Pinsker: It seems like this industry and any monopoly or unfair things going on in it probably don't receive as much scrutiny as another industry might, because the industry itself is stigmatized and thought of as something to keep at arm's length.

Tarrant: Exactly. I think two things are happening. One is that monopoly doesn't seem to be getting a lot of attention in our culture right now in general. And then in addition, you're exactly right that it hasn't been the focus of serious business attention, but we're talking about a lot of money. I have a figure in the book estimating that just in San Fernando Valley, the industry employs 20,000 people. And it's estimated, again, that stolen porn impacts the adult industry by about $2 billion a year. So there are the questions about ethics and crime, but we're also talking about a lot of money.

Pinsker: When I hear all this, I’m fascinated by the contrast between this industry and something like the food industry, where people are up in arms about factory farming and other things going on behind the scenes. Do you think some of the porn industry’s darker sides persist because when people are interacting with these companies, they are in a different mental state than they are in other realms of their lives?

Tarrant: I think that that's right. People are getting sexually aroused and they just kind of go into a political or economic denial about what they're doing. And then also, we live in a culture that doesn't want to talk about sex or sexuality. For instance, as I was doing research for this book, if I talked about pornography, then all of a sudden my conversation was sexualized. I've had this experience so many times, where people, colleagues or what have you, aren't even listening to what I'm saying about the industry or the politics or the financial aspects of what's going on. They're just thinking about whether or not I'm watching porn. If I said I was working on voting behavior, they wouldn't get so excited that they lost sight of what I was talking about.

That's what my experience is, and it dovetails with your question about ethics. We wouldn't dream of walking into Whole Foods and stealing. But that part of people's ethical behavior turns off when they go online and they find free porn. Watching free porn is the equivalent of walking into the grocery store and walking out with food that you're not paying for.

Making ethical decisions about pornography means knowing where your porn comes from and the labor conditions under which it was made. Those are the sorts of questions that economists are concerned with. If we're willing to be concerned about those issues when it comes to sneakers or food, then we need to transfer those concerns to the adult industry as well.

Pinsker: There's been a lot of attention paid in the last couple of years to how the algorithms that big companies, like Amazon or Google, come up with can shape users' lives, and yet details about them are kind of hidden to users. Could you talk through some of the biggest decisions that users, whether they know it or not, are outsourcing to porn companies?