Mastercard and Visa have cut off PornHub from their payment services
- Mastercard and Visa have withdrawn their services from PornHub.
- This follows an explosive New York Times column last week that accused the company of hosting illegal videos of child sexual abuse, rape, and women who have been secretly filmed.
- PornHub said it was "exceptionally disappointing" that Mastercard and Visa have cut off their services.
- It denied allowing child sexual abuse on its platform, and said it had made sweeping changes that meant only verified users can now upload content.
PornHub just got cut off by two major credit card companies.
Mastercard and Visa announced Thursday they were withdrawing their services from the porn site.
This comes after New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof published a column accusing PornHub of hosting videos containing rape, underage girls, and women who had been secretly filmed.
"Today, the use of our cards at Pornhub is being terminated," a Mastercard spokesperson told Business Insider. "Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site.
"As a result, and in accordance with our policies, we instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance. In addition, we continue to investigate potential illegal content on other websites to take the appropriate action."
Visa told Business Insider it was cutting PornHub off while it continues to investigate.
"Given the allegations of illegal activity, Visa is suspending Pornhub's acceptance privileges pending the completion of our ongoing investigation. We are instructing the financial institutions who serve MindGeek to suspend processing of payments through the Visa network," said a company spokesperson.
For the Times piece, Kristof spoke to a woman who had been trafficked, sexually abused, and filmed from age nine. She said videos of her abuse still reappear on PornHub. "Pornhub became my trafficker," she said.
PornHub denied allowing child sexual abuse on its platform. It also implemented broad changes meaning now only verified users can upload content and no one can download videos. It also promised to bolster its moderation team.
"These actions are exceptionally disappointing, as they come just two days after Pornhub instituted the most far-reaching safeguards in user-generated platform history," PornHub said in response to the news that Mastercard and Visa were withdrawing their services, as reported by Yahoo Finance.
"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. This news is crushing for the hundreds of thousands of models who rely on our platform for their livelihoods," it added.
According to Facebook's transparency report, the platform has taken action against 84 million instances of child nudity and sexual exploitation on its platform between Q2 of 2018 and Q3 of 2020. Facebook said in October that it has "led the industry in developing new ways to prevent, detect, and respond to abuse while maintaining high security, and we will continue to do so."
The Internet Watch Foundation confirmed to Business Inside that between 2017 and 2019 it identified 118 instances of child sexual abuse material on PornHub.
PornHub is likely to face scrutiny from more than just its partnered companies, US lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday which, if passed, would allow victims of sex trafficking and revenge porn to sue sites like PornHub if videos of them end up on its platform.