Debit-card companies can make it more difficult for the sex trade or facilitate it. Visa and Mastercard have taken a stand against the “digital brothels”, most visibly for the porn website Pornhub, a website were rape on children, revenge porn and rough abuse on women has been normalized. Now, more payment services and social media companies have to take responsibility against sexual abuse of women and children, and those responsible must be prosecuted.
Realstars has for several years promoted that payment services, like Visa and Mastercard, as well as banks take responsibility to counteract the digital sex trade. In 2018 we examined corporate connections in the report, The Digital Brothels. The payment services have a big responsibility as the same mechanism applies to sexual exploitation –the supply controls demand – and the demand is affected by how easily available pornographic material is. Since drevet mot Backpage [the hounding against Backpage], a website equivalent to Blocket, USA introduced the legislative package SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) and FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act). The laws promote the protection of groups that are exposed and also give amends for those that have been exposed to sexual exploitation. This has led to Visa and Mastercard no longer allowing its users to pay for pornographic material online, like Pornhub. The payment Services no longer wants to enable, or be associated with sexual exploitation of children and other videos where individuals haven’t consented to sex.
Pornhub is one of the world’s largest streaming services with more users than, among others, Netflix, with more than 42 billion visits per year. At the same time, material is being uploaded and spread without consent and many videos portray rapes on children and brutal assaults. The payment giant’s restrictions prevent Pornhub’s users from paying for pornographic material and assaults that have been filmed on videos. Pornhub have responded, and to argue that the payment giants restrictions are too big and that they already are working to eliminate sexual exploitation of children and content that’s not been verified. They imply that even the restrictions would upset many of the users that “live on selling pornographic material”. Pornhub, has at the same time, thousands of videos showing brutal rapes and revenge porn, like rape on children, racist and misogynistic content and woman being strangled, gang-banged and abused. Popular search words are “girls under 18”, “14yo” and girls with braces”. Only three weeks ago, more than 30 women sued the site for publishing films without their consent.
Also sites like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and search engines like google, today enable “child pornographic content” – documented assault on children. It’s time that more services and social media companies take responsibility to combat sexual exploitation of women and children. The reality is that these platforms and companies only act when pressured.
The USA is still in the lead within some areas. Senator Josh Hawley in 2020 introduced a law to enable victims of sexual abuse, human trafficking and revenge porn to report sites such as Pornhub. It’s an important step in the work to lower demand and put a stop to the digital brothels.
Realstars has previously written about how we stop the digital brothels:
https://globalbar.se/2020/05/banker-ta-ert-ansvar-for-att-stoppa-sexhandeln/
https://realstars.eu/digitala-bordeller-och-dar-usa-i-taten-for-att-komma-at-internetsidor/