Ep. 618 - Cracking Down On Smut Peddlers
Episode Stats
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Summary
A report about rampant child porn on Pornhub has prompted the site to make major changes, but the changes don t go nearly far enough. Also, Eric Swalwell s ties to a Chinese spy, and dozens of shoppers camp out in a Walmart parking lot to buy a new video game console. Why is that OK during a pandemic, but you still can t visit your grandparents for Christmas? And our daily cancellation? We will cancel a school board that voted to remove Thomas Jefferson s name from their elementary school.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, a report about rampant child porn on Pornhub has prompted
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the site to make, quote, major changes, but the changes don't go nearly far enough.
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Also, five headlines, including Eric Swalwell's ties to a Chinese spy and dozens of shoppers
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camp out in a Walmart parking lot to buy a new video game console.
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Why is that OK during a pandemic, but you still can't visit your grandparents for Christmas
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And our daily cancellation, we will cancel a school board that voted to remove Thomas
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So the reasons they give, I mean, you know that they're going to be bad reasons.
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All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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Before we get started today, you know, if you're on the Internet, which you are right now, probably,
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and I'm sure you spend a lot of time on it, as we all do, you need a VPN to protect yourself.
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I mean, does it make sense to you that the same company who controls half of online retail
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also eavesdrops passively on your private conversations at home?
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What about the idea that a single company controls 90% of Internet searches, runs your
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email service, gets to track everything you do on a smartphone?
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Big tech is, in fact, is more powerful than most countries are.
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And they profit, the way that they get so powerful is by exploiting your personal data.
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It's, I think it's time to put a layer of protection.
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Put a layer of protection between your online activity and these tech juggernauts.
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Think about how much of your life is on the Internet.
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You know, how much of your life you willingly, how much of your personal information you've
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willingly given over to the Internet, and then how much the Internet has helped itself to
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But when you run ExpressVPN on your device, the software hides your IP address.
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Something big tech can use to personally identify you.
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So ExpressVPN makes your activity harder to trace and harder to sell to advertisers.
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And again, it gives you that layer of protection that you need and you deserve.
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And ExpressVPN does all of this without showing your connection.
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That's why it's rated the number one VPN, or rather, without slowing your connection.
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And that's why it's rated the number one VPN service by CNET and Wired.
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What I like most about ExpressVPN is that it's very easy to use.
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If it was hard to use, I wouldn't be able to do it.
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The fact that I use it means that you can do it and you should do it.
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So stop handing your personal data over to these big tech monopolies that mine your activity
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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash Walsh to get three extra months free.
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The New York Times committed a shocking act of actual journalism this week when
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they published a lengthy op-ed titled The Children of Pornhub.
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Columnist Nicholas Kristof calls attention to an issue that earlier in the year was the
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subject of a petition that amassed nearly half a million signatures, namely that the behemoth
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smut site traffics in child pornography, rape videos, and other forms of abuse.
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And then, of course, films and uploads them for public viewing.
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It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and
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misogynistic content, footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.
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girls under 18, no space, or 14YO, which is 14 years old, leads in each case to more than
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Most aren't of children being assaulted, but too many are.
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Now, we should emphasize that even if a preponderance of the videos found using these search terms
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do not actually depict children being raped, a sizable portion do depict it, as he mentions.
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And also, almost as troubling, a significant portion of the non-rape videos found through
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these search keys are still meant to appeal to people who want to see children being raped.
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The point is that even the videos on the platform that do not involve child abuse or rape
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may still desensitize the viewer to child abuse and rape, and intentionally so.
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Pornhub itself proudly tells us that one of its most popular categories is teen.
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Okay, are we supposed to believe that the grown men huddled around their computers in darkened rooms
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looking for videos of teens are really hoping only to see 18 and 19-year-olds?
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No, they want to see young women or girls disrobe and perform sexually for their enjoyment.
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Their concern about the actual ages of the people on the screen extends only so far as providing
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them plausible deniability should the FBI come knocking.
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Terms like teen and barely legal are workarounds, you know, sort of a wink between Pornhub and
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The site feeds an appetite for illegal porn, even with its legal porn.
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But that shouldn't distract from the fact that there is a lot of the straight-up illegal
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stuff on the platform, and there are very real victims to tell the tale.
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He says, Pornhub, quoting now from a woman named Callie, Pornhub became my trafficker.
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She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive
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family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was nine.
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Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said.
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Callie said, I'm still getting sold, even though I'm five years out of that life.
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Now 23, she is studying in a university, hoping to become a lawyer, but those old videos
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I may never be able to get away from this, she said.
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I may be 40 with kids, with eight kids, and people are still masturbating to my photos.
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You type young Asian and you can probably find me, she added.
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Kristoff then notes that a search for young Asian returns tens of thousands of videos along
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with related search suggestions, such as young tiny teen and also young girl.
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There's a whole channel called Exploited Teen Asia.
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Now I suppose we're meant to believe that the people looking for young girls and young
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tiny teens or clicking on video compilations with titles like screaming teen, degraded teen,
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extreme choking, all examples mentioned in the article, are really only interested in seeing
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sober, willing adults engaged in consensual sexual relations.
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And we're further supposed to believe that the users uploading this content with these
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sorts of titles are only providing that sort of legal and above-the-board content.
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But anybody who really buys that claim must have already had their brain melted by porn over
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Pornhub makes untold millions monetizing child porn and rape videos, and it's not an accident.
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There is a huge market for this stuff, and Pornhub serves that market.
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But a funny thing happened after the Times piece was published.
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In the immediate aftermath, a spokesman for the company sent a statement to the National
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Review indignantly denying that they had any serious problem with rape and abuse videos
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They also claim to manually review every video posted to the site, a claim that itself must
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certainly be flagrantly untrue, as Pornhub also boasts proudly that users uploaded nearly
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But only a day later, Pornhub changed its tune rather dramatically.
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Perhaps having something to do with the fact that MasterCard and Visa said they'd be, quote,
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reviewing their relationship with the filth peddlers, the company announced suddenly that
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it would be taking major steps, quote, unquote, to, quote, protect our community.
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I thought they were already doing an excellent job in that regard, according to their own
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How can you take major steps to better do something that you're already doing nearly
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These major steps include limiting uploads to verified users only, prohibiting most downloads
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from the site, and also expanding moderation of the content.
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Again, it's hard to understand how they could expand their moderation if they were already
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manually reviewing something like 1.5 million hours of pornography a year.
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The conflicting messaging, though, only makes sense when you remember that this is a multi-billion
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dollar company that makes its billions, distributing videos with titles like Young Tiny Teen and
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Extreme Choking, a company that will let you search for porn using a search term like 14-year-old.
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In other words, they have no ethical standards of any kind whatsoever, and nothing they say
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Their statements and commitments and declarations of how seriously they want to protect rape victims,
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After all, if they really cared about protecting victims, they would just shut down operations
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A porn distributor claiming a commitment to combating sex trafficking is about as credible
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as all the tobacco companies now saying that they want to help rid the world of nicotine
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This is the script they have to read, but it cannot possibly be true.
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Their very existence testifies to the falsehood of their claims.
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Besides, the measures from Pornhub are laughably insufficient, even if they're actually adopted,
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What's to stop a verified user from uploading a video of an underage person or someone who's
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been sex trafficked or somebody who's unconscious or not consenting?
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The verified user gambit is also especially unconvincing because the bar for verification is low.
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As the website fight the new drug notes, all a person has to do to get verified on Pornhub
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is upload a photo of themselves with their or a photo of someone with their Pornhub
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username and Pornhub's website written on a piece of paper or their body.
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There's no attempt to verify age, much less that of all the performers, quote unquote,
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This is just verifying something, really verifying nothing about the person uploading
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the video. It doesn't tell you anything about the people in the video.
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While the efforts to protect the people in the videos is virtually non-existent,
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the efforts to protect the people watching the videos are literally non-existent.
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Pornhub makes no attempt to prevent children from accessing the hardcore filth on its platform.
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To visit Budweiser.com, you could try this yourself, you at least have to enter your date of birth.
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If you want to go to the official Camel Cigarette website, you need to register for an account.
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To sign up for a Bitcoin exchange like Bitfinex, a user has to provide their address, phone number,
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email, and two forms of government-issued identification.
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Now, surveying the options on the spectrum between the symbolic age verification of a beer company's website
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to the serious verification process of a crypto exchange,
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Any random eight-year-old can go to its URL and watch gangbang videos
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without having to jump through any hoops at all.
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This gives you an idea of how serious Pornhub is about protecting anyone, least of all children.
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And this is why we have to stop relying on the integrity and good hearts of executives at porn sites,
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trusting them to make good on their word, to self-regulate.
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We should force the issue, just like we do with all the regulations imposed on the alcohol and tobacco industry.
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I rarely hear anyone complain that an 11-year-old can't walk to 7-Eleven and buy a pack of cigarettes.
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Nobody complains that this is a nanny state or an intrusion or anything like that.
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Now, I confess I would be in favor of simply burning the porn industry to the ground,
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But in lieu of that, Pornhub and all sites like it should be legally required to verify the ages of all users,
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at a minimum, those uploading content and those viewing the content.
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If you want to buy a porn magazine from a gas station, if that's even so possible anymore,
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There is no reason why you shouldn't have to show one online.
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And don't tell me about, oh, it's the parent's job.
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Okay, yeah, the parent should be doing more to protect their own kids.
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But again, if a nine-year-old walks up with a Hustler magazine to buy a, you know,
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would you be okay with the cashier just selling it to him on the basis that,
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well, his parents aren't doing anything about it?
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Now, there should be at least the same level of scrutiny placed on Pornhub as there is on gas stations.
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as most of its users would be too ashamed and freaked out to give their ID to a porn site.
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That is a risk that I am more than happy to take.
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Now, the government could go even further and should,
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as Terry Schilling outlines in his excellent First Things essay published,
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He talks about what we could do to regulate porn.
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He says we could have zoning laws requiring porn sites to move to a .xx domain
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where age verification would be needed to access it.
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More aggressively, Congress could amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,
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getting rid of the blanket immunity enjoyed by big tech companies
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and holding them liable for the content posted on their platforms.
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This would mean that a sex trafficking or revenge porn victim could sue Pornhub
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for hosting and monetizing the footage of their abuse.
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If it doesn't seem possible for a massive, multi-billion dollar porn platform
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to really regulate its content and guard against child porn and rape porn,
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that might be a sign that massive, multi-billion dollar porn platforms
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The only real downside to regulating porn companies, as far as I can see it,
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is that it might make porn executives a little less rich,
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and it might cause some mild inconveniences for Internet users
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These are trade-offs that I think a society can live with.
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Indeed, trade-offs that we should embrace enthusiastically
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in exchange for offering at least some protection
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to the porn industry's many victims on both sides of the camera.
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And it's as simple as that, as far as I'm concerned.
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All right, now we get to our five headlines as we pull it up here.
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I got a bunch of clips to play today, but before we get to any of those,
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Representative Eric Swalwell sits on the sensitive House Intelligence Committee,
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said in response to an explosive story about ties to a suspected Chinese spy
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that, quote, congressional leaders knew about it, they knew about the matter,
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and implied that they apparently did not think that it was a big enough issue
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The alleged spy Chinese national Christine Feng, quote,
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targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country
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who had the potential to make it big on the national stage
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through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma,
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Even though U.S. officials do not believe Feng received
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or passed on classified information, the case was a big deal
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because there were some really, really sensitive people
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that were caught up in the intelligence network,
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according to a current senior U.S. intelligence official.
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When you've got a congressman who was potentially involved with a Chinese spy,
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this again, you know, we find this pattern playing out
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where the people who were accusing the Trump campaign of this sort of thing
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with relation to China were actually doing it themselves.
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Yet another guy who was railing about Donald Trump and Russia
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That whole time, he's got this, some sort of acquaintance with a Chinese spy.
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Big, big, big, should be big blowback for Eric Swalwell at a minimum.
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I still don't think it's as big of a story as Eric Swalwell farting on camera
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That is what will still ultimately define him, and I'm glad for that.
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That's not as big of a scandal, but I'm happy for the fact
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that this just absolute, mediocre, unimpressive, empty, nothing of a man
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will ultimately be defined by the fact that he farted on camera.
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That's all his entire public life will come down to.
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And I really, I hope it's more that than the Chinese spy thing.
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Okay, Biden, so Biden's got his COVID task force together.
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She's one of the people on the Biden COVID task force.
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And she's found, and we're going to get a lot of this
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We're going to get a lot of, of course, racializing everything,
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She's found a way to racialize the COVID pandemic
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in identifying what she calls a racial grief gap.
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It is not a coincidence, and it is not a matter of genetics,
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personally know someone who has been hospitalized
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our housing system, our food system, our justice system,
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Yeah, she says it's not, it's not a coincidence.
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and there's a large population, condensed population,
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that, you know, more, more black people are getting,
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She never explains how, how exactly is it racist?
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from bureaucrats in the federal government all the time.
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asking any, um, any Hispanic followers of mine,
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Of course, I'm trying to make sense of something
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The red ink shows where people are wearing masks.
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They travel in little droplets of spit and snot.
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So when the droplet gets into the fibers of a mask,
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This is not that hard to understand, everybody.
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but you only get to drive on one side at a time.