The film interviews – and is on the side of – the models and the performers as creative entrepreneurs and heroes of consenting sensuality. But it also shows that some of the campaigners against Pornhub are far-right Christian evangelists who simply want to stamp out pornography and all sex outside marriage. The film shows that Pornhub’s so-called moderators had to watch nearly 1,000 videos a day and could not meaningfully regulate the content in any way. So many of the user-generating performers migrated to OnlyFans, where the videos are more closely monitored. Moreover, the Fosta-Sesta laws brought in in the US against online sex trafficking in 2018 potentially incriminated all employees. But a 2020 exposé by New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof revealed that alongside this perfectly respectable material, people were uploading rape videos and child-abuse videos and the outrage meant that Pornhub’s activities were severely curtailed. Pornhub is the colossally successful porn site, owned by a Canadian company with the airily tech-bro name of MindGeek for years it provided a lucrative and arguably enlightened outlet for adult content creators and models who were providing a consensual, legal service to paying customers, and who were thus able to get away from the sleazier and more exploitative side of studio-based porn and sex work. It seems to me that Suzanne Hillinger’s uncertain documentary about Pornhub isn’t exactly sure what its money shot should be. D ocumentaries about pornography are usually building to one of two different climactic conclusions: that porn is actually a hateful enabler of rape, or that porn is actually a sex-positive celebration of sensual pleasure.
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