From the Pornhub scandal to payment processors, age verification and new UK laws, working in adult content has become increasingly difficult — even when everything being produced is legal, consensual and performed by adults.
Defending pornography in public is not easy.
The word itself carries moral judgement, embarrassment, prejudice and enough negative associations to make almost any discussion easy to dismiss with a shrug.
“It’s porn. What’s the problem if it gets regulated a little more?”
The problem is that, over the last few years, that little more has become a great deal more.
And when society discovers that one particular form of expression is especially easy to restrict because very few people are willing to publicly defend it, perhaps that is precisely when we should start paying attention.
Even The Economist has recently discussed the latest British restrictions on pornography in terms that go far beyond the adult industry itself: when a form of expression is socially uncomfortable to defend, it becomes much easier to keep moving the boundary of what can be restricted.
First of all: nobody is defending illegal content
Before going any further, one thing needs to be made clear.
There should be no controversy about strict rules against material involving minors, revenge porn, non-consensual uploads, real violence, exploitation or people being filmed without their consent.
There is very little to debate there.
Anyone who works seriously in the adult industry has every reason to want that material removed.
The problem begins when legitimate efforts to stop genuinely abusive content gradually create a system in which pornography as a whole is treated as inherently suspicious.
And not everything discussed here is “censorship” in the strict legal sense.
Sometimes we are talking about laws. Sometimes platform policies. Sometimes decisions made by banks, card networks or payment processors.
But for the person actually producing content, the practical effect often converges on the same point:
material that is completely legal, consensual and produced by adults can still become impossible to publish, impossible to monetise or simply too risky to produce commercially.
2020: the turning point
The symbolic moment when all of this accelerated was December 2020.
Following allegations that Pornhub hosted illegal material, including content involving minors and non-consensual uploads, Visa and Mastercard suspended payment processing for the platform.
Pornhub responded by removing millions of videos uploaded by unverified users and radically changing its upload system.
PayPal had already stopped processing Pornhub payments in 2019.
So it would be inaccurate to say that everything began on one specific day.
But 2020 made one thing impossible to ignore:
the companies that control payments can have enormous influence over what an adult platform is able to publish.
When a card network becomes a content regulator
In the years that followed, Mastercard introduced much stricter requirements for adult websites wishing to continue using its network.
Documented age and identity verification.
Documented consent.
Pre-publication review of content.
Complaint procedures.
Systems allowing performers to challenge the continued availability of material featuring them.
Taken individually, many of these requirements are understandable.
No payment network wants its infrastructure used to monetise illegal material.
But the result is that private financial companies — companies that do not produce the content, distribute it or have any direct relationship with sexual fantasy — inevitably acquire enormous influence over the entire adult ecosystem.
If you want access to mainstream payment infrastructure, you adapt.
Then every platform interprets those rules differently
And this creates another problem.
Mastercard, Visa and other financial intermediaries establish broad requirements.
But individual platforms then have to turn those requirements into practical rules.
And they do not all interpret them in the same way.
Something accepted on one platform may be rejected on another.
A particular fetish may be considered perfectly acceptable by one website and too risky by another.
The very same scene may receive completely different treatment depending on the compliance team reviewing it.
So for a producer there is not even one clear boundary to learn.
You cannot simply say:
“That is the rule, so now I know what I can shoot.”
You need to know what each platform allows, how it interprets its own rules, how conservative its moderation team is and, sometimes, how that same platform happens to interpret the rule on that particular day.
And this is where things start becoming absurd.
When common sense is replaced by “zero risk”
Over the last few years I have encountered situations that sound almost fictional when described to people outside the industry.
Take an outdoor shoot.
Someone rides past in the background on a scooter, seen from behind and wearing a helmet.
The question becomes: where is that person’s release form?
Of course I have no idea who he is.
He is simply someone who happened to pass through the background for a few seconds and had absolutely nothing to do with the production.
But if the platform’s policy requires everyone appearing in the footage to be demonstrably authorised, the safest decision for a moderator is simple:
reject the video.
I have even had a cat sleeping quietly on a chair in the background of a veranda scene become a problem.
The cat was not involved in the scene.
Nothing happened to the cat.
It was simply there.
Still a problem.
The same applies to fake blood.
A performer pretends to injure a toe.
A single drop of theatrical blood — something completely unremarkable in almost any film or television series — can suddenly turn a fetish video into unacceptable content.
Or take tickling.
A performer laughs and, as part of the scene, says:
“No, no, stop!”
A completely natural line during a consensual tickling scene can become problematic because, if read literally and stripped of context, it may look like a withdrawal of consent.
As a producer, I understand perfectly why platforms want to be extremely careful about consent.
But at some point we also have to ask whether it is still possible to represent fiction at all.
Because fiction involves people playing roles.
A character can say “no” inside a script without the real performer withdrawing consent to make the scene.
A character can be injured without the performer actually being injured.
A person can be “kidnapped” in a roleplay without having been kidnapped in real life.
If every fictional representation has to be interpreted literally, then fiction itself becomes difficult to produce.
A cautious rule can become far more restrictive in practice
This is one of the most frustrating parts of the entire system.
The original rule may even make perfect sense.
Protect consent.
Avoid unauthorised people appearing in footage.
Prevent real violence.
Fine.
But then somebody has to turn that principle into a decision about a real video.
And if that person’s primary objective is to reduce the platform’s risk as close to zero as possible, the interpretation naturally becomes more restrictive.
The question stops being:
“Is this scene actually non-consensual?”
And becomes:
“Could somebody interpret this as non-consensual?”
It stops being:
“Is that person in the background part of the scene?”
And becomes:
“Is there a person in the background for whom we do not have documentation?”
That is a huge difference.
And it explains how already cautious rules can become even more restrictive once they reach everyday moderation.
The bureaucracy that used to stay invisible
For a small producer, all of this eventually lands directly on the desk.
Platforms such as Clips4Sale now require identity documents and performer releases, and they verify that documentation themselves.
And to be clear: verifying that everyone involved is an adult and has consented is entirely reasonable.
I have always collected those documents.
The difference is the amount of administrative control now attached to them.
A release form completed incorrectly.
An address that does not match.
A verification that fails.
A document that has to be replaced.
A platform that once mainly distributed videos now also has to behave like a compliance office.
And producers increasingly have to behave like archivists.
Private regulation without a parliament
There is another issue here that deserves far more attention.
When a government makes something illegal, there is at least a public process.
A law.
A parliament.
A text that can be read and criticised.
Courts.
Appeals.
When a major financial network decides that a category of content represents too much risk, the consequences can be almost as powerful without anyone ever voting on that decision.
Of course Mastercard, Visa or a bank are private companies and have the right to decide whom they want to do business with.
But there is another reality:
when a very small number of intermediaries control a huge proportion of online payments, their private policies begin to have quasi-regulatory effects.
They do not need to formally ban a category of content.
They only need to make it too risky to monetise.
Porn is legal. Financially, it is still “high risk”
Millions of people consume pornography.
The largest adult platforms generate enormous amounts of traffic.
And yet people working in the industry are still routinely treated by the financial system as if they belong to an exceptionally dangerous category.
Additional monitoring.
Specialised intermediaries.
Extra procedures.
Banks and payment providers deciding that adult content simply is not worth the risk.
The problem is not only financial.
It is cultural.
Everyone knows pornography exists.
Many people consume it.
Very few want to be publicly associated with it.
And that hypocrisy has very real consequences for anyone simply trying to receive payment for a perfectly legal product.
Then came age verification
Protecting minors from pornography is a legitimate objective.
I would even call it obvious.
The difficult question is how.
The UK introduced mandatory age-assurance requirements.
Italy introduced similar obligations.
One important clarification: the Italian system designed by AGCOM specifically attempts to minimise privacy risks through a double-anonymity mechanism.
So it would be inaccurate to say that adult websites necessarily receive a user’s ID document or complete identity.
But one basic fact remains:
a new barrier has been placed between an adult and content that adult is legally entitled to view.
A rule for everyone — but not everyone feels it equally
There is another paradox that is difficult to ignore from inside the industry.
Age-verification rules are supposed to apply to everyone.
Formally, they do.
But there can be a huge distance between a law existing and that law being effectively enforced.
In March 2026, the European Commission preliminarily found that Pornhub and other major adult sites had failed to implement sufficiently effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their content.
In September 2026, Ofcom opened a specific investigation into Pornhub’s age-assurance system in the UK.
So we are not talking about a platform that regulators have somehow forgotten.
We are talking about the world’s best-known porn website still being investigated, months after the introduction of very strict new rules, to determine whether and how those rules have been properly implemented.
For the ordinary user this can create a strange result.
They visit a smaller adult site and immediately encounter an age-verification procedure.
They then visit the huge platform they have known for years and may encounter something very different.
Which raises an obvious question:
what is the point of imposing a heavy barrier across an entire industry if that barrier is not applied with the same speed and effectiveness to the platforms responsible for a huge share of the traffic?
That is not necessarily evidence of bad faith.
Large regulatory proceedings take time.
There are technical assessments, appeals, rights of defence and multinational companies with legal resources completely unlike those of a small producer.
But the practical result can still be deeply uneven.
A small operator tends to comply immediately because it cannot afford a dispute, a payment suspension or a block.
A giant platform can spend months inside regulatory proceedings while continuing to operate.
The smaller you are, the faster you feel the cost of compliance.
The compliance paradox
And this leads to something even stranger.
The serious producer — identifiable, documented, using signed releases, traceable payments and established platform accounts — is precisely the easiest person to regulate.
He is there.
He has an account.
He has documents.
He has money that can be withheld.
He has a business he cannot afford to lose.
An anonymous offshore operator willing to constantly change domains and payment intermediaries is much harder to reach.
So there is a real risk that ever-increasing compliance burdens end up making life hardest for the part of the industry already trying to follow the rules.
While the least regulated part simply moves elsewhere.
Making the regulated market harder can push users toward the unregulated one
This is another unintended consequence that deserves attention.
If the well-known compliant website requires verification, accounts and additional procedures while a less regulated alternative lets people enter immediately, some users will inevitably choose the easier route.
That does not mean we should abandon efforts to protect minors.
It means we should ask whether the chosen system actually achieves its objective or simply shifts traffic elsewhere.
Effective regulation should make the regulated market safer.
It should not make the less regulated market more competitive.
Privacy concerns do not disappear just because the system is well designed
This industry has one particular characteristic.
Sexual preferences are extremely private information.
A person may be perfectly willing to spend money on a particular fetish while having absolutely no desire to create a stronger connection than necessary between their identity and that consumption.
Not because they are doing anything illegal.
Because it is private.
The same applies to payments.
The fact that a transaction is completely legal does not mean a customer wants to leave more information than necessary about their sexual consumption scattered across different systems.
In this industry, privacy is not a minor detail.
It is part of the product.
6 November 2026: England and Wales take another step
On 6 November 2026, new criminal offences relating to pornography came into force in England and Wales.
It became illegal to possess or publish certain pornographic images explicitly and realistically depicting strangulation or suffocation.
The legislation also covers certain representations of sexual activity between people who appear to be relatives or pretend to be relatives, and material in which at least one person appears or pretends to be under sixteen.
The British Government argues that these measures are necessary because some pornographic representations may normalise dangerous or illegal behaviour in real life.
That argument deserves to be taken seriously.
Strangulation, for example, carries genuine medical risks.
But the difficult question is:
how strong should the demonstrated link between the representation of a fantasy and real-world harm have to be before the state makes even possession of that image illegal?
The precautionary principle can expand forever
And this is where I see the greatest risk for fetish content.
Every individual restriction can have an apparently reasonable explanation.
First you remove what is illegal.
Then what might appear non-consensual.
Then what might be dangerous.
Then what somebody could imitate.
Then what a bank considers reputationally risky.
Then what a platform worries a moderator might misunderstand.
And each time, the boundary moves a little further.
The real problem only becomes visible when you add everything together.
Because what remains is no longer necessarily simply what is legal and consensual.
It is what nobody could possibly misinterpret.
And those are not the same thing.
For custom producers, censorship starts before the camera is even switched on
For someone like me, who works extensively with commissioned custom videos, all of this has an especially direct consequence.
When I receive a new request, I no longer only ask:
“Can we make this fantasy?”
I also have to ask:
“If we make it, will I actually be able to publish it?”
That is a major difference.
There are now perfectly harmless, legal and consensual fantasies that I have to refuse, or significantly modify, simply because they risk conflicting with the policies of the platforms where the finished video would normally be distributed.
An outdoor scene can become problematic because somebody might accidentally appear in the background.
A scene involving bondage or a gag has to be planned with extreme attention to positioning, wording and the performer’s behaviour because any ambiguous element could be interpreted as evidence of non-consent.
Even a single line of dialogue inside the roleplay can completely change the way a moderator reads the scene.
The same is true of objects.
Weapons policies can be so broad or cautiously interpreted that the problem is no longer limited to guns or knives.
Even ordinary objects can require consideration if they might be perceived as weapons inside the scene.
In a medical scenario, for example, even showing a pair of scissors may become something that needs careful thought.
This is where the issue stops being theoretical.
Before accepting a custom, I now mentally run through a checklist:
Is it allowed on Clips4Sale?
Is it allowed on the other platforms we use?
Could it be interpreted as non-consensual?
Is there an object that could be classified as a weapon?
Can we shoot it outdoors?
Can we simulate that injury?
Can we use that form of restraint?
Could the wording in the customer’s dialogue create a consent problem?
The platform’s rules now enter the creative process before the video even exists.
And if I cannot resell it, the price changes completely
There is also an economic consequence that customers often do not see.
The price of a custom video is not determined only by the time required to shoot it.
Part of the business model is the possibility of eventually adding that video to the catalogue and continuing to sell it in the future.
That allows the production cost to be spread across multiple sales.
If the request contains elements that make the finished video impossible to publish on the platforms we use, that possibility disappears.
The video effectively becomes a production made exclusively for the customer who commissioned it.
And the price has to change accordingly.
That is not a punishment.
It is mathematics.
If part of the cost would normally be recovered through future sales and those future sales are no longer possible, the original customer has to cover a much larger share of the true production cost.
A fantasy that may cost €200 when it can be distributed commercially may therefore cost substantially more when it becomes effectively non-resellable.
This is another indirect effect of censorship that rarely gets discussed.
Restricting what can be published does not only reduce creative freedom. It also makes unusual fantasies more expensive.
Fetish risks becoming all the same
Fetish exists precisely because of variety.
The interesting part is not watching the same sexual act again and again.
It is unusual fantasies, roleplay, strange scenarios, specific dynamics and extremely particular obsessions.
It is a niche made of niches.
But if every year the number of things you cannot show, simulate, mention, film in a particular place or monetise keeps increasing, the inevitable result is gradual standardisation.
Platforms will favour whatever creates the least risk.
Producers will do the same.
Not because it is creatively better.
Because it is easier to approve.
Fetish is built on diversity. Regulation designed to eliminate every ambiguity risks eliminating part of that diversity as well.
Freedom of expression is tested by things we dislike
And this may be the most important point of all.
Defending the right to publish something everyone considers tasteful, intelligent and morally acceptable is easy.
It costs nothing.
The real test of freedom of expression comes when the expression involved is something many people consider vulgar, unpleasant, immoral or simply strange.
That does not mean every type of content has to be accepted on every platform.
It does not mean there should be no limits.
It means asking:
Who decides where the boundary is?
On what evidence?
And with what possibility of challenging that decision?
The question is not “porn: yes or no?”
Reducing this discussion to a battle between people who support pornography and people who oppose it would miss the point.
The more interesting questions are these.
How much power should private intermediaries have to decide which legal forms of expression remain economically viable?
How broad should a law designed to prevent harm be allowed to become?
How much inconvenience should millions of adults be required to accept in order to prevent minors from accessing legal adult content?
How much should we rely on platforms and moderators to distinguish fantasy from reality?
And when a consensual sexual practice becomes controversial, should the response be education about the risks — or prohibition of its representation?
These are not simple questions.
And precisely for that reason, they should not be answered automatically.
Are we moving backwards?
Working in adult content today feels strangely contradictory.
On one hand, sexuality seems to be everywhere.
On the other, discussing, showing and especially monetising certain forms of sexuality increasingly requires navigating a maze of restrictions, verification systems and prohibitions.
Some of this evolution may have been necessary.
There is no doubt that some of the protections introduced in recent years addressed genuine problems the industry had ignored for too long.
But that does not mean every new restriction automatically becomes justified simply because pornography is involved.
In fact, it is precisely when something is socially unpopular to defend that we should be especially careful.
Today the issue may be a sexual fantasy somebody considers too strange.
Tomorrow the principle used to prohibit it may be applied to something far more important to the people who see no problem today.
As a producer, I do not know where this direction will lead.
Perhaps the industry will find a new balance.
Perhaps some rules will eventually be revised when their unintended consequences become impossible to ignore.
Perhaps we will simply learn to work with more bureaucracy and less creative freedom.
Only time will tell.
But one thing already seems clear to me:
never before has legally producing consensual adult content required so much constant effort to prove that what you are doing is not something illegal.