Visa suspends credit card payments for ads on Pornhub in wake of lawsuit
Visa has suspended payments for ads on Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek after the credit card giant was accused by a woman of facilitating thꦚe dissemination of cജhild pornography on the website.
“We do not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity,” Al Kelly, Visa’s CEO, said in a statement issued Thursday.
The statement comes a week after a federal judge in California denied Visa’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Serena Fleites, who claims the p🍬ayments processor helped Pornhub and MindGeek profit from illegal con♏tent.
“Let me be clear: Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse,” Kelly said. “It is illegal, and Visa does not permit the use of our network for illegal activity.”
“Our rules explicitly and unequivocally prohibit the use of our products to pay for content that depicts nonconsensual sexual behavior or child sexual abuse,” the statement concluded.
A spokesperson for MindGeek told The Post earlier this week that Pornhub has banned child pornography as well as any maꦛterial that depicts sexual abuse of children.
US District Judge Cormac Carney said Visa continued to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite the fact that it may have known the💎 company🍒 monetized child pornography.
“It is simple,” Carney said i൲n his ruling on Friday.
“Visa made the decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant, despite its alleged knowledge that MindGeek monetized child porn. MindGeek made the decision to continue monetizing child porn, and t🍷here are enough facts pled to suggest that the latte𓃲r decision depended on the former.”
Visa called the ruling “disappointing,” saying it “mischaracterizes Visa’s role and its policies and practices.”
Fleites filed suit after she discovered that her boyfriend poste🦩d a video to Pornhub showing her in a sexually compromised state when she was in eighth grade.
The boyfriend uploaded the video 🍸♐to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent, .
By the time she discovered the video, it had 𝓀been vie𒉰wed on Pornhub more than 400,000 times.
Fleites alleges in court papers that it took MindGeek weeks to remove the explicit vid⛦eo after she initially flagged it.
By the time the video was finally taken down, it had been downloaded several times, generating more than 2.7 million vie꧃ws, the lawsuit alleges.
Fleites claimed in court papers that 🍎the discovery upended her life. She alleges that she developed an addiction to heroin and that she attempted suicide several times.
“Although Serena is now sober, the long-term effects of Pornhub’s wron♕gdoing continue to this day,” according to the lawsuit.
“The original Pornhub videos 🗹of Serena continue to be disseminated through other platforms, including on MindGeek affiliated sites and other pornography sites. Serena remains estranged from certain family members. Throughout various stages of the past five years she was homeless and lived in her car.”