Porn is hard to come by in China, as the country’s dedicated anti-porn task force continues to push for a more sanitised web, free from even ASMR videos. There are still those taking the risk to maintain horny corners of the web, but Chinese authorities have arrested the last two main suspects who were running a porn livestreaming platform, totalling at 20 arrests.
The investigation lasted over a year, according to South China Morning Post, and on April 26, police announced that they had arrested a man and a woman in the Phillippines for running a platform in which people livestreamed erotic performances and took requests in exchange for payment.
The platform was reportedly first called Huahua, though, in order to evade being caught, the app’s appearance changed several times. It reportedly made about $US2.3 million ($3.3 million) over the course of five months and had over 900,000 users.
People reportedly shared QR codes in the Chinese messaging app QQ to download the livestreaming app. Police were reportedly informed about this distribution method in March of last year, and the following month, arrested 18 people for their involvement running the app. Those involved reportedly maintained their anonymity with one another and only had one point of contact.
But the two individuals arrested last month left the country, with the man, who we know only by his last name Hong, going to South Korea and then the Phillippines. Li, the last name of the woman, was there, and they reportedly created another app like Huahua.
This is hardly unusual in the wake of China’s porn crackdown. Thousands of sites have been shut down and hundreds of people have been arrested for their involvement with porn platforms. But people are finding workarounds, whether it’s by finding erotic content on gaming sites or getting creative, like adding a space between ASM and R to trick the policed search engines.
But the recent arrests indicate that Chinese authorities have no plans to practice any leniency when it comes to tracking down and punishing those who risk steep fines and gaol time to provide horned up internet users in China with a space to satisfy their needs.