Media outlets that embedded Vidme videos should review their archives immediately

According to VICE, a brand called 5 Star Porn HD bought the one-time YouTube competitor Vidme’s domain.

This means anytime a media outlet like HuffPost, NY Mag, or Washington Post embedded a video clip into an article? The webpage for those pieces now has uncensored pornography ads on them.

For background: Vidme launched in January 2014 and closed down on December 15th, 2017. They were acquired by Giphy at some point.

VICE cites this Twitter user as the one blowing the whistle on the situation.

A list of articles discovered by the outlet to have impacted included a 2015 piece from NY Mag about John Boehner's "creepy kissy face," a 2017 HuffPost article about Martin Shkreli being permanently banned from Twitter, and a 2015 piece from Uproxx about Donald Trump coping with a heckler at a CNN GOP debate.

In the cases of the NY Mag and Huffpost pieces it’s safe to link to those since the porn in question has been removed. But Uproxx chose to redirect the article link to the site’s frontpage instead.

According to my own research, it has been happening since at least May 9th, 2021.

Many websites still haven’t rectified this issue. In a report from National File they list off other victims: Business Insider Australia, Kotaku, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Vox.

They claim that the issue was first discovered by 4chan users.