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If you want to understand why this happened, read this recent court decision: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.823614/gov.uscourts.cacd

If you want to understand why this happened, read this recent court decision: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.823614/gov.uscourts.cacd.823614.166.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.82... Basically, a court recently ruled that, since Visa is processing payments for ad purchases on Pornhub, Visa is a co-conspirator on all sex trafficking and child porn that Pornhub is involved with. Apparently Pornhub merely being alleged to have engaged in those activities is sufficient knowledge to constitute a "meeting of the minds" for Visa to become a participant in those activities. (As you might imagine, I vehemently disagree with that ruling. But as it's the ruling that stands, it's the situation that Visa finds itself in, and were I in Visa's shoes, I'd do exactly the same thing they're doing now. They really don't want to be a part of this--and they really shouldn't be a part of this, and dumping Pornhub's ad purchases is the fastest route they can take to not be a part of this, as problematic as it is.)

savant_penguin 4y ago
That's an interesting take. Would other companies that support pornhub/across in any way also be considered participants? Water supply/electricity/ internet providers/whoever sells them dildos/food
- happyopossum 4y ago
  Payments are a pretty specific aspect of trafficking, and while it's feasible some of those other areas you mention could be problematic, Visa has to be much more worried than the caterer.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  The argument specifically relies on the financial processing role: > MindGeek is being sued for knowingly monetizing child porn. Visa’s act of continuing to recognize MindGeek as a merchant is directly linked to MindGeek’s criminal act, as Visa’s act served to keep open the means through which MindGeek completed its criminal act knowing that that criminal act was being committed. At this early stage of the proceedings, before Plaintiff has had any discovery from which to derive Visa’s state of mind, the Court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn from the very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means to do so and knew MindGeek was indeed doing so. Put yet another way, Visa is not alleged to have simply created an incentive to commit a crime, it is alleged to have knowingly provided the tool used to complete a crime.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Wouldn't a crime and court ruling need to occur before Visa is of "knowing" status?
- TheDong 4y ago
  I think a more interesting analogy than water/electricity would be storage. Selling child porn has a special place in the law in a way that "feeding suspected CP criminals" does not. But storing is also special. Storing child porn is very illegal, so how far does that extend? Does AWS renting an EC2 instance to pornhub, knowing pornhub may store CP on it, mean AWS is complicit in storing child porn? Does Western Digital selling an SSD to pornhub for their datacenter make WD complicit in storing child porn? Does the data-center that leases them a server become complicit in storing and distributing CP?
  - knaik94 4y ago
    That analogy breaks down when the idea of encryption is considered. AWS has end to end encryption for customer data in motion, and optionally at rest. Pornhub is the only party that has absolute control and access of the data. The data centers are not at fault any more than the government is, for owning a road, when someone driving a tesla car in autopilot causes a crash. In this analogy, Visa is in the same position as a power plant that provides electricity for Tesla cars. I believe Visa should not be held legally accountable for the lack of action on Mindgeek/Pornhub in taking down and blocking reuploads of reported CSAM. However the issue is that Visa themselves have chosen to be a moderator of what content is allowed by its customers, regardless of the actual legality of the content. They do it indirectly by accepting and rejecting customers based on these guidelines that are not in line with what is or isn't allowed by law. Based on a shallow reading of the court documents, Visa made essentially the same argument, that it stands an independent of the decisions of Mindgeek and those who uploaded the CSAM. The counter is the idea that Visa is at fault for giving Mindgeek/Pornhub/Uploaders of CSAM a platform to make money in the first place. That was a decision made by Visa. The fact that Visa already stopped being a payment processor for Pornhub/Mindgeek once in 2020 due to a NYT article about CSM shows that Visa was aware of and had control over how strictly Mindgeek/Pornhub polices the uploads for CSAM. The case isn't about the existence of CSAM on Pornhub either, it's specifically calling out how Visa and Mindgeek has already profited from traffic generated by CSAM hosted on Pornhub. In my analogy, it would be a power plant knowing the electricity they provide will be used in Tesla cars used by criminals to rob places. Tesla, in this example, knowingly selling cars that they know will be used for robberies and not doing anything about it. Tesla cars can't run without electricity, and the power plant makes money from selling the electricity to a group they know will use it up faster than the general driver. Electricity and transportation is a regulated utility. I wonder if this case would not have a legal standing if net neutrality existed and a counter was made by Visa that it treats Mindgeek like any other media content provider and won't reject customers it provides services to, because it doesn't differentiate based on the specifics of the data. The website owners would still be responsible for host CSAM in that situation. Visa could potentially argue no joint understanding if net neutrality existed. Right now it's in contention because Visa has already shown it rejects and accepts customers based on their own rules about what kind of data is being served by its customers. Visa's previous action to stop and then restart providing a platform to Mindgeek/Pornhub, after they removed unverified content, shows a clear understanding of what kind of media is served. By re-accepting them as a merchant, Visa opened itself up to being a beneficiary and conspirator in Pornhub making money from CSAM, by being the company that provides a way for Mindgeek to make money. Not from pornhub directly but by being a payment processor for the advertising arm of Mindgeek. The specific issue is making money from CSAM, not the existence of CSAM.
- imperio59 4y ago
  These utilities likely have laws that shield them from liability for these things, otherwise every illegal grow-op would cause the power company to be criminally liable for having supplied power to the grower's house and that makes no sense. In this case Visa knows full well what they are enabling, by allowing payments to be processed on PH, especially given the volume of transactions, there's no way they don't know what they are supporting.
krn 4y ago
I have two completely different takes on this. On one hand, if a business generating almost $500M in revenue per year[1] is doing something illegal, it shouldn't be allowed to operate. Simple as that. If it is allowed to operate, then it should have access to the same payment methods as any other business. On another hand, if I belonged to a group of people who believe that such companies shouldn't exist[2] and had no way of getting them banned completely, that's exactly what I would try to do: force their biggest business partners to cut ties with them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek [2] https://exoduscry.com/ https://exoduscry.com/
- colechristensen 4y ago
  I think a payment processor has some – but not much – responsibility for the transactions they enable. But you're right in that if a thing is illegal, it should be targeted directly and not by making private companies responsible for defining and enforcing "law".
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Do you think there could be situations where they should deny processing payments over moral/political/ideological objections?
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      I would were I to manage a payment company.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        I'd want to, but not at the expense of people's freedoms, same as how I wouldn't censor things I didn't like if I were a bookseller or an ISP. If I thought they were involved in something illegal I'd turn the info over to the cops to investigate (I'm not HSBC!), but I'd just have to accept that people are going to do things I don't care for. There are plenty of companies I don't do business with now because I can't support them or what they stand for, but I have that luxury because I don't run a company that is (for some reason) allowed to insert itself in between people's private lawful transactions. I've got no business dictating what other people can or can't spend their money on.
imperio59 4y ago
This is a great decision to fight human sex trafficking and child pornography. Pornography is a giant societal scourge which funds a ton of human misery and social problems and anything we can do to make it harder for these businesses to operate is great news IMO.
yorwba 4y ago
Visa has not been found guilty of anything in this case yet. The court merely didn't fully grant their motion to dismiss. That only establishes that Visa is actually being accused of something illegal, i.e. Pornhub allegedly knowingly profiting from child porn and Visa allegedly providing payment services to Pornhub while allegedly knowing that Pornhub was using those payment services to profit from child porn (allegedly) would make Visa a participant in the alleged crime, if those allegiations turn out to be true. Hence Visa is a defendant in the court case where the truth of the allegiations will then be debated. That's why the document you linked uses the word "allegedly" so often.
jjav 4y ago
These are the scenarios to keep in mind whenever people promote cashless societies. Every transaction that needs to go through a gatekeeper means there is a gate that might be closed on you. Only cash is able to protect the ability to do private transactions withouth any possibility of external dependencies or interference.
knaik94 4y ago
The complexity in this situation comes from the fact that Visa rejected Pornhub as a merchant in 2020 due to the same issue, and after Pornhub removed millions of unverified videos, Visa resumed working with the advertising arm of them. Although never officially said, it is clear what the reasoning was for removing the content.
stefantalpalaru 4y ago
treeman79 4y ago
Meanwhile Netflix is hosting soft core child porn. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-texas-cuties-dispute-1235107850/amp/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/net...
devwastaken 4y ago
Prime example of "think of the children" laws giving judges the power to legislate from the bench. The closer we try to achieve the fantasy of ultimate safety we destroy freedom in the process, and nobody was protected.

savant_penguin 4y ago

That's an interesting take. Would other companies that support pornhub/across in any way also be considered participants? Water supply/electricity/ internet providers/whoever sells them dildos/food

happyopossum 4y ago
Payments are a pretty specific aspect of trafficking, and while it's feasible some of those other areas you mention could be problematic, Visa has to be much more worried than the caterer.
jcranmer 4y ago
The argument specifically relies on the financial processing role: > MindGeek is being sued for knowingly monetizing child porn. Visa’s act of continuing to recognize MindGeek as a merchant is directly linked to MindGeek’s criminal act, as Visa’s act served to keep open the means through which MindGeek completed its criminal act knowing that that criminal act was being committed. At this early stage of the proceedings, before Plaintiff has had any discovery from which to derive Visa’s state of mind, the Court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn from the very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means to do so and knew MindGeek was indeed doing so. Put yet another way, Visa is not alleged to have simply created an incentive to commit a crime, it is alleged to have knowingly provided the tool used to complete a crime.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Wouldn't a crime and court ruling need to occur before Visa is of "knowing" status?
TheDong 4y ago
I think a more interesting analogy than water/electricity would be storage. Selling child porn has a special place in the law in a way that "feeding suspected CP criminals" does not. But storing is also special. Storing child porn is very illegal, so how far does that extend? Does AWS renting an EC2 instance to pornhub, knowing pornhub may store CP on it, mean AWS is complicit in storing child porn? Does Western Digital selling an SSD to pornhub for their datacenter make WD complicit in storing child porn? Does the data-center that leases them a server become complicit in storing and distributing CP?
- knaik94 4y ago
  That analogy breaks down when the idea of encryption is considered. AWS has end to end encryption for customer data in motion, and optionally at rest. Pornhub is the only party that has absolute control and access of the data. The data centers are not at fault any more than the government is, for owning a road, when someone driving a tesla car in autopilot causes a crash. In this analogy, Visa is in the same position as a power plant that provides electricity for Tesla cars. I believe Visa should not be held legally accountable for the lack of action on Mindgeek/Pornhub in taking down and blocking reuploads of reported CSAM. However the issue is that Visa themselves have chosen to be a moderator of what content is allowed by its customers, regardless of the actual legality of the content. They do it indirectly by accepting and rejecting customers based on these guidelines that are not in line with what is or isn't allowed by law. Based on a shallow reading of the court documents, Visa made essentially the same argument, that it stands an independent of the decisions of Mindgeek and those who uploaded the CSAM. The counter is the idea that Visa is at fault for giving Mindgeek/Pornhub/Uploaders of CSAM a platform to make money in the first place. That was a decision made by Visa. The fact that Visa already stopped being a payment processor for Pornhub/Mindgeek once in 2020 due to a NYT article about CSM shows that Visa was aware of and had control over how strictly Mindgeek/Pornhub polices the uploads for CSAM. The case isn't about the existence of CSAM on Pornhub either, it's specifically calling out how Visa and Mindgeek has already profited from traffic generated by CSAM hosted on Pornhub. In my analogy, it would be a power plant knowing the electricity they provide will be used in Tesla cars used by criminals to rob places. Tesla, in this example, knowingly selling cars that they know will be used for robberies and not doing anything about it. Tesla cars can't run without electricity, and the power plant makes money from selling the electricity to a group they know will use it up faster than the general driver. Electricity and transportation is a regulated utility. I wonder if this case would not have a legal standing if net neutrality existed and a counter was made by Visa that it treats Mindgeek like any other media content provider and won't reject customers it provides services to, because it doesn't differentiate based on the specifics of the data. The website owners would still be responsible for host CSAM in that situation. Visa could potentially argue no joint understanding if net neutrality existed. Right now it's in contention because Visa has already shown it rejects and accepts customers based on their own rules about what kind of data is being served by its customers. Visa's previous action to stop and then restart providing a platform to Mindgeek/Pornhub, after they removed unverified content, shows a clear understanding of what kind of media is served. By re-accepting them as a merchant, Visa opened itself up to being a beneficiary and conspirator in Pornhub making money from CSAM, by being the company that provides a way for Mindgeek to make money. Not from pornhub directly but by being a payment processor for the advertising arm of Mindgeek. The specific issue is making money from CSAM, not the existence of CSAM.
imperio59 4y ago
These utilities likely have laws that shield them from liability for these things, otherwise every illegal grow-op would cause the power company to be criminally liable for having supplied power to the grower's house and that makes no sense. In this case Visa knows full well what they are enabling, by allowing payments to be processed on PH, especially given the volume of transactions, there's no way they don't know what they are supporting.

krn 4y ago

I have two completely different takes on this. On one hand, if a business generating almost $500M in revenue per year[1] is doing something illegal, it shouldn't be allowed to operate. Simple as that. If it is allowed to operate, then it should have access to the same payment methods as any other business. On another hand, if I belonged to a group of people who believe that such companies shouldn't exist[2] and had no way of getting them banned completely, that's exactly what I would try to do: force their biggest business partners to cut ties with them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek [2] https://exoduscry.com/ https://exoduscry.com/

colechristensen 4y ago
I think a payment processor has some – but not much – responsibility for the transactions they enable. But you're right in that if a thing is illegal, it should be targeted directly and not by making private companies responsible for defining and enforcing "law".
- autoexec 4y ago
  Do you think there could be situations where they should deny processing payments over moral/political/ideological objections?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    I would were I to manage a payment company.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      I'd want to, but not at the expense of people's freedoms, same as how I wouldn't censor things I didn't like if I were a bookseller or an ISP. If I thought they were involved in something illegal I'd turn the info over to the cops to investigate (I'm not HSBC!), but I'd just have to accept that people are going to do things I don't care for. There are plenty of companies I don't do business with now because I can't support them or what they stand for, but I have that luxury because I don't run a company that is (for some reason) allowed to insert itself in between people's private lawful transactions. I've got no business dictating what other people can or can't spend their money on.

imperio59 4y ago

This is a great decision to fight human sex trafficking and child pornography. Pornography is a giant societal scourge which funds a ton of human misery and social problems and anything we can do to make it harder for these businesses to operate is great news IMO.

yorwba 4y ago

Visa has not been found guilty of anything in this case yet. The court merely didn't fully grant their motion to dismiss. That only establishes that Visa is actually being accused of something illegal, i.e. Pornhub allegedly knowingly profiting from child porn and Visa allegedly providing payment services to Pornhub while allegedly knowing that Pornhub was using those payment services to profit from child porn (allegedly) would make Visa a participant in the alleged crime, if those allegiations turn out to be true. Hence Visa is a defendant in the court case where the truth of the allegiations will then be debated. That's why the document you linked uses the word "allegedly" so often.

jjav 4y ago

These are the scenarios to keep in mind whenever people promote cashless societies. Every transaction that needs to go through a gatekeeper means there is a gate that might be closed on you. Only cash is able to protect the ability to do private transactions withouth any possibility of external dependencies or interference.

knaik94 4y ago

The complexity in this situation comes from the fact that Visa rejected Pornhub as a merchant in 2020 due to the same issue, and after Pornhub removed millions of unverified videos, Visa resumed working with the advertising arm of them. Although never officially said, it is clear what the reasoning was for removing the content.

stefantalpalaru 4y ago

treeman79 4y ago

Meanwhile Netflix is hosting soft core child porn. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-texas-cuties-dispute-1235107850/amp/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/net...

devwastaken 4y ago

Prime example of "think of the children" laws giving judges the power to legislate from the bench. The closer we try to achieve the fantasy of ultimate safety we destroy freedom in the process, and nobody was protected.