This Transaction Raises a Ton of Questions and is Deeply, Deeply Weird

April 18, 2023 2:54 AM

It is tempting to ignore this transaction because the business is some pervy corner of the internet. But I would argue that Pornhub (and by proxy its parent company MindGeek) is one of the most important websites in the world. Pornhub had over 2B visits last year and 100M+ daily active users. Visitor’s average time on site is 9 minutes and 54 seconds. Meaning that in 2022, a grand total of ~38,026.51 years of time was spent at this URL. Anything that aggregates this much attention matters. from We Don’t Know Enough About the Pornhub Acquisition by Evan Armstrong [all links SFW but the topic is PornHub]

New Pornhub owner has plans beyond porn [Axios]
Pornhub is under new ownership [The Verge]
Pornhub’s new owner plans to defend sex workers and share the platform's moderation tools [NBC]

posted by chavenet (26 comments total)

MetaFilter: all links SFW but the topic is PornHub
posted by Merus at 3:56 AM on April 18, 2023 [42 favorites]

The first thing I thought about was some kind of foreign influence operation / qanon style political maneuvering since the Watsons also made their money from porn, but tbh it sounds more like MindGeek's investors still own pornhub, but this is a move to salvage the site's reputation, "look, we're totally under new management!"

But I guess the point is we don't know...
posted by subdee at 5:19 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I presum ECP is not connected to the similarly-named Ethos Capital, the failed stalker of the .org TLD and now owner of Identity Digital (formerly domain registrars Afilias and Donuts).
posted by zaixfeep at 5:42 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh I wish this article were better! I give lots of credit to Armstrong; they've found an interesting and relevant story and are the first I've seen to raise a bunch of questions. Sadly that's where the story ends. We need full investigative journalism here to get some answers!

It's totally unsurprising that an anonymized shell corporation would buy the Internet's most relevant porn company. It's not hard to understand how an investor "like Elon or Bezos levels of rich" or an Arab sovereign wealth fund would want to make this deal without their name attached. The real question is who, and how, and when. Maybe this story will get folks digging for details.

The other half of this story is the very deep legal trouble PornHub was in, profiting off of videos of child sexual abuse and assault and non-consensual porn. I don't think the legal trouble is over. And as part of their response they decimated their catalog, removing pretty much all content whose provenance they couldn't specifically verify. Whoever bought PornHub bought a diminished product and a whole lot of trouble.
posted by Nelson at 7:02 AM on April 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

Money Shot (Netflix, trailer) discusses PornHub's troubles with hosting amateur and revenge content and the move to rebrand MindGeek.
posted by SPrintF at 7:27 AM on April 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

What is it worth to know the kink of every politician and businessperson? To someone who knows how to use such info, this seems like a small price to pay.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:57 AM on April 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Buying the whole thing seems like a heavy handed way to achieve that, surely bribing or extorting a few admins would get you the same results much faster.
posted by each day we work at 8:56 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bought admins don't stay bought. Bought companies, for the most part, do.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:19 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

What is it worth to know the kink of every politician and businessperson?

We had a president who had an affair with a pornstar and then paid her to keep quiet, and his whole political party doesn’t seem to care.

Meanwhile if they’re a Democrat, even the slightest hint of impropriety is enough to render them persona non grata and unemployable for the rest of their lives.

So the answer to your question is : depends on their political alignment.
posted by panama joe at 10:45 AM on April 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

Pornhub's parent company was replaced by another parent company? So, like, a step parent?
posted by bondcliff at 10:58 AM on April 18, 2023 [33 favorites]

I hope that step parent, er parent company, avoids getting trapped in any dishwashers or under any beds, er avoids any traps or pitfalls the previous company may have been involved in.
posted by youthenrage at 11:56 AM on April 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Pornhub viewers want* to know if there's hot half-siblings coming from the step-parent's side?

*: I'm making this up, I have other yum that's not this yuck
posted by k3ninho at 12:20 PM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

The verge article suggests the "Cannabis Entrepreneurs" behind ECP might be looking to make money here by licensing the robust online age verification system which seems like a gamble on all online "adult" entertainment becoming more heavily regulated in the future.
posted by 3j0hn at 12:35 PM on April 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

ECP seems to be backed by people who have made money as gambling, drugs and other vices have been decriminalized/legalized. They’ve got the products that get advertised on places like Pornhub. They are locked out of normal financial institutions. Their profits are difficult to re-invest or save as this kind of money attracts of regulatory attention. Banks don’t like those headaches.
posted by interogative mood at 1:33 PM on April 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

The verge article suggests the "Cannabis Entrepreneurs" behind ECP might be looking to make money here by licensing the robust online age verification system which seems like a gamble on all online "adult" entertainment becoming more heavily regulated in the future.

Or, it’s a gamble on the feds legalizing weed and licensing a robust online age verification system becoming crucial to national distributors.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:02 PM on April 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Which feds? It sounds like ECP is Canadian, so there's already an ecosystem of online weed-ordering and age verification. Of course, age verification for an online product is very different than for a physical one, too.
posted by sagc at 2:20 PM on April 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Visitor’s average time on site is 9 minutes and 54 seconds.

Those 4 seconds at the end are the saddest.
posted by chillmost at 3:15 PM on April 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

Pornhub's parent company was replaced by another parent company? So, like, a step parent?

hot
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:17 AM on April 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

hot
posted by They sucked his brains out!

Eponysterical!
posted by Optamystic at 4:29 AM on April 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

What is it worth to know the kink of every politician and businessperson?

Don't most politicians' and businesspersons' ISPs already have that info? "Incognito mode" isn't what most folks think it is.
posted by mediareport at 5:58 AM on April 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

A lot of ISPs so the data is scattered and mixed with other users of accounts including businesses and organizations. Pornhub activity is nicely differentiated to accounts and via web bugs and fingerprinting at best semi anonymous profiles.
posted by Mitheral at 6:29 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

"There is a reason the SEC exists and American markets are considered some of the least fraudulent in the world."

LOL
posted by indica at 6:54 AM on April 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

> Don't most politicians' and businesspersons' ISPs already have that info? "Incognito mode" isn't what most folks think it is.

I mean all they can know is that you went to a porn-hosting domain. SSL covers the URL in the GET request, so only the porn site knows what you watched.
posted by dis_integration at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Funny to have mentioned ISPs. Why did Verizon buy tumblr and then sell it? I have thoughts.
posted by hypnogogue at 2:45 PM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

A lot of ISPs so the data is scattered and mixed with other users of accounts including businesses and organizations.

Ok, I'll take your word for it. My layperson's impression of the data mining biz is that it's now relatively easy for the folks with access to multiple databases to recreate specific individual profiles by cross-referencing.

I mean all they can know is that you went to a porn-hosting domain.

For some domains, couldn't that itself be embarrassing or politically harmful if it was shared? (I have little faith it won't be shared somehow, whether through bribery/social engineering or some other means.) Again, this is a layperson's impression, so feel free to correct that.
posted by mediareport at 7:05 PM on April 20, 2023

Can Pornhub evolve? A national security expert, bodybuilder and porn researchers are going to try. An article about a new advisory board that the private equity company created to provide oversight for Pornhub. It's a good looking group of advisors but it's not clear how much power they will have. Companies often create these kinds of boards for good PR and then ignore their work.
posted by Nelson at 12:46 PM on April 23, 2023