Graphic clips have appeared on sites across the internet, including those of news outlets such as the Washington Post and even Teen Vogue, after a defunct video hosting platform lost its domain to an adult film company.
Videos once displaying advertisements and news stories have been replaced with hardcore pornography courtesy of 5 Star HD Porn, the firm that now controls the former domain of Vidme, a hosting project shut down in 2017.
The strange phenomenon was spotted by Twitter users on Thursday, with several screenshots captured before the sites could scrub the NSFW vids. They popped up on Fox, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Newsweek, the Huffington Post and a long list of other major outlets. Some were still live at the time of writing.
oh i didn’t expect to see balls quite like this https://t.co/agvXgRUzU7pic.twitter.com/5yROh9FKk6
i see https://t.co/ou67FOKY7fpic.twitter.com/49O10VuOe8
Perhaps most disturbingly, the youth-oriented fashion and celebrity mag Teen Vogue was also swept up in the pornfest, seeing a wholesome, Christmas-themed article about pop singer Miley Cyrus transformed into an X-rated display.
Haha oh no. Teen Vogue was not spared. pic.twitter.com/B8uTrqJesO
For a brief time, an article at New York Magazine, appropriately headlined ‘John Boehner Answers Questions With Creepy Kissy Face’, was made all the creepier with the lewd videos, featuring titles such as ‘Naughty Spy Girls Part 2’ and ‘Bottoms Up, Brianna’. The mag appeared to have fixed the issue sometime on Thursday afternoon, however.
Leaks and loads being within the headline makes this better.
oops https://t.co/GpUyZBSfeLpic.twitter.com/8MqkONLqSI
Though it’s not entirely clear how the mishap occurred, the URL ‘vid.me’ now redirects to the homepage of the porn site, while archived versions of some of the affected pages show they previously had Vidme content embedded.
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