If you want to understand why this happened, read this recent court decision: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.82...

Basically, a court recently ruled that, since Visa is processing payments for ad purchases on Pornhub, Visa is a co-conspirator on all sex trafficking and child porn that Pornhub is involved with. Apparently Pornhub merely being alleged to have engaged in those activities is sufficient knowledge to constitute a "meeting of the minds" for Visa to become a participant in those activities.

(As you might imagine, I vehemently disagree with that ruling. But as it's the ruling that stands, it's the situation that Visa finds itself in, and were I in Visa's shoes, I'd do exactly the same thing they're doing now. They really don't want to be a part of this--and they really shouldn't be a part of this, and dumping Pornhub's ad purchases is the fastest route they can take to not be a part of this, as problematic as it is.)

> As porn star Cherie DeVille explains, the story is, and has been, a lot weirder than that. Because Visa and Mastercard hold effective duopoly status all over the world — controlling 98% of credit transactions in the U.K., 80% in the E.U., and over 70% in the U.S. — no porn performer can afford to cross the rules for acceptable content the two companies have laid down. And those rules are beyond strange.

“Women are allowed to squirt, but we’re not allowed to urinate,” DeVille says. “We can’t insert our panties into our vaginas anymore, because that’s an object. I tried to use a carrot-shaped dildo. That’s a problem because that’s an object, too, but a phallic-shaped dildo is apparently okay.” She shakes her head in amazement. “The rules are completely nonsensical.”

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-cherie-devil...

The relevant law here is called SESTA-FOSTA. It forces companies to ensure they don't host content that facilitates sexual exploitation. This has impacted full-service workers (i.e., prostitutes). Before SESTA-FOSTA, they could put up ads on specialized websites, chat with the clients and then have them come to a room they had rented. This arrangement gave them basic security.

After SESTA-FOSTA, the pages hosting those ads folded, as they couldn't comply with the new rules. Many full-service workers are now walking the streets again and have to have sex in their clients' cars. It's obvious that this makes them much more vulnurable.

It even goes further: Banks will close your account if they think your business has something to do with "sex", even if what you do is legal. If they feel you might be a risk, they freeze your account.

This law has hurt many sex workers, often people already at the very bottom of society. On the other hand, it's unclear how many lives it saved from sexual exploitation.

Sex workers are vulnerable, and many women are being abused. But the way this law was enacted, I can't help but think that pushing sex work further into illegality was a desired side-effect.

Source: I know a couple of sex workers in NYC.

Another win for the extremist anti-porn group Exodus Cry. They are just using a small handful of cases slipping through the cracks to make it look like PH is doing nothing to moderate this content. Their end goal was never to protect children, their goal is to eliminate all pornography from the internet.

I believe that recent crackdowns are worse for people in the long run. Lets assume that most sexually active people look at porn now and then, which I think is a safe assumption, and that teens learn about sex from watching porn.

These changes and age verification requirements have eliminated all the normal amateur sex scenes between regular consenting adults (On RedTube for example) and left the age-verified professional porn, which depicts unrealistic sex between adults who don't give a sh*t about each other, but have perfect bodies and big parts. Instead of showing wholesome normal sex, now all we get is porn shop slut/stud sex

Do we really want private companies to be in the business of law enforcement?

I don't personally care one whit about the fortunes of Pornhub but this sets a very bad precedent for the internet. The payment processing duopoly is a huge problem, they are able to dictate way too much of what is allowed to exist on the internet. Today it's illegal pornography that everybody agrees is terrible, but that's how it always starts. The safe targets, the stuff nobody objects to, to establish precedent. Once they have this power to censor it is extremely hard to walk it back.

I think legal porn (e. g. featuring consenting adults) is generally a-okay and shouldn't be illegal or banned... but I also don't need much convincing to believe MindGeek and Pornhub are bad actors. It simply isn't in their financial interest to protect people who need and deserve protecting, and so they didn't/don't. Anti-porn groups couldn't ask for more ideal enemies.

Yes, I know that the vast majority of the content they post is perfectly fine and legal. But enough of it isn't, and they are lax enough in checking, that they kinda deserve punishment at this point.

But I also don't think porn is going away. I hope whoever replaces them (looking at you, OnlyFans) is less scummy, so it is easier to defend them.

Leaving porn aside....Bitcoin FTW

This is what Satoshi was talking about; "Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model[0]."

So I need to trust and rely on Visa, MasterCard and other credit card companies not to cut me off their network? And they can do it anytime because they might not like my business, my business model or my business practices. If business is legal and up and running just let it be.

[0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I recommend this podcast-miniseries "Hot Money: porn, power and profit" by the Financial Times:

https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...

It spends quite a bit of time explaining how the credit card companies became the de-facto regulators of porn on the Internet.

These card companies have too much power. Companies engaged in the kava trade (vendors, kava bars, etc) have a very hard time with payments processors and banks due to the strict rules of Visa and Mastercard despite kava being a legal dietary supplement in the US.

Bill Ackman has been vocal on this issue and check out his Twitter for more commentary on this. He feels Visa's board is in big trouble here.

Central Bank currencies are starting to look better and better. At least then it is the government deciding. And that might be controlled by voters. Or violent revolutions.

I think the trick here will ultimately be to add a layer of indirection. Mindgeek could launch a bazillion internet bodegas that sell gift certificates that happened to be redeemable at Pornhub and their other properties. They could operate their ad business over regular banking networks. Basically anything and everything ti make it more complicated for Visa and Mastercard to simply look up Mindgeek and block the account. It would also provide some relief to Visa/Mastercard since they could say truthfully that they don't do business with Mindgeek. You can also counter the bad propaganda by pointing out that Visa/Mastercard are still very active selling alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, gambling (half the US states allow you to buy lottery tickets with credit cards, all the casinos take credit cards), guns, and pretty much every other vice. Though I don't think their role in purchasing guns makes them accomplices to murder anymore then processing a payment for a porn site makes them an co-conspirator to anything related to that. But if they want to make the case that they are then that sets precedent they are co-conspirators for everything else as well.

why don't they just build their own payment processor :^)

seriously, if you were Visa what would you do ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62372964

Visa only cares about money, just like every other megacorp. They will take as much money as they can for whatever they can, the only reason they're suspending payments is because they are facing legal liabilities. What other choice do they have?

A timely podcast about some of this is Hot Money: Who Rules Porn. Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times. Dives into some of the history of the industry, payment processors, and so on.

"Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse"

What a brave stance. It's nice to see a card network that cares about the children.

It’s hilarious to me that ads for porn are just more porn

Wow, finally a legitimate use case for cryptocurrencies!

In all seriousness, this nonsense is exactly why I continue to support crypto to this day. Visa, Mastercard and some random court jurisdiction in some random country should not have a say in whom I transact with.

Awaiting for when they will suspend payments to facebook , where a lot more child porn is uploaded. I hope visa is forced to expand this on all adult websites and even further. Maybe some of the cryptocurrencies will finally do what they were designed to do

These companies need to be regulated like any other utility. But no one will because they're hoping to use private companies to at morality police in a way governments are not allowed to.

I find it hard to believe Visa and Mastercard were unaware of what MindGeek does. Why reach to a situation which can be a PR disaster and avoid these companies altogether?

It should be a law to require human approval before any porn content is posted. I mean for obvious hints of minor presence. They can require government id for account creation as well. Moreover, "Teen (18+)", "barely legal" and similar content should not be allowed.

You would think DRM would have been all about enforcing this instead of corporate greed.

Welcome to hear from. The damages of widespread available pornography and the child exploitation rings around them are outraging. These websites are a gateway into cam sites and shady kik group chats where adult men sext minors. This is my perspective, being a victim myself.

But I thought we don't need VISA anymore? We can just use the latest crypto /s

Another reason that we need a decentralised blockchain and a decentralised stable coin.

Section 230 rocks! I love watching an endless stream of porn with clearly unwitting female subjects. Visa needs to stay in their lane!