'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story' Review: Suzanne Hillinger helmed documentary explores the dark side of Pornhub
Contain spoilers
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Netflix documentaries are often unique in their own way because of the theme they often choose to make the documentaries on, be it a true crime documentary like 'Sins of Our Mother,' or something completely porn-oriented, 'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story'. As one knows in 2020 The New York Times published an opinion piece written by Nicholas Kristoff that included the stories of multiple women who, as minors, were exploited by having their sexual assaults posted to Pornhub, one of the most popular adult-content sites on the planet.
Needless to say, the article obviously went viral. Since then, the company faced an ample amount of lawsuits, thus 'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story,' which is from 'Totally Under Control' director Suzanne Hillinger, explores the history of the explicit-video platform and delves into the moral contradictions involved in user-uploaded pornography. The documentary showcased many Pornhub corporate employees and journalists, that is not all, it also featured performers like Wolf Hudson, Siri Dahl, Natassia Dreams, Cherie DeVille, and Asa Akira discussing the rise of the site and its major controversies. Let's jump right into what the documentary film is about.
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PornHub will always be the hot-button topic
'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story' primarily focuses on how the second-most-trafficked adult website after XVideos made millions of money when unverified users uploaded rape, assault, and abuse videos of men, women, and children and became a lightning rod of controversy when it was accused of being a place that promoted sex trafficking and sexual abuse of children. Suzanne Hillinger helmed documentary touched on key aspects of how in today's date porn is manufactured and consumed. The film begins with how a tech company introduced porn globally when it made a platform where people could watch explicit adult videos online which eventually became a gamechanger for PornHub's parent company, Mind Geek. Nonetheless, the movie sometimes did feel it got lost in which story it tried to tell as it tried exploring all the bright and dark sides of the internet pornography website.
Freedom of technology becomes tricky
Let's be real here, 'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story' is not for the squeamish. It is definitely not for one who blushes away from porn performers who hang their sex toys in their shoe racks and buy lubes by the gallon, at least to say. The docu-film explores on how porn used to be in the early times when there was no internet, how people used more subtle mediums be it magazines or home videos, and with time how it evolved and something like AVN awards came to prominence. It also focuses deeply on the Trafficking Hub campaign that stood out to be a game changer for Mind Geek and Porn Hub. Although the film shows many clips of one of the big players of the anti-Pornhub campaign, Laila Mickelwait, they don't interview her. In the end, they stress how non-consensual sexual video uploads on the site need to be prohibited as it is a form of harassment for the victims, and there is nothing called non-consensual porn or sex, it is rape.
You can stream 'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story' on Netflix.