Hardcore pornography has appeared on news sites like Huffington Post, The Washington Post and New York Magazine after a video hosting site let its web domain expire.
It happened after Vidme, a defunct video hosting service’s, domain was purchased by a porn company resulting in pornography being embedded in news stories, Vice.com reported in a piece published Thursday.
Vidme was founded in 2014 and for a brief time was competitor of YouTube before it shuttered in 2017, the outlet noted.
NEW: Hardcore porn is embedded all over regular-ass websites because a porn company has purchased the domain of a popular, defunct video hosting site. https://t.co/UJSMEJ5vGX
— Motherboard (@motherboard) July 22, 2021
Throughout the article, there are various examples of how previous news stories with the vid.me embeds now redirect readers to the porn site 5 Star Porn HD.
One example included clicking on an article about former House Majority Leader John Boehner and seeing photos of a man with a gigantic penis having sex with a woman, the outlet noted. (SLIDESHOW: These Women On Instagram Hate Wearing Clothes)
New York Magazine, John Boehner, and 5 Star HD Porn. https://t.co/YeVvtTtItc pic.twitter.com/N9FGMK9sdI
— Motherboard (@motherboard) July 22, 2021
Another example provided was clicking on a news story about Martin Shkreli on Huffington Post and seeing NSFW videos titled “Getting Into Porsha’s Ass” and “Why Don’t We Tag Team Your GF?” (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything)
A Porn Site Bought Vidme, and Now There’s Porn on the Washington Post, HuffPost, and More https://t.co/fqqmXrWT7R pic.twitter.com/DtjotFPnJm
— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) July 22, 2021
A third was a news story from Donald Trump’s presidency and his performance during a GOP debate that appeared on the site Uproxx that now includes thumbnails of videos titled “Aria Lee Is Back For More” and “Naughty Spy Girls Part 2,” the outlet reported.
The Daily Caller reached out to Huffington Post, Washington Post and New York Magazine for a comment about the porn on its news sites and what plans they had to deal with it.
“We are in the process of permanently removing this content wherever it appears,” a spokesperson for Huffington Post shared with The DC.
“We identified 4 stories where the Vidme unit was showing up, and they’ve been removed from all of those stories,” a spokesperson for New York Magazine has since shared with The DC.
There has been no further word from the other news organization by the time of publication.