What’s happening on PornHub is happening all over social media; platforms are using “verification” as a way to distinguish between sources to decrease moderation needs (or allocate resources). This acts kind of like an internal badge and can factor into things like monetization.

YouTube just used this system, for instance, when figuring out how to address videos on Covid (called it self-certification). Inevitably this ends up benefiting more some media and bigger creators, as well as “official sources” (platforms seem to see direct info as less biased)

Er or raw data of some sort? I dunno. Anyhoo, this kind of mediation between users through verification and certification is a big move! We are seeing more of it from almost every platform (including ones you might not expect like AirBnb and Tinder).

It’s impacting amateur content specifically and drastically changes of what we once thought of as the “participatory internet” (but which probably never existed I suppose in any real way).

Platforms which had verification already are also going through new reviews of their systems and processes. Twitter recently opened theirs up to public comment.

I *think* this marks a change in moderation from content to sources, but time will tell. It’ll be pretty damn important to watch who falls in and out of this system (how are platforms verifying? What sources legitimate? What groups/individuals are more likely to be verified?)

It also has pretty broad implications for privacy, but I won’t go into that here (mostly because I haven’t thought about it enough yet).

And just a note: this isn’t just about moderation. Verification can reflect financial partnerships, or IP (as @av_rose_ev pointed out) and is becoming a larger part of platform economics