British newspaper The Guardian’s podcast coverage of XBIZ Amsterdam 2025 purports to investigate the power dynamics of today’s online adult industry. Instead, it ignores creators’ voices, airs tired and outdated preconceptions about the business, and rehashes the unsupported claims of anti-pornography crusaders.
As XBIZ reported last month, The Guardian published a lengthy article about the annual European adult industry conference. The author of that article, journalist Amelia Gentleman, who has previously covered issues related to the online adult industry for The Guardian, also appears on the newspaper’s “Today in Focus” podcast, in an episode titled “OnlyFans, AI girlfriends and ‘stepdads’: the porn industry in 2025.”
Though relatively even-handed compared to mainstream media coverage of the industry, which is often sensationalizing and demonizing, the podcast ultimately fails to follow through on its stated goal and waves away evidence that does not align with its predetermined narrative.
Gentleman tells podcast host Helen Pidd, “I went to the conference to try and understand where the power really lies, and is it really empowering for those women who have chosen this line of work?”
At XBIZ Amsterdam, Gentleman sought answers to those questions by speaking with numerous adult content creators. All of them, she admits, were “incredibly upbeat about the work that they were doing.”
“A lot of the women involved in creating the content now will say that the whole industry has shifted in their favor,” Gentleman tells Pidd. “They’re responsible for saying what they want to do, what they won’t do, deciding how much they want to work.”
Indeed, the podcast features clips of interviews with creators in which they discuss their career choices and enthusiasm for their work.
“I was in control,” creator Kali Kingsley attests. “That was a huge part of it for me.”
Creator Aery Tiefling tells Gentleman that she has found more dignity as an adult content creator than she was able to find in a “normal workplace.”
“There is not much dignity for the younger generation,” Tiefling says. “Because you’re earning very little money … That is not dignity.”
The creators’ accounts even lead host Pidd to remark, “That sounds like a dream industry for many people to work in.”
Yet despite the creators’ testimonies, Gentleman feels that she knows better.
“I found it very difficult meeting woman after woman after woman who told me that the work was positive and a very straightforward way to make money,” she explains. “And I suppose I’ve got a lingering sense of skepticism about whether that really is the case.”
At one point, Pidd asks directly, “Why can’t you just believe what they’re saying?”
Gentleman responds in the least convincing way possible. Unable to refute the unanimous testimony of the creators she interviewed, she simply changes the subject, suddenly shifting from talking about premium social platforms like OnlyFans — the only platform mentioned by name in the podcast — to discussing tube sites and paysites.
These sites, Gentleman says, portray “a kind of pornography that’s completely different, often very violent, very misogynistic, showing a lot of disturbing content.”
Instead of analyzing the power dynamics of the industry as promised, Gentleman falls back on “Porn is bad” as her thesis.
“You have to kind of keep an eye on the wider nature of the business,” she warns, describing Pornhub video titles that she found personally objectionable because they reference sex with stepsiblings and stepparents.
Pornhub’s Head of Community and Brand Alex Kekesi advises Gentleman that such videos are fantasy, not incest, and are therefore permitted on the site.
“What feels really empowering for some people is not the same for everyone,” Kekesi explains to Gentleman during an interview at the conference. “Something that might feel very violent for me or for you or for someone else is a good time.”
Kekesi’s latter comment is a response to Gentleman’s contention that “violent” pornography is prevalent on the site. On this topic, host Pidd seems in accord with Gentleman, asking whether “extreme” pornography normalizes sexual practices that “are in fact not normal and are actually unhealthy.”
Pidd’s comment and Gentleman’s assertions presuppose an objective universal standard for what is normal, healthy sexual behavior and what is not — a standard that conveniently aligns with their own comfort zones. This kind of analysis makes for a pretty convincing explanation of why porn exists in the first place. People need fantasy, especially when other people disapprove of their desires.
Pidd mentions “choking” content as particularly alarming, reflecting a recent media porn panic over the topic, though the term does not appear anywhere among Pornhub’s top categories and searches, for instance. That panic has been fueled by the talking points of anti-porn crusaders. So is Gentleman’s discussion of what she considers “extreme” pornography.
“The Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation is very clear that in something like 94% of scenes in pornographic content, women are the targets of both physical and verbal aggression, and most of the time the aggressors are men,” she recites.
It is unclear what criteria CEASE may have used in making that determination. In the past, anti-porn crusaders have frequently cherry-picked such data from studies that interpret all BDSM — which is famously focused on consent — as violence against women. That error has been helpfully debunked in Psychology Today.
Indeed, Gentleman seems oblivious to how often the word “consent” surfaced at XBIZ Amsterdam. Panels and Q&As returned to it repeatedly: negotiated, documented, enthusiastic consent; pre-scene conversations; on-set check-ins; stop rights; paper trails that producers treat as standard.
Gentleman also asserts that “the business model” puts pressure on women “to do more extreme things in order to get known, to become famous, to attract subscribers.”
Discussing creator Lily Phillips, often the subject of mainstream media attention due to what some term “extreme stunts,” Gentleman is again forced to admit that Phillips herself “argues that she’s in control of her own destiny, that she’s making her own decisions, that she is making money in a way that she sees as entirely empowering.”
Phillips tells Gentleman, “It’s creators like me who kind of hold the power ... We’ve cut out the middle man.”
This seems to answer, unambiguously, the podcast's original inquiry. Yet Pidd then asks, “Were you convinced by what she was telling you?”
Gentleman replies: “I wanted to agree with them that their work was empowering and dignified … I don’t know, though, that I really changed my mind about where the power lies within the business as a whole and about whether or not it’s an exploitative industry to go into.”
Here, Gentleman openly argues that her personal preconceptions and biases should carry more weight for listeners than the consistent statements of content creators, or the reality that porn depicts fantasies which the performers have expressly consented to act out. For a noted media outlet like The Guardian, this seems like questionable journalism at best.
