Algorithms driving popular social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are the focus of increasing ire, drawing fierce criticism for their potential to amplify toxic content, reinforce biases, and corrode mental health and public discourse.
But while most eyes are on the world鈥檚 tech giants, AV俱乐部 legal scholar Dr. Elaine Craig is focused on the way similar mechanisms are driving and reshaping the consumption of mainstream pornography.
And make no mistake, Canadians are significant consumers of the content. In 2021, major global player Pornhub reported over four million discrete user sessions in Canada per day 鈥攖hat is about 10 per cent of Canadians visiting their site daily. While its website is freely accessible in Canada, the company, which is headquartered in Montreal, is the target of in the European Union.
With large volumes of Canadian traffic flowing to Pornhub and other online purveyors, Dr. Craig says it鈥檚 time to shine a bright light on how they leverage the tech of social media to engross users鈥攍earning from their visitors鈥� browsing behaviour and serving up content that caters to and potentially distorts their porn consumption patterns.
"The business model for porn has changed," explains Dr. Craig, who is a professor in AV俱乐部鈥檚 Schulich School of Law. "It鈥檚 now consumed on streaming platforms akin to YouTube or Vimeo, driven by algorithms that not only shape the content we see but also amplify its most harmful elements."
This shift is the focus of her new book, , which explores how law, policy, and social measures can address the harmful consequences of algorithm-driven mainstream porn. Ahead of her book launch at AV俱乐部鈥檚 Weldon Law Building on September 24, she鈥檚 calling on law- and policymakers, and the public to create stronger safeguards around the propagation of pornography in our algorithm-amplified online environment.
To delve into the details, Dr. Craig did a Q&A with us about her book and how Canada鈥檚 courts and policymakers can contend with an industry motivated to commodify its audience.
Your book asserts that online pornography is becoming an increasing problem. Why have developments in the industry made it something we need to contend with?
The business model for porn has changed. Mainstream porn is now consumed on streaming platforms similar to YouTube or Vimeo. This has some specific consequences, including: i) an explosion in rates of porn consumption (according to Pornhub, 4 million Canadian users are on its site every day; that is 10 per cent of our population on one platform; ii) the reality that algorithms are now shaping the porn that people consume and; iii) a more communal element to porn consumption. You can rate videos, comment on them, interact with other users, or upload your own porn. These virtual porn communities amplify the social impact of porn, including its potential harms.
How has technology exacerbated the issue?
Well, for one thing, everyone with a cellphone is now walking around with access to millions of free porn videos in their pocket. But more than this, platform companies, porn and otherwise, often generate revenue through advertising. They sell the audience. We are the product and so these businesses depend on the number of users visiting and consuming content on their platforms. This can lead to both an attention economy so to speak, in which shocking content such as misogynistic or racist titles and tags may be amplified, and a trend in which larger platforms end up squeezing out smaller, more diverse offerings.
Can you provide a sense of the scope of the problem and its broader social cost?
While there is nothing inherently wrong with pornography and not all porn is problematic, there are some real problems with mainstream corporate porn. Porn platforms are data focussed and driven by algorithms.听 This risks, in the context of porn, an increasingly homogenized representation of sex, bodies and sexualities. While in theory the internet offers a cornucopia of diversity, the reality in an algorithm-driven mainstream porn context may be a representation of the same bodies and sex acts underpinned by the same sexist, racist, heterosexist, transphobic biases over and over again.
The phenomena of algorithm-driven porn consumption can also result in some problematic trends such as the incredible rise in popularity of incest themed porn including content that eroticizes intra-family sexual abuse, and other depictions of non-consensual sex, violence and coercion- acts that are illegal under Canadian law. The most obvious social cost is the threat that a subset of mainstream content poses to the sexual integrity of women and girls. More broadly, the massified consumption of this type of content harms all of us.
Dr. Elaine Craig. (Danny Abriel photo)
Who should we hold most accountable?
Most importantly, we should hold large, mainstream porn companies accountable. These corporations should be held responsible for content on their sites that violates their own content moderation policies, the use of metadata (titles and tags) to create taxonomies of sex, gender and race based hatred that violate the definition of hate speech in Canada, and the creation of virtual communities which historically made it incredibly easy, indeed almost frictionless, to transmit around the world sexual images of women without their consent.
As a legal scholar, how do you see the courts and legislation playing a role in tackling this issue? What legal strategies do you think could make a difference?
There are important implications for courts and lawmakers. Most obviously, every province should adopt a civil statute like the one enacted in British Columbia to provide victims with accessible, expedited take down and deindexing orders regarding non-consensual content, especially if Bill C-63 is not passed. There are also criminal law issues. For example, the legal narrative of consensual rough sex has arisen over the same period as the rise of porn platforms. Widespread social participation in the consumption of mainstream porn which frequently includes depictions of women responding with delight to being slapped, strangled and penetrated with considerable force will require judges to understand and vigilantly protect the affirmative, communicative definition of consent in Canadian sexual assault when assessing this consensual rough sex defence.
Canada鈥檚 opposition parties are poised to bring a law to the House of Commons to limit access for those 18 and younger. Do you think this could work?
No, I do not think that age verification laws such as Bill S-210 are the right approach.听 I devoted a good portion of the last chapter of Mainstreaming Porn to explaining why this law is unlikely to work for the very youth that access porn streaming platforms. Relying on technology rather than pedagogy will leave young people less equipped to deal with the sexually explicit material that they confront or seek out online. We need to talk to kids about porn, which means first building the porn literacy of teachers, social workers, health care providers and folks working in the legal system.
If this legislation isn鈥檛 adequate, what should government policymakers be doing?
The other proposed legislation relevant to this discussion is the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63). The challenge with it is that, at least in terms of any specificity regarding sexually explicit material, it is singularly focussed on child sexual abuse material and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Everyone, including major porn platforms, agrees that this content should be prohibited. However, beyond child sexual abuse material and non-consensual content, I am not sure that the proposed Online Harms Act adequately grapples with, or offers much hope regarding, the harmful aspects of mainstream porn streaming platforms.
If there is one change your book could inspire, what do you hope it achieves?
Some mainstream porn streaming companies have very strong content moderation policies: hate speech prohibitions, depiction of non-consensual sexual activity policies, and community standards documents. If the content readily available on major mainstream porn platforms consistently reflected the guidelines articulated in their policies, much of the content addressed in my research (the depictions of intra-family sexual abuse, depictions of the sexual assault of sleeping or unconscious girls and women, and the taxonomy of hate speech reflected in some platforms鈥� use of metadata) would be removed, which would be a significant improvement.