Digital payment giants Mastercard and Visa have ended their business partnership with adult content site Pornhub over what they term as presence of unlawful content.
The site, according to an investigation by New York Times, is filled with with child-abuse and rape-related videos.
“Mastercard has just advised me that it has confirmed the presence of illegal material on Pornhub, so it is immediately ending Mastercard use on Pornhub. It will also address the issue on other websites. This wouldn’t have happened without survivors bravely speaking up,” tweeted New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof.
.@Mastercard has just advised me that it has confirmed the presence of illegal material on Pornhub, so it is immediately ending Mastercard use on Pornhub. It will also address the issue on other websites. This wouldn't have happened without survivors bravely speaking up.
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) December 10, 2020
A statement from Mastercard affirmed the same, saying that more investigations were ongoing.
“Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site. We instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance,” a statement from Mastercard said.
Despite terming the allegations by New York Times as “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue”, the site has since removed its download function and said users must be verified to upload videos.
“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,” said Pornhub parent company MindGeek.
Pornhub users pay £9.99 a month for higher-quality video streams and advert-free and exclusive content, on top of the free content.
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