The Herald Sun, BuzzFeed Australia and other Australian publications have hardcore pornographic videos embedded into their articles because a domain once owned by a now-defunct video hosting website has been bought by a porn company.
As reported first by Vice, Twitter user @dox_gay pointed out that VidMe, a former YouTube competitor, let its domain registration expire. Popular in the mid-2010s, VidMe allowed websites to embed videos on to their webpages, including many major news publishers.
What happened next was that an enterprising porn company, “5 Star HD Porn”, bought that domain and rerouted things so that any website that had embedded a video from VidMe — like, say, highlights of soon-to-be president Donald Trump’s performance at an early Republican candidates debate — would instead show pornographic content from its website — such as “Naughty Spy Girls Part 2”.
This has affected websites like New York Magazine, The Washington Post, HuffPo and The Verge.
It’s also hit closer to home, with the Herald Sun being affected.
And BuzzFeed Australia.
This funny saga reminds us that the internet is ultimately an ephemeral construction that is rapidly rotting from the inside.
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