Mastercard Pursuing Allegations of CSAM Videos on Porn Hub

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 :wink:

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.

Latest update, Just got this to my email (not that I send any traffic to them via hub traffic) but considering they just cutting off any webmaster traffic rather than knocking the CPM rates to extremely low, that has to be some indication how much this is currently hurting them.

Also their ad network is currently only accepting Paxum

I didn’t realize Traffic Junky was one of theirs. So all their sites are affected. Suddenly a huge loss of income yet large running costs. They must be hurting badly. Question is how long they can survive without processing.

When asking rep about processing memberships on adult force only got the reply “we’re still processing”… yet obviously they are not.

And now some senators are proposing new legislation. The rules don’t sound so bad though, not quite as bad as the headline at least. Mainly targeting tube sites.

Wow … that smaks a lot like 2257 to me. It will certainly kill off or severely cripple sites that depend on any form of user uploaded content. I do agree that there are far more victims of non consenting images being uploaded than we may ever know about. I do find it interesting that the penalty for non-compliance is essentially a civil fine that goes to Victims assistance.

So do huge sites balance an income vs a fine? I think many will look to that as another cost of doing business.

Everyone said there was no way they’d shut down online gambling - too big to fail - and yet Visa and MC went after them. I’d say nothing is sacred right now, except “maybe” social media.

Even there, it will be interesting to see if the US anti-trust case against FB succeeds in forcing them to sell off What’s App and Insta.

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There are massive problems with the proposed law…

  • Require any user uploading a video to the platform also upload a signed consent form from every individual appearing in the video. What happens when those documents get hacked? Suddenly the legal names of performers are known.
  • Creating a database of individuals who have indicated they do not consent, which must be checked before new content can be uploaded to platforms. How can you have such a database and protect the identity of models? What names are in it – performer names or legal names? Are the two connected in any way? What if there are two people by the same name? Which means more information is needed, which further reveals details that will violate the privacy of models.
  • Requiring platforms hosting pornography to offer a 24-hour hotline staffed by the platform, for individuals who contact the hotline to request removal of a video that has been distributed without their consent. Requiring removal of flagged videos within two hours of such a request. How can a small site (e.g. a community site) manage to have a 24-hour hotline?
  • Requiring platforms to use software to block a video from being re-uploaded after its removal, which must be in place within six months of enactment of the legislations. Exactly how expensive is that software? How well does it work? If you re-encode the video, will the software stop the upload? The only systems I know of that work well involve an invisible watermark.
  • Requiring platforms hosting pornography to, within two weeks of enactment – Require any user uploading a video to the platform to verify their identiry[SIC] Two weeks for a significant software change?

All in all a horrible, and horribly impractical, set of rules.

A lot of clarification would be needed. Is there a chance something like this will go through?

It’s clearly worst for sites with user generated content / videos. But a couple of the rules are vague, would commercially produced videos count as well?