How Mastercard is changing the adult space
(for better or worse)
In the last two years there have been some drastic regulation changes to the adult industry. But if you don’t work in the industry, then you might not know what they are. One of the largest regulation changes to hit the industry was the new Mastercard regulations. Before getting into what these regulations are, and how they impact the industry, it’s important to note why they occurred in the first place.
What sparked the regulations:
In December 2020 an article came out in the New York Times.The article exposed the vast amount of child abuse content on one of the large adult sites, and asked the overarching question of: ‘Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?
This point about who's profiting, then put a spotlight on payment processors after a lawsuit against the porn company, also claimed that these payment processors knowingly facilitated the companies ability to monetize illegal content. And so, these payment processors had to take some form of action to distance themselves. This is why on some sites one cannot use Visa or Mastercard.
What were Mastercards new regulations?
Mastercard set out with the objective: to avoid the use of illegal content online and protect vulnerable people.
Here are some examples of the new ‘rules’:
Companies must have the documentation of age and identity verification for people depicted in the content, and the people uploading the content.
Must implement a content review process prior to publication.
Must implement a complaint resolution process that addresses illegal or non-consensual content within seven business days.
I think that we can all agree that making the industry safer is important, and that these rules make sense, however, there is a bit more to it. Here are some of the industry concerns:
You have to bear in mind that it was a massive infrastructural change for most sites. Especially for younger sites that do not have the revenue, or the investment. Luckily, for Freyja this was never an issue as we had designed our site like this before the rules even came out.
This generated a large fear within the industry because companies were worried that they would be next to get kicked off Mastercard, which essentially is a one way ticket to financial issues. For a lot of adult companies, the frustration is that governments are not the ones making the laws about the industry, and so instead you have payment providers essentially ‘making laws’ in a manner which is not democratic.
For many the issue wasn’t the rules themselves, but rather the hypocrisy because there are many other companies in other industries spaces, such as social media, which should also be held to the same standards. However, because adult content is more ‘taboo’ they are the only industry that is held to this safety standard.
Nobody was consulted. If you are going to make an industry safer, then you should consult with people that actually work within that space to figure out the best course of action. However, this was not done.
When it comes to the regulations, not every adult company is following them, but not everyone is getting in trouble. As a site (Freyja) that is 100% Mastercard compliant, it becomes frustrating to then look at why other sites are not ‘getting the cut off’, like other sites did. So, you can’t help but think that the rules were a one-time ‘show’ for the media image of the payment processors.
Overall, it is important that we have regulations to make the industry safer. For instance, having KYC and consent verification for performers should be a requirement, and frankly, I’m surprised that before it wasn’t. However, one cannot help but feel as though these rules were done to help save their own media image based on the lack of enforcement of these rules on other site violators. Similarly, if they were so concerned with their objective to avoid illegal and harmful content, then why have the same regulations not been placed on other industry spaces such as social media. As an adult company you often feel isolated and not supported by banks, governments and investors. It would be great going forward to see more cooperative relationships between Mastercard/Visa & other payment processors to work with the industry as that is how you can make it safer, through a joint effort. Rather, than by isolation.