Daisy Dunn

Rivals Wagatha Christie for its lowbrow twists: FT’s Hot Money – Who Rules Porn? reviewed

Plus: how data is being used against the female population

Image: M-Production

It was recently reported that almost 8 per cent of global internet traffic is to pornographic websites. The rise of working from home may make this statistic less startling than it might have been three years ago, but still, that’s an awful lot of procrastination and, well, not much WFH.

Given the dominance of the porn industry, it’s a wonder there hasn’t been an exposé of the kind produced by the Financial Times before now. The newspaper’s investigation into who lurks behind the webcams and controls this business took more than six months to complete and has now been turned into a riveting eight-part podcast series. Hot Money: Who Rules Porn? rivals Wagatha Christie for lowbrow twists.

The investigation was led by reporter Patricia Nilsson, who narrates each episode like a diary. Every now and then, her editor, Alex Barker, comes in with his own reflections and editorial steers. We swing back and forth between the here and now and the investigation in progress via extracts from interview tapes and casual voice-notes recorded on location everywhere from Cologne to LA. It all feels very immediate, with plenty of teasing about the surprising place we’re going to end up, and few spoilers along the way as to where that might be.

The first thing that strikes you is how ordinary many of the people involved in the porn industry sound. Fabian Thylmann is a Belgian-raised German businessman who established a major conglomerate of porn sites named, I kid you not, ‘Manwin’. He was a hoodie-wearing thirtysomething when he outed himself as a major industry player at ‘the Davos of porn’ in Las Vegas in 2012. By the end of that year, he had been arrested on suspicion of tax evasion, something he speaks about with almost gentlemanly candour on the podcast.

‘Bernard’, the former Goldman Sachs financier Thylmann sold his empire to, is less forthcoming.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in