Mashable ran an interesting story today about Pornhub, which celebrates its 15th year this year, and how the website changed the world of pornography as we know it.

Before the emergence of “tube sites,” websites where users upload often-pirated porn for others to stream, viewers usually bought DVDs or subscriptions to watch their favorite content. Then, in 2005, several PayPal employees founded YouTube, allowing non-tech experts to easily upload and share videos.

It didn’t take long for the adult industry to start using the same technology. Two years later, founders of the porn studio Brazzers started Pornhub, and thus began a shift in how people consume — and create — porn. Fifteen years later, Pornhub remains the king of the tubes. It was the eighth-most trafficked website in the world in December 2021, according to Semrush, sandwiched between Reddit at #7 and Walmart at #9 — and the only adult site in the top 15, with over a billion visits that month alone.

Pornhub no doubt irrevocably changed the industry by making porn viewing and creation more accessible — yet maintains a complicated relationship with performers and producers, according to experts.

History of Pornhub
Pornhub, which didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, wasn’t the first tube site. RedTube and YouPorn both preceded it in 2006, as New York Magazine reported in a 2011 deep dive into Pornhub and the proliferation of free porn. Nonetheless, these places fundamentally changed the industry because, for the first time, viewers were able to watch free porn on a massive scale.

Before tubes, studios dominated porn creation; they produced and distributed porn on their own websites, or through DVDs. Tubes then received ire from these performers and producers in studios because they pirated content and flouted copyright, said Mike Stabile, representative for the Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry lobby group. There was pirating before tubes, but it exploded with these sites.

Another invention that ushered in this new era was the iPhone, also first-released in 2007. Now, not only did people have screens that fit in their hand — perfect for doing other activities with the free hand — but they also had cameras, too (though some pre-iPhone cellphones had cameras as well).

If Pornhub wasn’t the first tube, why is it the household name it is today?

It could be because of the savvy dealings of the people behind the scenes, said Maggie MacDonald, a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto studying porn platforms.

While other studios decried the existence of tubes, founders of the studio Brazzers created Pornhub themselves. One founder even wrote that content pirates “will not steal it and get away with it” in an online forum — after Pornhub already launched, condemning the exact move he made, New York Magazine reported.

Three years later, in 2010, businessman Fabian Thylmann purchased Pornhub as part of the corporate conglomerate Manwin; the name later changed to MindGeek. Manwin/MindGeek went on to scoop up many tubes (including RedTube and YouPorn, in addition to Pornhub) and studios (including Digital Playground, Reality Kings, and Sean Cody, among others).

A reason behind these acquisitions, Stabile explained, was that studios were suffering financially (due to piracy and copyright issues). MindGeek knew that they had a massive amount of traffic from free content, and that a percentage of those viewers would ultimately buy subscriptions to watch what wasn’t uploaded to the tubes. Pornhub became a traffic partner for studios, many also owned by MindGeek.

“They’re often seen as a company that really destroyed the studio system,” said Stabile of MindGeek. “At the same time, they are also the largest studio there is.”

MindGeek is such a big conglomerate that some call it a monopoly. This leaves performers with limited options. As performer Tasha Reign told ABC in 2014, “I kind of have to shoot for them…because they own almost everything.” Even independent producers may have to create content in tandem with what’s popular on Pornhub, because that’s what sells, said MacDonald.

Neither Stabile nor MacDonald agreed with that labeling, though, as Pornhub and its parent company do have competitors (such as OnlyFans). MacDonald, however, called it an oligopoly: a market with few dominant players.

You can read the rest of the story at Mashable, and in the meantime, you can follow Pornhub on Twitter at @Pornhub.