On October 4th, 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp went down for several hours.
The consequence?
Pornhub saw an increase of 10.5% in traffic.
Let's put that in perspective.
For every hour that Facebook's services were down, Pornhub added about 500,000 more users.
Per hour!
No social network or streaming service can come even close to that.
There's no other way around: the world loves porn.
It's everywhere, and, yes, Pornhub is the world's biggest brand.
Pornhub is an adult-streaming website…
Our initial question was simple: with so much free porn out there, how the hell does Pornhub
make money?
The pornographic industry dominates society.
30% to 35% of all downloaded content relates to porn.
Right now, this very second, 29,000 people are watching adult content.
Every day, 68 million searches in google relate to pornography.
So, Pornhub has taken advantage of this global addiction.
This website ranks in the top ten companies with the most social impact, year in and year
out.
Behind Facebook and Google lies Pornhub.
But, if you've ever visited the site, you will notice that there's a lot of free content.
So, with all this free content, one would think there's no need for a subscription.
It's logical: paying for porn makes no sense.
At the same, we can't help but wonder how such a giant finances itself.
That's where Mindgeek comes in.
You see, Pornhub is only one of many companies under the giant umbrella that is Mindgeek.
If you've never heard of them, you're not the only one.
Go to their website, and you'll see a company that works on content delivery and advertising.
And, that's true.
But Mindgeek focuses on porn.
Now, is that bad?
It shouldn't be, for now.
So, how did this website come about?
After YouTube came into our lives, it was a matter of time before someone made an x-rated
tube site.
But, of course, it wasn't only one; many appeared in those days.
Sites like RedTube and YouPorn were free, for the most part, and relied on ads for income.
For every click, they got some change.
It wasn't a lot per click, but so many people watched porn that they made a decent living.
And, the numbers only increased.
You see, before these sites, buying pornography was a straightforward business.
People bought the videos and watched them.
That was it.
The only other way to make money was creating galleries that led users to pay sites.
But tube sites changed everything, and people wanted in.
That's where Matt Keezer comes in.
Anyway, he created Interhub, a tube content company, and one of the brands was Pornhub.
But, this wasn't Keezer's first foray into adult content.
That's where his other two buddies come in.
Stephan Manos and Ouissam Youssef had worked in those early galleries as far back as 2003.
Back then, they noticed how profitable specific "niche" markets were.
So, after having many galleries, they created their own website, Brazzers, to produce content.
This, of course, would become of the biggest production companies in the world.
So, by 2007, it made perfect sense for Keezer to create a tube site like Pornhub.
But, the three didn't stop there.
Brazzers created other sites, and between them, they were on their way to an empire.
The company grew enough to become an exciting bid for Fabian Thylmann, who's another porn
"connoisseur."
Thylmann had created a tracking software that allowed companies to track advertising links
and clicks.
This way, businesses could then charge commissions over these.
And, he's open about how he got into porn.
He was a geek and rarely got out.
But he's also very secretive.
There's actually very little on him, but one thing is clear.
He loved porn.
In fact, he spent his earnings from the software to buy several internet companies that he
fit under an umbrella.
After purchasing several European sites, Interhub caught his attention, buying it.
While, to this day, there's no definitive evidence on the amount, rumor has it that
it was around $140 million.
So, now, he had Interhub, including Pornhub, Brazzers, and many others.
He named his porn imperium Manwin, and he made sure it was a reputable company.
That's right, Thylmann wanted a reputable porn emporium.
So, he even created safe-sex campaigns.
He also bought 22,000 DVDs from small companies to license them through Pornhub.
And, it seemed the company was going legit.
Thylmann even made huge efforts to introduce anti-piracy fingerprinting.
His actions had immediate results.
Manwin increased earnings by 40% in less than a year, with Pornhub responsible for most
of that growth.
After that, there was no stopping the company, even owning the rights to Playboy digital
brands.
But then, in 2013, Thylmann announced that he was selling his shares of the porn empire
he had created.
Manwin executives would buy him out.
In his farewell letter, he thanked his employees.
He called it one of the hardest decisions in the lives of both his wife and himself.
Thylmann has said he's never set foot on a porn set.
Still, that doesn't take away from the fact that he had a porn empire.
He sold his share, and the company changed its name to MindGeek.
Though finding out who owns the company is hard, there are two prominent names.
Feras Antoon and David Tassilo are the most notable figures, and they were relentless.
They took what Thylmann had made and ran away with it.
From 2013 onwards, Pornhub became the biggest porn site in the world.
The company has made massive efforts to understand data to achieve this goal.
In fact, their algorithms are the stuff of legend.
And so are their yearly reviews.
The site received 42 billion visits in 2019, about 115 million per day.
Pornhub has so much content that, in 2019, it added up to 170 years of videos.
But, what about the money?
How did it become so huge?
Do you remember Thylmann's efforts to make the company grow?
Well, it wasn't only him.
Back then, Thylmann relied a lot on investors.
125 individuals and companies dished out $362 million in debt to help the pornographic expansion.
And, these included JPMorgan Chase, Fortress Investment Group, and, get this, Cornell University.
By the way, Cornell University dropped out of the investment in 2016.
When the media questioned them, they said they didn't know Mindgeek did porn.
They believed that Mindgeek was only an "online media distribution company."
So, fool me once?
I guess.
This leads to understanding that investors fueled the growth.
But what about sustainability?
That's where it gets fascinating.
The company is private, but we know that, for 2021, it's estimated that it will make
$460 million in revenue.
Most of that revenue comes from ads and subscriptions.
Someone is willing to pay for something already available with ease.
Yes, subscriptions remove ads, pop-ups and offer more content.
But, still.
I guess it's always been like that.
Those that were willing to pay for porn back in the 2000s are willing to pay for it now,
and they'll continue to do so.
Mindgeek, hence Pornhub, is a monopoly.
All the companies combined consume more bandwidth than Twitter, Amazon, or even Facebook.
Actually, it's so massive that the company has copyright issues with its own companies.
Producers create videos that end up in Mindgeek's free sites, thus lowering the returns for
Mindgeek.
So, it's a vampire system.
At the same time, the company has so much porn available that it has driven down income
for itself and artists.
To counter this, the company has launched communities and creator channels.
In these, members can tip specific stars.
Think of it as an OnlyFans.
But these are minor problems compared to the company's dark side.
There were approximately 170 years of content.
It's impossible to keep track of all that content.
So, in that sea of perversion, there's some dark stuff.
There are rapes, bestiality, and even murder.
As Pornhub grew in popularity, it tried to moderate the content.
But, in reality, the company didn't care much about it.
Take the example of Girls Do Porn, a production company.
This was a verified channel in Pornhub.
This means that moderators actually confirmed that everyone in those videos had agreed to
appear on them.
In reality, this channel had tricked women into having sex on camera.
In addition, the producers lied about where the video would end up.
Also, they didn't pay the promised amount and even forced women into acts they hadn't
agreed upon.
Former employees testified that the company relied on lies.
But, Pornhub only acted when 22 women sued the production company.
Then, after years of working with it, Pornhub deleted the channel and removed the content.
The problem is that the solution didn't work.
Mindgeek is so massive that this content still exists on some websites under the company's
umbrella.
This situation only highlighted the challenge Pornhub faced with moderation.
There's so much porn that it's impossible to see it all.
Now, even more so, after Pornhub introduced the Community channels.
Regular people upload their videos by the thousands with hopes of getting followers
and tips.
In theory, moderators have to watch each of those videos.
So let me be clear, the company does have moderators, but not enough.
In 2020, former Mindgeek moderators revealed that it was impossible to keep up.
They had to watch 1200 videos per day and catch anything from underage sex to bestiality
to death.
But Mindgeek had given them a remarkably lax rule book.
Since it was so big, the company even allowed for content forbidden in one site to appear
in another.
The moderators didn't know what to do, so they passed some videos.
They also told of how their mental health was taking a toll.
But, unfortunately, the company did too little, too late.
It added mental-health services and reported videos to authorities.
But it started doing so only after hundreds of thousands of videos had already made it
to the site.
In this very same situation, underage girls found their images and videos on the website.
In 2020, a story broke that two girls, aged fifteen and fourteen, were filmed without
consent.
Then, they ended up on Pornhub.
After desperate attempts to take the video down, Pornhub only obliged when one of the
girls impersonated a lawyer.
Still, her images and videos already navigated the untraceable sea of pornography that's
Pornhub and its branch companies.
After this column came out, other reports came of underaged women whose videos appeared
on the site.
Others had the women drunk or drugged.
More details about the lax moderation rules came out.
At one point, the moderation team only had ten employees.
Orders were that they should take immediate action only if the person was under 12.
Moderators were less likely to ask for verification or even take down the video if the "performers"
were 15 or 16 years old.
By the way, verification consists of uploading a picture of themselves with ID and their
username.
That's it.
Nothing more.
The media outcry led Pornhub to "take action" and remove videos involving sex trafficking,
rape, or non-consent.
And here's where the numbers are shocking.
Pornhub went from 13.5 million videos to under three million in a matter of days.
So, it was possible.
Pornhub knew how to do it, but it didn't care until word got out.
Immediately afterward, major companies dropped their partnerships or sponsorship from Pornhub.
So, Mastercard, Visa, and Discover all terminated possible use.
Women also took action, as there are many lawsuits worth millions of dollars in the
works.
But, the problem is more significant than that; Pornhub is the epitome of a human dichotomy.
Its founders and executives donate to charity, including Canada's UNICEF programs.
All the while, the company continues to operate in a shroud of secrecy.
Try to understand Mindgeek, and you find yourself knee-deep in a complex web of offshore companies
on financial-fraud watch lists.
Even Mindgeek's owner had been a mystery for years.
The company's biggest owner is Bernard Bergemar.
But there's little trace of him in Google, and that's saying something.
He owns a series of subsidiaries that have lent money to Mindgeek for generous monthly
payments.
But, these people are only part of the problem.
It's also about who consumes the product.
So, Pornhub will continue to exist.