TV Tuesdays 14: Money Shot
This is one of those moments where I’m tempted to just write, go watch it
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Welcome to the 14th TV Tuesday!
A friend from my Birmingham days texted me to say she thought of me while watching the Netflix doc Money Shot: The Pornhub Story for work.
This is one of those moments where I’m tempted to just write, go watch it and if you want expert commentary, please read Mike Stabile, Ashley Lake, and Gustavo Turner’s threads on it.
There is one thing I want to say about the film. Okay, fiiiine. More than one thing.
First, I’ve long wondered why there’s no real porn lobby. Think of any semi-criminalized, highly regulated, stigmatized industry. Guns. Gambling. Tobacco. The CEOs and investors in these industries hire teams of highly paid lawyers and PR flacks and fund think tanks to sway regulation and public perception.
Why not porn?
One reason occurred to me while watching the doc. There’s nothing for them to gain or lose.
No encroachment on free speech, new regulation, or new state that declares porn a “public health emergency” has any real impact on the major porn companies’ bottom line. The only people who suffered when VISA and Mastercard dropped PornHub were the models. PornHub’s real product is the eyeballs they sell to advertisers, who don’t pay PornHub with credit cards.
In fact, before the Bush admin went full censorship mode on internet porn we had a flourishing ecosystem of mostly small players competing for cash. After the crackdowns started and 2257 requirements went into effect, nearly all the smaller players went out of business, leaving six companies to dominate the online porn market.
Stop the war on porn? Why would Big Porn want to do that? Then they might actually have to compete.
It’s really hard to get the truth when there’s no easy way for anyone to make money telling it. This is a doc that, by and large, tells many truths that far too few people know. Please watch it. I hope they make many more.