Speaker 1: Pushkin. As you'll know by now, we made a series
Speaker 1: to investigate where power lies in the porn industry. This episode,
Speaker 1: like all the others, contains adult themes, including references to
Speaker 1: disturbing and illegal content. Around two years ago, I discovered
Speaker 1: that the world's biggest porn company had a secret owner,
Speaker 1: a man who lived like a shadow for nearly a decade.
Speaker 1: Finding him turned out to be my gateway into the
Speaker 1: maze of the pornography business. The discovery that set us
Speaker 1: off to report on four decades of breakneck change in
Speaker 1: the industry, and when you boil it down, each era
Speaker 1: involves money moving from one wealthy pornographer to another. But
Speaker 1: today thanks are different. With platforms such as Only Fans,
Speaker 1: it has never been easier for performers to shoot content
Speaker 1: on their own terms and sell it straight to fans
Speaker 1: on demand, which yes, equals more money for them, So
Speaker 1: all good, right, Not so fast. I specialize mostly in
Speaker 1: fetish stuff, so financial domination just bitchy braddy stuff. That's
Speaker 1: Ali Knox. She's creative and bright, like many performers we've
Speaker 1: met in the series, and to make a living, she
Speaker 1: hasn't just relied on being a Dominatrix. She has carved
Speaker 1: out other personas too, thank you for being here playing
Speaker 1: with me today, So I thought I tease you a
Speaker 1: little today, to play a little bit. Fans also love
Speaker 1: to watch Alie smoke weed. Would she buys legally at
Speaker 1: her local dispensary in Las Vegas. She could make her
Speaker 1: own videos smoking weed, and she had platforms where she
Speaker 1: could sell them. In her words, she was sovereign and
Speaker 1: when we say her, fans loved it. Ali can make
Speaker 1: around a thousand dollars a month reselling mostly old videos
Speaker 1: of her getting stoned, or she could until payments companies
Speaker 1: got cold feet. A few months ago, probably January February.
Speaker 1: I started noticing that my videos were being rejected. So
Speaker 1: if I would upload something, the platform would say, no,
Speaker 1: you can't have this, you had drugs in it, or
Speaker 1: you had smoking. We don't allow this anymore, or you
Speaker 1: violated the terms and why. It took her quite a
Speaker 1: lot of digging around, but in the end, one of
Speaker 1: the platforms she used most got back to her. They
Speaker 1: were scared of losing access to the big credit card networks.
Speaker 1: I can't put any videos of me smoking weed on
Speaker 1: the internet any or MasterCard has come through and said
Speaker 1: that there can be no drug use, even though again
Speaker 1: it's legal. This might not sound like such a big deal.
Speaker 1: Portant performers have for years not been allowed to drink
Speaker 1: alcohol in their films. This was surely just another one
Speaker 1: of those rules, a way to tighten up standards and
Speaker 1: protect people on set. But for Ali, losing a big
Speaker 1: chunk of her livelihood didn't feel like added security. So
Speaker 1: now if I can't do that, I gotta go find
Speaker 1: where I'm going to make that thousand dollars. Because my
Speaker 1: mortgage hasn't changed, my car payments haven't changed. So am
Speaker 1: I going to have to go to the street? Am
Speaker 1: I going to have to escort? Am I still going
Speaker 1: to have to start crossing on my boundaries? And all
Speaker 1: of those things happened when credit card processing fucks with
Speaker 1: our income. What's so odd about Ali's situation is that
Speaker 1: it comes after she found a degree of independence. She
Speaker 1: could make and sell her own content just as long
Speaker 1: as she had a payment channel. I had no idea
Speaker 1: when I got in the industry that my biggest, my
Speaker 1: biggest hurdle was going to be like how do I
Speaker 1: get paid? I thought I was going to meet a
Speaker 1: crazy agent or I was going to be unsafe on
Speaker 1: a porn set, all the things that people tell you,
Speaker 1: I never knew that my biggest risk was going to
Speaker 1: be how I can pay my bills. She is trying
Speaker 1: to use crypto, but it's tough. She first has to
Speaker 1: convince people to use it, which can take days, then
Speaker 1: arrange for the payment, then wait fifteen minutes or so
Speaker 1: to confirm the transaction. It's far from ideal for impulse purchases.
Speaker 1: And this is what Ali Knox has in common with
Speaker 1: the biggest porn companies in the world. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're the owner of porn Hub or one woman enterprise.
Speaker 1: The Visa and MasterCard networks can hobble your business. Payment companies,
Speaker 1: in the end set the limits of how any porn
Speaker 1: business can make money. So who are the people taking
Speaker 1: these kinds of decisions? Who decides what everybody from Alley
Speaker 1: to the owners of the biggest porn sites in the
Speaker 1: world can put on the Internet. In our final episode,
Speaker 1: we pull back the curtain and meet the real rulers
Speaker 1: of porn. I'm Patricia Nelson, I'm Alex Barker from Pushkin
Speaker 1: Industries and the Financial Times. This is Hot Money Act
Speaker 1: one the Windowless Room. In previous episodes, we explained Visa
Speaker 1: and master Card were powerful enough to cripple Pornhub and
Speaker 1: mind Geek, and how payment networks, day by day influence
Speaker 1: what can be made on a commercial porn set. The
Speaker 1: real mystery to us was how did they get into
Speaker 1: a position like this. It's not like these payment companies
Speaker 1: want to be seen as pawn regulators. They didn't ask
Speaker 1: for the job, and they don't like talking about it.
Speaker 1: Both companies declined to do an interview with us, but
Speaker 1: we did manage to track down two guys who used
Speaker 1: to be on the inside. Two guys who between them,
Speaker 1: spent a total of thirty years at Visa. First meet
Speaker 1: a dapper suite called Stanley Skogland I was the enforcer
Speaker 1: of Visas rules for a number of years. Stanley In
Speaker 1: left Visa around a decade ago, but he witnessed the
Speaker 1: crucial period for our story, the moment that Visa and
Speaker 1: master Card became the reluctant rulers of porn land. How
Speaker 1: step by step the companies waded into porn regulation. It
Speaker 1: started with the explosion of the Internet. Payments suddenly went
Speaker 1: from in person transactions to virtual ones. They relied on trust,
Speaker 1: on everybody playing by the rules, and in the early days,
Speaker 1: pawn was the big test. It wasn't just the credit
Speaker 1: card scammers. People would pay for pawn and then if
Speaker 1: their partner found the credit card bill, a lot of
Speaker 1: them were denial knowledge and demand a refund. Porn was
Speaker 1: a hot topic, not from a moral point of view,
Speaker 1: but because it was so desirable. But also people didn't
Speaker 1: want to get caught using pornography. That's why it became
Speaker 1: a big thing, you know, from a fraud perspective. So
Speaker 1: the banks then took that to VA said you have
Speaker 1: to do something about this. This has to stop because
Speaker 1: we're inundated. In the early two thousands, Stanley reckons porn
Speaker 1: made up roughly ten to fifteen percent Visa's online transaction volumes.
Speaker 1: It was too big to ignore, and along with the fraud,
Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard realized they had to work out ways
Speaker 1: to deal with content too, the really bad stuff like
Speaker 1: videos of child abuse. For some reason, those people who
Speaker 1: are interested in that, they found the Internet a very
Speaker 1: useful place very early on. Unfortunately, it would always be clandestine,
Speaker 1: it would never be obviously child pawn, you know, inc
Speaker 1: come here and buy your images. So it was quite deceptive.
Speaker 1: I would say. It meant VISA had to build up
Speaker 1: its intelligence, find some way to track the Internet and
Speaker 1: the site selling pawn. But who was going to do
Speaker 1: that well? In the mid nineties, the man in charge
Speaker 1: of risk at VISA was a well regarded former FBI
Speaker 1: agent called Dick Held. And no, Dick Held wasn't his
Speaker 1: cover name. Dick Held really was the guy who started
Speaker 1: to figure out how to regulate Internet porn. There was
Speaker 1: no obvious solution. Visa's initial idea was just to set
Speaker 1: up a special porn monitoring team worked from a windowless
Speaker 1: room deep inside Visa's headquarters in the San Francisco Bay area.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get in the room? And this is
Speaker 1: where we want to introduce VISA guy number two, Kevin Smith.
Speaker 1: You heard from him in an earlier episode. He's a
Speaker 1: payments expert and Kevin loves payments. His face lights up
Speaker 1: when talking about pin codes and zip zap machines, the
Speaker 1: things that would take imprints of credit cards in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. For seventeen years, Kevin worked her Visa, often
Speaker 1: handling issues related to high risk merchants, in other words,
Speaker 1: pawn and that's how he knew about the windowless room.
Speaker 1: It was this strange thing. It was. Yes, everyone knew
Speaker 1: of it, but it was it wasn't clandestine's secret. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't talked about. I mean, it's if you look
Speaker 1: at it in hindsight, it just didn't sound right that
Speaker 1: Visa actually had this group of people that were manually
Speaker 1: going out there trying to find violations and get them
Speaker 1: shut down. I mean, it's a horrible job, incredibly laborious
Speaker 1: and manual and probably highly ineffective, which is why you
Speaker 1: needed to find a more technical solution to address it quickly.
Speaker 1: By the end of the nineties, Visa shut down the
Speaker 1: pawn room. They pretty quickly realized that way madness lies.
Speaker 1: They knew they could never effectively screen all the horrors
Speaker 1: of the Internet, and they realized there was a much
Speaker 1: better option. They could delegate. They could outsource spying on
Speaker 1: porn to somebody else and payment system the banks and
Speaker 1: billers and service providers, and the Visa and MasterCard networks.
Speaker 1: But to outsource anything, Visa needed rules for others to apply,
Speaker 1: and when you're a global business on an issue like pawn.
Speaker 1: That's easier said than done. If you look at it
Speaker 1: a child pornography. Everyone agrees that it's horrible, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to be associated with it. But actually there are many
Speaker 1: countries around the world that don't actually have any legislation
Speaker 1: that says, in this jurisdiction child pornography is illegal. For
Speaker 1: a company like Visa operating across the globe, even defining
Speaker 1: what is outright illegal and definitely shouldn't be processed can
Speaker 1: be tricky. Visa's main regulations run to something like nine
Speaker 1: hundred pages. Pawn is a tiny, tiny fraction of that,
Speaker 1: but it played a special role in how the rules developed.
Speaker 1: Pawn was one of the first areas where card companies
Speaker 1: built an enforcement system to manage risky online business. When
Speaker 1: Visa and master Cards started to clamp down in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, one adult payments veteran told us it
Speaker 1: was like the sheriff coming to Pawntown. Real regulation, registration rules,
Speaker 1: supervision requirements, even find The unique nature of porn also
Speaker 1: made Visa and master Card deviate from a cherished principle.
Speaker 1: These payment networks succeed by being everywhere, and they can
Speaker 1: only do that by supporting all lawful commerce without taking
Speaker 1: immoral stance. Neutrality is good for business. Porn was the exception.
Speaker 1: In the two thousands, Visa decided that since their brands
Speaker 1: gave porn sides credibility helping consumers trust them, they couldn't
Speaker 1: ignore what the porn sides were selling, even if it
Speaker 1: was strictly legal. MasterCard took a similar approach. This is
Speaker 1: Stanley Skogland. Again, those decisions we took, they were never
Speaker 1: taken lightly, because you know, Visa cannot be a police
Speaker 1: man of the world trying to say you can buy this,
Speaker 1: but you can't buy that. You know, you can see
Speaker 1: how that could go wrong quite quickly, but especially in
Speaker 1: these instances where it was violence, where it was borderline
Speaker 1: underage kind of simulated rape. So there were areas where
Speaker 1: the legality of it wasn't necessarily what made Visa take action.
Speaker 1: This is all encapsulated and Visa Rule one point three
Speaker 1: point three point four a ban on selling images that
Speaker 1: are illegal in most parts of the world, like beastiality
Speaker 1: or non consensual mutilation, but also on top of that,
Speaker 1: a much broader catch all clause brand protect literally a
Speaker 1: ban on anything that might bring Visa into disrepute, and
Speaker 1: out of these decisions emerged a system for keeping pawn
Speaker 1: in check, the apparatus of control we see today in
Speaker 1: the pawn world. This was our takeaway, but we wanted
Speaker 1: to put it to people who had seen the system
Speaker 1: from the inside, so we asked Kevin straight up, the
Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard ruled the pawn industry, probably, yes, And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is that there are there are
Speaker 1: some significant names in the industry, and they are incredibly influential,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, that they are
Speaker 1: influential over their own content. Visa MasterCard cut across all
Speaker 1: of these, and yes, perversely, Visa MasterCard invertently has become
Speaker 1: the semi regulator controller of this industry. Visa and MasterCard
Speaker 1: use their direct power with restraint, but they ultimately oversee
Speaker 1: the card networks, the networks that create that messy thicket
Speaker 1: of rules and best practice, codes that left Alie Knox
Speaker 1: unable to sell videos of her smoking weed Will Naked,
Speaker 1: and the ones that stopped Stoya, the performer and author
Speaker 1: we've heard from a few times in this series, from
Speaker 1: working when she is on her period, or even telling
Speaker 1: her fans that she is whoever is the arbiter of
Speaker 1: what can be done with sexual media and sexual performance?
Speaker 1: Like I have no idea who they are? Did they
Speaker 1: take a philosophy class? Like are they? Do they have
Speaker 1: a degree in women's studies? After the break, we'll see
Speaker 1: whether there are any philosophers at the heart of Visa's
Speaker 1: pawn operation Act two? Playing God? This series has been
Speaker 1: about power. We've met a cast of secretive pornographers, ruthless bankers,
Speaker 1: supercharged tech bros. And we've always been led by the
Speaker 1: question who rules porn, who ultimately decides on what can
Speaker 1: and cannot be made in this business? And now, in
Speaker 1: slightly absurd fashion, we've ended up at the doorstep of
Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard, giant financial services providers. But who at
Speaker 1: Visa was actually deciding on porn policy? Estoya asked, are
Speaker 1: they moral philosophers, women studies PhDs? Kevin Smith had the
Speaker 1: answer because at one point he was one of the
Speaker 1: people making these calls. You've got a number of individuals
Speaker 1: playing god in a room. That's how the process has worked.
Speaker 1: But it's offset by the fact that you've got so
Speaker 1: many different disciplines there to give you a balanced and
Speaker 1: appropriate answer based on each individual case, there's a whole
Speaker 1: raft of individuals. It's almost like the Star Chamber because
Speaker 1: I was involved in similar versions in Visa in Europe.
Speaker 1: The Star Chamber back in the Middle Ages was created
Speaker 1: to supplement a normal court system. In England, it sometimes
Speaker 1: handled cases that were moral issues rather than clear breaches
Speaker 1: of the law, which might sound a little familiar. At
Speaker 1: its best, the Star Chamber was flexible and judicious, drawing
Speaker 1: in a wide range of opinion, but under certain kings
Speaker 1: it became a by word for arbitrary power. It was secretive,
Speaker 1: It lacked you process so difficult to imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: senior executives at VISA sitting down at a table and
Speaker 1: being like peeing and other people, you know, sexy or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tough job. If you're sitting there looking at
Speaker 1: a review of potential non compliance activities with the rules,
Speaker 1: You're going to look at the content, You're going to
Speaker 1: look at ridiculously sounding website names or descriptors. It comes
Speaker 1: with the territory. Maybe to you it makes perfect sense,
Speaker 1: but I think to most people, kind of most civilians,
Speaker 1: it would be quite extraordinary that these types of conversations
Speaker 1: take place at Visa. Yeah, they probably don't realize that
Speaker 1: these conversations are happening every day, not just on adult
Speaker 1: but on every single merchant environment you can think of.
Speaker 1: For Kevin, making decisions that could affect thousands of people
Speaker 1: in the porn industry was just part of the job routine.
Speaker 1: The same goes for Stanley. He was more on the
Speaker 1: enforcement side, but helped take decisions about businesses that broke
Speaker 1: VISA rules. He's not a philosopher, sorry Stoya, But Stanley
Speaker 1: is a trained sociologist, and as a student he happened
Speaker 1: to take classes in gender studies and the history of ideas,
Speaker 1: so Stoya wasn't that far off. Stanley and Kevin, of course,
Speaker 1: wouldn't have seen themselves as pawn regulators. They were payments professionals,
Speaker 1: managers of risk, and facilitators of commerce. When they were
Speaker 1: at Visa, they dealt with pyramid schemes and strange frauds,
Speaker 1: with gambling, and drugs, with things that pretended to be drugs,
Speaker 1: all the crazy things you can buy online. In these cases,
Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard were trying to apply a complex patchwork
Speaker 1: of local laws within a global payments network. But a
Speaker 1: Stayer explained pawn seems to be different. Payment networks do
Speaker 1: restrict things that are legal, like menstrual blood or cats.
Speaker 1: Is that actually Visa and MasterCard? Here's Stanley again, ninety
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent. I can tell you that that probably
Speaker 1: isn't the case. Visasa Mastercard's rules would not be as detailed,
Speaker 1: they would not address these issues, but that Visa would say, yes,
Speaker 1: you can you shoot at home, but you can't insert
Speaker 1: an object into your body, or you can't have animals
Speaker 1: in the frame, or you can't perform sex act while
Speaker 1: you're menstruating. No. Now, Stanley is right, Visa does not
Speaker 1: band videos with menstrual blood, not explicitly in its rules.
Speaker 1: But Stoya is also right. Menstrual blood is not allowed
Speaker 1: on most of the major porn platforms that take credit cards.
Speaker 1: Why the discrepancy? The answer is quite revealing. When Kevin
Speaker 1: and Stanley think about rules, they mean the Visa and
Speaker 1: master Card core operating rules, the commandments. They talk of
Speaker 1: them like the law. And in these regulations, Visa doesn't
Speaker 1: explicitly band blood or smoking weed in videos. Visa enjoys
Speaker 1: an arm's length position from it all. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, VISA does encourage a whole chain of people
Speaker 1: in the pawn payment system to make judgments on its behalf.
Speaker 1: They are told to protect the brand. They have to
Speaker 1: interpret the rules, monitor science, and promote what Visa would
Speaker 1: call best practices, and in part to keep Visa and
Speaker 1: MasterCard happy, those payment companies and platforms ban menstrual, blood
Speaker 1: and weed smoking in pawn the example the performer Ali raised,
Speaker 1: they're making all these arbitrary rules to push us off
Speaker 1: the Internet, to push us further and deeper underground. We're
Speaker 1: constantly under threat of censorship, of regulation. Kevin and Stanley
Speaker 1: see that as different from a Visa rule, but for
Speaker 1: performers like Stayer and Ali, there is no difference in
Speaker 1: practice or in impact. It's very hard for us to
Speaker 1: live stable lifestyles. We didn't have to shoot from porn
Speaker 1: companies anymore, we didn't have to shitty agents, and then
Speaker 1: regulations came through and now are back to being fucked.
Speaker 1: Visa and master Card clearly don't make all these decisions,
Speaker 1: but they do shape the network and try to shape
Speaker 1: an approach. We've talked lots of payment people for the series,
Speaker 1: but Kevin and Stanley, more than anyone else, helped us
Speaker 1: understand the mindset within the credit card Woppoli, the psyche
Speaker 1: of a reluctant ruler. Have they eat them right people
Speaker 1: to be the kind of ultimate quasi regulators of Paul
Speaker 1: In the absence of anyone else, I would say yes,
Speaker 1: And that could be quite a ballsy answer. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I think Visa master Card,
Speaker 1: through their relationships, they have a good local understanding of
Speaker 1: what's going on in this industry. Actually, it's challenges and
Speaker 1: it's constant evolution. I mean, there is a shared responsibility
Speaker 1: that says nobody wants to kill the industry, but it
Speaker 1: needs to make sure that as it moves forward, it's
Speaker 1: doing so in a legally defensible way. What Kevin described
Speaker 1: is a murky self regulating system that to some extent
Speaker 1: keeps pawn in check. When he was at Visa, I
Speaker 1: can imagine he was more or less trying to do
Speaker 1: the right thing, and he worked in a system that
Speaker 1: by its very nature involves different interests that often balance
Speaker 1: one another. Picture who is sitting around the table. There
Speaker 1: will be Visa executives whose job it is to drum
Speaker 1: up more business and encourage more transactions. Then there will
Speaker 1: be people with a different outlook, teams managing risk, worrying
Speaker 1: about the brand or the legal consequences of using Visa's power.
Speaker 1: Visa's aim, and frankly the aim of the adult industry too,
Speaker 1: is to try to find a balance where money is
Speaker 1: flowing but the risks in the system are managed. There
Speaker 1: is a recognition that everyone needs everyone else. The whole
Speaker 1: thing is symbiotic. If one of the parties falls out,
Speaker 1: then the whole damn thing falls over. Visa and master Card,
Speaker 1: almost by accidents, have filled a power vacuum and a
Speaker 1: regulation of porn around the world. It's such a peculiar
Speaker 1: position to be in, and to Stanley, it carries obvious risks.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to judge went to intervene and went to
Speaker 1: hold back. I mean, do you think that Visa and
Speaker 1: master Card. Do you think they realize how how much
Speaker 1: power they have, how people in the adult industry see
Speaker 1: them as their defector regulator. Yes, I think you may
Speaker 1: be onto something that if you have worked in that
Speaker 1: position a long time and you don't engage with the industry. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think there's absolutely a risk that you don't understand
Speaker 1: either the de facto power you have or how it
Speaker 1: is perceived, and perhaps that is something would benefit but
Speaker 1: Visa master Card to be more kind of self critical
Speaker 1: in their reflection of how these programs and how this
Speaker 1: policies are implemented. Is there a better approach for Visa
Speaker 1: and master Card. We'll try to do some critical reflection
Speaker 1: ourselves with a little help from the performers Stayer. That's
Speaker 1: coming straight after the break Act three ruled by Store.
Speaker 1: We are near the end of our journey through the
Speaker 1: porn industry, and we're going back to the person who
Speaker 1: set us off at the beginning, the performer and artist Stayer.
Speaker 1: Her advice was invaluable and at least for us, totally unforgettable.
Speaker 1: So if you try to make a podcast that's about
Speaker 1: all of porn, it's going to be scattered and messy
Speaker 1: and not make sense. You are the financial times, I
Speaker 1: suggest you stay in your lane. You focus on the
Speaker 1: business aspect, you focus on the finances. Stay in your lane.
Speaker 1: At that point, we had secretive porn barrens in our sides,
Speaker 1: big empires pumping out porn to the world. Men who
Speaker 1: lived in the shadows, fake names, no real public presence,
Speaker 1: people like Bernt Bergmeyer, Pornhub or Stefan Paco, the owner
Speaker 1: of X Videos. We thought they were the most powerful
Speaker 1: people in porn. But what we realized is that they
Speaker 1: aren't the masters of their own fate. What we discovered
Speaker 1: is that the real rule of s of porn were
Speaker 1: much closer to home the credit card networks, and they
Speaker 1: were in plain sight. The porn barons have immense power
Speaker 1: and influence, sure, but always within boundaries defined by payment companies.
Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard have the last word. These were in
Speaker 1: MasterCard are truly vast corporations. Visa is the world's biggest
Speaker 1: financial company, the single biggest, and MasterCard is something like
Speaker 1: the third and let's be frank, fees are and MasterCard
Speaker 1: aren't wildly exciting companies, even for financial journalists. We all
Speaker 1: use them every day, but give them as much attention
Speaker 1: as the plumbing in our house. But by examining the
Speaker 1: pawn industry, we saw the incredible power these payment networks
Speaker 1: wheeled over the Internet. Instead of the government defining what
Speaker 1: is and is not considered sexually acceptable, it's a corporation.
Speaker 1: A credit card company is defining what is and is
Speaker 1: not sexually okay. If you think about what the core
Speaker 1: goal is on their part. It's not necessarily you know,
Speaker 1: the good of the community or society, whatever. It's actually
Speaker 1: the protection of their brand and no fault of this.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's what a company's there to do,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily the thing that we want to
Speaker 1: use as our measure of whether pornography is okay or
Speaker 1: what kind of pornography is okay. Yeah, and it feels
Speaker 1: like a really bad idea to be saying, like, actually,
Speaker 1: I think the government should pay more attention to born,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that MasterCard and Visa should be
Speaker 1: the decision makers on this. We have spoken to people
Speaker 1: at these companies. We can tell you with absolute confidence
Speaker 1: that Visa and MasterCard don't want to be the decision
Speaker 1: makers either. They oversee a system that sets standards for
Speaker 1: world porn, but they just hate doing it. They are
Speaker 1: trapped in this thankless job deciding and enforcing moral codes
Speaker 1: on sex. It goes against all their instincts. But what's
Speaker 1: the alternative? A magic in the reaction if they did
Speaker 1: explicitly allow payments for videos that depicted rape. So if
Speaker 1: the question is who should rule pawn, we probably don't
Speaker 1: have much choice. Cryptocurrencies are still too clunky and expensive
Speaker 1: to usurp the role of credit cards in pawn, and
Speaker 1: if crypto did take over, there might be no rules
Speaker 1: left at all. What about governments. They certainly have immense
Speaker 1: power over pawn companies within their borders, but we've talked
Speaker 1: to regulators who are trying to tighten up rules around pawn.
Speaker 1: They struggle to get the big pawn platforms based in
Speaker 1: far off jurisdictions to even respond to their messages. They
Speaker 1: don't have the leverage of Visa and master Card or
Speaker 1: the global reach, so in practice Visa and MasterCard remain indispensable.
Speaker 1: There is nobody else. How should these payment networks use
Speaker 1: their power. There are some areas where Stoya, given the choice,
Speaker 1: might actually have taken a tougher approach, like what's so
Speaker 1: called faux sest. If you've been on a porn site
Speaker 1: in recent years, you'll have noticed that there's a craze
Speaker 1: for sexual fantasies about step relatives. Stoya wants to see
Speaker 1: less of it around, But then she also thinks decisions
Speaker 1: like this deserve an open debate, the kind of thing
Speaker 1: a government would have when making law. Call your senator
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, I actually want to defend step
Speaker 1: in sest porn because it's a fantasy, and so we're
Speaker 1: talking about thought crimes, and you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think Stoya is wrong. I think she's being reactionary and
Speaker 1: like over stepping. But with payment companies in control, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to have that kind of meaningful debate. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not like I can go down to the master
Speaker 1: Card office and be like, hello, I would like to
Speaker 1: have a civil dialogue about this, Like that's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. This might be one of the things that
Speaker 1: can be improved. The arbitrary nature of that power. Visa
Speaker 1: and MasterCard maybe reluctant morality police, but that's no excuse
Speaker 1: for operating at times almost by stealth and issuing vague
Speaker 1: catch all rules that are turned by payment networks into
Speaker 1: bizarrely precise, often inconsistent restrictions. We asked master Card for
Speaker 1: a recorded interview. They were helpful with background information, but
Speaker 1: in the end end they declined if we did have
Speaker 1: that conversation, we'd probably start with some optimism. We've tracked
Speaker 1: a crazy era for the adult industry. Pawn has gone
Speaker 1: from being scarce and expensive to being everywhere and mostly
Speaker 1: free all within a generation, and in business terms, you
Speaker 1: can finally see things kind of coming back together. The
Speaker 1: Internet is giving performers more power and independence and most
Speaker 1: importantly money. If that can improve their working conditions, that
Speaker 1: is surely welcome. We've seen how Visa and MasterCard oversee
Speaker 1: a regulatory system for pawn. But who are these rules for.
Speaker 1: The truth is they're not designed to protect the performers.
Speaker 1: They're not designed to protect the viewer. The rules are
Speaker 1: there to protect the Visa and MasterCard brands, but it
Speaker 1: is the only system we have. How could it work better?
Speaker 1: We have one suggestion. This series has been about how
Speaker 1: big porn barons are reliant on Visa and MasterCard, and
Speaker 1: how Visa and MasterCard are reluctant rulers of the porn barons.
Speaker 1: Those two things have created a really patchy system of
Speaker 1: rules and a weird situation where tube sides serving free
Speaker 1: porn have fewer restrictions than sites taking credit cards, even
Speaker 1: though tube sides are easier for underage people to access.
Speaker 1: If Visa and MasterCards said to an owner, you own
Speaker 1: tube sides, you own pay sites, We're going to treat
Speaker 1: everything you own as one. That would be one way
Speaker 1: to be more consistent and bring entire to standards on
Speaker 1: moderation to help lower the risk of unlawful videos appearing
Speaker 1: on tube sites. Don't underestimate the power of Visa and MasterCard.
Speaker 1: When credit card companies call, even secretive pornographers would feel
Speaker 1: compelled to pick up the phone because right now they
Speaker 1: don't want to talk. And that brings me back to
Speaker 1: the one moment where I thought I heard the voice
Speaker 1: of the man who was the start of this whole journey,
Speaker 1: Burned berg Meyer or BB, the ex Gorman Sax banker
Speaker 1: who I revealed was the secret owner of mine Geek.
Speaker 1: I was so excited to find his Hong Kong number.
Speaker 1: I called. A man picked up. I like to think
Speaker 1: it was BB. Hello, this is Patrician Nelson from the
Speaker 1: Financial Time this Bergmire As I introduced myself, and that
Speaker 1: split second, maybe he thought, what do I say? Do
Speaker 1: I have anything to hide from this reporter? A millennium
Speaker 1: of shame about sex and porn might have flashed across
Speaker 1: his mind. But then maybe he reconsidered things have changed.
Speaker 1: Porn is everywhere, everyone watches it. It's a business like
Speaker 1: any other. Is it time to explain what I do?
Speaker 1: He paused and then he hung up. Hot Money is
Speaker 1: a production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It
Speaker 1: was written and reported by Me, Patrician Neilson and me
Speaker 1: Alex Barker. Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer.
Speaker 1: Edith Russelo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen Shakurgie.
Speaker 1: Amanda ka Wong is our engineer. Music compositioned by Pascal Wise,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. A Pushkin Industry's Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Mia LaBelle, letal My Lad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, John Schnaz, Maggie Taylor, Morgan Ratner, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Jake Flanagan, Jordan McMillan, Mary Beth Smith, Isabella Nervis, Sean Carney,
Speaker 1: Carlie Migliori, Maya Kanig, Daniela Lakhan, Nicole Morano and Jacob
Speaker 1: Weissberg at The Financial Times Special thanks to Renee Kaplan
Speaker 1: and Ruler Khalaf, Alista Key, Kendra, James, Nigel Hansson, Molly Eisner,
Speaker 1: Ronda Taylor, Breen Turner, Nicholas Stansfield Peter Spiegel, Philippa Goodrich,
Speaker 1: Kevin Wilson, Carolina Vargas, Manuela Saragosa tofer foreheadge Laura Clark,
Speaker 1: Matt Garrahan, Andrew Georgiades, Petros Gion passes, Richard Martin, Barney Jobson,
Speaker 1: Daniel Dombie, Cynthia Omoreho and voice Mihawark