Porn on trial (The Critic Magazine)
Republished from The Critic.
Extract:
Storing “child porn” (child sexual abuse material or “CSAM”) for future re-uploading; maintaining the title and web data of a video depicting the sexual abuse of a toddler to draw traffic; anonymously smearing critics — these are just some of the appalling allegations that have been levelled in a newly-released court judgment in the United States against multinational conglomerate MindGeek.
The case and its related judgment serve as a carnival of misery for anyone who has the misfortune to read it, but a brief overview for those who haven’t: for several years, MindGeek and its subsidiary site Pornhub have been locked in battle with anti-sexual exploitation activists, experts and organisations over the site’s alleged involvement in the dissemination of illegal material.
This material ranges from videos and images depicting the sexual abuse of children, teenagers and adults to the non-consensual sharing of intimate images of its subjects (more colloquially known as “revenge porn”). The case at hand was brought by an immeasurably brave young woman called Serena Fleites, who was also one of the subjects of a New York Times expose on Pornhub in 2020. In her case, Fleites brought numerous causes of action against MindGeek, but perhaps most pertinently here, she also named Visa as a defendant.
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Fleites alleged that Visa not only profited from the processing of transactions of illegal and abusive content, but that it was aware that this was the nature of the content. Further, Fleites alleges that Visa ignored public outcry as well as its own due diligence processes and procedures to investigate whether its continued relationship with MindGeek was non-compliant with such processes and procedures.
In response to Fleites’s case for damages — which was brought partially under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act — Visa distanced itself from the harm suffered by Fleites, and from suggestions of involvement in the general profiteering from highly illegal content. The judgement is lengthy, but powerfully written and well-worth reading. The court refused (in part) to allow Visa to circumvent responsibility and culpability for its alleged involvement in profiteering from illegal, abusive material.
As well as giving credibility to charges against Visa, MindGeek and Pornhub, the judgement explores and ultimately rebukes the fundamental operational structure of the porn industry. It provides a window through which we can all understand just how incurably exploitative the industry is, whether knowingly or not.
The judgement states: “If not for its drive to maximise profit, why would MindGeek allow Plaintiff’s first video to be posted despite its title clearly indicating Plaintiff was well below 18 years old?” Further, “Visa urges that it has no involvement in the maintenance of MindGeek’s websites [ … ] Plaintiff’s [Fleites] claims against Visa are all based on an unsupported assumption that Visa could force MindGeek to operate differently [ … ] But Visa quite literally did force MindGeek to operate differently, and markedly so, at least for a time” (referring to a period in 2020 whereby Pornhub removed over 80 per cent of its content when Visa suspended MindGeek’s “merchant privileges”).