On this special guest episode of the 404 Media Podcast, I talked to Alexzandra Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Pornhub. Kekesi started in her current role in August 2023, after working for Pornhub and its parent company for more than a decade. She joined us from Montreal, where Pornhub is headquartered. We discuss the stigma facing the adult industry, Luigi Mangione porn, the trad wife to feet pics pipeline, and algorithms that shut you down for showing side boob. Kekesi also breaks down Pornhub’s choice to pull out of states in more than a third of the U.S., following regressive age verification laws.
Kekesi started working at Pornhub's parent company more than a decade ago, when it was still called Manwin. The company, now named Aylo, has since gone through a lot of change in that time, including stronger moderation and uploading requirements. Now, the entire adult industry is in a battle against politicians who would prefer to see porn eradicated altogether.
When we spoke right before the new year, we were heading into 2025 staring down a new wave of privacy-invading age verification laws that make it harder to access adult content online. We talked through how Pornhub is responding to–and legally complying with–those laws by going dark in states where they're enacted.
We also discussed the increased interest in "tradwife" and "demure" porn, and what that says about the world today. "What's interesting about the Year in Review or even search activity on the site in general is that it is certainly a mirror of what's going on in society in general," she said. "We're hovering somewhere around the ballpark of like 130 million daily visitors. So when you see those fluctuations in traffic or these spikes in searches, it really is indicative of real trends or real change in society."
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- Pornhub Sees Surge of Interest in Tradwife Content, ‘Modesty,’ and Mindfulness
- Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South
- Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet
