A Bunch of News Websites Had Hardcore Porn Embedded After a Defunct Video Hosting Service Was Purchased By a Porn Company

By Sarah RumpfJul 23rd, 2021, 6:56 pm

LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images

The perils of an ever-changing World Wide Web caused an embarrassing situation for a number of mainstream media companies, after a porn company purchased the expired domain of a defunct video hosting service, leading to videos of hardcore sex scenes being embedded on websites that normally publish far more PG-rated fare.

According to a report by Vice, the porno ambush happened after Vidme, a video hosting site that sought to compete with YouTube, closed up operations in 2017, and Vidme’s domain was purchased by 5 Star Porn HD, and the porn company subsequently switched both Vidme’s homepage as well as all of its vid.me embeds to play its hardcore porn videos.

A Twitter user named @dox_gay first noticed the “NSFW porn all over the regular internet” as a result of the expired Vidme domain, and posted links with several examples in a Twitter thread on Thursday. (A warning that should be all-too-obvious: some of the links in that thread may contain offensive content.)

Twitter hasn’t noticed but a now-defunct video hosting/advertising platform (VidMe) let their domain expire so it was purchased by a porn website, now there is NSFW porn all over the regular internet where their links were embedded lol

For example: https://t.co/UdPRFnq4EP

— DOXIE ? (@dox_gay) July 22, 2021

this is now a scavenger hunt, go on google and type “vidme + keyword” and post your favs

— DOXIE ? (@dox_gay) July 22, 2021

Well-known sites such as The Washington Post, Huffington Post, New York magazine, and Uproxx were affected, as Vice noted. “For example, if you check out this New York magazine article about former House Majority leader John Boehner’s ‘creepy kissy face,’ you will see photos of Boehner but also images of a man with a gigantic penis fucking a woman.” (That particular link seems to have been fixed and no longer displays porn videos.)

“This is funny, unfortunate, and also, an example of a much larger problem: The internet is a collective hallucination that is fading away thanks to link rot,” Vice concluded, linking to a recent article at The Atlantic about our “rotting” internet.

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5 Star Porn HD porn Vice Vidme

Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law & Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on the BBC, MSNBC, NewsNation, Fox 35 Orlando, Fox 7 Austin, The Young Turks, The Dean Obeidallah Show, and other television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe.