Yesterday, the New Yorker published a piece by Sheelah Kolhatkar entitled “The Fight to Hold Pornhub Accountable” that is harshly critical of the site’s content moderation and takedown practices, quoting extensively from anti-porn activist Laila Micklewait and representatives from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (the anti-sexual expression group formerly known as “Morality in Media”).
Later in the day, in response to the New Yorker piece, the Free Speech Coalition issued a statement making the Coalition’s assessment of the article quite clear.
Titled “New Yorker’s Praise of Antiporn Extremists is Disgraceful” the FSC statement takes the New Yorker and Kolhatkar to task for failing to subject the anti-porn activists and organizations referenced throughout the article to the same sort of exacting scrutiny they directed at Pornhub and MindGeek.
“We are shocked but not surprised by the New Yorker’s misleading and misguided attack on Pornhub,” FSC stated in its response. “Rather than engage in a nuanced look at the challenges of moderation on an internet comprised of limitless user-generated content — from Twitter to Snapchat to Facebook — journalist Sheelah Kolhatkar set her sites almost exclusively on one adult website, adopting the rhetoric of religious extremists.”
The FSC asserts that while “Kolhatkar acknowledges the faith-based roots of the crusade” she also “swat(s) away concerns about their campaign against marginalized communities as irrelevant.”
“Early on in a conversation with Kolhatkar, we suggested that the claims of faith-based anti-porn groups should be viewed with suspicion,” FSC said in its statement. “Kolhatkar told us she’d heard those concerns from others, but didn’t see the relevance. After all, if their information and issues raised were valid, what did it matter if they believed that all pornography should be banned? The issue, we explained, was that they are not honest in their goals, nor honest in their claims.”
From the FSC’s perspective, Kolhatkar’s “lack of interest in questioning their narrative had a predictable effect.”
“Despite the fact that Kolhatkar had already been reporting the article for about two months when we spoke — much of it spent speaking with Laila Micklewait and others — she still didn’t know the basics of content moderation on Pornhub,” the FSC said. “She expressed disbelief when we explained that all content on Pornhub requires identification and model releases to be submitted before uploaded videos are published. She believed, incorrectly, that she could upload illegal content onto the platform with no verification — a regular talking point of the antiporn groups.”
FSC closed its statement by saying the organization is “outraged that the New Yorker, instead of defending the value of free expression against the attacks of religious censors, would instead lean in on a culture war sex panic, furthering the agenda of extremist special interest groups without regard to the truth.”
