xHamster Company Profile

“Holger,” a user made by VICE News to examine the inner workings of the content moderation team, is a participant in the conversation. As a member of “the Reviewers Club,” a group of over 100 unpaid volunteers, Holger has some influence over which images are removed from the internet and which remain online. These choices affect millions of people around the world; at the moment, xHamster is more popular than eBay and is the 22nd most visited website globally. The portal allows anyone to post anonymously pornographic short stories, videos, and images.

For the staff behind voluntary deletion, additional content equals more effort. The Reviewers Club click their way through thousands of fresh photos each day using a 480-word guidebook that explains which images are allowed and which are not. Paid workers are now entrusted with reviewing videos for reasons that xHamster declined to disclose. The only thing that xHamster knows about the moderators is their usernames because they work anonymously on their own personal xHamster accounts. read more