Name: Why Credit Card Companies Control the Fate of Online P*rn Sites
Uploaded: 2025-03-24T13:30:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Credit Card Companies Control the Fate of Online P*rn Sites' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Credit Card Companies Control the Fate of Online P*rn Sites' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-24. Transcript available.

And one of the things that was so important at this outset was we felt like,
you know,
this trafficking is a transactional crime. All of this is being done for money.
Like that's the
only thing that these companies care about. And in order to, you know, make a
difference here,
we have to hit them where it hurts. We have to go after the money. And so we
said, we have to go
after the credit cards to cut ties with Pornhub. And when the owner reached out,
he confirmed that.
He said, listen, the only thing they care about is money. If you go after the
credit cards,
that's the Achilles heel of Pornhub. So you're saying if Visa and MasterCard,
they will say we will not allow our credit cards to be used. That would be the
worst thing that could
ever happen to Pornhub. Yes. Because they, you know, they need those in order
to sell ads,
premium memberships, all of that. Going up through having all these meetings
with the credit card
companies, executives, trying to present evidence and evidence and more
evidence to them and saying,
listen, you have to stop monetizing this content because actually it's even
illegal to knowingly
benefit from trafficking in the United States. Right. So at that point, if they
know, if you
put the knowledge on them that they're benefiting from it, then that becomes a
crime against them.
Then they're knowingly benefiting from trafficking and trying to bring this to
them and saying,
listen, you have to stop. But they were resisting, right?
Why? Because it's so much money, you think? I think there's multiple reasons. I
think it's because
they feel like this is a slippery slope. If we do this here, we might have to
do it there.
Right. And they just don't want to take action unless they're forced to take
action. So they're
like, we're really concerned. This is so concerning. Thank you for bringing
this to us.
Give us more information, more information. I give more information. They want
more information.
Anyway, they're resisting, right? So Nick Kristof does this investigate. He
releases the children
of Pornhub. And one of the things he does in his article is he calls out the
credit card companies.
And when this is released, I mean, I couldn't believe the impact that it had.
It started to
like thousands of follow on articles. The pressure was on Justin Trudeau in
Canada was responding to
the article saying how horrific what was going on was Canadian parliament was
up in arms demanding an
investigation. And the pressure was on the credit card companies. And within
days of that article
being released, Visa, MasterCard, and Discover joined PayPal in cutting all
ties with Pornhub,
leaving them only with cryptocurrency as a payment option.
Incredible.
This was the worst thing that could happen to Pornhub. Okay. Right. And so-
They must have lost it.
In a panic. In an absolute panic. This is the worst thing that could happen to
them.
So they did basically the unthinkable for their business model, which relies on
massive amounts
of content because content is king for the Pornhub sites. You have to
understand this, that
it's about getting unrestricted, massive amounts of content so that they could
get picked up in
Google search results so that they can drive massive amounts of traffic so they
can sell all
those ad impressions and make hundreds of millions of dollars a year on free
porn. Okay.
Worst thing they could do is take content down from this site. But they started
to delete millions
of videos. They deleted 10 million videos and over 30 million images basically
in 24 hours
in what Financial Times called probably the biggest takedown of content in
internet history.
They deleted all of their unverified videos because they had no idea who was a
child and
like who was 16 and who was 18. Right.
Who was, uh, what was rough sex and what was rape? They had no idea what was
consensually
recorded and non-consensually uploaded. Right. And so they took down that much
content.
Cause they're worried about the money.
Yeah. They wanted to woo the credit card companies back as they said, okay, we
have to, we have
to do this. They basically deleted their site. Uh, they, uh, well, 80% of it at
the time.
Sadly, I found out that, so then there's global headlines, right? Hundreds of
headlines all
over the world. Visa, MasterCard, the big takedown. I found out, uh, an insider
came to me months
later and said, you don't know this, but two weeks after the credit card
companies disengaged
with Pornhub, they quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of Pornhub called
traffic junkie.
Cause they have their own ad arm. Right. And that's how they make most of their
money.
So business is going on as usual. And I said, Oh my God, it's like the worst
thing that I could
have ever. I can't believe that this is what happened. I said, how, what are we
going to do
now? Like how, how wouldn't a CEO of Visa or one of these companies be like,
yeah, we're just not
going to do this anymore. How would they, why wouldn't they just say we would
stop? This is bad.
This isn't good. You know, is at that point, is it because they're also worried
about free speech
and stuff like that? Do you think, or this is not about free speech? I mean, I
think, I think it has
to do with money as well, because one thing you have to know is like, these are
high risk
transactions. They charge more per transaction for high risk transactions,
which are porn transactions.
I see. So there's big money. So there's money, right? Um, and they went back.
And so it was
another two year battle to try to get them to finally disengage, which happened,
uh, because Serena
sued Pornhub, not only Pornhub, she sued its individual owners and its
executives. And she sued Visa
for monetizing her abuse. Wow. And she sued the hedge funds for funding the
whole enterprise.
Did she win? And so what happened was Visa lost their motion to dismiss the
case because they had filed a
motion to dismiss. They lost it. And at the same time, we were able to put the
pressure on publicly.
Bill Ackman was one of the heroes in this story. I mean, he knew the CEO of
MasterCard. And so he was
making phone calls. Yeah. That's Bill Ackman right there. So he got him and I
on CNBC Squawk Box and we
called out Al Kelly, who was the CEO of Visa for 17 minutes on the show. And
this was right when Visa
lost their motion to dismiss. So the pressure was on from multiple angles. And
a motion to dismiss is what?
So they say- Oh, they want to say dismiss the case. Dismiss the case. We're not
involved. Like this
had not, you know, nothing we could do about this. We're not part of this
problem. And the court says,
hold my gavel, brother. In a damning decision. And it wasn't just a decision.
It was like they,
the judge actually said that Visa gave Pornhub the very tool through which to
complete the crime
of benefiting from child trafficking. Like those were his words in his decision.
Yeah. And so the pressure was on. And then, so then Al Kelly said, he did kind
of an unprecedented
thing. He actually- Who is Al Kelly? He's the CEO of Visa.
Okay. So the CEO of Visa, Al Kelly, then- Then he says, okay, fine. We're going
to cut them off once
and for all. And he made a personal statement. He said, I'm a father and I, you
know, don't approve, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And so we're cutting off Pornhub. And then of course, MasterCard
quickly followed
Discover. Now they've lost it. Totally. The question then becomes, because Pornhub's
not alone,
right? I want everybody to understand that it's not like you go, okay, well, X
videos must be fine.
They're a free user generated porn site that was operating in a similar way of
not verifying agent
consent. And there's, you know, Nick Kristof did an investigation and found,
you know, reported on the
victims who were on X videos and there's X hamster and there's all of these X
and XX, right? And there's
others that operate in a similar way. And so the question is, well, how do we
stop this across
all of these sites? Right? And that goes back to the source of the problem is
not verifying agent
consent. We have to demand third-party agent consent verification for every
single person in every
single video that is uploaded to a user generated porn site. And when that
happens, we're going to make a
huge difference in stopping that illegal content from being uploaded. But that's
a huge task, right?
So it's not just governments who have to do this because this is an
international problem. These sites
operate internationally. So if the U.S. does that, well, they're still in
Canada and they're in, you know,
every country in the world. So the solution at scale becomes the credit card
companies implementing
that policy because we know they're highly motivated by money. And if Visa says
we don't do business with
user generated porn sites that don't verify the agent consent of every person,
every video,
well, all of these companies are going to comply and they're going to do it
quickly. So that's the
solution. So how do we, because you would think at this point, they would just
go on ahead and say
that because it's like, it's obviously the next right thing to do. Right. And
as in a moral sense,
it would feel like, well, a lot of companies don't operate from right. Business
doesn't have emotions.
Well, yeah. And it comes from pressure. Right. And so that's where I see the
litigation being
important where these survivors, dozens of survivors have sued the credit card
companies. Right. So now
they're facing some of it. Right. Right. So they're feeling that pressure. And
at some point
they go, listen, it's better business to just let it go. Implement this policy.
Just like we have
anti-money laundering policy. We're going to have anti-online sexual
exploitation policy. And we just
don't do business with user generated porn sites that don't verify agent
consent because it's too
risky for us. Right. Right. Yeah. It hits their wallet. Exactly. It's like big
pharma. It's like,
you know, litigation made a huge difference in reform in, in the pharmaceutical
industry. We saw it in
hedge fund insider trading cases when they had big litigation and criminal
prosecution and it forced
those changes to happen. So I think that could be, uh, that's where we're, that's
where you're hoping to get to
next. Yeah. Which credit companies are still accepting payments for pornography
websites? None. Oh, pornography
websites. Um, well, all of them except American Express. Okay. So American
Express is the only. Like they've never
been involved in online or like pornography. So American Express is the only.
Yeah. Credit card company that doesn't, will not allow its information to be
used on pornography
websites. Yeah. Period. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that that has to be the
position of
like the other credit card companies. No, but if they're not going to say that
we're not going to
verify things. Yeah. That, well, the, that's the easy route here is for them to
just say,
like, we have anti-money laundering policy. We have this anti-exploitation
policy policy and you have
to verify agent consent. If you want to do business with visa, that's it. Like,
and that will, that'll,
that'll take place instantly and globally. Like it'll apply everywhere.
Okay. So what could we say then to the companies? Like if we were to put out a
clip, it's like, Hey,
this is what right now credit card companies are allowing transactions on
pornography websites.
That are not verifying the agent consent. That are not verifying the age and
consent of.
Every individual in every single video. Every individual in every single video.
And they need to stop that. And they need to stop that right now. Yeah.
The only one who doesn't do it is American Express. Right. Cause they just have
like this blanket
policy against all of it. Cause they have a blanket policy.
Thank you.