Hot Money: Who Rules Porn?

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Pushkin

I'm Patricia Nelson and I'm Alex Barker.

We're journalists for the Financial Times.

We write about business.

But over the last year, we've found an amazing financial story in an unexpected place, the porn industry.

No one really likes to talk about porn.

We're embarrassed to, even though most of us have watched it at some point.

And there's a contradiction at the heart of it.

Porn relies on performers to literally bear it all.

Yet, information about the people and businesses who run the industry is kept like a state secret.

I am so exposed.

And the people who really own these tube sites get to be reclusive.

and not publicly held to account.

Obviously, it's not fair that the person who get the least shame get the most money.

That is so unfair.

I don't like it.

Who are these secret owners?

We wanted to follow the money and work out who really controls online porn.

It was who's got the largest penis here kind of thing.

And they hate each other.

So it was all about that.

People with nefarious backgrounds and companies that are hidden, who are not part of the industry, come into the industry, make a lot of money in the industry.

On our mission, we met directors and adult performers, plus people with real power, tech pioneers and Wall Street billionaires.

You probably were a catalyst for one of the biggest takedowns of media content in the history of the internet.

Like, when had 9 million videos ever been taken down overnight?

I felt good about it.

I felt good about it.

Over the course of eight episodes, we'll be taking you inside the porn industry.

So this man who was getting very nervous about us standing around and recording here, he chased me up the stairs and he very politely escorted me off the premises.

Do you have regrets on how you handled it looking back?

For a lot of people, it was like being cut down at the knees.

Telling you about the rivalries, the power battles.

You can make a choice in business to be friendly competitors or you can be enemies.

And I think that that was just the decision that was made between the two of them to be completely antagonistic.

We were surprised by what we discovered and by who's really in charge.

There is two players on this planet that can kill porn online and they can literally kill it.

And if they decide to, it's dead.

This is Hot Money, a show about power and finance.

Coming June 7th from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times.

Listen wherever.

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