The idea that the general populace, the same populace that watches porn, doesn't care about the people they jerk off to, isn't off base at all. Free porn clips and rips dominate the market, when people jerk off or finger off they're essentially looking for pieces of meat that make their brain and dick/vajayjay happy, ejaculate, and then the performers or people are forgotten about minutes later.
There is an apathy that perpetuates sexual abuse in the industry, but the majority of viewers of porn have no clue what's going on behind the scenes. The number of people that know porn stars by name versus people that run into porn stars on clips sites is heavily skewed towards the latter.