Front Burner - Could an ID law trigger a Pornhub blackout?

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says his party supports a bill from an independent senator that would require websites to verify users' ages before allowing them to see sexually explicit content — similar to laws recently passed in the U.K., several E.U. countries and numerous American states. But critics say the law would be disastrous for privacy and civil liberties — and industry titan Pornhub says it might force them to block Canadians from the site altogether, as they've already done in some of those other jurisdictions.Sam Cole — a journalist with 404 Media and the host of Front Burner's upcoming spinoff podcast, The Pornhub Empire: Understood — explains the controversy around a seemingly simple push to protect children online, and what it could mean for the future of the online porn industry.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcriptsTranscripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. You may have seen this week a statement by Pierre Polyev. It caught a lot of headlines because, well, it was about porn. Specifically, the conservative leader was throwing his support behind a controversial bill that would require people looking at porn websites to have their age verified. Under 18, not allowed in. And if the

website doesn't stop you, they could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Critics say this could be a privacy and civil liberties nightmare. And Canadian pornography titan Pornhub says that if the bill passes, blocking Canadian access would be an option, which is something that's done in a handful of U.S. states. My guest today is Sam Cole, a journalist with 404 Media, and she's going to walk us through this proposed law and some of the broader issues that it raises. Sam is also the host of our upcoming spinoff podcast all about Pornhub. The series launches on March 11th but right now you can search the Pornhub Empire

understood and follow the feed so you don't miss the first episode drop. Hi, Sam. Thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. Hi, thank you for having me. So this bill that we're talking about, it's currently being studied by a committee in the House of Commons here in Ottawa. It's being championed and sponsored by independent Senator Julie Meville-Duchenne. And I know that you spoke to her for this podcast that you have coming up. And what did she say about why she thinks this bill is necessary? Yeah, so the senator is obviously like many people are very concerned about child safety on the internet. And this is a topic that's been very controversial. It seems

like it should be very straightforward. We want kids to be safe online. But it's been something that's been a long fight since really the beginning of the Internet. But it's really started picking up intensity in the last few years, especially in the last year. Here in the States also, we have quite a few very similar bills being passed. very similar bills being passed. The premise, and as she outlines in the bill, is that kids are being harmed by these service providers who have explicit material on their sites, and they're letting anyone view it, including kids. We have a whole generation of children who have been raised on those websites and think that sexual relationships are what they see on porn, which is not the case. We're talking about performance. We're talking about

stuff that's not real. That's not sexual education. She makes a bunch of claims in the bill about things like pornography addiction, which the jury is very much out about currently in the science, things like gender and development of, you know, attitudes about harassment and violence. All the indication we have from science, from scientific research, is that there are links between watching porn for kids and having increased stereotypes about sex, you know, normalization of some of what they see. These are all very, you know, controversial positions to take to begin with. These aren't facts that we've established. And going from there, putting down

these rules and these fines about who can and can't access porn sites, but not really getting specific about how that would look in practice. So yeah, how we're going to verify and how the porn sites are going to be fine. Yeah, exactly. Just before we go on to what is happening in other jurisdictions, I just elaborate on what you mean by the jury's still out for me when you say porn addiction and when you say when you're talking about violence and pornography. Yeah, I mean, these are these are, again, very much topics that people have been interested in since the beginning of online pornography. It used to be you could just like pull out a magazine from under your mattress and no one was particularly getting riled up about addiction to that. But now we have it at our fingertips at all times. So it's obviously a concern. But as far as people who study and research these things, at least in terms of whether or not it's harmful or whether these are healthy behaviors, it's really it's not an issue that's settled. So whether or not pornography addiction is true addiction,

for example, is it, you know, addiction in the same sense that like alcohol would be an addiction. So, you know, there's, there's a lot of rhetoric going around about this, a lot of concerns from healthcare providers about messaging that young people especially are getting online about whether or not their own behaviors are healthy. So it's tough. It's, you know, it's something that people do struggle with, but I think it's being used as especially, you know, kind of this buzzword to get some bills passed that would actually increase censorship online. And what about the idea that kids are being exposed to like very violent images? Yeah, it's, it's really is like a noble cause to not want kids to be exposed to things too early that they shouldn't be. But whether or not it's

the realm of these technology companies and those internet service providers, or whether it's the realm of parents and educators to teach kids about what is and isn't real and what isn't okay to do in real life is kind of the debate that's happening. That is happening in other jurisdictions. So this law that is being considered here in Canada, you know, we're obviously not the first. And there are others that have actually gone before us and they've implemented some kind of law. And so what have we seen elsewhere? How are they dealing with this attempt to stop young people from looking at porn online? young people from looking at porn online. So this is, it's something that's happening across the United States. The states that have passed these similar kind of age verification laws include Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Utah, Texas, Montana, and Louisiana. It's like, it's spreading pretty fast. That's a lot of states. New law is aiming at protecting our children in Louisiana,

and it requires age verification on adult websites. One of the most popular adult websites, Pornhub, has blocked Virginia users over the state's new age verification law. Pornhub and several adult entertainment workers are suing the state of Texas to block its impending age verification law. They're all very similar. They all are very similar to the bill that we're talking about today in Canada, are suing the state of Texas to block its impending age verification law. They're all very similar. They all are very similar to the bill that we're talking about today in Canada, where they propose that these sites have a responsibility to not let young people in, that there will

be these massive fines, but they don't really give concrete guidance on how to make that happen, how to enact it, how it will be enforced, things like that. So that's kind of the state of things here. Has anybody put forward anything concrete at this point? Like if you sign in or if you try to go to Pornhub, you know, you get this prompt and you have to put in a government ID and, I don't know, scan your face. Like, is anything like that in practice right now? It's in practice somewhat in some of these states. It's not, it's still not something that is being included in the law. So, you know, sites are really on their own as far as how they're going to abide by the law. In Louisiana, at least, I tested one of the identity verification

processes from Pornhub, which, you know, they were using LA Wallet, which is like a Louisiana-based, like a digital driver's license. So, you know, to do the steps for that is pretty straightforward. You're just uploading your driver's license. Pornhub says it doesn't collect the data. In other cases, there's third-party apps that involve, if you're a new user, a lot of steps. I tried one with Xhamster, which is another really big porn site. I won't go through all the steps because there were literally 50 of them. I won't go through all the steps because there were literally like 50 of them, but it involved like scanning a QR code from the site, like looking at your computer and like getting your face scanned, entering in, you know, a five digit pin and then verifying that pin and then scanning a selfie. Wow.

Uploading your ID, waiting for review. Sometimes it doesn't work. For some reason, it didn't work on my face a bunch. It just like it was like, you know, there was was a high demand so it said it would take longer and then once you get through that process then it's like thanks for doing that process we don't store any of that but like what are your kinks and what kind of porn do you want to see you know it was like then you were met with a survey about like these very personal details which was really i don don't know, I find it very invasive. Does it feel maybe a bit violating?

Yeah. Yeah, in some ways. Okay, so some people are going to listen to what you just said. And I think they're going to get like, you know, big time George Orwell 1984 vibes, which I feel like is a good segue for us to talk about the criticisms of this, right? And, you know, the people who are saying that this is a real civil liberties nightmare, what are they saying? What is the argument that they're making? that these sites are asking for your ID and to scan your face in a lot of cases in order to access porn to, you know, access something that's like part of your sex life. So it's very invasive. It's very, I think, in my opinion, overstepping what what needs to happen in order to, you know, we're we're trying to block kids from seeing these sites, but in the process,

we're blocking adults from, you know, easily accessing pretty standard legal entertainment. So that's the big one is the privacy concerns, concerns about like leaking data, the handling of data, things like that. And then another really big concern, I think probably the most, the more serious one is that because the enforcement is so up in the air and unclear as to how this is actually going to happen, you have porn habit sites like this, like X Amster, they're trying to work with law. If you're faced with this really convoluted long process, you're just going to say, you know what, nevermind, I'm going to go to another site. I'm going to go to a different site that isn't doing the same kind of moderation and regulation. Or you're going to use a VPN and just say, you know, I'm going to use a virtual private network, spoof my IP, make it look like I'm coming from a different place.

If you're in Canada, you can say, oh, I'm coming from New York in the United States and then just get around it that way, which is very easy. Kids could do that. No law there. Yeah. Yeah. This was my big thing when I was looking at this. Like, can't you just get around this? Like how everybody, you know, one of our producers was saying that he's getting around the meta news ban here in Canada just by changing the location on his iPhone. Right. It's so easy. I know that you put that to the senator. And how does she even respond to that? I mean, in general, when the people writing these bills are posed with more technological or social issues when it comes to the problems with their bills,

the response is usually, well, the sites should figure it out. It's up to them to abide by this. But it's really not under the site's control whether or not a kid can download a VPN and get around it that way. One of the big arguments was for me, oh, your law will never work because teenagers will use VPNs to hide in which country they are

and they will access porn. Well, yes, obviously. But younger kids under 11 don't exactly know it exists. And we will protect enough children with age verification that it will be useful. So I asked her specifically, you know, have you considered talking to sex workers, talking to people in the adult industry, because they are very motivated to not have kids on their sites if they're doing their jobs correctly. They don't want, you know, kids viewing the content that they're making. And, you know, the response was basically like, well, that's, you know, that's not really something that we're going to do.

You know, they have a right to speak out. They have a right to be afraid that they could lose customers. But I don't think this is an argument for not protecting millions of children. This is not our society. The government have intervened for decades to stop children from buying alcohol and to stop them from going in sex shops and watching porn movies. So why would it be different on the Internet? It's difficult. It's like these are the the

stakeholders of the of the issue at hand these are the people that are going to be affected with their livelihoods if they can't uh sell their content online or have it viewed by people easily and they're being left out of the conversation entirely and i I've seen Pornhub, you know, as we're talking about this one huge site, comment on this. They are saying they don't want responsibility. They don't want the responsibility of having to verify people, but they do seem to be punting it elsewhere, right? And so explain to me what they're almost almost suggesting it seems like a sort of a device level thing which i don't totally understand yeah so most i would say i mean i'm not super familiar with like the parental controls on iphones and stuff like that but like most new

phones uh have and you know computers in general you can download this software but um they have parental controls where you can put in a category of site civic site and say i don't want my kids accessing this and then they can't from the phone and that solves the problem of getting around it with an with a vpn um it kind of puts the responsibility on parents to pay attention to what their kids are doing online, which is like a it's it is kind of it's pushing their sensibility off on parents. But at the same time, especially here in the States, it's like there's this big debate going on about education, sex education in schools. And it's like, how much can teachers talk about in schools? And, you know know where is the education happening similar debates going on here yeah it's like there's never been really good yeah and what should the education be yeah there's never been good sex education especially in the

states i never had good you know sex education certainly most of my friends didn't so it's not happening in schools and then the parents are like, we're not going to do it. Someone else should do it. And it's like, well, someone's got to do it. You know, the sites selling the content are like, well, the parents should be doing it. So it's just this kind of passing around a responsibility and where it's going to land. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money For Money for Cops. Just to note, or to put a fine line on this, with all of these issues of privacy concerns, the potential workarounds, the fact that, as you talked about,

there are consenting adults and issues around accessing porn and also people who are making the porn and how they might be losing livelihoods here. The proponents of this law, they will ultimately argue here that the harms of this pornography on children is outweighing all of these other issues. And I know that you put that to the senator. It's in a way it's like that, again, is like a very common sense thing to say. And like that's very much the belief of a lot of people who are supportive of these bills.

But I think what people don't really realize is I think the the result of these bills getting passed is always going to be more censorship in general. So it's not just like, oh, poor you. You can't access Pornhub. It's like eventually you're not going to be able to access Twitter. Well, this is a question I had for you because there is porn on Twitter, right? Yeah. And Reddit. Oh, there's so much.

So would this apply to all these? There's porn everywhere on the internet. Exactly. You know, you remember, I think it was like Avenue Q, that song from Avenue Q, the Broadway show, like the internet is for porn. So this is, yes, it's not just a site. We're talking about Pornhub a lot. This is obviously affecting a lot of other places on the internet that aren't Pornhub. Yeah, exactly. them. And I know that they faced this huge crisis back in 2020, one that they actually haven't even gotten through yet. But that crisis wasn't about who's allowed to look at the site, right? It

involved who was allowed to upload material on the site. And just refresh our memories about what happened there. I know this is part of the story that you're telling in this upcoming podcast. Yeah. So there was this big, it was kind of positioned as like an expose, but it was an opinion piece in the New York Times, put out by Nicholas Kristof, who's a journalist, primarily writes for the opinion section. And he had talked to a few people who claimed that they had child sexual abuse material uploaded of themselves on Pornhub. And it was really difficult to get it taken down. And you know, it caused a ton of harm. Obviously, this is like a horrible thing to have happen to kids, especially and to anyone really, it's like it's non-essential porn on the internet

and on Pornhub also has been a huge problem in the past where people can't get their own content taken off the site quickly or in some cases at all so so that piece came out this followed like years of criticism from people in the industry and people who are using corn up as performers also saying you know we need this site to be more responsive to these kinds of claims. They were recognized from within as being not responsive enough to people who said, hey, this content's on here. I need it taken down. So that piece came out. And, of course, it generated so much attention because it's the New York Times. And they laid out this really horrific story that happened to these women.

because it's the New York Times and they laid out this really horrific story that happened to these women. And immediately or almost immediately, MasterCard and Visa pulled their services from the site and said, you know, we're not, this is too much of a risk. We're not going to deal with Pornhub anymore. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called on MasterCard and Visa to temporarily withhold payments to Pornhub following the New York Times column. Visa did not immediately. Which, of course, lots of people doing legal consensual work on Pornhub were immediately affected. They were like, we can't pay rent this month because we can't cash out through these very huge mainstream credit card processors. So that happened. Pornhub went on a really long and thorough crisis prevention, crisis management.

Journey. Yeah. Saga where they, their name change. It's just hard to even like get into words like how big everything, how big the changes were that happened. Their name, their name of their parent company changed from MindGeek to ALO. They were bought by a private equity firm called ethical capital partners they went through this big revamp of like we're going to be ethical now they scrubbed unverified uploads off the site which was like millions of videos they changed their entire uploading process where you couldn't

upload unless you had all this paperwork and id and everything like that and it's still happening like they're still making changes years later where they're requiring things like consent forms from everyone in the video and stuff like that. So it was huge. I would say at this point, it's like, Pornhub went from like this kind of reputation for being like, you can upload whatever, whenever. And, you know, there were, it was kind of wild west vibes vibes to like this site is probably like the safest porn site on the Internet in a matter of like a year or two. So huge 180 for the company and revamped their entire their entire process. So, yeah. And then now you have them taking a stand against these education laws by just saying we're not going to play ball at all. laws by just saying we're not going to play ball at all. I think they threatened to pull out of Canada entirely, which is a really wild thing to say. Yeah, I mean, is it so? So I guess,

what do you think that this could potentially mean for a company that has already been through so much turmoil that they're now seeing this push from the other side from the like you know they dealt with this all these issues on the supply side um and now they're dealing with all these issues on the demand side on the consumer side yeah i mean it's it's tough because it's like they did all of this these, they made everything much safer. And MasterCard and Visa are still not back on Pornhub. So they changed a bunch of stuff, they did what, you know, seemingly was, you know, being asked of them, and then it still didn't bring back these payment processors. And now you have these bills that are basically going after all porn in general and saying, you know, we're

going to make it really hard to access porn. And now they're having to deal with this. So it does feel a little bit endless. And I think on Pornhub's end, you know, they built the company up as this, this like synonymous with porn type brand. It like that was if you're going to think about finding porn on the internet that's kind of what you would think of as going to porn hub at least in like the mainstream so they got really big and got really popular and now they're kind of paying for that visibility by being like the the representatives of the porn industry in a way i'm sure they would they would not see themselves or say that they felt that way. But it's definitely kind of the public perception is like, oh, what Pornhub does is kind of

representative of how the whole industry is going because they're so big. That's so interesting. And Sam, I cannot wait to listen to the whole podcast. I hear it's fantastic. And I want to thank you so much for coming on to the podcast and talking about this. It was great to talk to you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. All right, that is all for this week. And just one last reminder, if you want to hear that podcast, the trailer is live right now. Search the Pornhub Empire and hit follow. While you're there, you can also listen to the series we made about Sam Bankman Freed and his doomed crypto company, FTX. FrontBurner was produced this week by Matt Muse, Ali Jane, Sarah Jackson, and Derek VanderWijk. Sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Sam McNulty. Music is by Joseph Shabison. Our senior

producer is Elaine Chow. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk to you next week.