[HN Gopher] OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting ...
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OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in October
Author : minimaxir
Score : 562 points
Date : 2021-08-19 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Banks, payment processors are the police officers, or rather
| soldiers of the world.
|
| They're really just helping the adoption to mainstream crypto.
| fnord77 wrote:
| is this like Ford saying they're going to stop making vehicles?
| systematical wrote:
| Isn't that the point of their site?
| viggity wrote:
| smells like a publicity stunt to me. "omg. wtf, onlyfans, I won't
| be able to pay my bills" a million sex workers howl into social
| media. For 2 months. october rolls around, "we've decided to
| reverse course". So much free publicity.
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| It's a risky game though, because you're opening the space to
| potential competitors for two months. That's some significant
| time to achieve network effects, and people who move out are
| unlikely to ever get back.
| MelvinButtsESQ wrote:
| Sex work is legitimate work. They should not be shame and pushed
| to the fringes as we do here in the US, both by power of state
| and morality. I cringe at the number of people, mostly women of
| course, who are going to lose their livelihood because of
| "virtual Karens" imposing THEIR moral beliefs on others via power
| of the state.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| OF should complain to ftc or whoever that the payment processors
| bullying disproportionally effects women and lgbtq community. I
| am not being sarcastic
| findthewords wrote:
| No idea how this will play out, but this is very reminiscent of
| Yahoo and Tumblr: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tumblr-sold-to-
| wordpress
| [deleted]
| dotcoma wrote:
| Why are they shooting themselves in the foot?
|
| Wasn't (soft) porn their business model?
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually
| explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be
| allowed to post nude photos and videos, provided they're
| consistent with OnlyFans' policy, the company said Thursday.
|
| This paragraph contradicts itself:
|
| - The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually
| explicit
|
| Versus
|
| - Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos
|
| What is this article trying to say?
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| nude is not the same thing as sexually explicit.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| That's true, but I suspect that there's enough of an overlap
| on a site like OnlyFans that the Venn diagram is basically a
| circle.
| speeder wrote:
| Seemly nudity is fine, sex is not.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Looks like OF is saying softcore only and is gonna call
| anything they don't like explicit based on the whim of the
| reviewer.
| rchaud wrote:
| The Brandi Maxx definition of pornography
| raitom wrote:
| Congrats on making the dumbest business decision ever made!
| [deleted]
| antcas wrote:
| Isn't their whole business model "explicit"? I don't get how this
| will work out for them.
|
| Based on the Indie Hackers interview with two active Only Fans
| content makers, it also sounds like their app is kinda shitty and
| slow.
|
| Seems like they're opening the door wide open to a new
| competitor.
| Miner49er wrote:
| A new competitor will face the exact same problem, unless they
| try and do something like accepting cryptocurrency.
| rvz wrote:
| > The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from
| banking partners and payment providers, according to the company.
|
| Fintech's finest financially suffocating OnlyFans, forcing them
| to ban explicit videos off of their platform.
|
| Somebody has got to lose.
| bitwize wrote:
| > OnlyFans to block profit starting in October
|
| ftfy
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Digital pimpin' ain't easy. If it was, everyone would do it.
| midrus wrote:
| Is it today April 1st in any part of the world I'm not aware?
| Loeffelmaenn wrote:
| It really doesn't sit right with me that payment processors can
| emit such a huge pressure that OnlyFans is willing to loose 99.9%
| of their userbase becuase they just have no other choice.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Its almost as if Yarvin had a point when he described The
| Cathedral.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| This is going to be corporate suicide on a greater scale than
| Tumblr's policy.
|
| I say greater because OnlyFans is/was still on a massive upswing
| whereas Tumblr was 10 years past its peak already when the nails
| went in the coffin.
|
| Edit: I understand this is supposedly not their choice.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I think a lot of governments are starting to decide that social
| media and porn are a terrible waste of resources. If so,
| they're not wrong.
| cryptonector wrote:
| TFA:
|
| > OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business.
|
| HN: s/of the pornography //
| frutiger wrote:
| >TFA: >> OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business.
| >HN: > s/of the pornography //
|
| ...is getting out business?
| belter wrote:
| This is the least of their problems and I am amazed none of
| their executives is not yet in jail:
|
| "The children selling explicit videos on OnlyFans"
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I honestly did not know they did anything besides porn. They
| have a really bad marketing department as I bet most people
| only know of them via porn (or I run in a slightly more
| degenerate circle).
| redisman wrote:
| Not at all. If someone told anyone I know they have a
| onlyfans, I can't think of anyone who would assume anything
| other than porn
| slg wrote:
| It is the same problem that Voat had. If you are are a
| platform that prioritizes minimal moderation in a market
| dominated by someone who doesn't, the primary reason to use
| your platform is because that content isn't allowed on the
| market leader.
|
| Voat only became "Reddit for white supremacists" because
| Reddit was pushing many of those users off their platform.
| Only Fans only became "Patreon for sex work" because
| Patreon didn't want those users on their platform. Anyone
| who wasn't one of those groups was better off just sticking
| with Reddit and Patreon and that only became more true as
| the reputation becomes more and more ingrained with the
| platform's brand.
| buzzwords wrote:
| That was one first thought too
| tootie wrote:
| OF is a creator platform at heart and not necessarily tied to
| sexually explicit content except by reputation. There is a
| likely a huge non-porn market for helping creators of all types
| monetize their content. The question will be if they can
| actually get people to completely change their mind about what
| the platform is for.
| trident5000 wrote:
| OF is thot central.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Yes there is a huge market for non-porn and it's all on
| Patreon.
| maccolgan wrote:
| For this use case, Patreon & OpenCollective (yes,
| OpenCollective) is far more established and offers many more
| features than OF. What's the point in using OF then?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Network effects. Start with taboo yet high demand market
| then pivot.
| tehbeard wrote:
| How and where and what USP (Unique Selling Point) is
| there to OF that Patreon/OpenCollective are missing?
|
| "Network effects" doesn't mean jack, this isn't surfacing
| a plumber to a user on facebook because friends of
| friends have reviewed them in their local area..
| [deleted]
| unicornfinder wrote:
| I agree that there's a huge non-porn market that's likely
| largely preferable, but said market is already on Patreon
| which, I think most people would agree, is overall a better
| platform to begin with.
| [deleted]
| peteretep wrote:
| Perhaps, but OnlyFans will always be a porn site in consumer
| imaginations moving forward. Nobody's going to put their
| wholesome knitting content on there moving forward
| ramesh31 wrote:
| It's not like they have a choice. Their business was only ever
| viable at the behest of their payment provider. The reason no
| one has made an OnlyFans before, and the reason why people have
| tried and failed, entirely comes down to this.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Oh god I can't believe I'm going to say this.
|
| Crypto/Bitcoin, in keeping with the relationship the Internet
| and adult content have. Congrats Coinbase, Venmo, and others
| enabling censorship resistant crypto payments on your revenue
| bump.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| And as always, porn leads the way
| bcheung wrote:
| Having worked as an adult programmer, they are really far
| behind technology trends. You're lucky if they use
| version control and staging servers.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| Somehow there is this meme that porn sites are
| technically impressive due to their scale/small video
| playback enhancements, neglecting that they have a
| slightly more captive audience that will forgive small
| hitches than most streaming video providers.
|
| The meme is dumb and should die imho.
| gowld wrote:
| It's not about quality of product. It's about motivation
| to deploy new technologies for the experience it enables.
| [deleted]
| 3np wrote:
| Maybe OnlyFans talk to these guys and see if they can worm
| something out
|
| https://spankchain.com/
| mrRandomGuy wrote:
| LOL This is would actually work! Holy crap if OnlyFans
| actually started accepting bitcoin that would be incredible
| skinnymuch wrote:
| It's not that special. Other adult sites and shadier
| stuff push crypto or only do crypto
| traveltek wrote:
| transaction fees would be too high, transactions would
| take too long, and the transactions would be public.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| OnlyFans could be the exchange. You send their public
| wallet the crypto buying a "OF coin" stable coin or
| similar (gift card funds essentially), they handle the
| distribution internally.
|
| Best practice would be for patrons and content producers
| to have dedicated wallets for OnlyFans transactions, to
| prevent data leakage from ledger analysis.
| bserge wrote:
| OnlyFanBucks heh. Don't actually need crypto for that,
| but if it's better, then whatever.
| cody8295 wrote:
| Or just use a private crypto like Monero
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Getting a payment provider an adult business using crypto
| is going to be even harder than getting a payment provider
| for just an adult business.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It took me minutes to setup a Coinbase account to send
| funds to SciHub. As long as OnlyFans isn't hosting
| illegal content and they're meeting financial regulations
| (no laundering, robust accounting), I don't see a
| blocker. Yes, you're going to have to meet up with fiat
| rails somewhere, which is where incumbent crypto
| exchanges operating legally come in (Coinbase, Gemini,
| Fidelity Digital Custodial).
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > It took me minutes to setup a Coinbase account to send
| funds to SciHub.
|
| The issue is getting money from Coinbase into Wells Fargo
| or wherever, not getting it into Coinbase.
| davesmylie wrote:
| It's easy enough for someone with basic tech skills to do
| this sure.
|
| Onlyfans depends on joe average being able to do this
| (and not being scared off at the mention of the word
| "crypto")
|
| I think crypto is about 5 - 10 years away from this point
| [deleted]
| marvin wrote:
| This would be the perfect spark for such a shift.
| xur17 wrote:
| I agree it's a ways off from a user experience point of
| view, but people are willing to put up with a lot of
| "effort" if it's something they really want. This very
| well could be the impetus necessary to make crypto used
| more broadly for payments.
|
| With current tech this would just be a mobile wallet that
| holds stablecoins with some sort of built in funding
| mechanism.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Hate to break it to you, but all these processors that are
| facilitating crypto are actively policing what you do with
| it. They will restrict you or kick you off their platform
| for using crypto for things they don't want you to use it
| for.
| tyingq wrote:
| Curious how much work they put into this. Do they follow
| coinbase->private wallet->multiple payees at different
| times for lower amounts?
| rodneyg_ wrote:
| Coinbase, Venmo, and others are not enabling censorship
| resistant crypto payments. Coinbase does track who and
| where you send your crypto to, so in theory they can
| control what you do with it. The workaround would be to
| send your crypto to wallets not associated with them, even
| still.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > so in theory they can control what you do with it.
|
| And yet, that isn't happening to the same degree as visa
| or mastercard.
|
| So, for whatever reason, visa and mastercard are
| currently, successfully, forcing OnlyFans to do this kind
| of policy change, whereas coinbase is not.
|
| When the actual rubber meets the road, crypto is defacto,
| not as censored as visa or mastercard.
| adrusi wrote:
| Coinbase and Venmo's role is analogous to a bank that
| offers account holders debit cards that can access CC
| networks, not the organizations in control of the CC
| networks themselves.
| bcheung wrote:
| But most coins are public ledger. And the "know your
| customer" exchanges are not allowing privacy protecting
| coins.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Right, but... is that 99% of their content, 99.9%, or 99.99%?
| Cause I bet it's at least 99%.
| gtirloni wrote:
| How do sites like Pornhub get paid then? Why can't OnlyFans
| switch to whatever provider they use?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Don't pornography companies typically use payment
| processors that are considered pretty shady? Or, these days
| I'd imagine most of them accept cryptocurrency.
| gowld wrote:
| They are "shady" only by circular reasoning, because they
| handle porn.
| lol768 wrote:
| > How do sites like Pornhub get paid then?
|
| At the moment I'm pretty sure they don't. At least, not via
| card-based payment systems.
| LegitShady wrote:
| pornhub is having exactly this issue.
|
| https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news
|
| from february
| dvdkon wrote:
| > "This is good for adoption! Next up, Onlyfans."
|
| Sadly it doesn't seem to be working out as the crypto-
| enthusiast author might have wanted.
| zzleeper wrote:
| Didn't they had the same problem a few months ago or so?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _This is going to be corporate suicide on a greater scale than
| Tumblr 's policy._
|
| Just a note that Tumblr's anti-porn policy has been fairly
| leaky and users basically adapted to it. After a decline, the
| site now hosts nearly as much porn as previously.
|
| The problem is that onlyfans has a much bigger spotlight on it.
| So yeah, one wonders how people justify just killing their
| product.
| dvt wrote:
| > This is going to be corporate suicide on a greater scale than
| Tumblr's policy.
|
| Strong disagree. They lined their coffers and now it's time to
| pivot. In fact, it's probably the _perfect_ time to pivot. They
| are still relatively unknown, and their reputation hasn 't been
| tarnished. Patreon is ripe for disruption.
|
| Pornography is not how you become a billion-dollar unicorn,
| which is I'm sure what they're eyeing (especially after their
| most recent raise).
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I don't know - OF has one type of users, Patreon has another
| type of users. OF would need to completely re-brand
| themselves, name change and all - because seriously, what
| non-adult (or those very close to adult content) content-
| creators would use OF as a platform for their work?
|
| Onlyfans is synonymous with camgirls and porn
| sonicggg wrote:
| Sounds like a great opportunity for another player to step in
| and fill the vacuum, given that OnlyFans already proved there's
| a market for this. Just like Vine vs TikTok.
|
| Also, weird that they would give up an entire market because of
| prude payment providers. Are these providers from Afghanistan?
| They should not have that much power over their customers.
|
| Maybe a crypto spin off could work.
| lamontcg wrote:
| April 1st in August?
| boraturan wrote:
| just create your next OnlyFans with Alvin5.com
| Ansil849 wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. It's like if the Food Network
| suddenly announced that due to mounting pressure from
| advertisers, they would no longer be airing any cooking shows.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| So the history channel then?
| fzzzy wrote:
| This made me laugh out loud.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Or The Learning Channel. Or I guess basically any other
| ostensibly nonfiction programming American channel :(.
| drcode wrote:
| Or like MTV no longer showing music videos 24/7
| [deleted]
| albertTJames wrote:
| (Conservative [?] Woke) == {e : e [?] (bland [?] tedious)}
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| This is asking for a partnership with shopify: onlyfans could
| automatically generate a t-shirt/coffee cup store on shopify and
| a t-shirt fulfillment partner, and creators could perform for
| fans who buy a lot of t-shirts ("buy 3 t-shirts and I'll take off
| mine for you!") with smooth bidirectional API integration etc.
| Card processors can't ban all these people buying t-shirts.
| yholio wrote:
| I can understand the business reasons for cleaning up the
| OnlyFans brand. But I can't, for the life of me, understand why
| they are killing a cash cow instead of spining it off into a side
| business.
|
| Clone the full experience on a dedicated site, OnlyFantasy.com,
| duplicate the whole userbase, and give a simple warning that I
| can find my favorite stars on another site. In time, the user
| bases will diverge naturally depending on interests.
|
| Yes, the payment processors will bark at the porn site. Move to a
| more expensive processor for that site only, pay 5%, 10% fee, it
| doesn't really matter, it's free money.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Stripe is their payment processor and they're _full aware_ of
| what Onlyfans' content mostly is.
| miohtama wrote:
| MasterCard calls the shot and they were drive into this by
| Exodus Cry campaign https://mobile.twitter.com/GustavoTurnerX
| /status/14284408173...
| devrand wrote:
| There was a thread on this a year ago [1]. The leading
| theories seem to be that they use Stripe for SFW content and
| others (ex. CCBill) for NSFW content.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790
| fumar wrote:
| Stripe should solve for nsfw paid content. That industry is
| ripe for disruption.
| devrand wrote:
| The problem is that the industry is ripe with fraud, even
| from what were legitimate customers. I listed some
| examples elsewhere, but I'll repeat:
|
| * Money laundering by people making anonymous accounts
| with stolen credit cards and then selling them to people
| using crypto (so that they're not associated with the
| account).
|
| * Customer's spouses/SO finding out about it and the
| customer claiming fraud to chargeback and cover it up.
|
| * (More OF specific) Customers making a large payment for
| custom content and then filing a chargeback after they
| get it. This is more or less a problem with all digital
| goods, but probably more of a problem with custom
| content.
|
| Most banks/payment processors don't want to touch this
| industry since it poisons their image to others in the
| network. For example, if Stripe started serving the
| industry and fraud went up, that ruins Stripe's image to
| all the banks they interconnect with. It's just segment
| that isn't worth serving at the expense of all your other
| markets.
|
| Even if someone made a bespoke payment processor for the
| industry, banks would just stop working with them.
|
| In reality, the fraud problem really needs to be dealt
| with first. If your "customers" are going to be bad
| actors then there's really nothing you can do on the
| payment side to solve that.
| joshmn wrote:
| You don't even need an anonymous account as much as you
| just need an account: they have plausible deniability.
|
| Chaturbate had this issue some years ago where
| entrepreneurial individuals would just go direct to the
| model for a cut.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Once you reach a certain size and payment processors are
| barking at your content, the answer becomes: "start your own
| payment processor" an amusing side note is today I learned
| onlyfans didn't just host people's porn videos.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| You will discover new Eastern European "friends" who will
| "discourage" you from becoming an adult-services payment
| processor. That entire market is cornered, and they don't
| like to share.
| g051051 wrote:
| > Clone the full experience on a dedicated site,
| OnlyFantasy.com
|
| You are, absolutely, a genius.
| qzw wrote:
| Even more so if the GP owns the OnlyFantasy domain.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| Probably impossible as someone mentioned it might be due to
| FOSTA-SESTA which is intended to curb online sex work, which is
| arguably what onlyfans currently enabled right now. They
| probably determined it's too risky to continue.
| miohtama wrote:
| Here are the details how MasterCard got into the censorship
| business https://mobile.twitter.com/GustavoTurnerX/status/142
| 84408173...
|
| OTOH OnlyFans could have complied, and the requirements are
| not impossible, though harsh.
| noobermin wrote:
| What other brand do they have?
|
| Also, there seriously needs to be a reckoning with the payment
| processor issue, somehow.
| collegeburner wrote:
| Exactly, you can't clean up the OF brand because its brand as
| it is commonly known is 18 to 30yr olds selling nudes. And
| this seems to be its big customer demographic. There is no
| significant "other brand" to split off. If it wants to start
| a Patreon competitor with the same backend fine, but that's a
| new brand. It's literally a meme among younger people: "oh
| yeah that OF charge it's a cooking class" or "yoga sessions"
| or some shit. This is the Colgate Dinner problem: you can't
| apply a toothpaste brand to frozen food, you can't apply an
| amateur porn brand to patreon stuff. If i'm a chick trying to
| sell some non-porn subscription content I _cannot_ use that
| brand because everyone will think it is porn and write me off
| as another thot.
| philwelch wrote:
| Companies can be very self-deluded about what they are.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > Yes, the payment processors will bark at the porn site. Move
| to a more expensive processor for that site only, pay 5%, 10%
| fee, it doesn't really matter, it's free money.
|
| If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card, a
| smaller company will have no chance at all. We're seeing a
| sterilization of legitimate porn on the internet, done by
| legitimate tax paying western companies. It'll be left to
| whoever can operate beyond those constraints, which is kind of
| a sad state of affairs for free speech, separation of church
| and state, and policing in general.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I find it utterly fascinating that Reddit is able to maintain
| such a huge porn collection with relatively little attention.
| I wish I knew what percentage of submissions were in NSFW
| subreddits, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were the
| majority.
|
| Maybe it's because they're not trying to make money off of
| it? I don't think they run ads on NSFW subreddits.
|
| I wonder if there's a market for something like how strip
| clubs operate -- where the artist pays OnlyFans to stream
| there, and then the artist collects their income some other
| way (e.g. Patreon, or just direct cash equivalents). That
| could in theory keep OnlyFans good with their payment
| processors, while still keeping this revenue stream at least
| somewhat open.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Given how janky the last few years of website updates on
| reddit have been, the sheer user hostility might be reason
| enough alongside 0 monetization that keeps it afloat.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > I find it utterly fascinating that Reddit is able to
| maintain such a huge porn collection with relatively little
| attention.
|
| I suspect they're working in the same direction, no? For
| example a few months back they removed NSFW from /r/all.
| They didn't just make it user-config'd SFW by default, to
| my knowledge you cannot browse NSFW content on /r/all. So
| they sort of ghosted that entire genre on their site.
|
| Maybe they'll stop there?
| Y_Y wrote:
| There was all kinds of nsfw stuff on r/all this morning
| for me.
| vultour wrote:
| There are NSFW posts but it's never porn, mostly random
| things you might not want to open at work even though
| they're harmless.
| adamc wrote:
| But also a business opportunity for someone, with high
| margins.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those
| constraints
|
| Maybe by accelerating adoption and normalization of
| cryptocurrency.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Eventually this will just drive BTC adoption. Perhaps OF had
| a reason not to go with this option, but other parties will
| step up.
| burnished wrote:
| Gonna be hard to get people to spend a speculative asset,
| too many people had a couple bitcoins years ago (and
| everyone had the chance) kicking themselves, I think, for
| it to be seen as money.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Sure Jess. Any day now...
| devrand wrote:
| While that might help them accept payments, they'll likely
| then have troubling converting that back to USD and doing
| normal business banking.
|
| While crypto could fix those issues as well, it's just
| layers and layers of segments that need wide adoption (B2B
| transactions, payroll, benefits, etc.)
| jessaustin wrote:
| Well, sure, it would have been easier not to get
| blackballed. We don't live in a just world.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card,
| a smaller company will have no chance at all. We're seeing a
| sterilization of legitimate porn on the internet, done by
| legitimate tax paying western companies. It'll be left to
| whoever can operate beyond those constraints, which is kind
| of a sad state of affairs for free speech, separation of
| church and state, and policing in general.
|
| Welcome to the "free(ish) market." As I've said before,
| people _love_ to say they 're in favor of the "free market,"
| until they get one. There is no law preventing any payment
| processor from accepting clients in the adult content space.
| They do it simply because of risk and to protect their
| corporate image.
| nickff wrote:
| Well, there may not be laws against it, but the government
| doesn't always play by the rules:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
| posguy wrote:
| The chokepoint isn't the government in this case, but
| rather the major card brands (Visa, MasterCard, American
| Express). In the US, these brands have embedded morality
| clauses that prohibit these payments from riding their
| rails[1].
|
| That being said, most US debit networks (Star, Pulse,
| Coop, etc) don't have these restrictions. It does damage
| the user experience to limit your card acceptance to most
| debit cards.
|
| 1 -
| https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-
| upda...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It's that weird American kind of funny that you can't pay
| for porn with an American Express credit card, but you
| can buy guns and a few crates of ammo.
| nickff wrote:
| You're slicing the baloney pretty thin if you agree that
| the government has taken action against these same
| financial institutions, with respect to their processing
| similar payments, but it's completely unrelated to the
| current situation, and that the financial institutions
| should act as if nothing's ever happened before.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > They do it simply because of risk and to protect their
| corporate image.
|
| They're only allowed to operate because they're licensed by
| the government, and the government can yank their license
| at any time.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Okay, so, let me ask you a question: there are payment
| processors that process adult transactions; has a single
| one had its license pulled because of that? I can't find
| a single instance of that happening, only more instances
| of adult content providers being targeted this way:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-
| are...
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Perhaps not, but it's not exactly leaving them alone
| either: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-
| doj-forcing-ba...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| So? Spin off everything "risky" into another corporate
| entity, and charge more. The simple fact that they don't
| do this tells me they just don't want to.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| This is America, nobody will ever take seriously the
| argument that it's not the government doing it when they
| can get cheap internet points by saying "but muh
| freedoms!1!!"
| mcdevilkiller wrote:
| Yeah. But, supposedly, in a free market, if there's demand
| for it (a payment processor that accepts porn), there would
| be supply. Someone would come up with a company devoted to
| just that.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >We're seeing a sterilization of legitimate porn on the
| internet, done by legitimate tax paying western companies.
| It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those
| constraints,
|
| Why wouldn't it just revert back to how it was before all the
| amateur stuff got monetized over the past 5yr or so.
| watwut wrote:
| The thing is, only fans is significantly safer then street
| prostitution. As in, some people are getting back into
| serious risk.
|
| Kind of like when they closed backpage. It went back - to
| situation I which sex seller risk more.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Free speech, separation of church and state has nothing to do
| with it. Not wanting to be associated with rape, child and
| revenge porn (variations on non-consent) is all it is.
|
| User submitted content is so much harder to verify facts
| about (consent in particular) and as long as the user
| submitted content is sexual in nature, it is legal plutonium.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I don't see how a payment processor is "being associated"
| with the content. Deciding whether that sort of thing is
| happening really shouldn't be their purview.
| midev wrote:
| > I don't see how a payment processor is "being
| associated" with the content
|
| They are literally facilitating the transaction....
| Handling payments which determine access to the content
| is very much "being associated".
|
| > Deciding whether that sort of thing is happening really
| shouldn't be their purview.
|
| That _is_ their purview. Who they choose to process
| payments for, and the various rates based on content and
| risk, is the entire purpose of their business.
| miohtama wrote:
| Because Exodus Cry campaigned for it
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/GustavoTurnerX/status/14284408
| 173...
| neolog wrote:
| A lot of the attacks against amateur porn and sex work are
| by religious groups masking their actual motive by focusing
| on consent verification. Verification raises the barrier
| and makes performers much more vulnerable since their legal
| identities are attached to their work.
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-
| war...
| zdragnar wrote:
| So what? There are legitimate arguments to having consent
| verification, and the things they prevent are about as
| far from victimless crimes as you can get- what happens
| on the internet, stays on the internet, leading to a
| lifetime of re-victimization.
|
| Just because people you don't like are for something does
| not mean that you must automatically be against it.
| smhost wrote:
| By this logic, separation of church and state doesn't
| matter to you as long as you can construct some
| legitimate arguments in favor of theocracy.
| zdragnar wrote:
| No, the logic is that separation of church and state is a
| red herring.
|
| Payment processors are choosing to not associate with
| businesses that cannot demonstrate that legal consent was
| gained from everyone involved in the production of the
| videos.
|
| There's neither church nor state involved here.
| smhost wrote:
| This is just a variation of the ontological argument.
|
| You say there's neither church nor state, but then you
| cite payment processors and legal consent, which are both
| constructs that are determined by the state. And the
| content that's in question is sexual consent. The idea
| that there should be an additional mind (e.g. a legal
| mind) regulating the behaviors of sexual participants is
| an old religious conservative idea.
|
| If you still insist that the church in this sense has no
| meaning, and that this isn't a question of church and
| state, then you don't believe that there is fundamentally
| a problem of church and state at all, which in itself is
| an old religious conservative idea.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I am saying that state isnt involved in the sense that
| the state isn't compelling payment processors to make
| these decisions through regulation. Church isn't involved
| because there is no establishment of religion. I have
| presented, in several places, non-theological reasons why
| payment processors may be making the decisions they are.
|
| If you want to count "choosing to not support a business
| that enables rapists and child porn" as exclusively an
| old conservative idea, I guess you are missing the mark
| by quite a lot.
| dkarl wrote:
| I don't think we should expect a policy to serve the
| stated purpose when the people driving it have entirely
| different reasons for pushing it.
|
| For example, when states strengthen regulations on
| abortion clinics with the stated goal of improving
| patient safety, but the driving forces behind the
| legislation are anti-abortion groups who know that rural
| abortion providers will have to close, creating large
| unserved areas... will those laws help or hurt the safety
| of women who want abortions?
|
| Likewise, we should be wary of consent verification laws
| that are pushed by groups whose supporters are opposed to
| legal pornography.
|
| In both cases the goal is not to protect women. The goal
| is to take something morally wrong and make it seedy,
| underground, and dangerous, like morally wrong things are
| supposed to be.
| zdragnar wrote:
| "but the driving forces behind the legislation are anti-
| abortion groups"
|
| This is the definition of an ad hominem, which is what
| the whole separation of church and state discussion is,
| since neither church nor state are involved here.
|
| We arent discussing regulations, we are discussing
| payment processors choosing to not do business with video
| hosts who cannot prove legal consent was obtained from
| all involved.
|
| If you ran a business, would you want to make money off
| of rape and child pornography? The payment processors
| chose "no", and that is their right.
| dkarl wrote:
| Ad hominem is an appropriate form of reasoning in this
| case, although in context you might pronounce it "cui
| bono." It's reasonable to expect that when a group pushes
| a policy, the details of the policy will be engineered to
| serve their goals, and the policy will be tweaked over
| time to serve their goals better. Corporations want to
| make them happy so they can do business in peace. What
| will make them happy? Will it make them happy if most
| porn is created by workers who enjoy robust assurances
| that their autonomy, consent, and medical safety will be
| respected? Or would they regard that as a nightmare of
| legitimized industrial-scale psychological harm to women?
|
| In porn as in abortion, prohibitionists are numerous and
| committed enough to be a force to reckoned with, but they
| strategically justify their work using reasons that the
| rest of society finds persuasive. Anti-abortionists
| believe that abortion is inherently wrong, but they talk
| about women's safety while they shut down clinics.
|
| The difference is, the groups who care about the safety
| of women will look at the details and say, the effect of
| this supposed "reproductive safety" bill is that
| thousands of women will lose access to legal abortion.
| Even if it targets shortcomings at poorly staffed,
| decrepit facilities, they won't support it if it actually
| makes women less safe. Overall, will shutting down
| OnlyFans payments make things better or worse for the
| women on it? People who aren't asking that question don't
| actually care.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It is still the inverse of an appeal to authority. Both
| "Agree about X because Y agreed" and "Disagree about X
| because Y agreed" are faulty logic.
|
| Replacing skepticism and critical analysis isn't doing
| anyone any favors, and it doesn't make the matter at hand
| an issue of church or state.
| hvdijk wrote:
| "So what?" as a response to a post explaining how a
| policy puts certain people at risk, regardless of what
| the policy is and who those certain people are, makes how
| you view those people quite a lot clearer than you may
| have intended.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The person I responded to implied that the arguments in
| favor of consent verification were made in bad faith
| because some people might also oppose porn in general.
|
| It is a logical fallacy. The risk of de-anonymization
| doesn't go away because their consent wasn't verified-
| tattoos, birthmarks, backgrounds of images and video, etc
| are still there.
|
| Not only that, but that same risk still applies to people
| whose videos were posted without consent. What's worse
| than being raped and having your video put online?
| Knowing that everyone you ever work with may have seen
| it, for the rest of your life.
|
| Also, if you read the article the post attached, it
| literally opens with a woman who had to impersonate a
| lawyer to get porn of her taken off of pornhub.
|
| "How I view those people" seems to be your imagination,
| not mine.
| neolog wrote:
| Context and quantification are needed, not
| sensationalism. Yes there are real accounts of abuse. The
| problem is that the policies adopted aren't actually
| directed at solving those problems with minimum harm to
| people involved; they are directed at eliminating sex
| work.
|
| How many problems occur, what kind, what protocols would
| address the problems without needlessly harming
| performers and consumers?
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| Verification is obviously necessary to prevent revenge
| porn.
|
| If that inconveniences performers, then that's their
| problem to deal with. We shouldn't be focused on making
| things easy for performers if that happens at the expense
| of allowing revenge porn.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm of the impression that consent is a legitimate
| problem? Lots of pornography is wrapped up in sex
| trafficking never mind revenge porn, or so I've heard.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > Verification raises the barrier and makes performers
| much more vulnerable since their legal identities are
| attached to their work.
|
| Producers should have been doing this anyway.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257
|
| > "... create and maintain individually identifiable
| records pertaining to every performer portrayed in such a
| visual depiction."
| neolog wrote:
| The industrial producers are already doing that. Many
| performers make their own content individually and don't
| want to enter a corporate or governmental bureaucracy to
| do it.
| tailius wrote:
| Yep. It's pure FUD used to moralize and control behavior
| of consenting adults. It's one step removed from
| criminalizing homosexuality and abortions.
| jhgb wrote:
| > User submitted content is so much harder to verify facts
| about
|
| That doesn't seem to be stopping e-Bay and such. I don't
| believe that payment processors have any idea what are
| people buying and selling.
| kwere wrote:
| c'mon man
| ev1 wrote:
| As of this year you can no longer sell on eBay without
| going through full KYC, including SSN (not EIN),
| providing a physical bank account, etc. If you are
| selling as a company, including a multi-owner or multi-
| person company you are still required to provide full
| personal details for the people involved and any
| beneficial owners.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Ebay has the same kind of rules, prohibiting "sexually
| oriented materials" and allowing nudity "only in limited
| situations".
| (https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-
| restricted-ite...)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Stolen items are fenced on eBay. The payment processors
| don't have an issue with actual crimes like theft but
| want to impose a moral code on legal behavior.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Can you explain in more detail? I just don't see the
| analogy you're drawing here. People may sometimes fence
| stolen items on Ebay, but you're not _allowed_ to, and
| payment processors would definitely cut them off if you
| were.
| jhgb wrote:
| Maybe that people may sometimes post illegal porn on
| OnlyFans but you're not allowed to either?
|
| User-traded goods on e-Bay are also much harder to verify
| facts about than goods from a brick-and-mortar shop.
| Doesn't seem to prevent e-Bay from operating.
| codetrotter wrote:
| It's not about morals, it's about chargebacks. That's
| why.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Then you charge a higher merchant fee.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| They could do that. Or they could choose not to be
| involved in that sort of business.
| User23 wrote:
| How is banning theft any less arbitrary than banning
| porn?
| jhgb wrote:
| Except "sexually oriented materials" are not the same
| thing as illegal goods. I was NOT talking about "sexually
| oriented materials".
| nemo44x wrote:
| Looks like we found the killer app for Bitcoin.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| It's my understanding that PH is the only adult site with
| this issue. They got in hot water because of a series of
| high-profile lawsuits and media pieces about exploitation
| videos on their platform.
|
| OF would likely not run into this because all of its content
| creators are verified and can only post videos of themselves
| or videos they have the rights to; it's not a free-for-all
| upload fest like PH used to be.
| biztos wrote:
| It really seems weird to me that with all the countries that
| allow various forms of sex work, _payment processing_ is
| still such a bottleneck.
|
| As I understand it, independent providers doing 100% legal
| work in their countries live in terror of their payments
| being cut off due to the factors mentioned above.
|
| Where is the CoinBase of legal erotica?
| dboreham wrote:
| That was "SpankChain", I believe.
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| Which is a scam along with any other porn themed coin.
| Every sex worker I've ever met holds bitcoin (maybe ether
| if they newer in this space). Sex workers know what is
| money and what is a fraud.
| svachalek wrote:
| I wonder if crypto has finally found its "killer app".
| Pseudo privacy, no charge backs, permissionless.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| PH is having problems due to so much "user uploaded" content
| that they can not verify the identity of the actors contained
| within. The difference now is that Mastercard is enforcing
| the rules rather than the US Government which had USC2257 in
| place for many years with the same requirements. The
| difference this time is that MC is global(and controls these
| sites income) and USGov is not, so MC is actually able to
| enforce this. Adult content sites with their IDs in order(as
| all US based ones should have already) will have no problem
| under the new rules. It's not a closing down of the business
| its actual enforcement of rules that have been on the books
| for 20+ years by a private entity instead of the lax USGov.
|
| Lets be real, if PH had a way to take monies without having
| to clean up to save face for the card issuers, it would still
| be business as usual.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I wonder if the reason "sexually explicit content" isn't
| allowed is because that generally involves a partner. I
| believe OF requires ID verification before you can do
| _anything_ as a creator, so they're trying to curb that by
| making it essentially a solo website.
|
| It might be a better idea to require all participants in
| videos to have their OF account linked and tagged in the
| video.
| devrand wrote:
| My understanding is that this industry has way higher than
| average chargeback/fraud rates, which is really what
| discourages payment processors/banks from wanting to support
| them.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Selling porn site accounts is a popular way to turn stolen
| credit card details into untraceable cryptocurrencies.
|
| That means there is already an userbase for crypto porn.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| The first commercial use of any technology is porn ;)
| jenkstom wrote:
| Or Pizza.
| acchow wrote:
| Why can't the payment processor just come to an agreement
| with OnlyFans to hold back some reserve funds to cover the
| high chargeback/fraud rate?
| vidarh wrote:
| Because of your chargeback rate is persistently high
| enough, the payment networks will cut you off
| irrespective of processor.
|
| If it was just covering the chargebacks it'd be easy.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Though whether that's a convenient excuse for prudishness
| or not, we'll never know (because you can't collect data on
| chargebacks if you don't allow any sex sites to make
| charges in the first place).
|
| Banks are notoriously risk-averse. This is a disruption
| waiting to happen for the first person who can crack
| handling sex-worker credit card payments despite the banks.
| devrand wrote:
| True, but I think there's obvious legs to it. Some common
| reasons for fraud are:
|
| * Laundering money (buy accounts with stolen cards, sell
| them using crypto to people who don't want to be
| associated with the accounts).
|
| * People falsely claiming fraud to cover up the payments
| (ex. a spouse finding out about them).
|
| * More specific to OF, people paying for private/custom
| content and then filing a chargeback.
|
| I think people being prudish is kind of what allows this
| market to be ripe with fraud. I'm not sure there's a way
| to "disrupt" this industry using credit cards just due to
| the inherent tendency for fraud in the market.
| wmil wrote:
| Look into "Operation Choke Point". It was an Obama era DOJ
| program to control payment processors in order to block
| things they didn't like.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Do you think prostitution should be legal?
| watwut wrote:
| Yes.
| LandR wrote:
| I think this is a tough one, and I'm not sure where I stand
| on this.
|
| On the one hand I don't think the government should be able
| to tell you what you can and can't do with your body. If
| you want to sell your body, you should be able to.
|
| But on the other hand, if you legalise it then you open the
| door to people being exploited, and I'm aware that people
| are exploited now in prostitution, obviously, but I feel if
| it's legal it might be harder to punish those that do.
|
| So maybe on balance it's better for it to be illegal if it
| protects at least some people.
| TotempaaltJ wrote:
| > I feel if it's legal it might be harder to punish those
| that do.
|
| Or it could be easier because it becomes regulated and
| controlled?
| nixass wrote:
| How do you think keeping it illegal keeps sex workers
| more safe?
| mynegation wrote:
| Sex work should be legal. I do not want to use the word
| "prostitution" as it carries unnecessary stigma. The main
| consideration is the safety of sex workers. Exploitation
| does exist but victims are hesitant to go law enforcement
| precisely because sex work is illegal. On the flip side
| people organizing sex work enterprises (aka "pimps" and
| "madams") are already breaking the law so for them
| application of violence is not out of the framework.
| devonbleak wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| People are going to do what they want to do. When you ban
| something that's the end of your regulation on it. So it
| goes underground and becomes less safe for everybody that's
| involved with it.
|
| When you legalize it you can be more nuanced with the
| regulation, ultimately making it safer and having better
| outcomes for a huge majority of the people involved. You
| won't get 100% but it's certainly better than the 0% you're
| getting with a ban.
|
| Of course the more you over-regulate and create effective
| bans the lower that % of people following your regulations
| is going to be and you're back to square one. Take a look
| at the history of abortions through being banned, coming
| into legality, and then back into over-regulation/effective
| ban in some places. Rate of abortions doesn't go down
| meaningfully when they're explicitly or implicitly illegal
| but rate of complications from abortions goes way up.
|
| An anecdote for you: someone I know was instrumental in
| getting the "condoms in porn" law architected in LA county.
| The goal was to normalize condom use in the face of
| multiple STD epidemics including HIV. On the surface this
| is great. But porn with condoms is insanely less popular
| than porn without condoms - effectively making this new law
| a ban on producing porn in LA county. So what happened?
| Productions either went half an hour down the road to the
| next county or they just stopped actually filing permits
| and went unregulated meaning no more enforcement of the
| regimen of testing etc that porn actors were previously
| required to adhere to, leading to less safe outcomes for
| the folks involved and no meaningful increase in the amount
| of porn featuring condom use.
| yholio wrote:
| Porn sites still exist and they accept credit card payments
| all the time. The major credit networks do not censor them.
|
| Then, it's simply a question of the fee structure.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Yes and no. Credit card companies are fine with the
| professionally produced stuff, because everyone signs model
| releases and shows ID. It seems like they are fine with
| softcore amateur stuff like showing vulva and nipples.
|
| What they don't like is hard-core amateur stuff. Its hard
| to verify the models there. You see titles like "I brought
| my tinder date home and rode him/her hard" in a video title
| and you start to wonder if this person consented to being
| in a paid film, or if they are of legal age. My guess is
| onlyfans will ban anything involving two or more people. It
| will become instagram with tits and parasocial
| relationships.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > It will become instagram with tits and parasocial
| relationships.
|
| Instagram is already Instagram with tits and parasocial
| relationships.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| the free speech issue has been settled: it is no longer a
| core value in western societies
|
| it's all who/whom now
|
| i don't like it, but that's the reality
| smt88 wrote:
| I totally agree that OnlyFans is a legitimate and ethical
| site, but let's not kid ourselves about PornHub. It was
| mostly pirated content with a lot of videos of people being
| harmed.
| zokula wrote:
| Nobody was being harmed on Pornhub. Don't feed the lying
| anti-sex work media.
| midev wrote:
| You are grossly misinformed. So much so I have to wonder
| why. PornHub _JUST_ took down 600k videos of minors and
| consensual acts. https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-first-
| transparency-report-1...
|
| Either you're commenting without being informed, or
| you're intentionally lying. Either way, you are harming
| people.
| smt88 wrote:
| What about the company Girls Do Porn that PH refused to
| take down?
|
| Some of those were literal rape videos.
| werber wrote:
| They were, In 2020 they removed over 600,000 videos that
| contained abuse.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-first-transparency-
| report-1...
| threeseed wrote:
| There were many examples of voyeur, creepshot, revenge
| and ex-partner videos.
|
| None of which had the consent of all parties involved.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _I totally agree that OnlyFans is a legitimate and
| ethical site_
|
| "IRL", abusive relationships can be hidden in plain site
| from people who think they know the couple well. How do you
| stand any chance of knowing there isn't an abusive pimp
| behind the camera of an onlyfans account? Ultimately you
| only have intuition and guesswork to go off of, but both
| are fallible. Even if the platform itself is trusted and
| does a good job of verifying identities, that doesn't
| preclude abuse.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| While both those things are true, the 'mostly' part is not.
| There are a _lot_ of couples and singles posting their
| exploits and OnlyFans creators trying to drive traffic to
| their feed. What are you searching for that got you those
| results??
|
| Let's not kid ourselves about PornHub...
| rednerrus wrote:
| Isn't this the case for Cum Rocket?!?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Wow, this is like if Apple said they were going to stop making
| iPhones.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Especially if you consider that you could just web search for
| free iPhones, ask your friends older brother to go buy some
| iPhones for you from the corner store, or work on your
| appearance and conversational skills and go get someone to give
| you a free iPhone IRL.
|
| I never understood this subscriber minded concept of "Porn as a
| Service". Back in my day we'd just steal our dad's iPhone and
| share it among friends (assuming everyone took care of the
| iPhone and didn't spill any liquids on it). Even in the 80s and
| 90s you could just throw a rock and there was a 50% chance it'd
| land on an iPhone. It's even easier now, there's entire
| websites dedicated to hoarding images and videos of iPhones on
| various hosting sites. From an access-to-iPhone perspective,
| this is non-news. From a "MUH RIGHTS" perspective, I get why
| people are upset, but you also gotta see it from the billing
| perspective. It's their payment processing and they'll do with
| it what they want. But I mean ccBill exists and offers rates of
| 10-15%.. just earn less, I guess.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| If the issue is coming from banks and payment processors, why
| doesn't Patreon have this same kind of problem? They both fill
| the same niche, right?
|
| Edit: Apparently the same thing happened to them too. Thank you
| to the person who linked the other discussion below.
| jerf wrote:
| They do have this problem:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801
| Zababa wrote:
| Interesting. Does this means that there is a business to make
| companies like OnlyFan and Patreon for adult content and then
| dropping it once you get big, and start again?
| Asooka wrote:
| Given that it keeps happening, I'd say yes.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| This is racism against womyn and sexy workers.
| isatty wrote:
| So nobody learnt anything from whatever Tumblr pulled. It's like
| watching a train wreck in slow motion. Amazing.
| some_person wrote:
| I wonder if that answers this question from 11 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790
| ctoth wrote:
| From my understanding, one of the major reasons that payment
| processors don't like porn is the regretful customer problem,
| which makes this sort of content a lot more likely to be
| disputed/have chargebacks. One of the oft-mentioned downsides to
| Cryptocurrency is the 'no takebacks' property. Perhaps these two
| things fit together? Also avoids the problem of payment
| processors dictating morality.
| danielmg wrote:
| The fact that crypto isn't even a thing with these sites tells
| you everything you need to know about the future of crypto.
|
| It's a speculation-bubble and a circle-jerk all in one.
|
| It has no future in retail or p2p payments. People need the
| safety nets the existing payment schemes, processors, banks,
| and regulators provide. See "push payment fraud" in my country
| (UK) as an example.
| bruceb wrote:
| The winner here might actually be the majority of NSFW content
| makers on OF who are mortgaging their future reputations for very
| small payouts.
|
| (not a judgment on what they do but the reality of the situation)
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Is there anything else on OnlyFans? Without porn, OnlyFans is
| just another Patreon knock-off.
| TillE wrote:
| It sounds like they'll basically continue to allow tasteful
| nudes, which is probably about half their content. So they're
| only killing an enormous fraction of their business, not the
| entire thing.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| half the content, 85% of the money.
| taurath wrote:
| The marketplace desperately needs payment processors that handle
| adult content.
|
| Arguments against it scale down to "because there is
| exploitation, we shouldn't have any porn". This is the drug war
| mentality. Guess where it leads
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| What is it called when your greed for investor money ends up
| giving a giant opening for your competitor and destroying your
| business? Also how come even the most profitable company can't
| compete with deep SV pockets? Is this capitalism?
| rchaud wrote:
| It is, but it's not a very good one. Think about the billions
| that have gone into reinventing the taxi industry, the hotel
| industry and the food delivery industry. We don't call it
| 'picking winners' however, because it's not the filthy public
| sector doing it. And also because none of Uber, Airbnb or
| DoorDash can really be considered a 'win'.
|
| State-backed capitalism has its faults, but they usually try to
| move billions into a strategically important area that benefits
| a large enough section of the economy.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think "The Vine Effect" would be apt
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Maybe it's not investor money but issues with payment
| processors. Credit card companies don't like porn for some
| reason, and they're in a position where they can enforce such
| limits on many platforms.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Really weird that they are kicking off a large portion of their
| user base for _inclusive_ reasons.
| drenvuk wrote:
| Payment processors need to be regulated in a way to prevent this
| stuff from happening. This is financial censorship for legal
| activities.
| Sargos wrote:
| I'm not sure the government has a problem with this as they
| just passed FOSTA-SESTA which nearly makes porn illegal.
| jerf wrote:
| So, serious question because I know very little about OnlyFans
| other than the general knowledge flowing around the internet:
| What does this leave of the site? Because my impression was
| certainly that this was the purpose of the site.
| carabiner wrote:
| There's cooking videos, yoga, gardening and other benign stuff
| on OF, believe it or not.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Yes but if somebody says "drop your OF" is not talking about
| gardening. Mostly it is known for sexual material.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Pretty sure that content is not what is bringing in the
| monies.
| rchaud wrote:
| Why not just feature that stuff on the homepage? Most adult-
| oriented channels are run solo, so they're distributing links
| via social channels.
|
| Same as Twitter. It's awash in porn but you wouldn't really
| know it if you stuck to the default trends and searches.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| InRange moved to pornhub when they were banned from Youtube.
| While cute and all, that made 0% revenue for them.
| monocasa wrote:
| There's benign stuff on PornHub too, but I don't think they'd
| be able to survive without their adult content either.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I watch several channels on YT, and I think they have
| excellent value (educational like 3Blue1Brown, entertaining
| like Davie504, musical like Ichika Nito and so on). I really
| enjoy watching/listening to them especially when I do
| something around the house like cleaning. But the moment they
| said they go OnlyFans and I have to pay $10 in order to watch
| them, I can't imagine I'd switch.
| fragmede wrote:
| Is it OnlyFans or paying money for things that's the issue?
| Would you pay $10 on Paetreon or for YouTube premium? Would
| you pay $1 to OnlyFans? How about paying $10, but no one
| would know you were paying OnlyFans?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It's the immense hassle involved with paying small
| amounts of money to many different people. Sites like
| YouTube (and presumably OnlyFans) fix that problem.
| city41 wrote:
| The article says
|
| > Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and
| videos, provided they're consistent with OnlyFans' policy, the
| company said Thursday.
|
| So I am guessing the distinction is nudes vs sex acts?
| bcheung wrote:
| ...for how long? There were rumors they were getting rid of
| adult and then they put out an announcement saying that they
| would always be inclusive of sex workers. Then they just
| announced this.
|
| Their credibility is gone.
| noir_lord wrote:
| What Credibility - They are 75% owned by Leonid_Radvinsky.
|
| He puts the sketch in sketchy (porn click farms in the
| 90's, sued by Amazon _and_ Microsoft working together for
| spamming emails by the millions in the early 2000 's).
| [deleted]
| wtf_is_up wrote:
| It's a huge win for PornHub which already has a robust amateur
| porn monetation platform. I suspect most explicit OF users
| already use PH for teasers and free content. Most likely they
| will move all content to PH and leave OF behind
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I assume they will end up like Tumblr after it went Safe for
| Work. Still around but nowhere near as popular and a shell of
| its former self.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Tumblr is exactly what I had in mind. It will be a much less
| popular place with other copycats just taking over on that
| business model.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Not necessarily. Discord is a pretty popular platform for
| exclusive access to selected people, e.g. Patreon supporters.
| As long as OF allows this kind of link it might stay
| relevant.
| spiderice wrote:
| Except they have the reputation of porn, but now they don't
| have the porn. I wouldn't go sign up for an OnlyFans
| account in order to follow a SFW creator, simply because
| the reputation OnlyFans has. However I would join their
| Discord or Patreon.
|
| Now their in this weird uncanny valley of "adult content"
| combined with "no adult content". Seems hard to shake that
| image.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > simply because the reputation OnlyFans has
|
| Lol. Watching a musician on OF and your friend looks over
| your shoulder.
| Wohlf wrote:
| Patreon already exists for exclusive SFW content, and with
| exclusive Discords you can also interact with other fans of
| the same content. Not sure where OnlyFans would fit in
| other than "different Patreon".
| [deleted]
| rhino369 wrote:
| Maybe I'm out of the loop, but at least Tumblr had recognized
| non-porn uses.
|
| If someone linked me their OnlyFans, I would assume it's
| porn.
|
| How do they seriously expect people to use it when the brand
| is porn?
| spoonjim wrote:
| Think "show your titties," not "suck a dick."
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Man, I would hate to be the judge of "nude but not sexually
| explicit" content
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Good old "I know it when I see it"
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I'm sure you could find a few volunteers.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| It's gotten taken over by celebrities. They don't promote
| content from girls selling their nudes anymore.
|
| Even dead ones get it better. I took one look at it recently
| and saw lil peep on there. My first thought was wow they're
| really putting a dead rapper's meat out there like that? But
| nah, it's like unreleased music videos and shit. Gotta wonder
| who is milking that.
| georgefrick wrote:
| Fairly good explanation of it being about far more than nudity.
| They have created a casino like experience for emotional
| interaction.
|
| https://youtu.be/ji5qepCx-8s
| crackercrews wrote:
| Very helpful video. Also mentions their sister site
| myfreecams. That's probably where the x-rated videos will
| remain. Seems like they're splitting the brand to have one
| NSFW and one SFW.
| jerf wrote:
| Thank you, that's a perfect example of the sort of thing I
| was fishing for with my question.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| That's my question, too - I thought OnlyFans was a hosting
| platform for personal porn sites; I remember there was a big
| uproar a few months back when some TikTok influencer joined the
| site and started posting non-adult content. People were upset
| that they were diluting a site that's specifically for adult
| content.
| benbristow wrote:
| Linus Media Group (Linus Tech Tips) started an OnlyFans
| parody-style account for April Fool's this year
|
| https://onlyfans.com/reallinustechtips
|
| Ended up being one of the top accounts on the platform for a
| while.
| mrunseen wrote:
| They also donated the income to a right to repair act.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Not quite accurate. Bella Thorne joined Onlyfans and promised
| "no clothes naked" content in exchange for her $200
| subscription fee. She made millions of dollars but then only
| sent clothed and obscured pictures to her subscribers. After
| thousands of people demanded refunds, Onlyfans changed their
| policies to heavily limit how much subscribers could be
| charged for content, how much they could pay, and increased
| the creator payout wait time from one week to three weeks.
| This heavily damaged the incomes of thousands of people
| overnight.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Fourth paragraph
|
| > That popularity also brought with it additional scrutiny, and
| OnlyFans is positioning itself more as a forum for musicians,
| fitness instructors and chefs than sex workers. While many of
| its most-popular creators post videos of themselves engaging in
| sexual behavior, several mainstream celebrities like Bella
| Thorne, Cardi B and Tyga have also set up accounts.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Bella Thorne was only there for explicit stuff.
|
| Not sure about the other celebs.
| jjulius wrote:
| Are you sure? Another user posted this elsewhere in this
| thread, a few posts below yours:
|
| >Not quite accurate. Bella Thorne joined Onlyfans and
| promised "no clothes naked" content in exchange for her
| $200 subscription fee. She made millions of dollars but
| then only sent clothed and obscured pictures to her
| subscribers. After thousands of people demanded refunds,
| Onlyfans changed their policies to heavily limit how much
| subscribers could be charged for content, how much they
| could pay, and increased the creator payout wait time from
| one week to three weeks. This heavily damaged the incomes
| of thousands of people overnight.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Yeah. She was there because of "no clothes naked" which
| is explicit. She ended up being deceitful and hurting
| others. Still means she was there because of explicit
| stuff. in other words, there's a reason she made millions
| on onlyfans in no time and not with a brand new Payreon.
| sirmoveon wrote:
| I think the initial purpose was similar to Patreon: allowing
| creators a way to monetize. It just became famous due to the
| pornographic content.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| To be more specific, it was a direct competitor to Patreon,
| but patreon banned porn and onlyfans didn't, thus the market
| differentiation.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Patreon has decidedly 18+ content on it. It even has 18+
| interstitial pages to make sure you're 18+
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| From Patreon Support:
|
| While we allow nudity and for creators to push the
| boundaries of art, we also have guidelines against
| funding pornography on patreon. In our community
| guidelines: We define pornographic material as real
| people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or
| sexual intercourse on camera.
| ArcticHusky wrote:
| On ThePornDude, there is a section called "free OnlyFans leaks
| sites", which is an excellent example of actual content.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Stealing content from self-employed creators is pretty low.
| There is plenty of free porn on the internet that doesn't
| involve theft.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Most of which is posted in violation of copy right.
| ArcticHusky wrote:
| Agree, furthermore, those sites are content scrapers from
| other sources.
| throwaway8358 wrote:
| With all the focus on "local" now, maybe society just needs to go
| back to good ol' fashioned red light districts with brothels
| where Johns can make cash payments to the Madams that credit card
| companies and Apple/Google Pay can't block. Instead of paying
| with a credit card to see pixelated computer-screen boobies that
| are 3000 miles away, maybe just go to a local "gentleman's club"
| and see actual in-the-flesh nude women or something, ya know?
| ctoth wrote:
| > But sex work still has a stigma. And OnlyFans is trying to
| raise money from outside investors at a valuation of more than $1
| billion.
|
| > The company handled more than $2 billion in sales last year,
| and is on pace to more than double that this year. It keeps 20%
| of that figure.
|
| So they're killing the golden goose to placate outside money when
| they already are making ~800M a year?
|
| Something here doesn't really add up but I don't know enough
| about this field to see what I'm missing.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Yeah, they are basically screwing up their investors. They
| pumped up the valuation being a porn site and now will get a
| bunch of money with low dilution for hiring more executives and
| stuff probably with a stupid plan like "we are going to be the
| next Twitter" that will fail in like three years.
| djrogers wrote:
| Your math is off - 20-% of 2b is $400m
| snypher wrote:
| They're doubling that this year, so 4b?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >citing mounting pressure from banking partners and payment
| providers
|
| Based on the tweet, I would presume their ability accept
| payment via the established payment networks is being
| threatened.
| perardi wrote:
| Wow, you spend years thinking crypto is convoluted nonsense...and
| then something comes along that impacts a lot of your friends,
| and you start to change your mind.
|
| I have a fair number+ of friends and acquaintances who have
| OnlyFans. Some for side income, some for a _substantial_ portion
| of their livelihood. And to see that get taken away because the
| payment processors want them to fall in line...I guess I'm on the
| crypto train now.
|
| _+Yes, I have a slightly strange life, I know._
| agilob wrote:
| >And to see that get taken away because the payment processors
|
| There was a story about an online dildo seller who couldn't
| sell specific colour of dildos because American Express didn't
| like them. I think it was lovehoney
| cbdumas wrote:
| The fact that OnlyFans isn't even trying to move to crypto to
| keep their business alive is a stunning indictment of the state
| of crypto as a viable payment method.
| marvin wrote:
| Couldn't the explanation be as simple as them lacking
| imagination? They're not a Silicon Valley funded startup. My
| impression is they lucked into the golden goose, and this
| move makes me think they're downright clueless about their
| options when things get adversarial.
| [deleted]
| brundolf wrote:
| It also puts crypto in an interesting new light: circumventing
| sovereign governments and regulations was always a fool's
| errand in my opinion. But circumventing _private payment
| providers_ that have decided to do extralegal morality-
| policing... that 's a much more realistic and interesting thing
| to aim for.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| "This is all garbage" followed by "Oh, it happened to me or my
| loved ones and now it's not garbage" is such a classic pattern
| across so many controversial topics.
|
| I wonder how we can be more open minded as a society while
| still keeping enough skepticism to not accept literal garbage.
| perardi wrote:
| Yeah, I absolutely admit to my hypocrisy and/or short-sighted
| attitude here.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Reminds me of all the politicians who were anti-LGBT until
| one of their kids came out and then they miraculously flip
| flop.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| It works I'm reverse as well. The owner of a socialist
| magazine just recently fired most of his staff for trying
| to unionize. He wrote a bunch of articles purporting to
| support all these ideals but the moment those ideals
| threatened his power he shut it down.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Whoa I'd be very interested to read more about this, if
| possible.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Looks like Current Affairs maybe?
|
| https://twitter.com/lyta_gold/status/1428011761635143681
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Pick any "we should oppress this thing that other people
| want/like/are" and there are people who miraculously
| realize that actually, there's a reason people
| want/like/are that thing once it happens to them.
|
| I think it starts from some combination of factors like
| fear of the unknown, superiority complexes, downright
| stupidity, etc., which are only un-blinded when it smacks
| you in the face.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >+Yes, I have a slightly strange life, I know.
|
| No you don't. There are _many_ people who are become porn
| actors as a result of only fans. That is likely why this is
| happening.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's none of our business if your life is strange, the question
| is if it's illegal, which it isn't.
| perardi wrote:
| I'm sure there's got to be other full-time UI designers/part-
| time circuit queens out there. Can't be _that_ weird.
|
| But yes, these are consenting adults _(a fair number of them
| quite highly educated and absolutely aware of what they are
| doing)_ selling solo videos or videos with other consenting
| adults. It's legal, it's a huge business, and it's dumb to
| push it further to the fringes.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I'm curious, what fraction of their material, income is nudes
| (still allowed) and what fraction is sexually explicit?
| perardi wrote:
| ...well I am not going to go through and do a full audit, but
| a fair bit is explicit, and realistically people are paying
| for the videos and not the stills.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Someone else will replicate of
| perardi wrote:
| Sustainably? Or will they replicate, survive for a while, get
| to a critical mass, and then get nuked from orbit by Visa?
| bob33212 wrote:
| If crypto was ever going to be useful, this is where it
| will do it.
| FabHK wrote:
| Right. So I just looked into it a bit, and the idea has
| been around. There's (adult content warning...):
|
| - Sexcoin, launched in 2013 [https://sexcoin.info]
| [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/sexcoin/]
|
| - Titcoin, TIT [https://titcoin.github.io]
| [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/titcoin/]
|
| - Tittiecoin, launched in 2014: "TittieCoin Accelerates
| Your Digital Transformation", now Limitless VIP?
| [https://tittiecoin.com]
| [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/limitless-vip/]
|
| - Spankchain, by Spanktoshi Nakabooty
| [https://spankchain.com/]
|
| - Fapcoin [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/fapcoin/]
| defunct
|
| - Pornrocket
| [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/pornrocket/]
|
| - PornStar
| [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/pornstar/]
|
| - Intimate [https://intimate.io/]
|
| - Okoin [https://okoin.io/] defunct?
|
| - Analcoin
| [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/analcoin/]
|
| - VGINA [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/vgina/]
|
| Has it been useful? I doubt it.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Wow, this is really bad for crypto. Even though they can
| circumvent VISA technically with coins, OnlyFans doesn't
| want to go down that path. Probably because it
| immediately becomes partially funded by money laundering
| or sex trafficking, and they get shutdown eventually
| breadzeppelin__ wrote:
| adult industry once again on the cutting edge of tech
| nwienert wrote:
| I know of people building OF in crypto, I'm sure they're
| happy right now.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| there are already a few competitors, and afaik pornhub
| cleaned up its content in order to follow that model. If they
| are registered to hands-off countries they ll probably steal
| OF's thunder overnight.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| A number of my friends and loved ones will be affected by this,
| and many more have been thrown under the payment processing bus
| before.
|
| And forgive me if this seems ranty, but it isn't just payment
| processors, it seems to permeate so much that comes out of the
| USA. See the various App Store rules too.
|
| And this isn't about fraud rates. Because why are the fraud
| rates high? It's because the sex whole industry is pushed to
| the fringes, and loaded with shame. "Oh that payment wasn't me,
| my card must have been stolen".
|
| I feel pretty angry how much this puritanical nature in a
| foreign country affects the people I care about around me.
|
| If you can let China censor your platforms, you can let
| Europeans have porn.
|
| Ok, rant over. Please don't downvote too heavily.
| [deleted]
| draw_down wrote:
| I'm afraid this one's more about illegal content and KYC than
| fraud. Sorry.
| rkalla wrote:
| Serious Question: Do they all use it for adult content? I've
| never used OF but see the porn/adult references all the time so
| I assumed that is all it was (obviously not it seems?)
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Of course they do. No one paying to see Someone put legos
| together
| K5EiS wrote:
| https://onlyfans.com/legowhore
| lukeramsden wrote:
| Saying anything on the internet these days is a risk,
| you're almost guaranteed to be wrong somehow.
| biztos wrote:
| I think this must be the most overlapping possible Venn
| diagram of HN and OF, no?
| Tade0 wrote:
| Better: any made up story may become true eventually.
|
| I've experienced this first hand. I was a compulsive liar
| in primary school and one time I told my friends that I
| saw a webcomic that had this gimmick that every panel
| ended with the phrase _< insert topic> is EVIL(BAD)_
| ("Zle/zly/zla" in Polish).
|
| Oddly specific, isn't it?
|
| Well here it is in the flesh:
|
| https://www.deviantart.com/oliko/art/Pablo-Webcomic-
| ep-221-1...
| perardi wrote:
| I am sure someone is going to come up with silly edge case
| examples, but OnlyFans is for porn, and anyone else who says
| otherwise is trying to spin you.
| moonchrome wrote:
| If crypto was actually a viable alternative they wouldn't be
| doing this.
|
| I'm not against the promises of crypto - but the tech so far
| has failed to deliver anything but a platform to streamline
| illegal activity, asset speculation bubbles and a whole bunch
| of wasted energy/hardware along with reliving the problems
| people had historically with bank fraud in free banking and the
| likes (banks printing their own notes without cover till you
| get a bank run - this is why central banks were invented ...)
| saurik wrote:
| So, here is the core problem: if you want to do this on
| mobile... how? You can't do the actual payment parts securely
| using just a web browser--if you think about it that kind of
| undermines the whole concept for a lot of people: you would
| need to host that website somewhere--and then crypto wallets
| that support dapps and payment processing tend to get banned
| by Apple, because they provide a way to bypass their cut for
| services using an app (even if that app is just a browser)
| :/.
| lynx234 wrote:
| The tech is there but mainstream adoption and understanding
| is still coming along. It's incredibly easy and cheap to send
| USDC or DAI to OnlyFans if they accept tokens on a sidechain
| (like Polygon or Fantom).
|
| You don't have to sign up for an account or provide any
| personal info, just use your wallet to send certain tokens to
| an address, then you can use that wallet as a sign-in.
|
| OnlyFans can then use Coinbase or an off-ramp to go from
| crypto to fiat.
|
| It's a more seamless user experience and solves the payment
| processing issue.
|
| In my opinion it's a matter of educating the masses to a very
| different method of paying for services and using services
| (both on the business and consumer side).
| noobermin wrote:
| Honest question, I tried to ask it below: the optics issues
| of being associated with illegal activity, being a waste of
| energy and hardware during a chip shortage, as well as the
| actual reality that most people in crypto are speculators at
| this point, these seem like issues that crypto advocates can
| actually recognize and address so crypto can achieve wider
| adoption. It unfortunately feels like crypto enthusiasts just
| dismiss these concerns and think they don't matter, which
| just maintains the status quo with respect to its adoption.
| dvdkon wrote:
| The properties of certain cryptocurrencies that make them
| good for illegal transactions also make them good for
| pornography and other "not illegal but touchy" areas.
| moonchrome wrote:
| Not really - these are high volume low value transactions
| and need to be low friction. Money laundering and similar
| illegal transactions are fine with the opposite.
| dvdkon wrote:
| The cryptocurrencies I consider viable for this kind of
| thing (mostly Monero) are actually better for low-value
| transactions than conventional card payments, since they
| have a low, fixed transaction cost (well under 0.1USD,
| try that with VISA/MasterCard). I'm not sure about
| scaling volume, but the current situation looks
| promising.
|
| Friction is a problem, but I don't see why sending Monero
| has to be any harder than with conventional payment
| methods. The hard part is overcoming the network effect
| of payment cards.
| fksadfji12 wrote:
| meet the lightning network
| redisman wrote:
| There are many cryptos that would be perfectly viable for
| payments here. XLM, USDC, Polygon for example. I think the
| investors told them that it's too niche and they'd rather
| have credit card payments for whatever remains after the
| policy change.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The "only people doing illegal stuff use it" point doesn't
| really hold up when you consider how much energy is going
| into keeping legal uses less convenient than centralized
| finance. It's like saying only robbers wear masks, and then
| we have a pandemic and suddenly everyone does. With the right
| economic incentives, defi is a tool waiting for the right
| moment to shine. This could be such a moment.
| superfrank wrote:
| I worked at a webcam pornography company (as a software
| engineer) a few years ago and honestly, I get it from the
| processors perspective. I wasn't privy to all the
| conversations, but I know at the time, some higher ups were
| toying around with the idea of basically building an entire in
| house payment processor to handle transactions.
|
| I think a lot of people think the processors are doing this out
| of some moral high ground to try and kill off the pornography
| business, but that's not what's happening. It's all about risk
| and opportunity cost. I forget the exact numbers, but
| pornography and gambling are near the top of the list when you
| look at industries with the highest number of fraudulent
| transactions. When someone reports a transaction as fraudulent,
| the money to refund the customer comes out someone behind the
| scenes pocket and often that money gets tied up in limbo while
| everyone points fingers at everyone else. Dealing with
| fraudulent transactions is a massive headache that wastes a ton
| of time.
|
| Most major processors just don't want to deal with the hassle
| and the ones who do charge extremely high fees to offset the
| extra risk. OF has probably been using a processor that doesn't
| allow for pornography this whole time, but the processor has
| been letting it slide. My guess would be the risk has finally
| grown too large and the processor is cracking down. Like I
| said, there are other processors out there who are happy to
| work with the porn industry for a much higher fee, but it seems
| like OF has decided for one reason or another that that isn't
| as lucrative as just banning explicit content all together.
| ryanlol wrote:
| Big Porn like onlyfans and pornhub are not being targetted by
| cc companies because of fraud rates, but because of the weird
| Christian fundamentalist lobby in America.
| superfrank wrote:
| Pornhub's live cam service was a white label of the company
| I worked at. I can tell you pretty definitively that you
| are wrong.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| What year do you think this is?
| chadlavi wrote:
| What's next, twitch banning gaming?
| biesnecker wrote:
| Are there any major non-porn OnlyFans creators? I've never seen
| it referenced outside of adult content.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I don't know where to find a trustworthy list, but I've read
| that several of the biggest ones are fitness influencers and
| personal trainers who do preview videos on
| Instagram/YouTube/Twitch and use OnlyFans to post the full
| routine/program and provide individual consultation. Granted,
| there's not exactly a bright line between fitness content and
| softcore porn, but they're typically not put in the same
| category for administrative/policy purposes.
| bcheung wrote:
| To be specific, they are banning sexually explicit content
| (masturbation and sex), not nudity.
|
| A lot of OF creators only do nudes and nothing sexual.
|
| I personally know models making 6 figures and they don't even
| do nudes on OF.
| [deleted]
| mkl95 wrote:
| Porn app bans porn. Serious onion vibes
| eykanal wrote:
| From the comments here, it sounds like the main issue is payment
| processors needing to accommodate "vice laws" or something. Can
| someone explain why OnlyFans can't simply use non-US payment
| processors to get around this? My understanding is that many
| European countries are much less concerned with vice than the US.
| mrRandomGuy wrote:
| Who the fuck is using OnlyFans for something _other_ than porn?
| threatofrain wrote:
| I guess we can all be fans of Real Anal.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Apparently the LTT OnlyFans was very popular when it was
| around.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Crypto payments maybe? As a medium before it's sold back to
| USD/regular fiat.
| bcheung wrote:
| Crypto payments hasn't taken off yet. It's beyond the scope of
| most people's ability to pay in crypto.
|
| To reach the masses you probably have to go with "know your
| customer" (KYC) requirements that are going to scare lots of
| people away when they have to upload photos of their passport
| and stuff like that to a website.
|
| And governments and banks are going to impose the same
| restrictions somehow.
|
| Unless they use a coin that is private, all transactions are
| going to be recorded in the blockchain and publicly viewable to
| everyone. Nobody wants their porn purchases to be public
| knowledge.
|
| It will probably eventually get there but probably at least 5
| years out.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| > Nobody wants their porn purchases to be public knowledge.
|
| I'm curious about that, I agree that you can trace
| transactions of a wallet, but can you figure out who a wallet
| belongs to?
| bcheung wrote:
| IRS is leading the way with that. They do it by association
| and high probability that you own the wallet.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm a cryptocurrency advocate, but for the average person
| transacting with crypto is still insanely intimidating and a
| pain to set up properly. Maybe paying with stablecoins could
| work but that is still a lot to ask of your users who are
| accustomed to paying for things with a credit card.
|
| Want to buy something? Open a Coinbase or Gemini account, hook
| up ACH or wire transfers, wait a week for the deposit to be
| made, then send 'dollars' to this really long and complicated
| looking address. If you send it to the wrong address you are
| SOL.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Yeah I'm saying you'd have a service that does that for you,
| moves the money from credit (OF sub) to crypto back to fiat
| for the user (OF creator). I also realize about costs too...
| but like with CBP if you transact a lot of volume the fees go
| down so you could build it up.
|
| Well... I guess ultimately you still need that thing between
| the credit card and the service eg. stripe... idk if the porn
| thing is like a blanket protection against CP or something?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I think the most important thing would be wrapping the
| destination address around an easy to view label. Maybe
| only allow transactions to trusted/verified addresses for
| partner companies and services.
| lucymort wrote:
| We're building an alternative to OnlyFans! And we're hiring a
| Head of Engineering and a Senior Engineer!
|
| https://angel.co/l/2vyMwb https://angel.co/l/2vA8yr
|
| HMU lucy@sunroom.so
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our
| platform, and the continue to host an inclusive community of
| creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines
|
| So, they are trying to get inclusive by excluding most of their
| community...
|
| I understand it is bullshit and the only reason they do it is
| because porn is a difficult investment, with a lot of credit card
| fraud and limited opportunities for partnership. But still,
| OnlyFans made a name for itself with porn, and even managed the
| impressive feat of staying mostly clean regarding abuse and
| copyright infringement.
|
| It is a difficult niche to fit in, but by abandoning it, they
| will compete with everyone else, including Google, Facebook,
| etc... and I don't think they will stand a chance. It is like,
| say, a shop that sells craft beer next to Walmart. Craft beer
| suppliers may be unreliable, have limited stock, with wild
| variation in quality, etc... it is much easier to deal with large
| industrial breweries, but if you stop selling craft beer because
| it is too hard, people will not buy your new, "guaranteed profit"
| industrial beer, they will go to Walmart, because Walmart if
| bigger and can negotiate lower prices, and people can get their
| beers with their groceries. The only reason the craft beer shop
| can make money is because they do the kind of thing Walmart
| refuses to do.
| [deleted]
| dbg31415 wrote:
| "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes."
|
| Prediction:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38963007
|
| Also relevant... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_o8vYUU-jo
| temp20210816 wrote:
| Problem with these sites is that how do you ensure that
| everything is voluntary? You might end up making money for a pimp
| or human trafficking group.
|
| This is a real concern especially on the cam content. It's quite
| tempting business for some pimp on low-income country to get
| house, few cameras and put ladies to work.
|
| Kind of same issues with the porn in general, but I assume
| there's lots of paperwork happening on background for large
| production companies.
| nikkinana wrote:
| Finally.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Wait, so what are they going to do without their only source of
| revenue? I was pretty well under the impression that OF pretty
| much _only_ hosted camgirl accounts. I mean, other than the token
| "thought influencers" they probably bought to try to give
| themselves a glimmer of legitimacy. It's so bad that other social
| media sites (well, TikTok, I don't know about others) completely
| ban mention of OnlyFans under the assumption it's just porn.
| lucymort wrote:
| We're building an alternative to OnlyFans! And we're hiring a
| Head of Engineering and a Senior Engineer.
|
| https://angel.co/l/2vyMwb https://angel.co/l/2vA8yr
|
| HMU lucy@sunroom.so
| buzzwords wrote:
| Anyone know if there are any legal recourse for them?
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| What an absolutely dumb move. Why not leave the thing on
| autopilot generating $400m a year, and start a new site for SFW
| simping?
| TekMol wrote:
| mounting pressure from banking partners and payment
| providers
|
| HN is often sceptical about use cases for crypto beyond
| speculation.
|
| This looks like one.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I'm one of those vocal sceptics on HN. I agree with you! Here's
| finally a huge industry that is consistently shunned by the
| mainstream payment providers.
|
| I'm not being facetious. I believe it's a one of a kind
| opportunity for crypto currencies to step in, show the middle
| finger to the established payment pipelines and prove that a
| smooth, reliable and safe payment system can be operated even
| for the adult industry.
|
| According to the Guardian[1] the adult industry clears between
| $10bln-$100bln a year. That's a lot turnover and clearly they
| are not being served well by the current providers. I'd imagine
| the fees are also acceptably higher (due to the increased
| fraud, etc..) so the profit margins should also be potentially
| higher.
| o_m wrote:
| What is stopping MasterCard and Visa from banning Coinbase and
| others if this happens
| goatmeal wrote:
| most of the folks I know fund their exchange accounts via ACH
| and not their card
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| They can't ban everything, since at the extremis you could
| buy crypto from eBay sellers.
|
| But in the long run you are right: to avoid MasterCard and
| Visa we should move everything to crypto. It is the only way
| to control our own destiny.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >They can't ban everything, since at the extremis you could
| buy crypto from eBay sellers.
|
| This is against eBay's policies. All items sold through
| their site must be delivered physically. If you type
| "bitcoin" in today you'll only get hardware or novelties,
| not the coins themselves.
| sosuke wrote:
| I'm not sure if that would have any effect at all. I put
| money into Coinbase and pull it out of Coinbase with a bank
| account. Buying crypto with a credit card isn't a great idea.
| bawolff wrote:
| If bitcoin didnt get banned over drugs and murder-for-hire
| schemes, i cant imagine porn will be the tipping point.
| cma wrote:
| Does coinbase even take credit cards?
|
| https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/getting-
| started/add-a-...
| abetusk wrote:
| HN often touts that crypto is either a Ponzi/MLM scheme or has
| as its only use criminal activity.
|
| If you make basic payment processing for services criminal,
| then, by definition, cryptocurrency's primary use case is for
| criminal activity.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Porn isn't criminal... ?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to get crypto federally banned. It
| would probably only take a single high profile trafficking case
| to get a law to sail through both houses.
| root_axis wrote:
| So why do you think they decided to ban sexually explicit
| content rather than use cryptocurrency?
| nathias wrote:
| because the payment providers have 99% of market share?
| root_axis wrote:
| And why is this the case when a variety of cryptocurrencies
| are trivially available to the public.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| and 99% of their revenue was from porn so i guess this
| business-ending decision is close to cryptopayment-parity
| xur17 wrote:
| I imagine their options were:
|
| * switch to crypto entirely
|
| * keep credit cards, but block sexually explicit content
|
| I doubt there was middleground where they could accept
| crypto for sexually explicit content, but still accept
| credit cards for everything else.
|
| Which makes me think that a smart move here would be to
| spin off a second company that does allow this content,
| but only accepts payments in crypto. I suppose if they
| don't, there is a opportunity ripe for a competitor to
| take advantage of.
| IdontRememberIt wrote:
| CC processing business is hold by 2 American companies. When they
| warn you (through your CC acquirer), you have zero negotiation
| power. Comply or die.
|
| You can use proxies if you are a small company. But at onlyFans'
| level, the solutions are limited.
|
| PS: By experience, I can also confirm that most of the CC
| acquirers evaluate your business not on its legality but on its
| morality.
|
| PS2: With mandatory 3DS2, the excuse of high fraud/complains
| rates (which were true 10 years ago) does not make sense anymore.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Remember when yahoo bought Tumblr for 1.1 billion, banned porn
| and later sold it for 3 million?
| paulgb wrote:
| Ostensibly, payment providers block this type of thing because it
| has higher fraud risk, but this makes me wonder: do countries
| where credit is less fundamental to payments have the same
| problem? My understanding is that in the UK, for example, you
| could make a deposit to a betting site with the same payment card
| you use to buy milk, since it's more secure than a credit card
| and the counterparty assumes less risk.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| That should be a myth by now. Would be interesting if e.g.
| Stripe could share the fraud statistics for onlyfans. The banks
| probably do this purely to keep up appearances and avoid
| potential bad PR.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| This was targeted illegally by the administration under
| Operation Choke Point, and I would hazard to guess something
| similar is happening again now.
| imglorp wrote:
| I don't understand who appointed the banks became the keepers
| of puritanical propriety. They're terrified someone might see
| a boob or buy some weed, and the weight of the world rests on
| the banks to prevent that from happening.
| paulgb wrote:
| > I don't understand who appointed the banks became the
| keepers of puritanical propriety.
|
| Congress, for one. There's a history of bills that are
| meant to target trafficking scooping up consensual
| practices as well (see also the Mann Act, SESTA/FOSTA). I'm
| not sure how influential the threat of something like this
| was here, but it can't help:
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/human-trafficking-banking-
| bil...
| ryandvm wrote:
| It's probably not fraud so much as it is chargebacks from
| guys whose wives are asking "wtf is this OnlyFans charge?!?"
|
| "Ah shit, honey. Somebody must have stolen my card."
| cblconfederate wrote:
| that's the popular myth. is there evidence for that?
| selectodude wrote:
| Here in the United States I use the same debit card for sports
| betting and groceries.
| fleddr wrote:
| Same here in the Netherlands, we pay with a debit card. In
| stores as well as online.
|
| May people do have one (55%) as it sometimes comes with a
| payment package, but they are generally frowned upon as tech
| from the stone age and insecure.
| tailius wrote:
| Idiotic. Ceding to puritanical, moralizing PHBs is weak and
| throws away their core business model. They might as well declare
| bankruptcy and get it over with.
|
| Leadership with backbone would deleverage themselves from
| controlling investors and utilize other payment methods like
| crypto.
| bdcravens wrote:
| According to OnlyFans, nudity is still allowed (be interesting to
| see where they draw the line regarding what's explicit)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Why is Bloomberg the primary source for this? OnlyFans is too
| cowardly to make a press release?
|
| Anyway, it seems like OF is about to accomplish an epic maneuver:
| raise money at a $1 billion valuation based on a product you just
| cancelled.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually
| explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be
| allowed to post nude photos and videos.
|
| Makes sense
| tomc1985 wrote:
| So long, OnlyFans. You started a golden age just as quickly as
| you ended it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Good luck surviving that exodus. Dropping porn killed Tumblr,
| Onlyfans doesn't have _anything_ that makes it stand apart from
| competition like Patreon.
|
| For sex workers, there is ManyVids that will eat their lunch.
|
| Only benefit out of this, maybe nsfw Reddit will be worth a visit
| again when most of the OF ~~spammers~~sellers have gone.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| The ability to tip and unlock content in DMs as well as tip on
| posts makes OF different from patreon. Tips bring in ALOT of
| money to popular creators, way more than the monthly
| subscription.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| "The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually
| explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be
| allowed to post nude photos and videos"
|
| Makes sense
| SlowRobotAhead wrote:
| > Makes sense
|
| Does it?
|
| Nude is ok, but sexual isn't? What if I find nude sexual, what
| if I find sexual separate from nudity? Why business is it of
| payment processors to say what is OK when it comes to
| sexuality?
| devwastaken wrote:
| Reason for crypto right here. They're not going to stop offering
| payment processing to crypto sites.
| jwond wrote:
| It seems a lot of people in this post are opposed to payment
| processors pressuring OnlyFans to do this.
|
| When Google, Apple, Amazon, et al. simultaneously took actions
| that resulted in the shutdown of Gab it seemed a lot of people
| supported it.
|
| Now they could very well be completely disjoint groups, but I'd
| be interested if anyone who opposes the payment processors
| pressuring OnlyFans but supported the actions taken against Gab
| could explain how they reconcile the two positions. In both cases
| we have companies with dominant positions in the market denying
| or threatening to deny crucial services to another company.
| evol262 wrote:
| One provided a shelter for incitement to violence, culminating
| in an attack on the US Capitol.
|
| The other one is naked people.
|
| It's the difference between suing someone because they yelled
| "fire!" in a crowded adult theatre and being an actor on the
| stage of that theatre.
| standardUser wrote:
| The difference, of course, is threats and violence. I don't
| imagine many OnlyFans models are mentioning their love of
| firearms in the same breathe as they mention that civilization
| will end if we don't establish an all-white ethnostate.
| [deleted]
| caslon wrote:
| There is a duopoly in payment processing because it's the most
| regulated industry in the world. Google, Apple and Amazon are
| in vastly different businesses, rose to where they were based
| on the free market and are sustained by it, would be there with
| or without regulation, and will eventually be replaced.
|
| Personally I don't really care about either of these scenarios
| and a whole lot of the people complaining about this one are
| doing it for pretty obvious self-interested reasons, but you're
| being disingenuous by acting like these are the same thing.
| Visa and Mastercard are a government-enforced duopoly (with a
| few minor similarly-enforced exceptions). No tech company is as
| meaningfully.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Are you surprised folk agree with things that fit their morals
| and disagree with ones that don't? Gab was being used to
| promote hate, violence, and misinformation. Onlyfans is not
| those things.
|
| This feels akin to saying something like, "Oh, you were onboard
| when the government criminalized murder, how do you feel now
| that they're criminalizing weed?!"
| stale2002 wrote:
| The point is that people who talk about a slippery slope were
| correct.
|
| The more that you let large and powerful organizations, get
| away with targeting groups that you don't like, the more
| likely that those powerful organizations are going to be able
| to turn the guns on you, or your favorite cause, when public
| opinion doesn't go your way.
|
| Neutral platforms, that don't discrimination, protects your
| enemies as well as your self. The slippery slope is real.
|
| The people who oppose neutral platforms have made their bed.
| Now we'll see if they change their mind once they have to lay
| in it.
| jwond wrote:
| > Gab was being used to promote hate, violence, and
| misinformation
|
| So is every other social media site
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Gab was created as a reaction to other social media sites
| trying to remove that content. They're clearly different
| beasts even if Facebook and Twitter don't do nearly good
| enough of a job at tackling it.
| Redoubts wrote:
| > I'd be interested if anyone who opposes the payment
| processors pressuring OnlyFans but supported the actions taken
| against Gab could explain how they reconcile the two positions.
|
| I think most people would reconcile them fairly easily. Do you
| think there's a surprising answer to be had here?
| majani wrote:
| The real reason is probably that "adult Patreon" probably isn't a
| sustainable business model. The incentive for famous influencers
| to scam users with photos and videos that are only technically
| nude is just too high, and that will result in charge backs
| galore.
| coldtea wrote:
| Upcoming headline: "OnlyFans to close down business starting in
| November"
| SamEdosa wrote:
| More money for Twitter. I would venture to say Twitter has more
| sexually explicit content then OnlyFans.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Unexpected.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Absolutely terrible that companies feel the need to drop sex
| workers, many of whom depend on the platform to make a living.
|
| Don't even blame onlyfans because it's the demands of banks and
| VCs in this case and society at large who still treat sex workers
| like some kind of caste of undesirables they don't want to be
| associated with.
| justinzollars wrote:
| Looks like I had the wrong link on my clipboard. This is what I
| intended to post:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-...
| claaams wrote:
| Whose daughter at the payment processor was doing onlyfans that
| got them all riled up?
| uncoder0 wrote:
| You joke... but having personally seen how many decisions are
| made this way at high levels of corporations and even
| government this is rather plausible.
| drummer wrote:
| This is why we need fully private and untraceable
| cryptocurrencies like monero, pirate chain and mobilecoin.
| Someone should tell the people at onlyfans.
| dweekly wrote:
| It sure sounds like this was forced on them by their payment
| processors, not that this was a voluntary move.
|
| https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1428420774449266691?s=...
| throwawaysea wrote:
| We really need an alternative to big payment processors like
| Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe, etc. Moving money around is
| so fundamental to basic living that it shouldn't be solely
| possible through duopolies or oligopolies, and it is morally
| and ethically unacceptable that these companies seek to impost
| their own morals and politics upon others who are voluntarily
| transacting with each other. We've known this was a problem for
| a LONG time now, going back to when the credit card companies
| colluded to institute a payment blockade against Wikileaks over
| 10 years ago (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/1
| 2/07/visa-m...). I'm disappointed we aren't in a better place
| yet. We need renewed antitrust legislation to take control of
| big tech and payment processors. They are as influential as
| governments, and cannot be allowed to discriminate, just like
| your water utility cannot discriminate against you based on
| your personal life or politics.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| This is absolutely ridiculous.
|
| What if they decide people can no longer buy dildos or lube or
| condoms or guns or alcohol or meat on Fridays?
|
| There's no law with respect to "payment neutrality"??
| _jal wrote:
| Remember this next time people start pushing going cashless.
|
| Doing so means that a third party is involved in every
| transaction you make, and that someone else will always have
| veto power over your commercial transactions.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| That's an excellent point.
|
| Having an electronic alternative to cash would be amazing,
| but so far there's nothing close to it with respect to
| privacy and freedom.
| missingrib wrote:
| Is this satire going over my head?
| bcheung wrote:
| Crypto will eventually democratize business transactions
| but it will take some time and it will not be without
| increased fraud.
| bserge wrote:
| PayPal and other pseudo currencies already did, for a
| while. You bought virtual currency (which PayPal was at
| first, and so was e-gold, webmoney, etc) and traded that
| for anything you could.
|
| Then PayPal wanted to go big, other virtual currencies
| were caught in fraud scandals of their own (not their
| users'), people just lost trust and interest when card
| processing became more common.
|
| Some are still around but sellers can't be arsed to use
| them. Maybe they will, once again.
| gpvos wrote:
| With ~90% of it currently being used for speculation or
| illegal activity, I don't see it getting real traction.
| adamc wrote:
| You're assuming the government won't just ban it
| entirely.
| losteric wrote:
| Mass adoption of crypto will come with the same problem -
| middlemen slipping in under the guise of efficiency and
| convenience, who will then be compelled to cooperate with
| big brother.
| Sargos wrote:
| The big difference is that those middlemen won't be
| required for payments to function so OnlyFans could
| ignore them and take payments directly.
| xur17 wrote:
| What type of fraud? It seems to me that it would make it
| basically impossible to defraud a merchant with a stolen
| payment method (much like cash). Do you mean merchants
| defrauding their customers?
| kmonsen wrote:
| Right, but that means it will be a lot easier to scam
| regular people. The ability to clawback money is a vital
| way of stopping scams over the internet.
| xur17 wrote:
| As a customer I wish I could have the option (in return
| for a cut of the interchange + fraud fees the merchants
| pay).
| emodendroket wrote:
| Why should there be? It seems absurd to MANDATE anyone
| participate in the sex trade. There are payment processors
| who specialize in adult content.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Why should internet providers be mandated to participate in
| the "sex trade" by allowing immoral bits to flow over their
| wires?
| ardit33 wrote:
| morality is relative.... next stop it is strip clubs, then
| hooters being banned?
|
| Payment processors provide a utility. They should have the
| right not to process illegal transactions and illegal
| activities. But as long as the activity is legal, it
| shouldn't be up to them to police morality.
|
| They should be treated like utilities. If we go down this
| path, the city's water and electric utilities can decide to
| shut down the new hooters, because it is obscene and
| against god (according to conservaties), or it uses women
| and is an oppressor (according to some liberals).
|
| Utilities shouldn't be involved in morality policing.
| emodendroket wrote:
| There are a couple practical reasons why they wouldn't
| want to: high risk of fraud or chargebacks and difficulty
| keeping on top of content that veers into illegality
| spring to mind immediately.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Like paying for abortions or gay weddings in certain
| states? Buying cannabis from somebody on the street
| instead of somebody in a store 6 months later? Promoting
| unions depending on the decade? Letting "trespassing"
| black people buy coffee in shops that banned them in the
| 60s? Making breaking the law impossible is dangerous
| emodendroket wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at but most legal
| dispensaries require you to pay cash.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Like paying for abortions or gay weddings in certain
| states?_
|
| These do not have the high rates of chargeback that adult
| content does.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| This is a very legitimate concern -- payment processors
| _could_ start enforcing that kind of thing based on
| morality.
|
| However, unless something has changed lately, for decades
| the issue with adult content + online payment processors
| is not morality related. It's because of the high
| fraud/chargeback rates associated with online porn
| transactions.
|
| Unless it's SESTA/FOSTA related, but I don't think
| anything's changed on that front for a while.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| They can simply charge more based on a mathematically
| provable risk of fraud/chargebacks. We can regulate that
| to make it fair/transparent, and also regulate that
| payment processors must not discriminate against any
| activity that is legal.
| adamc wrote:
| Yeah, this is a fair point. I think it would make sense
| to require them to offer services, but let them charge a
| rate that allows them to make similar margins as on other
| business.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| You know how US Dollars say "This note is legal tender for
| all debts" on them?
|
| It seems to absurd to allow companies with an oligopoly on
| most of the transfer of those notes to pick and choose what
| sectors are appropriate for citizens to interact with
| financially.
| [deleted]
| thephyber wrote:
| There is no financial neutrality requirement, but perhaps
| there should be.
|
| Also, that quote on the dollar has nothing to do with
| your argument. You seem to be projecting a layperson's
| interpretation of those words instead of the relevant
| jurisprudence.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > companies with an oligopoly on most of the transfer of
| those notes
|
| This is an important distinction. Credit card payments
| are not notes. They are not cash. So these companies have
| very little to do with the transfer of cash.
|
| The point of "legal tender" is that if you try to pay off
| a debt in cash, they can't claim you haven't paid it and
| take you to court. If you try to pay for your meal in a
| restaurant with cash and they refuse, you can just walk
| out and they wouldn't have a legal case (probably. in
| theory. not legal advice).
|
| What's tricky is this has to be a _debt_ , as in past
| tense. If you try to buy groceries with cash and they
| refuse, you can walk out but you can't the groceries with
| you.
|
| Participation in the cash market is mandatory on anyone
| who is owed money. Everything else on top (credit cards,
| checks) is essentially voluntary. Merchants can take it
| or leave it, the processors can come or go.
|
| If you want to make an argument about the outsized effect
| that Visa has on the US monetary system, that's totally
| legitimate. It just has little to do with the concept of
| "legal tender".
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _If you try to pay for your meal in a restaurant with
| cash and they refuse, you can just walk out and they
| wouldn 't have a legal case (probably. in theory. not
| legal advice)._
|
| I think they would have a case, because you still owe
| them a debt. But then after you lose the case you can pay
| in cash. Just how I understand it, could be wrong.
| Doesn't change your point though.
| emodendroket wrote:
| How could they operate no-cash businesses if this were
| true? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/
| 09/16/fac...
| gowld wrote:
| But cash is illegal!
|
| If you try to pay a $10K debt in cash, it will likely be
| seized for no reason whatsoever, on suspicion of criminal
| activity.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| The way to avoid this if you want to really pay in cash
| is to order the cash from your bank and have an armored
| car service transport it for you. There is just little
| point since that's more expensive than a check or ACH
| transfer.
|
| And yes Civil Asset Forfeiture is pure evil, I agree.
| lallysingh wrote:
| That's not what that means.
|
| https://www.quora.com/On-every-US-dollar-bill-the-
| message-Th...
| l33t2328 wrote:
| The comment you linked to doesn't address the point I
| made.
|
| My point was that you can spend your cash wherever you
| want, in whatever way the seller will accept.
|
| My point was not that sellers ought to be forced to
| accept bags of pennies.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| The choice of wording -- specifically "debt" -- is
| deliberate and meaningful.
|
| If I owe you $5, you have to accept my $5 bill as legal
| tender
|
| But if I want to buy something from your store that
| doesn't mean you have to accept my $5 bill - that's not a
| debt
| tylersmith wrote:
| That has nothing at all to do with payment processing.
| adrusi wrote:
| We mandate that some companies participate in the sex
| trade, at least to the extent that payment processors can
| be considered to be participating.
|
| The electrical company is mandated to provide power to
| Onlyfans' datacenters, so long as they are paying for the
| service.
|
| Also there's basically only four payment processors: Visa,
| Mastercard, Discover and Amex. None of them specialize in
| adult business. There are downstream processors along the
| lines of PayPal and Stripe, and some of them specialize in
| adult business, but they're entirely beholden to the big
| four.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think this is different. If the customer is unhappy
| with the service provided, their dispute has nothing to
| do with the electrical company, nor are they going to
| claw back payments to them.
| adrusi wrote:
| If the problem is that customers are contesting payments
| or other fraud-related issues, the standard remedy is to
| bump fees, not revoke service.
| didgfehfocu wrote:
| Why should it require specialization at all besides that
| laws pushed by religious conservatives to advance puritan
| ideals demand it? Don't be a doctor if you aren't willing
| to help your patient exercise their right to choose and
| don't be a payment processor if you're not willing to
| process payments in a neutral fashion. It's rediculous that
| at a time when equity and #metoo is all the rage that no
| one is talking about inequity in the law in the form of
| legal sandbags.
| marvin wrote:
| At the mercy of Visa and MasterCard, I would guess. Doesn't
| OnlyFans work with CCBill, who exclusively work with adult
| content providers?
|
| More info is needed to conclude, but it wouldn't surprise
| me if their upstream providers made demands.
| bcheung wrote:
| I highly doubt they are going through CCBill. They are
| too expensive at volume. Since they are only charging
| models 20% I suspect they tried to pretend to not be
| adult, which they probably weren't in the beginning. But
| not it is almost all adult and CC processors know that
| and want their higher cut.
| boplicity wrote:
| 1. Freedom of Speech extends to all parties in a relationship
|
| 2. Freedom of speech includes choosing who I work with
|
| 3. It makes sense to have certain restrictions on freedom of
| speech, especially as it relates to clearly harmful
| discrimination (i.e. racial discrimination, gender
| discrimination)
|
| 4. It does not make sense to restrict freedom of speech in
| the case of pornography, specifically, whether a company can
| choose to work with pornographers or not
| [deleted]
| ozim wrote:
| That is called democracy and yes there are a lot of things
| that are not sold.
|
| General public agrees that explicit material is bad.
|
| Right now we have in Poland shops closed each Sunday - it is
| annoying for me. Selling alcohol in Norway is heavily
| restricted and I see more and more restrictions on alcohol
| sales in Poland.
|
| Explicit material is tied a lot to money laundering, there is
| also a lot of scams tied to it and lots of stolen cards are
| used to pay for explicit material. It is huge cost for
| payment providers, all the laws for anti-laundering trump any
| "payment neutrality".
|
| If you want to see naked ladies go to "a place" and risk on
| your own, pay with cash.
| postsantum wrote:
| No, this is dictated by a vocal minority of puritans, don't
| drag "democracy" into this
| bserge wrote:
| And when the general public agrees cash is bad? After all
| you can buy anything with digital methods nowadays. Cash is
| only for criminals.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| >General public agrees that explicit material is bad
|
| I don't think that's true when asked anonymously.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Payment networks should operate according to laws and
| regulations, not reputation and public opinion. Would you
| want your electricity turned off because someone did not
| like who you were or what you believe? That is a road to
| tyranny.
| emodendroket wrote:
| No business operates this way.
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| Given that payment processors are an oligopoly, and it's
| incredibly difficult to build another Visa or MasterCard,
| they should be regulated as utilities (or at the very
| least, similarly to telecom providers), and be required
| to be content-neutral.
|
| Just like Comcast can't tell me I can't download porn,
| Visa shouldn't be able to tell me I can't buy it, either.
| ozim wrote:
| Slippery slope argument.
|
| So you are going to run naked in the city center because
| public opinion about this does not match what you want.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think you and @toomuchtodo are talking about different
| things.
|
| Laws, democratic or otherwise, can indeed constrain what
| payment providers will allow themselves to be used for.
|
| Public opinion short of law should not be able to add
| further constraints.
|
| IMO the question of "what should Visa and MasterCard be
| allowed to restrict?" is the same category of question as
| "what category of app should Apple and Google be allowed
| to restrict?"
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Public opinion short of law should not be able to add
| further constraints.
|
| Isn't reputational feedback one of the key enablers of
| the free market? Unless you want to move to a system that
| is fully centrally planned and noncompetitive, you'll
| have reputational differences (read: public opinion)
| affecting the success of a firm. To the extent that
| reputation affects a firm's success, the firm will make
| decisions (including "do we carry this unpopular thing")
| based on its reputation.
|
| Shall we require all firms to do business with all
| potential partners, regardless of reputational
| repercussions, or if the partner has an established
| history of abuse (say, a contractor who repeatedly under-
| delivers on contracts)?
| [deleted]
| adamc wrote:
| I agree, but the law does have to consider the very
| different risk profile some customers present. As has
| been pointed out, adult businesses have to deal with
| shame and a lot of fraudulent chargebacks. The reality is
| that they are much more expensive to service.
| pjc50 wrote:
| _Which_ general public? This stuff varies by jurisdiction.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| The fact that OF is not all in on crypto payments is a massive
| indictment of crypto as a payment mechanism.
| smt88 wrote:
| Even if OF could accept crypto, they'd still need an off-ramp
| back into fiat. They can't operate only on crypto, even just
| stablecoins, which is itself the indictment of crypto.
| Tenoke wrote:
| There's plenty of services for that - e.g. Coinbase has an
| enterprise one for that use case.
| smt88 wrote:
| They need a bank no matter what. They can't do payroll in
| stablecoins.
| arebop wrote:
| nope, not for adult content/services
| https://commerce.coinbase.com/legal/terms-of-
| service-2021-08...
| tommymachine wrote:
| It's not about chargebacks its about sex trafficking
| liability
| Tenoke wrote:
| Okay, that seems much worse than OF since there's no
| chargebacks or anyone over them for it to be an issue.
| flatline wrote:
| But if coinbase doesn't want to be associated with OF,
| they no longer have that avenue.
| [deleted]
| serverholic wrote:
| Or that crypto is only 12 years old which is really fucking
| young for a currency.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Or that just the transfer fees would be more than most
| payments.
|
| Or that no one would be able to properly use those payouts.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Nothing is on crypto payments because you never know how
| you are actually paying
| T0Bi wrote:
| There are stable coins as well, where you know exactly
| what you're paying.
| mortehu wrote:
| That's not young at all. How much trouble did people have
| accepting Euro in 2011?
| toast0 wrote:
| A government mandate certainly helps a currency develop.
| qwytw wrote:
| idk... the Euro was introduced in 1998/1999 I heard it was
| already pretty huge a couple of years later.
| serverholic wrote:
| You're comparing a government mandated currency change vs
| grassroots currency.
| zz865 wrote:
| It also highlights the lack of anonymity with crypto -
| everyone gets to see what you spend money on.
| young_unixer wrote:
| Not if you use Monero.
|
| https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/what-is-monero/
| teh_infallible wrote:
| I love Monero, but I think it is more intimidating for
| no-coiners than bitcoin.
|
| You can't buy it on Coinbase or many other exchanges, and
| the wallets are not as polished as the btc wallets I have
| used.
|
| So if you're trying to get your fans to pay you in XMR,
| you would be creating a lot of friction for them.
| cody8295 wrote:
| With most crypto, yeah. Monero happens to be private and
| anonymous.
| Tenoke wrote:
| This is a massive exaggeration. I've spent a fair amount of
| crypto without trying to hide it, please tell me what on.
|
| Maybe the state can find my addresses with a bit more
| effort than they can find my CC purchases but random people
| or friends and family not so much unless I want them to.
| zz865 wrote:
| > random people or friends and family not so much unless
| I want them to
|
| What I mean is if you ever send F&F money they'll see all
| your previous purchases too, and if OF is a well known
| wallet its easy for them to see that detail.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| There is no limit to the number of addresses you can have
| in Bitcoin. Best practice is to NEVER reuse an address.
| So this is all a lot harder than you're making it out to
| be. If I sent you some BTC right now, you wouldn't know
| what else I'd been up to with it, how much I have, which
| addresses are mine, etc.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Presumably OF would use a ton of auto generated wallets
| which a random family member wouldn't easily connect to
| them and remotely savvy users will send money from their
| exchange to a separate wallet for either family or OF.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Most wallets create new change addresses for every
| transaction which eliminates that sort of trivial
| transaction association.
| redisman wrote:
| The issue is likely that if there are hacks and leaks of
| wallet addresses tied to personas from a exchange for
| example then someone can build a tree pretty easily off
| of that
| Tenoke wrote:
| Sure, and there can be leaks from OF or equifax or a
| payment processor showing your purchase, too.
| young_unixer wrote:
| Huh? Many services on the Internet accept crypto, Namecheap
| is a good example.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm still surprised nobody tried to bridge the two .. it
| seems like the most obvious of shark fad business move
| Goronmon wrote:
| I assume because as soon as you become the "place where
| people get crypto for adult content" then the same issues
| that OF is running into now become your issues as well.
|
| Unless people are getting paid directly in crypto, they are
| purchasing it from somewhere, and wherever that entry point
| is will have this problem.
| vesinisa wrote:
| Yes, already now buying cryptos is ridiculously
| difficult. Any reputable operator requires KYC, which is
| a similar process to opening a bank account including
| submitting a photo ID. That's a pretty good deterrent for
| the random Joe against signing up on a porn site even if
| it's all legal.
|
| While cryptos in of themselves are decentralized and
| inherently unregulatable, people forget that the
| interface with the real financial world is very much
| vulnerable.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| True, but there are services like Purse.io which let you
| order on Amazon and pay with crypto. So theoretically,
| you could have your fans pay you in crypto, and you could
| convert that to whatever goods you want. It might not
| work as your only income, but could be a valuable way to
| supplement it.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It might be easier to operate a dodgy site off of USPS money
| orders than it would be off of cryptocurrency.
| mzs wrote:
| and possibly FOSTA-SESTA too
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| You would think that it would be profitable enough for them to
| become their own bank and processor if no one else would. This
| right here tells me they knew they couldn't. Why? Who is
| telling them no? How can we live in a place where LEGAL
| businesses are purposefully excluded from the market?
|
| I think they should start taking Bitcoin or Monero. Fuck
| MasterCard and whoever dictates what they do. If you are going
| to be forced into bankruptcy, at least do it in style.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >You would think that it would be profitable enough for them
| to become their own bank and processor if no one else wou
|
| Or just buy a bank. Surely they could have raised the
| capital.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| This is why America needs to work beyond it's fascination with
| creditcards.
|
| Your bank can't block shit and has to process whatever
| transaction you want short of the terrorist watchlist.
| bitwize wrote:
| Since the Obama administration the government has been using
| threats of increased regulatory scrutiny against banks that
| do not block transactions dealing with certain undesirable
| industries including guns, cannabis, and porn -- whether such
| transactions are legal or not.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Your bank can't block shit and has to process whatever
| transaction you want short of the terrorist watchlist.
|
| Is that true?
| pvarangot wrote:
| No. I'm in the US and my bank even blocked sign in bonuses
| "just to be sure everyone is ok with it because it's a lot
| of money". Using plain old inter banking transfers for
| something like OnlyFans subscriptions is suicide and the
| new APIs like Zelle or Venmo are subject to even more
| internal regulations than credit cards regarding percentage
| of fraud transactions/porn.
| mopsi wrote:
| Seems like it's the cost of fraud protection then. The
| European SEPA has virtually no fraud protection, unless
| it was a technical error (duplicate payments etc). The
| upside is that no-one cares who you transact with. All
| payments are final.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > The European SEPA has virtually no fraud protection,
| unless it was a technical error (duplicate payments etc).
| The upside is that no-one cares who you transact with.
| All payments are final.
|
| Yeah, I'm used to using that domestically and rarely for
| business. We usually use Giros[1] for business and now
| Swish for more personal stuff. I think most areas now
| have Klarna (even the US according to Wikipedia). I
| wonder how much they would interfere in things like this.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment)
|
| 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klarna
| L3viathan wrote:
| Not with SEPA Direct Debit (which accounts for most of my
| online payments); I can "return" (get back) money spent
| like that easily via my bank.
| jhgb wrote:
| Yes, they will even support drug cartels and actually even
| terrorists -- at least until they get caught. Nobody goes
| to prison anyway and the resulting fines are just price of
| business. See HSBC, for example.
| jjulius wrote:
| And yet they all stopped processing payments for PornHub.
|
| Please cite a source(s) for your claim, re: "banks can't
| block shit"
| aj3 wrote:
| PH was blocked by payment processors (Visa and Mastercard):
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/10/pornhub-
| mast...
|
| Parent is making distinction between credit cards and
| banks.
| jjulius wrote:
| Fair point, though I'd still like to see a source, re:
| banks not being allowed to "block shit".
| thebean11 wrote:
| Weren't banks closing accounts over Coinbase transactions a
| couple years ago?
| ipsum2 wrote:
| > Your bank can't block shit and has to process whatever
| transaction you want
|
| I don't think this is true for things that are in a gray area
| - storing profits from cannabis where its legalized and
| purchasing cryptocurrency
|
| https://decrypt.co/39226/banks-still-blocking-crypto-
| transac...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2020/08/18/the-
| cann...
|
| (Although the cannabis one seems to have changed recently)
| eximius wrote:
| Our banks are horribly, horribly insecure. I use a credit
| card because we don't have a good way to use our banks.
| jpeter wrote:
| Why should payment processors force them to. They will make
| less money
| emodendroket wrote:
| Probably the reputational risk to them from being associated
| with porn is not worth whatever OnlyFans brings in.
| pell wrote:
| Why would OnlyFans not simply move to another payment
| processor then? This all seems a bit strange.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| It's not so easy. The obvious candidates all ban adult
| content, and the ones used by the porn industry are
| either owned by the same or take cuts that make the
| AppStore look reasonable.
| gpvos wrote:
| They could set up their own payment processor (unless
| it's really Visa or Mastercard pushing this).
| pell wrote:
| From what I understand OnlyFans has essentially no other
| product except for this type of content though. So I
| would have assumed negotiating with one of these
| processors for a somewhat more reasonable contract
| despite higher fees would still be more lucrative than
| giving up what seems to be their core business and
| revenue stream.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Taking a 30% cut doesn't seem that bad compared to the
| alternative. Why lose 90% of your revenue and all your
| profit just to not give a 30 or 40% cut to shitty middle
| man?
|
| Unless Onlyfans actually has some decent traction outside
| sexual stuff. I find that hard to believe. If photos are
| still allowed, that's something. But still.
|
| Maybe I'm completely misinformed though!
| judge2020 wrote:
| If the party pushing is Visa or Mastercard (of which
| 'other' processors like Paypal, Venmo, Cashapp are
| beholden to as well) that would only really leave
| cryptocurrency, which is a large barrier to taking
| payments and would likely mean >90% revenue loss anyways.
|
| Reminder that payment processor pressure is what has
| caused a lot of (legal) art to be pushed off of
| Patreon[0].
|
| 0: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-
| suspension-of... (discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801 )
| throwawayvisa2 wrote:
| To add:
|
| Bans some forms of anime art:
| https://www.dailydot.com/irl/patreon-anime-porn-ban/
|
| Banning for activity/art outside of art hosted on
| Patreon: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/patreon-gay-
| hypnosis-artists/
|
| (articles may contain nsfw imagery)
| arebop wrote:
| Strike and Coinbase prohibit any use in connection with
| adult services in their ToS. Building/maintaining fiat
| onramps at scale is hard.
| make3 wrote:
| not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is textually
| what is said
| gpvos wrote:
| Ignore a few downvotes in the first hour or so, they're
| likely to be compensated with upvotes if you're saying
| anything substantial.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think sometimes people downvote you for stating some
| fact that they think shouldn't be true. No big deal.
| cronix wrote:
| I just ignore all downvotes that don't give some sort of
| rebuttal. I just assume I pissed someone off by stating
| fact they didn't like otherwise. In fact, I think that
| would be an excellent feature - you can't downvote
| without an honest reply.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| I think that is the exact opposite of what a downvote
| should be for: comments which aren't even worth replying
| to.
| gpvos wrote:
| Both types exist, I'd say.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Payment processors and financial institutions like to use
| the (IMO mostly political) cover of "AML regulations" to
| decline service to sex workers and sex worker-adjacent
| businesses. Prior to the internet and OnlyFans there was at
| least a tenuous connection: sex work was a cash business
| and _all_ cash businesses are at "higher" risk for money
| laundering. Pizza shops, nail salons, car washes, etc. Of
| course the pizza shops and nail salons and car washes still
| get to open bank accounts even though they're subject to
| higher scrutiny behind the scenes.
|
| But that pretext for excluding sex workers from banking and
| payment processing really falls apart with OnlyFans. These
| are small, repeated, digital payments that are highly
| traceable because they're coming from and going to _known_
| people. And the existence of the underlying work product is
| _easily_ verifiable: are the accounts actively posting
| content or not?
| brador wrote:
| The issue is sex trafficking not money laundering here.
| elliekelly wrote:
| It's six in one and a half dozen in the other. Banks only
| care about sex trafficking because sex trafficking is a
| crime and processing money from criminal activity is...
| money laundering. But regardless, what's the risk of sex
| trafficking here? Again, these payments are coming from
| and going to _known_ parties. In fact, this should be a
| KYC dream come true. Because of the adult content
| OnlyFans collects (and in the case of payment recipients,
| confirms) the name, DOB, and address of everyone buying
| and selling on the platform.
|
| If human trafficking were the actual risk banks were
| trying to mitigate here then it would be difficult for
| any business sector that relies on migrant workers to
| obtain banking services but I've never heard of an almond
| grower having trouble opening a bank account.
| bserge wrote:
| Let me remind you that eBay allowed sales of digital
| products and OTC medication.
|
| For a long time, so they somehow dealt with all the
| supposed fraud.
|
| Then they grew large enough to tell digital product
| sellers to fuck off and stepped hard on the medication
| sellers (pretty sure they banned anything that's more
| than a supplement).
|
| PayPal did the same, or maybe it was PayPal leading that,
| they were the same company for a long time.
| rapind wrote:
| You had (still have?) the same issue with marijuana
| businesses. Not easy to open a bank account for a
| marijuana business.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Yes except there's one _major_ legal difference: selling
| marijuana is (for now) a federal crime and selling naked
| photos is not. So AML regulations _do_ actually prohibit
| banks /payment processors from servicing marijuana
| businesses but they _do not_ prohibit them from servicing
| OnlyFans.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I would bet money that there is some portion of the
| content on OnlyFans breaking the law.
| koolba wrote:
| Like what? Besides kiddie porn and sex trafficking /
| forced labor, what could possibly be illegal?
|
| Isn't this site just a bunch of naked girls twerking in
| front of webcam?
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. Underage performers, revenge porn,
| nonconsensual stuff. These are common problems for every
| other site with adult content so why would they be
| immune.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm sure you're right. But the same is probably true for
| Reddit and YouTube and Amazon but for some reason Visa
| and MasterCard don't seem so concerned...
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well, all of them have been forced to curtail some kinds
| of content in response to outside pressure as well.
| OnlyFans is just unique in being all-in on this one kind.
| cronix wrote:
| I don't think I've ever been on onlyfans, but anytime I've
| heard the name in a news context it is associated with pay-
| for-porn. I don't think I've ever heard of a non-porn thing
| on there, whether its in the news or people advertising
| their fan site. Do they actually have some sort of non-porn
| reputation that exceeds the porn reputation that I've never
| heard mentioned before? From what I gather, their
| reputation is about the same as pornhub, when it comes to
| "porn." I don't see how they fix that, and stay in
| business. This is just an opinion of a passer-by who
| casually hears the name. I don't think I'm much different
| than most people who have never been on there, which I'm
| assuming is most people in general.
| kyleee wrote:
| I suspect they have a lot of models that toe the line of
| sexual explicitness; but I certainly have the same
| perception of the site
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Not a reputation thing, unless that's changed lately. You
| can use credit cards for all kinds of porn and various
| shady things, they don't care.
|
| For decades, the specific issue was with the huge
| chargeback/fraud rates associated with online porn.
|
| - People paying for porn with stolen cards
|
| - Or, more frequently, people disputing the charges when
| their wives see the credit card statements and get mad, so
| they claim the card was stolen etc.
| _rpd wrote:
| If you think about what payment processors actually do,
| dealing with fraud is one of the main costs. There's a lot of
| fraud associated with porn related transactions, so it can
| make financial sense to just drop the entire transaction
| category.
| jlengrand wrote:
| Because it is a high risk area, just like gambling
| dhosek wrote:
| Some years ago I interviewed with a company that served as a
| payment risk processor for high-risk businesses (in short,
| porn).
|
| The chargeback rate on online porn is _huge_. As a result,
| where a traditional payment processor may be 1.3-3.5%
| depending on the business and the assessed risk, for a high-
| risk business, the rate can be much much higher. While
| Onlyfans keeps 20%, I 'm guessing that they'd be badly hurt
| if they had to give half that to their payment processor. I'm
| sure they've looked at their numbers and they find the non-
| porn providers are more profitable to them, especially if it
| means they can lower their processing fees. Booting the porn
| providers will likely also make it easier to recruit more
| non-porn providers.
| grishka wrote:
| Another thing that feels uniquely-US to me is chargebacks.
| I don't even know what's the process for initiating one in
| Russia. I once wanted to do that (forgot to disable auto-
| payment for internet in the apartment I rented and since
| moved from), called my bank, they told me that there's
| nothing they could do and I have to talk to the merchant to
| get a refund.
|
| But many comments here imply that chargeback is almost as
| easy as clicking a button or asking nicely. How's that?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The US has specific legal rights to a chargeback.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_in_Lending_Act
|
| "I forgot to disable automatic billing" probably wouldn't
| be a valid chargeback, though.
| _rpd wrote:
| It makes it easy to comply with the Fair Credit Billing
| Act:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act
| klodolph wrote:
| In the US, you can't click a button to make a chargeback
| happen. People are eliding some of the steps or being a
| bit sloppy with the terminology. A chargeback is
| something that the bank (or rather, the credit card
| issuer) does to merchants.
|
| You can log in to your credit card account, click on a
| transaction, and open a dispute. You have to choose a
| reason for the dispute. The reason has to be something
| like, "I was charged for a product, but never received
| the product."
|
| This just starts the process. The end result may be a
| chargeback to the merchant.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| The overall theme here is difference between bank, and
| visa/Mastercard.
|
| If I have a legitimate charge on my debit/chequing
| account, I too don't know how to reverse it directly
| through bank.
|
| But if I pay with visa or Mastercard (actual credit
| cards), I call the toll free number or go to website and
| start process and go through it.
|
| Partially it's that highbibterest rates pay for policies
| and systems and options and insurance. Partially that
| credit card fraud is common so systems must be easy for
| consumer. E.g. I had my credit card used by somebody else
| probably 5 to 6 times over 15 years. They'd call me when
| they detect fraud,we'd go through list of transactions,
| and based on quick word over phone they'd cancel all
| transactions that weren't mine. It's a very different
| process than banking.
| klodolph wrote:
| Debit cards have some of the same protections as credit
| cards. You can dispute a debit charge.
| knome wrote:
| >But many comments here imply that chargeback is almost
| as easy as clicking a button or asking nicely. How's
| that?
|
| I can log into my banks website and, selecting any
| payment transaction within the chargeback period,
| initiate a chargeback claim by just clicking a few
| buttons.
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| You hop on the phone with the bank and initiate a
| dispute. They give the merchant a chance to prove that
| you specifically did indeed make the purchase and/or
| receive a hard product. If they can't, the money is
| refunded to your account.
|
| Of course, if you keep on charging back, eventually your
| bank will give you a polite call to let you know that
| they're closing out your account. This provides the
| incentive to be relatively honest about charge backs in
| addition to the fact that a false charge back is a
| criminal offense (fraud).
| isatty wrote:
| > I'm sure they've looked at their numbers and they find
| the non-porn providers are more profitable to them,
| especially if it means they can lower their processing
| fees.
|
| I highly doubt this. There's like no way a site that's
| known for porn makes more money on what Patreon does.
| 99.999% impossible.
|
| > Booting the porn providers will likely also make it
| easier to recruit more non-porn providers.
|
| Pornhub can allow regular content but nobody is going to
| ditch YouTube, especially PG content creators, because of
| the name association.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >While Onlyfans keeps 20%,
|
| Where's the rage against a 3rd party platform ripping off
| the users?
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Onlyfans isn't a duopoly, unlike iOS/Android.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Unsure as to whether booting porn will enable any other
| recruitment of more other providers. OF is synonymous with
| young girls (over 18 but still young) selling nude picture
| for everybody under certain age. That is what everybody is
| thinking when it is mentioned. If you tell somebody under
| 30 you have OF subscription and bookmarked site yes, but
| only for watching gardening video, people will think you
| are joking.
| gumby wrote:
| I had a friend who ran a "sexually explicit" site you've
| heard of. He was paying north of 25% to payment processors
| (compare to less than .2% restaurants pay...though his
| margins were _much_ bigger).
|
| The payment processors take this attitude because that way
| they can tell congress they are "doing something about vice",
| and in exchange not be subject to undesired regulations.
|
| I suspect this kind of soft pressure is being applied to
| Apple in the background. Everyone remembers what happened to
| Joe Nacchio, and resisting such pressure is harder now than
| it was over the last four years.
| admn2 wrote:
| Seems like a business opportunity for someone to build a
| Stripe for vice businesses. Question I know nothing about
| is besides being stigmatized, do these industries have
| higher fraud rates? Pretty sure credit card companies won't
| let you "chargeback" stripe clubs as fraud even if it
| wasn't you.
| joshmanders wrote:
| "Stripe for vice business" wouldn't work because the
| payment processors are still beholden to VISA and
| MasterCard. This company would also have to create a
| whole new credit card in which majority of people are
| using.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| You'd probably need to create a network of people that
| accepted physical cash and gave you crypto in return,
| sort of like localbitcoins.
|
| I guess you could buy a chain of Bureau de Change outlets
| and have them convert cash to bitcoin, monero etc. I'm
| surprised this isn't already happening to be honest -
| they have all the infrastructure and licenses already.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm sure if you're a store with a bunch of Karen's asking
| if you accept an OF card for payment, you'd probably
| reach out to OF to figure out how to get that money that
| just walked out the door...
| pandesmos wrote:
| Absolutely higher fraud and chargeback rates.
| miohtama wrote:
| Yes. High value virtual content is the best way to
| launder money, especially if it is private content like
| shows.
|
| However unless there exist payment rails outside
| Mastercard or Visa, no one is going to build "Stripe."
| The only way would be Stripe running on crypto, but then
| how people get crypto in the first place if not by a
| card?
|
| EDIT: Crypto also lacks chargebacks (so called hard
| money).
| duskwuff wrote:
| More importantly, cryptocurrency also lacks recurring
| payments. Most adult sites depend upon income from
| ongoing subscriptions.
| Sargos wrote:
| The Sablier protocol (https://sablier.finance/)
| trustlessly streams crypto/stablecoins on a
| second/hourly/daily/monthly basis which covers use cases
| such as subscriptions.
| duskwuff wrote:
| No, that doesn't address the use case for subscriptions.
| (In fact, I'm struggling to understand why _anyone_ would
| use it in its current state.) The sender of a Sablier
| "stream" has to set a fixed start and end time for the
| stream, and deposit the entire value of the stream up
| front. None of this makes any sense for a subscription
| application, where the merchant wants the subscription to
| recur until cancelled, and the subscriber doesn't want to
| make a large payment up front.
| around_here wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily lack it, but it's set up
| differently via one way payment channels.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Seems like a business opportunity for someone to build
| a Stripe for vice businesses.
|
| It seems that was a big part of WireCard's business.
| Didn't turn out that well. (Though their vice business
| might've been one of the few parts that actually made
| some money...)
| mind-blight wrote:
| My roommate is one of the risk analysts on the fraud team
| for a large subprime credit card company. About 45% of
| credit card transactions from OnlyFans are CC fraud.
|
| Edit: update numbers to be correct
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Question I know nothing about is besides being
| stigmatized, do these industries have higher fraud rates?
|
| Very much so. Adult businesses have extremely high rates
| of friendly fraud, which is worsened by the facts that 1)
| they don't deliver a physical product, so it's difficult
| for the merchant to prove that a charge was legit, and 2)
| some customers will charge back purchases which they
| regret making, or which a partner disapproves of. ("No,
| honey, I definitely didn't sign up for that porn site,
| I'll call the bank right away.")
|
| > Pretty sure credit card companies won't let you
| "chargeback" stripe clubs as fraud even if it wasn't you.
|
| I'm pretty sure they will.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Sadly the porn industry shot themselves in the foot
| almost a decade ago trying to scam as much money out of
| people as possible until VISA and MasterCard stepped in
| themselves and banned a terrible practice from being
| accepted.
|
| Remember in 2012 the whole hubbub of "pre-checked cross-
| sales?"
|
| The act of hiding the checkbox below the fold of the
| screen and make the visitor think there's nothing more
| below so they won't uncheck the box that says "Yeah,
| charge me $1 for this 3 day trial, but also sign me up
| for all these other programs that will bang my card for
| $60-120/each"
|
| You'd think you were getting a 3 day trial for a buck but
| instead you'd be getting a $300-1000 charge on your card.
| Giorgi wrote:
| ok that's oddly specific.
| gsibble wrote:
| The people that come up with this shit are evil.......
| koolba wrote:
| > Pretty sure credit card companies won't let you
| "chargeback" stripe clubs as fraud even if it wasn't you.
|
| Of course you can. If your wallet was stolen and the perp
| went to the champagne room at a strip club, you would not
| be liable for it. The strip club knows that as well so
| the onus is on them to actually check that the ID matches
| the person and the card.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Yes, in Vegas many are checking ID for use of credit card
| exactly with this reason in mind. It is so common for
| pickpocket that otherwise they have too many such issues.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Seems like a business opportunity for someone to build
| a Stripe for vice businesses.
|
| Well, not really. The whole point is that if you do that,
| the government will apply soft pressure on you, until you
| go out of businesses.
|
| Its an end run around of the 1st amendment, basically. A
| senator doesn't have to make a law, targeting you
| specifically. They just have to threaten your bank, that
| they will be punished, sometime down the line, in an
| unrelated law, and then the bank will, shut you down.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Everyone remembers what happened to Joe Nacchio_
|
| Everyone paying attention. Most people have never heard of
| him, and don't know that the USG regularly exercises huge
| power against private enterprise in this way.
| yibg wrote:
| Adult content usually has a high charge back rate. "What? How
| did this get here? My card must've been stolen" when the
| spouse sees the statement.
| majani wrote:
| Also Onlyfans willfully supported a scammy business model
| by allowing people to sell content without any preview
| whatsoever and cash out quickly. What would then happen was
| that famous women would open an Onlyfans, lie about having
| nudes on there, tell their fans to unlock the "nudes" for a
| price, fan unlocks only to discover that the woman was
| indeed nude but strategically covering all the good stuff.
| By the time complaints were being lodged the creator had
| already cashed out. Onlyfans tried to slow down the
| cashouts but the creators still had a leg to stand on since
| they technically didn't lie about what they were selling
| nix23 wrote:
| IDEA: Master/Slave-Card, available in Black or Brown just
| chargeable with crypto or cash max amount 300$ no address
| needed, if lost, your problem.
| vxNsr wrote:
| visa/mc giftcards are a thing.
| nix23 wrote:
| Really? Never heard of that...maybe a US thing then?
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Prepaid cards including virtual cards are available in
| Europe..
| nix23 wrote:
| Cant pay with them on OnlyFans, let alone buying used
| bath water.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| I wouldn't know, I'm just saying the exist too in Europe.
| Also many of the multi-chain gift cards are also prepaid
| payment cards they go through the same payment system
| it's much easier to leverage it than to build another
| one.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| In US you can go to many store and get such a card, pay
| with cash. Downsides are that some merchant (mostly
| internet ones) will check and refuse to accept such pre-
| paid options.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Interesting. Yeah I would love to know what percentage of
| charge backs are a result of that vs stolen cards. It seems
| like adult entertainment has two significant sources of
| fraud then. A couple of years ago Visa clamped down pretty
| hard on "high risk verticals" and the threshold of charge
| backs they need to maintain. See:
|
| https://directpaynet.com/new-visa-rules-dating-adult-info-
| pr...
| [deleted]
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Don't chargebacks go to the merchant anyway? Why would the
| payment processor care?
| paxys wrote:
| They still have to deal with it. For example, a previous
| company I worked at valued every customer service call at
| ~$13. If it was a <$10 problem we would simply offer to
| refund the customer in full online, no questions asked.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Wouldn't that only affect the issuing bank, rather than
| the card processor? The card processor would just process
| a chargeback like any other CC transaction.
|
| So I could see why issuing banks may not want to support
| adult content, but then there could be a porn friendly
| issuing bank that may charge higher fees or something.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| That's close to the average I've seen for several
| European banks, insurances and telcos in costs per call:
| 10 to 12 euros, which is 11.6 to 14 USD
| bambax wrote:
| It may be so, but they won't need payment processors once they
| don't have payments, or users.
| miohtama wrote:
| The requirements from MasterCard are here and not impossible to
| comply
| https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/142844966253361972...
| miohtama wrote:
| Here is the story https://www.xbiz.com/news/258606/heres-what-
| the-new-masterca...
|
| But sounds like OnlyFans could have complied with verification
| requirements, like PornHub had done?
| bcheung wrote:
| Were they getting their credit card processing in the non-adult
| category. I know a bunch of adult credit card processors are in
| the range of 12-15% and OF only takes 20%. Maybe that is why they
| are cracking down on them.
|
| There are plenty of porn sites out there operating legally,
| wonder why the banks are giving them issue.
|
| My guess is that they presented themselves to banks as just
| ordinary non-adult transactions and now the banks are seeing that
| they are almost entirely adult so they want to put them into the
| higher and more expensive "high-risk" category and OF won't be
| able to get away with only taking 20% from the models.
|
| I guess I'm getting back into the adult website game. I work with
| tons of adult models as a photographer and got out of making
| websites due to OnlyFans.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Their primary payments processor was CCBill, so no, they were
| using "adult proof" providers. I think there's something going
| on on the adult payments industry that I don't know about.
|
| Either PornHub/OF got too big even for CCBill's approach to
| dealing with fraud, or CCBill is pulling the plug on websites
| that take market away from "traditional porn" probably because
| of pressure from the later.
| Shalomboy wrote:
| I always felt like adult websites were tech unsavvy. Like they
| usually designed the site with plenty of love and care, but the
| structures holding that design up felt notably behind-the-
| times. Got a take on that?
| yvdriess wrote:
| The cliche is the inverse. Porn is always the first industry
| in making use of new technologies. VHS, DVD, www, streaming
| video etc.
| bcheung wrote:
| Used to be the case. They are far behind now. Just read the
| docs for CCBill. Most of adult is still PHP even for new
| stuff. And they usually work on the servers directly
| instead of using version control and staging servers. Only
| the really bigger adult companies adopt a modicum of modern
| programming practices.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| Next up
|
| Google blocks search and Twitter blocks politics
| gpapilion wrote:
| I've seen them brag about revenue, and it looks amazing. That
| said the porn industry if filled with liars, and I don't believe
| anything w/o and audited results.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Good.
|
| Onlyfans is extremely exploitative, and part of the business
| model is to groom underage girls into doing pornography. There
| have been many news reports of only fans ignoring reports that
| underage girls are selling pornography of themselves on their
| website; something which onlyfans profits off of.
|
| They are pimps, and seem to be okay with pimping out children and
| encouraging children to enter the sex trade. I hope that some of
| them end up in prison.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983.amp
| Giorgi wrote:
| OF will probably die off and clone will emerge in the country
| that US can't pressure into complying. Like it happened with
| torrent trackers.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I have zero sympathy.
| [deleted]
| cbdumas wrote:
| A few comments here are drawing a parallel between tech companies
| shutting down Gab (temporarily) and payment processing companies
| forcing this move from OnlyFans (which from the outside looking
| in appears tantamount to shutting them down). Regardless of how
| you perceive the two specific cases, I think they make people
| uncomfortable because in both cases they demonstrate the power
| that large tech platforms have over law-abiding companies.
|
| It seems to me that the government needs to take some of that
| power back from tech companies by clearly delineating which
| services can and cannot be refused and in what circumstances. For
| instance, I think it is perfectly right for Google to remove Gab
| from their app store if they wish, but I think it would be wrong
| if Gab was refused internet service by their ISP, for example.
| Similarly, as we transition to a cashless world I think there
| need to be limits on the authority that payment processors can
| exercise over which businesses are allowed to receive payments
| and which are not.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| That is a lot of people who are suddenly going to need to find
| work...but I think a lot of the sexually themed OF's will migrate
| to other cam websites. I wonder how much money OF will lose
| because of this decision?
| peepholeoptim wrote:
| Yes, and the South American and Eastern Europe sex slave
| cammers will follow them, like what happened with Chaturbate
| and CamSoda. OnlyFans didn't have to worry about this because
| nobody's going to subscribe to an account of three gay
| Colombianos half-heartedly diddling some poor girl, or an
| anorexic Russian getting anal for six hours straight. OnlyFans
| succeeded by not being part of that race to the bottom.
| _nothing wrote:
| This question isn't necessarily directed to you but your
| comment made me wonder: How do other cam sites handle payments
| and what makes them different than OF?
| fragmede wrote:
| They use payment processors that specialize in adult content
| - who charge exorbitant fees for the privilege. Adult payment
| processors charge 15-20% vs the 2.9%+30C/ Stripe charges, and
| is nowhere near as nice to use.
| bruceb wrote:
| The winner here is a majority of OF performers who are mortgaging
| their future reputation for present small payouts.
| watwut wrote:
| Isnt that kind of ridiculous?
|
| If there is a case for cancel culture, free speech or capitalism
| issue, this sounds like it. Few powerful players systematically
| destroying speech and business because they don't like it.
| [deleted]
| meeshoo wrote:
| Isn't it funny how porn-related news generate such great interest
| and such fiery intellectual debates on HN?
| croes wrote:
| So I can buy porn in a store but not online? What's next? They
| are payment providers not the moral police.
|
| That's one of the advantages of cash.
| scelerat wrote:
| Patreon made similar decisions about four years ago when they
| began to tighten their terms for NSFW creators.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-27-patreon-adult-content-cr...
|
| Much of the pressure came from payment processing partners and
| banks, much like is described in this article.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of...
|
| It seems like for any crowdsourced funding platform there is a
| volume cap for NSFW content imposed by the need of those
| platforms to seek wider audiences and funding sources.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| So basically this just begs for the owners to create two
| clearly differentiated brands: (1) the current one will
| probably die like Tumblr but they have some high-profile non-
| porn creators so I think they will keep going for a while, (2)
| the second one geared towards porn mainly and accepting
| alternative payment methods like Webmoney, Paysafecard and
| others. They can start accepting credit cards and Paypal
| initially to gain users, and when the pressure builds up, drop
| the banks and hope that the users are so attached to their
| content they'll use the alternative methods.
| vwoolf wrote:
| I assume this will lead to Onlyfans's effective death, much as
| Tumblr's porn ban seems to have led to, or hastened, its death.
|
| Reddit seems to have resisted whatever calls it must be getting
| to eliminate porn. So far at least. It will ban or quarantine
| some heretical ideas, but porn is still there.
| fragmede wrote:
| Reddit's gone to lengths to hide it, so casual users aren't
| hitting it by accident two clicks off an unrelated Google
| search result page, not on "/r/all", which gets advertisers
| what they want, without the uproar that banning porn would
| cause.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Reddit seems to have resisted whatever calls it must be
| getting to eliminate porn
|
| Not entirely. They purged all NSFW subreddits from the r/all
| and r/popular meta subreddits. They also go on a purging
| binge whenever a remotely taboo subreddit makes the news.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| What "remotely taboo" subreddits were banned after making
| the news? The ones I recall weren't "remotely", they were
| "extremely". As in, sexual images of children, pictures
| taken of women without their knowledge, legitimate hate
| subreddits, ones dedicated to spreading misinformation re:
| COVID, etc.
| Notanothertoo wrote:
| R/watchpeopledie and similar got banned.
|
| All of the porn subreddits that still exist banned
| domains that serve "unverified" content. The amateur porn
| scene has been leveled, most of which was legitimate
| content. Also a lot less user submitted content simply
| because the hassle of verification and also you have to
| formally identify yourself at one point. Claims of Reddit
| hosting illegal content is hugely overblown.
| pvarangot wrote:
| r/The_Donald was "quarantined", which is not banning but
| kinda. The excuse I think was that they did "organized
| brigading" or something like that.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| They were eventually banned after the quarantine.
|
| But they also spent years promoting racism, hate,
| dangerous conspiracy theories, a neo-nazi rally that
| resulted in murder, etc. It's hard to look at all of that
| and think it was just "kind of taboo".
| wincy wrote:
| I went to the Donald all the time to get a different
| perspective and if there was racism and hate any worse
| than /r/politicalhumor or /r/politics I never saw it.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I started doing the same after the Pulse Nightclub
| shooting when literally the rest of Reddit was censoring
| and preventing discussion because it was almost
| immediately known the shooter was Muslim. It was the only
| place you could go for a live thread and actual info.
|
| Over time, the signal to noise was low. But occasionally
| there was a good point or funny meme.
|
| I can't say for sure I saw any racism worse than anywhere
| else. I really don't like when people use whatever this
| is ((( ))) to talk about Jews, saw that a couple times on
| t_d, but I've definitely also seen it on /r/politics
| /r/atheism etc
| RIMR wrote:
| Or your are too ignorant of all the dogwhistles to
| realize how packed full of racists that place was.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > The excuse I think was that they did "organized
| brigading" or something like that.
|
| It was actually for "violence against police". Hillary
| Clinton's MediaMatters group found a few comments and
| made an article on it, this was pushed as far as
| possible, presenting Reddit with enough cause to
| "quarantine" them.
|
| The specific anti-police messages were about a
| congressional walkout in Oregon, and threats to use the
| police to bring them back for a quorum. A rep replied
| "Send bachelors". This was the cause and theme of the
| comments MediaMatters focused on. None were made by mods,
| their own posts, or even upvoted (under 20 or so). Reddit
| used this to say the mods there were not removing
| extremist content, eventually forcing the sub allow only
| mods "approved" by Reddit Inc. They shuttered the sub
| before allowing this to happen.
|
| The big joke to is that these anti-police messages were
| before the summer when it was non-stop ACAB, Kill The
| Police, etc, in practically every other sub-reddit as
| part of the riots and protests. Standards applied evenly,
| Reddit would be left with a knitting and a windsurfing
| section.
|
| Reddit wanted the_donald gone, end of story. MediaMatters
| helped, and the reason was surface level deep, but they
| didn't need some iron clad reason. Interestingly, Reddit
| removed the "violence against police" reasoning, and
| replaced it with a more generic cause, as the hypocrisy
| was warming up.
|
| I researched this shortly after it happened.
| wincy wrote:
| Hah the funny you should say that about windsurfing, as
| the mod of the most popular surfing subreddit was banning
| anyone who posted in the Donald.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm sure there is some law for the most ridiculous
| example you can think of off the cuff, someone will find
| has been true somewhere. :)
|
| I never saw that back then, that subs would ban you for
| that, but recently I posted a negative comment to No New
| Normal. I was instantly banned from almost every popular
| reddit sub.
|
| A couple of them sent me a think saying they might unban
| me if I promised never to post there again. It wasn't a
| supportive comment, I was mocking one of them. How insane
| is it that the people that admin and mod Reddit are so
| fragile that they literally ban anyone who talks to
| people they don't like?
|
| This can't continue. I suppose I appreciate their
| acceleration.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Reddit doesn't let people pay directly for content. You can
| gift awards but those aren't really worth anything.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| Patreon went one step further - if you post content against
| Patreon's rules anywhere else, even if you don't link to it, if
| Patreon finds out, they'll ask you to stop doing it, and
| threaten to suspend your account if you keep doing it.
|
| This is why many people who post fetish-y art (even stuff like
| mind-control kink) moved from Patreon to SubscribeStar. Even
| erotic roleplay site F-List moved to SubscribeStar.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Patreon went one step further - if you post content against
| Patreon 's rules anywhere else, even if you don't link to it,
| if Patreon finds out, they'll ask you to stop doing it, and
| threaten to suspend your account if you keep doing it._
|
| That sounds outrageous. Is there a link to more info about
| this policy?
| claudiawerner wrote:
| The only example I remember was a little less bad, but
| still pretty bad in my opinion - the artist in question
| uploaded contra-TOS artwork on his Twitter account, and had
| a link to his Twitter account from Patreon. However,
| Patreon's own terms of service state that they _look where
| traffic is coming from_ to see what kind of things you 're
| funding with the money, and can ban you on that alone:
|
| > _Because you are raising funds on Patreon, we may be held
| accountable for what you do with those funds, so we may
| also look at what you do with your membership off our
| platform. As a result when we talk about "On Patreon," it
| means the creations you are funding on and through Patreon.
| When reviewing a page, we look at how creations are shared,
| where the page is linked to and where the traffic comes
| from. No matter what happens, we always give creators the
| opportunity to appeal a decision by contacting us and
| sending any relevant information they believe was not
| considered. We may not change our minds, but we will always
| listen._
|
| From: https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/policy/guidelines
|
| This means that you only need to link _to_ your Patreon,
| not even link _from_ your Patreon for them to find you
| objectionabe.
|
| About NSFW creators leaving the platform because of tighter
| content restrictions on fiction:
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/irl/patreon-hypnosis-porn-ban-
| sexua...
|
| https://thenextweb.com/news/patreon-continues-to-crack-
| down-...
|
| Further, Patreon has communicated to artists that
| regardless of the age of a fictional character, certain art
| elements common to anime/manga style drawing (even of
| adults - "big head, big eyes, short height") may be
| considered as marking the artwork as a child - and even
| adding adult-like proportions such as large breasts may not
| be sufficient to evade Patreon's ban:
| https://twitter.com/Waero_Re/status/1238408555507539968
|
| Another artist in the thread noted that Patreon decided
| their content was "violent" because their drawings featured
| people not smiling during orgasm.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Because you are raising funds on Patreon, we may be held
| accountable for what you do with those funds_
|
| Wow.
|
| That is _not_ good. Any hypothetical employer could
| justify any hypothetical abuse using that rationale.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Not generally about the policy, but there is one famous
| instance I'm aware of: Sargon of Akkad. It was something to
| the effect of him calling the neo-Nazis the N-word on
| someone else's Youtube channel. To be clear, he used the
| slur AGAINST the neo-nazis. Then Patreon dumped him. Here's
| the first Google result I found about it, no guarantees of
| accuracy.
|
| https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/patreon-sargon-of-akkad-
| jorda...
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| Thinking that's ok cause you're saying it _to_ a bad
| person is some... high levels of mental gymnastics
| rchaud wrote:
| Somehow they manage to get away with DMCA violations however.
| Lots of 'reaction' channels (where people watch along with a TV
| show or Youtube clip) now only post heavily truncated preview
| videos on Youtube. The full videos, which include the
| copyrighted content, sits on Patreon.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's a dollar cap - process enough dollars per month or per
| year, and Visa/Mastercard takes notice (as mentioned by Vice).
| For all the furor, taking payment via crypto's not viable
| outside of specific niches. Or rather, OnlyFans did the X vs Y
| of kick x-rated content off the platform vs get kicked off
| Visa/Mastercard's "platform", and is going with option 1.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Goodbye OnlyFans
| goldcd wrote:
| One of the current owners is the guy behind myfreecams - he knows
| how to run a porn site (and get cards to work on it).
|
| This split - and it's going to be a split (as they'd be insane to
| let that much porn money walk) is just to leave behind a nice
| investable onlyfans to rival patreon.
| [deleted]
| mgarfias wrote:
| RIP: their biz model
| perlgeek wrote:
| > Starting in October, the company will prohibit creators from
| posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website
| [...]. They'll still be allowed to put up nude photos and videos,
| provided they're consistent with OnlyFans' policy.
|
| So nude is OK but it may not sexually explicit?
|
| That seems like a _very_ fine line to walk, with much associated
| drama.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's been a pretty well established line with the MPAA for
| decades, so they can likely use that standard out of the box.
| bregma wrote:
| Where are you supposed to go to find interesting images now?
| Asking for a friend.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| There was even a AskHN question here a while ago (1..3 years)
| from somebody ot of this kind of business. A part of the
| discussion was also how OnlyFans just can do it. The fall of
| Wirecard (and new owner) was a problem for Pornhub last year. I
| the most early case I know was Fetlife .. it had been over 10
| years now..
| nathias wrote:
| Imagine there was a huge oligopoly of payment providers that had
| full control of global online economy explicitly regulating
| content.
| gregoriol wrote:
| One reason often cited for payment processors not wanting adult
| companies is because of high level of chargebacks, but I don't
| understand this in the situation at hand here: it is not that
| this company is going to stop accepting payments, it is that they
| are going to prevent sexual content and keep nudity, so it
| shouldn't change much the behavior expected around those
| chargebacks?
| fossuser wrote:
| There's clearly some sort of opportunity here for an Audius like
| decentralized application/protocol (with the UI figured out), or
| just applications on Urbit when that stack is ready enough.
|
| Centralized services like this will always fail eventually. We
| need better models than our current megacorp/client stack and the
| incentives that creates for most services.
|
| In this case though it may be a factor of liability changes on
| high risk content: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-
| controversial-new-sex-traf...
|
| It's not so much the tech companies and payment processors that
| are making policy, but a reaction from them to changes in
| government policy that increases their exposure.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| So they are shutting down the site?
| 8eye wrote:
| i'll say it, who wants to go co-founder on a new startup idea?
| orliesaurus wrote:
| i'm down
| ma9o wrote:
| Down. I'm actually working on this problem as of now :)
| moneywoes wrote:
| Why not lol
| candylifter wrote:
| Let's do it
| barbazoo wrote:
| > The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from
| banking partners and payment providers, according to the company.
|
| What's their argument here, is there a law being broken or is the
| pressure motivated by ethics or something else?
| epa wrote:
| This is what happens when you have risk adverse execs getting
| paid too much.
| weezin wrote:
| Sue Visa and MC for anti-trust and start working on crypto
| payments immediately.
| post_break wrote:
| This makes me think of Operation Choke Point. I understand
| payment processors need to limit fraud and risk, but at what
| point do they get to determine what a legal business does? I
| understand the mental gymnastics involved to think a private
| business gets to choose who they do business with, but when there
| are only a handful of businesses doing the processing what then?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
| yellow_lead wrote:
| A reason governments like monopolies - they centralize control.
| This applies to many industries: telecom, cellphones, social
| media, etc.
| [deleted]
| jefftechentin wrote:
| I remember PH having the same issue. Do payment processors take
| on liability for facilitating sexual content that is illegal in
| some way? Is it a PR thing? Is mastercard owned by the Holy See?
| What's the deal?
| HaloZero wrote:
| Most likely it's about FOSTA-SESTA in the United States which
| exempts you from Section 230.
| dang wrote:
| This thread has 800+ comments; to see the rest, click More at the
| bottom of the page, or like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=3
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=4
|
| (Comments like this will go away when we turn off pagination.
| Sorry for the annoyance.)
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand. If PornHub and Chaturbate can
| accept major credit cards for explicit sexual material, why can't
| OnlyFans?
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/ETIG3
| newbamboo wrote:
| If it can happen to porn it can happen to crypto. History is a
| pendulum. Those who believe otherwise may be right, but nobody is
| right forever.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Payment processors need to be declared a utility. Any legal
| business shouldnt have banks playing morality police.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This supposedly coming soon system should ideally be able to
| serve as the electronic payment utility.
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...
| lnjarroyo wrote:
| Curiously similar to "Pix" launched by brazilian central bank
| about a year ago. A quick Google search will show you dozens
| and dozens of countries getting instant payment systems
| promoted by their own central banks during the last years.
| Really makes you wonder who could be behind such a
| "coincidence".
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If there is any conspiracy, it would have to be how the
| hell did it take so long for all these societies to come up
| with an electronic payment utility.
| lnjarroyo wrote:
| Well, it's pretty simple, actually. Central banking is a
| monopoly, you don't need to be the best option if you're
| the only one. Curiously, all central banks start
| launching efficient payment systems as soon as crypto
| shows up.
|
| Not really affirming any conspiracy here since I'm very
| uneducated at the subject, I just thinks it's
| suspiciously interesting to a point I can't ignore,
| almost as if all those central banks were coordinating as
| part of a larger goal.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| One of the big issues in 2008 was that payments took
| multiple days to clear. That meant all the banks owed each
| other big chunks of money. That's not really a problem: if
| Bank A owes Bank B 1Bn and Bank B owes bank A 1.01 Bn,
| they're both solvent and you can just net them off to tell
| what your profit is.
|
| But if Bank A suddenly goes Bankrupt, Bank B might still
| owe Banks A's creditors but won't get paid. So Bank B is
| fucked now too, even though they weren't doing anything
| dumb. In turn other banks will be pulled down when Bank B
| fails. This is why Lehmans was bailed out (in theory,
| conspiracies aside)
|
| This is called Contagion, it's a type of counterparty risk:
| the risk that you make good deals and everything works out
| in your favour but the people who are meant to pay you
| welch.
|
| To reduce this, there has been a big push to cut the time
| between trades\deals and settlement of payments. Ideally we
| want it to be immediate.
|
| This is one reason central banks might be pushing this.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| One of my personal conspiracy theories is that bitcoin (and
| Tor) are the reason so many states have legalised weed: you
| have to permit what you cannot actually police.
|
| Hopefully we'll see the same effect here with bitcoin or a
| single processor making a killing in the market for "sins"...
| Grakel wrote:
| McDonald's to stop selling burgers and fries.
| MelvinButtsESQ wrote:
| What an absolute shame. Not particularly because I use OF, but
| because they feel the need to do this, due to public pressure,
| pressure from banks, etc. When are we going to stop moral
| policing (literally via power of the state and figuratively)
| consensual adult activities?
| ianhawes wrote:
| This seems incredibly odd given that OnlyFan's primary payment
| processor is CCBill, a massive payment processor focused solely
| on adult content.
|
| Here is opportunity #3928 for Stripe to step in and earn their
| valuation and flex their payment muscle and allow adult payments.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Stripe's hands are tied - they need financial services to
| operate and banks (and CC processors) are the ones pushing down
| these puritanical values.
| [deleted]
| bpicolo wrote:
| Could be wrong, but I think it's less puritanical, and more
| that transactions with these types of vendors are
| overwhelmingly fraudulent and charged-back. It's a big
| liability for the processors.
| [deleted]
| eh9 wrote:
| This is a common reason that's given, but I haven't seen
| any proof. I wouldn't be surprised if this is surprisingly
| overblown and the industry doesn't actually have that bad a
| problem with charge backs
| fouric wrote:
| It could also be because, as suggested in another
| comment[1], banks are getting regulated in a way that the
| payment processors simply don't want to deal with.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28238003
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It's very likely the pressure is coming from Visa and
| MasterCard (especially MC) rather than at the level of CCbill.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| How so?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Because CCbill can do nothing if MasterCard puts pressure
| on them, and MasterCard are putting pressure on adult
| content businesses and have been for years.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I guess I just don't understand how payment processing
| works in this domain: are you saying MasterCard is
| basically saying that their credit cards cannot be used
| to purchase adult services such as these?
| microtherion wrote:
| I suspect that their aversion to adult services payments
| might be based less on moral qualms than on elevated
| levels of chargebacks with said services.
|
| "Why, honey! I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why there is a
| charge for a Swedish Penis Pump on our Credit Card bill.
| An evil hacker must have gotten ahold of my card. I shall
| have the charges reversed at once!", etc.
| zelag wrote:
| Swedish penis pump?
| microtherion wrote:
| I'm afraid I'm dating myself a bit here with my cultural
| references: https://youtu.be/Yh6kbQnOAg4?t=35
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Mastercard (and Visa and AmEx and Discover) do not want
| their networks to be used by merchants selling
| pornography.
|
| I would think the only reason is the chargeback/fraud
| rates are too high in this type of business, as well as
| not wanting to be involved in a business where there may
| be a high chance of illegal content.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-14/master
| car...
|
| >The banks will now have to ensure that sellers require
| "clear, unambiguous and documented consent" in adult
| content, the payments network said in a blog post
| Wednesday. The firms will also be required to ensure
| websites document the age and verify the identity of
| anyone depicted in pictures and videos as well as those
| uploading the content.
|
| >"The banks that connect merchants to our network will
| need to certify that the seller of adult content has
| effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where
| necessary, take down all illegal content," John
| Verdeschi, Mastercard's senior vice president of customer
| engagement and performance, said in the post.
|
| Allowing merchants to sell pornography is probably not
| worth the hassle for the card networks.
| _moof wrote:
| Sounds like MasterCard is in fact fine with merchants
| selling pornography, but the merchants aren't willing to
| do so on MasterCard's extremely reasonable terms.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Lol, such as the people involved can't be dressed as
| vampires.
|
| "Extremely reasonable"
| raydev wrote:
| I'm bothered that more people aren't upset about 2
| payment providers effectively controlling all non-cash
| commerce.
|
| I assume we'll wake up a few years from now and say "oh,
| yeah, probably wasn't a good idea to let private
| companies get this powerful". Or maybe not.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am upset, but not at the private companies. I am upset
| at politicians for not getting the ball rolling on an
| electronic payment method that works like cash in the
| interest of its citizens.
| IdontRememberIt wrote:
| Actually it was the historical excuse. But today with
| 3DS2, etc. the fraud/complains rates are very very small.
| (I have had zero in years.)
| hhh wrote:
| Yes. The same happened to Pornhub too.
| tadfisher wrote:
| MasterCard has two customers: card issuers (banks,
| usually) and merchants (through payment processors like
| CCBill, usually). MasterCard is saying that CCBill will
| lose access to the MasterCard payment network if they
| serve customers dealing in sexually explicit content.
| [deleted]
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense at all. Pick a subscription porn
| site right now, any one, and go try to sign up. You don't
| have to follow through, just get to the payment page and
| don't click submit. They all take Visa and MasterCard.
|
| CCbill itself couldn't exist if Visa and MasterCard didn't
| let it process payments for porn.
| TillE wrote:
| Yeah exactly. PornHub is the exception, not the rule - they
| _were_ taking card payments right up until the recent news
| coverage about illegal content.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It's not about a flat yes/no to porn, it's about the level
| of arbitrary rules, shifting policies, banned keywords etc
| etc that Mastercard inflict on any businesses that include
| adult content, that make operating a business nearly
| impossible.
|
| These rules are getting worse because MC's head has decided
| to give in to the scaremongering by far right religious
| group Exodus Cry.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| The porn industry is regulated, believe it or not. What
| happens is that financial system support is withdrawn from
| places that provide avenues for exploitation of children or
| victims of human traffickers. I expect OF didn't think they
| could meet recordkeeping requirements or assume the
| liabilities of doing so incorrectly.
| GDC7 wrote:
| Why can't these websites simply find other banks to do business
| with?
|
| I mean also overseas, for sure the extra costs (if any) are
| better than basically killing the golden goose.
|
| The odds of Onlyfans becoming the huge phenomenon that it is were
| so slim, it seems like a waste of luck to just throw it all away
| because of banking problems.
| monocasa wrote:
| Because it's Visa and Mastercard saying no, not the banks.
| bcheung wrote:
| Visa and Mastercard allow adult. They just force you to pay
| the "high-risk" category. Which is much higher fees. OF can't
| get away with only charging models 20% if credit card
| processing is taking more than half of that.
|
| I suspect they are currently not classified as adult and the
| banks are saying, look, you are almost entirely adult so you
| have to pay us more.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| And this is typically offset by maintaining a rolling-
| reserve too. Any merchant doing over 200K in transactions
| is considered high risk.
| monocasa wrote:
| I mean, yeah, that's one of the mechanisms. Charge you
| close to an order of magnitude more for being "high-risk",
| while also putting all the actual risk on you as well.
| Visa/MC are more than compensated for each chargeback with
| the additional fees the charge the vendor for each
| chargeback.
| GDC7 wrote:
| Do people chargeback the 50$ they spend on OnlyFans?
|
| Besides PR in the age of revenge porn, what's the technical
| or legal element which changed compared to 2019?
|
| Can't be social because if anything society is in love with
| porn.
| bruceb wrote:
| Society = men. Same when they say youth violence, its boys.
| monocasa wrote:
| It shouldn't matter from Visa/MC's perspective because they
| put the cost of chargebacks (and more) on OnlyFans.
|
| For some reason payment processors have always viewed
| themselves as morality police.
| Arrath wrote:
| Why hasn't someone started a bank and/or payment processor
| without these puritanical moral qualms about adult content?
| Seems like the real golden goose, waiting to be had.
| rchaud wrote:
| Because that sounds more like an ideologically-driven venture
| than something that would be good business.
| Arrath wrote:
| Call it "providing financial services to a
| neglected/stigmatized sector of the entertainment industry
| and bringing the benefits of official banking and
| regulations", then. Yes my first comment was probably
| worded with an inflammatory bent, but this does genuinely
| seem like an underserved sector.
|
| Akin to the problems legal marijuana grows and dispensaries
| have with accessing banking services (though in that case
| due to federal regs), the stances of the entrenched
| industry leaders seem to bring more negatives than would
| come from providing the needed services.
| rchaud wrote:
| I understand, but there's usually a good reason why the
| underserved sectors are the way they are. For the
| payments industry I would imagine this market is simply
| not large enough to allow for economies of scale, so the
| services can't be priced at a level where it can be
| sustainable.
|
| It seems like an obvious area for crypto to stake a
| claim, but that doesn't appear to have happened.
| coderintherye wrote:
| The sub-headline is more interesting:
|
| "The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually
| explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be
| allowed to post nude photos and videos, provided they're
| consistent with OnlyFans' policy"
| thrower123 wrote:
| It sounds like they're trying to thread the needle and be
| Instagram with titties, or take up the tasteful softcore torch
| that Playboy used to carry.
| noxer wrote:
| Who's the first to makes a CryptoOnlyFans?
|
| I see 2 losers here OnlyFans and the banks.
| [deleted]
| murphyslab wrote:
| At the end of July I started noticing odd ads for that site while
| browsing reddit on mobile. Out of curiosity, I started collecting
| screenshots of the ads. They have been trying to pivot for a
| little while now:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Kh6zMga.png
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I think this is a rule to keep payment processors happy that
| won't be enforced. How are they going to find these sexually
| explicit videos among all the nude videos they still allow? Maybe
| they have software that can distinguish between a nude video and
| a sexually explicit nude video. If not they need to either review
| videos that are posted or rely on users to report sexually
| explicit videos. I doubt they want to manually review all
| uploaded videos, so that leaves user reports. Who is going to
| report an onlyfans account they subscribe to for posting an
| explicit video? Probably nobody.
| taylodl wrote:
| Sadly I know girls who are using OnlyFans to keep a roof over
| their heads and stay out of abusive relationships. Whether we
| like what they're doing to make money OnlyFans was providing them
| a much-needed revenue stream. Now that's being taken away from
| them by the morality police who won't be affected by the
| consequences of their own decisions.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I agree that payment processors shouldn't get to say what
| people do for employment or how people spend their money - but
| how is it that OnlyFans is keeping women out of abusive
| relationships? If they couldn't earn money selling pornography
| they'd have to return to abusive partners?
|
| OnlyFans is only a lucrative option for a small group of people
| - young attractive women. How is it that every other segment of
| the population can keep out of abusive relationships and
| beneath a roof (to the extent they can) without the benefit of
| OnlyFans?
| zapdrive wrote:
| Well, maybe they can start working and be productive to the
| society like the rest of us. Also, the fact that a girl can
| sustain a life just by taking nudes shows you how much
| different the both genders actually are. There's no equality.
| Also why is no one crying about wage gap in porn?
| twirlock wrote:
| I live alone, have no girlfriend, and want one. Hi.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| With all due respect, the fact that anyone is forced into porn
| to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the indictment
| of a society.
|
| I get that it's a de facto situation for some, but let's not
| drop the onus on "morality police", payment processors, and
| OnlyFans for a massive societal failure to help vulnerable
| people. You could take that argument as far as you want
| (prostitution, drug sales, etc). There is some level of dignity
| that everyone's entitled to. If someone does OF by choice
| because they love it, good for them. If someone is compelled to
| in order to feed their kids or leave an abusive partner, then
| we should all be ashamed of that.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It doesn't have to be "porn".
|
| People are making huge bank with content you could post on
| Instagram without fear of being banned.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| > the fact that anyone is forced into porn to get housing be
| safe from abusive partners is the indictment of a society.
|
| You're right, we should tell them to wait until society is
| fixed.
| beiller wrote:
| You make the claim they are forced but do you have any
| sources for that claim? All I can say for sure is that now,
| they are forced out of porn. This problem is not directly a
| morality problem. It is a chargeback issue. More like
| chargebacks via stigmiziation of sexuality but that is just
| an opinion.
| paxys wrote:
| A huge chunk of the planet is forced into jobs they don't
| like to provide for themselves and their families. What's so
| "dignifying" about a job getting humiliated by entitled
| customers in retail or waitressing for minimum wage or
| breaking your body doing hard manual labor? Religious
| morality is the only reason a much more safe, comfortable and
| lucrative option like OnlyFans is banned.
| spideymans wrote:
| Exactly. People talk as if these girls are oblivious to the
| fact that they can work some shitty minimum wage jobs.
|
| I totally get their mindset. If it wasn't for my own
| residual sexual conservatism, I'd much rather be an
| OnlyFans sex worker than some underpaid wage slave.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I think you should accept some people think of it
| differently.
|
| And let's be frank here. OF is probably a viable financial
| opportunity - on average - for a small number of more
| attractive that normal people, and it's probably weighted
| towards younger women. I'd love to have hard data to
| present to you, but I can't find it.
|
| I have literally zero problem with people who want to use
| OF to support themselves. However, let's agree 1) that some
| people for whom it would be a viable financial option find
| it objectionable and 2) it's a less viable financial option
| for some, even if they don't find it objectionable.
|
| I think that groups 1 & 2 in there should still be able to
| work a 40 hour job and pay for food and rent, and still be
| able to save something to retire if they want to. And they
| probably should fear starving or dying of exposure even if
| they don't have a job.
|
| Call it unrealistic, but I prefer to fix that problem, too.
| ryanlol wrote:
| > I think you should accept some people think of it
| differently
|
| But why? Because their parents told them so?
|
| Is there some fundamental reason to see this differently?
| Some cultures accept murder too, should we accept that
| some people think of it differently? I say fuck those
| people.
| [deleted]
| throwaway306744 wrote:
| All cultures accept murder. The ones that didn't were
| killed by the ones that did.
| paxys wrote:
| I am completely fine with people having their own views
| on this issue and not participating in it if they don't
| like it, blocking it on their computers or whatever else.
| The problem is these views being imposed upon the greater
| population for no reason.
| [deleted]
| throwaway306744 wrote:
| Are you saying that working retail or construction is about
| the same as doing porn in terms of how society treats you?
| That does not match my experience by a long shot. They are
| qualitatively different.
|
| > Religious morality is the only reason a much more safe,
| comfortable and lucrative option like OnlyFans is banned.
|
| I do not think this is right either. Take away all the
| religious baggage and still parents will try to keep their
| daughters from doing porn. Change our neurobiology so we
| don't act that way and, well you have a different species.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I believe they're saying working retail or construction
| is about the same as doing porn in regards to how some
| people have to work jobs that break them down
| (emotionally, physically or socially) for money.
| handmodel wrote:
| I do not consume OF but tbh if I was an attractive girl I
| would probably choose making 80k a year on OF over 30k a year
| as a hostess or factory worker or whatever. I don't think it
| is exploitative or has less dignity than these.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They're not forced into it the same way nobody is forced to
| be an under the table construction laborer. They just
| consider it to be a better all things considered way to make
| a living than getting a fast food job or whatever.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| > If someone washes dishes for a living by choice because
| they love it, good for them. If someone is compelled to in
| order to feed their kids or leave an abusive partner, then we
| should all be ashamed of that.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Women, especially attractive women always had this option,
| historically it was just usually done through marriage.
|
| Arguably one can claim that marrying upwards isn't always bad
| and quite often they are loved and cared for but in the end
| this is nothing new.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > With all due respect, the fact that anyone is forced into
| porn to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the
| indictment of a society.
|
| with all due respect, most people are 'forced' into some sort
| of labor to get housing or escape abusive partners. It's the
| way society is built. If it's sex work or not, that's a
| different story but not by much. Work is work.
| SilasX wrote:
| Agreed, I think this is a crappy policy and I feel sorry for
| those that would get hurt by it, but blaming it for the
| suffering of domestic violence victims is over-the-top.
| millbraebart wrote:
| It's up to them how they make money, but framing it as a
| "survival" tactic is frankly pathetic. Admit it is easy money
| as your own boss, but don't try to play victim at the same
| time.
| mzs wrote:
| Can they not setup an account on another for profit service
| which will commit to verify identity, age, and consent of
| performers?
| TchoBeer wrote:
| This seems like an unecessarily cynical take. Do you think it's
| a good thing that people are forced to sell their bodies to
| survive? Obvious to me that regardless of whether or not
| onlyfans shuts down, we should have social safety nets so that
| these people aren't forced to do that.
| jdlyga wrote:
| L O fucking L. That's literally what it's for.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Visa and MasterCard are pretty evil enterprises, and it's fairly
| inevitable at this point they will either need to be destroyed or
| regulated.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Let's make TrueFans ?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Why can PornHub successfully sell a premium porn service but
| OnlyFans cannot? Is it just the size of the company?
| LegitShady wrote:
| pornhub is having this issue exactly. They got PNG'd by all the
| payment processors. They only have crypto payment options now.
| My bet is pornhub is doing a lot worse now than they were
| before.
|
| https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Their FAQ is still showing that they offer credit card
| payments via Probiller, but clicking onwards does indeed show
| them temporarily not accepting credit card payments,
| defaulting to a SEPA transfer instead.
| LegitShady wrote:
| i imagine their income from a few years ago is much larger
| than it is today.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't know if you were aware but PornHub had a massive
| scandal with the content people were uploading that led to them
| basically deleting the majority of user contributions
| altogether. So maybe not so easy for them either.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Wasn't that a copyright issue? People uploading stuff for
| which they didn't own the authorship rights?
|
| OnlyFans does not seem to have that problem at any
| significant scale at all, so why can't they figure out a way
| to handle payments for porn?
| emodendroket wrote:
| No, it was primarily about various forms of nonconsensual
| and underage content.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Does anyone else here feel the Onlyfans phenomenon is just
| exploiting sad lonely men who'd be better off leaving the house,
| doing some exercise and trying to eat healthier and build their
| IRL social networks?
|
| This whole cam-girls making a fortune this way seems somehow more
| dishonest than normal porn to me, maybe because it's about these
| guys (who can never have relationships with these women) building
| a personal and intimate relationship as one of her "fans". I
| almost see this as being like gambling where people need to
| acknowledge maybe how powerful sex is and being a technology that
| should be regulated similarly.
|
| I wonder if nobody calls out this exploitation because society
| keeps suggesting that all men are privileged, which is definitely
| not true for at least 60% of the male population.
|
| Anyway I'll probably get downvoted for this but these double
| standards have been irritating me for a while :-)
| perardi wrote:
| Well among other things: way to _utterly and entirely_ ignore
| the LGBT creators on there who are making money but also
| creating erotic content for their communities.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| It is a correct reading that my comment didn't make
| assumptions about those creators or communities. That's
| because it was about something else, that I think consuming
| this kind of porn is particularly bad because it is _largely_
| lonely low status men obsessing about and giving money to
| rich powerful women on OnlyFans. I find it interesting to
| point out there might be an unfavourable power dynamic here
| in the opposite way to how it usually occurs within our
| society.
| after_care wrote:
| I suspect the economics of OnlyFans is similar to the economics
| of gambling, loot boxes, and heroin. 20% of the users are
| generating 80% of the revenue. People can form an unhealthy
| relationship to anything, but there's probably a lot of people
| getting real enjoyment out of OnlyFans without it causing
| personal problems.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| Edit: as has been pointed out, I've misrepresented the parent
| comment. It's late here, my apologies.
|
| There seem to be a lot of assumptions here that I don't agree
| with. So perhaps this comment isn't for me, in which case feel
| free to ignore the following.
|
| People seem to add so many values into the mix when it comes to
| sex work. If these old lonely people paid carers to visit them
| at home, would that be somehow different? Are these old lonely
| people somehow exploited because there is sex involved? If they
| cannot make rational choices because sex is involved then I'd
| say that is the problem.
|
| Also, where does being able to "have" someone figure into any
| of this? There is no 'you must be at least this hot to enter'
| scale, people get together for all kinds of reasons. Plus,
| "have" sounds a lot like possession of someone, which I think
| we all think is bad? Right?
|
| I think there are a lot of values encoded in the above comment,
| but I also know it wasn't intended negatively.
| jfup wrote:
| >where does being able to "have" someone figure into any of
| this?
|
| The GP said "have relationships with these women", not "have
| these women".
| adamcharnock wrote:
| I clearly should have read that comment more closely before
| getting on my high horse. Apologies.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| To be fair I made heavy refinements to it so you may have
| read a less cogent version, specifically on the
| relationships thing! Sorry about that!
| adamcharnock wrote:
| Ah no problem! :-)
| andy_ppp wrote:
| 1. I didn't say old, maybe you misread?
|
| 2. I think I'm suggesting some men (the most obsessive and
| biggest spenders?) would use onlyfans instead of having a
| relationship. I'm not saying it's right that a proportion of
| men become obsessive but it happens right?
|
| 3. I'd say a lot of men don't make rational choices about
| sex.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| 1. That's embarrassing, you're absolutely right
|
| 2 & 3. I agree that a lot of men don't think rationally
| about sex, and I think that has various societal causes.
| But I also think _that_ is the problem here, and that
| possible obsessive OF use is one of the more minor
| symptoms.
| jfup wrote:
| >a lot of men don't think rationally about sex, and I
| think that has various societal causes
|
| Really? I don't think so. My understanding is that sexual
| activity (or lack thereof) affects hormonal balance and
| that in turn affects mood. To make a very blunt example,
| if someone isn't getting any and the fake interaction
| provided by OF makes them feel better, do we really need
| to look for a societal explanation? If I give you a
| painful but harmless electric shock and you try
| desperately to get away, do I need to posit that it's
| because you've been culturally conditioned to be afraid
| of electric shocks?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Eating McDonald's makes you feel better if you're hungry
| but it's not food.
| jfup wrote:
| I didn't say it was a good feel-good, just that that it
| does make them feel good. I don't think anyone can deny
| that. If buying content on OF made one feel bad nobody
| would do it.
| ayngg wrote:
| It is at the intersection of pornography and parasocial online
| relationships (seen in Youtube, Twitch and other influencers),
| both extremely profitable. Looking at some of the revenue
| breakdowns the fees to message are just as significant as
| subscription costs.
|
| On average I don't think it is particularly healthy to replace
| real social/ sexual relationships with parasocial ones and I
| think that is the primary use for these services. For the most
| part they lack real meaningful intimacy which is a significant
| benefit that real relationships provide. I don't think many who
| maintain healthy social and romantic relationships are the
| majority of users of the platform.
| hume_annoyed wrote:
| Super-cool vendor lock-in strategy, and neatly, the unwritten
| terms of service "host your new content here, we have X videos of
| you doing Y, Z,,," and it is totally normal and ok now. /s
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Is there a difference between the title and "OnlyFans to shut
| down in October"? I literally didn't know OnlyFans had anything
| else besides porn/porn-esque material.
| emodendroket wrote:
| At some point I think they intended to be something line a
| competitor to Patreon. It also sounds like they're going to
| keep allowing softcore content.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > It also sounds like they're going to keep allowing softcore
| content.
|
| That is such puritanical nonsense. You can show naked people
| rubbing together, but the moment you show a penis in a
| vagina, Satan comes to get you.
| skizm wrote:
| > They'll still be allowed to put up nude photos and videos,
| provided they're consistent with OnlyFans' policy, the company
| said Thursday.
| bcheung wrote:
| ...for how long? They just promised they would be inclusive of
| adult sex workers only months ago to combat the rumors which
| apparently were true.
| tibbon wrote:
| So uhh... time to raise some funds and launch a crypto-payments
| version of OF?
| noobermin wrote:
| Question, what is the open source/decentralized alternative for
| these? Just cryptocurrency? The unfortunate part of crypto I
| think for the public is that it's highly volatile and only used
| by people who want to speculate with it.
|
| It feels like the only way to solve the payment processor issue
| is to somehow have a change to US laws that no longer criminalize
| sex work.
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