The War on Pornhub Is a War on Sex Work, Critics Say

When one of the biggest websites in the world voluntarily guts its own content, it’s big news. Especially when that self-evisceration appears to be an attempt to placate the world’s biggest credit card companies.

Tectonic shifts in the bedrock of the adult entertainment industry continued this week as Pornhub removed millions of videos uploaded by unverified users. The decimation of its content came after the Canadian House of Commons unanimously voted for the executives of Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, to testify before a governmental committee. And that move came after Mastercard and Visa stopped all payments on the platform, followed quickly by Discover. (American Express has never processed payments for adult content.) Which, in turn, happened after Pornhub vowed to change its policies about uploading, downloading, verification, and content moderation. All of which seems to have been spurred on by a column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times that called upon major credit cards to stop working with with Pornhub—and which name-checked anti-Pornhub site Traffickinghub, run by anti–sex work group Exodus Cry.

Now,  consumers around the world are left with less than half the smut that had been available to them on Pornhub just last week—and unable to pay for anything on the site unless they’re using cryptocurrency. (PayPal backed out of its partnership with the platform last year.) 

But all of this has resulted in a catch-22: Vice reported, “The verified users that are now the only ones able to upload or download to Pornhub are also suddenly unable to receive payouts through the two biggest credit card companies.”

Pornhub’s initial moves toward more focused curation and even the removal of videos uploaded by non-verified users answered calls from adult content creators, who have wanted more security for their copyrighted content on the site for over a decade—and more protection for people whose images have appeared on the site without their consent. In fact, Ginger Banks started a petition asking Pornhub to revise its policies just last year. 

But, now, the thousands of pornographers who have come to rely on Pornhub as a major source of income from ads, video uploads and Modelhub are left wondering what comes next—and they’re not optimistic.

Sex Workers Outreach Project Behind Bars called the credit cards’ moves “a war against sex workers” in a statement on Friday, and many in the industry are echoing the sentiment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a proponent of free speech online, wrote on Tuesday, in response to the credit card companies’ positioning themselves as the enforcers of morality online: “Those praising Mastercard and Visa’s actions now should recognize that these censorship powers are more often used against those without power. That should scare all of us.”

Vice called even the idea of shutting down payments to Pornhub “callous and myopic.” She further reported, “Sex workers and activists say that this is a dangerous, discriminatory decision—one fueled by anti-porn campaigners and conservative activist groups who want sex work abolished.”

Groups that have been calling for Pornhub’s demise are jubilant about what they’re clearly seeing as a victory. “If Pornhub cares about sex workers, they should not have placed ads on their stolen and pirated content for the last 10 years,” Laila Mickelwait, founder of Traffickinghub, told NBC. “Pornhub should be apologizing to porn performers for bringing this upon themselves.”

But the adult entertainment industry is scrambling to figure out what happens next. Will credit cards stop working with smaller sites and platforms, now that they’ve dealt this blow to Pornhub? 

“Porn performers have dealt with deplatforming and discriminatory payment processing practices from the beginning of the internet and beyond, but have always adapted, finding new ways to continue their work,” noted Samantha Cole at Vice. “But if two of the biggest credit card companies in the world can choose to deny service to Pornhub—a household name for online porn—some worry that nothing’s stopping them from denying service to smaller platforms, too.” Platforms like OnlyFans and Clips4Sale, to which thousands have turned for income during the pandemic.

“The war on porn is picking up steam,” Alana Evans warned NBC News. “The biggest fear is that this will lead to a waterfall of companies being financially affected.” During the pandemic, she said, “Thousands of people have turned to this type of online sex work to feed their families, and this move is affecting those moms who just want to buy diapers and milk.”

And Siri Dahl said to Rolling Stone: “The question a lot of us have is, what is the threshold here?…How many people are we helping versus how many people’s livelihoods are we completely destroying?”

With the events in this drama unfolding at blinding speed, adult content creators are still reeling from the events of the past two weeks. And no one knows what may happen next. But suffice it to say that 2020 seems determined to wreak as much havoc as it can on its way out.

Explosion photo by Pixabay from Pexels