Throughout various stages of the past five years she was homeless and lived in her car.” Serena remains estranged from certain family members. “The original Pornhub videos of Serena continue to be disseminated through other platforms, including on MindGeek affiliated sites and other pornography sites. “Although Serena is now sober, the long-term effects of Pornhub’s wrongdoing continue to this day,” according to the original lawsuit. She became addicted to heroin and attempted suicide several times. By then, the video had been downloaded and then uploaded again several times, with one version garnering an additional 2.7 million views, according to the lawsuit.įleites, who filed the case along with nearly three dozen other anonymous victims of sex trafficking, said her life spiraled out of control because of the video. She alerted MindGeek, which then took weeks to remove the video. The video already had 400,000 views by the time Fleites discovered it. Visa, for its part, reinstated card-acceptance privileges for MindGeek sites other than Pornhub.Īt the center of the California case is Serena Fleites, who says her boyfriend posted on Pornhub a sexually explicit video of her he filmed when she was in eighth grade. Mastercard ultimately said it won’t allow its cards to be used on Pornhub, and it later announced that banks will have to ensure that sellers require “clear, unambiguous and documented consent” in adult content. Immediately after the review, Pornhub announced it had removed 80% of its content. both began reviewing their ties to MindGeek after a New York Times column in December 2020 accused Pornhub of distributing videos depicting child abuse and non-consensual violence. The payments giant and rival Mastercard Inc. The lawsuit is the latest turn in a long-running controversy between Visa and Pornhub. Visa will not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity.” “This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes Visa’s role and its policies and practices. “Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company,” the San Francisco-based firm said in an emailed statement. Visa had continued working with MindGeek’s paywalled sites, such as Brazzers, and its advertising network.Visa said it believes it’s an “improper defendant” in the case. MindGeek was brought to the brink of collapse in late 2020 after its main site Pornhub was cut off by Mastercard and Visa following an investigation that identified unlawful content on the platform.
Visa said it disagreed “strongly” with the court’s decision to dismiss its argument that alleged injuries suffered by the plaintiff - a woman who said sexual footage of her taken when she was underage was uploaded to Pornhub - depended “entirely on the independent actions of parties other than Visa”.įurther rulings on the case could have long-standing implications for payment networks and their liability over transactions carried out using credit cards.
“At this early stage in the case, courts must accept as true all allegations made in a lawsuit - even if they are not accurate or proven,” he added. “In this pretrial decision, the court denied Visa’s motion to be removed from the case on a theory that Visa was complicit in MindGeek’s actions because Visa payment cards were used to pay for advertising on MindGeek sites, among other claims,” Visa chief executive Alfred Kelly said in a statement.
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