Pushkin.

This is an I-Heart podcast.

Right. Before we start, we're two Financial Times journalists, trying to work out who rules the porn industry.

So, this show has adult themes.

I want to take you to a suburban shopping plaza in Ohio.

It's 1993. We're in the middle of America's Rust Ohio. It's 1993.

We're in the middle of America's Rust Belt.

There's a toupee store, a place selling furniture,

and tucked in a corner, a little company for interactive computer services.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but if the internet has roots, they stretch to here, to this modest shopping centre in Youngstown, Ohio, to that corner business. Every social media website you visit today, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, these platforms are able to operate in part thanks to them.

A family-run IT business.

A family-run IT business with what was possibly the biggest stash of digital porn in America.

Today's power dynamics in porn came from here.

Straight from that family to the most powerful pornographers of the 21st century,

the people we've been talking about on this show.

And you know, we told you in previous episodes that the masters of the adult tube sites were able to get away with making money from other people's content?

The answer to how lies here in the choices of an Ohio family back in the 90s.

This family, the Hardenbergs, defined what it means to moderate content in cyberspace.

And what happens when you go too far?

My name is Russell Francis Hardenberg IV, and I'm a sales manager at a car dealership.

Russ is one of two sons who worked at the IT business back in the day.

When I first called him and said I was a journalist, he slammed the phone down. I'm so pleased I tried again. After some apologetic mumbling,

...