Speaker 1: Pushkin. We are two journalists from the Financial Times. We've
Speaker 1: spent six months following the money in porn. Our aim
Speaker 1: has been to find out who rules the industry. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we bring you our encounters with some of
Speaker 1: the biggest financial companies in the world and some of
Speaker 1: the most explicit discussions of sex in this series so far.
Speaker 1: So please be aware this is definitely content for adults.
Speaker 1: Previously on Hot Money, a secretive former banker bought mine geek,
Speaker 1: a giant porn company whose flagship site was driven by
Speaker 1: user generated videos. The law allowed mine geek to take
Speaker 1: a hands off approach to moderation, largely avoiding legal liability
Speaker 1: for the content that users posted to their site. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much all the context you need for today's show.
Speaker 1: When we started our investigation into the adult industry, we
Speaker 1: thought online porn was basically unregulated, uncontrollable in a way,
Speaker 1: just too big for any government to handle. But it
Speaker 1: turned out we were wrong, well not entirely. We just
Speaker 1: missed a real story. Remember STORYA the performer and author
Speaker 1: in our first episode, I'm in lagerie and people tip
Speaker 1: me and I take my broth or pull the cups
Speaker 1: down and I jiggle my shoulders while saying thank you.
Speaker 1: Though I get my period and then I have cramps,
Speaker 1: and then I really don't want to be vigorously jiggling,
Speaker 1: but I also want people to know, like, don't tip
Speaker 1: me and be disappointed. We are not doing vigorous behavior tonight.
Speaker 1: And you know, it would be nice to be able
Speaker 1: to say, because I have my period, but I cannot
Speaker 1: because it is a band word. A band word. What
Speaker 1: Stayer is describing here is live video work, and it
Speaker 1: does sound fantastically absurd. Jiggling naked breasts for money no problem.
Speaker 1: Typing the word period in the chat box absolutely forbidden.
Speaker 1: But why what stopped Stawyer from being able to type
Speaker 1: the word period into a chat box? Who or what
Speaker 1: was on the other end of that rule. The answer
Speaker 1: to that question took us to a place we never expected.
Speaker 1: In this series, so far, we've told you about the
Speaker 1: secretive owners of big porn companies like mine Geek, how
Speaker 1: they thrived in large part because of the taboos around porn.
Speaker 1: It gave them the cover to hide from scrutiny and accountability.
Speaker 1: But around two years ago, Mine Geek faced a reckoning.
Speaker 1: It was brutal, It was public, and it revealed a
Speaker 1: whole lot of things about power and control in the
Speaker 1: porn industry. One day in December twenty twenty, mine Geek
Speaker 1: went from being the most powerful company in porn to
Speaker 1: a business cowering under pressure on the brink of collapse.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to tell you how all
Speaker 1: of that happened, the chain of events that forced mine
Speaker 1: Geek to take the majority of its pawn offline. Mine Geek,
Speaker 1: just like Stayer, had to bow to one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful finance companies in the world. I'm Patrician Nelson
Speaker 1: and I'm Alex Barker and from Pushkin Industries and the
Speaker 1: Financial Times. This is Hot Money Act one. Mister persistence.
Speaker 1: I think we're known to be a good investor. We're
Speaker 1: known for not being shy, willing to kind of share
Speaker 1: our views. I've been called the most persistent person in America.
Speaker 1: I take as a compliment. That's Bill Lackman. He's a
Speaker 1: big name in the land of the Financial Times, and
Speaker 1: not just because he's a billionaire. He runs an investment
Speaker 1: firm called Pershing Square, and it's one of those firms
Speaker 1: that everybody knows about on Wall Street. Bill is not
Speaker 1: an investor in Pawn. On the contrary, during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Bill pulled off one of the most insanely successful trades
Speaker 1: in the history of modern financial markets. He turned a
Speaker 1: twenty seven million dollar bet into roughly a two point
Speaker 1: six billion dollar windfall. Yeah, as around a hundred times
Speaker 1: the money within a few weeks. Not bad. It doesn't
Speaker 1: always go that well. He does sometimes lose two in
Speaker 1: an almost as spectacular of fashion. Anyway. Bill first made
Speaker 1: his name as an activist investor. He didn't just buy
Speaker 1: shares in a company. He bought big stakes and then
Speaker 1: told chief executives what to do, and occasionally he even
Speaker 1: tried to kick them out. So when he shouts, people listen.
Speaker 1: What made him agree to talk to us about pawn
Speaker 1: of all things? Good? Question? His communications person asked him
Speaker 1: the same thing, said, Bill, do you want to do
Speaker 1: this be interviewed by the ft or whatever people just
Speaker 1: think reputationally. I don't want to have anything to do
Speaker 1: with I don't want my name and the word porn
Speaker 1: in the same paragraph or story. And the problem with
Speaker 1: that is it a lot of bad things can happen
Speaker 1: in the underground, and those bad things he saw them
Speaker 1: in December twenty twenty, when The New York Times published
Speaker 1: a powerful column by Nicholas Kristoff. It was titled The
Speaker 1: Children of Pornhub. Bill was sitting at home scrolling on
Speaker 1: Twitter when a story popped up. This Christoph article about
Speaker 1: porn Hub I found very challenging to read and depressing
Speaker 1: and also made me angry. Bill has four daughters, and
Speaker 1: the appalling accounts of exploitation hidd a nerve Christoph basically
Speaker 1: pulled pawn Hubb apart. He alleged the free pawn sign
Speaker 1: was infested with rape videos, and through talking to victims,
Speaker 1: he depicted it as a business that monetized spy cams,
Speaker 1: revenge pawn, and other horrid stuff. Recent allegations claimed porn
Speaker 1: Hub maybe profiting from footage of sexual assault, revenge porn,
Speaker 1: and sex tapes obtained without consent from those embarked accused
Speaker 1: of hosting sexual assault footage as well as child sexual
Speaker 1: abuse material, doing little to guard against and remove such content.
Speaker 1: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also took notice, saying his
Speaker 1: government was working with police and security officials to address
Speaker 1: the issues raised in the New York Times column. Everyone
Speaker 1: in pawn just refers to it as the Christophe piece.
Speaker 1: It was part investigation, part opinion column, and hugely contentious
Speaker 1: in the industry. Even people who hate pawn Hub saw
Speaker 1: it as part of a broader war on pawn mine
Speaker 1: geek executives. The owners of porn Hub denied wrongdoing, insisting
Speaker 1: they took a zero tolerance approach to illegal content. Pornhub
Speaker 1: told us that they now have more comprehensive safeguards than
Speaker 1: most social media platforms. Now, we're not going to get
Speaker 1: into the details of the piece or who was right
Speaker 1: or wrong. We looked at the impact instead. There's no
Speaker 1: argument over that, partly because of Bill Atman. You can
Speaker 1: destroy a fifteen year old and get them to commit
Speaker 1: suicide by just having her boyfriend share a video she
Speaker 1: didn't want to see, an embarrasser in front of everyone.
Speaker 1: People kill themselves over the kids do and the notion
Speaker 1: that people are profiting from this. You know that got me. Now.
Speaker 1: Bill is no prude. He's not a posed to pornography.
Speaker 1: He's a free speech advocate. But he was so moved
Speaker 1: by the stories in the article that he decided to
Speaker 1: do something. I thought this is important and the problem
Speaker 1: with the topic of pornography is. People don't want to
Speaker 1: acknowledge of every even viewed pornography, perhaps, and so it's
Speaker 1: just easier to just let it pass. Bill made his
Speaker 1: name in the business of corporate influence. His whole stick
Speaker 1: was forcing companies to do things they don't want to do,
Speaker 1: and he comes armed with the deep contact book he'd
Speaker 1: expect of an American billionaire. He's also a finance guy,
Speaker 1: so when he read the New York Times piece, he
Speaker 1: didn't just get angry and think what can I say
Speaker 1: to make politicians do something? He thought about the way
Speaker 1: to kick a company where it hurts payments. He knew
Speaker 1: that vis unmaster card are the rails that any digital
Speaker 1: business depends on to sell online. While so much online
Speaker 1: porn is free, big porn companies rely on premium sites.
Speaker 1: They either own them or sell ads for them. They
Speaker 1: do need people to pay for porn, and how do
Speaker 1: they do that again credit cards without payment processing. These
Speaker 1: aren't just porn companies. They are failing porn companies. But
Speaker 1: he also realized there are good reasons why the payments
Speaker 1: industry sticks with high risk sectors like porn. The more
Speaker 1: dice into transaction, the higher the scrape, meaning the fees
Speaker 1: are higher and so the profit margins are better. There
Speaker 1: was no guarantee he could get the big payment networks
Speaker 1: to do anything, so he went full actman. He didn't
Speaker 1: bother with a polite campaign or letters or whatever. He
Speaker 1: just picked up his phone and messaged Aja Banger. Now
Speaker 1: Banger was the chief executive of master Card at the time.
Speaker 1: You both you're packing for tennis, and I've met him
Speaker 1: and made a couple of big tennis tape and it
Speaker 1: texts this to them, and I said, a please read
Speaker 1: the above piece. MasterCard is facilitating sex trafficking. PayPal is
Speaker 1: already withdrawn payment processing from Pornhoub. MasterCard does not want
Speaker 1: to be the last company to do so. Please call
Speaker 1: and discuss if you disagree, Banger replied immediately. High Bill
Speaker 1: just saw this, he wrote, before effectively laying down the law.
Speaker 1: If the allegations were proven, Banger wrote, Pornhub would be
Speaker 1: blocked from using MasterCard mine Geek's top site would be
Speaker 1: partly cut off from the payments world to his credit.
Speaker 1: MasterCard very very quickly got on top of this and
Speaker 1: came up with some pretty strong principles. MasterCard acted after
Speaker 1: its investigation found unlawful content. It banned the use of
Speaker 1: its credit cards on Pornhub's premium site. Visa followed by
Speaker 1: suspending not just Pornhub but all of mine geek sites.
Speaker 1: It basically cut off the use of its credit cards
Speaker 1: on premium websites that generate about half of mine Geek's
Speaker 1: revenue subscriptions that are paid for by credit cards. We
Speaker 1: reached out to Visa, unmaster Card, and both the kind
Speaker 1: to be interviewed. The company stressed that their priorities are
Speaker 1: to support commerce and illegal activity, but it is fair
Speaker 1: to say these payment networks hardly ever remove a company
Speaker 1: from their systems. It's a devastating move and the consequences
Speaker 1: were immediate. You might be wondering why free porn sites
Speaker 1: would crumble because Visa or MasterCard stop them accepting credit cards.
Speaker 1: On the face of it, Tube sites are mostly ad funded,
Speaker 1: but they are indirectly tied to bank rules. There are
Speaker 1: a few reasons for that. They run subscription tiers like
Speaker 1: pawn Hub Premium. Some advertisers use credit cards to pay
Speaker 1: the Tube sites, and a lot of the Tube site
Speaker 1: ad money comes from pay sites that are covered by
Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard. Rules, and for that reason. An industry
Speaker 1: insider told us that some of pawn hubs advertisers got
Speaker 1: cold feet about spending money with them. The result was
Speaker 1: that pawn hubs cash flow dried up overnight. That triggered
Speaker 1: all sorts of other problems. Just imagine the conversation with
Speaker 1: long term subscribers. You know that pawn company you signed
Speaker 1: up to a few years ago, Well, we'd really like
Speaker 1: you to subscribe again. You just need to go through
Speaker 1: all the hassle once more, but this time, please use
Speaker 1: bitcoin or some other complex banking process instead of your
Speaker 1: credit card. The MasterCard move, which was then followed by Visa,
Speaker 1: was genuinely a watershed moment for the adult industry. Bill's
Speaker 1: intervention wasn't the only reason it happened, but with that text,
Speaker 1: it's not hard to imagine he helped tip the balance.
Speaker 1: The suspension happened very quickly, and within a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks they announced a bunch of policies. Was really quick
Speaker 1: and impressive. A few days after all of this, something
Speaker 1: else huge happened to mine geek, the parent company of Pornhub.
Speaker 1: Its lenders served at the notice of default a warning
Speaker 1: that mine Geek wasn't meeting the conditions of its loan.
Speaker 1: This hasn't been reported before. We heard about it from
Speaker 1: a different billionaire who was approached to buy the company,
Speaker 1: and it is confirmed and a footnote buried in mine
Speaker 1: Geek's latest accounts. The company was running short of cash,
Speaker 1: its lenders weren't happy. It was on a brink of collapse.
Speaker 1: At the same time, MasterCard was reviewing its policies for
Speaker 1: the whole pawn industry, including what permissions you needed to
Speaker 1: upload any explicit video onto a site that uses credit cards,
Speaker 1: basically all those amateur uploads that helped tube sites dominate
Speaker 1: the pawn industry. The pressures on myne geek were building.
Speaker 1: It had to do something, and just like that, pawn
Speaker 1: Hub went from thirteen million videos down to four million.
Speaker 1: You probably were a catalyst for one of the biggest
Speaker 1: takedowns of media content off the web in the history
Speaker 1: of the Internet. When a nine million videos ever been
Speaker 1: taken down overnight, it's pretty extraordinary. Do you remember that
Speaker 1: moment and how did you feel? I felt good about it.
Speaker 1: It's not good. People want to make their livelihood the
Speaker 1: way they make their livelihood. It's their life, their body,
Speaker 1: their choice. I'm okay with it. As long as you
Speaker 1: know they're a consenting adult, It's fine. It was pretty
Speaker 1: interesting talking to Bill about the adult business. His game
Speaker 1: is taking the measure of a company, its strength and
Speaker 1: its weaknesses, and here he was sizing up pawn. It
Speaker 1: isn't a huge industry compared with the larger world of
Speaker 1: online entertainment. At its peak, mine Geek made around four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars a year in revenue. Just
Speaker 1: for perspective, Netflix generates more than four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million during an average week. But online pawn can be
Speaker 1: highly profitable, and those profits have drawn in Wall Street
Speaker 1: over the years, as we've discovered in this series. To
Speaker 1: Bill Ackman, the amazing thing is not that pawn has
Speaker 1: access to finance. It's that Wall Street types got into
Speaker 1: bed with companies like mine geek while averting your eyes
Speaker 1: from potential problems, and when things went wrong, it was
Speaker 1: left to payment companies to marp up the mess. It
Speaker 1: should be regulated by state actors, you would think, right,
Speaker 1: But my experience waiting around for the government to act
Speaker 1: to clean up is painfully slow acratic. There are tens
Speaker 1: of millions of sex videos online hosted in dozens of countries.
Speaker 1: Unless we all take a Chinese approach to censorship, no
Speaker 1: government can really police who watches it or control what
Speaker 1: is made. So the nearest thing to setting global rules
Speaker 1: for porn would come from mastercardam Visa, because without MasterCard
Speaker 1: and Visa there just isn't much point in making porn
Speaker 1: because no one can buy it. I think there should
Speaker 1: be the factor of regulating these companies. Right, They're not
Speaker 1: going to let you use a credit card to pay
Speaker 1: for a hit on someone, right, That I'm sure is
Speaker 1: against their principles. Right. So once you decide that you're
Speaker 1: going to decide what people can spend their money on
Speaker 1: and what they can charge the master card for or
Speaker 1: the Visa card, who should focus? Then they have to
Speaker 1: be the factor regulators or what's permissible content and what's not.
Speaker 1: There was one more important thing that Bill didn't realize.
Speaker 1: He texted the head of MasterCard he wanted MasterCard to
Speaker 1: act like a regulator for pawn. But after we dug
Speaker 1: into this, we found payment companies were already involved in
Speaker 1: setting the rules for this industry. They don't like admitting
Speaker 1: to this role, but banks and payment companies do have
Speaker 1: a real say in what kind of pawn gets made
Speaker 1: and sold online act too the list. Some of you
Speaker 1: may have heard about the Haze Code back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, in the early days of Hollywood. The Haze
Speaker 1: Code set the standards for what you could and couldn't
Speaker 1: depict on screen. No lustful kissing, no nudity, no interracial relationships,
Speaker 1: no perversion whatever that meant. It was all self policed
Speaker 1: by the industry and amazingly held in place well into
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. It all sounds so strange today, like
Speaker 1: something from a bygone age, and what has this got
Speaker 1: to do with online pawn. Well, when we saw the
Speaker 1: power of Visa and MasterCard had over mind geek, we
Speaker 1: wanted to understand how they could bring the world's biggest
Speaker 1: adult company to its knees. What we discovered is that
Speaker 1: the world of porn might just have its own version
Speaker 1: of the Haze Code. There's a really curious system of
Speaker 1: rules rules on porn contents, not enforced by porn producers,
Speaker 1: but financial gatekeepers the payments world, a world ultimately overseen
Speaker 1: by Visa and MasterCard. We realized this sounds odd, it
Speaker 1: is odd, and it raised more questions than answers. I
Speaker 1: remember the moment the door to this world was open
Speaker 1: for me. I was just chatting with an executive in
Speaker 1: the industry and she mentioned these lists basically dos and
Speaker 1: don't for pawn production. So I asked her to dig
Speaker 1: one up and she shared a document of best practices,
Speaker 1: all compiled by a company called Mobius Pay. Now. Mobius
Speaker 1: is a payment processing company. If you're a business that
Speaker 1: wants to take credit cards, you need a bank to
Speaker 1: sponsor you a merchant account. Mobius helps to sort that out.
Speaker 1: It acts as a bridge between high risk businesses like cannabis,
Speaker 1: pawn or gambling and banks in the visa and MasterCard system.
Speaker 1: John Corona is Mobius Pay's chief operating officer, and he
Speaker 1: put together that one page primer of things to avoid.
Speaker 1: We asked him to read a sample of problematic words twink, nymphet,
Speaker 1: any racial slur or symbol, and team. You know these
Speaker 1: specific words tend to create problems. Problems with two where
Speaker 1: the visa and master card, the acquiring bank, and if
Speaker 1: it goes far enough, ultimately law enforcement. When you sit
Speaker 1: down to create this list, you know what you based
Speaker 1: at on the list, and the words are in the
Speaker 1: interest of protecting the Visa and master Card brand reputation.
Speaker 1: This was a lot for us to get our head around.
Speaker 1: The more we ask people about these pawn lists, the
Speaker 1: more we realize they are almost talmudic in nature. Visa
Speaker 1: and MasterCard are at the center of this credit card world.
Speaker 1: They sit down some broad guidelines on material that might
Speaker 1: be legal, but just as in't kosher, stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: fit with their brand and the banks some payment processors,
Speaker 1: like John at Mobia's they are expected to flesh that out. Now,
Speaker 1: they don't have much to work on, not even ten
Speaker 1: commandments they get about five. MasterCard sums it up in
Speaker 1: just one short paragraph. They are against the sale of
Speaker 1: an image or service that is patently offensive or lacks
Speaker 1: serious artistic value. They ban videos involving miners, animals, mutilation,
Speaker 1: or non consensual behavior. Now that all sounds reasonable, but
Speaker 1: just to make sure they are never wrong, MasterCard also
Speaker 1: says they ban any other material that master Card might
Speaker 1: find unacceptable in the future. Genius people like John they
Speaker 1: need to make fine distinctions on what Visa MasterCard allow
Speaker 1: and don't allow. Write down to a twink, which means
Speaker 1: a slim, young looking gay man, do you have conversations
Speaker 1: with Visan master Card? Do you? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: have sit down with them or talk to them on
Speaker 1: the phone. I were saying what you think about Twink? Oh? Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone complains to the card brands. They take it very
Speaker 1: seriously and they will review your content and if they
Speaker 1: find something they disagree with, they could terminate your account
Speaker 1: effective immediately. Could you call it a type of self
Speaker 1: censorship in the porn industry then, I mean you have
Speaker 1: performers who are not doing certain things, not showing certain
Speaker 1: things because you know someone might cut them off. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a self censorship and self policing. Ultimately, it's if
Speaker 1: you want to accept the sound master Card, then you
Speaker 1: have to follow their rules. John explained that Visa and
Speaker 1: MasterCard have had rules on what pawn can and can't
Speaker 1: be sold online for more than a decade. It's just
Speaker 1: that since the Christophe piece, they are all much more
Speaker 1: active in policing them. John says MasterCard has entire teams
Speaker 1: devoted to this, conducting investigations and reviews. Other tech companies
Speaker 1: are also hired to cruel websites looking for content that
Speaker 1: breaks the rules. And here's the thing, that really blew
Speaker 1: our mind. The lists evolve and the guidance evolves. New
Speaker 1: words or phrases are banned all the time or unbanned,
Speaker 1: like so called golden showers, you know, being it was
Speaker 1: off limits for a lot of banks and payment processors.
Speaker 1: Then suddenly, around twenty sixteen it became kind of okay,
Speaker 1: presumably because the term was in the news a lot
Speaker 1: and somehow normalized. All of this implies that somewhere there
Speaker 1: must be a decision maker, someone blesses these distinctions and
Speaker 1: how they might change. They decide what is fine to
Speaker 1: stream and what isn't. Now that is a relatively easy
Speaker 1: distinction to make when something looks outright illegal. John actually
Speaker 1: conducts his own checks, and we should warn you here.
Speaker 1: We're about to hear how he has come across disturbing videos.
Speaker 1: I started looking for prohibited tech content, and I searched
Speaker 1: keywords within the website. He'll type in a word like
Speaker 1: rape or underage or the countless variations of those themes.
Speaker 1: I did come into a situation where it was kind
Speaker 1: of disturbing content. I can't say it with certainty that
Speaker 1: it was pedophilia, but what I did was I screenshot
Speaker 1: at everything brought it to my first line supervisor, and
Speaker 1: we both just file the report with the FBI. I
Speaker 1: felt we had an ethical obligation to at least alert
Speaker 1: someone in a position of authority to review what we
Speaker 1: had seen. If John searches for a term like twink,
Speaker 1: he might need to take several steps, For example, look
Speaker 1: at ID documents from the performer to confirm that he's
Speaker 1: over the legal age. Racial slur we don't allow it,
Speaker 1: and I understand there are free speech concerns there, but
Speaker 1: I would just tell them, hey, this word here, the
Speaker 1: bank's not going to approve it. You need to change
Speaker 1: it to something else. There are some areas where the
Speaker 1: boundary is hard. As a drawl we're betting pool, like
Speaker 1: hypnosis or sex while someone appears to be asleep. Of
Speaker 1: course they're acting, they're not actually asleep, and no one's
Speaker 1: actually getting hypnotized. But being asleep means that the person
Speaker 1: sleeping does not have the ability to render consent, and
Speaker 1: the thought of hypnotizing someone into doing what you want
Speaker 1: them to do remove the ability to render consent, even
Speaker 1: though it's all acting, it's all fiction. Those perceptions is
Speaker 1: what makes it prohibited. John talks in a pretty matter
Speaker 1: of fact way about the details of these lists, where
Speaker 1: they draw a line and what they try to stop.
Speaker 1: But it's actually a pretty huge deal. Mobia's, the company
Speaker 1: that John works for, essentially acts as a standard regulator
Speaker 1: for pornography, doing the work the governments aren't doing on
Speaker 1: behalf of Visa and MasterCard. It amazed us that this
Speaker 1: level of supervision exists at all, and even more so,
Speaker 1: who does it. To see how much of an influence
Speaker 1: these codes really had on porn production, we went back
Speaker 1: to somebody we trust and what they told us, well,
Speaker 1: it was a little graphic, but truly stunning. That's after
Speaker 1: the break Act three, more power than the Pope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come on in, So thank you for letting us into
Speaker 1: your home. It's great to see you in New York
Speaker 1: in person. And the snow is here. Brooklyn is white.
Speaker 1: We're in Story's apartment. This is where she told us
Speaker 1: about that detail that got us going down this whole
Speaker 1: path to begin with, that she can't type period in
Speaker 1: a chat box on some pawn platforms. As a performer,
Speaker 1: she's seen a lot of different business models, from pay
Speaker 1: sites to camsites. To create a platforms like only fans
Speaker 1: They all have different characteristics, but there was always one
Speaker 1: common theme, one powerful constraint on what content could be
Speaker 1: made and sold online. She remembers Visa and Mastercard's influence
Speaker 1: coming up way back almost fifteen years ago, right from
Speaker 1: the start of her career, when she was shooting for
Speaker 1: a big pawn studio. I was on a porn set
Speaker 1: for Digital Playground and someone had four fingers in me
Speaker 1: and the director was like, watch the thumb. And I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: you can't put a thumb in and he was like no,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what if it's just a thumb And
Speaker 1: he's like, just a thumb's fine, And I'm like, what
Speaker 1: if it's four fingers and then another finger from the
Speaker 1: other hand and he's like, that's fine, it's just the thumbs.
Speaker 1: The thumbs make it fisting. And I was like, this
Speaker 1: is so strange. It does sound strange. Now, this would
Speaker 1: have been back into days when DVDs were being sold,
Speaker 1: so the rules have evolved. But on stoy a set
Speaker 1: payment companies, we're basically calling the shots somehow. MasterCard and
Speaker 1: Visa are deciding this is high risk, right, this is porn,
Speaker 1: so this is high risk. They're deciding this is this
Speaker 1: kind of sexual act. This is acceptable, this is not acceptable.
Speaker 1: So this is actually like an incredible amount of power,
Speaker 1: more power than the Pope on this subject. Whoever, these
Speaker 1: people are at MasterCard deciding when it comes to rules.
Speaker 1: I likes to understand what she's dealing with very precisely.
Speaker 1: So at one point she got in touch with the
Speaker 1: payment company called cc Bill, which is one of the
Speaker 1: biggest important What she wanted was the set of rules,
Speaker 1: the detailed rules, the ones that precisely lay out the
Speaker 1: limits of what they think MasterCard and Visa tolerate. And
Speaker 1: so they shared it, all four pages of it. They
Speaker 1: can literally tell you on these lists what you can't
Speaker 1: make right over, Yeah, I mean all you could make it,
Speaker 1: but you can't put it anywhere, which is akin to
Speaker 1: banning it. And you know, some things should be banned, right,
Speaker 1: Sexual depictions of miners that is bad. That it is
Speaker 1: not okay. It is a problem. It should not be
Speaker 1: allowed anywhere. Bestiality again, bad problems shouldn't be allowed in full.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy document, totally bizarre in parts, the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you might expect from lawyers. Said Lose at
Speaker 1: the Fetish Convention with a mission to categorize every little kink.
Speaker 1: The interesting part is the gray zone sexual activity that
Speaker 1: is technically legal but in practice not tolerated. That's a
Speaker 1: different kind of power in pawn. And what's so interesting
Speaker 1: and so difficult to grasp is that there isn't just
Speaker 1: one set of rules, but many these are. A master
Speaker 1: Card don't seem to want to publish a detailed set
Speaker 1: of rules themselves that would acknowledge that they're effectively the
Speaker 1: biggest regulators of pawn, so instead they just issue deliberately
Speaker 1: vague guidelines about what fits their brand. Banks and payment
Speaker 1: processes and platforms then have to interpret for their own
Speaker 1: customers what the limits of MasterCard and Visa might be.
Speaker 1: It's like guessing the wishes of an all powerful king.
Speaker 1: You only know you're wrong when you're punished. And like
Speaker 1: all efforts to codify and regulate human behavior, the rules
Speaker 1: can get weirdly precise. Where do you draw the line?
Speaker 1: Like how many slaps before we consider it a spanking
Speaker 1: instead of an ass slap? How many bursts of fluid
Speaker 1: before we decide what we're seeing is not female ejaculation
Speaker 1: is urine? I mean, you can laugh about some of this.
Speaker 1: There is would you believe a code about furry costumes?
Speaker 1: Two people in furrey costumes having sex, that's okay. But
Speaker 1: if one of them is half man, half beast or
Speaker 1: in human form, No, No, too close to beastiality. One
Speaker 1: platform worried about bestiality band animals even straying into the shot.
Speaker 1: How close can a cat be before it is considered
Speaker 1: an inappropriate distance? Anyone who has lived with a cat
Speaker 1: knows like filming, unless there is a room that you
Speaker 1: can shut a cat in, filming anything without intrusion by
Speaker 1: a house cat is very difficult. Then there was the
Speaker 1: question of blood. These are a master card to clear violence, mutilation.
Speaker 1: Those are not things they abide in pawn. But if
Speaker 1: you break that down, things start to get complicated. What
Speaker 1: about pawn stars dressed as vampires devouring ketchup blood? Is
Speaker 1: that allowed? Well, try to find that online on the internet.
Speaker 1: Vampire pawn with fake or real blood is like a
Speaker 1: forbidden good. And of course not all blood comes from violence,
Speaker 1: because they have a uterus. And I'm thirty five, and
Speaker 1: I get my period somewhere between every twenty and thirty
Speaker 1: one days, and so sometimes there is blood in my
Speaker 1: vagina and you can see it in the vulva, and
Speaker 1: that cannot be portrayed in a commercial sex video. And
Speaker 1: I feel that menstruation is completely natural, and I also
Speaker 1: use my vagina for work. Someone at Visa or MasterCard
Speaker 1: finds this completely natural biological process to be unacceptable, And
Speaker 1: then we're raising people who are becoming sexual in a
Speaker 1: culture where menstruation is completely erased. Whoever is the arbiter
Speaker 1: of 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 do they have a
Speaker 1: degree in women's studies? When we set out to find
Speaker 1: who rules online porn, we did not expect to be
Speaker 1: confronted with such a thought experiment. A porn star wondering
Speaker 1: who actually regulates the site of certain bodily functions. But
Speaker 1: here we are, like a lot of credit card customers,
Speaker 1: staring at the fine print and still confused. Do payment
Speaker 1: companies control porn in a way? They have a huge influence?
Speaker 1: But we sensed that wasn't the full story. For that
Speaker 1: we needed to keep digging. We still wanted to figure
Speaker 1: out how these payment companies actually use their power. Coming
Speaker 1: up on Hot Money, We want to introduce you to
Speaker 1: a man with the world's most popular pawn site, a
Speaker 1: site with double the page views of porn Hub, running
Speaker 1: out of a throwback Soviet block apartment building in Prague.
Speaker 1: I mean they're still operating as if they were a
Speaker 1: shadow company. It's one of the top ten websites in
Speaker 1: the world. And when porn Hub took down nine million
Speaker 1: videos because they upset Visa and MasterCard, this guy, well,
Speaker 1: he still has nine million videos up. Hot Money is
Speaker 1: a production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It
Speaker 1: was written and reported by me Patricia Nilsen and me
Speaker 1: Alex Barker. Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer.
Speaker 1: Edith Russolo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen
Speaker 1: Shakerjie Amanda ka Wong is our engineer. Music composition by
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise, fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Renee Kaplan and Ruler Kalov at The Financial Times and
Speaker 1: Mia Lobel, lital Molad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton and Jacob
Speaker 1: Weisberg at Pushkin Industries. Thank you to similar Web for
Speaker 1: providing our web traffic data. If you want more from
Speaker 1: the FT, try our new app featuring eight essential stories
Speaker 1: every weekday. Search FT Edit in the iPhone app store.
Speaker 1: Your first month is free, and it's ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: a month for six months after that.