Money Shot: The Pornhub Story

Straight from the title and before reading any reviews you'd think this is a documentary on the site we all know (it is advertised in the title) from beginning to end. Well... it is not. It focuses a LOT (and I mean a bloody lot) on the latest ordeal to the point it is over 75% of the whole documentary. To the tech geeks like myself, there is not a single reference to the tons of features that were innovated here and then taken by everyone else. There are also no devs interviewed. It focuses a lot more on the other thing... and not what you'd be looking for should you enter the site, but rather the other nasty stuff that came as collateral.

I'd be lying if I said that the documentary does not present the 2 sides of the coin, it does, but one gets far more screen time than the other. The other problem is the perspective. It is not a coin with two sides, but more of a dice where society and law enforcement play a HUGE role, yet the documentary has a strong bias against the object of study from a moral high ground that should be unacceptable in a documentary.

If you already have a strong mindset against the adult entertainment industry or THAT company in particular, you'll grant this production 10/10 stars. Same as if you consider such activities as sinful or morally unacceptable. To the rest, be warned: nobody is innocent here, reality is much darker than it is presented in this "documentary".

You can hardly call this a Documentary! From the beginning, the narrators attack those who protest against Porn Hub and by stigmatizing them, they want to insinuate that they are the bad characters of the story.

In the following, they want to convey to the viewer that, firstly, the number of these incidents in this case is small, and secondly, that the company has always been cautious and is attentive to all matters, and with a summary, it says that since these are the minority, the company should continue its procedure, Because of the number of models they work for, they need to be paid.....

The point to think about is that the models (sex workers) are dependent on this platform, which does not really matter what is happening behind the scenes of this company (not all of them, but from what we saw in this video, we can say that the majority of them have the same mentality).

In the end, this is my opinion; This was a promotional video to show PornHub as oppressed (from showing unnecessary questions in the committee of managers or images of burning the CEO's house, which I strongly condemn), this video was not against the PornHub platform, it was just cautious about what In the last two or three years, it took a look and a little compassion for Porn Hub!

A misleading title and description. I thought we would get a deep dive into the lives of performers, behind the scenes and interesting facts. Instead I got an absolute snooze fest. The majority of this documentary was spent complaining about legal battles, hurdles and legislation that changes the rules. I was not interested in the slightest. I found myself saying so what? What value do I get from watching this? Clearly there is no value for a mass audience. The only audience that might enjoy this are performers in a similar situation. Otherwise it falls flat. The doco should have been called 'Legal battles with PH' and the description clearly saying it documents the legal hurdles performers go through to upload their content. This title was deceitful. Not a good production Netflix, disappointing.

We all know what pornography is...or do we? The porn industry is not just boobs and butts. The actual industry is far more nuanced than that. Pornhub was able to capitalize on the selling of content via the Internet, but like a lot of companies, it forgot who was making the content and why. It allowed non-consensual content from non-performers who were not able to profit from their exposure (and likely had no intention of ever being on its' platform). All the while, actual performers were directly affected and their opinion meant very little to the company or to the religious zealots who sought to bring down the company. Again, someone forgot about who was being shown on the platform and why.

One of the only documentaries to show a balanced view of what happened with pornhub. I hadn't realised the widespread implications of their actions and the ripple effect it has had across the broader internet. Zooming out, these effects are truly terrifying when considering the current and developing legal and political environment.

While the documentary was successful in illustrating Pornhub as a company, I do wish that this was a short series. Having read so much about Pornhub's story, and those surrounding it's scandals, like Exodus Cry and NCOSE (previously Morality in Media), there's a lot which wasn't covered which would have completed the picture. Hopefully Netflix consider this going forward.