Prosecutors take Dutch-hosted abuse site Motherless offline

[RoosterDance]

I'm curious what people here think about this one.

The public prosecution service (OM) has taken the pornography site Motherless offline, after an investigation by broadcaster NOS and current affairs programme Nieuwsuur found it had been hosted on Dutch servers since 2024. The site ran various kinds of sexual abuse videos.

Motherless drew roughly 62 million visitors a month, according to the investigation.

An NOS analysis of 20,000 videos posted on the site’s front page in the first week of May found that “incest” was the third most popular user tag, after “teen” and “amateur”, covering more than 1,000 videos that together drew 60 million views in a week.

The single most-viewed clip in that period – 4.2 million views – carried tags including “rape”, “school girl” and “sister”. A criminal investigation has been opened by the OM.

[...]

The site has been hosted since at least 2024 by Nforce, a provider based in the North Brabant town of Steenbergen. Speaking to NOS, Nforce director Simon Elimeleh said the volume of complaints meant that monitoring and removal were needed, not that the site was flawed.

International scrutiny intensified in March, when CNN, prompted by the trial of Gisèle Pelicot in France, found 20,000 videos on Motherless of women being filmed while drugged or asleep.

[...]

Full article here.

[Scorchingwilde]

I'm curious what people here think about this one.

The public prosecution service (OM) has taken the pornography site Motherless offline, after an investigation by broadcaster NOS and current affairs programme Nieuwsuur found it had been hosted on Dutch servers since 2024. The site ran various kinds of sexual abuse videos.

Motherless drew roughly 62 million visitors a month, according to the investigation.

An NOS analysis of 20,000 videos posted on the site’s front page in the first week of May found that “incest” was the third most popular user tag, after “teen” and “amateur”, covering more than 1,000 videos that together drew 60 million views in a week.

The single most-viewed clip in that period – 4.2 million views – carried tags including “rape”, “school girl” and “sister”. A criminal investigation has been opened by the OM.

[...]

The site has been hosted since at least 2024 by Nforce, a provider based in the North Brabant town of Steenbergen. Speaking to NOS, Nforce director Simon Elimeleh said the volume of complaints meant that monitoring and removal were needed, not that the site was flawed.

International scrutiny intensified in March, when CNN, prompted by the trial of Gisèle Pelicot in France, found 20,000 videos on Motherless of women being filmed while drugged or asleep.

[...]

Full article here.

I happen to follow an anti-censorship journalist (who is anti-MAP, but otherwise astute and reasonable) who covered the original story related to the website and the claims about "62 million men" on it being trained to drug and rape people (Taylor Lorenz, if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvzQ0WPzRSo). The website seemed to be a hub for fake nonconsent (staged) type porn, and in the comments under one video there was a link to a Telegram with maybe a couple hundred people actually sharing tips on abusing their wives and girlfriends by drugging them. I think it's absurd that this misinformation has led to the shutdown of the site itself now, and it's concerning that lies propagated originally by a far-right Christian SWERF have managed to go this far.

[HumanBeing]

I'm curious what people here think about this one.

The public prosecution service (OM) has taken the pornography site Motherless offline, after an investigation by broadcaster NOS and current affairs programme Nieuwsuur found it had been hosted on Dutch servers since 2024. The site ran various kinds of sexual abuse videos.

Motherless drew roughly 62 million visitors a month, according to the investigation.

An NOS analysis of 20,000 videos posted on the site’s front page in the first week of May found that “incest” was the third most popular user tag, after “teen” and “amateur”, covering more than 1,000 videos that together drew 60 million views in a week.

The single most-viewed clip in that period – 4.2 million views – carried tags including “rape”, “school girl” and “sister”. A criminal investigation has been opened by the OM.

[...]

The site has been hosted since at least 2024 by Nforce, a provider based in the North Brabant town of Steenbergen. Speaking to NOS, Nforce director Simon Elimeleh said the volume of complaints meant that monitoring and removal were needed, not that the site was flawed.

International scrutiny intensified in March, when CNN, prompted by the trial of Gisèle Pelicot in France, found 20,000 videos on Motherless of women being filmed while drugged or asleep.

[...]

Full article here.

I've heard they monetized the content through online ads. If that's the case, I agree with the shutdown, and they should financially compensate the people who appeared in the content.

If you'd like to see my position on this type of material in more detail, I wrote a post about it a few years ago here.

https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?t=1736

[RoosterDance]

I've heard they monetized the content through online ads. If that's the case, I agree with the shutdown, and they should financially compensate the people who appeared in the content.

If you'd like to see my position on this type of material in more detail, I wrote a post about it a few years ago here.

I assume you're saying that you think it should be illegal when they make money off of abusive content. But was their content truly abusive? Do you know this for sure? Or are you taking the sensationalized media claims at face value?

[RoosterDance]

I happen to follow an anti-censorship journalist (who is anti-MAP, but otherwise astute and reasonable) who covered the original story related to the website and the claims about "62 million men" on it being trained to drug and rape people (Taylor Lorenz, if you're curious).

Thank you for sharing that video. Within, I found an unrelated but interesting comment:

“If you don’t engage with this stuff, then you don’t understand the technology”- is literally the battle the 3D printing hobbyist community is fighting right now with states trying create laws to monitor design files and gcode. We are fighting an uphill battle.

exactly, they are trying to make you get a background check to buy a 3D printer, or criminalize the possession of a literal .stl file. absolute BS overreach

[HumanBeing]

I've heard they monetized the content through online ads. If that's the case, I agree with the shutdown, and they should financially compensate the people who appeared in the content.

If you'd like to see my position on this type of material in more detail, I wrote a post about it a few years ago here.

I assume you're saying that you think it should be illegal when they make money off of abusive content. But was their content truly abusive? Do you know this for sure? Or are you taking the sensationalized media claims at face value?

Yeah making money off of real abusive content should be illegal as it motivates criminals to commit more violence for profit, that's why it should be 100% non-profit to be legal, I didn't knew about that website until it appeared in the news so I'm assuming it is like they said