Cash Investigation: Porn: A Ruthless Business

A major investigation into the workings of porn sites and the people behind them.

More than half of 12-13 year-old boys and a third of girls the same age visit porn sites every month. With just a few clicks, they can access them via cell phones or computers. Among the most popular are Pornhub and Xvideos. Between them, these porn platforms rack up over 5 billion visits a month and are among the top 20 most-visited websites in the world.

Multi-award-winning investigative journalist Marie Maurice spent over a year investigating the people behind these sites. Behind Pornhub is the Canadian multinational Mindgeek and, for Xvideos, the Web Group, run by a mysterious Frenchman, Stéphane Pacaud.

The porn industry has been totally turned upside down by these free platforms. Amateur videos and advertising are at the heart of their business model. To convince advertisers to buy advertising space, more and more videos have to be offered to visitors, sometimes even without the consent of the people filmed. The titles of videos uploaded to free sites are increasingly violent. Certain sites also include amateur videos of sexual assaults. Some paid platforms go so far as to order videos from studios that depict incest or abuse. Porn actresses report shooting increasingly brutal and degrading scenes.

To dismantle the mechanics of these behemoths, former employees have agreed to give an insider’s account of how these platforms operate. Their fear is that the content promoted by these sites will skew the sexuality of an entire population – and this is indeed the risk when minors are accessing them at ever younger ages. In France, a law passed in 2020 prohibits minors from accessing porn sites. But the porn giants are doing their utmost to ensure that this law is not enforced…