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The worst thing about data driven UX - especially with porn - is that it's often a self fulfilling prophecy. Trends that are likely side-effects are considered to be primary factors driving engagement.

With porn, it's usually a fetish that is only moderately popular, but broadly unoffensive. Because the average person who isn't specifically interested in the fetish isn't turned off by it either, that fetish gets more positive engagement relative to other fetishes; which drives studios to make more of it, and tube sites to advertise it more.

This pattern likely started with foot fetish, but really took off over the last few years with "step sibling" porn.

No one I've talked to is actually interested in the step-sibling fetish, yet the overwhelming majority of content being made and advertised - especially by mainstream studios and well-known actors - is step-sibling themed. Why? Because these studios are deciding what to make based on what's popular on pornhub, and what's popular on pornhub is literally anything these studios make. I sincerely doubt that they would see a drop in engagement if they diversified, but trends in data will never drive diversity faster than they drive convergence, because convergence is essentially the goal of data driven production in the first place.

It's also worth noting that the near-monopoly status of Mindgeek in the casual porn streaming industry has amplified this pattern. Their recent decision to stop hosting unverified content - good or bad - has had a pretty serious side-effect on the singular greatest driving factor of internet porn: piracy.

If a porn studio or independent actor doesn't want their content floating around pornhub, they can simply refuse to post it. Anyone who wants to upload a copy without their consent will fail verification.

So now, the only content being shared on pornhub is what creators hope will be interesting, and never what consumers want to share.

Most new competitive content creators are more concerned about getting paid than getting advertised because they don't have the financial buffer that established studios have; so they are less likely to put their content on pornhub, and less likely to by found by the casual consumer.

> No one I've talked to is actually interested in the step-sibling fetish, yet the overwhelming majority of content being made and advertised - especially by mainstream studios and well-known actors - is step-sibling themed. Why? Because these studios are deciding what to make based on what's popular on pornhub, and what's popular on pornhub is literally anything these studios make. I sincerely doubt that they would see a drop in engagement if they diversified, but trends in data will never drive diversity faster than they drive convergence, because convergence is essentially the goal of data driven production in the first place.

I think your analysis is incorrect... it's likely extremely profitable for the porn studios because: 1. It's an easy plot to make up. 2. requires absolutely no extra props fancy locations or anything beyond the basic porn shoot. 3. it's extremely taboo so for whoever is actually into that they get to rope in and for the rest of the porn consumers they can just skip the part where they have all that verbalized and it's basically normal porn for some version of normal.

Just a guess but: I suspect a bit that foot thing might be to lower fractions of NSFW parts in an image for otherwise SFW websites(e.g. Twitter), and also to appease older demographic because it is often argued that fetish move downwards as people ages. "Step sibling" is just a successor to "teen" and "schoolgirl" for ban avoidance. There are chances that a successor will appear in 3-5 years and my instinct says it could be a nationality tag.

> because convergence is essentially the goal of data driven production in the first place.

But what comes after an ultimate convergence - let's say, a 3:45 minutes long .mp4 file of an incomprehensible psychedelic rainbow mosaic that cause a strong euphoria to any singular entity of a primate species born in or before 2022 - will audiences not adapt to it? And when they consume the stimuli, how does the convergence sustain? There will have to be a change of trend, and a novel oddity to be normalized will have to be brought in from outside the industry, I think.

> but really took off over the last few years with "step sibling" porn.

Even one of the Mortys in R&M made a wish that "inc*st porn have more a mainstream appeal." My partner both winced at that and said to each other, "Did he just say what I think he said?" So maybe I'm just too old and traditional (despite being queer)?

> No one I've talked to is actually interested in the step-sibling fetish

Why would anyone admit it publicly :P

>No one I've talked to is actually interested in the step-sibling fetish,

I derive much enjoyment of the lewd but not pornographic memes and other humor it generates as a byproduct of being widespread.

So I guess that supports your theory that nobody actually wants that in their porn.

I built the IT infrastructure for one of the largest hardcore porn sites out there.

When we did a complete rebuild of it (because it was in horrible PHP code), we tried to do a redesign and the CEO of the company made us change it back.

Why? Because it was too nice and the UX was too good.

He told us that his customers actually appreciated a more 'dirty' and 'raw' feel to the site. It is porn after all!

So, we went back to the drawing board and did just that... many of the changes we made to the UX were reverted to intentionally make things a bit harder to use and make the site feel more 'dirty'... which is funny given the content was already super dirty.

> his customers actually appreciated a more 'dirty' and 'raw' feel to the site. It is porn after all!

Sounds like HN.

Oddly enough, I somewhat agree with your CEO. In the hypothetical scenario where I would ever visit a porn site, I wouldn't ever want to feel like I'm being funneled anywhere. I would already not trust the site and feeling funneled would make me wary of falling into a scam/exploit/trap, even though most sites would most likely only ever want ad money and would never care to scam/exploit/trap me.
It's not surprising that all the porn websites the author mentions have a similar design; they're all owned and run by the same company, Mindgeek.
I haven't seen any porn site with tagging, search, or browse features as well made as e621 (or any booru website)
Not? Some belong to a French guy in Czechia IIRC.
Callous comparison.

Take a step back and imagine what success, and reflection of good rankings algos would be on these sites. Longer engagement times and multiple videos (+ads) for YouTube. Shorter time on site and less videos for Pornhub.

The interfaces would be designed accordingly with those end goals in mind.

Why would they want less time spent on the site? That's optimal perhaps for the user not site, and the article discusses how the site is designed to keep the user searching.
I had a friend once tell me that porn was the driving force for innovation on the internet.

Firstly getting the speeds up to load images, then videos with buffering then 4k, then VR.

The design features and business model of porn sites is years ahead of anything else, for a reason these sites up until very recently were the majority of bandwith over the Internet.

A business model you will start to see more which is very common in porn is to use the streaming site as advertising to your paid membership site.

You release 10min clip of say a podcast and to watch the rest you need to join the members only site. As YouTube partner programme gets worse and rules about what content get more strict you will see a drive to only using YouTube as a marketing tool to get people behind the pay wall.

Speaking as someone who built the IT infrastructure for one of the largest sites on the net, this is absolutely true.

We were the first to do live 1080p streaming. At the time, even finding a hardware mixer for this content was difficult. It was so early that there was only one product available that wasn't just prime time equipment.

Wasn't porn the first ecommerce offering? Like they were the pioneers of "give me your credit card we give you porn." or is that an urban legend, I swear I've heard this remarked here on HN before, I just don't have any solid citations.
Gaming is why the pipes are fast. Porn is why the pipes are fat.
It's absolutely driving innovation in the VR and stereographic 180 degree film markets.

2k -> 4k -> 6k -> 8k side-by-side video over the course of a 4-5 years.

> You release 10min clip of say a podcast and to watch the rest you need to join the members only site.

That's exactly what John Oliver's show does, and has for years, right? They have a couple major segments and two or three smaller bits in an episode, and one of the two major segments gets released in its entirety for free (and inevitably linked by someone or another in every half-way relevant discussion thread anywhere on the Web). They post them on YouTube, I think, I suppose since HBO Max doesn't have a free streaming site and it wouldn't get 1/10 the eyeballs of YouTube even if they did, and the point is advertising, after all.

and IoT...thinkaboutit
I think the author is being too generous.

The layouts were designed over a decade ago and most tubes sites just copied YouTube for a layout, assuming They know what they were doing when they designed it. Or copied other existing tube sites’ layouts. A lot of these sites started by using an out of the box software that has a prebuilt back then as well. The designs weren’t changed because why would you change a horse that’s winning you many millions per month? Plus everyone was afraid of changing anything that might hurt their seo ranking.

Source: worked in that industry for over a decade and know/knew many of the decision makers at these companies. They weren’t that strategic, I assure you.

How is the pornhub interface different from youtube‘s?
YouTube copied a lot of features from pornhub like the heatmap of the most watched parts of a video.
People in thumbnails make weird facial expressions for different reasons
Pornhub doesnt hide the upload date like youtube does
Clickbait vs masturbate.
Interesting how, in attempt to make the article on this topic more SFW, they decided to replace thumbs of actual porn with hand-painted representations..
They put the quotes incorrectly. Normally all the titles should be about incest or pedophilia like on the real websites.
It's Art!
NSFW or recovering porn addicts. Wish I hadn't clicked.
I have the same issue with this as other commenters here: The article says that porn sites are designed to maximize engagement. As opposed to what, other video sites?
A very naive thought, but isn't it a bit different for porn sites because of the existence of orgasms? If I'm watching TikTok and a really good video comes on I am encouraged to watch more but if there is a really good porn video I'm ... Done? At least for that session. So it's like they want to keep dopamine levels not cranked up, but at sustained medium levels.

Again, I don't know anything about UX, please tell me if I'm wrong.

Maximize utility.

Maximize search accuracy.

Give people what they want rather than string them along for as much time as possible.

Consider the timing and placement of advertisements. Youtube is most frustrating with a an unskippable advertisement just before an important part of the video. Such behavior by the site is much less desirable with a porn video.
I imagine it's a different type of "engagement" for a lot of viewers, something the article only alludes to euphemistically.
Not opposed to anything. Statements are not always argumentative.
Search for the definitive article about porn and technology:

porn, the slow-slung engine of progress

Gutenberg might have printed the bible, but he made is money off of porn.

The top/title banner on this site displayed > 30% of my mobile screen. I'm just noting this before reading, as the topic is website UX ... (e: it's much better when in portrait mode, I just happened to be browsing landscape)
The byline says July 2022, but the errata says “This article was updated with corrections on August 13, 2019”… hmmm

Also possibly NSFW (illustrations of the porn sites).

From the very beginning of the article:

>This story is part of our Weekend Reads series, where we highlight a story we love from the archives. It was originally published in the fifth issue of Eye on Design magazine and again online on August 8, 2019.

Why is infinite scrolling not more popular with these sites?
Because it actually sucks. Pages and tabs are much more useful.