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The Almighty Buck The Internet

VISA Continues Pornhub Ban, To Allow Card Use On Some of Its Parent's Sites (reuters.com) 83

Posted by BeauHD from the under-review dept.
Visa said on Wednesday it would allow usage of its cards on Pornhub-owner MindGeek's platforms that host professionally produced adult studio content, but would continue to decline processing payments coming from Pornhub itself. Reuters reports: Visa said its ban remains in effect for those websites that host user-generated content, the most popular being Pornhub, until an ongoing investigation was completed. "Following a thorough review, Visa will reinstate acceptance privileges for MindGeek sites that offer professionally produced adult studio content," a Visa spokesperson said.

Visa, like rival Mastercard, had suspended processing payments on Pornhub earlier this month after a New York Times report found unlawful content on its website. Pornhub had denied the allegations, calling the two-biggest payment processing networks' decision "disappointing." Days after the Times report Pornhub said it had pulled content uploaded by unverified users from its platform and would only allow certain partner accounts to upload content.
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VISA Continues Pornhub Ban, To Allow Card Use On Some of Its Parent's Sites More

VISA Continues Pornhub Ban, To Allow Card Use On Some of Its Parent's Sites

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  • It's not about PornHub (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Thursday December 24, 2020 @07:04PM (#60863878)
    It's about setting a precedent for large scale bans from the financial sector against private organizations and groups of individuals.
    • Good -- let them keep it up and drive people to crypto currency and other alternative means of payment transactions

      • let them keep it up and drive people to crypto currency

        When governments regulate crypto, they will become useless. Or do you think any government will allow some sort of currency they dont control? You might think the gov cant regulate it, but they can. One day governments will decide that no bank or credit union is allowed to transfer money to crypto sites and they will all die.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by quall ( 1441799 )

          Government control isn't the issue at hand because the government isn't controlling Visa or Mastercard here. Those 2 have a market dominance and can choose who they stop working with, which is the problem here. Most bank cards are tied into one of these 2 vendors and are probably what most users are using.

          • government isn't controlling Visa or Mastercard

            Awwwe thats cute

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by quall ( 1441799 )

              You think the government forced Visa and MC to stop funding pornhub?

              Let me guess... Someone at Discover didn't pick up the red phone when it rang, and that's why it took them a bit longer to "join in".

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by CoolDiscoRex ( 5227177 )

              government isn't controlling Visa or Mastercard

              Awwwe thats cute

                Actually, he’s probably right. I think it’s the other way around.

              • What most would consider to be the "left" complains that big corporations control the government.

                What most would consider to be the "right" complains that the government controls the corporations.

                They are both right, in that the same people basically run both.

                Which side has the more effective solution, is left as an exercise to the reader.

        • Its not all or nothing. The government technically controlls physical cash too. But in practice the level of privacy in cash deals is much higher than for credit cards. If cryptocurency reaches the privacy level (and usability) of phsical cash, while allowing electronic payments, that would be huge; even if the goverment has their gluttonous mits all over it.
      • So-called 'cryptocurrency' isn't a 'payment method' it's a 'risky speculative investment' at best -- and more typically, just a way to launder money. We will never be using it instead of actual money in any substantial way.
    • That makes no sense. They've always had the ability to deny service to whatever business they wanted, but never did because that meant less profits for them. At best this is about protecting themselves against liability (i.e. being sued by people who had their content posted there without their permission) or maybe political correctness in an age where sexism is in a big way no longer being tolerated -- and that last being just for the optics, not because they actually give a damn.
      Your comment has more to

      • Re:It's not about PornHub (Score:4, Insightful)

        by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Thursday December 24, 2020 @09:59PM (#60864254)

        They've always had the ability to deny service to whatever business they wanted

        This is dangerous.

        but never did because that meant less profits for them. At best this is about protecting themselves against liability (i.e. being sued by people who had their content posted there without their permission)

        Is it possible to effectively falsify these nebulous concepts of liability by proxy anymore? Can the electric company providing power to the people who run pornhub for profit also be sued? Maybe they should also consider reducing their liability by discontinuing provision of electricity.

        or maybe political correctness in an age where sexism is in a big way no longer being tolerated -- and that last being just for the optics, not because they actually give a damn.

        This is insanely dangerous.

        • Can the electric company providing power to the people who run pornhub for profit also be sued?

          I dunno, can they? That's for a judge to decide when a lawsuit is filed.

          ..or maybe political correctness in an age where sexism is in a big way no longer being tolerated -- and that last being just for the optics, not because they actually give a damn.

          This is insanely dangerous.

          Why? Any company with half a brain wants to have a good public image. They're not supposed to care? Not smart.

          • It's dangerous when you think nothing of me asserting that you are personally responsible for the deeds and misdeeds of anyone and everyone you have ever exchanged currency with. People and organizations need to be held accountable for what they themselves do, not a penny less, not a penny more. Blurring the line between what I do and what you do in terms of assigning responsibility is a very necessary and almost sufficient condition for lovely things like collective punishment, witch hunting, and the iden
            • Get off your fucking soapbox. Or are you just upset because your access to PornHub may be curtailed or destroyed by this?
              They made a business decision to stop doing business with a company that is, either out of (willful) ignorance or by design, engaging in the distribution of pornographic content featuring people who either did not know that content would be distributed in such a way, or that did not know that content was made AT ALL. They're protecting the business reputation of their (Visas') company, t
              • About two years ago, BofA and Citi and Salesforce were making noise about cutting off firearm manufacturers and dealers, and using transactions at gun shops to try to identify mass shooters.

                Unlike making, distributing or watching kiddie porn, manufacturing, selling, and buying guns is absolutely legal. Pardon my paranoia, but this looks like a precedent setting exercise more than a business decision.

          • I dunno, can they? That's for a judge to decide when a lawsuit is filed.

            It was a rhetorical question designed to highlight the stupidity of the underlying concept people are responsible for shit others do. I have no doubt at all the lawyers won't stop pushing this bullshit until everyone is guilty of everything everyone else does.

            Why?

            It aggregates too much power into the hands of too few. Merchants can't elect not to accept credit cards without incurring severe losses. Allowing adhoc excuses for denial of infrastructure service in an effectively monopoly position breeds corrupti

        • I would concur that the ability to deny service is dangerous, if the entities involved are monopolies or oligopolies. This is arguably true for the two companies that control nearly all credit card services. This is almost by definition an oligopoly.

          I would not concur otherwise.

          I have no particular wish for gay or lesbian bakers, for instance, to be forced to bake a cake that says "God Hates Fags."

          Private businesses are, by definition, private businesses, and you cannot decide for them whom they will or w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cylix ( 55374 )

      They have already pulled this trick several times, but not at this scale.

      A major issue is there isn't much way to get around visa/mastercard when they decide it's time to silence you. Many of the online payment processors still use their services.

      Maybe this will force another payment processor that will be less of a corporate moral authority.

      I understand, it's OK to have slave labor make shoes and tech equipment, but it's bad when it's someone we disagree with. Now, it's bad when people get naked or leave t

  • Local mother upset over advert used by peanut butter brand, will now switch to a different brand which is the exact same product sold under a different name by the same company.

  • I hope VISA gets sued senseless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday December 24, 2020 @07:12PM (#60863900)

    Nobody made them morality police, judge and executioner.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      It makes me wonder if Visa received threats from members of religious groups and other social conservatives to go full Dave Ramsey and cut up their Visa cards over processing payment for semiprofessional erotica.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
        This isn't the 50s. If you want to see how much power social conservatives have right now just look at SSM and silicon valley. This is (primarily) by a new wave of feminist/progressive/secular activists and busybodies. The people who in another era would have been busybody Sunday school teachers and fundamentalist soccer moms have become the women's studies professors and woke soccer moms of today. They both oppose porn of course, but the woke soccer mom of today will hunt you down for being sexist and pre

        • From the New Republic:

          Nick Kristof and the Holy War on Pornhub [newrepublic.com]

          The article points to the group "Exodus Cry" as being behind attacks on pornhub.

          “In my work with Exodus Cry, I am daily confronted with the horrors of a world ravaged by the degradation of women and children,” writes the group’s founder Benjamin Nolot, in the foreword to a book called Babylon: The Resurgence of History’s Most Infamous City, published in 2009 by the evangelical ministry International House of Prayer Kansas

          • Let me be clear. I hate porn. I think it is very destructive.

            However, there is a HUGE difference between consensually filming adults who are willing participants, versus sharing videos of those who are either not willing participants, and/or may not even be legal adults.

            The former did not cause any issue for Visa to the best of my knowledge. The latter did.

            Their actions make perfect sense to me, even though I am concerned about the market power exercised by the two companies which, more or less, have the

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Big Boss ( 7354 )

              I think that an investigation by law enforcement should have happened, and the company taken to court with the evidence collected. IF convicted, then size all their assets and cut them off from financial services etc.. Not some private company with no accountability and no opportunity for the accused to defend themselves. Particularly when there is almost no competition.

              I think this should be the case for any business, regardless of my opinion of their product. I don't care about this particular company one

              • Currently, the due process requirement only applies to governments, not private entities, but, when those entities are entrusted with oligopolistic or monopolistic powers by the direct or indirect actions of government, maybe it should apply to both.

                Law has not yet evolved to the point of giving a definite answer here, but perhaps this might be part of the impetus for using either the courts, statute law, or both, to try to carve out some reasonably predictable rules that hopefully protect the rights and in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Probably more worried about getting sued by the victims. Once they knew crimes were taking place failure to act would have been deliberately profiting from sexual abuse.

        • As opposed to deliberately profiting from Obama's drone campaign slaughtering children throughout the world? Or deliberately profiting from communist china's slave factories and genocide camps?

          This is about ideology, not morality. This is a large-scale practice run for a china style social credit based un-personing. Fail to be woke enough and you won't even be able to buy food.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            No it's about who can sue them. Drone strike and slave factory victims can't, PornHub victims can.

            • Or how about we don't use "think of teh wimminz/chillenz" as an excuse for fascism and only people who actually commit crimes get held responsible. This is as asinine as suing the company that made the videocamera the criminal used.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
        no, it was the child porn and revenge porn being shared on their platform
    • As I just said to someone else in this discussion, what VISA is doing is most likely about preventing themselves from being sued.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      However everyone got a public demonstration of how cashless capitalism will work. You the slave, the corporation permission to buy controllers the masters. They say jump, you better jump, just as fucking high as you can, else you not cash card will deny you permission have anything, until you grovel to your corporate AI robot (you nothing, do not rate personal service) and pay sufficient reperations (agree to a new loan you have to pay back with large interest rates, in order to be able to give them the mon

    • Nobody made them morality police, judge and executioner.

      VISA has way too much power and regularly abuses it. It's not enough to sue them. They need to be destroyed by realtime funds transfer alternatives and legislation and enforcement actions against a raft of anti-competitive business practices.

    • Nobody made them morality police, judge and executioner.

      This happened with Wikileaks. Visa was sued in Iceland by Wikileak's payment processor and VISA was fined $6000US / day until they reinstated the ability to donate to Wikileaks.

      But seriously fuck these guys. The finance industry should have zero say in how someone's legal business is conducted. We have laws for a reason, we don't need a morality police on top of that.

  • Not really about porn. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Thursday December 24, 2020 @07:25PM (#60863946)
    Porn makes it titillating but really the issue is different and bigger: under what conditions can and should credit card companies refuse to work with companies because of the materials that they sell. Could they refuse to do business with Amazon because Amazon sells counterfeit goods? Refuse to do business with Jeppesen because of their military contracts? Refuse to work with the Church of Satan? Or companies that also accept bitcoin? Lots of complexity here. Pornhub is accused of having illegal materials on their site - but that seems like an issue for law enforcement. (and one I hope they will act on if the accusations are correct).

    • under what conditions can and should credit card companies refuse to work with companies because of the materials that they sell.

      They can do this to pornhub because pornhub is a small cookie in terms of reveneu to the cc company. They cant do this to amazon because amazon is a huge portion of the cc revenue.

    • Money is a tool; it is morally and ethically neutral. What you use it for however is a direct reflection on your intent. A payment company like VISA only cares about one thing really: profit. If being named in a massive class-action lawsuit because they're enablers of people downloading pornographic material that was uploaded to PornHub without the knowledge or consent of the people in it, then that directly affects their profitability in numerous ways.
    • Why is this modded troll? It's a good goddamn question. When did Visa become the gatekeeper? And who is conducting this "ongoing investigation" that TFS mentions? Certainly if law enforcement were conducting it based legitimate claims suspicion of child pr0n, then it may be prudent for Visa to suspend payment processing until such time as the investigation is completed and no wrong-doing is found. To indiscriminately suspend processing because "reasons" is not good. As the parent poster asks, where is the l

      • When did Visa become the gatekeeper?

        Of Visa transactions? In 1976?

        Your porn provider, like other utilities, accepts cash and personal checks too right, so what's the big deal.

    • > "under what conditions can and should credit card companies refuse to work with companies because of the materials that they sell?"

      You are correct that it isn't really about porn - it is about "brand damaging" material and other contraband and avoiding large fines. It has been awhile since I've been in this industry (I spent a good hunk of my SW career working for a company that provided content monitoring as a service), so I might have the picture slightly wrong but here goes:

      Mastercard and VISA

      • How far does legal responsibility go? If someone sells illegal materials on Amazon, is Amazon culpable? Is Visa culpable if they processed the transaction? On the other side are credit card companies free to decide not to do business with anyone they wish? Presumably not if it entails discrimination against a protected class but otherwise? Could they choose not to do business with companies that made political donations to a particular party? Just curious - I don't know how restricted they are in their
    • They can't handle illegal drug transactions either. Credit Card companies have never been allowed to handle illegal transactions, and if Pornhub is engaging in transactions that appear to be illegal, then it makes sense that credit card companies won't touch them.

      . Is it a good thing? I don't know. But it is not a new thing. I am wondering if people are just pissed because they like free porn.

      As for your counterexamples: those are good questions, and I imagine they would all depend on the public relat
    • I don’t know about “should”, but they can refuse service to anyone. Prostitution is legal here and sex workers can get a business bank account and mobile payment terminals (though banks have often refused them in the past). But they can’t accept credit card payments on those terminals in most cases, those companies continue to refuse them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In this case it's the point at which they start to become legally liable for the sexual abuse of minors and non-consensual participating adults.

      • Why. Why is Visa legally liable here but, say, the US Treasury isn't for minting cash used in a drug deal? Why is Visa legally liable but the electric company that powers pornhubs servers isn't? Why isn't Intel legally liable because their processors were used in those servers?

        This is nothing but a trial run for communist china style unpersoning. "Citizen #323217 you have been accused of being a counter-revolutionary. You may no longer make use of any payment processor or banking services until you confess

    • How about Wikileaks? Visa and Mastercard cut them off from funding despite the site itself being declared legal.

      As you said legality of a site is an issue for law enforcement, not for their finance provider. If they received a court order to stop processing payments so be it, but until they do that they have no business being involved.

      We have laws, we don't need a morality police as well.

    • Porn makes it titillating but really the issue is different and bigger: under what conditions can and should credit card companies refuse to work with companies because of the materials that they sell. Could they refuse to do business with Amazon because Amazon sells counterfeit goods? Refuse to do business with Jeppesen because of their military contracts? Refuse to work with the Church of Satan? Or companies that also accept bitcoin? Lots of complexity here. Pornhub is accused of having illegal materials on their site - but that seems like an issue for law enforcement. (and one I hope they will act on if the accusations are correct).

      Well, apparently it's ok - with Slashdot too! - if it's because they don't like your politics.

    • Card processors effectively form a global duopoly at this point. Almost all transactions online non-cash-in-person go via either mastercard or visa somewhere in the chain. Mastercard and Visa can demand (and apparently have demanded) banks and other companies cease servicing people or they'll pull their ability to process payments. Card companies have effectively displaced cash as the main transaction method.

      As a result - card processing companies need to be regulated to require nondiscriminatory business

  • Alot of people who support Net Neutrality regulations, would be against legislation that stopped VISA from banning based on arbitrary things. The reason is that using cc/processor companies to cancel people is what they want to do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      Nope. You're confusing authoritarian with liberal, maybe deliberately because you're trolling. Those 2 concepts are on 2 different political axes. Both liberals and conservatives can be authoritarian or anti-authoritarian. If you're anti-authoritarian, then concentration of that kind of power is bad in anyone's hands, whether that's the government or a private individual.

      • You're confusing authoritarian with liberal

        Not really. Few people who call themselves “liberals” these days have any idea what it means. Today’s identity-politics-pushing folks are just pushing neo-bigotry as a virtue, and as long as the echo chamber agrees, they’ll keep doing it while pushing forth endless justifications for it..

        Seriously, if the supposedly-progressive leaders started advocating the reinstatement of slavery, there would be 1,000 snarky one-line memes by the morni

        • I understand the historical usage of the term and by that usage I'd be a "liberal" myself. However, today, that term has been co-opted to mean "far-far left," with which I have little in common. Using the term without giving the proper context will only result in confusion.

  • What are you doing, Step-Payment Processor?

  • People rolled over when copyright law was used to punish consumers of music, film, and games. I wonder what happens when people realize that free porn they've been downloading for decades is technically copyrighted material and is going to finally go away.

    Will we have people finally paying for the porn that they "use", exposing their personal information to a website that is likely to get hacked and leaked? Or do people give up looking at any pornography in this era of visual media, maybe finding a cheaper

    • Calm down, cupcake. Pornography has been around forever. It's not going anywhere.

      • Calm down, cupcake. Pornography has been around forever. It's not going anywhere.

        He might feel better if your name wasn’t “Known Nutter”.

        Just sayin.

      • Why not? Maybe it will go somewhere, like underground when people are afraid of being tracked through a subscription or credit card.

  • "Visa said its ban remains in effect for those websites that host user-generated content," If they are banning sites with user generated content well youtube is one such site and should be banned as well. Heck even twitch should be banned cause its same.

    • Visa said its ban remains in effect for those websites that host user-generated content," If they are banning sites with user generated content well youtube is one such site and should be banned as well. Heck even twitch should be banned cause its same.

      But private companies can do whatever they want! What, are you too good to use carrier pigeons with $20 bills strapped to their legs? Are one of those snowflakes I’ve been hearing about? Once the monopolies control this country, we can finally have th

  • This is Why (Score:3)

    by CoolDiscoRex ( 5227177 ) on Friday December 25, 2020 @07:57AM (#60864838) Homepage

    A cashless society would be a disaster where the financial institutions would become de facto legislators while the usual suspects would crow “let the free market take care of it, the banks should be able to do what they want ... if you don’t like it, don’t use it, nobody is forcing you to use money!”

    • No. This is why a credit card duopoly is a disaster. The "cashless society" that people talk about has nothing to do with middle a credit supplying duopoly middlemen and while your American laws aren't worth the paper they are written on in most of the world a bank can't simply refuse to honour a transaction.

      I effectively live in a cashless society. I don't own a credit card (of my own, I do have a corporate one).

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