PronHub gets cancelled by Visa and Mastercard

[AlTech]

<removed by staff>

 

Summary

A few days ago the New York times expose into alleged illegal content on PronHub caused Visa and MasterCard to get upset with the platform. Today that upset becomes official with a ban on payment processing on their website leaving paying customers with the option of Cryptocurrency.

 

After the expose came out PronHub had committed to disabling video downloads and making steps towards uploader verification but had largely denied any wrongdoing on their part.

 

Quotes

Quote

That leaves users who are part of the site’s 100 million daily visitors with American Express or cryptocurrency including Bitcoin and Litecoin which Pornhub started accepting in September. Pornhub said Mascercard and Visa’s decision was ‘exceptionally disappointing’ and ‘crushing news for the hundreds of thousands of models who rely on our platform for their livelihoods’. The company has called the New York Times piece ‘irresponsible and flagrantly untrue’ and earlier this week announced that they would ban unverified users from uploading material.

 

Quote

“Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site,” said MasterCard spokesman Seth Eisen.

“As a result, and in accordance with our policies, we instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance.”

 

Quote

In a statement today, Pornhub announced a new set of policies aimed at keeping nonconsensual videos off the site. Most significantly, the platform will no longer accept uploads from unidentified users, a significant shift for a company that built its platform on non-professional uploads. In the short term, that will restrict uploads to content partners and members of the platform’s Model Program, although Pornhub plans to roll out a broader verification process for regular users in 2021.

 

My thoughts

I'm gonna be honest I think they wanted to cancel PornHub anyways but this is a pre-textual way to do it while making them not look like the bad guys.

 

I'm not a fan of how much of a stranglehold Visa and MasterCard hold over the internet and real life as it is right now. Although Amex and Crypto are alternatives, I wouldn't be surprised if Amex joins the bandwagon.

 

Sources

 https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22164031/pornhub-upload-limit-blocked-download-nyt-kristof-child-abuse

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mastercard-visa-pornhub-cards-payment-investigation-b1769718.html

https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/11/visa-and-mastercard-ban-porbhub-transactions-after-child-abuse-allegations-13739879/

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic placed in General Discussion =-

Topic does not meet the definition of Tech News.

[Coolmaster]

Seems like a bad precedent of credit card companies deciding morality. If the court finds PH guilty then let them decide, not a credit card.

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

May I ask why it was moved from Tech News?

We reviewed the topic and reached consensus that it's not Tech News because it's about a policy ruling, the ruling companies are not Tech companies (they're finance/payment processing companies) and the website ruled on is not a Tech website.

 

The topic can live on in GD though, as long as it doesn't devolve into "prawns vs no prawns" type arguments.

[piratemonkey]

6 minutes ago, Energycore said:

prawns vs no prawns

Prawns nasty tho. All my homies love shrimp

[Skiiwee29]

9 minutes ago, Coolmaster said:

Seems like a bad precedent of credit card companies deciding morality. If the court finds PH guilty then let them decide, not a credit card.

American Express has never allowed its cards to be used on Adult oriented content sites like that, so its not unprecedented. 

[SansVarnic]

26 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

leaving paying customers with the options of Amex and Cryptocurrency.

Not AMEX. Please do your due diligence on this bit of mis-information. As @Skiiwee29 has also mentioned. 

I have been a American Express user for 20+ years they have never allowed it.

[AlTech]

Just now, SansVarnic said:

Not AMEX. Please do your due diligence on this bit of mis-information. As @Skiiwee29 has also mentioned. 

I have been a American Express user for 20+ years they have never allowed it.

I thought one of the articles I linked said Amex was still allowed. But I'll update the OP to reflect that.

[Tristerin]

10 minutes ago, piratemonkey said:

Prawns nasty tho. All my homies love shrimp

ILY

[Letgomyleghoe]

Is paypal allowed? 

It's easy enough to set up a paypal account, sometimes you don't even have to set one up.

 

buying crypot just for a pronhub subscription is something most people wont do.

[Mling]

this has been a long time coming and the content they have been caught hosting will push the boundries of how much liberty we want to live under.

[AlTech]

2 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

Is paypal allowed? 

It's easy enough to set up a paypal account, sometimes you don't even have to set one up.

 

buying crypot just for a pronhub subscription is something most people wont do.

No, the only option left appears to be Crypto.

[Mling]

2 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

buying crypot just for a pronhub subscription is something most people wont do.

would it not be a good way to hide it from the spouse?

[Letgomyleghoe]

1 minute ago, Mling said:

would it not be a good way to hide it from the spouse?

I mean yes, but lets be real, who looks through the others spending in 2020, and who cares enough about a pron subscription to say something. Also Bitcoin transactions take a while to arrive in your wallet, and a while to be sent. For most people it's just not worth the wait.

 

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

No, the only option left appears to be Crypto.

thats gonna be a RIP for pronhub then. they'll have to increase adds or something.

[piemadd]

There have been multiple instances where minors have found content of themselves on the platform with the site refusing to take it down due to the amount of money it was making. Just gonna point that out.

[whm1974]

Why is everyone misspelling porn as pron?

[Arika]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

the platform will no longer accept uploads from unidentified users

why the hell was this not already a thing?

[Koitsu]

This will very likely kill the platform, no? They will absolutely not be able to maintain their large staff and presumably MASSIVE server costs off of the small amount of people who will actually use crypto to pay.

 

I'm not sure what other platforms there are, I'm obviously aware of some names but to my understanding pornhub/brazzers is by far the largest, as to if this will take down a significant portion of the industry as a whole...

 

Also I don't understand this.. What does visa and mc actually have to gain by this??? All this is going to do is take money out of their pockets from people not spending money, it's going to annoy and frustrate customers who use this website, and for what gain? There is literally not one person out there who is going to not go forward with signing up with a credit card company because they service porn websites, literally no one, not the most puritan god fearing fuckknuckle is going to do that. Let alone even KNOW about this one way or the other, it's INSANE.

 

And on that same note, it's not like this is 'good publicity' or marketing, I mean it is, but it's not effective, because again there are not people who choose a credit card based on the fucking presumed morality of the minutia of which websites/stores they do or do not service. There is not someone out there going... hmm okay I *was* going to get this 2.5% cashback, 10% interest rate card with benefits.... but they take payment from porn so I better go with a 0% cashback 19% interest card because they offer LITERALLY FEWER OPTIONS OF WHERE I CAN SPEND MONEY?

 

It's absolutely weird to me. This won't affect me whatsoever so... whatever, and it may be best that these types of porn tube sites die, but the visa and mc's decision here seems nuts to me.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Coolmaster said:

Seems like a bad precedent of credit card companies deciding morality. If the court finds PH guilty then let them decide, not a credit card.

They aren't. There are explicit credit card processing rules of which Mastercard is the most lax and American Express is the most strict.

 

Like one of the reasons why a certain client moved to far tighter control over their submissions and review process was because we had (comic) artists submit stuff that "might pass" not "would be certain to pass"

 

 

Unfortunately people are used to stealing porn on the internet, and people think just because *chan sites love to steal and proliferate edgy porn, that somehow all internet porn is non-con, underage, bestiality, or whatever when it's really more like role-play and cosplay nonsense. Yet that all gets lumped together because rules in the US, Japan, Europe, Germany, and so forth are not even on the same page.

 

Some artists would fight tooth and nail to get uh... 

I'll just leave this here.

 

Basically non-con is rampant in fiction because it's a power dynamic. Pornhub however can not tell the difference between legal porn and illegal porn, because their site is UGC, like Youtube. People upload whatever random tiddies they stole from another site to it. Then it's a whack-a-mole game to keep it off.

 

Porn sites, should not be UGC. It's a huge liability. Sites that accept porn need to only accept it from the artist or performer themselves, and I can pretty much guarantee you if Pornhub did that, 95% of it's content would vanish.

 

 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

Is paypal allowed? 

It's easy enough to set up a paypal account, sometimes you don't even have to set one up.

 

buying crypot just for a pronhub subscription is something most people wont do.

No, Paypal will terminate your account and any account that deals with you if it's discovered to be dealing in adult material, even in an artistic sense.

 

Same with Patreon, Gumroad, Kickstarter, etc.

 

Pateron skirts the rules a bit by making all mature/adult content behind paid posts and no previews permitted. This is similar to how services like Youtube and Twitch deal with potential boobs on the same site that kids might watch.

 

This might actually be a deathknell for any new "adult" site, as no ISP will be able to process payments to keep the site up, and any grandfathered sites will be looking for any mistakes to be terminated.

[Mooshi]

Who pays for porn?

[PlayStation 2]

Wow, who woulda thunk that a porn site with no real moderation would end up with child pornography and rape? 

And the funnier thing is there's cases of the site in question not taking down said videos unless that shit becomes a big story against them.

I have no love for these motherfuckers. Glad to see them rot from Visa and MasterCard.

[Random_Person1234]

Here's the original NYTimes report for anyone interested. Here's an update from the author of the article.

[Koitsu]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

This might actually be a deathknell for any new "adult" site, as no ISP will be able to process payments to keep the site up, and any grandfathered sites will be looking for any mistakes to be terminated.

 

This is pretty shitty and a really 'dangerous' precedent and is just signalling more and more death of the internet as we know it. Woke corporate puritanism...

[Letgomyleghoe]

1 hour ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Here's the original NYTimes report for anyone interested. Here's an update from the author of the article.

jesus christ that is fucked up. welp, Rot in hell pronhub.