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As DealBook reported earlier, a California federal court last Friday declined to dismiss Visa from a case brought by a woman who struggled to have sexually abusive videos, taken of her as an underage teen, removed from Pornhub. The suit argues that Visa helped monetize the illegal content via advertising, even though it has blocked the use of Visa cards for payments on Pornhub since 2020.

The legal decision has “created new uncertainty” about the role of TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, Al Kelly, Visa’s C.E.O. and chairman, wrote in a company blog post yesterday. “Accordingly, we will suspend TrafficJunky’s Visa acceptance privileges based on the court’s decision until further notice,” he wrote. Kelly also said that his company condemned “sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse.”

Mastercard put up its guard. Not a party to the suit but perhaps anticipating future litigation, it told DealBook in a statement that it was also blocking payments to TrafficJunky. “New facts from last week’s court ruling made us aware of advertising revenue outside of our view that appears to provide Pornhub with indirect funding,” a spokesman said. Like Visa, Mastercard halted direct payments on Pornhub after Nicholas Kristof highlighted credit card companies’ ties to the site in a Times Opinion piece.

The pressure has been on ever since, not least from Bill Ackman, the founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, who is campaigning for accountability. “I just learned that @discovercard is still providing payment services to MindGeek despite @Visa and @Mastercard’s suspension,” Ackman tweeted yesterday. “This needs to stop now!” Discover did not comment in time for publication.

THE SPEED READ

Deals

• Coinbase and BlackRock are joining forces, connecting platforms so BlackRock clients can easily access the crypto exchange. (FT)

• Halliday, a buy-now-pay-later start-up for financing blockchain game purchases, gets $6 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. (TechCrunch)

Policy

• The PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is single-handedly reshaping Republican campaigns. (Daily Beast)

• The Transportation Department proposes new rules to protect travelers from flight disruptions. (NYT)

• Jurors order Alex Jones to pay $4.1 million for defaming parents of a child killed at Sandy Hook. (NYT)

• The N.R.A. donated millions to groups behind amicus briefs supporting expansive gun rights in a June Supreme Court ruling. (Politico)

Best of the rest

• Survey: Retail investors find stocks and bonds more baffling than crypto. (Reuters)

• “More Americans Are Going Hungry, and It Costs More to Feed Them” (NYT)

• Occupancy rates at WeWork suggests people are returning to the co-office. (NYT)

• “Why the Old Elite Spend So Much Time at Work” (Atlantic)

• Wine bottles are bad for the planet, but the alternatives are unpopular. (NYT)

David F. Gallagher contributed to today’s DealBook.

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