July 19, 2022 • 40 mins
In the season finale, Alex and Patricia discover how Visa and MasterCard became the reluctant rulers of porn. And they figure out what being ruled by credit card companies means for the porn industry today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. As you'll know by now, we made a series
to investigate where power lies in the porn industry. This episode,
like all the others, contains adult themes, including references to
disturbing and illegal content. Around two years ago, I discovered
(00:43):
that the world's biggest porn company had a secret owner,
a man who lived like a shadow for nearly a decade.
Finding him turned out to be my gateway into the
maze of the pornography business. The discovery that set us
off to report on four decades of breakneck change in
the industry, and when you boil it down, each era
(01:06):
involves money moving from one wealthy pornographer to another. But
today thanks are different. With platforms such as Only Fans,
it has never been easier for performers to shoot content
on their own terms and sell it straight to fans
on demand, which yes, equals more money for them, So
(01:30):
all good, right, Not so fast. I specialize mostly in
fetish stuff, so financial domination just bitchy braddy stuff. That's
Ali Knox. She's creative and bright, like many performers we've
met in the series, and to make a living, she
hasn't just relied on being a Dominatrix. She has carved
(01:53):
out other personas too, thank you for being here playing
with me today, So I thought I tease you a
little today, to play a little bit. Fans also love
to watch Alie smoke weed. Would she buys legally at
her local dispensary in Las Vegas. She could make her
(02:13):
own videos smoking weed, and she had platforms where she
could sell them. In her words, she was sovereign and
when we say her, fans loved it. Ali can make
around a thousand dollars a month reselling mostly old videos
of her getting stoned, or she could until payments companies
(02:35):
got cold feet. A few months ago, probably January February.
I started noticing that my videos were being rejected. So
if I would upload something, the platform would say, no,
you can't have this, you had drugs in it, or
you had smoking. We don't allow this anymore, or you
violated the terms and why. It took her quite a
lot of digging around, but in the end, one of
(02:56):
the platforms she used most got back to her. They
were scared of losing access to the big credit card networks.
I can't put any videos of me smoking weed on
the internet any or MasterCard has come through and said
that there can be no drug use, even though again
it's legal. This might not sound like such a big deal.
(03:17):
Portant performers have for years not been allowed to drink
alcohol in their films. This was surely just another one
of those rules, a way to tighten up standards and
protect people on set. But for Ali, losing a big
chunk of her livelihood didn't feel like added security. So
(03:37):
now if I can't do that, I gotta go find
where I'm going to make that thousand dollars. Because my
mortgage hasn't changed, my car payments haven't changed. So am
I going to have to go to the street? Am
I going to have to escort? Am I still going
to have to start crossing on my boundaries? And all
of those things happened when credit card processing fucks with
our income. What's so odd about Ali's situation is that
(03:58):
it comes after she found a degree of independence. She
could make and sell her own content just as long
as she had a payment channel. I had no idea
when I got in the industry that my biggest, my
biggest hurdle was going to be like how do I
get paid? I thought I was going to meet a
crazy agent or I was going to be unsafe on
(04:20):
a porn set, all the things that people tell you,
I never knew that my biggest risk was going to
be how I can pay my bills. She is trying
to use crypto, but it's tough. She first has to
convince people to use it, which can take days, then
arrange for the payment, then wait fifteen minutes or so
to confirm the transaction. It's far from ideal for impulse purchases.
(04:45):
And this is what Ali Knox has in common with
the biggest porn companies in the world. It doesn't matter
if you're the owner of porn Hub or one woman enterprise.
The Visa and MasterCard networks can hobble your business. Payment companies,
in the end set the limits of how any porn
(05:06):
business can make money. So who are the people taking
these kinds of decisions? Who decides what everybody from Alley
to the owners of the biggest porn sites in the
world can put on the Internet. In our final episode,
(05:29):
we pull back the curtain and meet the real rulers
of porn. I'm Patricia Nelson, I'm Alex Barker from Pushkin
Industries and the Financial Times. This is Hot Money Act
(06:15):
one the Windowless Room. In previous episodes, we explained Visa
and master Card were powerful enough to cripple Pornhub and
mind Geek, and how payment networks, day by day influence
(06:36):
what can be made on a commercial porn set. The
real mystery to us was how did they get into
a position like this. It's not like these payment companies
want to be seen as pawn regulators. They didn't ask
for the job, and they don't like talking about it.
Both companies declined to do an interview with us, but
(06:59):
we did manage to track down two guys who used
to be on the inside. Two guys who between them,
spent a total of thirty years at Visa. First meet
a dapper suite called Stanley Skogland I was the enforcer
of Visas rules for a number of years. Stanley In
(07:21):
left Visa around a decade ago, but he witnessed the
crucial period for our story, the moment that Visa and
master Card became the reluctant rulers of porn land. How
step by step the companies waded into porn regulation. It
(07:43):
started with the explosion of the Internet. Payments suddenly went
from in person transactions to virtual ones. They relied on trust,
on everybody playing by the rules, and in the early days,
pawn was the big test. It wasn't just the credit
card scammers. People would pay for pawn and then if
(08:05):
their partner found the credit card bill, a lot of
them were denial knowledge and demand a refund. Porn was
a hot topic, not from a moral point of view,
but because it was so desirable. But also people didn't
want to get caught using pornography. That's why it became
a big thing, you know, from a fraud perspective. So
(08:29):
the banks then took that to VA said you have
to do something about this. This has to stop because
we're inundated. In the early two thousands, Stanley reckons porn
made up roughly ten to fifteen percent Visa's online transaction volumes.
It was too big to ignore, and along with the fraud,
(08:52):
Visa and MasterCard realized they had to work out ways
to deal with content too, the really bad stuff like
videos of child abuse. For some reason, those people who
are interested in that, they found the Internet a very
useful place very early on. Unfortunately, it would always be clandestine,
(09:16):
it would never be obviously child pawn, you know, inc
come here and buy your images. So it was quite deceptive.
I would say. It meant VISA had to build up
its intelligence, find some way to track the Internet and
the site selling pawn. But who was going to do
that well? In the mid nineties, the man in charge
(09:39):
of risk at VISA was a well regarded former FBI
agent called Dick Held. And no, Dick Held wasn't his
cover name. Dick Held really was the guy who started
to figure out how to regulate Internet porn. There was
(10:00):
no obvious solution. Visa's initial idea was just to set
up a special porn monitoring team worked from a windowless
room deep inside Visa's headquarters in the San Francisco Bay area.
Did you ever get in the room? And this is
where we want to introduce VISA guy number two, Kevin Smith.
(10:27):
You heard from him in an earlier episode. He's a
payments expert and Kevin loves payments. His face lights up
when talking about pin codes and zip zap machines, the
things that would take imprints of credit cards in the
nineteen eighties. For seventeen years, Kevin worked her Visa, often
(10:50):
handling issues related to high risk merchants, in other words,
pawn and that's how he knew about the windowless room.
It was this strange thing. It was. Yes, everyone knew
of it, but it was it wasn't clandestine's secret. It
just wasn't talked about. I mean, it's if you look
at it in hindsight, it just didn't sound right that
(11:11):
Visa actually had this group of people that were manually
going out there trying to find violations and get them
shut down. I mean, it's a horrible job, incredibly laborious
and manual and probably highly ineffective, which is why you
needed to find a more technical solution to address it quickly.
(11:32):
By the end of the nineties, Visa shut down the
pawn room. They pretty quickly realized that way madness lies.
They knew they could never effectively screen all the horrors
of the Internet, and they realized there was a much
better option. They could delegate. They could outsource spying on
(11:56):
porn to somebody else and payment system the banks and
billers and service providers, and the Visa and MasterCard networks.
But to outsource anything, Visa needed rules for others to apply,
and when you're a global business on an issue like pawn.
(12:17):
That's easier said than done. If you look at it
a child pornography. Everyone agrees that it's horrible, nobody wants
to be associated with it. But actually there are many
countries around the world that don't actually have any legislation
that says, in this jurisdiction child pornography is illegal. For
a company like Visa operating across the globe, even defining
(12:39):
what is outright illegal and definitely shouldn't be processed can
be tricky. Visa's main regulations run to something like nine
hundred pages. Pawn is a tiny, tiny fraction of that,
but it played a special role in how the rules developed.
Pawn was one of the first areas where card companies
(13:02):
built an enforcement system to manage risky online business. When
Visa and master Cards started to clamp down in the
early two thousands, one adult payments veteran told us it
was like the sheriff coming to Pawntown. Real regulation, registration rules,
supervision requirements, even find The unique nature of porn also
(13:31):
made Visa and master Card deviate from a cherished principle.
These payment networks succeed by being everywhere, and they can
only do that by supporting all lawful commerce without taking
immoral stance. Neutrality is good for business. Porn was the exception.
(13:54):
In the two thousands, Visa decided that since their brands
gave porn sides credibility helping consumers trust them, they couldn't
ignore what the porn sides were selling, even if it
was strictly legal. MasterCard took a similar approach. This is
Stanley Skogland. Again, those decisions we took, they were never
(14:17):
taken lightly, because you know, Visa cannot be a police
man of the world trying to say you can buy this,
but you can't buy that. You know, you can see
how that could go wrong quite quickly, but especially in
these instances where it was violence, where it was borderline
underage kind of simulated rape. So there were areas where
(14:39):
the legality of it wasn't necessarily what made Visa take action.
This is all encapsulated and Visa Rule one point three
point three point four a ban on selling images that
are illegal in most parts of the world, like beastiality
(14:59):
or non consensual mutilation, but also on top of that,
a much broader catch all clause brand protect literally a
ban on anything that might bring Visa into disrepute, and
out of these decisions emerged a system for keeping pawn
(15:20):
in check, the apparatus of control we see today in
the pawn world. This was our takeaway, but we wanted
to put it to people who had seen the system
from the inside, so we asked Kevin straight up, the
Visa and MasterCard ruled the pawn industry, probably, yes, And
(15:43):
the reason for that is that there are there are
some significant names in the industry, and they are incredibly influential,
but at the end of the day, that they are
influential over their own content. Visa MasterCard cut across all
of these, and yes, perversely, Visa MasterCard invertently has become
(16:06):
the semi regulator controller of this industry. Visa and MasterCard
use their direct power with restraint, but they ultimately oversee
the card networks, the networks that create that messy thicket
of rules and best practice, codes that left Alie Knox
unable to sell videos of her smoking weed Will Naked,
(16:30):
and the ones that stopped Stoya, the performer and author
we've heard from a few times in this series, from
working when she is on her period, or even telling
her fans that she is whoever is the arbiter of
what can be done with sexual media and sexual performance?
(16:52):
Like I have no idea who they are? Did they
take a philosophy class? Like are they? Do they have
a degree in women's studies? After the break, we'll see
whether there are any philosophers at the heart of Visa's
pawn operation Act two? Playing God? This series has been
(17:19):
about power. We've met a cast of secretive pornographers, ruthless bankers,
supercharged tech bros. And we've always been led by the
question who rules porn, who ultimately decides on what can
and cannot be made in this business? And now, in
(17:43):
slightly absurd fashion, we've ended up at the doorstep of
Visa and MasterCard, giant financial services providers. But who at
Visa was actually deciding on porn policy? Estoya asked, are
they moral philosophers, women studies PhDs? Kevin Smith had the
(18:08):
answer because at one point he was one of the
people making these calls. You've got a number of individuals
playing god in a room. That's how the process has worked.
But it's offset by the fact that you've got so
many different disciplines there to give you a balanced and
appropriate answer based on each individual case, there's a whole
(18:31):
raft of individuals. It's almost like the Star Chamber because
I was involved in similar versions in Visa in Europe.
The Star Chamber back in the Middle Ages was created
to supplement a normal court system. In England, it sometimes
handled cases that were moral issues rather than clear breaches
(18:52):
of the law, which might sound a little familiar. At
its best, the Star Chamber was flexible and judicious, drawing
in a wide range of opinion, but under certain kings
it became a by word for arbitrary power. It was secretive,
(19:12):
It lacked you process so difficult to imagine, you know,
senior executives at VISA sitting down at a table and
being like peeing and other people, you know, sexy or not. Yeah,
it's a tough job. If you're sitting there looking at
(19:34):
a review of potential non compliance activities with the rules,
You're going to look at the content, You're going to
look at ridiculously sounding website names or descriptors. It comes
with the territory. Maybe to you it makes perfect sense,
but I think to most people, kind of most civilians,
it would be quite extraordinary that these types of conversations
(19:56):
take place at Visa. Yeah, they probably don't realize that
these conversations are happening every day, not just on adult
but on every single merchant environment you can think of.
For Kevin, making decisions that could affect thousands of people
in the porn industry was just part of the job routine.
(20:18):
The same goes for Stanley. He was more on the
enforcement side, but helped take decisions about businesses that broke
VISA rules. He's not a philosopher, sorry Stoya, But Stanley
is a trained sociologist, and as a student he happened
(20:38):
to take classes in gender studies and the history of ideas,
so Stoya wasn't that far off. Stanley and Kevin, of course,
wouldn't have seen themselves as pawn regulators. They were payments professionals,
managers of risk, and facilitators of commerce. When they were
(20:59):
at Visa, they dealt with pyramid schemes and strange frauds,
with gambling, and drugs, with things that pretended to be drugs,
all the crazy things you can buy online. In these cases,
Visa and MasterCard were trying to apply a complex patchwork
of local laws within a global payments network. But a
(21:23):
Stayer explained pawn seems to be different. Payment networks do
restrict things that are legal, like menstrual blood or cats.
Is that actually Visa and MasterCard? Here's Stanley again, ninety
ninety nine percent. I can tell you that that probably
(21:44):
isn't the case. Visasa Mastercard's rules would not be as detailed,
they would not address these issues, but that Visa would say, yes,
you can you shoot at home, but you can't insert
an object into your body, or you can't have animals
in the frame, or you can't perform sex act while
(22:07):
you're menstruating. No. Now, Stanley is right, Visa does not
band videos with menstrual blood, not explicitly in its rules.
But Stoya is also right. Menstrual blood is not allowed
on most of the major porn platforms that take credit cards.
(22:31):
Why the discrepancy? The answer is quite revealing. When Kevin
and Stanley think about rules, they mean the Visa and
master Card core operating rules, the commandments. They talk of
them like the law. And in these regulations, Visa doesn't
(22:53):
explicitly band blood or smoking weed in videos. Visa enjoys
an arm's length position from it all. But at the
same time, VISA does encourage a whole chain of people
in the pawn payment system to make judgments on its behalf.
(23:14):
They are told to protect the brand. They have to
interpret the rules, monitor science, and promote what Visa would
call best practices, and in part to keep Visa and
MasterCard happy, those payment companies and platforms ban menstrual, blood
and weed smoking in pawn the example the performer Ali raised,
(23:37):
they're making all these arbitrary rules to push us off
the Internet, to push us further and deeper underground. We're
constantly under threat of censorship, of regulation. Kevin and Stanley
see that as different from a Visa rule, but for
performers like Stayer and Ali, there is no difference in
(23:59):
practice or in impact. It's very hard for us to
live stable lifestyles. We didn't have to shoot from porn
companies anymore, we didn't have to shitty agents, and then
regulations came through and now are back to being fucked.
(24:19):
Visa and master Card clearly don't make all these decisions,
but they do shape the network and try to shape
an approach. We've talked lots of payment people for the series,
but Kevin and Stanley, more than anyone else, helped us
understand the mindset within the credit card Woppoli, the psyche
(24:42):
of a reluctant ruler. Have they eat them right people
to be the kind of ultimate quasi regulators of Paul
In the absence of anyone else, I would say yes,
And that could be quite a ballsy answer. But at
the end of the day, I think Visa master Card,
through their relationships, they have a good local understanding of
(25:06):
what's going on in this industry. Actually, it's challenges and
it's constant evolution. I mean, there is a shared responsibility
that says nobody wants to kill the industry, but it
needs to make sure that as it moves forward, it's
doing so in a legally defensible way. What Kevin described
(25:27):
is a murky self regulating system that to some extent
keeps pawn in check. When he was at Visa, I
can imagine he was more or less trying to do
the right thing, and he worked in a system that
by its very nature involves different interests that often balance
(25:47):
one another. Picture who is sitting around the table. There
will be Visa executives whose job it is to drum
up more business and encourage more transactions. Then there will
be people with a different outlook, teams managing risk, worrying
about the brand or the legal consequences of using Visa's power.
(26:11):
Visa's aim, and frankly the aim of the adult industry too,
is to try to find a balance where money is
flowing but the risks in the system are managed. There
is a recognition that everyone needs everyone else. The whole
thing is symbiotic. If one of the parties falls out,
then the whole damn thing falls over. Visa and master Card,
(26:33):
almost by accidents, have filled a power vacuum and a
regulation of porn around the world. It's such a peculiar
position to be in, and to Stanley, it carries obvious risks.
It's difficult to judge went to intervene and went to
hold back. I mean, do you think that Visa and
(26:55):
master Card. Do you think they realize how how much
power they have, how people in the adult industry see
them as their defector regulator. Yes, I think you may
be onto something that if you have worked in that
(27:16):
position a long time and you don't engage with the industry. Yes,
I think there's absolutely a risk that you don't understand
either the de facto power you have or how it
is perceived, and perhaps that is something would benefit but
Visa master Card to be more kind of self critical
(27:39):
in their reflection of how these programs and how this
policies are implemented. Is there a better approach for Visa
and master Card. We'll try to do some critical reflection
ourselves with a little help from the performers Stayer. That's
coming straight after the break Act three ruled by Store.
(28:12):
We are near the end of our journey through the
porn industry, and we're going back to the person who
set us off at the beginning, the performer and artist Stayer.
Her advice was invaluable and at least for us, totally unforgettable.
So if you try to make a podcast that's about
(28:36):
all of porn, it's going to be scattered and messy
and not make sense. You are the financial times, I
suggest you stay in your lane. You focus on the
business aspect, you focus on the finances. Stay in your lane.
At that point, we had secretive porn barrens in our sides,
(28:59):
big empires pumping out porn to the world. Men who
lived in the shadows, fake names, no real public presence,
people like Bernt Bergmeyer, Pornhub or Stefan Paco, the owner
of X Videos. We thought they were the most powerful
people in porn. But what we realized is that they
(29:24):
aren't the masters of their own fate. What we discovered
is that the real rule of s of porn were
much closer to home the credit card networks, and they
were in plain sight. The porn barons have immense power
and influence, sure, but always within boundaries defined by payment companies.
(29:49):
Visa and MasterCard have the last word. These were in
MasterCard are truly vast corporations. Visa is the world's biggest
financial company, the single biggest, and MasterCard is something like
the third and let's be frank, fees are and MasterCard
(30:11):
aren't wildly exciting companies, even for financial journalists. We all
use them every day, but give them as much attention
as the plumbing in our house. But by examining the
pawn industry, we saw the incredible power these payment networks
wheeled over the Internet. Instead of the government defining what
(30:36):
is and is not considered sexually acceptable, it's a corporation.
A credit card company is defining what is and is
not sexually okay. If you think about what the core
goal is on their part. It's not necessarily you know,
(30:58):
the good of the community or society, whatever. It's actually
the protection of their brand and no fault of this.
I mean that that's what a company's there to do,
but that's not necessarily the thing that we want to
use as our measure of whether pornography is okay or
what kind of pornography is okay. Yeah, and it feels
like a really bad idea to be saying, like, actually,
(31:22):
I think the government should pay more attention to born,
but I don't think that MasterCard and Visa should be
the decision makers on this. We have spoken to people
at these companies. We can tell you with absolute confidence
that Visa and MasterCard don't want to be the decision
(31:45):
makers either. They oversee a system that sets standards for
world porn, but they just hate doing it. They are
trapped in this thankless job deciding and enforcing moral codes
on sex. It goes against all their instincts. But what's
(32:07):
the alternative? A magic in the reaction if they did
explicitly allow payments for videos that depicted rape. So if
the question is who should rule pawn, we probably don't
have much choice. Cryptocurrencies are still too clunky and expensive
(32:27):
to usurp the role of credit cards in pawn, and
if crypto did take over, there might be no rules
left at all. What about governments. They certainly have immense
power over pawn companies within their borders, but we've talked
to regulators who are trying to tighten up rules around pawn.
(32:50):
They struggle to get the big pawn platforms based in
far off jurisdictions to even respond to their messages. They
don't have the leverage of Visa and master Card or
the global reach, so in practice Visa and MasterCard remain indispensable.
(33:12):
There is nobody else. How should these payment networks use
their power. There are some areas where Stoya, given the choice,
might actually have taken a tougher approach, like what's so
called faux sest. If you've been on a porn site
in recent years, you'll have noticed that there's a craze
(33:36):
for sexual fantasies about step relatives. Stoya wants to see
less of it around, But then she also thinks decisions
like this deserve an open debate, the kind of thing
a government would have when making law. Call your senator
and be like, hey, I actually want to defend step
(33:58):
in sest porn because it's a fantasy, and so we're
talking about thought crimes, and you know, I think I
think Stoya is wrong. I think she's being reactionary and
like over stepping. But with payment companies in control, it's
impossible to have that kind of meaningful debate. You know.
It's not like I can go down to the master
(34:21):
Card office and be like, hello, I would like to
have a civil dialogue about this, Like that's not going
to happen. This might be one of the things that
can be improved. The arbitrary nature of that power. Visa
and MasterCard maybe reluctant morality police, but that's no excuse
(34:43):
for operating at times almost by stealth and issuing vague
catch all rules that are turned by payment networks into
bizarrely precise, often inconsistent restrictions. We asked master Card for
(35:03):
a recorded interview. They were helpful with background information, but
in the end end they declined if we did have
that conversation, we'd probably start with some optimism. We've tracked
a crazy era for the adult industry. Pawn has gone
(35:24):
from being scarce and expensive to being everywhere and mostly
free all within a generation, and in business terms, you
can finally see things kind of coming back together. The
Internet is giving performers more power and independence and most
(35:46):
importantly money. If that can improve their working conditions, that
is surely welcome. We've seen how Visa and MasterCard oversee
a regulatory system for pawn. But who are these rules for.
The truth is they're not designed to protect the performers.
(36:07):
They're not designed to protect the viewer. The rules are
there to protect the Visa and MasterCard brands, but it
is the only system we have. How could it work better?
We have one suggestion. This series has been about how
big porn barons are reliant on Visa and MasterCard, and
(36:30):
how Visa and MasterCard are reluctant rulers of the porn barons.
Those two things have created a really patchy system of
rules and a weird situation where tube sides serving free
porn have fewer restrictions than sites taking credit cards, even
though tube sides are easier for underage people to access.
(36:55):
If Visa and MasterCards said to an owner, you own
tube sides, you own pay sites, We're going to treat
everything you own as one. That would be one way
to be more consistent and bring entire to standards on
moderation to help lower the risk of unlawful videos appearing
on tube sites. Don't underestimate the power of Visa and MasterCard.
(37:20):
When credit card companies call, even secretive pornographers would feel
compelled to pick up the phone because right now they
don't want to talk. And that brings me back to
the one moment where I thought I heard the voice
of the man who was the start of this whole journey,
(37:43):
Burned berg Meyer or BB, the ex Gorman Sax banker
who I revealed was the secret owner of mine Geek.
I was so excited to find his Hong Kong number.
I called. A man picked up. I like to think
it was BB. Hello, this is Patrician Nelson from the
(38:08):
Financial Time this Bergmire As I introduced myself, and that
split second, maybe he thought, what do I say? Do
I have anything to hide from this reporter? A millennium
of shame about sex and porn might have flashed across
(38:29):
his mind. But then maybe he reconsidered things have changed.
Porn is everywhere, everyone watches it. It's a business like
any other. Is it time to explain what I do?
He paused and then he hung up. Hot Money is
(39:03):
a production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It
was written and reported by Me, Patrician Neilson and me
Alex Barker. Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer.
Edith Russelo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen Shakurgie.
Amanda ka Wong is our engineer. Music compositioned by Pascal Wise,
(39:26):
fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive producers are
Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. A Pushkin Industry's Special thanks
to Mia LaBelle, letal My Lad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton,
Heather Faine, John Schnaz, Maggie Taylor, Morgan Ratner, Eric Sandler,
(39:49):
Jake Flanagan, Jordan McMillan, Mary Beth Smith, Isabella Nervis, Sean Carney,
Carlie Migliori, Maya Kanig, Daniela Lakhan, Nicole Morano and Jacob
Weissberg at The Financial Times Special thanks to Renee Kaplan
and Ruler Khalaf, Alista Key, Kendra, James, Nigel Hansson, Molly Eisner,
(40:13):
Ronda Taylor, Breen Turner, Nicholas Stansfield Peter Spiegel, Philippa Goodrich,
Kevin Wilson, Carolina Vargas, Manuela Saragosa tofer foreheadge Laura Clark,
Matt Garrahan, Andrew Georgiades, Petros Gion passes, Richard Martin, Barney Jobson,
(40:36):
Daniel Dombie, Cynthia Omoreho and voice Mihawark
Pushkin. As you'll know by now, we made a series
to investigate where power lies in the porn industry. This episode,
like all the others, contains adult themes, including references to
disturbing and illegal content. Around two years ago, I discovered
(00:43):
that the world's biggest porn company had a secret owner,
a man who lived like a shadow for nearly a decade.
Finding him turned out to be my gateway into the
maze of the pornography business. The discovery that set us
off to report on four decades of breakneck change in
the industry, and when you boil it down, each era
(01:06):
involves money moving from one wealthy pornographer to another. But
today thanks are different. With platforms such as Only Fans,
it has never been easier for performers to shoot content
on their own terms and sell it straight to fans
on demand, which yes, equals more money for them, So
(01:30):
all good, right, Not so fast. I specialize mostly in
fetish stuff, so financial domination just bitchy braddy stuff. That's
Ali Knox. She's creative and bright, like many performers we've
met in the series, and to make a living, she
hasn't just relied on being a Dominatrix. She has carved
(01:53):
out other personas too, thank you for being here playing
with me today, So I thought I tease you a
little today, to play a little bit. Fans also love
to watch Alie smoke weed. Would she buys legally at
her local dispensary in Las Vegas. She could make her
(02:13):
own videos smoking weed, and she had platforms where she
could sell them. In her words, she was sovereign and
when we say her, fans loved it. Ali can make
around a thousand dollars a month reselling mostly old videos
of her getting stoned, or she could until payments companies
(02:35):
got cold feet. A few months ago, probably January February.
I started noticing that my videos were being rejected. So
if I would upload something, the platform would say, no,
you can't have this, you had drugs in it, or
you had smoking. We don't allow this anymore, or you
violated the terms and why. It took her quite a
lot of digging around, but in the end, one of
(02:56):
the platforms she used most got back to her. They
were scared of losing access to the big credit card networks.
I can't put any videos of me smoking weed on
the internet any or MasterCard has come through and said
that there can be no drug use, even though again
it's legal. This might not sound like such a big deal.
(03:17):
Portant performers have for years not been allowed to drink
alcohol in their films. This was surely just another one
of those rules, a way to tighten up standards and
protect people on set. But for Ali, losing a big
chunk of her livelihood didn't feel like added security. So
(03:37):
now if I can't do that, I gotta go find
where I'm going to make that thousand dollars. Because my
mortgage hasn't changed, my car payments haven't changed. So am
I going to have to go to the street? Am
I going to have to escort? Am I still going
to have to start crossing on my boundaries? And all
of those things happened when credit card processing fucks with
our income. What's so odd about Ali's situation is that
(03:58):
it comes after she found a degree of independence. She
could make and sell her own content just as long
as she had a payment channel. I had no idea
when I got in the industry that my biggest, my
biggest hurdle was going to be like how do I
get paid? I thought I was going to meet a
crazy agent or I was going to be unsafe on
(04:20):
a porn set, all the things that people tell you,
I never knew that my biggest risk was going to
be how I can pay my bills. She is trying
to use crypto, but it's tough. She first has to
convince people to use it, which can take days, then
arrange for the payment, then wait fifteen minutes or so
to confirm the transaction. It's far from ideal for impulse purchases.
(04:45):
And this is what Ali Knox has in common with
the biggest porn companies in the world. It doesn't matter
if you're the owner of porn Hub or one woman enterprise.
The Visa and MasterCard networks can hobble your business. Payment companies,
in the end set the limits of how any porn
(05:06):
business can make money. So who are the people taking
these kinds of decisions? Who decides what everybody from Alley
to the owners of the biggest porn sites in the
world can put on the Internet. In our final episode,
(05:29):
we pull back the curtain and meet the real rulers
of porn. I'm Patricia Nelson, I'm Alex Barker from Pushkin
Industries and the Financial Times. This is Hot Money Act
(06:15):
one the Windowless Room. In previous episodes, we explained Visa
and master Card were powerful enough to cripple Pornhub and
mind Geek, and how payment networks, day by day influence
(06:36):
what can be made on a commercial porn set. The
real mystery to us was how did they get into
a position like this. It's not like these payment companies
want to be seen as pawn regulators. They didn't ask
for the job, and they don't like talking about it.
Both companies declined to do an interview with us, but
(06:59):
we did manage to track down two guys who used
to be on the inside. Two guys who between them,
spent a total of thirty years at Visa. First meet
a dapper suite called Stanley Skogland I was the enforcer
of Visas rules for a number of years. Stanley In
(07:21):
left Visa around a decade ago, but he witnessed the
crucial period for our story, the moment that Visa and
master Card became the reluctant rulers of porn land. How
step by step the companies waded into porn regulation. It
(07:43):
started with the explosion of the Internet. Payments suddenly went
from in person transactions to virtual ones. They relied on trust,
on everybody playing by the rules, and in the early days,
pawn was the big test. It wasn't just the credit
card scammers. People would pay for pawn and then if
(08:05):
their partner found the credit card bill, a lot of
them were denial knowledge and demand a refund. Porn was
a hot topic, not from a moral point of view,
but because it was so desirable. But also people didn't
want to get caught using pornography. That's why it became
a big thing, you know, from a fraud perspective. So
(08:29):
the banks then took that to VA said you have
to do something about this. This has to stop because
we're inundated. In the early two thousands, Stanley reckons porn
made up roughly ten to fifteen percent Visa's online transaction volumes.
It was too big to ignore, and along with the fraud,
(08:52):
Visa and MasterCard realized they had to work out ways
to deal with content too, the really bad stuff like
videos of child abuse. For some reason, those people who
are interested in that, they found the Internet a very
useful place very early on. Unfortunately, it would always be clandestine,
(09:16):
it would never be obviously child pawn, you know, inc
come here and buy your images. So it was quite deceptive.
I would say. It meant VISA had to build up
its intelligence, find some way to track the Internet and
the site selling pawn. But who was going to do
that well? In the mid nineties, the man in charge
(09:39):
of risk at VISA was a well regarded former FBI
agent called Dick Held. And no, Dick Held wasn't his
cover name. Dick Held really was the guy who started
to figure out how to regulate Internet porn. There was
(10:00):
no obvious solution. Visa's initial idea was just to set
up a special porn monitoring team worked from a windowless
room deep inside Visa's headquarters in the San Francisco Bay area.
Did you ever get in the room? And this is
where we want to introduce VISA guy number two, Kevin Smith.
(10:27):
You heard from him in an earlier episode. He's a
payments expert and Kevin loves payments. His face lights up
when talking about pin codes and zip zap machines, the
things that would take imprints of credit cards in the
nineteen eighties. For seventeen years, Kevin worked her Visa, often
(10:50):
handling issues related to high risk merchants, in other words,
pawn and that's how he knew about the windowless room.
It was this strange thing. It was. Yes, everyone knew
of it, but it was it wasn't clandestine's secret. It
just wasn't talked about. I mean, it's if you look
at it in hindsight, it just didn't sound right that
(11:11):
Visa actually had this group of people that were manually
going out there trying to find violations and get them
shut down. I mean, it's a horrible job, incredibly laborious
and manual and probably highly ineffective, which is why you
needed to find a more technical solution to address it quickly.
(11:32):
By the end of the nineties, Visa shut down the
pawn room. They pretty quickly realized that way madness lies.
They knew they could never effectively screen all the horrors
of the Internet, and they realized there was a much
better option. They could delegate. They could outsource spying on
(11:56):
porn to somebody else and payment system the banks and
billers and service providers, and the Visa and MasterCard networks.
But to outsource anything, Visa needed rules for others to apply,
and when you're a global business on an issue like pawn.
(12:17):
That's easier said than done. If you look at it
a child pornography. Everyone agrees that it's horrible, nobody wants
to be associated with it. But actually there are many
countries around the world that don't actually have any legislation
that says, in this jurisdiction child pornography is illegal. For
a company like Visa operating across the globe, even defining
(12:39):
what is outright illegal and definitely shouldn't be processed can
be tricky. Visa's main regulations run to something like nine
hundred pages. Pawn is a tiny, tiny fraction of that,
but it played a special role in how the rules developed.
Pawn was one of the first areas where card companies
(13:02):
built an enforcement system to manage risky online business. When
Visa and master Cards started to clamp down in the
early two thousands, one adult payments veteran told us it
was like the sheriff coming to Pawntown. Real regulation, registration rules,
supervision requirements, even find The unique nature of porn also
(13:31):
made Visa and master Card deviate from a cherished principle.
These payment networks succeed by being everywhere, and they can
only do that by supporting all lawful commerce without taking
immoral stance. Neutrality is good for business. Porn was the exception.
(13:54):
In the two thousands, Visa decided that since their brands
gave porn sides credibility helping consumers trust them, they couldn't
ignore what the porn sides were selling, even if it
was strictly legal. MasterCard took a similar approach. This is
Stanley Skogland. Again, those decisions we took, they were never
(14:17):
taken lightly, because you know, Visa cannot be a police
man of the world trying to say you can buy this,
but you can't buy that. You know, you can see
how that could go wrong quite quickly, but especially in
these instances where it was violence, where it was borderline
underage kind of simulated rape. So there were areas where
(14:39):
the legality of it wasn't necessarily what made Visa take action.
This is all encapsulated and Visa Rule one point three
point three point four a ban on selling images that
are illegal in most parts of the world, like beastiality
(14:59):
or non consensual mutilation, but also on top of that,
a much broader catch all clause brand protect literally a
ban on anything that might bring Visa into disrepute, and
out of these decisions emerged a system for keeping pawn
(15:20):
in check, the apparatus of control we see today in
the pawn world. This was our takeaway, but we wanted
to put it to people who had seen the system
from the inside, so we asked Kevin straight up, the
Visa and MasterCard ruled the pawn industry, probably, yes, And
(15:43):
the reason for that is that there are there are
some significant names in the industry, and they are incredibly influential,
but at the end of the day, that they are
influential over their own content. Visa MasterCard cut across all
of these, and yes, perversely, Visa MasterCard invertently has become
(16:06):
the semi regulator controller of this industry. Visa and MasterCard
use their direct power with restraint, but they ultimately oversee
the card networks, the networks that create that messy thicket
of rules and best practice, codes that left Alie Knox
unable to sell videos of her smoking weed Will Naked,
(16:30):
and the ones that stopped Stoya, the performer and author
we've heard from a few times in this series, from
working when she is on her period, or even telling
her fans that she is whoever is the arbiter of
what can be done with sexual media and sexual performance?
(16:52):
Like I have no idea who they are? Did they
take a philosophy class? Like are they? Do they have
a degree in women's studies? After the break, we'll see
whether there are any philosophers at the heart of Visa's
pawn operation Act two? Playing God? This series has been
(17:19):
about power. We've met a cast of secretive pornographers, ruthless bankers,
supercharged tech bros. And we've always been led by the
question who rules porn, who ultimately decides on what can
and cannot be made in this business? And now, in
(17:43):
slightly absurd fashion, we've ended up at the doorstep of
Visa and MasterCard, giant financial services providers. But who at
Visa was actually deciding on porn policy? Estoya asked, are
they moral philosophers, women studies PhDs? Kevin Smith had the
(18:08):
answer because at one point he was one of the
people making these calls. You've got a number of individuals
playing god in a room. That's how the process has worked.
But it's offset by the fact that you've got so
many different disciplines there to give you a balanced and
appropriate answer based on each individual case, there's a whole
(18:31):
raft of individuals. It's almost like the Star Chamber because
I was involved in similar versions in Visa in Europe.
The Star Chamber back in the Middle Ages was created
to supplement a normal court system. In England, it sometimes
handled cases that were moral issues rather than clear breaches
(18:52):
of the law, which might sound a little familiar. At
its best, the Star Chamber was flexible and judicious, drawing
in a wide range of opinion, but under certain kings
it became a by word for arbitrary power. It was secretive,
(19:12):
It lacked you process so difficult to imagine, you know,
senior executives at VISA sitting down at a table and
being like peeing and other people, you know, sexy or not. Yeah,
it's a tough job. If you're sitting there looking at
(19:34):
a review of potential non compliance activities with the rules,
You're going to look at the content, You're going to
look at ridiculously sounding website names or descriptors. It comes
with the territory. Maybe to you it makes perfect sense,
but I think to most people, kind of most civilians,
it would be quite extraordinary that these types of conversations
(19:56):
take place at Visa. Yeah, they probably don't realize that
these conversations are happening every day, not just on adult
but on every single merchant environment you can think of.
For Kevin, making decisions that could affect thousands of people
in the porn industry was just part of the job routine.
(20:18):
The same goes for Stanley. He was more on the
enforcement side, but helped take decisions about businesses that broke
VISA rules. He's not a philosopher, sorry Stoya, But Stanley
is a trained sociologist, and as a student he happened
(20:38):
to take classes in gender studies and the history of ideas,
so Stoya wasn't that far off. Stanley and Kevin, of course,
wouldn't have seen themselves as pawn regulators. They were payments professionals,
managers of risk, and facilitators of commerce. When they were
(20:59):
at Visa, they dealt with pyramid schemes and strange frauds,
with gambling, and drugs, with things that pretended to be drugs,
all the crazy things you can buy online. In these cases,
Visa and MasterCard were trying to apply a complex patchwork
of local laws within a global payments network. But a
(21:23):
Stayer explained pawn seems to be different. Payment networks do
restrict things that are legal, like menstrual blood or cats.
Is that actually Visa and MasterCard? Here's Stanley again, ninety
ninety nine percent. I can tell you that that probably
(21:44):
isn't the case. Visasa Mastercard's rules would not be as detailed,
they would not address these issues, but that Visa would say, yes,
you can you shoot at home, but you can't insert
an object into your body, or you can't have animals
in the frame, or you can't perform sex act while
(22:07):
you're menstruating. No. Now, Stanley is right, Visa does not
band videos with menstrual blood, not explicitly in its rules.
But Stoya is also right. Menstrual blood is not allowed
on most of the major porn platforms that take credit cards.
(22:31):
Why the discrepancy? The answer is quite revealing. When Kevin
and Stanley think about rules, they mean the Visa and
master Card core operating rules, the commandments. They talk of
them like the law. And in these regulations, Visa doesn't
(22:53):
explicitly band blood or smoking weed in videos. Visa enjoys
an arm's length position from it all. But at the
same time, VISA does encourage a whole chain of people
in the pawn payment system to make judgments on its behalf.
(23:14):
They are told to protect the brand. They have to
interpret the rules, monitor science, and promote what Visa would
call best practices, and in part to keep Visa and
MasterCard happy, those payment companies and platforms ban menstrual, blood
and weed smoking in pawn the example the performer Ali raised,
(23:37):
they're making all these arbitrary rules to push us off
the Internet, to push us further and deeper underground. We're
constantly under threat of censorship, of regulation. Kevin and Stanley
see that as different from a Visa rule, but for
performers like Stayer and Ali, there is no difference in
(23:59):
practice or in impact. It's very hard for us to
live stable lifestyles. We didn't have to shoot from porn
companies anymore, we didn't have to shitty agents, and then
regulations came through and now are back to being fucked.
(24:19):
Visa and master Card clearly don't make all these decisions,
but they do shape the network and try to shape
an approach. We've talked lots of payment people for the series,
but Kevin and Stanley, more than anyone else, helped us
understand the mindset within the credit card Woppoli, the psyche
(24:42):
of a reluctant ruler. Have they eat them right people
to be the kind of ultimate quasi regulators of Paul
In the absence of anyone else, I would say yes,
And that could be quite a ballsy answer. But at
the end of the day, I think Visa master Card,
through their relationships, they have a good local understanding of
(25:06):
what's going on in this industry. Actually, it's challenges and
it's constant evolution. I mean, there is a shared responsibility
that says nobody wants to kill the industry, but it
needs to make sure that as it moves forward, it's
doing so in a legally defensible way. What Kevin described
(25:27):
is a murky self regulating system that to some extent
keeps pawn in check. When he was at Visa, I
can imagine he was more or less trying to do
the right thing, and he worked in a system that
by its very nature involves different interests that often balance
(25:47):
one another. Picture who is sitting around the table. There
will be Visa executives whose job it is to drum
up more business and encourage more transactions. Then there will
be people with a different outlook, teams managing risk, worrying
about the brand or the legal consequences of using Visa's power.
(26:11):
Visa's aim, and frankly the aim of the adult industry too,
is to try to find a balance where money is
flowing but the risks in the system are managed. There
is a recognition that everyone needs everyone else. The whole
thing is symbiotic. If one of the parties falls out,
then the whole damn thing falls over. Visa and master Card,
(26:33):
almost by accidents, have filled a power vacuum and a
regulation of porn around the world. It's such a peculiar
position to be in, and to Stanley, it carries obvious risks.
It's difficult to judge went to intervene and went to
hold back. I mean, do you think that Visa and
(26:55):
master Card. Do you think they realize how how much
power they have, how people in the adult industry see
them as their defector regulator. Yes, I think you may
be onto something that if you have worked in that
(27:16):
position a long time and you don't engage with the industry. Yes,
I think there's absolutely a risk that you don't understand
either the de facto power you have or how it
is perceived, and perhaps that is something would benefit but
Visa master Card to be more kind of self critical
(27:39):
in their reflection of how these programs and how this
policies are implemented. Is there a better approach for Visa
and master Card. We'll try to do some critical reflection
ourselves with a little help from the performers Stayer. That's
coming straight after the break Act three ruled by Store.
(28:12):
We are near the end of our journey through the
porn industry, and we're going back to the person who
set us off at the beginning, the performer and artist Stayer.
Her advice was invaluable and at least for us, totally unforgettable.
So if you try to make a podcast that's about
(28:36):
all of porn, it's going to be scattered and messy
and not make sense. You are the financial times, I
suggest you stay in your lane. You focus on the
business aspect, you focus on the finances. Stay in your lane.
At that point, we had secretive porn barrens in our sides,
(28:59):
big empires pumping out porn to the world. Men who
lived in the shadows, fake names, no real public presence,
people like Bernt Bergmeyer, Pornhub or Stefan Paco, the owner
of X Videos. We thought they were the most powerful
people in porn. But what we realized is that they
(29:24):
aren't the masters of their own fate. What we discovered
is that the real rule of s of porn were
much closer to home the credit card networks, and they
were in plain sight. The porn barons have immense power
and influence, sure, but always within boundaries defined by payment companies.
(29:49):
Visa and MasterCard have the last word. These were in
MasterCard are truly vast corporations. Visa is the world's biggest
financial company, the single biggest, and MasterCard is something like
the third and let's be frank, fees are and MasterCard
(30:11):
aren't wildly exciting companies, even for financial journalists. We all
use them every day, but give them as much attention
as the plumbing in our house. But by examining the
pawn industry, we saw the incredible power these payment networks
wheeled over the Internet. Instead of the government defining what
(30:36):
is and is not considered sexually acceptable, it's a corporation.
A credit card company is defining what is and is
not sexually okay. If you think about what the core
goal is on their part. It's not necessarily you know,
(30:58):
the good of the community or society, whatever. It's actually
the protection of their brand and no fault of this.
I mean that that's what a company's there to do,
but that's not necessarily the thing that we want to
use as our measure of whether pornography is okay or
what kind of pornography is okay. Yeah, and it feels
like a really bad idea to be saying, like, actually,
(31:22):
I think the government should pay more attention to born,
but I don't think that MasterCard and Visa should be
the decision makers on this. We have spoken to people
at these companies. We can tell you with absolute confidence
that Visa and MasterCard don't want to be the decision
(31:45):
makers either. They oversee a system that sets standards for
world porn, but they just hate doing it. They are
trapped in this thankless job deciding and enforcing moral codes
on sex. It goes against all their instincts. But what's
(32:07):
the alternative? A magic in the reaction if they did
explicitly allow payments for videos that depicted rape. So if
the question is who should rule pawn, we probably don't
have much choice. Cryptocurrencies are still too clunky and expensive
(32:27):
to usurp the role of credit cards in pawn, and
if crypto did take over, there might be no rules
left at all. What about governments. They certainly have immense
power over pawn companies within their borders, but we've talked
to regulators who are trying to tighten up rules around pawn.
(32:50):
They struggle to get the big pawn platforms based in
far off jurisdictions to even respond to their messages. They
don't have the leverage of Visa and master Card or
the global reach, so in practice Visa and MasterCard remain indispensable.
(33:12):
There is nobody else. How should these payment networks use
their power. There are some areas where Stoya, given the choice,
might actually have taken a tougher approach, like what's so
called faux sest. If you've been on a porn site
in recent years, you'll have noticed that there's a craze
(33:36):
for sexual fantasies about step relatives. Stoya wants to see
less of it around, But then she also thinks decisions
like this deserve an open debate, the kind of thing
a government would have when making law. Call your senator
and be like, hey, I actually want to defend step
(33:58):
in sest porn because it's a fantasy, and so we're
talking about thought crimes, and you know, I think I
think Stoya is wrong. I think she's being reactionary and
like over stepping. But with payment companies in control, it's
impossible to have that kind of meaningful debate. You know.
It's not like I can go down to the master
(34:21):
Card office and be like, hello, I would like to
have a civil dialogue about this, Like that's not going
to happen. This might be one of the things that
can be improved. The arbitrary nature of that power. Visa
and MasterCard maybe reluctant morality police, but that's no excuse
(34:43):
for operating at times almost by stealth and issuing vague
catch all rules that are turned by payment networks into
bizarrely precise, often inconsistent restrictions. We asked master Card for
(35:03):
a recorded interview. They were helpful with background information, but
in the end end they declined if we did have
that conversation, we'd probably start with some optimism. We've tracked
a crazy era for the adult industry. Pawn has gone
(35:24):
from being scarce and expensive to being everywhere and mostly
free all within a generation, and in business terms, you
can finally see things kind of coming back together. The
Internet is giving performers more power and independence and most
(35:46):
importantly money. If that can improve their working conditions, that
is surely welcome. We've seen how Visa and MasterCard oversee
a regulatory system for pawn. But who are these rules for.
The truth is they're not designed to protect the performers.
(36:07):
They're not designed to protect the viewer. The rules are
there to protect the Visa and MasterCard brands, but it
is the only system we have. How could it work better?
We have one suggestion. This series has been about how
big porn barons are reliant on Visa and MasterCard, and
(36:30):
how Visa and MasterCard are reluctant rulers of the porn barons.
Those two things have created a really patchy system of
rules and a weird situation where tube sides serving free
porn have fewer restrictions than sites taking credit cards, even
though tube sides are easier for underage people to access.
(36:55):
If Visa and MasterCards said to an owner, you own
tube sides, you own pay sites, We're going to treat
everything you own as one. That would be one way
to be more consistent and bring entire to standards on
moderation to help lower the risk of unlawful videos appearing
on tube sites. Don't underestimate the power of Visa and MasterCard.
(37:20):
When credit card companies call, even secretive pornographers would feel
compelled to pick up the phone because right now they
don't want to talk. And that brings me back to
the one moment where I thought I heard the voice
of the man who was the start of this whole journey,
(37:43):
Burned berg Meyer or BB, the ex Gorman Sax banker
who I revealed was the secret owner of mine Geek.
I was so excited to find his Hong Kong number.
I called. A man picked up. I like to think
it was BB. Hello, this is Patrician Nelson from the
(38:08):
Financial Time this Bergmire As I introduced myself, and that
split second, maybe he thought, what do I say? Do
I have anything to hide from this reporter? A millennium
of shame about sex and porn might have flashed across
(38:29):
his mind. But then maybe he reconsidered things have changed.
Porn is everywhere, everyone watches it. It's a business like
any other. Is it time to explain what I do?
He paused and then he hung up. Hot Money is
(39:03):
a production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It
was written and reported by Me, Patrician Neilson and me
Alex Barker. Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer.
Edith Russelo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen Shakurgie.
Amanda ka Wong is our engineer. Music compositioned by Pascal Wise,
(39:26):
fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive producers are
Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. A Pushkin Industry's Special thanks
to Mia LaBelle, letal My Lad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton,
Heather Faine, John Schnaz, Maggie Taylor, Morgan Ratner, Eric Sandler,
(39:49):
Jake Flanagan, Jordan McMillan, Mary Beth Smith, Isabella Nervis, Sean Carney,
Carlie Migliori, Maya Kanig, Daniela Lakhan, Nicole Morano and Jacob
Weissberg at The Financial Times Special thanks to Renee Kaplan
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