2018 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights

Welcome to Pornhub’s 6th annual Year in Review, our complete recap of the trends, tech and types of porn that logged us on and got us off in 2018. If you’ve followed our Pornhub Insights blog you already know that 2018 was an epic year with lots of searches, celebrities and events that influenced how people around the world have enjoyed visiting and using Pornhub.

Follow along to see the most interesting data points amassed by our team of statisticians, all presented with colorful charts and insightful commentary. Enjoy!

2018 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights

You thought fake news was bad? Deep fakes are where truth goes to die | Technology | The Guardian

Fake videos can now be created using a machine learning technique called a “generative adversarial network”, or a GAN. A graduate student, Ian Goodfellow, invented GANs in 2014 as a way to algorithmically generate new types of data out of existing data sets. For instance, a GAN can look at thousands of photos of Barack Obama, and then produce a new photo that approximates those photos without being an exact copy of any one of them, as if it has come up with an entirely new portrait of the former president not yet taken. GANs might also be used to generate new audio from existing audio, or new text from existing text – it is a multi-use technology.

The use of this machine learning technique was mostly limited to the AI research community until late 2017, when a Reddit user who went by the moniker “Deepfakes” – a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fake” – started posting digitally altered pornographic videos. He was building GANs using TensorFlow, Google’s free open source machine learning software, to superimpose celebrities’ faces on the bodies of women in pornographic movies.

You thought fake news was bad? Deep fakes are where truth goes to die | Technology | The Guardian

‘Fauxcest’: The Disturbing Rise of Incest-Themed Porn

Utter the word “incest” and most people will shudder, ill at the thought of being intimate with a family member. The fantasy of incest isn’t socially acceptable; it’s one of the extreme taboos, which could help explain why titles such as Forbidden Family Affairs, Mother Son Secrets and My New White Step-Daddy are topping the porn sales charts. Fictional incest porn, better known as fauxcest, is on the rise—a dark, dirty desire that’s certainly not for everyone.

Over a century ago, Sigmund Freud suggested most people have unconscious incestuous urges that need to be repressed. Though most of Freud’s theories have been discredited, if recent data on porn viewing habits is any indicator, he may have been onto something. Leading adult content providers GameLink.com reported a 178 percent average increase in the consumption of “family role-play porn,” while 1 in 10 purchases made by young adults on the site were for fauxcest titles.

Feminist pornographer Jacky St. James has embraced the controversial genre, calling it one of her favorites to direct. “It’s the one taboo that can’t really be explored in real life safely. This will be forbidden no matter what you do,” she says. “Because of that there is this allure of the untouchable, and what’s untouchable to us is often the most appealing.”

‘Fauxcest’: The Disturbing Rise of Incest-Themed Porn

Forced into pornography: Japan moves to stop women being coerced into sex films | World news | The Guardian

A slew of reports about women being offered modelling contracts, only to be tricked or coerced into appearing in X-rated films, has finally prompted authorities in Japan to confront the darker side of its multibillion dollar porn industry.

Last year, the government launched its first survey of the industry’s recruitment of vulnerable young women and found that 200 among the 20,000 surveyed had signed “modelling” contracts, with more than 50 later asked to pose nude or have sex on camera.

In 2016, 200 women sought help from Lighthouse, which supports victims of human trafficking, and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence – a dramatic rise from the 62 cases recorded for the whole of 2015 and just 36 the year before.

Forced into pornography: Japan moves to stop women being coerced into sex films | World news | The Guardian

Why More Teen Girls Are Getting Genital Plastic Surgery

By college, a third of women and 90% of men have viewed porn, which some experts say has become a main source of sex ed for millions of American teens. “A lot of girls watch porn to learn how to have sex,” Bernstein said. “What they see there influences the way things should go, and how they think things should look.”

Especially, it seems, how things should look. Between 2014 and 2015, there was an 80% increase in the number of girls 18 and younger receiving genital plastic surgery, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. The numbers shot up so quickly that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued new guidelines this monthfor doctors who perform labial and breast surgery. Among the recommendations: physicians are now encouraged to screen girls for body dysmorphic disorder, an obsession with an imagined or slight defect in appearance.

Time

Paedophiles use secret Facebook groups to swap images

Settings on the social network mean the groups are invisible to most users and only members can see the content.

Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield said Facebook was not doing enough to police the groups and protect children.

Facebook’s head of public policy told the BBC he was committed to removing “content that shouldn’t be there”.

A BBC investigation found a number of secret groups, created by and run for men with a sexual interest in children, including one being administered by a convicted paedophile who was still on the sex offenders’ register.

The groups have names that give a clear indication of their content and contain pornographic and highly suggestive images, many purporting to be of children. They also have sexually explicit comments posted by users.

BBC