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07/12/2020

Allegations Against Pornhub To Be Investigated By Mastercard




Allegations Against Pornhub To Be Investigated By Mastercard
After a report was published in The New York Times of videos in the website Pornhub.com, that the authors of the report described to be of assaults on unconscious women and girls and many of the videos were of child abuse were , an investigation against the allegations against Pornhub will be initiated by Mastercard, the company has said.
 
The author of the column in The New York Times in which the allegations were made was Nicholas Kristof.
 
"The issue is not pornography but rape. Let's agree that promoting assaults on children or on anyone without consent is unconscionable," Kristof wrote in the column published on Friday.
 
The allegations have been denied by Pornhub.
 
“Any assertion that we allow CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue,” it said in a statement emailed to the media.
 
It was investigating the allegations with Pornhub’s parent MindGeek’s bank, Mastercard said in a statement issue on the issue to the media. “If the claims are substantiated, we will take immediate action,” Mastercard said.
 
After the publication of the newspaper column, a call on Mastercard and Visa Inc to temporarily withhold payments to Pornhub was given by billionaire investor Bill Ackman. A call to take action on the website has also been given by Ackman to American Express Co even though the website does not accepts the company’s cards.
 
There were no comments on the issue available from Visa.
 
A globally applicable policy for a long time is implemented by American Express according to which its cards cannot be used for making payments on digital adult content websites, the company said.
 
Posting of videos before being reviewed and checked by a monitor on porn sites and until such time that the monitors are able to verify the and consent of participants in such videos, should be made illegal, Ackman suggested.
 
In addition to having installed automated detection technologies, a large team of human moderators who review “every single upload” physically themselves has been created by it, Pornhub said in its response to the allegations. The company however did not disclose how many human were there in the review team set up by it.
 
Reactions from politicians including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were also drawn by the column published in The New York Times. In order to address the issues raised in the column, his government was working with police and security officials, Trudeau said.
 
A federal right to sue for every person “coerced or trafficked or exploited by sites like Pornhub” will be created by the introduction of a legislation by him, United States Senator Josh Hawley said in response to the issue and the column.
 
(Source:www.moneycontrol.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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