Why NSFW porn clips are popping up on regular sites today

Do you remember VidMe? It was a video hosting and streaming site set up in 2014 that hoped to compete with YouTube. It ultimately couldn't compete, and closed its virtual doors in 2017. Its domain was apparently recently purchased by a porn site, 5 Star HD Porn. The result is that websites that used to host VidMe clips now have embedded clips of extremely NSFW porn videos. 

Twitter user Doxie made the discovery, posting a thread to Twitter showing that sites like The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post and more all had 5 Star HD Porn videos embedded on their article pages. Motherboard found that archived versions of these stories previously had VidMe embeds where the free porn now is. 

At the time of this writing, The Washington Post and Huffington Post appear to have rectified the issue. The pornographic embed is still live on the New York Magazine site, as well as other publications, like Complex. "We are in the process of permanently removing this content whenever it appears," a spokesperson for the Huffington Post said.