Sorry - that tweet should read:
“Given the allegations of illegal activity, Visa is suspending Pornhub’s acceptance privileges pending the completion of our ongoing investigation. We are instructing the financial institutions who serve MindGeek to suspend processing of payments through the Visa network.”
Its very hard to tell what the impact will be. Of course its terrible for those who rely on pornhub for their income but it could also have a impact on its popularity. It depends on what they do in response. If they are forced or choose to remove all user uploaded videos (often stolen / copyright theft) it wont be such a great site any more. If we’re totally honest here their popularity isn’t from the performers or promo clips that’s on there. Its popularity comes entirely from shamelessly hosting stolen content while making money off it through their premium membership. They’ve always got away with what the rest of us can’t do. Killing of competition and producers.
This could go several ways:
Pornhub could be unaffected and just continue as they are if their revenues don’t depend too heavily on premium memberships and microtransactions. Personally I think they depend very heavily on processing, all that free stuff, hosting costs, staff… from running a tube myself I know how slim the margins are if you rely only on affiliate sales.
But it could also just blow over as Pornhub implements a few changes to uploading and adds some nicely worded rules that VISA / Mastercard feel is enough to cover their ass. The end effect is not much change. It’s seems to be what pornhub was hoping for, considering how they reacted earlier on in the week. But it seems Pornhub miscalculated VISA / Mastercard will to take action, perhaps they are not too big to fail after all…
The worst case scenario for Pornhub would be if without processing they can’t make enough money to pay their staff and hosting. It then becomes a downward spiral, where less income means they can do less to comply with any new regulations. This depends on how much cash they have put aside, how long they can stay going without processing payments, that’s assuming of course that they make a loss without it.
Worst case scenario for all of us is if this thing spreads to affect every site that uses Mastercard / VISA and the entire industry is dragged into the shit pornhub created. It could make it difficult for everyone to process payment and cause a massive die off of porn sites. I think that’s unlikely though because porn all together must account for a massive chunk of revenue to VISA and Mastercard.
Thinking about it and even if it would be a very difficult change for all of us, it would perhaps be better if there was no hardcore porn available for free. A world where porn went back to being something you have to pay to access, where the payment is also a way to keep minors out in most cases. It would eventually create a healthier industry with more money going back to producers, site owners and performers.
Unbelievable that in her thread of Tweets on the subject she promoted her book. That and using the language ‘rape tape’ doesn’t exactly endear her to me.
This seems to be another instance of a business model being unsustainable once reasonable expectations of moderation are applied.
This is usually the case with any large platform where user submitted content is the bedrock of growth and profitability. These companies wouldn’t exist (or they certainly wouldn’t have become the behemoths they are) if they had been forced to apply scalable moderation methods expected of every small forum and blog in the world.
So far it seems Tumblr is the only one to have fallen foul of the ramifications of the “too big to moderate” ethos, although that was driven by Apple, not a government agency or legislative effort. It’s not unreasonable to expect every Tube site to suffer the same fate when legal power is brought to bear, and this will likely extend to social media eventually. Facebook is going to be fending off a tsunami of regulators in the next ten years and it’s probably not going to win most of those battles.
I think it’s likely to come down to the question of whether authorities deem it reasonable to allow some risk in exchange for the perceived benefits to users. Social media sites like FB and Twitter have a much better chance to prove their worth than adult content sites, due to existing biases against adult entertainment.
I’m glad they’re taking this seriously at PH.
Well there’s further developments, one I did dear hoping for so soon. However, let’s see how it actually plays out and if they really are deleting all the user uploaded stuff:
Potentially… a very good thing for the rest of us.
Well I did a little test… If you go to the link below, you will find only content with blue tick… so uploaded by the verified model, or a studio and 2257 checked ect… There’s still a few pages i am seeing with unverified, I am assuming its just a cache issue or they are suspending the unverified in batches.
Since they live on the illegal and unverified content and then just try to monetize themselves off the unverified I suppose there might be a bit more cake for the rest of us… Also trying to imagine what removing millions of pages from SERPs will do to their rankings also 
Yes that’s what I’m thinking, at least in theory… I don’t trust them though. Removed content now says pending verification, so it might not be gone forever. And there’s still plenty of very suspiciously long videos on there.
Trying to stay optimistic on this one… I cant say I trust them, I see a lot of long videos from model accounts, but that makes sense as my understanding is they get a viewshare even on the free side of $X cents per short video and $XX cents for longer ones.
By example, when I looked at Sort by longest just a few days ago to check piracy there were about 50 pages of 200+ minute videos, now there is only 12 over 100 minutes.
In the shorter video bracket I see some full scenes, but all seem to be part of studios channels, so… so far I am counting it as a win, both as an affiliate and from speaking to fellow studios over the past few hours, future will only tell what happens next
The entire network of their sites, Xtube, Gaytube, for example, now offers videos only from verified partners. I guess their ranks will collapse dramatically, along with all the tube sites that used their content. Without being an exceptional optimist, I think this is excellent news for those of us who play the game honestly - owners, producers, partners.
I really hope so too, lets see how it develops.
I checked my XTube account this morning. It had some videos I uploaded YEARS ago. All but one were gone (with no explanation). I’m assuming the other will be gone in a day or so. Curiously I showed as a “verified user”, but when I went to the upload page it said I wasn’t the type of user that was allowed to upload.
So, yes, it’s their entire network. And yes, the videos are completely gone, not just pending verification.
Well that’s interesting. That’s a lot of videos on a lot of sites they removed then. It shows then just how much they rely on their transactions and how little sponsors get from them.
CNN featured them now too:
This is a tricky one for me. One one hand I am aghast that Visa and MC are stepping to fill the role on internet police and censors. We ran afoul of them already years ago with Peters Twins content (ironic that it remained up on PornHub the whole time but we are not allowed to screen it). On the other hand, this business has been built on the theft and misuse of others hard work in the knowledge that there was basically no policing.
Absolutely, their success is entirely based on others demise, always hiding behind user generated content rather than taking responsibility. The rest of us use whatever promo content we get from sponsors and know exactly where it comes from.
I personally thought it was quite ironic to be honest that one of the most noticeably pirated sites on pornhub in recent years was czech hunter, had all its videos pirated within hours of being released… Ended up getting acquired by Mindgeek… Now all that piracy has been cleared off the main tubes and the site is surely a lot more profitable, just under the new owner that facilitated the piracy by having it on one of its platforms in the first place.
Also as a sidenote… anyone noticed that gaytube has seemingly disappeared, tried it today it redirects to xtube
oh wow ok… yes same for me, it redirects. Why the hell would they just close it? it was very spammy obviously but still. Perhaps there was simply too much unverfied uploads to save?
BTW, this is affecting more than MindGeek’s tube sites. Right now the only way to buy a membership on their paysites is with MasterCard. Visa, JCB and Discover are all disabled. If you enter a credit card number for a Visa card it will tell you they can only take Mastercard.
Needless to say that’s going to affect ratios with AdultForce sites.
Now only verified members can upload videos to PH, which will prevent a lot of pirates from uploading full videos to PH. At least this is a good sign for sponsors and affiliates.
That’s bad news… thanks for pointing it out. It very much will hurt ratios. There used to be some sites on ccbill that only accepted MasterCard and they did much worse.
I also tested myself here in Europe and get the same, only MasterCard accepted now.
Sales seem unaffected at the moment though. However I don’t sell as much for Adult Force as I used too, their changes a while back made sales decline.