Mastercard and Visa cut ties with Pornhub following New York Times expose

midian182

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In a nutshell: Mastercard and Visa have announced that their cards can no longer be used on Pornhub following a New York Times exposé highlighting rape and child abuse videos populating the service.

Nicholas Kristof's NYT report alleges that Pornhub monetizes videos of rape and the sexual abuse of underage girls. It also documents other illegal content on the platform, including spycam videos and revenge porn. Kristof wrote that he "didn't see why search engines, banks or credit-card companies" should "bolster" Pornhub.

Despite parent company MindGeek calling the allegations "irresponsible and flagrantly untrue," Pornhub responded to the article by prohibiting uploads from unverified users and banning most downloads.

The revelations also saw both Visa and Mastercard investigate the child abuse allegations with MindGeek's bank. Yesterday, Mastercard said its investigation had "confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their [Pornhub's] site." It has now "instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance" of its cards.

Visa, meanwhile, is suspending Pornhub's acceptance privileges pending the completion of its investigation. Given Mastercard's decision, it seems unlikely that Visa will reinstate its cards for use with the site.

Responding to Mastercard's decision, Pornhub wrote: "These actions are exceptionally disappointing, as they come just two days after Pornhub instituted the most far-reaching safeguards in user-generated platform history.

"Unverified users are now banned from uploading content - a policy no other platform has put in place, including Facebook, which reported 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material over the last three years. In comparison, the Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub over the last three years."

The company added that the news "is crushing for the hundreds of thousands of models who rely on our platform for their livelihoods."

In its 'Year in review' for 2019, Pornhub revealed that there had been 42 billion visits to the site and 6.83 million video uploads last year. The 1.36 million hours of new content would take 169 years to watch.

Image credit: charnsitr

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Porn is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

I'm shocked the big banks and businesses would bother trying to cut ties with it.

Bad things happen all over the world and they can't save everyone.

Maybe porn needs to trade in Cryptocurrency instead.

A Porn Alt-coin makes sense.
 
Hypocrites.
Meanwhile, they don't cut ties with companies that use slave labor, nor to companies that sell weapons to dictators, etc...
If those weapons are sold legally I don't see a problem? They're not in charge of the world. They're not even the UN. A nation allowing its companies to sell weapons to those places does however need to look over their own greed.
The slave labour companies can unfortunately argue ignorance to the problem. I think, that's also something for nations to deal with better. Legislate companies to be more accountable for their off-shore labour law breaches.
 
"Unverified users are now banned from uploading content - a policy no other platform has put in place, including Facebook, which reported 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material over the last three years. In comparison, the Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub over the last three years."
This is just a publicity stunt by Visa and Mastercard because they have never given a rat's posterior about stuff like this before. Far more damage is done to modern society through Facebook than has ever been done through PornHub.

Clearly, PornHub did something to piss them off.
 
Porn is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

I'm shocked the big banks and businesses would bother trying to cut ties with it.

Bad things happen all over the world and they can't save everyone.

Maybe porn needs to trade in Cryptocurrency instead.

A Porn Alt-coin makes sense.
All that would happen is that Visa and MC would say that they can't be used to buy those Alt-Coins.
 
If those weapons are sold legally I don't see a problem? They're not in charge of the world. They're not even the UN. A nation allowing its companies to sell weapons to those places does however need to look over their own greed.
The slave labour companies can unfortunately argue ignorance to the problem. I think, that's also something for nations to deal with better. Legislate companies to be more accountable for their off-shore labour law breaches.
You could say the exact same thing about illegal porn. It's often done in countries where the authorities tolerate it as long as they get paid off.
 
You could say the exact same thing about illegal porn. It's often done in countries where the authorities tolerate it as long as they get paid off.
If they'd been an offshore corporation, sure. But they aren't are they? They're a western company with their head office in a European country. Sure, a reprehensible country actively shaming rape victims, but still.
 
If they'd been an offshore corporation, sure. But they aren't are they? They're a western company with their head office in a European country. Sure, a reprehensible country actively shaming rape victims, but still.
I don't condone it at all but PornHub makes a valid point, Facebook is FAR worse in this regard but you don't see VISA and MC dropping that platform which shows that this is just BS virtue-signalling. If VISA and MC really care about this, let them drop Facebook as well. The way that they did it, PornHub could sue them and PornHub would win because it's obvious that they're just being singled out when there are far worse actors with whom VISA and MC continue to do business.

If VISA and MC want to help clean up the world, I'm all for it but I want to see them hit EVERYTHING because just hitting PornHub doesn't even begin to alleviate the problem. The people who upload this content must be tracked down and brought to justice. Attacking PornHub won't do a thing because there's XHamster, XVideos and others like them who are more or less identical and the content will just go there, completely unchecked.

This is like attacking a Siberian Tiger with a plastic knife from McDonald's. It may appear valourous but it is ultimately stupid and useless.
 
I don't know about you lot, but I have looked at pornhub before and I don't think I have ever come across a video of rape or sexual abuse that is actually real. Yes there are "rape" videos, or other dubious acts, but I do think its mostly fake, actors and staged etc.

Like "woman get head stuck in washing machine and gets raped", or mom get stuck under the bed.

I don't know about you but first off how big is the womans head to get stuck in the washing machine and secondly how many washing machines do you see with a camera installed inside them, or cameras under beds its just fake tosh.

Yes illegal videos may exist on there, but I am sure they get taken down fast and its only a very small minority ?
 
I don't condone it at all but PornHub makes a valid point, Facebook is FAR worse in this regard but you don't see VISA and MC dropping that platform which shows that this is just BS virtue-signalling. If VISA and MC really care about this, let them drop Facebook as well. The way that they did it, PornHub could sue them and PornHub would win because it's obvious that they're just being singled out when there are far worse actors with whom VISA and MC continue to do business.

If VISA and MC want to help clean up the world, I'm all for it but I want to see them hit EVERYTHING because just hitting PornHub doesn't even begin to alleviate the problem. The people who upload this content must be tracked down and brought to justice. Attacking PornHub won't do a thing because there's XHamster, XVideos and others like them who are more or less identical and the content will just go there, completely unchecked.

This is like attacking a Siberian Tiger with a plastic knife from McDonald's. It may appear valourous but it is ultimately stupid and useless.
This is not the first company or service these payment services has distanced themselves from, so I don't know what your point is here. It does indeed not do much difference to ban one, but they can also only ban the ones they have justifiable evidence against.
 
I don't condone it at all but PornHub makes a valid point, Facebook is FAR worse in this regard but you don't see VISA and MC dropping that platform which shows that this is just BS virtue-signalling. If VISA and MC really care about this, let them drop Facebook as well. The way that they did it, PornHub could sue them and PornHub would win because it's obvious that they're just being singled out when there are far worse actors with whom VISA and MC continue to do business.

If VISA and MC want to help clean up the world, I'm all for it but I want to see them hit EVERYTHING because just hitting PornHub doesn't even begin to alleviate the problem. The people who upload this content must be tracked down and brought to justice. Attacking PornHub won't do a thing because there's XHamster, XVideos and others like them who are more or less identical and the content will just go there, completely unchecked.

This is like attacking a Siberian Tiger with a plastic knife from McDonald's. It may appear valourous but it is ultimately stupid and useless.

Except they would win that kind of lawsuit, if they facilitate the payment for underage, revenge, or rape porn directly they can be held liable, on the other hand facebook money transfer and payments are forbidden by the eula of Facebook for being used for illicit or pornographic content at all giving them deniability, while porn hub is very honest they have porn.
 
Hypocrites.
Meanwhile, they don't cut ties with companies that use slave labor, nor to companies that sell weapons to dictators, etc...

Apparently there is more money in supporting crap like that compared to the porn industry
 
I don't care for the porn...after you get a wife/girlfriend, get over the age of say 25-30, most people probably don't pay attention to it. But, if some do, more power to you. Isn't there enough "free" crap that you don't need to pay for it?
Plus, if it wasn't for the porn industry, how long would it have taken VHS, CD's, DVD's etc to become popular back in the day, not to mention the price drop.
 
Hypocrites.
Meanwhile, they don't cut ties with companies that use slave labor, nor to companies that sell weapons to dictators, etc...
Planned hypocrisy.

They do this every year to get into the perception of people that they are good guy and they are trying to make the money legit way.

Check the news in a month or 3 and you will see a title "Visa and Mastercard are again accepted at PH after allegations were ..."

They don't care as long as they arent the victims or that it isn't causing them financial loss.
 
Good, porn is detestable, it symbolizes our immorality, and flagrant disregard for the sanctity of sex between loving spouses.
Oh please, religious crap. Plenty of animals (yes, that is what we are too, just conscious) have sex for pleasure. It is literally our bodies.

Sick of religion to be honest. Bunch of brainwashed.
 
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