Mastercard complaint: Master Card policies on Adult Content is dangerous and unacceptable

Master Card has recently enacted new policies that put unrealistically tight restrictions on the production of adult pornographic content. While the ease of access to adult content and the prominence of content such as revenge porn is indeed an issue, Master Card’s new policies essentially go ‘scorched earth’ on all adult content unless they are within a very tight and manually reviewed restriction.

These new policies are so tight that they are made impossible to maintain, such as requiring not only content be posted by verified adults but also requiring any content to be manually reviewed and any live streams be reviewed in real-time. With hundreds of thousands of such content being uploaded each minute, these standards are unreachable for any moderately sized platform let alone any platform bigger. This pressures platforms to either end their relationship with Master Card or disallow any and all pornographic material due to their inability to keep up with these restrictions.

Due to the prominence of Master Card, losing their relationship can mean losing your business as a whole, or at the very least losing a massive chunk of your income for said business. This also created a dangerous situation for sex workers.

Sex work is legitimate work and millions of people rely on sex work for their income. Removing legitimate platforms for sex workers will only harm them by forcing them into less safe platforms and environments. Unrealistically tight bans on sex workers have even lead to the deaths of thousands of sex workers already due to being forced into unsafe environments after losing legitimate work places. These Master Card restrictions will lead to sex workers going into poverty, being forced onto the streets, and being killed. This isn’t a make-believe scenario, that WILL happen if Master Card, and other payment processors, continue to tighten the restrictions on pornographic content.