Why are top university websites serving porn? It comes down to shoddy housekeeping.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/04/why-are-top-university-websites-serving-porn-it-comes-down-to-shoddy-housekeeping/
114 points · 18 comments · view on lemmy.world
18 Comments
paraphrand@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 135d
Why shouldn’t they? Did you know VHS succeeded because of porn? Same thing here. They are top because of porn.
The logic is irrefutable. There are absolutely zero downsides to porn.
rozodru@piefed.world · 51 pts · 135d
in the early 00's I worked in the porn industry as a web developer. Pretty much every standard of media consumption can be traced back to the adult entertainment industry. VHS? porn. DVDs? porn. I was working in the industry when Bluray vs HDDVD was just ramping up and there were many discussions within the industry at the time on insider web forums (shout out gofuckyourself) about which one to back. Well you can easily guess which one we went with as you can still buy blurays today. They were cheaper to produce than HDDVDs.
like watching streaming content online? thank porn. At the time we were uploading mpegs and what have you to thumb sites (thumb nail galleries, those mini sites that just had like 6 to 10 "preview" images of porn that were all over the place) until a few of us at Digital Playground figured "would be a lot easier for the user to just have the vids play in real time in their browser as opposed to them having to download the stuff." we saw this new fangled thing called Youtube and figured we could embrace that and adapt it to porn. so we started "tube sites". rest is history. in fact for a time up until recently you could still see some of our original code for streaming on pornhub/various other manwin sites as...well...they bought us all out and used it.
Going back to the DVD stuff it was called within the industry the "golden age" because my god companies made so much money off DVD sales it was insane. it dwarfed online subscriptions. We had a massive warehouse in Tucson Arizona that was just constantly shipping out DVDs like 24 hours a day. So when DVD sales started dying everyone friggin panicked and that's how Manwin/Pornhub was able to just buy up everyone in the industry.
nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 6 pts · 135d
Thank you for your service o7
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 134d
How did you get into that? Feel like I never see a listing for those kinds of gigs when I look for jobs online, but a lot of my personal projects came out of acquiring and managing porn, lol.
rozodru@piefed.world · 8 pts · 134d
if I remember correctly I just responded to a job ad posted on craigslist. They said they needed a web developer, didn't say what it was for and I only found out it was porn when I was at the actual interview. Literally one of the interview questions was 'how do you feel about porn?'
paraphrand@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 135d
I baited this response. I was being sarcastic. Dorks can’t help themselves.
DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz · 18 pts · 135d
Not so sure if there are zero downsides. Just as in some corners of the modelling world there is more-often-than-negligible some shady stuff going on.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org · 38 pts · 135d
The internet was built up mostly by universities. And it was used for porn at all times. The cat pictures started only later.
nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 10 pts · 135d
feels good, man
YaksDC@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 134d
I totally forgot about those!
GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 135d
scutiger@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 135d
There was so much porn on .edu domains in the earlier days of the internet
forrgott@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 135d
I downloaded porn from Microsoft.com once I'm pretty sure
bedwyr@piefed.ca · 6 pts · 135d
I have a Microsoft app only because it is the only one I can get to work for the purpose I use it for, and it puts ads into it that get by my you block origin somehow, but they are like naked chicks and soft porn pictures. Microsoft is advertising with soft porn to me at this very day.
forrgott@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 134d
Cue music: the internet is for porn
timestatic@feddit.org · 5 pts · 134d
I mean they still serve it the way they fuck over their customers
Passerby6497@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 135d
TLDR they're not doing basic cleanup and auditing of their DNS records.
peacefulpixel@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 134d
hoagecko@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 135d
This is a security issue, not a content issue.
There is nothing wrong with universities posting pornography.
This is evident from the fact that Japanese universities research traditional pornographic art from that country.
HubertManne@piefed.social · 2 pts · 134d
why are top university websites serving alcohol. It comes down to human nature and being about 20ish.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 135d