Mondays can be slow for tech news, so I began trawling some unusual sources online for stories that might interest our audience, and I eventually found myself on Pornhub. The site added an SFW section last week, noting that it featured “hundreds of videos with ranging topics, including adult entertainers sharing advice and experiences; compilation videos with attractive, yet clothed people; video game reviews and demonstrations; and more.”
The section is here; click with caution (and preferably not at your workplace).
That’s all well and good, Pornhub, but the real question is, who’s visiting Pornhub for non-porn videos? The company explained that it launched the new section in response to Starbucks’ recent decision to block XXX sites on its free Wi-Fi. But if it’s SFW videos you want, you’re much better off browsing YouTube or Vimeo – and not just because of the wider selection of videos on those sites.
The SFW section is SFW – except for the ads, which are unabashedly NSFW.
Just because your browser page is filled with kosher video thumbnails for a full-length King Crimson album and anime shows like Kuroko no Basuke, doesn’t mean your boss is going to look past the large ad promoting interracial pornography in full HD. Trust me, I checked.
If you feel compelled to enter pornhub.com into your browser’s address bar while at work, consider appending /insights to the end of the URL.
You’ll find yourself on an actually SFW portion of the site that takes you through plenty of interesting data about its audience – like how Spain’s most popular performer is baby-faced male pornstar Jordi El Nino Polla, how traffic to the site from US increased by some 20 percent during the midterm elections last month, and how searches for ‘red dead’ grew by 731 percent ahead of the release of Rockstar Games’ new action-adventure title, Red Dead Redemption 2.
So, a word to the wise: Pornhub is best enjoyed in the privacy of your own home – or at the very least, some place your employer can’t see you. Even the SFW section.
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