• Re: Democrat donor Visa 'Intended to Help' Pornhub and Its Parent Compa

    From Why Waste Money On Queers?@21:1/5 to governor.swill@gmail.com on Wed Sep 6 01:41:45 2023
    XPost: alt.news-media, alt.journalism, alt.politics.libertarian
    XPost: talk.politics.guns

    In article <ud86f2$24nkn$23@dont-email.me>
    <governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:


    Very happy to see Swallwell fail after his immature ignorant behavior with a Chink whore spy.

    Monkey Pox, right on time to give Democrats an excuse to cheat in the next election.

    In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor
    is liable for the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub
    and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal
    judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa
    knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.

    On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the
    U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued
    a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s
    motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair
    Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent
    business acts and practices — by processing payments for child
    porn. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)

    In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately
    alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with
    MindGeek to monetize child pornography. Specifically, he wrote,
    “Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized
    child porn”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially
    benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s]
    decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite
    allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount
    of child porn”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that
    Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn” by
    “knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”

    “When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides
    to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that
    goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn,
    it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like
    plaintiff will suffer the harms that plaintiff alleges,” Carney
    wrote.

    In a statement, a Visa spokesperson said: “Visa condemns sex
    trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse
    materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company.
    This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes
    Visa’s role and its policies and practices. Visa will not
    tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We
    continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this
    case.”

    A rep for MindGeek provided this statement: “At this point in
    the case, the court has not yet ruled on the veracity of the
    allegations, and is required to assume all of the plaintiff’s
    allegations are true and accurate. When the court can actually
    consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will
    be dismissed for lack of merit. MindGeek has zero tolerance for
    the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has
    instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated
    platform history.”

    The company’s statement continued, “We have banned uploads from
    anyone who has not submitted government-issued ID that passes
    third-party verification, eliminated the ability to download
    free content, integrated several leading technological platform
    and content moderation tools, instituted digital fingerprinting
    of all videos found to be in violation of our Non-Consensual
    Content and CSAM [child sexual abuse material] Policies to help
    protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our
    moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of
    non-profit organizations around the world. Any insinuation that
    MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material
    seriously is categorically false.”

    In June, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo
    resigned. The Montreal, Quebec-based company also laid off an
    unknown number of employees. That came in the wake of a June 20
    New Yorker exposé that found Pornhub hosted sexually explicit
    nonconsensual videos including those with children.

    The plaintiff in the case against MindGeek and Visa is Serena
    Fleites, who, when she was 13, was pressured by her then-
    boyfriend into making a sexually explicit video — which he
    allegedly uploaded to Pornhub (with the title “13-Year Old
    Brunette Shows Off For the Camera”) without her knowledge or
    consent. Fleites’ attorneys say the video, which was alleged to
    have been viewed millions of times on MindGeek sites, destroyed
    her life: “While MindGeek profited from the child porn featuring
    plaintiff, plaintiff was intermittently homeless or living in
    her car, addicted to heroin, depressed and suicidal, and without
    the support of her family,” her lawsuit, filed in June 2021,
    states. Fleites’ story was featured by New York Times columnist
    Nicholas Kristof in December 2020, who detailed how MindGeek
    “monetizes child rapes.”

    In his July 29 decision, Carney ruled partly in Visa’s favor. He
    wrote in the opinion that Fleites “simply has no basis for
    claiming Visa directly participated in the sex trafficking
    ventures that harmed her.” In addition, he ordered Fleites to
    provide “a more definite statement with respect to her common
    law civil conspiracy cause of action against Visa.”

    In a second ruling (available at this link), Carney compelled
    MindGeek to undergo jurisdictional discovery, which attorneys
    for Fleites said will reveal MindGeek’s “shadowy operations and
    those controlling it” by exposing the defendant’s financial
    relationships. “Where the money flows in the MindGeek web, which
    may relate to ownership of the porn sites that generate revenue,
    matters to the court’s jurisdictional analysis,” the judge said
    in the opinion. “As the court sees it, financially benefitting
    from the sexual exploitation of minors is the core of this case.”

    On Saturday, activist investor Bill Ackman of Pershing Square
    Holdings, who has previously called out the role of Visa and
    Mastercard in enabling MindGeek’s ability to make money from
    child pornography, posted a thread on Twitter about the ruling
    in the case.

    “Visa’s conduct here is inexcusable, likely to cause the company
    incalculable financial and reputational damage” as well as
    “create serious… personal liability and potential criminal
    liability for the board,” Ackman wrote in part. According to
    Ackman, neither he nor Pershing Square have any economic
    interest, long or short, in Visa, Mastercard or any other
    payments company, bank or financial institution.

    According to Ackman, after he read the Times’ story about
    Fleites and Pornub, he reached out to the CEOs of Visa and
    Mastercard to express concerns about their part in enabling
    MindGeek’s business. Shortly afterward, both companies cut off
    consumer payment processing to MindGeek’s sites; within “a day
    or so, MindGeek removed >10m illegal videos, 80% of its
    content,” the hedge fund manager said. However, they both soon
    reactivated business-to-business payments for the purchase of
    ads on MindGeek sites and for subscriptions to “premium”
    content, representing about 90% of the company’s revenue, per
    Ackman.

    Ackman wrote that Visa CEO Alfred Kelly “should know that the
    majority of child trafficking victims are from lower-income
    families including Black and Brown families. I would recommend
    that Visa’s board, and separately Mr. Kelly, should hire
    independent white collar and criminal counsel.” He concluded the
    thread with, “Et tu, @Mastercard?”

    Michael Bowe, partner at Brown Rudnick and lead attorney
    representing Fleites in the lawsuit, said in a statement, “The
    court’s holding that our detailed complaint adequately pleads
    Visa was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to monetize child porn
    means Visa and other credit card companies are finally going to
    face the civil and perhaps criminal consequences of this
    unconscionable and illegal activity.”

    The case, Serena Fleites v. MindGeek S.A.R.L. et al., is Docket
    No. 2:21-cv-04920-CJC-ADS in the U.S. District Court for the
    Central District of California.

    Fleites is one of 34 individual plaintiffs who last year sued
    Pornhub and MindGeek, alleging exploitation and monetization of
    child pornography, rape videos, trafficked content, stolen
    content and other nonconsensual content. The litigation is the
    first application to date of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
    Organizations (RICO), child pornography and trafficking laws
    seeking to hold financial institutions accountable for illegal
    conduct monetized by and through the systems of companies whose
    payments they process.

    VISA should be put out of business as a lesson.

    https://news.yahoo.com/visa-intended-help-pornhub-parent-
    125556303.html

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