The payment companies blocked the use of their cards on the site last week after a New York Times investigation into Pornhub on Dec. Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild, a union representing porn actors, and a veteran porn star who sells videos on Pornhub, said the companies' actions were particularly distressing coming in the middle of a pandemic. Pornhub, which was visited 42 billion times in , is such a major player in the porn industry that sex workers say they have little choice but to work on it if they want to promote their business. It creates a monopoly on search traffic to adult content. So people are left with no choice but to interact with them. Sex workers and followers of Pornhub say that the company historically has made money by offering a vast free-to-access collection of videos uploaded by professional and amateur creators, as well as paid-for premium content.

These are the core obsessions that drive our newsroom—defining topics of seismic importance to the global economy. Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. OnlyFans has brought in billions of dollars distributing pornography.

With the launch of a new campaign this past week, Freedom United joins a growing coalition of organizations calling on credit card companies to cut ties with pornographic sites such as Pornhub on the basis that they facilitate trafficking. In a new letter to ten major credit card companies, activists and campaigners called for the immediate suspension of payments to pornographic sites as a result of their failure to prevent exploitative content. Last year, the owners of a Pornhub content provider named GirlsDoPorn were charged by the FBI with coercing women into making pornographic films.