A Frank Talk With the Ex-Pornhub Employee in Netflix’s ‘Money Shot’ – Rolling Stone

As one of the most famous tube sites in the industry, Pornhub has become a prime target in its fight against religious right smut, with its opening music being a TikTok meme. Most recently, the website he became the subject of a lawsuit brought by NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation). NCOSE is a right-wing organization formerly known as Morality in Media. The group has also spearheaded a publicity campaign against Pornhub. new york times An editorial by author Nicholas Kristof claims that the website was flooded with sexual abuse clips, and in the process, many payment processors were persuaded to cut ties with the website.

Most of the war coverage against Pornhub focuses on one of two demographics. It’s the group lobbying to shut it down and the sex workers and small-scale content he creators who have been hurt by the effort. But most of all, Pornhub, like any other company, has effectively been exposed to the weaknesses and weaknesses of other businesses, with little attention paid to the website and the big company that owns it, his MindGeek itself. Is not …

money shot, A Netflix documentary about the fight against Pornhub, directed by Suzanne Hillinger, is about to change that, offering a glimpse into the inner workings of the controversial company. Her key interviewee for the MindGeek story is her Noelle Perdue, a porn industry expert and writer working on a book about the history of moderation.

Perdue is also a former Pornhub employee and knows the inner workings of the site, warts and more. And he now finds himself in the odd position of having to defend an entire industry that admits itself to be flawed. “The most frustrating part about it is this kind of false criticism. [led by groups like NCOSE] It really hides a real change that needs to happen in the industry and a really powerful movement led by sex workers,” she says. rolling stone.

A self-professed “porn geek” and former stand-up comic based in Toronto, Perdue has always been fascinated by the adult industry. You can see her just by interacting with people in real life,” she says. After googling whether porn scriptwriting was a “real job,” she began working in the industry as a screenwriter for her MindGeek-owned porn production company, Brazzers. She mainly focused on porn parodies. -Cultures refer together as humanly possible. Initially, she enjoyed the gig, but when she was transferred to writing for a studio producing LGBTQ content, she became squeamish.

“At Brothers, we make jokes and parodies of Marvel,” she says. “But when you’re writing for a studio that relies heavily on identity, that’s when the more offensive aspects of pornography really come into play.” I was asked to write a scene where I expose my cock. So she asked that her Pornhub clips be transferred to her Modelhub, her site where creators upload and sell their own content.

Perdue joined Modelhub at an important time in Pornhub’s history. For years, sex workers have denounced platforms that essentially take money out of their pockets by allowing users to upload content without their consent.With Modelhub, Pornhub made its platform the first He had sex with his workers to help spread olive branches. “Pornhub had such a high profile and such a huge power that I thought it was really exciting that they really, really wanted to be a positive force in the industry. site,” he says Perdue.

Perdue’s main job was to recruit big names from the porn world to the platform, but it essentially became a sounding board for sex workers’ issues on Pornhub. One of the main issues was that Pornhub did not provide mandatory verification. This serves the dual function of protecting sex workers from content piracy and preventing anyone from uploading content that violates our guidelines, such as videos containing underage models or non-consensual pornography. “It was overall very frustrating for everyone involved to be put off for such a long time,” she recalled, taking this information back to Pornhub executives and they said, “There has been little movement.” I said I would talk to you.

“There is a constant battle of sorts between those who work at Pornhub and those who are serious about having such positive relationships with porn performers and those who don’t care at all. “It was done without a hitch,” she recalls. .

In a motivational speech at a conference, Pornhub executives framed Pornhub not as a porn company, but as a technology company. Perdue felt that this was disrespectful and that he was actually disrespectful to the people who built the website in the first place. “They had absolutely nothing to do with the content or the performers or the people who actually made the money,” she recalls.At one point, as she also said money shot, Perdue remembers he didn’t know about SESTA/FOSTA when he attended a meeting with the CEO. SESTA/FOSTA is his infamous 2018 law aimed at curbing online sex trafficking, which has the effect of endangering sex workers. “I was furious,” she says.

Frustrated by the perceived inability to listen and understand the grievances of the performers that Pornhub built the platform for, Perdue left Pornhub in 2020. It is to facilitate and abet sex trafficking. Perdue knew this was completely false and that the issues people were highlighting on Pornhub weren’t real issues with his website.

“This is frustrating because I wish II had just left Pornhub and was like everyone else and was like, ‘Oh my old employer, screw them up.'” she says. “But obviously I find it very frustrating because there is so much moral panic, unwarranted moral panic, to the point that porn companies are being talked about and defended to a standard that other companies don’t have. I was put in a position.”

Hillinger was the first to contact Purdue, money shot, She was reluctant at first. All the more so given the generally negative coverage of Pornhub and porn in the media. But she thought there was value in adding her own voice to her conversation, and she thought: new york times For individual payment processing. And I may have a billion and two.

Not everyone who appeared in the film felt entirely positive about the results.For example, porn star Cherie DeVille wrote a column for this magazine, money shot “Participating in ‘both sides’ discussions with a neutral approach” between the porn industry and the right-wing-led anti-trafficking industry [making] It’s unclear what the moral of the film is.

Hillinger and crew have been incredibly open to feedback from the sex workers they interviewed, she says, but Purdue feels similarly conflicted about the documentary, and hopes it will. money shot We have had the opportunity to provide more context on what actually constitutes trafficking (which is much more complex and nuanced than organizations like Christophe and NCOSE commonly lead us to believe, and how marginalized people are). It deals with the majority of cases where people are trafficked by trusted family members or members). friend). He also pointed out that Facebook hosts far more child sexual abuse material than Pornhub, according to data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, suggesting that movies may not be a popular choice for the complexities of online moderation. She said she wished she had touched him more.

Ultimately, however, Perdue says her problem is something else. money shot, However, people in the sex industry rarely get a chance to tell their story in the mainstream media. You want it all to go away You want to educate everyone in the right way And it’s not realistic to expect from one documentary ‘ she says. “There are criticisms of this movie. But ultimately, my real criticism is that we need more opportunities to have these conversations in the mainstream.” is “the ability to nuance something” rather than leaning into a dichotomy that the adult industry is all good or bad.

Honorably, the frustration with the lack of nuance in discussions of Pornhub and porn in general is evident on many occasions. money shot, It’s a juxtaposition of clips of right-wing speakers foaming at the mouth about the evils of websites. The Sopranos — in a shot of a janitor hanging around the Montreal headquarters at night.of money shot, MindGeek, and by extension the industry as a whole, seem harmless and mundane — and of course, that’s the point. Not an evil shibboleth, the company is like any other company looking to make a profit in the western world in his 2023, with different issues and frustrations than what Kristoff raised in his viral article. .

Perdue says he learned this lesson firsthand because he works in media, not the adult industry. This is terrifying. This is terrifying,” she says. “And that’s what’s frustrating. Now that I’m on the other side, I’m like, ‘Damn, why aren’t we talking about this?’ Let’s all take a step back and check our teeth in the mirror. ”