Adult performers fear "war on porn" after Visa, Mastercard and Discover block use on Pornhub.
Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild, a union representing porn actors, and a veteran porn star who sells videos on Pornhub, said the companies' actions were particularly distressing coming in the middle of a pandemic. “It’s one of many companies in the adult space that is exploitative and problematic in a number of ways. But people have to use them to make money,” said an East Coast-based dominatrix who goes by the name of Bardot Smith, noting that Pornhub has essentially become the default search engine for adult content. “If you search for a porn star’s name, it’s more likely you’ll get results from Pornhub and other tube sites than their private sites.
“Our decision was based on an internal investigation that confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site,” a company spokesperson, Seth Eisen, said in a statement. “As we noted last week, we continue to investigate potential illegal content on other websites that has been referred to us in order to take the appropriate action.”
But professional sex workers on the site say they have requested these features for years because their paid content has been stolen and republished on the site.
What will Banana Republicans do without their favorite web site.