Technology Connections did a REALLY good series of videos on VHS vs Betamax a few years back (and it is fun, if only because it was before he felt comfortable being incredibly snarky on camera).

But the gist is: no. That is a myth. Betamax had porn too. The real reasons VHS won were that it had a better licensing agreement for third parties, the physical format made it easier to see if the rental was rewound (so you could charge if it wasn’t), and it allowed for higher capacity recordings (so sports).

If you have a way to monetize? Porn is nice. The rental shops with the cowboy doors in the back tended to do better than the ones that only had Air Bud 51516161616. But, increasingly, the business model of social media (and the internet as a whole) is built around ads and sponsors. And even the dick pills companies tend to not like advertising alongside straight up porn. And all the incels and puritans even make advertising next to “hot tub streams” risky (even if you can often see much more risque stuff on billboards along the interstate…).

And of the companies that decided “porn wins the internet”: Tumblr is a shadow of its former self once it got rid of all the good stuff. Snapchat and Instagram have always walked a VERY fine line with very strict moderation. And OnlyFans and PornHub are pretty much at the mercy of credit card companies even letting people spend money there.

Not sure the benefits to locking it behind an app (or clicking the desktop site button in firefox) but between this and the ongoing “protests”? I wouldn’t be surprised if porn is straight up off reddit within the next year.