How Mastercard’s Rules Against Child Pornographers Could Be Used To Ban Conservatives From Banking

Last week, Mastercard, Inc., announced new rules for banks processing credit card payments to pornography websites, designed to combat child pornography and sex trafficking. Unfortunately, for a country whose corporate overlords refuse (or are unable) to distinguish between intrinsic evil and prudential policy judgments, this promising development will likely also serve as a beta test to further attack conservative groups.

In December, Mastercard and Visa banned the use of their credit cards on the Pornhub website after The New York Times ran a column by Nicholas Kristof detailing the availability of child abuse and rape videos on that site. Mastercard explained its decision by confirming that Pornhub, a subsidiary of MindGeek, had violated the company’s standards by providing “unlawful content.” Visa quickly followed suit, announcing that it too had instructed “the financial institutions who serve MindGeek to suspend processing of payments through the Visa network.”

On April 14, 2021, Mastercard’s senior vice president John Verdeschi announced new standards applicable to all merchants providing pornography—and their banks. Under the new policy, all banks that connect merchants to the Mastercard network will need to certify that the purveyor of pornography “has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content,” with a process that “addresses any illegal or nonconsensual content within seven business days.” Additionally, the pornography merchants must provide “documented age and identity verification for all people depicted and those uploading the content” and a “content review process prior to publication.”