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Credit and Debit Card Executives Must End Their Companies' Involvement in Sexual Exploitation
In a New York Times article, which documented many survivors’ stories of their abuse being uploaded to Pornhub, Nicholas Kristof stated: “I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women."
This powerful statement comes on the heels of a joint letter by an international coalition of child safety and anti-sexual exploitation organizations and advocates—spearheaded by the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation (ICOSE)—calling on major credit card and payment processing companies to cut ties with Pornhub and the pornography industry.
These credit and debit card companies, like Discover, must stop processing payments for the pornography industry given its extensive promotion of nonconsensual content—including child sexual abuse, sex trafficking videos, rape, and more—and of content eroticizing sexual violence, incest, and racism.
We believe this decision would be in line with their corporate ethical commitment to processing legal purchases, and that refusing to aid human rights violations will have the side effect of enhancing the reputation of their businesses.
It is first vital to recognize that the pornography industry does not judge or verify consent in any videos on their site, let alone live webcam videos. Some sites, such as Pornhub, which is one of the largest and most mainstream pornography sites, do not require age verification for any person to upload pornographic videos—let alone any metric to measure consent. This inherently makes pornography websites a target for sex traffickers, child abusers, and others sharing predatory non-consensual videos. Further, it is impossible to assume the pornography industry is ever capable of producing a real metric to measure consent in any pornography on its site, aside from complaints from victims of non-consensually shared porn (which is insufficient since an estimated 1/25 Americans are victims of this kind of abuse and many never know about non-consensually-shared porn of themselves.)
Right now, on websites that these companies process payments for, there is pornography featuring themes including:
- incest
- homeless teens
- assaulting drunk women/girls
- racial degradation
- kidnapping
- forced sex (i.e. rape)
- and more.
These themes are damaging to worldwide culture because they eroticize and encourage violence against women and girls, rape, incest, racism, and more. Are these the themes any company or brand should be associated with, profiting from, or complicit with in any way?
It is for these reasons that an international group of passionate advocates are calling on these companies to stop processing payments for the pornography industry.
We need you to be one of them so that the volume is so loud that these executives and their companies have no choice but to listen to and address these human rights concerns.
Credit and Debit Card Executives Must End Their Companies' Involvement in Sexual Exploitation
In a New York Times article, which documented many survivors’ stories of their abuse being uploaded to Pornhub, Nicholas Kristof stated: “I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women."
This powerful statement comes on the heels of a joint letter by an international coalition of child safety and anti-sexual exploitation organizations and advocates—spearheaded by the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation (ICOSE)—calling on major credit card and payment processing companies to cut ties with Pornhub and the pornography industry.
These credit and debit card companies, like Discover, must stop processing payments for the pornography industry given its extensive promotion of nonconsensual content—including child sexual abuse, sex trafficking videos, rape, and more—and of content eroticizing sexual violence, incest, and racism.
We believe this decision would be in line with their corporate ethical commitment to processing legal purchases, and that refusing to aid human rights violations will have the side effect of enhancing the reputation of their businesses.
It is first vital to recognize that the pornography industry does not judge or verify consent in any videos on their site, let alone live webcam videos. Some sites, such as Pornhub, which is one of the largest and most mainstream pornography sites, do not require age verification for any person to upload pornographic videos—let alone any metric to measure consent. This inherently makes pornography websites a target for sex traffickers, child abusers, and others sharing predatory non-consensual videos. Further, it is impossible to assume the pornography industry is ever capable of producing a real metric to measure consent in any pornography on its site, aside from complaints from victims of non-consensually shared porn (which is insufficient since an estimated 1/25 Americans are victims of this kind of abuse and many never know about non-consensually-shared porn of themselves.)
Right now, on websites that these companies process payments for, there is pornography featuring themes including:
- incest
- homeless teens
- assaulting drunk women/girls
- racial degradation
- kidnapping
- forced sex (i.e. rape)
- and more.
These themes are damaging to worldwide culture because they eroticize and encourage violence against women and girls, rape, incest, racism, and more. Are these the themes any company or brand should be associated with, profiting from, or complicit with in any way?
It is for these reasons that an international group of passionate advocates are calling on these companies to stop processing payments for the pornography industry.
We need you to be one of them so that the volume is so loud that these executives and their companies have no choice but to listen to and address these human rights concerns.