Category: News

PornHub is removing all non-verified content following a New York Times report that found the website included videos of child abuse and non-consensual sexual violence.

“Last week, we enacted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history. We banned unverified uploaders from posting new content, eliminated downloads, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations, among other major policy changes,” PornHub wrote in a statement. “As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program. This means every piece of PornHub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Twitter have yet to institute.”

This wasn’t a minor purge, either. As of Monday morning, there were 4.7 million videos on PornHub, down from 13.5 million the night before, according to Vice, “including the most-viewed non-verified amateur video, which had more than 29 million views.” To become verified, a user needs an account, an avatar, and a “verification image,” like “a photo of you holding up a sign with your username and pornhub.com written on it (or on your body).” If those actions are met, the user will be allowed to upload videos:

Porn performers who use the platform as a source of income told Motherboard that the change would seriously damage their livelihoods. The change to banning unverified users from uploading or downloading, however, was a shift that models on the site have been asking the company to act on for years, both to prevent abuse and stop content piracy.

The New York Times spoke to “The Children of PornHub,” one of whom was forced to appear in sexually explicit videos when she was only nine years old, and “some videos of her being abused ended up on PornHub and regularly reappear there.” She called the website her “trafficker.” After the article was published, Visa and Mastercard vowed to investigate the “financial links” MindGeek, the company that owns PornHub.

(Via Vice and New York Times)

During Disney’s Investor Day event, Marvel Studios confirmed Christian Bale and Jonathan Majors’ villainous roles in Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quatumania, respectively. While Majors’ role of Kang the Conqueror was rumored already, Bale’s role has been more illusive, but now, we know that he’s playing the menacing Gorr the God Butcher, who has arguably done more damage to Thor’s life than any other villain. But if you’re not familiar with the comics, these names probably sound pretty random, so here’s a quick rundown on these two new characters and what their arrival could mean for the future (and past) of the MCU.

Gorr the God Butcher

Exactly like it says in his name, Gorr‘s whole deal is murdering gods for failing the mortal beings who look to them for protection. Armed with an ancient symbiote sword, All-Black the Necromancer, a vengeful Gorr has spent centuries murdering the deities of the Marvel universe throughout time and space. After being introduced in 2012’s Thor: God of Thunder by writer Jason Aaron, Gorr has wreaked significant havoc on Thor’s life that’s still reverberating in the comics today. Specifically, Gorr’s justifiable hatred of the gods resulted in Thor becoming “unworthy,” which led to Jane Foster wielding Mjolnir and becoming The Mighty Thor. Considering that Natalie Portman has confirmed that she’ll be wielding the hammer in Thor: Love and Thunder, it sounds like the fourth film will pull from Thor’s epic encounter with Gorr.

As for Gorr’s implications on the MCU, the character has recently been tied to Venom, which could get interesting. He’s also manipulated time in his quest to kill all of the gods, and messing with the very fabric of reality seems to be a major theme in the Phase 4 slate of films. That’s exactly in the wheelhouse of Major’s villain.

Kang the Conqueror

Despite being one of the “smaller” pieces of the MCU, the third Ant-Man movie will introduce Kang the Conqueror, who has long been a Thanos-level threat to the Marvel universe in the comics. A master traveler of time, Kang has no qualms with altering reality in his quest to rule the universe. While his backstory is enough to make even the most hardcore comics fans go cross-eyed, Kang is believed to be the father of the Fantastic Four‘s Reed Richards. We now know that the classic team is making its MCU debut, thanks to Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts, so it’d be safe to assume that Kang’s presence won’t be contained to Ant-Man 3 as the MCU presumably changes while colliding with the “multi-verse” that either opened from the events of Avengers: Endgame or will be soon when WandaVision hits Disney+. Either way, Kang’s sure to be at the center of it, and the MCU will look dramatically different when the dust settles.

If Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller hopped on Fox & Friends Monday morning thinking the show was just another platform for him to push voter fraud conspiracy theories unchallenged, he got a wake-up call — and it came in the form of host Brian Kilmeade.

Miller appeared on the program this morning as members of the Electoral College are set to meet to cast their votes for each state. As things stand, President-elect Joe Biden has a clear majority — of the electoral college vote and the popular vote — but Trump’s aide gave the show’s host an alternative outcome, suggesting Trump loyalists will cast their electoral ballots for the disgraced candidate, which could sway outcomes in key states like Georgia and Wisconsin. Of course, those votes won’t be certified state secretaries which means they won’t count, but Miller seemed undaunted by that minor roadblock.

“You have an alternate slate of electors in a state like say Wisconsin or in a state like Georgia and we’ll make sure that those results are sent up side by side to Congress,” Miller told the hosts. “So that we have the opportunity, every day between now and January 20, to say that slate of electors and the contested states is the slate that should be certified to uphold a fair and free election and an honest result.”

He went on to claim that Trump’s legal team had evidence of every kind of voter fraud happening in those states — from dead people voting to underage voters to “illegal aliens.” All of these conspiracies have been debunked and none of those claims have held up in court, something Kilmeade happily pointed out when cross-examining his guest.

“Stephen, so if there were underage people voting and criminals voting, if there was illegal ballots cast, your legal team [has], in almost every state, 50 times lost, so do you have the worst legal team who just don’t seem to be presenting a good case?” Kilmeade quizzed Miller. “Or [are] you just too late, in this case, should have been brought before the election?”

Miller blamed those legal losses on “pressure from the corrupt corporate media” which feels like an obvious dig at Kilmeade and his Fox News posse but, and we can’t believe we’re saying this, the host has a point. If you’re going to label your gang of crackpot lawyers a “legal strike force,” you really need to have a better track record than 0-50.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

So much of our Covid-related discourse in 2020 centered on what was lost. But a precious few of us seized upon this very strange and sequestered year as an opportunity for acquiring some new part of ourselves. Was it a surprise that Taylor Swift was one of those people?

Her summer release Folklore was instantly contextualized as a quarantine project. Swift’s second album of 2020, Evermore, was similarly presented by the singer-songwriter herself as extra run-off from an especially fruitful songwriting period. But anyone taking a wider view of her career could see albums like Folklore and Evermore on Swift’s musical horizon, even before Covid. During the press cycle for her 2019 effort Lover, Swift was already expressing disdain for the pop machine, likening it to The Hunger Games. That strain was also apparent on the album, in which some very good “small” Taylor Swift songs were larded with some very bad “big” would-be hits like “Me” and “I Forgot You Existed.” More than ever, the gap between the songs in which Swift’s heart seemed to be truly invested and the songs required for radio exposure and meme-friendly virality was incredibly stark. As our current reigning stadium rocker, Swift had made Born In The U.S.A.-style mega-smashes time and again. Now, it seemed, she yearned to make her Nebraska.

But would pop’s chronic overachiever ever allow herself to make an album of strictly “small” and intimate songs? When the world shut down in 2020, the obligation to fill our stadiums and arenas with world-conquering jams suddenly became moot. And Swift — the canniest pop artist of the early 21st century — instantly recognized it. This was the perfect context for the commencement of her curse-word era, a chance to indulge in Dropboxed collaborations with admired artists who make indie records much cooler than hers. Ultimately, it was a pathway toward reimagining her career. And, like almost everything Taylor Swift does, it worked.

The strength of Folklore is how it puts the focus squarely on her wordplay and evolving penchant for spinning sharp narratives, in which this famous over-sharer is merely a wise and all-knowing narrator. Setting those lyrics against austere and atmospheric music created primarily with Aaron Dessner of The National made Swift seem more like a kind of musical novelist than a pop star — both more approachable as a scaled-down personality, and less visible in her songs as a familiar tabloid persona. It is the first Taylor Swift album that’s not immediately classifiable as an autobiographical work. Instead, it feels like a world onto itself.

It’s understandable that Swift would want to spend more time in that world. (For starters, even someone as rich as Swift has nothing better to do at the moment.) But even Folklore felt overstuffed — at 16 tracks, it’s a little samey in places, especially given the monochromatic nature of Dessner’s musical electro-folk beds. (This has also been an issue on the last few National records.) It’s still the second-best Taylor Swift record after Red, though it might have topped that record had it been reduced to an unbeatable 10-12 tracks, with “Cardigan,” “The Last Great American Dynasty,” “Mirrorball,” “August,” and “Invisible String” acting as a very strong core.

Swift — and surely her many fans — no doubt feel differently. So now comes Evermore, the Amnesiac to Folklore‘s Kid A. As Swift herself concedes, this is the first time that a Taylor Swift record has reiterated a previous album’s aesthetic, rather than pushing her music in a different direction. Put another way: It’s another 15 songs of novelistic Swift writing set against downbeat pianos, plunky acoustic guitars, and wintery-country vibes.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s a safe bet that if you loved Folklore you will at least like Evermore, though I suspect the predecessor will always feel more significant, as an album and as a gesture. As is usually the case with companion records, the one that comes second can’t help but sound like leftovers that sparkle a little less without the benefit of having the shock of the new. Even the best of Evermore — “Champagne Problems,” “Tis The Damn Season,” “Gold Rush,” “Marjorie” — can’t quite touch the best of Folklore, at least in part because we’ve already heard this Taylor Swift before. The same goes for Evermore‘s weaknesses, which go a little lower than Folklore. (Sadly, the clunky awkwardness of Folkore‘s biggest misfire, the Bon Iver duet “Exile,” is compounded by several more ill-suited Bon Iver cameos on Evermore.)

A slight deviation this time is that several Evermore tracks fit together as a song cycle about the very specific phenomenon of going home for the holidays when you’re between the ages of 18 and 25, and bumping into people you used to know and briefly reliving past lives. In “Dorothea,” she sings from the perspective of a person whose childhood friend has become rich and famous — basically everyone surrounding Taylor Swift — with some unrequited love overtones. (In the line where she sings, “But are you still the same soul I met under the bleachers? Well…,” the ellipses do a lot of heavy lifting.) “Tis The Damn Season” is another “home for the holidays” narrative, with some wonderful writing that captures the edgy melancholy of revisiting your still-near childhood even as it’s rapidly disappearing: “I parkеd my car right between the Methodist / And thе school that used to be ours / The holidays linger like bad perfume / You can run, but only so far.”

Otherwise, I find myself being drawn most on Evermore to the songs that deviate from the usual Dessner-assisted template. That includes the fun “No Body, No Crime,” a classic murder ballad featuring Haim that finds Swift confidently returning to her long-lost country-music writing style. (It also includes a very well chosen Olive Garden reference, for all of you chain-restaurant fans out there.) But my favorite track of all is “Gold Rush,” the sole Jack Antonoff collaboration with a subtle bass thump that I bet could become a major hit with a poppier remix. In the song, Swift calls out an unnamed jerk by pointing out that “at dinner parties I won’t call you out on your contrarian shit.” (This lyric instantly reminded me of Fiona Apple’s “Under The Table” from Fetch The Bolt Cutters, another song about the awfulness of dinner parties. Bless these albums for easing the pain of quarantine by reminding us that gatherings aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.)

Taken together, Folklore and Evermore culminate a fascinating transitional period for Swift that began back in 2017 with Reputation, that maligned but ultimately underrated album that bore the backlash from the mammoth success of 1989. The past three years have been marked by Swift’s evolving feelings about her own fame — hurt, then anger, then acceptance, now calm. Folklore is the best, most assured album of this period, a new benchmark for her as a writer and an encouraging sign that she can flourish outside of the glare of mainstream pop expectations. But for all of its strengths as a well-made sequel, Evermore suggests that it is now time for Swift to move on to a new reimagining of herself. She can keep the curse words, though.

Evermore is out now on Republic Records. Get it here.

No one knows for sure whether Melania and Donald Trump’s marriage will last the test of time, even though reports say that she’s really not feeling it anymore. What does appear to be more certain, though, is that Melania hasn’t enjoyed White House life all that much (after all, she’s now gotta pretend to like Christmas decorations after she got caught on tape trashing the holiday FLOTUS duties). Melania also waited several months following Trump’s inauguration (officially due to Barron’s schedule) to move into the White House, but it looks like she’s wasting no time in planning to leave the presidential residence as soon as possible.

After CNN reported last week that Melania “just wants to go home,” Page Six is following up with word that she spent the weekend touring a private school in Florida with hopes that Barron will attend. There might be a little tax hangup, though:

A source tells Page Six the First Lady toured Pine Crest school, located in Fort Lauderdale, about forty minutes away from Mar-a-Lago.

Tuition at the ritzy private school is $35,150 for grades nine through twelve and requires personal and business tax returns for enrollment. Judging from The Donald’s past reluctance, that could be a snag, though we doubt they’d hit any serious problems.

Yep, she’s shown off those swanky tennis pavillion renovations, and it’s almost wrap time for Melania, for she’s accepted the truth of the matter, even if her husband refuses to see the light. She will probably head back to Mar-a-Lago, given that the Trumps aren’t too welcome in NYC these days, and she and Donald moved their official primary residence from New York to Florida last year. It remains to be seen whether Melania will leave a visible vapor trail in her haste to depart the White House while Donald’s dragged out by the Secret Service on January 20, 2021. It could happen!

(Via Page Six)

While most of our options for New Year’s Eve have been limited this year, Jack Harlow, Post Malone, and Steve Aoki are all set in that department thanks to Bud Light and the brand’s NYE live stream, “Bud Light Seltzer Sessions Presents New Year’s Eve 2021.” While that name may be a bit of a mouthful — get it? Bud Light? Mouthful? Thanks, I’ll be here all week — Malone had a relatively simple message for fans: “Ready to bring in 2021 with my friends at Bud Light and kick some ass while doing it,” he said in a statement.

The stream is scheduled for 10:30 PM ET on December 31, taking place on budlight.com/NYE and on the brand’s social channels. Hosted by late-night newcomer Lilly Singh from Park MGM in Las Vegas, the stream will include a live performance of Harlow’s new album That’s What They All Say, a DJ set from Aoki, and performances by additional artists to be announced ahead of the show.

By now, fans and artists alike are no strangers to streaming sets. Malone himself appeared in a virtual festival celebrating Tom Petty’s 70th birthday and in his own jam session where he covered Nirvana and Motley Crüe, as well as on Governor’s Ball’s 2020 live stream. Harlow, meanwhile, performed for BET’s 2020 Hip-Hop Awards Cypher, and gave a performance of “What’s Poppin” to an empty arena at the 2020 VMAs. Aoki recently teamed up with pro gamers for a Black Lives Matter-supporting live stream session as well.

Artists like Cardi B, Dua Lipa, and The Weeknd have had tremendous years. It could be argued, though, that the musicians who had the biggest 2020 of all is Dolly Parton, although not for her music. She donated a lot of money that helped fund a promising coronavirus vaccine, she moved Stephen Colbert to tears on the air, and it turns out that she saved a young dancer from a potentially dangerous situation.

Inside Edition recently did a profile on three siblings who were all cast in Parton’s new holiday movie Christmas On The Square, and in one part of the piece, 9-year-old Talia Hill revealed that on set, Parton yanked her out of the path of a moving vehicle:

“We were on set and I was at the hot chocolate station. They said, ‘Go back to your beginning positions.’ So there is a vehicle moving, and I was walking, and then somebody grabbed me and pulled me back. I looked up and it was Dolly Parton. I was surprised, I was like [gasp]. And she’s like, ‘Well, I am an angel, you know,’ ’cause she plays an angel in the movie, and I was in shock. She hugged me and shook me and said, ‘I saved your life!’ And my mom was crying, like, ‘Yes you did, Dolly Parton, yes you did.’”

Watch the interview video here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Houston rapper Tobe Nwigwe‘s “Get Twisted Sundays” campaign has capitalized masterfully on the viral buzz from his single “Try Jesus” this summer. With each release, he continues to showcase his creativity as an art director, producer, and rapper, while sharing the spotlight with some of the dopest rappers — legends and newcomers alike — ever to grace a microphone. With this week’s release, he links up with one of his hometown heroes, Lil Keke, to pay homage to the late, great Prince on “Purple Rain Thing.”

Again appearing in one of his monochromatic smocks — this time a rich, theme-appropriate violet — Tobe accents his sparse, minimalistic beat with samples from Prince’s iconic hit as he continues to rhyme tight spirals of wordplay detailing his commitment to his family and his integrity as an artist. Keke joins in the fun on the second verse, sounding as fresh as he did during his rise to becoming Lone Star State royalty in the mid-90s.

In previous editions of “Twisted Sundays,” Tobe has rapped alongside Mississippi’s Big KRIT on “Bozos,” literary rap legend Black Thought and Grammy-nominated Royce Da 5’9 on “Father Figure,” and Inglewood’s own Grammy-nominated breakout star D Smoke on “Headshots.”

Watch the “Purple Rain Thing” video above.

This essay is running as part of the 2020 Uproxx Music Critics Poll.

Think about all those great times you experienced music with people. Perhaps it was at a concert, or on a rooftop, or in a backyard. Speakers blasting “Waterloo” or something at the community pool, and for a brief second, hundreds of people singing ABBA on a hot summer day. Those moments didn’t exist this year, the absence of a collective joy we all derive from being around each other and celebrating a song come to life on a stage or being thrust into whatever setting we’re in, augmenting it instantly.

No, this year’s forced isolation was an unplanned retreat from those common joys that music has built up an entire industry around over the last twenty years. No more clubs or festivals or spontaneous gatherings to see some high school kids play outside a coffee shop because that’s what high school kids do to get their music heard, honing a craft in front of strangers wherever makes sense.

Some of the most profound music released this year reflected this new reality. It was born out of and into loneliness in either sound or with lyrics; sometimes both. The first real piece of music that struck me in this sense came in June, about 12 weeks in. In passing, I wound up on Chicago-based musician Tenci’s Bandcamp and was mesmerized by everything about her debut My Heart Is An Open Field. The music immediately felt raw and as if she was next to me, or I was watching her in a room recording in real-time. Guitar chord changes felt pronounced, and her voice seemed broken. Very broken, but not lacking confidence — a feeling that I think resonates with a lot of people this year.

This forced-upon-us intimacy came in bigger, more commercial releases as well. Fiona Apple’s fifth album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, felt like a gift to music fans when it was released in April, as the unknown ravaged most of our collective consciousness.

Kick me under the table all you want. I won’t shut up. I won’t shut up.

This line. This… line. It’s perhaps the most intimate of pop music lyrics to come out this year, and was a stark reminder of things we shouldn’t be doing (going to dinner parties) and feelings we should be feeling (rage). How many times did you want to scream? How many times did you want to give up but you kept going? But you held back. Or you kept it inside. You kept it under the table, a private, and intimate moment with yourself, one that Fiona makes so relatable, all the time — but perhaps heightened this time around. Bolt Cuttersnwas cathartic in the sense that if not for nothing, we could finally relate to Fiona after all these years. Not fully. But maybe just a bit more than ever. Intimacy is kinda fucked up.

Taylor Swift’s Folklore did this, too. Working with Aaron Dessner of The National — in separate spaces, not together — Swift gave us some of the most intimate portraits of her humanity throughout this record, from the sparse (for her) arrangements to the imagery passed on.

But I knew you, dancin’ in your Levis, drunk under a street light
Just like a folk song, our love will be passed on.
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets.

Phoebe Bridgers’ celebrated Punisher is full of these intimate moments that helped remind me of what things were and could be, namely the freedom to go. The luxury of leaving became something to be put on pause. Bridgers’ sang about these moments not as things to celebrate, but necessary ways of escape. The complex emotions around maybe leaving someone on “Savior Complex.” Going to Memphis on “Graceland Too.” In Bridgers’ Punisher world, there’s a familiar wrestling with relationships that lines a lot of lovelorn pop music; her’s was mostly sparse and devoid of grandiose presentations. It was personal and up close, but that undercurrent of “going” is what stuck. I didn’t “go.” None of us did. But with this, we had a songs that allowed us to remember how important it really is.

Talk to enough musicians and they’ll tell you isolation is not a new concept for them. Records are written and made in private, in small numbers, often with painstaking methods of repetition. And when they’re finally released to us, in any other time, experiencing them is never mirroring the process itself. But I bet if you also talk to enough musicians they would say this experience now, of their music, would never be something they’d want. Seeing the collective joy around a song is also a reason to make a song. It’s something that comes to life, fully, with people.

I bet Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker realized this as she hunkered down in the pandemic’s early days to start recording what would become a new pair of solo albums, Songs and Instrumentals. Those titles are rather apt for the times. Just some songs. Oh, and a few instrumentals. Devoid of description, because maybe it would cloud the music in some unnecessary way. Or maybe its bluntness is just to mirror an experience of isolation, where she was just existing, like we all were.

When this is over, I’m sure we will flock to see Dua Lipa perform Future Nostalgia and Run The Jewels and Megan Thee Stallion and everything else we feel like we missed out on. But I don’t know if I missed out on anything. The albums that helped me through this — and we will all have them — connected in ways that it feels hard to do these days. You have a record and if you were lucky, a music video to go with it. For decades, that’s all music had. Fans connecting to it in bedrooms and basements, and perhaps some chatter about your private discoveries the next day IRL.

But hey, the year wasn’t completely free of that collective music experience. One moment really did feel like those old days of experiencing a song with everyone else at once, like we used to do, like we want to do. Thank you @420doggface208 for skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac and drinking Ocean Spray.

Although Verzuz fans were disappointed when Saturday’s battle between Ashanti and Keyshia Cole was postponed due to Ashanti’s COVID-19 diagnosis, the show’s final matchup of the year should be exciting enough to make up for it — especially among those Oakland residents who were ready to turn out in force to support Cole. The final Verzuz battle of the year has been set for December 19 and will see two icons of Bay Area rap go song for song.

E-40 and Too Short — who are pioneers of rap in the truest sense of the word — are scheduled to trade musical hits to close out the first year of the popular streaming show, which is a match made in heaven for West Coast aficionados and a potential musical masterclass for residents of other regions who missed out on many of their local hits. Both are 30-year veterans of the rap game and spent much of that time releasing music independently. However, in the mid-2000s, the emergence of the hyphy sound on the national stage offered more widespread recognition thanks to hits like “Tell Me When To Go” and “Blow The Whistle.”

And while anyone East of the Mississippi will easily recognize those songs, Californians will likely be waiting with bated breath for jams like “Sprinkle Me,” “Quarterbackin’,” “Freaky Tales,” and “Just Another Day.”

Tune in to see how the two legends whittle down their massive catalogs on Saturday, 12/19 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET on Instagram and Apple TV.