Billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman has criticized Visa for not banning payments on Pornhub, amid a lawsuit accusing the pornographic website of hosting explicit videos of children.
“Visa’s conduct here is unforgivable and is likely to cause incalculable financial and reputational damage to the company,” Ackman said in a tweet following a key court ruling in the case.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in California ruled that Visa may have facilitated the distribution of child pornography by providing payment services to Pornhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek.
The judge rejected Visa’s request to be dismissed from the case, finding that the plaintiff had credibly claimed that “Visa knew MindGeek’s websites were teeming with revenue-generating child pornography.”
Billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman has criticized Visa for failing to ban payments on Pornhub amid lawsuit accusing pornographic website of hosting child pornography
“Visa lent MindGeek a much-needed tool—its payment network—with the purported knowledge that MindGeek’s websites contained a wealth of child porn with revenue,” Carney wrote in his decision.
The charges were brought by 34 women who said Pornhub had hosted videos showing that they were sexually assaulted or abused as children without their consent.
The lead prosecutor said that in 2014, when she was 13, her boyfriend uploaded a sexually explicit video of her to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent.
The video was titled ’13-year-old brunette shows off for the camera’ and was viewed 400,000 times before the girl found out, according to court records.
The indictment alleges that Pornhub took weeks to remove the video and in the meantime it was widely downloaded, copied and redistributed.
After the video was published, the girl was harassed and bullied, dropped out of school, attempted suicide and became addicted to heroin, the indictment said.
The prosecution’s lead attorney, Michael Bowe, told DailyMail.com: “The court ruling that our detailed complaint sufficiently argues that Visa was involved in a criminal conspiracy to monetize child porn means that Visa and other credit card companies have finally brought the civil and may face criminal consequences. of this unscrupulous and illegal activity.’
The lawsuit was brought by 34 women who said Pornhub had hosted videos showing that they were sexually assaulted or abused as children without their consent.
“Visa does not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activities. We continue to believe that Visa is an inappropriate defendant in this case,” a company spokesperson said
A Visa spokesperson said in a statement to DailyMail.com: “Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse material as abhorrent to our values and purpose as a company.”
“This preliminary ruling is disappointing and misrepresents Visa’s role, policies and practices,” the company added.
“Visa does not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activities. We continue to believe that Visa is an inappropriate defendant in this case.”
MindGeek did not respond to a request for comment, but rather called the allegations in the lawsuit “completely absurd, completely reckless and categorically false.”
According to the lawsuit, Montreal-based MindGeek owns more than 100 pornographic sites, including Pornhub, RedTube, Tube8 and YouPorn, and sees some 3.5 billion visits each month.
The porn giant has faced growing backlash since the New York Times published an article in December 2020 accusing Pornhub of posting illegal content online, including child pornography and rape videos.
“Why is Canada hosting a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?” wrote Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
According to the lawsuit, Montreal-based MindGeek owns more than 100 pornographic sites, including Pornhub, RedTube, Tube8 and YouPorn
The public outcry prompted Visa and Mastercard to suspend payments on Pornhub. The other major payment network, American Express, does not serve porn merchants.
But after MindGeek deleted millions of user-uploaded videos, Visa apparently considered the matter resolved and resumed payment processing.
Carney said in his statement: “Visa has made the decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant, despite the alleged knowledge that MindGeek made money from child pornography.”
“The court can easily conclude that Visa was intended to help MindGeek monetize child pornography,” Carney wrote.
Ackman has been outspoken on the matter, telling CNBC on Tuesday, “My interest stems from the fact that I have four daughters.”
“If you think about the worst harm – economic, physical and mental harm you can do to a human being – it’s a child being trafficked…videos of the rape appear. I find it difficult to talk about it,” he said.