PURCHASE, N.Y. — Mastercard announced new restrictions for adult content and the payment transactions required for premium content and subscription services. As YNOT reported yesterday, John Verdeschi, the company’s Senior VP of Franchise Customer Engagement & Performance, announced their “Specialty Merchant Registration requirements” will be expanded to “connect merchants to our network will need to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content.”

“You might ask, ‘Why now?’ In the past few years, the ability to upload content to the internet has become easier than ever,” wrote Verdeschi in a post on the Mastercard corporate blog. “All someone needs is a smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection. Now, our requirements address the risks associated with this activity. And that starts with strong content control measures and clear, unambiguous, and documented consent.”

According to these stricter standards, banks using the Mastercard payment network and handling transactions involving adult content now must require adult entertainment stakeholders to provide: documented age and identity verification for all people depicted and those uploading the content; content review process prior to publication; complaint resolution process that addresses illegal or nonconsensual content within seven business days; and an appeals process allowing for any person depicted to request their content be removed.

Free Speech Coalition (FSC) Communications Director Mike Stabile told YNOT that “we should work to keep CSAM and other illegal material offline, but these broad restrictions are likely to have a devastating impact on legal adult businesses and content creators.”

“Producers should and do hold model release and age-verification forms, but in the age of the internet, clips travel widely — from tube sites to Twitter — it’s unreasonable to think that every platform where an adult image appears has the ability — or the willingness — to verify it,” Stabile added. “Most would rather block it than develop the complex vetting systems needed.”

On Twitter, the #MasterCensors hashtag has been trending among industry personalities and adult content creators. Popular cam model and activist Mary Moody has been expressing her frustration with Mastercard’s new rules for adult content, calling the actions of the multinational company an homage to anti-porn and far-right religious conservative groups like NCOSE and TraffickingHub.

“Having major credit cards as an option for sales is an accessibility option for any business,” Moody told YNOT. “Fans unable to purchase content with a credit card simply won’t buy it. Religious anti-porn organizations pushing for MasterCard and Visa to ban sex workers know this and hope that we will come to Jesus by limiting our options. These organizations think the best way to end pornography is to starve sex workers and make us fear for our lives.”

Asked what she thought about the entire policy on a broad scale, Moody had some choice words to offer.

“This new policy does nothing to stop abuse or end CSAM,” she adds. “It does create onerous requirements for adult industry sites and sex workers that aren’t equally applied to vanilla sites and workers. Larger, established sites that feature professional content may already meet these requirements. Individual sex workers, their personal sites, smaller businesses, and sites that rely on immediate content shares or live streaming are going to suffer immediately. Not because they may potentially have non-consensual content, but because MasterCard has absolutely no idea how the industry works. If they do understand the industry, then they know full well they are screwing over millions deliberately.”

Adding to these concerns, Stabile said more mainstream safe-for-work platforms and content could face additional scrutiny in some instances.

“We don’t yet know how or when these will be enforced, and for whom,” he said, in reply to questions regarding the potential impact for safe-for-work (‘vanilla’) platforms like Twitch. “But we do see adult content, and adult workers, becoming a greater liability for vanilla platforms that host them.”

Laila Mickelwait, the organizer of the TraffickingHub movement backed by Exodus Cry ministries, applauded the announcement. She retweeted New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof, author of the sensationalist “Children of Pornhub” expose in December of 2020, featuring his applause for Mastercard’s business decision. After the release of Kristof’s controversial, one-sided column, the abjective Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist claimed victory in leading to a temporary ban on payment processing services for Pornhub and other MindGeek properties by Visa, Mastercard, and Discover. While the payment processors reverted to the permission of payments through these platforms, Mastercard’s latest action echoes the moves the company made four months ago with respect to Pornhub.

Adult content websites are faced with a multi-front crisis, with anti-porn sentiments coming from both the private industry and the political realms. In addition to Mastercard’s actions, several mainstream social media platforms (including the more ‘porn-friendly’ Twitter) have taken stances against certain types of content and have shuttered the accounts of models and content creators who are creating content that is both legal and consensually produced. Social media platforms normally serve as top-level marketing avenues for creators and models, via the sharing of link trees and landing pages that feature gateways to premium content. Social media is a crucial component to converting a follower into a subscriber. In addition to the payment restrictions brought on by payment processors, lawmakers are also targeting digital transactions as a means to erode Section 230 liability protections for interactive computer services platforms.

Among these legislative proposals is the SAFE TECH Act, which would add additional scrutiny to the exchange of digital goods and services by denying the liability shield for payments exchanged over platforms. As YNOT has previously noted, the SAFE TECH Act and describing how the proposed law would directly harm far more than illegal transactions and fraudulent advertisements as the bill is described to do by its sponsors, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

The Mastercard recent action could (and very likely will) serve as a justifying case study for lawmakers and anti-porn activists pleading for the passage of bills like the SAFE TECH Act, other restrictive Section 230 reforms, so-called social media accountability proposals, and proposals to restrict the constitutionally-protected production, sale, and consumption of consensual porn.

“MasterCard is trying to win PR points with this new policy because appealing to religious anti-porn crusader’s feelings is more important to them than stopping millions of marginalized workers from suffering. They are already suffering, and MasterCard is wholly to blame for it,” Moody said.

Talk about a clusterfuck.

Screw photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels