Not so long ago, Vienna was one of the most influential strongholds of the international porn industry – only (almost) nobody knew it. That was of course what we wanted. Just as it was no coincidence that the headquarters of the red-white-red adult entertainment giant – in a prime location in the heart of Vienna’s city center – was so inconspicuous from the outside that even years later nobody would have guessed that the suits, who walked in and out of the venerable old building offices every day, watched porn for hours on end for work. And yet, right there, on Rotenturmstraße between Schwedenplatz and Stephansplatz, was the headquarters of “RedTube”.
At that time, so-called “tube” sites were still new – i.e. sites that not only functioned as video providers, but primarily as platforms. Users can upload videos themselves and share them with the audience. This also gave rise to the task of the “Dossier” informant and his colleagues, who at the time provided the videos with titles and “tagged” them, i.e. to make them easier to search and find with keywords.
And not only that: All the videos that were uploaded also had to be sorted according to the strict company guidelines. By far not everything was allowed to be shown: “Blood or sodomy were no-gos,” the former RedTube employee knows. “You had to be careful that someone didn’t upload a video where they cut off their finger. That’s where human abysses open up.”
For years, however, it was not revealed to the public how exactly the men in suits from Rotenturmstraße actually generated the porn millions that were made behind those doors in Rotenturmstraße at the time. The people behind RedTube knew how not to leave a mark or how to cover them up well – and when someone asked what one of the most secretive suit wearers did for a living, they only answered vaguely: “I work in an agency”.
That wasn’t a complete lie either – in fact, “RedTube” became an undercover project of Redact Media GmbH for a while, which outwardly had nothing to do with the porn industry. Even in the agency’s offices only insiders knew what was still being worked on here. And so it went on for a while, “RedTube” growing and growing – with some sales, affiliate arrivals and other business moves that are beyond the scope of this article.
Finally, in 2013, RedTube became part of the Manwin group, which then became owned by porn giant Mindgeek (Youporn, Pornhub, etc.). An Upper Austrian – a key figure in the RedTube era – became one of the richest porn millionaires in the world thanks to “RedTube” and the headquarters in Vienna City were no longer needed. Another global brand then moved in there: The “Hard Rock Café” Vienna. Somehow fitting.
