Money Shot: The Pornhub Story
Year: 2023
Director: Suzanne Hillinger
Starring: Gwen Adora, Asa Akira, Cherie Deville, Natassia Dreams, Wolf Hudson & Siri
Runtime: 95 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 22/03/23
Director: Suzanne Hillinger
Starring: Gwen Adora, Asa Akira, Cherie Deville, Natassia Dreams, Wolf Hudson & Siri
Runtime: 95 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 22/03/23
We are currently living in the midst of a sexual revolution, or more specifically, a sex work revolution. Since the dawn of the internet, pornography has been available for people to ogle, admire, and relieve themselves to and usually for free. Prior to the internet, saucy material was exclusive to adult magazines and dodgy VHS tapes hidden away at the video rental shop. But since the mid 2000’s internet pornography has seen a rapid growth and change. Pornhub is the second largest adult video website in the world, and the fourteenth most visited website on the internet. It’s everybody’s dirty little secret, because clearly everyone uses it, but nobody will admit to it. Established in 2007, Pornhub stored the largest catalogue of videos on any kind of adult site, totalling around thirteen million as of December 2020. It was also one of the first sites to allow users to make money off of their videos, giving rise to the new internet sex work culture that is beginning to boom. But following investigations of videos and images depicting children came to a head in late 2020, the service removed around nine million videos from the site and stopped processing payments to uploaders.
Money Shot: The Pornhub Story investigates how this came to be, what the company did to try and stop child sex abuse content being uploaded to the site, and how the changes affected prominent sex workers.
Clocking in at just over an hour and a half, I feel that Money Shot does a decent enough job of laying the groundwork around the rise and fall (if it can be considered a fall as it has still remained popular) of Pornhub, but it never manages to go more than skin deep on the issues it presents. It tries to cover a lot of ground, which is why I think this is a great starting point for people wanting to do their own research into child sex trafficking, or online sex work.
The film starts out by covering the basics, how Pornhub started, what the site was as of its creation, and how it expanded to be able to monetize content and pass that on to creators. This is really what I had expected the majority of the documentary to be about, and it’s nicely done though it never goes in too deep about the specifics of how the site was run. Instead, those interviewed are all content creators, and Pornhub brand ambassadors, rather than those in charge. A lot of them feel restricted about what they can say without having a lawsuit brought against them, but they all seem fairly positive about the early days of Pornhub despite expressing concerns regarding unverified accounts.
Money Shot: The Pornhub Story investigates how this came to be, what the company did to try and stop child sex abuse content being uploaded to the site, and how the changes affected prominent sex workers.
Clocking in at just over an hour and a half, I feel that Money Shot does a decent enough job of laying the groundwork around the rise and fall (if it can be considered a fall as it has still remained popular) of Pornhub, but it never manages to go more than skin deep on the issues it presents. It tries to cover a lot of ground, which is why I think this is a great starting point for people wanting to do their own research into child sex trafficking, or online sex work.
The film starts out by covering the basics, how Pornhub started, what the site was as of its creation, and how it expanded to be able to monetize content and pass that on to creators. This is really what I had expected the majority of the documentary to be about, and it’s nicely done though it never goes in too deep about the specifics of how the site was run. Instead, those interviewed are all content creators, and Pornhub brand ambassadors, rather than those in charge. A lot of them feel restricted about what they can say without having a lawsuit brought against them, but they all seem fairly positive about the early days of Pornhub despite expressing concerns regarding unverified accounts.
The documentary then shifts gears into looking at the child sex abuse claims levelled against the site, and how the company consistently failed to improve safety features and algorithms to stop stolen or illegal videos being uploaded. It’s a pretty damning indictment and for a while I did think that the documentary had chosen to be ‘anti-porn’ in its agenda, simply because it’s still a taboo subject, and whilst the critics interviewed were claiming this to be an issue related specifically to Pornhub, the reality is that they were all very much anti-pornography in general.
But then came the twist, and I have to say I didn’t see it coming. I really enjoyed the way that Money Shot pulled the rug out from under my feet in a story I felt I knew reasonably well, and how that then influenced the decision made in December 2020 to remove over half of the website’s content.
The whole thing wraps up with the professional sex workers explaining how they have adapted without Pornhub, and the rise of OnlyFans. It’s a great epilogue of sorts to the investigation as there’s clearly a lot more to be done on Pornhub’s end of things, but OnlyFans is a story in of itself that simply couldn’t be contained within this documentary.
Money Shot probably would have worked better as a miniseries, exploring different avenues of sex work with Pornhub kind of at the centre of it all. But as it stands it’s a decently made and impartial look at how the biggest brand in porn rose to prominence and the complicated legal proceedings, they found themselves caught up in during the 2010’s. Crucially, and I think wisely, the victims of the child sexual abuse are never put on display. We hear legal testimonies from them, but this isn’t a documentary about sex trafficking, it’s a documentary about a porn website, and I think it’s wise that the choice was made to focus on the legal proceedings at large rather than specific cases of child sexual abuse.
It's surface level stuff, but Money Shot is a good entry point for further research into the subject, and I’d love to see someone tackle some of the topics presented with a narrower focus and in greater depth.
But then came the twist, and I have to say I didn’t see it coming. I really enjoyed the way that Money Shot pulled the rug out from under my feet in a story I felt I knew reasonably well, and how that then influenced the decision made in December 2020 to remove over half of the website’s content.
The whole thing wraps up with the professional sex workers explaining how they have adapted without Pornhub, and the rise of OnlyFans. It’s a great epilogue of sorts to the investigation as there’s clearly a lot more to be done on Pornhub’s end of things, but OnlyFans is a story in of itself that simply couldn’t be contained within this documentary.
Money Shot probably would have worked better as a miniseries, exploring different avenues of sex work with Pornhub kind of at the centre of it all. But as it stands it’s a decently made and impartial look at how the biggest brand in porn rose to prominence and the complicated legal proceedings, they found themselves caught up in during the 2010’s. Crucially, and I think wisely, the victims of the child sexual abuse are never put on display. We hear legal testimonies from them, but this isn’t a documentary about sex trafficking, it’s a documentary about a porn website, and I think it’s wise that the choice was made to focus on the legal proceedings at large rather than specific cases of child sexual abuse.
It's surface level stuff, but Money Shot is a good entry point for further research into the subject, and I’d love to see someone tackle some of the topics presented with a narrower focus and in greater depth.