By Cathy Reisenwitz

I intended to write a very short history of pornography censorship and obscenity in the US. As I mentioned in Why you can’t flash yo titties on Zoom, I’ve been mildly obsessed with pornography censorship ever since I tried (and failed) to find consensual non-consent porn on Xvideos.

But instead I want to talk about how the DOJ helped shut down law-abiding American porn producers, paved the way for Pornhub to dominate the market for online porn, and made the problem of illegal pornography worse, not better.

It’s topical because Nicolas Kristof recently accused PornHub of breaking the law by not doing enough to stop users from uploading copyrighted videos, videos of underage performers, and videos depicting non-consensual violence. It’s important to note here that we really can’t trust Kristof’s reporting about anything.

Days later, reports came out that Visa and Mastercard were investigating their relationship to Pornhub.

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