The rabbi who co-owns Pornhub and the free porn business
Solomon Friedman, a lawyer and ordained rabbi, is one of the owners of Pornhub after Ethical Capital Partners bought it in 2023.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Who is Solomon Friedman, the rabbi who co-owns Pornhub
In 2023, a little-known fund —Ethical Capital Partners— bought Pornhub's parent company. One name appeared in the deal: Solomon Friedman, a lawyer and ordained rabbi, one of the owners. TIME and The Washington Post reported on it throughout 2024. The rabbi detail spread faster than any balance sheet. Behind it lie two layers: the corporate one and the storytelling one.
Who owns Pornhub?
The short answer: a corporation. The acquisition was formally announced in 2023, and the company was presented as an attempt to clean up the adult content business, with Friedman among those in charge. That one of the owners is a rabbi and a lawyer doesn't explain the deal, but it does help make sense of the packaging: the company's discourse revolves around ethical porn, with content verification and piracy control. Whether that's marketing or a real change isn't settled by a press release.
Why porn has been free since the nineties
Pornhub was born in 2007. Twelve years earlier, The Hun —run by Dutchman Patrick Terwee— had already shown that sharing free links was a viable model. No single owner designed it: the attention economy did, where the visitor doesn't pay and the cost is covered by volume. Hence the question running through the whole debate about free access: who really profits when billions of people access adult content without spending a cent.
Sensual behavior as an economic variable. Some argue that mass availability changes habits, how couples form, and even birth rates, and that this deserves research before dismissing social effects. It's a reasonable and unresolved hypothesis. What doesn't hold up is the leap in reasoning from measurable effect to designated culprit.
From a specific shareholder to the total control theory
From there, part of the public commentary jumps from the company to the collective: from "this man owns a company" to "this group owns everything," banks and media included. Let's say it plainly: there is no evidence supporting that narrative. It's the old antisemitic theory of hidden domination, repackaged with a corporate hire as proof. It works for a simple reason: a named shareholder is more striking than an organizational chart.
The pattern repeats itself. A verifiable fact is taken, stretched into a category, and suspicion is added. The verifiable part —that an ordained rabbi co-owns an adult content company— gets diluted into the unprovable part, which is precisely the part that gets shared.
Who pays for the free porn party
The adult content business that costs viewers nothing runs on traffic: the more visits, the more value. The question of who ultimately benefits from that free access remains open and allows for uncomfortable answers, but none of them involves a supposed committee deciding the direction of the population's desires. It comes down to balance sheets, advertising, and subscription funnels.
When Pornhub didn't even exist, free porn had already been running for twelve years. The model doesn't need a villain with a name and surname. It needs viewers who don't pay.
In 2023, a little-known fund —Ethical Capital Partners— bought Pornhub's parent company. One name appeared in the deal: Solomon Friedman, a lawyer and ordained rabbi, one of the owners. TIME and The Washington Post reported on it throughout 2024. The rabbi detail spread faster than any balance sheet. Behind it lie two layers: the corporate one and the storytelling one.
Who owns Pornhub?
The short answer: a corporation. The acquisition was formally announced in 2023, and the company was presented as an attempt to clean up the adult content business, with Friedman among those in charge. That one of the owners is a rabbi and a lawyer doesn't explain the deal, but it does help make sense of the packaging: the company's discourse revolves around ethical porn, with content verification and piracy control. Whether that's marketing or a real change isn't settled by a press release.
Why porn has been free since the nineties
Pornhub was born in 2007. Twelve years earlier, The Hun —run by Dutchman Patrick Terwee— had already shown that sharing free links was a viable model. No single owner designed it: the attention economy did, where the visitor doesn't pay and the cost is covered by volume. Hence the question running through the whole debate about free access: who really profits when billions of people access adult content without spending a cent.
Sensual behavior as an economic variable. Some argue that mass availability changes habits, how couples form, and even birth rates, and that this deserves research before dismissing social effects. It's a reasonable and unresolved hypothesis. What doesn't hold up is the leap in reasoning from measurable effect to designated culprit.
From a specific shareholder to the total control theory
From there, part of the public commentary jumps from the company to the collective: from "this man owns a company" to "this group owns everything," banks and media included. Let's say it plainly: there is no evidence supporting that narrative. It's the old antisemitic theory of hidden domination, repackaged with a corporate hire as proof. It works for a simple reason: a named shareholder is more striking than an organizational chart.
The pattern repeats itself. A verifiable fact is taken, stretched into a category, and suspicion is added. The verifiable part —that an ordained rabbi co-owns an adult content company— gets diluted into the unprovable part, which is precisely the part that gets shared.
Who pays for the free porn party
The adult content business that costs viewers nothing runs on traffic: the more visits, the more value. The question of who ultimately benefits from that free access remains open and allows for uncomfortable answers, but none of them involves a supposed committee deciding the direction of the population's desires. It comes down to balance sheets, advertising, and subscription funnels.
When Pornhub didn't even exist, free porn had already been running for twelve years. The model doesn't need a villain with a name and surname. It needs viewers who don't pay.
Also available in: Deutsch
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (16 replies).
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