About a year ago, a friend confided in me that he was addicted to online pornography. We talked about it at length, and I was impressed with his understanding of how damaging pornography is. He understood not only the harms on consumers’ mental health and sex lives, but the way pornography fuels violence against women, the exploitative nature of the industry, and more.
That’s why I was surprised when, after several conversations about this, he admitted he wasn’t currently motivated to put a lot of effort into quitting, saying, “At the end of the day, I’m really only hurting myself.”
I blinked at him, perplexed and unsure what to say. Hadn’t he just acknowledged all the ways pornography hurts not only him, but people in the industry and women at large?
Then came his clincher: “I would feel a lot worse about it if it was the kind of pornography you pay for.”
This story, shared by a NCOSE staff member, exposes a common misunderstanding that, if one does not pay for pornography, one bears no responsibility for the exploitation and harm it causes. But this is simply ignorant of how the pornography industry’s profit model works.
Just like with social media, where the platform is ostensibly free, companies still rake in major profits from the time their users spend on the platform. The same is true for pornography platforms. In fact, social media and pornography are two of the most profitable industries in the world, and yet, you can access much of the content for free.
How is this possible?
Ad Revenue Drives Major Profits for Pornography Sites
First and foremost: ad revenue. Companies flock to popular websites to advertise their products or services because they know that’s where they can reach a vast audience.
In 2021, when the Canadian government investigated Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek (now “Aylo”) for complicity in mass sexual abuse, the MindGeek CEO admitted that approximately 50% of the company’s revenue was made from advertising.
Advertisers typically use a “cost per click” or “cost per impression” model to pay websites that display their ads. This means that the more views pornography websites get on their videos, the more money they make. So, although an individual pornography consumer may not be paying for the videos, by viewing them he is absolutely lining the pockets of the pornography industry.
The Pornography Industry Preys on Addictive Behaviors
Another prominent way the pornography industry brings in major profits has to do with the addictive nature of the content. While many people consume pornography “casually” or infrequently, many are compulsively using pornography and paying exorbitant amounts of money to satisfy their compulsive use..
In NCOSE’s report Not a Fantasy: How the Pornography Industry Exploits Image-based Sexual Abuse in Real Life, researchers explained how “some of these people are willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to purchase a personalized adult video tailored to their individual taste.”
Anonymous Uploads to Porn Sites Drives Up Profit … And Abuse
Today, pornography companies rely heavily on user-generated content, rather than just content uploaded by professional pornography producers. User-generated material comprises a large portion of pornography industry’s total content; for example, when Pornhub deleted unverified user-uploads after backlash from the public, it resulted in them deleting 80% of their content.
The amount of unverified content that is available on pornography sites has driven up site traffic due to increased variety. Unfortunately, “variety” in the context of pornography includes content depicting rape, incest, bestiality, and non-consensually uploaded videos d (a form of image-based sexual abuse).
The lack of age and consent verification on pornography websites has proven to be very profitable for these companies. But this profit comes at the cost of opening the door to illegal and abusive material.
To read more about the ways the “free pornography” profit model and how the pornography industry exploits survivors of image-based sexual abuse, download the “Not a Fantasy” Report below.
