Collateral Damage in the War on Sex Trafficking
As payment processors distance themselves from adult websites, content creators warn of financial discrimination and danger to free speech.
Gwen Adora said it was 2018 when she started uploading videos of herself to Pornhub, one of the Internet’s biggest sites for adult content. She used the money to pay her bills while pursuing a Bachelor’s in Communications and Multimedia Studies. By posting videos users would pay to see, she was able to earn as much as $1,500 a month—enough to cover school and living expenses.
Her story is far from unique. For almost two decades, an untold number of creators of sexual content have made money this way. But in the five years since Gwen began posting, the industry has come under intense legal and financial pressure. Bloomberg spoke with several adult content creators (all of whom like Gwen requested we use their online names for reasons of personal safety) who said their livelihoods have been jeopardized from the fallout of efforts to stop child exploitation and sex trafficking—both of which are widespread online. They have also been the target of conservative groups that oppose online pornography in general.