Mastercard New Revisions Leave Webmasters Concerned

Last Updated on October 15, 2021 by Corepay

In recent light of Mastercard’s updated adult revisions, web admins have begun to express fear and concern over specific compliance rules. As the date is set for October 15, many websites are still not compliant with the new regulations.

Of the compliance packages delivered to web admins, there is one that is of prime concern.

Report Abuse

One of the suggested compliance packages discusses a “report abuse” form that needs to be set in place by the October 15 due date.

In this form, you will find a checklist of boxes that allows any site visitors to report abuse immediately upon viewing the website. The following are options to click:

• Prostitution
• Trafficking
• Weapons
• Drugs
• Copyright
• Underage material
• Trademark
• Personally identifiable information
• Other

While this is in good nature, web admins have expressed concern. As a result, web admins are being asked to place a checklist on every page of a website displaying adult content. 

There are a couple of things adult webmasters can be concerned about in this situation. The first being a damaging SEO attack from a competitor. They could use these checklists and report any of the above red flags.

What is an SEO attack? This means that one of your competitors in your space is knowingly trying to harm your rankings in a search engine. One of the ways to do this is by abusing “report abuse” functionalities in websites to get your website penalized by Google.

Another thing that webmasters are concerned with is that anti-porn activists can use these checklists to impact the specific website negatively.

These checklists make it possible for any visitor of the website to report abuse.

Another thing to note is that the form forces all adult sites to add words to their websites such as “prostitution, trafficking, or drugs to their metadata, which can lead to a Google penalty, a shadow-ban, and even state surveillance.

One webmaster stated, “Mastercard didn’t make a distinction between types of sites.” This means that there is no distinction between user-generated content and paysites. 

What To Expect

While adult web admins have many good points, you will need to comply with these revisions if you wish to process Mastercard transactions.

The main thing to note here is that while “report abuse” forms can be manipulated, there will likely be repercussions for those abusing the conditions. 

Wrapping Up

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