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 started 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.
Now, there’s a federal lawsuit making its way toward trial that could raise the stakes significantly. A young woman is suing not only Pornhub’s owner, Luxembourg-based MindGeek, for circulating a graphic video of her taken when she was a minor, but also the credit card company that helped process the site’s transactions, Visa. Filed in Los Angeles federal court under a 2018 anti-sex trafficking law, the industry claims the case has already had negative consequences for individual content creators. Some of them allege increased financial discrimination, which they warn creates the conditions that allow sex trafficking to spread.
