Pornhub, OnlyFans, and How Financial Institutions Are Aiming to Curb Sex Trafficking Online

Banks and credit card companies are on high alert.

Financial institutions have an essential role in preventing online sex trafficking, including the monetization of filmed underage sexual abuse, which is rampant on mainstream websites. Last year, Pornhub, the world’s most popular porn site with 47 billion visits per year and enough content that it would take 169 years to watch the videos uploaded in a single year, was globally exposed and condemned for enabling and profiting from mass sexual crime, including child rape and abuse, sex trafficking, and a spectrum of illegal image-based sexual abuse. In December of 2020, an explosive New York Times investigation revealed Pornhub as a site “infested” with the filmed criminal sexual abuse of victims. The spotlight for enabling this mega-sex trafficking operation was placed on the credit card companies whose services allow exploitation to remain profitable. Within days of the damning exposé, Mastercard confirmed the presence of illegal content on the site, including child pornography, and was the first to cut ties with Pornhub. Visa and Discover quickly followed suit. PayPal had already stopped doing business with the site in late 2019 after a Sunday Times investigation revealed dozens of illegal videos found on the site within minutes, some featuring children as young as 3 years old.  Subscribers, click here to read the full magazine. Not a subscriber? Click here to become a Patriot member today and receive access to The American Spectator in print and online! These moves by credit card companies to disengage with Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek were not done solely out of benevolence, but also self-protection. According to the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a company that knowingly benefits from a sex trafficking venture is liable to be sued. In the case of Visa, removing its services from Pornhub in 2020 was too little, too late. The company was aware of sex trafficking and child exploitation on the site long before the New York Times exposé, yet chos...