Happy Friday to the millions of internet users who woke up this morning, logged on to their favourite major news website and were greeted by hardcore porn ads that have been embedded on the pages of The Washington Post, Teen Vogue and even Australia’s Herald Sun.
This is not a joke, nor is it a last-ditch effort to make money in the fickle world of digital news media. It’s not even a hack.
As first noticed by Twitter user @dox_gay, the porn site 5 Star Porn HD managed to snag the domain for VidMe — a former YouTube competitor, which has been defunct since 2017 — after its domain expired.
Twitter hasn’t noticed but a now-defunct video hosting/advertising platform (VidMe) let their domain expire so it was purchased by a porn website, now there is NSFW porn all over the regular internet where their links were embedded lol
For example: https://t.co/UdPRFnq4EP
— DOXIE ???? (@dox_gay) July 22, 2021
Usually, this wouldn’t be a huge issue considering nobody has used VidMe since 2017. However, the domain was actually the host of thousands of embedded ads across the safe-for-work side of the internet.
It seems as though any VidMe embeds across the internet are now programmed to redirect to 5 Star Porn HD’s homepage. Additionally, the direct website link (NSFW, obviously) also redirects.
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And in a particularly amusing turn of events, these particular ads have popped up in a number of iconic places.
For example, HuffPost’s article entitled ‘‘Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli Says He’s Been Permanently Banned From Twitter’ featured videos like ‘Anal Fisting Missing Keys’ and ‘Why Don’t We Tag Team Your GF?’ before the publisher quickly moved to, you know, remove the content.
Meanwhile, Australia’s very own Herald Sun at one point was promoting a video entitled ‘Emergency Squirter’. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go clean up my coffee I just spat out while reading the news this morning.
Obviously, it’s worth noting that none of the outlets caught up in the ordeal actually meant to publish the NSFW content and have quickly moved to delete the content. It’s very clear that the embedded videos once showed something much more safe-for-work and have been swapped out when the Vid.Me domain was reclaimed.
Much like that time somebody purchased Scott Morrison’s lapsed domain address to have it play Lustra’s ‘Scotty Doesn’t Know’ on repeat, this incident serves as a timely reminder never to let your domain expire because you never know who is going to buy it.
The silver lining of the whole situation? It gives the millions of us currently stuck in lockdown something to laugh about over our morning coffee.