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Who’s making all of the money in the porn industry? | The Global Story

From BBC News.
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Every day, tens of thousands of hours of pornographic content are uploaded to the internet. At peak times, 10% of internet traffic is people watching porn. But who is making money from it, and how?

Journalist Patricia Nilsson of the Financial Times has spent the past six years absorbed in this industry - chasing down its money men. She speaks with The Global Story’s Tristan Redman about how they’ve changed not just the porn we watch online, but the entire internet.

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0:00 Introduction

0:42 Why Patricia Nielsen started investigating the porn industry

2:42 How Wall Street took control of the porn industry

4:13 The golden age of porn in 1970s and 80s California

6:34 How free online porn changed the industry

7:07 The man who transformed the online porn business

10:13 Why porn industry figures were angry with Fabian Tilmann

11:49 How Wall Street funded the rise of Pornhub

14:41 How affiliate marketing turned online attention into money

17:42 How porn’s business model spread across the internet

19:22 Who took control of Pornhub after Fabian Tilmann?

22:51 The search for Pornhub’s secret owner

27:52 How smartphones and personal data changed online porn

32:07 How OnlyFans changed the porn industry and the internet

35:06 What porn’s business model tells us about AI

36:50 How investigating porn changed Patricia’s view of the internet

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