MONTREAL — A group of Canadian advocacy groups and professionals is calling on Visa and Mastercard to cease processing payments for adult video sharing site Pornhub and its owner MindGeek, citing the credit-card companies’ own product and service rules against child pornography, incest, bestiality and rape.
Representatives of more than 40 women’s shelters and anti-sexual-exploitation collectives from across Canada, and from three religious faiths, sent letters Wednesday to senior executives at Visa and Mastercard, copying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau along with ministers Bill Blair, David Lametti, Steven Guilbeault and Maryam Monsef.
The letters, copies of which The Logic obtained, come on the heels of the federal government’s pledge of new legislation that will in part target online child pornography and hateful material on sites like Pornhub, and that will introduce fines in the millions of dollars should the sites not comply.
Talking Point
The letter from more than 40 signatories to Visa and Mastercard comes as the government has promised new legislation to crack down on child pornography and hateful content on various internet platforms. “Fines could be imposed in the millions of dollars. We’re not talking about a slap on the wrist,” Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault told The Logic.
“I’m a signatory because I have a deep concern about protecting children from online abuse,” said Montreal Council of Women president Penny Rankin told The Logic. “I am not participating to impose any kind of moral question about those who watch Pornhub. I just want Visa and Mastercard to look at their own rules and investigate.”
In their correspondence, the groups quote from a recent open letter signed by 20 Canadian politicians accusing Pornhub of “publishing videos of child abuse, sexual assault and sex trafficking” along with “misogynistic and gender-based violence, explicit racism and hate, minors, incest and voyeurism and intimate images.”
The advocacy group also cited Visa’s commitment to ensuring “modern forms of slavery are not taking place in the company’s business operations and supply chains” in its letter to the company. Signatories of the letters include National Council of Women of Canada president Patricia Leson, Canadian Federation of University Women president Janet Watson and Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of Montreal’s Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom synagogue. Some of the signatories, such as Defend Dignity and EVE, are expressly opposed to sex work and pornography.
The letters are the latest salvo against MindGeek, the Luxembourg-based company whose main base of operations is in Montreal, where it was founded, and whose stable of pornography websites is among the world’s largest, including Pornhub, Brazzers, Tube8, Redtube and YouPorn. A New York Times column published last week profiled a young woman rendered homeless, suicidal and addicted to drugs after a sexually explicit video of her at 14 was uploaded to Pornhub.
In the wake of the column’s publication, Visa and Mastercard said they were reviewing their financial ties to Pornhub. PayPal ceased providing payment services to Pornhub’s models in November 2019. American Express, meanwhile, prohibits the use of its services for “adult content sold via Digital Delivery Transactions.”
Pornhub has recently denied the presence of child pornography on its platform, including in an October exchange with The Logic. At the time, a Pornhub spokesperson who identified themselves as Ian Andrews called claims the site featured underage material “conspiracy theories.” The site removed a video with a racial slur in the title after The Logic brought it to Pornhub’s attention; however, similar material remains on other MindGeek properties.
On Tuesday afternoon, Pornhub announced updated trust and safety measures in a bid to address the criticism it’s faced after the recent media attention. The company says it will now only permit verified uploaders to post material to the site. It has also removed the ability to download most videos from the site, and expanded its moderation to include a “Red Team” that will patrol the site for potentially illegal material. Pornhub will also publish its first ever transparency report in 2021.
Pornhub’s release Tuesday also cited its recently launched its “Trusted Flagger Program,” in which it said it works with 40 online child-safety non-profits worldwide, letting them “alert us of content they think may violate our Terms of Service.” The release does not list a Canadian partner. Late last month, The Logic reported that the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a government-backed child-safety non-profit, had withdrawn from a global anti-child-exploitation network called InHope over its association with MindGeek.
In an interview with The Logic Tuesday, Heritage Minister Guilbeault said that while he applauded the measures Pornhub said it would take, it is folly to let internet platforms police themselves. “Self-regulation doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in the environmental field, and it certainly doesn’t work when it comes to online platforms.”
Rather, Guilbeault said the government will bring in new regulations in early 2021 to ensure “platforms are respecting our laws and regulations” with respect to harmful online content. “Fines could be imposed in the millions of dollars. We’re not talking about a slap on the wrist.”
During Question Period on Tuesday, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet offered his party’s support “for all measures to put an end to sexual exploitation of young people.”
It isn’t the first time Visa and Mastercard have faced calls to cease providing payment services to Pornhub. In May, a group of signatories from women and childrens’-rights advocacy groups issued a similar letter calling on 10 credit-card companies—Visa and Mastercard included—to block payments to pornographic sites.
