About

What this project is

EthicalBestPorn reviews adult sites against a six-criteria framework for ethical production — performer compensation, consent, performer agency, representation, content quality, and transparency. Each review is scored individually, the methodology is published in full, and every recommendation is something we'd stand behind if someone we cared about asked us for the short list.

It's a small project. One editor, a specific brief, no pretense that we're covering the entire adult industry. We're focused on the roughly thirty sites that take ethical production seriously enough to be worth writing about carefully.

Who edits it

Margot Keane edits the site.

Before starting this project, Margot spent twelve years at a women's lifestyle magazine in senior editorial roles — commissioning, editing, and sometimes writing pieces on feminist film, reproductive policy, sexual health, and adult media. She started covering ethical adult content in 2019, first as a newsletter for friends asking where to watch something they could actually feel good about, then as a steadier side project, and eventually as this site.

She reads everything published about a studio before subscribing to it, keeps notes on performer testimony across Instagram, X, and independent podcasts, and spends three weeks on each review before any of it goes live. She's based in the United States and writes in American English because that's where most readers are.

Margot writes under her own byline. When a named external expert contributes a piece — a performer, a sex educator, a filmmaker — the byline changes accordingly and the outside contributor's background is made clear.

What we mean by "ethical"

Short version: adult content produced with informed consent, fair compensation, safe working conditions, diverse and honest representation, and clear transparency about who's behind the work. The long version is here.

Ethical is a moving target. The framework we use draws from academic research (particularly the University of Sydney 2023 synthesis led by Zahra Zsuzsanna Stardust), from producer interviews, from performer testimony, and from the Feminist Porn Awards criteria going back to 2006. It'll keep evolving. When we update the framework, we update the reviews and note what changed.

What we don't do

We don't accept payment for reviews or placements. We don't remove unflattering content when studios ask. We don't review sites we can't verify — opaque ownership, shell companies, or sites that won't let us subscribe get left off the list. Our affiliate relationships — where they exist, with specific sites we've reviewed positively — are disclosed on the review pages where they apply.

The full editorial standards are documented in how we rate.

How we're funded

Through affiliate commissions on some of the sites we recommend. When you click through to a site from one of our reviews and subscribe, the site may pay us a percentage of your subscription. This doesn't change what you pay, and it doesn't determine whether a site gets a good review. We pay for our own subscriptions when we sign up to review a site. The affiliate income covers research costs, hosting, and the occasional freelance contributor.

We disclose the affiliate relationship on every review page where one applies. Sites we review where no affiliate exists are rated the same way; some of our highest-rated sites don't give us commission.

The team

Right now: Margot, full-time. Occasional freelance contributions from named experts — a sex educator who consults on specific reviews, a performer who's written guest pieces on set experience, a filmmaker who's done Q&As. Their names and backgrounds appear on the relevant posts. Nothing ghost-written; no uncredited sources.

If we grow, we'll say so. If the ownership structure changes, we'll say so. If we start accepting sponsored placements, we'll be extremely clear about it (though we won't — that's not what this is).

Contact

If you have questions, corrections, or suggestions for sites we should consider reviewing, use the contact page. If you're a performer or producer and want to raise something about how your site or your work has been represented in a review, please get in touch — corrections to factual errors are made promptly, and we'll credit the correction openly.

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Start with the best ethical porn sites list, or read the introduction to ethical porn.