Pushkin.

This is an I-Heart podcast.

As you'll know by now, we made a series to investigate where power lies in the porn industry.

This episode, like all the others, contains adult themes, including references to disturbing and illegal content.

Around two years ago, I discovered that the world's biggest porn company had a secret owner,

a man who lived like a shadow for nearly a decade.

Finding him turned out to be my gateway into the maze of the pornography business,

the discovery that set us off to report on four decades of breakneck change in the industry.

And when you boil it down, each era involves money moving from one wealthy pornographer to another.

But today, things are different.

With platforms such as only fans, it has never been easier for performers to shoot content on their own terms and sell it straight to fans on demand, which, yes, equals more money for them.

So all good, right? Not so fast.

I specialize mostly in fetish stuff, so financial domination, just bitchy, brady stuff.

That's Ali Knox. She's creative and bright, like many performers we've met in the series.

And to make a living, she hasn't just relied on being a dominatrix.

She's carved out other personas too.

Thank you for being here and playing with me today.

So I thought I teased you a little today and play a little bit.

Fans also love to watch Ali smoke weed, which she buys legally at her local dispensary in Las Vegas. She could make her own videos smoking weed, and she had platforms where she could sell them.

In her words, she was sovereign. And when we say her fans loved it,

Ali can make around $1,000 a month reselling mostly old videos of her getting stoned. Or she could

until payments companies got cold feet. A few months ago, probably January, February, I started noticing that my videos were being

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