The anti-porn religious lobby just destroyed the livelihoods of pornographers
salon.com
salon.com
1. Visa and Mastercard's duopoly power to coerce virtually any business, even one as large as Pornhub, is problematic. They are a single point of failure, and since electronic payment processing is a fundamental utility service that underlies virtually all activity, this duopoly results in very real censorship. Censorship masquerading as safety is not a new concept, but it has come to become more normalized on the Internet in recent years, with deplatforming becoming a popular tactic for activists. Now the anti-porn religious lobby is now pressuring credit card companies to block ALL payments to ALL porn sites (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52543508).
2. Pornhub has received a lot of critique over their practices of allowing unverified accounts to upload videos and so on. However the volume of abusive content found on Pornhub is far less than other sites like Facebook. Furthermore, any platform is going to have some level of illegal content. Requiring zero illegal content seems unrealistic and is a level of perfection society doesn't expect of any other large-scale service.
3. The recent NY Times article that resulted in the Pornhub payment blockade is resulting in the rise of a new puritanism. Pornhub and other prominent porn sites have made changes to censor various kinks. Many search keywords on these sites now return no results. Many categories of videos are being deleted altogether. And some sites like Xvideos have started to shorten video titles by shrinking words they deem to be problematic to single letters (for example "son" becomes "s").
4. No regard has been given to those who rely on this ecosystem as a means of living, especially when it is an income stream people are particularly reliant on during the pandemic. The sudden blockade of payments and policy changes at porn sites made with no warning, leaves them with unexpected income insecurity.
We really need regulations so that a balance can be stuck between the needs of the corporate and us consumers.
(Though, specifically on the PornHub issue, I really don't have much sympathy for them - a lot of private sex videos, and even illegal underage ones, have been uploaded there as revenge or just for the heck of it, and PornHub has benefited monetarily from it.)
Who do you mean by "we"? I guess if these people are able to earn a living then there must be a market for their content and the answer is yes.
> wouldn't society be better off if they did practically anything else as an honest living?
They make content that others are willing to pay for, with little to no negative externalities. I can't see how that's bad or dishonest?
I don't see why you're criticizing pornography when there are lots of jobs out there that are actually dishonest and are net negatives for society at large, like the aforementioned religious lobbying group the article is talking about.
Porn is extremely toxic to the mind and soul. In my mind a drug dealer and a pornographer are in the same category. You're selling vices that destroy a person's life and mind. I'm sure I'm going to get coomers telling me pornography isn't that bad but a simple google search of "negative consequences of pornography" will show that there are many negatives to pornography. A heroin addict is willing to pay for heroin but that doesn't mean that they should be able to freely. They should be put in a treatment center, same with people who buy pornography.