On December 10, Mastercard and Visa announced that they will no longer allow Pornhub to accept payment for Mastercard and Visa on their platform after intense pressure from religious groups who are waging a war against sex workers. We say “war against sex workers” because the damage they do does not impact the labor as much as it affects the laborers who depend on the Pornhub platform to earn a living. Because of this decision, based on fiction and conflated reports regarding the presence of minors being assaulted on its platform, many sex workers will be forced even further into the margins.
In Winter.
During a pandemic.
On International Human Rights Day.
And only a week before sex workers around the world memorialize those we have lost to violence on International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, December 17th.
Violence Against Sex Workers includes the societal and institutional violence that has led to the shuttering of our online platforms that give us a measure of safety and allow us the critical resource that is the ability to access banking. The action from MasterCard and VISA will cause harm to our already suffering community members and will have zero impact on the Pornhub platform, who will simply switch to cryptocurrency – a complicated and inaccessible method of payment for many sex workers.
Sex workers from around the world condemn this action and point to the 85 Million reports of the very same conduct from mainstream platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These platforms have no accountability for their part in the horrific abuse of children, women, men, trans and non-binary people, and we find Mastercard and VISA to be posturing for its over zealous base and the bad intentions and actions of the anti-trafficking community who consistently targets sex workers in order to profit from our vulnerable state of being.
This action will have no impact on Rapists and Abusers and it will not stop sex work. We stand with the Adult Performers Artist Guild in their Statement titled United We Stand, Divided We Beg and we encourage sex workers and allies to sign the petition demanding Mastercard and VISA rescind this censure of Pornhub.
As a sex worker who has been fighting tubesites like Pornhub since I started performing in 2009, this is an asinine statement. Any performers/companies who work with pornhub fully knowing that the site depends on stolen content is what I like to call a “scab,” in the union sense, but also a victim of Stockholm syndrome. Because Pornhub attempted a monopoly in the adult industry by buying up multiple companies while over saturating the market, which forced performer rates to go down, quality of products suffered, companies to go out of business, etc. some people in the industry felt they didn’t have any other choice but to work with Pornhub. And sure, they may be paying models/companies now, but with the money, they earned from the content they stole from those very models/companies. There are plenty of other sites to work with that didn’t intentionally try to control an entire industry and everybody in it. This is actually a HUGE victory for the industry. You do not speak for all sex workers.
Thank you so much for your response. We completely agree that we do not – and cannot – speak for all Sex Workers. But we do support all Sex Workers, and that includes the sex workers who are in a living using platforms like porn hub and we think that it is harmful for a MasterCard and Visa to withdraw their ability to accept payments for subscriptions and to make payments to Sex Workers who are going through such difficult times right now. Again thank you for your perspective and we appreciate and respect your advocacy.
If the piracy was the reason for Visa/MC action then I would 100% agree with you, Fuck PornHub but sadly that was not why, The reason is for broader. We are already all platforms beginning to purge adult content. Both twitch and Tik Tok are suspending people with Onlyfan accounts or even a hint. I was excited to see my over 2000 pirated clips gone from PH. I never partnered with them out of principle so I am not here defending them just want people to understand the broader implications of billers and credit card companies distancing themselves from us.