[HN Gopher] OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
___________________________________________________________________
OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
Author : uptown
Score : 419 points
Date : 2021-08-25 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (variety.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (variety.com)
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| It's extraordinary that payment processors don't have any
| regulations that force them to serve businesses in a neutral
| fashion. It's weird that they're allowed to play morality police
| with the Internet even though they have no formal governmental
| role as such.
|
| You'd think that once the government decides what is and isn't
| acceptable, the processors would follow that lead. But instead
| they go a different, more restrictive way.
|
| I guess they want to be everyone's prudish uncle, instead of
| payment processors.
| imglorp wrote:
| There is lobbying/regulatory/activist pressure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry
| paulgb wrote:
| Exactly, I don't believe that payment processors _want_ to
| play the role of gatekeepers (after all, they lose revenue
| for every customer they turn down). They probably just want
| to show that they can self-regulate to give Congress less of
| a reason to pass something like this[1].
|
| I think people underestimate how much moral regulation in the
| US actually comes top-down under the guise of anti-
| trafficking law (remember SESTA/FOSTA and how it killed
| Craigslist personals?)
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-
| bill/808/...
| axelroze wrote:
| The bigger you are the stronger is the pull of the average.
| simonh wrote:
| I don't see how common carrier type regulation in the financial
| services industry could work. You're essentially forcing people
| to lend out or risk their money with anyone who asks regardless
| of their financial status or the risk profile of their
| business. Surely choosing what business risks you are willing
| to take must be some sort of right?
|
| The only way out of that would be blanket government insurance
| for payment processors, but that would essentially be a massive
| subsidy and open to rampant abuses.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| This is a good point. So there's more fraud associated with
| OnlyFans and the like?
| lordloki wrote:
| You do see that this is specifically an issue with the credit
| services threatening to refuse the processing of payments and
| not simply withholding credit. These are two different
| banking services, and you can support neutral payment
| processing without supporting neutral (forced in your
| vocabulary) lending. The reasons that the banks are as
| regulated as they are everywhere is because of the huge
| amounts of power that they have by controlling the flow of
| money. If you deregulated banks you would end up with one
| bank that controlled the world.
| duxup wrote:
| My understanding was that they were being cut off by payment
| processors and banks and that drove the decision.
|
| Was this resolved?
| moksly wrote:
| There are US laws that I can't remember the names of which make
| financial institutions legally responsible (probably bad
| English) for crimes that happen on platforms they sell their
| services to.
|
| So VISA could be fined for any trafficking that happen on
| OnlyFans. This is also why Pronhub had to remove almost all
| their videos if they wanted to keep credit card services.
|
| As an European I'm a fan of laws that make platforms and big
| tech responsible for the content they house, but there is no
| denying that vetting that every OnlyFan sexworker is a task
| they can't likely perform easily.
|
| Of course moderation is only one of the solutions, paying money
| and accepting the financial damage that may come from lack of
| moderation is another. Of course the big banks know this, which
| is why they charge an insane margin for their credit card
| services to platforms like onlyfans, it's likely they simply
| upped the price behind the closed doors.
| vxNsr wrote:
| It's more than that. Anyone who works for the company can be
| held personally liable for trafficking and distribution.
| da_chicken wrote:
| > _There are US laws that I can't remember the names of which
| make financial institutions legally responsible (probably bad
| English) for crimes that happen on platforms they sell their
| services to._
|
| If it's what I'm thinking of, these laws are collectively
| known as "know your customer" or "KYC" [0]. It's primarily
| intended to prevent racketeering, money laundering, and other
| organized criminal activity, but the laws are written very
| broadly in part because they're looking for surreptitious
| activity.
|
| In the case of sex work, it's difficult to verify that all
| performers are of legal age, that all activity is consensual,
| and so on. Since there are many, many ways that sex work can
| be illegal, it's very complicated.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer
| marktangotango wrote:
| Coinbase (and other financial services) do a pretty good job
| of requiring photo id on signup; I don't know what OF
| procedure is, but there's definitly precedent.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I'd be interested in the Coinbase verification
| requirements, do you have a link? Like a lot of Companies
| these day they don't give that information away before you
| sign up and agree to their ToS.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| It's government provided ID + SSN + photo of yourself +
| address / personal details. If your gov ID doesn't have
| your current address you have to show a utility or other
| bill.
|
| That all wouldn't be good enough for sex crimes though,
| because even if you have a passport + gov ID + a notary
| signed statement saying you are 18 and your own mother
| vouching for you, the counterparty can still be convicted
| of rape if it turns out you're lying about your age.
|
| Of course this is really all just to keep the law abiding
| law abiding. Criminals on the dark web will just buy a
| forged electronic id package and KYC is bypassed.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| Sex crimes are often strict liability. You violate the law
| whether you know or even meant to perform the act or not.
| For instance, Cody Wilson was sentenced for statutory rape
| after a sexual encounter with an individual who had a fake
| ID that stated they were 18, looked 18, and stated they
| were 18.
| gambiting wrote:
| That sounds insane and like a failing of a justice
| system.
| philipov wrote:
| A drop in the ocean of failure.
| Goronmon wrote:
| I assume it's because no one wants to be figuring out
| where the line is for whether a person was "tricked
| enough" for sex with a minor to be allowed.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > There are US laws that I can't remember the names of which
| make financial institutions legally responsible (probably bad
| English) for crimes that happen on platforms they sell their
| services to.
|
| How is it enforced? Any high-profile cases?
| moksly wrote:
| No idea, I just know about it because I work in the public
| sector of Denmark where we build our national digital
| identity system in corporation with banks, and we had a
| notice of changing terms some time back. I didn't get too
| into it because it wouldn't affect us, but I remember
| briefing over it because it had some sort of eye catching
| headline.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| >corporation
|
| I think you mean collaboration.
| gambiting wrote:
| Facebook reports over one million(!!!) images of child sexual
| abuse on their platform per year, and that's only the stuff
| that they identify and find. Clearly it's a platform where a
| huge amount of illegal materials are being exchanged, yet
| Visa and MasterCard happily keep Facebook as a client.
|
| >>but there is no denying that vetting that every OnlyFan
| sexworker is a task they can't likely perform easily.
|
| Just make every performer submit a valid ID to have an
| account, if my mobile provider can ask for that, why not OF?
| busymom0 wrote:
| I would also like to know on whether it's possible for someone
| to start their own payment processors? There are tutorials on
| how to start an ISP, so should be possible for payment
| processors too no?
| Daedren wrote:
| No because the banks from which the payments come from must
| support said processors.
|
| Many countries have their own local payment processors, but
| it's still only a country-wide thing.
| busymom0 wrote:
| So I guess starting a bank is the next step?
| elliekelly wrote:
| Payment processing isn't something a bank gets to decide
| on their own either. It's decided by a group. In the US
| it's NACHA:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACHA
| jtbayly wrote:
| I don't see any mention of payment processing in there.
| Have another link?
| LegitShady wrote:
| Sounds like a cartel gatekeeping the role of processor, and
| then the processors can put pressure on any business to do
| what they want or face "the consequences" which means no
| income (aside from crypto which most people don't know how
| to use).
| after_care wrote:
| I think the traditional Visa/MasterCard/American
| Express/Discover payment processor has established a
| significant enough moat to make joining them unattractive.
|
| There are several challengers like Paypal, Venmo, Zelle,
| Coinbase, etc that attack from a slightly different angle. I
| think the thing that is most common is that have super low
| cost bank transfer options, and they encourage users to
| maintain a balance. Processing payments locally is 100x-1000x
| preferable then processing payments externally for these
| players.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| PayPal is even worse for sex workers, they're banning
| people left and right if they even _suspect_ you might be
| involved into anything relating to it.
|
| Their official stance always has been that this is due to
| the credit card companies, the reality rather is that
| Paypal doesn't want to deal with the rampant fraud (aka
| post-nut clarity) in porn.
| staticassertion wrote:
| The bar is probably much higher. Among other things you're
| going to have a ton of regulatory controls to deal with.
| knicholes wrote:
| Why not use crypto? Porncoin2.
| Saris wrote:
| You still need to pass through a bank to convert it to
| anything usable.
| knicholes wrote:
| How will the banks know the crypto came from porn,
| though? Receive payments either to your own wallet or
| straight to Coinbase, convert to USD, transfer to your
| bank, and we're done, right? What am I missing?
| [deleted]
| vageli wrote:
| That doesn't seem like it would be a problem for
| individual creators though, unless all exchanges
| coordinate to ban sex workers or something (not to
| mention decentralized exchanges like bisq, or in-person
| exchanges like localbitcoins).
| duxup wrote:
| Is there a way to do that where customers / content
| creators don't eventually hit traditional payment processor
| / bank?
| dylan604 wrote:
| not until you can reliably buy groceries, pay rent, pay
| utilities, etc with that crypto, it has to get exchanged
| for local currency somehow.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Starting your own payment processor is done reasonably
| frequently, it has a certain barrier of entry (a few million
| and a year or two for all the approvals, so feasible with
| investor backing if you have a valid business reason to make
| a payment processor) but it's being done regularly and also
| you can buy and rebrand an existing one, which is a common
| way to get a quicker market entry at the cost of a bit more
| money.
|
| However, that new processor will be a member of some existing
| payment systems e.g. Visa network and bound by all the same
| constraints as the other processors there. Creating your own
| alternative to a payment system (e.g. a major, widely and
| internationally supported card network like Visa or MC) is
| not really plausible. Perhaps you can look at the whole setup
| of cryptocurrencies+all the crypto exchange companies as
| something like such an alternative system, so there's _one_
| alternative made in this millenium.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| It is. The problem is connecting to the rest of the financial
| system. Imagine starting an "ISP" that had not upstream
| connectivity. It wouldn't be an ISP then. Same problem here.
|
| There's a few players here:
|
| payment gateways, this is a service that provides the
| checkout service on a website and handles protected credit
| card information. Payment gateways also provide anti-fraud
| services.
|
| payment processors, these execute the actual transaction.
| They are members of card associations like Visa and connect
| the card issuing bank and the merchant bank of the payee.
|
| merchant banks, these are the banks that hold the company's
| bank account that the funds from the payment processor come
| into.
|
| card associations, Visa/Mastercard these provide the
| connectivity and set the high level rules.
|
| card issuers, these entities extend credit and may be retail
| banks or other parties.
|
| there is a difference between Amex/Discover and
| Visa/Mastercard in that the former are also the issuer.
| That's why you also see Visa debit cards in Europe, they're
| using the payment processing network but not extending
| credit.
|
| It should be clear that starting a new payment gateway is
| trivial. It takes money to properly comply but ultimately
| this is a software business. Starting a new payment processor
| is much harder but it doesn't matter because all payment
| processors must comply with the card association rules to get
| access to that network.
|
| Starting your own card network would require attracting
| issuers who would then issue cards that people could use to
| pay for OnlyFans... probably not realistic!
|
| It was the threat by Visa and MC to cut them off that was the
| killer here, plenty of payment processors would be happy to
| take their money but not if the card networks ban the
| company.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I don't understand why they don't just use Bitcoin or some
| other crypto, seems like this is the exact use case it was
| designed for
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I don't understand why they don't just use Bitcoin or some
| other crypto, seems like this is the exact use case it was
| designed for_
|
| The most popular options, BTC & ETH, are incredibly expensive
| for $20 subscription payments.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| So pay with LTC or XMR instead? There are plenty of high
| liquidity coins with low transaction fees, these are just a
| couple examples. If the alternative is to not cam at all it
| seems pretty obvious, even if you are unbanked and get hit
| with 7% fees from an ATM or crypto-fiat in person
| moneychanger.
|
| It's also trivial to exchange BTC to LTC (or other low fee
| coin), you don't even need KYC or in some cases to even use
| an exchange (atomic swap BTC-LTC). So the cam girls could
| take fees in LTC and then swap them to BTC once they have
| enough value to be worth the transactional costs.
| throwawayFries wrote:
| Do you know anyone who's able to make use of crypto in the
| real world without using a bank of some sort?
| quantumBerry wrote:
| Anyone who has feet that are able to walk to an ATM or
| person on someplace like localmonero? In places like Mexico
| and Switzerland there is no KYC, you just put the cash into
| the ATM or send to the address and take it out, there's no
| need to have an identity or bank account.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's not practical to use bitcoin for individual transactions
| due to the high cost. If there was an easy way for non-tech
| people to cash in and out of crypto currency easily I bet
| that would be a good alternative.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Now ask yourself how much business they could do if they
| couldn't process credit cards or make cash payouts?
| wongarsu wrote:
| I suspect that OnlyFans realized they have the choice of either
| having a business that makes it incredibly hard to process
| payments, or to have no meaningful business at all. It's too
| late to pivot the brand to SFW with a couple of users going
| slightly over the line (similar to Patreon).
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Yes:
|
| > "The proposed Oct. 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due
| to banking partners' assurances that OnlyFans can support all
| genres of creators," [an OnlyFans spokesperson] said.
|
| https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/onlyfans-drops-porn-ba...
|
| The _Variety_ article theorizes that the backlash may have
| actually been exactly the outcome OnlyFans wanted, because they
| were able to focus public outrage toward the banks and payment
| processors putting them in that position.
| meowface wrote:
| I've seen so many different grand theories proposed in this
| thread, but to me this seems like it was the most obvious one
| from the start. My guess: yes, it was intended to achieve an
| effect; no, it wasn't built on false pretenses / a viral
| marketing stunt / a way to avoid negative press from the BBC.
| It was probably a way for them to respond to escalating
| pressure from financial intermediaries with some pressure of
| their own.
| brundolf wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised the market forces are strong enough
| that the banks have to care about the bad PR at all
|
| Nobody wants to change banks even when it affects them
| directly. How many people are going to change banks out of
| principle?
|
| I guess some Gen Zers might be motivated not to pick Chase as
| their first bank?
| _coveredInBees wrote:
| I think a factor that they may be concerned about is that
| there is a large userbase that is spending a lot of money
| on OF and that they may very well all just move to BTC or
| some other cryptocurrency based solution to exchanging
| money. And once that happens, you have a younger generation
| that is more comfortable dabbling in making financial
| transactions without the banks being involved.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| This just sounds like wishful thinking from
| cryptocurrency enthusiasts. There is no precedent of this
| happening, so I doubt they were so terrified about a
| completely hypothetical scenario.
| _coveredInBees wrote:
| There also hasn't been a precedent for a platform that
| has a large userbase spending hundreds of millions of
| dollars on sex workers being abruptly cut off by payment
| providers with no other recourse to processing payments
| from their userbase. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I don't have great answers to that, although I think by
| "banking partners" they actually mean "credit card
| companies" and most specifically mean MasterCard, which
| (assuming reporting on this I've read is correct) was or
| may still be in the process of further tightening their
| policies around adult content.
|
| Well, a not-great but plausible answer, maybe -- companies
| make changes, both good and ill, because they're panicked
| over PR fiascos all the time. From all appearances,
| MasterCard announced those policy changes because of PR
| pressure that was put on them by "Exodus Cry," a
| fundamentalist Christian anti-porn activist group. OnlyFans
| may have calculated that their best bet was to knock Exodus
| Cry off their hashtag-save-the-children pedestal.
| brundolf wrote:
| No, they called out specific banks, including Chase
| skohan wrote:
| Honestly that seems even more far-fetched. Visa and
| MasterCard are essentially a duopoly. Where on earth are
| customers going to flee to on bad pr?
| vageli wrote:
| This seems like a good use case for crypto currencies.
| skohan wrote:
| Realistically it would take decades, or great strides in
| usability, for cryptocurrency to really reach the main
| stream to the point it could be considered a serious
| alternative for credit cards.
| vageli wrote:
| Could you speak more to the areas in usability that you
| find currentl lacking?
| rodgerd wrote:
| Customers may not flee, but:
|
| 1. Customers in e.g. the EU may push their reps to "do
| something" about two US companies controlling all
| e-commerce.
|
| 2. Customers frustrated that Mastercard have gone on the
| record as refusing to block payments to terrorist-
| supporting orgs while refusing to process payments to
| look at titties may pressure regulators to start having a
| much closer look at Mastercard's money flows.
|
| Both of those seem like meaningful concerns.
| akiselev wrote:
| Pretty much the only threat to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly
| is public awareness that leads to antitrust enforcement.
| They're usually immune to any kind of backlash but this
| seemed to strike a cord with many people who are frustrated
| with America's puritanism (myself included).
|
| I don't have a dog in this fight but it certainly reminded
| me how much power V+MC have to become an existential threat
| along the likes of Google and Spectrum. Next time I write
| to my Congressman about antitrust, I'll be sure to put them
| top of the list now (for all that's going to do...)
| RedComet wrote:
| Ah, so it was a marketing scheme the entire time. How modern.
| ajay-b wrote:
| Thousands of jobs saved.
| bArray wrote:
| > The company has struggled to attract outside investors and the
| move was done at the request of at the request of its banking and
| payout partners, it said.
|
| Reads a little weird. It was a request of a request, from a
| friend of a friend?
| Veen wrote:
| It's just bad proofreading. The writer probably duplicated "at
| the request of" and the editor didn't catch it.
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| I wonder if this was the plan from the beginning. Perhaps the
| bankers and business people with no connection to reality just
| wouldn't believe how disastrous that policy would be, so they
| make the announcement and use the backlash to get the point
| across.
| bcheung wrote:
| The damage is already done. I was doing a photoshoot at my house
| with 2 models that have OnlyFans accounts. When the news hit they
| literally signed up for other platforms within an hour.
|
| The other platforms are capitalizing on the news and finding ways
| to make migration to their platform as easy as possible.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| So now they'll come back because OF still has the larger
| community.
| bcheung wrote:
| Just got this text from a model:
|
| "I don't trust them at all and nor do the other girls. So
| diversifying is our best bet"
| bcheung wrote:
| I think they may stick around because it has the user base
| and why not, they are already making money so no point giving
| that up.
|
| But now models will diversify across multiple platforms
| because the writing is on the wall. They may lose their
| income at any point so they are going to have backups.
| thrown wrote:
| People will forget this ever happened in a couple weeks. By
| then, they'll be angry about something new.
|
| The old models won't use new platforms because it's so much
| easier to just stay on OnlyFans. They already chose the
| easiest career path with the most short-term gain, I don't
| see how they're suddenly going to start thinking long-term.
| I don't think these people think long-term at all, if they
| did they probably wouldn't do this.
|
| Soon enough, new models will be joining without any
| knowledge that this ever happened. It'll get memory-holed
| in weeks.
| aNoodleAmongUs wrote:
| People will forget this ever happened in a couple weeks.
| By then, they'll be angry about something new.
|
| Big true. The adult content creator community is famous
| for this. The old models won't use new
| platforms because it's so much easier to just stay on
| OnlyFans.
|
| After building content and following there for multiple
| years, it would be stupid to think that a majority of
| them would follow to new platforms. A lot of subscribers
| are not interested in giving their CC information to new
| platforms all willynilly. Soon enough,
| new models will be joining without any knowledge that
| this ever happened. It'll get memory-holed in weeks.
|
| And Onlyfans will continue to be the biggest and most
| well known name in adult content platforms, making it the
| most profitable site for content creators to use.
| f6v wrote:
| Every OF model has her own link in social media profile. They
| do marking via Instagram, Twitter, Reddit etc. It seems like
| the OF "community" doesn't matter.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| It matters because that's where their customers have
| accounts and presumably they don't wish to make a new
| account for each new person they want to follow.
| mzkply wrote:
| I doubt it. With all this PR and every boomer on the planet now
| knowing exactly what OnlyFans is... their user base will
| explode, and models will come right back. They couldn't have
| hoped for more free marketing if they tried... genius.
| gmoore wrote:
| How did they not see this backlash coming?
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Although not an onlyfans fan, these new Puritan times are
| dangerous for everything the West supposedly stands for. The
| bankers who allegedly have laundered drug money and goodness
| knows who elses dirty money, now seem to have an issue with those
| who use the platform safely and responsibly (and all the rest of
| the OF users) on that platform.
| ddingus wrote:
| Of course they did!. It was that or give up the company
| basically.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| "Onlyfans decides not to go under"
| sokoloff wrote:
| Genius two-step marketing.
|
| People who knew nothing about OnlyFans: "Hmm, this company I've
| never heard of is making the news for banning explicit sexual
| content."
|
| A few days later, on several mainstream reporting channels, "Just
| kidding, OnlyFans will continue to have steamy hot explicit
| sexual content available for a low, low monthly price."
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Is there any evidence that this was the plan, or are you just
| trying to show solidarity for other business people?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm hypothesizing a tactic that would turn out to be
| brilliant (and funny as hell). I doubt it was the actual
| plan.
| gambiting wrote:
| In fact I subbed one couple on OF just few days ago because I
| thought OF was going to kick them out and I wanted the content
| before that happened. Anecdotal, I know, but I wonder how many
| other people did the same.
| fnord77 wrote:
| content creators will now have persistent anxiety about OF
| pulling the plug in the future. They'll hedge with other
| platforms.
|
| I think OF killed itself and this backtracking will not save it.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| if they are smart they'll move to crypto and hopefully start a
| movement away from these centralized payment processors. Stuff
| like this might finally be what causes mainstream adoption
| lunarboy wrote:
| I still don't understand this argument, maybe because I just
| don't understand enough about crypto currency itself.
|
| What coin is stable enough to use as currency? Unless OnlyFans
| could pay its employees and services with that said coin (who
| could then use it elsewhere directly), the company would still
| have to convert to fiat currency right? And wouldn't that
| itself affect the coin price?
| skohan wrote:
| I am very much a cryptocurrency skeptic, but you could
| imagine a token which is only used as a medium of exchange.
| I.e. you convert your USD into the token immediately before
| making the payment, and the recipient converts it back to USD
| milliseconds later.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I can't be the only one who's not hot on crypto. Do we really
| want a world where even the simplest transaction is permanently
| recorded publicly and cryptographically sealed? The governments
| will just mandate custodial wallets and we'll be back in the
| same place with respect to things like forfeitability.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Very few commebtors here seem aware that onlyfans were being
| forced to do this by their payment providers.
|
| So its not a publicity stunt, so much as "publicity forces others
| to reconsider their crazy decisions".
| gootler wrote:
| Nothing like a great sex place! I wish they would move to oculus
| and get me some vr, then I wouldn't have a need for women at all,
| yay!
| riwsky wrote:
| "Fans cans planned ban stans panned"
| dmix wrote:
| > He said BNY Mellon "flagged and rejected" every wire transfer
| linked to the firm, while Britain's Metro Bank in 2019 closed
| OnlyFans' corporate account with short notice
|
| So it wasn't just the credit card merchants but wire transfers
| and corporate bank accounts. So stupid... at least CC merchants
| can blame chargebacks or something.
|
| I guess it'd help if laws were clarified, in the UK where they
| are based as well.
|
| Maybe we'll find out if something changed soon.
| pornel wrote:
| Maybe because British Board of Film Censors jurisdiction has
| been extended to online porn, and face-sitting and fisting is
| banned in the UK? (although that ban is older than OnlyFans
| itself)
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-30454773
| seanieb wrote:
| Where's Ireland's IDA now?
| anothernewdude wrote:
| I don't understand the platform at all. I understand it's huge in
| the adult space, but it seems impossible to actually find
| anything on the platform. There's no discoverability (as far as I
| can tell). Is the discoverability problem solved by other
| platforms?
| TillE wrote:
| Well, it's like Patreon. Nobody goes to the index of
| patreon.com to browse.
| asdff wrote:
| > Is the discoverability problem solved by other platforms?
|
| Reddit, snapchat, and instagram mainly
| flerchin wrote:
| aka "Our valuation is dropping like a rock"
| lostgame wrote:
| What the hell did they think would happen?
|
| Does anyone remember Tumblr? No? We've already experienced what
| it's like for a brand to lose any relevance by abandoning the
| very community that made it successful.
| danaris wrote:
| Not only is Tumblr still alive and well, I see screenshots of
| _recent_ posts being passed around Twitter and Imgur
| regularly.
|
| The idea that a) Tumblr was 90% porn before the ban, or b)
| Tumblr is now dead are both quite false.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Does anyone remember Tumblr? No?
|
| Yes? I check my Tumblr timeline pretty much every day -
| there's a lot of content there (and I only follow a handful
| of people.) Anyone suggesting Tumblr is dead is mistaken.
|
| (And yeah, the daily posts are way down but that's after 8
| years of neglect and mishandling. Any social network would
| suffer the same!)
| prionassembly wrote:
| everything2.com has new content everyday. Long tail != top
| brand.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Alexa currently has tumblr.com at 114 and Tumblr report
| about 12M posts a day this year - I'd say that probably
| still counts as a "top(ish) brand".
|
| For contrast, everything2.com is at 526113.
| isatty wrote:
| Tumblr went from >1B valuation to ~3M right after it was
| announced. It wasn't the 8y of neglect that did it.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Tumblr went from >1B valuation
|
| Yahoo are not known for their savvy approach to
| acquisitions - they frequently paid well over the odds
| for the cachet of ownership until Verizon snapped them
| up.
|
| > to ~3M right
|
| But we don't know how much they were valued at when
| Verizon bought the Yahoo group in 2017. If they
| considered Tumblr only worth $3M then before they banned
| porn, then the porn ban has done nothing to the
| valuation. Anything else is just conjecture.
| amelius wrote:
| "But look, now it's soaring like never before"
| doikor wrote:
| More likely "we managed to get a deal in place with our payment
| processor". The only reason why they were going to do this was
| their payment processor saying they would stop processing their
| payments.
| ckdarby wrote:
| With all the PR a major bank that deals with high risk would
| have stepped in. There is too much volume and processing to
| turn a blind eye from this deal.
|
| It should be noted that the cams see a lot lower chargebacks
| than subscriptions because of the shady tactics a lot of
| subscription adult sites use. Example would be not noticing a
| "$1 trial" addon being offered that recurs at like
| $44.95/month.
|
| The rest of the chargebacks can be offset with 3DS/3DS 2 to
| shift the liability off the merchant (In this case OnlyFans)
| and onto the issuing bank.
|
| I can answer any questions within reason if someone wanted to
| know anything more.
|
| Source: Worked/wrote code for a high risk payment processor
| with volume +$1B/Yr.
|
| Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and only my
| own.
| convery wrote:
| Indeed, but it's odd that creditcard companies are so hard
| on merchants. Surely they could just offer some program
| where they hold payments in escrow until the transaction is
| final and just subtract chargebacks from the escrow account
| as necessary.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Some people who buy porn will lie to other people in
| their life and open chargebacks if they're found out, and
| dealing with those people is a nightmare because they're
| lying and they get loud and angry and litigious to try to
| sell the lie so they don't lose social standing and/or
| in-person sex.
|
| Something like Apple Pay, that is rooted in a
| biometric/pin-verified payment (low fraud) rather than
| "enter your card number manually" (high fraud) would be a
| godsend for the industry, since it would detect the lie
| in the fraudulent chargebacks as described above.
|
| Human beings in many world cultures are such a huge pain
| when it comes admitting and openly talking about paying
| for sex and sex-tangential things, that I can understand
| and grudgingly concede that higher processing fees are
| necessary. I do not know if they need to be 25%, but they
| do definitely need to be higher than for other
| industries.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| They already do this. Credit card transactions don't
| "finalize" for 180 days. Until they do, Visa can reach
| into the merchant's bank account and claw back the funds
| plus a fee.
| _nalply wrote:
| What do you think what they will do to handle the high
| risk?
| busymom0 wrote:
| Is it feasible for someone to start their own payment
| processor?
| mightykipper wrote:
| Yes and no. It's not feasible for me, and I don't know
| you but I'm gonna go ahead and day it's not feasible for
| you either. The barriers to entry are extremely high,
| regulators need to be convinced you know what you're
| doing, as do banks, and you need to be accepted by enough
| places for it to be worthwhile people paying for things
| through you and merchants paying your fee to accept you.
| You can choose to do only parts of the payments
| processing picture and that's easier, but it's not easy.
| Bottom end startup costs would likely be in the hundreds
| of thousands, ignoring actually developing your payments
| platform (so just to get everyone onside and regulatory
| approvals etc), more realistically a budget of say low
| tens of millions might get one off the ground.
| fludlight wrote:
| Besides adult content, what else is considered "high risk"?
| What are the commissions in this space?
|
| Also, major media outlets* are now doing bait and switch
| subscriptions. Does that make them high risk too?
|
| *Bloomberg $2/mo->$35/mo after 3m
|
| NYT $4/mo->$17/mo after 1yr
|
| WAPO $4/mo->$10/mo after 1yr
|
| Economist $25/qtr->$55/qtr after 1 qtr
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > Besides adult content, what else is considered "high
| risk"?
|
| Off the top of my head: gambling, medication, gift
| cards...stuff that's legal but more-likely-than-average
| to chargeback or default.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Pxtl wrote:
| AFAIK a relevant credit card company said "we haven't done
| anything"
| doikor wrote:
| Well Mastercard did update their rules. They did not
| specifically go and say anything to onlyfans but onlyfans
| investors/banks looked at the new rules and interpreted
| them as "well this is now super risky of being shut down at
| any time" and stopped pumping in more money / loans. Only
| way to continue from there is to get an actual
| promise/contract from the processor that no we will not
| shutdown your stuff on a whim. (or the nuclear option of
| getting rid of this risky content)
|
| Here are the updated rules https://www.mastercard.com/news/
| perspectives/2021/protecting...
|
| Basically starting October 15th every new piece of content
| uploaded to OnlyFans needs to be reviewed and have age
| verification done for all the people involved.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| But if I'm an investor, I would be worried that
| Visa/Mastercard could get pressed by one of the anti-porn
| groups at any moment, and then _poof_ , there goes my
| investment. It's better from a risk perspective to go ahead
| and get OF into compliance by banning adult material before
| buying into the platform.
| GDC7 wrote:
| > It's better from a risk perspective to go ahead and get
| OF into compliance by banning adult material before
| buying into the platform.
|
| Except, there would be nothing left to buy.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Lol, you're right, but some folks don't think that far
| ahead. And if the owners of OF want to eat at the
| financial trough, their only option might be to try to
| see what they can get away with.
| zuppy wrote:
| mastercard denied saying this. what a clusterfu*k.
| [deleted]
| digianarchist wrote:
| It wasn't MasterCard that was the problem rather their
| banking partners according to the FT.
| mzs wrote:
| Thanks for the heads-up, the article from yesterday:
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069c
| a04...
| zuppy wrote:
| oh, ok. i was actually looking now for the source, I
| remember I read that mastercard delined forcing them,but
| there was nothing mentioned on that article about who
| actually requested this.
|
| thanks for the information
|
| edit: converting the url posted below this into archive
| link, to skip paywall: https://archive.is/Aqx8x
| digianarchist wrote:
| https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069c
| a04...
| mzs wrote:
| I hope the assurances secured means that OF will verify
| consent per MC reqs. [edit - seems they have: "We're already
| fully compliant with the new Mastercard rules, so that had no
| bearing on the decision" ^^]
|
| Also I suspect their biggest money makers were leaving,
| here's the first screen from a competitor's ^ 'join as a
| creator' page tailor-made from this:
|
| >Earn 100% payouts from every new user from now until Oct 1,
| 2021!
|
| > _Sign up_
|
| >Leaving another platform? Not to worry! Our team is on hand
| to help you transfer your content to FanCentro!
|
| ^ https://fancentro.com/sell
|
| ^^ https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca
| 04...
| mogadsheu wrote:
| I suspected something like this would happen.
|
| As an adult company they thrive on controversy. If they found a
| group willing to invest at the scale that they need, sparking
| controversy like this is low hanging fruit for exposure and
| (hopefully) a quick boost to growth that an investor would want.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 300bps wrote:
| So it was a publicity stunt after all.
| TillE wrote:
| The extremely quick turnaround does suggest this as one of the
| more plausible explanations, but it's an incredibly stupid,
| counterproductive publicity stunt if so.
| yeldarb wrote:
| Wonder if this was all a publicity stunt to put pressure on their
| payment processors.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| The tweet from their official account[1] reads:
|
| _Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard._
|
| _We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse
| creator community and have suspended the planned October 1
| policy change._
|
| _OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide
| a home for all creators._
|
| This seems to match your theory.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/OnlyFans/status/1430499277302816773
| ziml77 wrote:
| Given that people predictably started leaving the platform, I
| doubt it. There isn't a social network or content
| discoverability aspect to the service, so hopping to somewhere
| else is easy. And people will remain wary of OnlyFans since
| they could try to restrict content again since they've already
| shown from the original announcement that they don't really
| care about supporting NSFW content creators
| onion2k wrote:
| One effect of the proposed ban would presumably to motivate
| content creators to look for alternative platforms. If it was a
| publicity stunt it seems like it would have had a pretty big
| downside.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Possibly.
|
| The amount of coverage this got in the financial press
| (particularly the FT) would seem to support this theory.
|
| Additionally, it's _interesting_ that the reversal happened
| after he named the banks in his FT interview yesterday.
| tandr wrote:
| Since FT article is paywalled, would you be kind to quote
| these names here?
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| If so, I think that's a good thing. This should bring attention
| to payment processors' ability to effectively kill any _type_
| of business they don 't agree with.
|
| I'm not sure what the solution is. Should banks be forced to
| behave as a common carrier? Or do we want private companies to
| be able to ban the public from purchasing things like
| pornography and firearms by stopping adults from completing
| legal transactions?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Let's turn the question around instead: why _shouldn 't_
| banks be forced to behave as common carriers, at least when
| it comes to things like processing payments, providing
| checking accounts, and other such basic services? What good
| does it do to start a business, only to be told by the
| banking industry that you can't open a bank account for your
| perfectly legal business?
|
| I'm not sure if I'd include lending in "basic services." That
| seems a bit more debatable to me.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'd include lending in basic services. However it would tie
| it to pure risk, along with don't let a customer get into
| too much debt. Pure risk means you only get to look at risk
| from an actuarial/numbers perspective, nothing more. Too
| much debt I'm not quite sure how to word into proper
| legalise but that needs to be done before we can actually
| do this - maybe just better bankruptcy laws so that risk
| goes up too high before the customer has too much debt?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| The sticking point in my mind for lending is that risk
| undoubtedly varies by industry. It's not really very
| sensible to force banks to lend money to businesses
| without considering what industry they're in. At that
| point, how do you differentiate a sensible underwriting
| decision from unfair discrimination?
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the point. They should have numbers to show which
| industries get rates, and targets that a company meet
| (how is an open question - it might not be possible) to
| move to a different rate - either up or down.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Interest rate and documentation.
|
| Pretend that a batch of YC startups are all getting loans
| rather than ownership purchases. What effective interest
| rate are they paying? What is the default rate where the
| startup dies before acquisition/profitability/IPO?
|
| Write a heuristic to determine a fair interest rate given
| the current prevailing rates, financial history of the
| company in question, financial history of similar
| companies, and similar objective and quantifiable
| subjective factors. Document it. When someone complains,
| demonstrate to your regulator that your procedure was
| fair, reasonable, and applied evenhandedly, and to the
| extent possible is consistent with actual outcomes.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Any new batch
| of startups is so risky, I can't imagine a bank lending
| them a cent at any non-usurious interest rate until
| they've been in business for a few years.
| bluGill wrote:
| Banks often do lend at better rates to companies run by
| executives with a good history.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Sure, but not without a personal guarantee from one or
| more of said executives, I would imagine. At that point,
| it's effectively the bank lending the money to the exec
| though, and not lending to the company.
| amarant wrote:
| Lending and banking should be considered separate, if
| related business IMO. And bankers should absolutely be
| considered common carriers. Lenders should not.
| ikerdanzel wrote:
| American companies can only understand lawsuit. Microsoft,
| Google, Apple as examples in the pasts have been sued to
| behave. Banks are predominantly protected from lawsuits.
| Allows class action lawsuits and send ceos to death sentences
| like what commonly happen in China, problems will auto
| resolve. Bankers in America rarely get jail sentences. Even
| Madoff managed to get off several times while a black guy
| peddling something legit will get shot first and as question
| later.
| the-dude wrote:
| Dutch banks terminated accounts of Corona-critics / anti-
| vax'ers / conspiracy nuts ( you choose how to call them ).
|
| I wonder if climate change critics are next.
| sethammons wrote:
| Wow, source? I'm not opposed to looking it up, but a claim
| like that will come across stronger if you link something
| the-dude wrote:
| Dutch source : https://www.metronieuws.nl/in-het-
| nieuws/binnenland/2021/08/...
|
| When I submitted it, I tried to find English sources, but
| couldn't.
| glitchc wrote:
| Payment processors are heavily regulated by govts in the
| jurisdictions they operate in. They're not operating in
| isolation, rather they act as choke points for policy
| enforcement.
| alphabetting wrote:
| I doubt it. I'd imagine one of their top priorities is
| relationship with models on their site. It's not like they have
| some crazy proprietary platform that couldn't be copied. If it
| came out this was a head fake it would damage that trust with
| models.
| smt88 wrote:
| The CEO actually blamed banks, not payment processors. He
| specifically said MasterCard was not to blame, but name-dropped
| banks that he did blame.
|
| I don't think payment processors would care at all because
| they're an oligopoly. I doubt most banks would care much
| either, but maybe they are afraid of losing business from
| large-volume merchants.
|
| Most likely some alternative banks stepped up and told OnlyFans
| they'd love to work with them.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I figured it was some kind of publicity stunt from the
| beginning.
|
| There is no way they didn't know this would kill the company.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Absolutely. They may indeed have had pressure from the banks,
| but this is a solvable problem. They're servicing pornhub. If
| this is just about KYC, they can roll out or use one of the
| myriad identity verification services.
| jfoster wrote:
| They know their platform. I presume that prior to the
| announcement they had tried everything they could to continue
| BAU.
|
| The fact that they're able to now reverse the announcement makes
| me wonder what changed. Did they find a new banking or payout
| partner? Existing ones had a change of heart? Feels like there
| would be more to it than these possibilities.
| dannyw wrote:
| Banks: if we ban onlyfans and other widely popular services, a
| decent number of people might actually turn into crypto and
| make our business extinct.
| jliptzin wrote:
| My guess is they are just paying higher transaction fees now
| danjac wrote:
| What's next? YouTube banning videos? SoundCloud banning music?
| dudul wrote:
| I would love to see the transcript of the conversations to
| implement this ban in the 1st place. What did they think would
| happen?
| mcphage wrote:
| It's possible that _all this_ is what they knew would happen,
| but they needed to go through it to get some leverage on
| someone upstream.
| SinParadise wrote:
| The fact that this even went anywhere is indicative of some
| serious, serious disconnect between the decision-makers and the
| reality of the situation.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Lets remind people why this happened in the first place:
| extremist christian org "Exodus Cry" petitioned high power people
| in board roles to defund sex work companies.
|
| Exodus cry's mission is seeking the abolition of the legal
| commercial sex industry, including pornography, strip clubs and
| sex work, as well as illegal sex trafficking. So, their gameplan
| is to always claim the last one (illegal sex trafficking) and
| child porn, to greatly muddy the waters of legitimate sex work.
|
| https://reason.com/2021/08/20/why-onlyfans-is-double-crossin...
|
| Exodus Cry previously went after PornHub after they made claims
| of child porn and sex trafficking. PH ended up getting
| disconnected from payment processors, and they ended up deleting
| 14 million videos down to their verified members only.
|
| Long story short: the drug war failed. And banning sex work for
| similar temperance reasons will only help people be LESS safe and
| run sex work underground (with no legal protections). Then again,
| that's this slimy christian org's goal.
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| When are we going to see a Medium or Substack for pornographic
| content?
|
| Even better an opensource LAMP or MEAN stack to host your own
| adult entertainment site?
| dyeje wrote:
| OnlyFans _is_ Substack for porn.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Tumblr is getting a subscription feature, and as I heard their
| porn-content came back to old strength after they weed out some
| years ago. Maybe there is a platform for this over there.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Not been to a porn site recently, or any media hosting site
| really? They all look exactly the same and offer the same
| features, so presumably they're already using some commodity
| off-the-shelf hosting platform for video, images, and live
| streams with sign-up and payment.
|
| The actual barrier is very few performers are popular enough on
| their own to be able to afford hiring people who can run
| servers with this software for them, but the few who are often
| do have "club{NAME}.com" sites for their own exclusive content.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Most of the popular tube sites are owned/operated by the same
| company, MindGeek.
| rattray wrote:
| The hard part is the banking and payments side of things.
| That's where a new entrant would be useful (but unfortunately
| also ~impossible in the US).
| asdff wrote:
| Why not paypal? I remember in the early 2000s even the most
| dusty geocities sites having paypal buttons.
| rattray wrote:
| Their policy prohibits "certain sexually oriented materials
| or services".
|
| https://www.paypal.com/en/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full
| asdff wrote:
| I feel like you could just sell an access code that
| allows you to download content rather than the content
| itself and be perfectly within paypals acceptable use
| policies.
| rattray wrote:
| You _might_ get away with that for a short while, but a
| fairly trivial account review would result in a funds
| freeze at the minimum.
| egoisticalgoat wrote:
| Paypals policy bans using it for payment of any digital
| adult content [0]. Many artists still use it for nsfw
| commissions, but every payment is a risk of getting your
| entire account banned simply due to a bad comment in the
| note field.
|
| [0] https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-
| paypal%E...
| rootsudo wrote:
| Just a better argument to force crypto, get a few exclusivity
| models and even if you have one or a few porn sex worker
| influences as a loss leader, you gain leverage - then it's
| worth it.
| janetacarr wrote:
| I wish this were true, but it's not that simple. For
| businesses, there is a lot of 'unknowns' with Crypto. It's
| regulated differently across jurisdictions, and Crypto in
| the USA is subject to things like anti-money-laundering and
| different taxable events when it's exchanged.
| kamarg wrote:
| Many of the adult sites that have tried using crypto for
| payments have reported that less than two percent of their
| users are willing to pay with crypto. Until it becomes as
| easy as using a credit card or PayPal, crypto isn't going
| to be the savior of adult content.
| psychometry wrote:
| I'm sure these puritanical payment gateways and processors
| have no problem taking fees for sales of guns, cigarettes,
| and all varieties of snake oil. But porn? No that's simply
| too much!
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| "Well they're private companies." The pro-censorship
| puritans and meddlers love farming their oppression out to
| monopoly corporations.
| randomdata wrote:
| I suspect the fraud rate for porn is much higher than for
| most other categories and the cost doesn't make business
| sense.
| rcstank wrote:
| Many vendors do block sales of firearms (or anything
| resembling 2A) due to similar risk factors. It's extremely
| difficult to find a gateway and processor that's 2A
| friendly. The small number of vendors that are 2A friendly
| usually require an FFL to further mitigate risk.
|
| If you can find a gateway and processor that has an
| underwriting team that will not require an FFL, that would
| be a sight to behold.
| rattray wrote:
| It's often the banks who block the processors. (If the
| processors block it of their own accord, it's due to
| fraud/chargebacks).
|
| I am not sure why the banks are so puritanical.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > When are we going to see a Medium or Substack for
| pornographic content?
|
| That's...what OnlyFans is?
| WJW wrote:
| Surely both LAMP and MEAN stacks are already perfectly capable
| of hosting pornography? It's not as if the bits are different
| from other types of image.
| whymauri wrote:
| Like written erotica? I think you can still get away with it on
| Patreon.
| delaaxe wrote:
| So are they going to use stablecoins/doge?
| StrLght wrote:
| That was a bloody genius marketing: do something absolutely
| unexpected first - gain a lot of articles on this, announce
| complete 180 just a week later - same thing, tons of articles
| about your company.
| kleiba wrote:
| _complete 360_
|
| :-)
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Of Course not ... We live in decadence, seeing China take over
| while the west is eaten away by a bunch of narcisists. I think
| it's just obvious to assume we will all be living in some form of
| Democrat North Korea soon enough.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I guess you can expect companies to start using the defence of
| many politicians, just create as much noise and kick up as much
| dirt as possible distracting from whatever the main issue is (in
| this case child porn on your platform [1]).
|
| They were never going to ban adult content were they. Cynical in
| the extreme.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58255865
|
| EDIT: I've updated this comment with a BBC investigation that
| suggests they had quite lax child porn policies. Do any of the
| down-voters really believe OnlyFans were genuine about removing
| all adult content?
| vermilingua wrote:
| I guess you're just using the offence of many current
| politicians, attack everything you disagree with under the
| pretense that it aids paedophiles.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Not at all, I was just wondering if OnlyFans banning adult
| content was a distraction tactic (from the BBC investigation
| or something else), it seems extremely likely as it doesn't
| make any sense for a porn site to ban pornography!
| ddtaylor wrote:
| What makes you think that OF is any different than any other
| platform? Do you think they all struggle with this problem or
| do you think it's unique to OF?
| wolf550e wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865
| pc86 wrote:
| What evidence do you have that there was that sort of content
| on the platform?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I've updated the comment with an investigation by the BBC.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I find that news report to be pretty uncompelling. They are
| using lots of weasel wording to make it sound like they have
| evidence of widespread jailbait, bestiality, and incest (a non-
| issue between two consenting adults), when really they have
| nothing. They have "leaked documents" suggesting that accounts
| posting illegal material are warned instead of shut down
| immediately, and then they give third hand testimony of
| examples of illegal content moderators have seen. Notice that
| there is no attempt to quantify the amount of illegal content.
| But here we are, trembling in our boots about it.
|
| > Christof - not his real name - says on some days, he has
| viewed up to 2,000 photos and videos looking for content
| prohibited by the site. He uses lists of keywords to search
| within bios, posts and private messages between creators and
| their subscribers.
|
| > He says he has found illegal and extreme content in videos -
| including bestiality involving dogs and the use of spy cams,
| guns, knives and drugs. Some material is not actively searched
| for by moderators as frequently as he believes it should be,
| says Christof, despite being banned under the platform's terms
| of service.
|
| Oh! Well if Cristof thinks they aren't doing enough I guess
| they must be shut down!
| onlyfansfan wrote:
| A question to you entrepreneurial types. Why does an globally
| established and growing company with a proven business model want
| to raise a billion dollar investment?
|
| It's money they'll have to pay back with interest and I assume
| there would be other strings attached (like the high risk implied
| by the planned move that was now canceled). How is possibly
| better than organic growth at this point where they are probably
| close to market saturation (in the sense that further exponential
| growth is implausible)?
| eloisant wrote:
| It's not necessarily money they'll have to pay back, it can be
| investors getting a share of the company (and existing
| investors getting their share diluted).
|
| Sometimes they might want to raise to grow faster than your
| competitors. Not sure about their market, but sometimes there
| is a "winner takes all" market where the winner isn't
| established yet. So it's a race to grow fast enough to be the
| first to get to that network effect.
|
| Look at online videos for example. Youtube has a near monopoly,
| while Dailymotion, Vimeo and others are just getting scraps. If
| your market hasn't settled yet, even if you're already
| established and growing, getting investors money could mean the
| difference between becoming Youtube and becoming Dailymotion.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The devs of FloatPlane considered entering that market as
| soon as the exit was announced, but given the development
| time and the fact that most of the content creators migrated
| to other platforms, and therefore they would be very late.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Huh, the thought came out unintelligible.
|
| Let me try again.
|
| The devs of FloatPlane considered entering that market as
| soon as the exit was announced, but given the development
| time and the fact that most of the content creators
| migrated to other platforms, they would be very late and
| therefore it is not a worthwhile endeavor.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Because if they don't someone else will and they'll get out-
| developed or undercut by someone with deep pockets.
|
| It's kind of a dark forest of startups, if you get too much
| attention one of the giants will snipe you out of existence...
| so a lot of companies take investment to keep ahead of it.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| It's perceived trajectory. You think they can't grow any more-
| they think they can grow 100x over with enough capital
|
| Growing organically takes a long time and require a lot of
| luck. Capital can unlock massive growth if used in the right
| way.
|
| Besides, why not? If the company gets bigger, all the execs
| win, if the company raises money and wastes it and collapses,
| the execs are rich already and just move on.
| adventured wrote:
| > Besides, why not? If the company gets bigger, all the execs
| win, if the company raises money and wastes it and collapses,
| the execs are rich already and just move on.
|
| That mental equation depends on who owns the company. Who the
| big insider ownership stakes are held by. If you own 43% of
| OnlyFans as the primary founder, you're going to think twice
| about mass dilution unless it's absolutely necessary. If you
| can avoid hefty dilution and still build the company, your
| wealth outcome will be dramatically better in the end. That's
| why not.
|
| OnlyFans isn't a zero insider ownership shell run by suits at
| this juncture. It's only 4-5 years old. It was founded by two
| brothers (that may still retain upwards of a quarter of the
| business), and then Leo Radvinsky from the MyFreeCams cam
| site purchased 3/4 of it. MyFreeCams is a money spigot, which
| funds Leo's venture activities, including the purchase of
| OnlyFans. Taking an enormous dilution hit would not be ideal
| for someone in that position, he would want to be very
| strategic about it (he already has financial resources).
|
| This is Leo's venture capital enterprise:
|
| https://leo.com
| radu_floricica wrote:
| A bit of a tangent, but the dynamics in high-value investment
| is quite the opposite. You have people with lots of money (they
| do exist) who don't have anything to do with that money. They
| want to make it grow, and often are paid or otherwise
| incentivized to make it grow, but it's kinda hard to find a way
| of making 1 billion make you 100 million in a couple of years,
| without doing micromanagement for 1000 different 1-million
| businesses.
|
| So the market is skewed the other way: if you are a company
| that seems to be able to productively use a lot of money,
| they'll be throwing investments at you. And onlyfans is
| currently in a very good position to do this.
|
| Also, from what I read the consensus seems to be their decision
| had nothing to do with investors (if I were an investor I'd be
| absolutely livid to hear it), but with payment processors,
| especially master card.
| ledauphin wrote:
| can you explain this a bit more? Why wouldn't "invest in an
| index fund" be the obvious alternative to micromanaging
| thousands of investments?
| Lambent_Cactus wrote:
| OnlyFans is a classic two-sided marketplace with strong network
| effects. The more paying customers are already on the site the
| more attractive it is for new performers to choose OnlyFans as
| their platform, and the more performers there are on OnlyFans,
| the stronger the value proposition is for customers. That tends
| to give you a winner-take-all (or at least winner-take-most)
| market, where if you can establish a dominant market position
| is becomes self-reinforcing, you become very hard to displace,
| and can command very large profit margins. It's exactly the
| dynamic that has kept eBay the primary way of doing auctions
| online for over two decades.
|
| When you have a market like that, it often makes sense to
| pursue growth as an end in itself, well past the point of
| profitability, because the reward for coming in first place (a
| durable monopoly) is way higher than a linear projection would
| suggest. Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) gives an especially
| clear explanation of this logic in Blitzscaling:
| https://www.blitzscaling.com/
| antihero wrote:
| I wonder if there's market to be gained from people who
| otherwise wouldn't venture near a site with such reputation
| who might be converted into the main model.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _it often makes sense to pursue growth as an end in itself,
| well past the point of profitability_
|
| To be clear, growth is _not_ an end in itself, even in this
| case -- profitability is still the end.
|
| The point is to _temporarily_ forego profit until you have an
| unassailable market lead, so that you can then more _more_
| profit in the long-term.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Because that's just what tech startups do now: as long as you
| have a good "story", VCs throwing around their funny money left
| and right are easy to find. And once you're been tainted by it,
| you're forever fucked, locked into either going public or being
| bought out all the while needing to achieve hockey-stick
| growth. Organically grown tech companies are very few and far
| between.
|
| The "old" boomer way of going to a bank with collateral to get
| a $750k loan is non-existent in tech. Not to mention, the bank
| is probably way more scrutinizing than VCs are (or just plain
| don't understand and will deny you).
| staticassertion wrote:
| You don't pay investments back. They are a purchase of shares.
| The exchange is made and you're done.
|
| > How is possibly better than organic growth at this point
| where they are probably close to market saturation (in the
| sense that further exponential growth is implausible)?
|
| Moving into new markets, expanding the scope of the existing
| market, etc. Is OnlyFans that different from Youtube, or
| Patreon? Is it that different from GoFundMe?
|
| There are plenty of adjacent markets that OF could be trying to
| tackle.
| rowland66 wrote:
| > You don't pay investments back. They are a purchase of
| shares. The exchange is made and you're done.
|
| This is a common misunderstanding that equity funding is
| free. For the owner of a business, taking outside investment
| and issuing share in return is diluting the original owners
| stake in the business. If effect, you are paying for these
| investments forever because you are giving up some portion of
| the businesses future profits.
|
| There are certainly situations where this makes sense if you
| are able to grow much faster with the additional capital.
| However, the investment is not free.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I'm a CEO, I'm pretty familiar with the costs. I didn't say
| it was free, I very clearly said the opposite - that it is
| a purchase.
|
| The parent was very clearly (and admittedly, elsewhere)
| thinking of investments as a literal loan.
| adventured wrote:
| That's correct, taking venture capital is almost always a
| massive obligation and a very real operational liability.
| It's just not a liability in the financial loan/debt sense,
| the liability isn't on the balance sheet as debt, it's in
| the obligation and complexities that come with managing the
| new capital partners and their self-interest; self-interest
| which may not always align with your own or the company's
| best interests. The operational liability is burrowed into
| the cap table.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Raising capital is not always for money. It can also be a means
| of paying for protection.
|
| Letting powerful people wet their beak has always been a part
| of how the game is played.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Investments aren't loans, so you don't have to pay it back the
| way a loan might be.
| onlyfansfan wrote:
| Thanks, I guess I was wrong on that count. It makes sense.
|
| The first part continues to baffle me. If I have a proven
| profit of $X/year and I have the market captured (speaking on
| the order of 10% or 50%, doesn't matter), how does it make
| sense to seek investment in the order of 100*X? What's the
| goal? Why not just keep milking the proven cash cow and stop
| growing and risking?
| beervirus wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo
|
| "I don't want to make a little bit of money every day. I
| want to make a fuckton of money all at once."
| dragontamer wrote:
| What risk is there?
|
| * If you fail to grow, the investors lose their money. But
| the company still exists afterwards.
|
| * If you succeed, you still get many benefits.
|
| You're risking __someone else__'s money. And they're not
| even asking for the money back, just equity. In fact, a
| common scheme is to take the money, pay yourself, and do
| nothing. (Slightly fraudulent, but its really hard to tell
| the difference. Ex: all the yachts that Adam Neumann bought
| when he got investment money for WeWork).
|
| As the CEO, you still get the salary, and that salary comes
| out of the investment money. So at a minimum, you often
| give yourself a raise for convincing other people to give
| lots of money to your company.
|
| --------
|
| There's also something to be said about cashing out. If
| you're tired of the grind of building a company, you can
| sell out and make $100s millions or $Billions with a
| company like this.
|
| Ex: Notch burned out and dropped off the grid after a few
| years of Minecraft development. He took the $5 Billion
| offer from Microsoft and then largely disappeared. I don't
| think anyone can blame him, indie developers at heart don't
| want to deal with the politics of leading a 10+ million
| video game players.
|
| Seeking investors is the path towards cashing out and
| retiring. You need to find a new owner of the company, and
| selling your stake / equity to them is a major step towards
| retirement.
| kbenson wrote:
| I guess the risk is going from possible 50%+ ownership of
| a a company worth a few millions or tens of millions to
| much less ownership of a company worth roughly the same
| amount if it fails to grow. Or the risk of being forced
| out of control, I guess.
|
| I think that's a good illustration of why people do it.
| 10% of a $20 million dollar company is still worth
| something and even if you lost ten or twenty million or
| so from theoretically doing nothing, having 10% of a
| multi-billion dollar company is worth a whole lot, so
| people like that gamble.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I guess the risk is going from possible 50%+ ownership
| of a a company worth a few millions or tens of millions
| to much less ownership of a company worth roughly the
| same amount if it fails to grow. Or the risk of being
| forced out of control, I guess.
|
| If the company is worth $50 million, and you sell 10% of
| it, the company gets $5 million bucks.
|
| Since the company is now $5-million richer, you'd expect
| the company to really be worth $55 million at least
| (since its the same company, except now with $5 million
| more bucks).
|
| It is now on the onus of the CEO to ensure that the extra
| cash does indeed grow the company's value. Sure, the
| money could be pissed away in a party yacht. But ideally,
| a good CEO will do something reasonable with the money.
| (Though the party yacht is often then used to raise more
| money from other rich folk, raising the value of the
| company again, lol)
|
| As long as the CEO doesn't fall into the trap of just
| grabbing money without purpose... as long as the CEO has
| a plan for what to do with the investment money... its
| probably a good thing. IMO, where a lot of CEOs make a
| mistake is that they go into full-tilt money raising mode
| and never stop to think if they have "enough money for
| now". But I doubt that OnlyFans is at this stage of the
| game, OnlyFans probably can grow much faster with a bit
| more investment money.
| kbenson wrote:
| Yeah, I just meant to show what is probably a worst case
| (not really, worst case would be company goes under or
| loses a lot of value/market share I guess), where they
| accept money and it's spent in an effort to help the
| business but just doesn't. I guess in the example you put
| forth that would be a $50 million company that takes $5
| million, spends it on a major advertising campaign, and
| sees zero difference. Now they've given away equity and
| gotten nothing in return other than that what they tried
| before doesn't work. The flip side is that it helps
| immensely and your lower equity might be worth more
| overall. Any anything in between.
|
| At least that's how I understand it. I'm not trying to
| pretend I know a huge amount about this. It's mostly
| general knowledge accumulated from normal sources and
| discussions here, so if you think I'm totally missing
| something, I'm happy to hear it.
| PeterisP wrote:
| One aspect is that it's a way for the founders get to take
| some money off the table. It's not prudent to have 99% of
| your wealth tied up in a single "cash cow" no matter how
| proven it is, you do want to diversify.
| eloisant wrote:
| That's a different strategy - you can be shooting for a
| sustainable medium size company, or try to become a tech
| behemoth.
|
| Both choices are valids, but investors tend to push you
| towards growing forever. So if your board is already
| controlled by investors (as opposed to founders or
| employees), they'll encourage you to raise more to grow
| more.
| ErrantX wrote:
| You need to look at it slightly differently. The founders
| aren't looking at the money they can make from the cash
| cow. Revenue is a long-term earner and requires them to
| keep being successful for that long term. An exit (via a
| sale of the business) is the real short-term earner & lets
| them walk away (m/b)illionaires.
|
| Therefore the game is to optimise valuation - the higher
| the investment round, the higher the company valuation, and
| the higher the sale value.
|
| Simple as that.
| pdpi wrote:
| > What's the goal? Why not just keep milking the proven
| cash cow and stop growing and risking?
|
| I'm going to ignore the whole "cashing out" and "hyper
| growth" answers because they've been covered to death.
|
| Rather, I'll just say that this OnlyFans situation is a
| great example of why you'd want to do that. OnlyFans is a
| great case of what you described -- they have definitely
| captured a significant chunk of the premium adult content
| market, and have nice steady revenue streams from there.
| They could just keep milking that and improving it
| incrementally.
|
| Yet, that whole revenue stream comes with a huge risk
| attached (a risk of 'extinction event' proportions) in the
| form of payment providers refusing to do business with you.
| Near as I can tell, this whole situation is at least
| somewhat due to Mastercard pressuring OnlyFans to stop
| offering adult content (or, at least, to offer it under
| much more restrictive terms), so this is not some
| hypothetical risk, it's an actual credible threat.
| Investment gives them the resources to go find ways to work
| around that risk somehow.
| tinco wrote:
| It doesn't really make sense in my opinion, so maybe I'm
| the wrong person to answer, but I think it's a game of
| statistics.
|
| OF has captured a certain market, and is making a certain
| amount of money. Of companies like that, a small but not
| insignificant number grows to super major size, the size
| that can do an IPO and exit for billions.
|
| The current owners are OF are trying to capitalize on the
| value investors put on that possibility, and on the reduced
| risk of having so much money invested. With each investment
| round the risk of failure goes down a little, and the risk
| of major success goes up a little.
|
| A major example of this is Facebook. It was profitable and
| well established, why would they need extra investment or
| an IPO? Then out of nowhere Facebook bought Instagram, and
| Whatsapp, and it is clear now that without those two
| acquisitions Facebook could have been in serious trouble.
| The absolute crapton of cash they got effectively took away
| risk.
|
| So it's a chance to de-risk and cash out of OF, and let the
| big boys play on taking OF to an IPO.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Why does an globally established and growing company with a
| proven business model want to raise a billion dollar
| investment?
|
| The suggestion I saw go past on Twitter was "because the
| current owner wants to cash out his $MM investment" but I
| cannot vouch for the accuracy, etc.
| totetsu wrote:
| I think somebody in the last thread about this topic links to
| an article about the money being used to buy out the founder of
| only fans.
| asdff wrote:
| Because then OF becomes a company worth X+a billion dollars.
| Your stock options go up accordingly, and you can take profit
| and walk away before the cows come home. It's like getting
| ahold of a stolen credit card and maxing out the credit limits
| with fraudulent purchases while you can. Most business leaders
| who these days only have tenures of a few years do not care
| about outlooks past a few years. Throw the hot potato into the
| next persons lap and you are already working the same angle in
| your next gig when the old one explodes in your wake.
| dalbasal wrote:
| This is actually an important question.
|
| First, they probably don't have to pay back with interest.
| Large investments, provided by upper tier firms are "cheap"
| atm. For loans that means very low interest. More commonly in
| tech world, these are equity investments. Investors get shares.
| Dividends are paid in theory, but not or on a strict schedule
| and not if the company can't afford it. Increasingly, not at
| all. If you can be securitized and fed into the "high finance"
| system, you get to exist in a much more attractive monetary
| system.
|
| A more pertinent question is "why do they need investment at
| all?" Assuming they can operate out of revenue, most answers to
| this question are controversial, one way or another.
|
| One reason is cashing out founders and early investors. OF is
| popular now, but it _could_ lose popularity. Founders are
| currently paper millionaires and selling equity gives them an
| opportunity to sell shares too. Even if the company itself
| sells all the shares, just having cash in OF 's account is a
| buffer to risk.
|
| A more amorphous set of reasons is "getting in with the in
| crowd." An equity investment is also a valuation event. It
| gives shares a market value. Besides allowing founders to sell
| shares, it also makes it easier to compensate employees with
| options. The company can use shares to buy other companies.
| Etc. All this relies on shares having a market value, and
| selling shares to an institutional investor is a way of doing
| this.
|
| There's also good reason to establish _a_ relationship with _a_
| financial backer. You 'd rather talk to a merchant bank when
| times are good, revenue is flowing and investors want in, not
| when the company is struggling. In the future, you might need
| emergency cash on a short turnaround. You might want growth
| finance... likely for a network that needs to scale. otherwise,
| you leave opportunities for the competition. You kind of need
| an institutional backers to help you IPO, or otherwise interact
| with the financial sector.
|
| A lot of this is pretty speculative, but an OnlyFans backed by
| Softbank might find it easier to negotiate terms with standard
| payments providers. It might have an easier path to IPO, etc.
|
| In the old days, when firms built factories and made widgets,
| it was always big news when a big firm signed with a big bank.
| This was presumed to be a long term relationship, with the
| merchant bank funding the company and selling its bonds,
| leading major investment rounds when needed. These
| relationships were the bedrock of capitalism. Japan's economy
| for example, was entirely structured around merchant banks.
| "Keiretsu" brands like Mitsubishi & Mitsui were basically just
| a bunch of companies backed by a single merchant bank.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Investors are the final customer in a bubble. Uber and WeWork
| were never going to be profitable. The game was to convince
| investors they could be. In a bubble, it feels like anything is
| possible and silly things like math just weigh you down.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Marking the value of your company to market can make you richer
| over night. If you have a $10/year income stream, a bank might
| run a calculation valuing that income stream at $50-$100. If
| you can instead get investors to value it at $1000 (because it
| is a "tech company" and deserves an insane valuation), you are
| a lot richer than you used to be. Even if you lose 90% of your
| income stream, you are still probably richer.
|
| This comes down to the question: why do you want to own a high-
| value asset? So you can borrow against it to buy more assets.
| This is how Jeff Bezos can fly around on a $500 million jet
| while selling $0 of his stock.
|
| Because it's so hard to get traditional investment,
| entrepreneurs in the sex industry often see that they are a lot
| poorer (in quality of life terms) than people who own
| businesses that are much less successful.
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| For the sake of correctness, Bezos is definitely not in a
| $500M jet. The only jet at that price is owned by a Saudi
| Prince.
|
| Also, the idea that Bezos and people like him never sell
| stock is just completely wrong. This stuff is public record,
| you can look it up. Here's an article that did it already
| [0]. Which means, yes, Bezos and all the other uber rich pay
| taxes and don't borrow money to avoid taxes until they die.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/06/24/heres-.
| ..
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Also, the idea that Bezos and people like him never sell
| stock is just completely wrong._
|
| ProPublica did some pretty good investigating reporting
| showing that no, that idea is not "completely wrong".
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-
| trov...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Also, if you borrow against a stock as collateral, that
| loan will come due eventually. Don't you have to sell
| _something_ to pay that money back?
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| The headline should have "For Now" appended to the end
| PaulHoule wrote:
| OnlyFans had creators that weren't pornographic?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| These women were grooming children on apps like Tiktok. Good
| riddance!
| l-_l-_l-_lo_ol wrote:
| I seriously thought that onlyfans was catered to porn.
| haasted wrote:
| Isn't "OnlyFans without sexual content" basically Patreon?
| belorn wrote:
| I think there are more users of Patreon that uses it as a
| subscription donation service than there are on OnlyFans, with
| the primary content being available for free to anyone. Game
| reviews, mods and web comics comes to mind. I have no idea how
| large portion of the primary customer base those are for
| patreon.
| pacbard wrote:
| I guess they offer similar subscription services but it seems
| to me (at least) that they serve completely different niches.
| For example, if a content creator says "check out my OnlyFans
| for subscriber-only content" versus "check out my Patreon for
| subscriber-only content", I would expect that they are selling
| completely different things.
|
| Another parallel could be comparing HomeDepot and HobbyLobby.
| Both stores sell you things for DIY stuff, but they target
| different kinds of DIYers (even if they could sell some of the
| same items).
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > For example, if a content creator says "check out my
| OnlyFans for subscriber-only content" versus "check out my
| Patreon for subscriber-only content", I would expect that
| they are selling completely different things.
|
| So, OF without p0rn is basically Patreon
| [deleted]
| evancox100 wrote:
| Ya, you'd suspect one is selling porn and one isn't, at least
| that's what I would have done.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Hasn't this comment been made 100 times ready?
| [deleted]
| haasted wrote:
| Possibly. Haven't read through all 5k comments on the
| previous posts.
|
| Also, it was actually meant as a genuine question, not a
| snarky drive-by comment. I have only superficial knowledge of
| both platforms, so it would be nice to know whether there are
| some fundamental differences beyond "NSFW / Not NSFW".
| rtkwe wrote:
| OnlyFans does have features that patreon doesn't that really
| improve the functionality for any type of creators; finer
| grained control over visibility of posts (you can sell things
| for additional money on top of the subscription cost), built in
| live streaming and video.
|
| Patreon is really barebones, for example to host video just for
| Patrons you have to go through other sites which lets users
| leak out the info to access it since it's not usually directly
| tied to their Patreon account. There's no built in support for
| livestreaming on Patreon at all. All in all Patreon is a super
| basic private text blog.
| Kye wrote:
| Patreon has a hosted video thing in beta.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's good they really need to provide more to their users
| than they do now. I get why because serving video is
| extremely expensive but not being able to do a properly
| private video on platform is a big gap.
| egypturnash wrote:
| If I recall correctly OF basically started getting serious
| traction once Patreon banned photographic/video porn, so yes.
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Kind of? There are some tech differences on what the creators
| can do. Especially around video/live streaming that are all
| handled on site instead of externally like Patreon.
| jordache wrote:
| lol these weak people. Just stick to your business driven
| decisions.
| rootsudo wrote:
| My biggest shock was how much "PR" was generated on Reddit, and
| how many sexworkers really do use the platform.
|
| I knew it was a thing, I knew of the memes, but to see both sides
| in arms over a company vs branding, creating their own website
| and content - and vanity domain as well.
|
| People really do just want a one click solution for creating
| adult content, and consuming adult content.
|
| And the memes, I think they're pretty toxic, 4chan, incel,
| reddit, twitter memes - I never knew there was that much angst.
| immmmmm wrote:
| a good friend of mine is a sex worker, a cam girl to be
| precise, and uses OF as it is safer than other platforms. it
| should be noted that she is a brilliant individual and do this
| job due to severe psychiatric problems that prevent her doing
| more "normal" jobs. she feeds one child with this money, as a
| lot of sex workers that are also loving moms.
|
| it is important that such platforms do exist (if they implement
| proper safeguards) and that these content creators are not
| stigmatized.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > it should be noted that she is a brilliant individual
|
| it should NOT be noted. Too many good people died in the wars
| of past centuries to get us to the freedom and liberty we
| enjoy today to let any fundamentalists dictate what a normal
| job is and who works it.
|
| Sex work is work and if you dislike it you'd might enjoy
| Afghanistan these days.
| nooyurrsdey wrote:
| The amount of anger and negativity in this comment is
| shocking.
|
| The work she does is often stereotyped as being "dumb" or
| non-intellectual. To fight that idea, OP found it valuable
| to mention how smart she is and how these platorms provide
| a safe and profitable way to provide for her child.
|
| Ask yourself - and I mean really ask yourself - what about
| that statement has you so angry?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I think it's the implication that sex work is inherently
| beneath someone who is "brilliant."
| immmmmm wrote:
| i was saying:
|
| 1) that she is doing sex work, because she has no choice
| to feed her son, given her medical condition.
|
| 2) on an unrelated note: she is a brilliant and very
| intelligent individual.
|
| 3) point 2) was emphasized because for a significant part
| of the population, these two are incompatible, which is
| obviously wrong.
|
| 4) these platforms, while far from perfect provides some
| safety to sex workers. this important and fundamental:
| the sex industry, be it pornography or other, is
| dangerous to actress, actors and prostitutes alike. many
| get raped and/or abused, for instance.
|
| 5) on yet an unrelated note that she is a loving mom.
| moreover, an ex gf of mine, a past sex worker as well, is
| also a loving mom. i added this information because both
| in english and french slang, if you're mom is a sex
| worker, you and her are not good person. i don't think
| these children can openly talk about their moms' jobs
| openly at school without provoking major backlash, if not
| legal actions. and we live in a quite liberal country.
|
| sorry not making all of the above clear enough.
| arodgers_la wrote:
| If she is restoring to sex work to feed her son, what is
| she spending the father's child support money on? That
| seems like the entire reason child support is required by
| law.
| jlokier wrote:
| "Required by law" as not as powerful as it sounds.
|
| Law is not powerful enough to protect someone from a
| violent partner. Restraining orders don't stop violence
| from taking place. They only promise punishment
| afterwards.
|
| So you do not pursue a violent partner for child support,
| even with the law on your side. It is too dangerous.
|
| Online sex work is the safer option.
|
| Oh, also, you seem to have the idea that child support
| money is enough by itself for the costs of raising a
| child decently. It often isn't, you need another income
| source to cover it. In the example we are talking about,
| the person could not do a typical job, so they had to
| find an alternative and OF provided it.
| immmmmm wrote:
| yes, thanks!
|
| i forgot to mention her mom is an hardcore and highly
| manipulative evangelist, as if life was not hard enough.
| arodgers_la wrote:
| You pulled that assumption out of nowhere. I said feeding
| a child.
| tclancy wrote:
| Stop. The problem is you need to feed your kid today. Not
| when the judge or law gets around to deciding you're
| right. Just stop arbitrating other people's lives. It's
| not hard.
| jlokier wrote:
| The assumption comes from this:
|
| > If she is resorting to sex work to feed her son, what
| is she spending the father's child support money on?
|
| That implies:
|
| (a) there is father's child support (a sweeping
| assumption that is often wrong), and
|
| (b) the father's child support is sufficient by itself to
| feed her son without needing to resort to sex work.
|
| It's also suggesting that the mother is misusing funds
| somehow.
|
| The distinction between "feeding" and "raising" you might
| have picked on would be, in my view, a quibble over a
| technicality. Child support is to contribute to the costs
| of raising a child, it's not earmarked to specifically
| cover food, and if you need extra income to raise a
| child, it's acceptable common language to phrase that as
| earning money to feed a child.
| immmmmm wrote:
| father is not paying a nickel, and is a violent
| individual.
|
| alternative is social services.
| arodgers_la wrote:
| If she thinks he will go after her if she has his wages
| garnished, she should add a restraining order.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| If that person is going to go after her for wage
| garnishment, I'm not confident a restraining order will
| change anything.
| [deleted]
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| You got it. Drives me nuts. Like a computer scientist is
| inherent gold for society and everyone else has to
| justify their existence.
| immmmmm wrote:
| please re read it, with the additional information in
| child message.
|
| i agree and i am a computer scientist.
| myWindoonn wrote:
| You're so close to having empathy for all people! Just
| keep going: What if _nobody_ had to justify their
| existence?
|
| Edit: Downvoters, try a little harder. Engage your
| emotional core. Really work those empathy centers. Think
| about it: If nobody had to justify their existence, and
| people just allowed each other to exist, then we wouldn't
| have to weigh whether sex workers are more deserving of
| rights than computer scientists. We could allow both; we
| could allow everybody.
| whynaut wrote:
| You shouldn't need to "excuse" sex work.
| adjkant wrote:
| You shouldn't need to, but on Hacker News I can't say I
| can fault this caveat getting ahead of some potentially
| nasty comments, even if in principle I agree it shouldn't
| need to be said.
| immmmmm wrote:
| i know, unfortunately sex work is still highly stigmatized,
| including in western present cultures.
|
| you don't need to go as far as afghanistan, i'm back from
| eastern europe where my friends from the LGBTQ community
| are literally being beaten by neo nazi funded by putin.
| fenderbluesjr wrote:
| It is stigmatized because it plays a part in facilitating
| people's addictions and mental problems. Just like
| gambling, drug-dealing, snake-oil salesmen, etc. It's not
| all roses, that's for sure..
| mumblemumble wrote:
| We should try to read each others' comments in the most
| charitable light possible.
|
| In this case, I think the friendly way to interpret that
| comment is as an attempt to anticipate and pre-empt a very
| common and harmful misconception about sex workers.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| I'm not sure how else you could interpret it.
| isoskeles wrote:
| It comes off as strange to me because it doesn't make a
| difference if a "sex worker" is intelligent or not. And
| this goes for any job that doesn't require brilliance. Am
| I supposed to feel better for, more accepting of, more
| sympathetic to, etc. a person because of their intellect?
| And if I have a problem with sex work, it has nothing to
| do with how I perceive the intellect of the workers, so
| the pre-empting seems unnecessary.
|
| Maybe comments should read each others' future, unwritten
| comments in the most charitable light possible. Otherwise
| it starts looking like we're writing up preemptive
| strawmen.
|
| Also, it is quite clear that comment was written to
| elicit sympathy. I can see why someone gets angry when
| intellect is used as a justification for sympathy.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Pointing out that someone is intelligent is useful, in
| this case, as a general "well, this can happen to anyone"
| kind of comment, and to break stereotypes about how sex
| workers all fit some narrow stereotype.
|
| That is important to point out, as sometimes people
| generalize or attack people, unfairly, based on these
| things.
|
| Also, don't be so mad. It comes off as bad faith.
| [deleted]
| clevergadget wrote:
| It comes off as strange to me because it doesn't make a
| difference if a "sex worker" is intelligent or not.
|
| Tell me you don't understand sex work without telling me
| you don't understand sex work.
| immmmmm wrote:
| doesn't require brilliance? appart from her deep interest
| in science, she became one the top twenty most paid porn
| actress worldwide. i don't think this comes out of pure
| luck.
|
| it is true that the intelligence argument was arbitrary
| (it is my assessment of her) and perhaps clumsy. but
| again, go have a look on your favorite social media how
| these people are considered.
| isoskeles wrote:
| And for every one of the top twenty most paid porn
| actresses worldwide, there are probably ~2 million[1] who
| aren't that. I'm not saying your friend isn't intelligent
| when I say that sex work does not require brilliance, nor
| am I saying that intelligent sex workers don't exist. I
| am saying that sex work itself doesn't have employers
| screening candidates for their level of intelligence.
| This should be a fairly uncontroversial remark IMO. It's
| not strictly about your friend, and I'll take your word
| for it that she's quite smart.
|
| 1: https://prostitution.procon.org/questions/how-many-
| prostitut...
| immmmmm wrote:
| agreed, that she "made it" doesn't imply much. my bad.
|
| scientific circles are quite a bit the same, in term
| screening and funding.
|
| and yes we shouldn't forget the other ones (why not
| developing a better, safer and fairer platform btw).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Wow youre so naive I wish I was you
| drakythe wrote:
| I don't think it is just the One Click Solution they want
| (though I don't deny that is probably very attractive). I'm
| pretty sure we would see more vanity URLs and one-off sites if
| payment processors weren't so strict when it comes to selling
| adult content/services. Spinning up a CMS website of your own,
| even with commerce/membership functionality, isn't difficult.
| But the payment processors are the unspoken guardians of
| internet commerce, and without VC level backing good luck
| getting them to touch something like adult content.
|
| I think this is a missing piece of OFs popularity and
| usefulness to creators. Not only is it a centralized and (by
| now) well known site for this kind of content. OF deals with
| the payment processors, the charge backs, and the disputes. It
| is relatively seamless for the content creators in that regard.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| This is exactly the sort of problem cryptocurrencies were
| created to solve. Nobody should need some payment processor's
| permission for anything. People should be able to get paid in
| cryptocurrencies as if it was cash.
|
| Monero is ideal for this sort of thing.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > But the payment processors are the unspoken guardians of
| internet commerce, and without VC level backing good luck
| getting them to touch something like adult content.
|
| You're completely correct here. The only other real option in
| this space is CCBill - and they:
|
| a) only do payments - not hosting and everything that OF does
|
| b) still take a ~18-20% cut, in addition to annual flat fees
|
| c) are really fucking unbelievably terrible
| app4soft wrote:
| > _My biggest shock was how much "PR" was generated on Reddit_
|
| Here is Twitter event by _Tech Insider_.[0,1]
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/TechInsider/status/1430654887327682565
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/TechInsider/events/1430648239171198984
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Why do we call pornstars sex workers and not artists?
| immmmmm wrote:
| they are both. but the former is less controversial.
| psyc wrote:
| There's a lot going on in the porn world, especially now that
| it's, er, democratized. Sex workers is very broad. Porn stars
| is a little fuzzy. Some porn stars are big names, and/or can
| actually act pretty well. Or excel at creating fantasies. A
| surprising number of cam girls just sit at their desk fully
| clothed, chin in hand, and the only action is their eyes
| darting around their monitor while bad background music gets
| mangled through their microphone.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| "Sex workers" is synonymous with prostitution. Pornography
| is a form of art. "Sex artists" would make more sense. "Sex
| worker" sounds very pedestrian, we don't call actors or
| singers "theater workers". As for the girls just sitting in
| their desks that doesnt sound like sex-related work at all,
| they might as well be called cam-artists. This is a not a
| tiny niche anymore, there is space for more than one terms.
| partdavid wrote:
| > "Sex workers" is synonymous with prostitution.
|
| No, it's not, it's an umbrella term covering multiple
| kinds of sexually-explicit work people do, including
| prostitution, fetish modelling, camming, stripping, phone
| sex.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work
|
| > there is space for more than one terms.
|
| That's right, there's more than one term. When you want
| to say something about porn actors, you can use that
| term. When you want to say something about sex workers,
| you can use that term. When you want to say something
| about artists, you can use that term. They are different
| but overlapping terms and which one you use depends on
| what you're saying.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Interesting, i ve heard it more used to refer to
| prostitution -- do ,e.g. strippers count as sex workers?
| Also, even that article is confusing, for example it says
| that sex work is prohibited in most of the world, but
| camming is legal almost everywhere.
| partdavid wrote:
| Well, I think the intention behind it is that it's an
| umbrella term; I'm sure there's lots of gray area around
| the edges--I doubt anyone thinks there's a bright line
| where it's "sex work" on this side and "not sex work" on
| the other. Maybe that's part of the point, it's somewhat
| loose. But the intention is to include workers other than
| prostitutes.
| spidersouris wrote:
| > Pornography is a form of art.
|
| Pornography is as much art as streaming video games or
| uploading card opening videos to YouTube are a form of
| art.
|
| Pornography is entertainment, and not all entertainments
| are art. In spite of all the more or less recent porn
| videos labeled "Art Porn," which, in fact, rather depicts
| passionate sexual intercourse, pornography cannot
| reasonably be considered art in the traditional sense.
| Pornography does not elevate your spirit, it does not
| make you feel a broad range of emotions, and there is no
| real creativity, or it is utterly limited to a mediocre
| plot and a few different environments.
|
| What definition of art do you have in mind that makes you
| think that pornography is art?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| that's a very narrow definition that excludes a lot of
| mediocre works which are typically classified as art. I m
| not interested in that discussion as much in why porn and
| prostitution are lumped together.
| [deleted]
| scythe wrote:
| "Porn artist" might be taken to mean the people who make
| pornographic drawings/animations. Actors aren't colloquially
| referred to as "artists" most of the time; they're called
| actors.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is a good chance that any given reddit post in the widely
| viewed subreddits is posted in order to get people to look at
| the user's profile or other posts and follow it back to their
| only fans page.
| finalfire wrote:
| That's pretty right. In particular, there is a (huge)
| subreddit devoted to selfies where a high number of users
| that post in there have a OF link present in their biography.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| I guess that's on you for attempting to conceptually limit the
| the wellspring of internet angst 4chan, incel, reddit, and
| twitter have become.
| da_chicken wrote:
| > _People really do just want a one click solution for creating
| adult content, and consuming adult content._
|
| Once they know it's possible, people want a one click solution
| for anything. The subject being taboo has nothing to do with
| it.
|
| This is one reason why Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix did
| such a good job combatting piracy for music, video games, and
| movies, while ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20
| year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made
| content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so
| they're still widely pirated.
| jedberg wrote:
| Netflix is getting into games for a reason. It's unclear if
| they only play to make new ones or also license old ones.
|
| But I agree with you, I'm surprised Steam doesn't have a way
| to get old ROMs.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > But I agree with you, I'm surprised Steam doesn't have a
| way to get old ROMs.
|
| They sell old games, e.g. Sonic the Hedgehog: https://store
| .steampowered.com/app/71113/Sonic_The_Hedgehog/
|
| That's a Windows program that runs a Sega Genesis emulator
| that loads the game's ROM.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That doesn't entitle me to run the game on a much better
| emulator with RetroArch or apply fun ROM hacks on it.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It doesn't stop you either.
| gowld wrote:
| They'll have to compete with SuperStonk GameStop... (and
| GeForce Now, and Stadia...)
| kbenson wrote:
| > But I agree with you, I'm surprised Steam doesn't have a
| way to get old ROMs.
|
| Not quite old ROMs, but gog.com sells old computer games
| prepackaged for Dosbox, which because of that work on
| Windows, Mac and Linux. That's basically the old PC
| computer equivalent of what I believe Nintendo does by
| shipping the emulator with the ROM when you buy it through
| the Virtual Console so it runs as a whole.
| speeder wrote:
| I am abandonware collector of sorts, and one thing I
| liked is how all major abandonware site happily link to
| GOG.com when the game is up there.
| munk-a wrote:
| GOG has been earning a lot of my praise recently for not
| only hosting binaries - but actually putting labour into
| making sure their games run on modern systems. This is
| particularly important for games from the era of weird
| sound cards that can't render audio quite right without a
| vintage soundblaster - but also goes for games that were
| simply designed with DOS expectations in place.
|
| Back in the day I was a big fan of an SSI game called
| Imperialism - this game pretty much refuses to run on
| modern software - it needs DOSBox to run smoothly and
| even then it does custom cursor stuff that tends to screw
| up very obviously on modern systems - the GOG version of
| the game runs smooth like butter.
|
| Why would I ever pirate a copy of Imperialism and spend a
| day actually getting it set up to run _sorta_ decently on
| my machine - when I can grab it off GOG for 1.89 CAD? A
| day of my time, even an hour of my time (even my leisure
| time), runs well above 2$ at this point - the convenience
| is there so pirating becomes a bad value proposition.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| The Sega Genesis games they sell are basically just ROMs.
| You can go into the folders where they are installed and
| grab them to use in a different emulator.
| lobocinza wrote:
| > Steam doesn't have a way to get old ROMs.
|
| Licensing hell.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Yeah, I'd settle for being able to buy No One Lives
| Forever and NOLF2 again on Steam, and those games are a
| lot younger.
| jedberg wrote:
| I am sure it is, but I figure if anyone can crack that
| nut, it's Valve.
| lawn wrote:
| And also why piracy is increasing again as the movie/TV
| series space is becoming so fragmented.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I've actually heard that quite often and it seems
| anecdotally true to me, but is there actually any study to
| prove this?
| ddingus wrote:
| I don't have a numerical proof based on numbers myself
| either, but myself and everyone in my circles has
| increased.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Nope.
|
| There was a little upkick at the start of the pandemic
| according to Sandvine, but Sandvine's methodology is not
| watertight and lots of people staying at home with not
| much to do seems a more likely culprit than service
| fragmentation.
| toyg wrote:
| anecdotally, I freeload on a Netflix account paid for by
| a friend, and last year I was tempted to get my own
| subscription. Then I noticed Netflix had fewer and fewer
| movies I was interested in, and just went back to sailing
| the high seas.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Yea, it's their Achilles heel.
|
| You can throw money at directors, and actors, but there
| are just so many great movies, and most were made by
| hollywood years ago.
|
| The owners of those great films, started their own
| streaming service.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Yeah. The attraction of Netflix was the ease of access to
| a lot of desirable content even faster than finding it
| online somewhere else*
|
| But, nowadays it feels like Netflix's catalog is full of
| its self made titles(Some of them are great), but less
| and less "popular" ones that we heard of somewhere and
| just want to watch.
|
| If I am expected to shuffle around multiple streaming
| subscriptions, and pay for them individually, it is not
| that different from the cable TV model that these guys
| took on against.
|
| Sailing the high seas indeed!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It is one of the biggest reasons to use torrents. You
| see, this is the only non-fragmented service that has
| _all_ media content!
|
| Now, of only there was a way to have a moderated search
| for _all_ content on all trackers.... Maybe there is one
| already, and its just that i don 't know it?
| whoaisme wrote:
| People like you always say you will pay but never do, not
| because of BS like selection but because you are cheap
| and will never pay for something you can steal. I dont
| even know why you'd pretend to be interested in paying.
| tacLog wrote:
| I found this site from the torrentfreak link below and
| thought it was pretty cool.
|
| https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 If
| you flip thru the years at least the top movies in 2018
| have more downloads than the top movies in 2021. I think
| that can somewhat safely answer your questions.
|
| EDIT: WRONG because as a comment points out below older
| movies also might just have been downloaded more over
| time.
|
| From this site, it doesn't look like their was much of an
| uptick in top downloaded movies from 2019 to 2020. And in
| general torrenting has been growing less popular.
|
| However, the numbers on this site in general don't sanity
| check very well for me. For example, the End Game
| Avengers movie, which was incredibly popular, was only
| downloaded: 2,890 times in 2019? That doesn't seem high
| enough to me.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| I don't torrent when I pirate anymore (or use usenet).
| Torrent stats might be going down because there are
| easier alternatives.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| A friend who torrents these things just checked for me
| and saw well over a 100,000 'snatches' for that Avengers
| flick on just one private torrent tracker.
|
| So yeah, not 2,890. Think millions.
| tacLog wrote:
| > A friend who torrents these things just checked for me
| and saw well over a 100,000 'snatches' for that Avengers
| flick on just one private torrent tracker.
|
| This makes far more sense, I wonder why their numbers are
| so bad.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It does make some sense that movies which have been
| available for three years could have more downloads than
| movies which have been available for one year.
| tacLog wrote:
| I didn't think of this at all. This throws the tenuous
| conclusions I was drawing completely out the window.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Yeah but if most people have services - I have three -
| then the most popular movies for that year will be on all
| the services almost. Endgame has been on all my services
| at some point over the last couple years. I've seen it
| probably 20+ times. Probably also the people who are most
| likely to want to watch Endgame have services.
| tacLog wrote:
| By services you mean, Netflix, Hulu and similar right?
| Not plex, or the various illegal streaming sites?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| right.
| asdff wrote:
| https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-and-filesharing-traffic-
| surg...
| e40 wrote:
| I had completely stopped downloading movies in 2018, and
| even for that year, I downloaded very few. I had been
| tapering off since 2015. These are real numbers from my
| NAS. I got a seedbox 2 months ago. This was my last
| straw: trying to rent some movie on Amazon and was told I
| had to subscribe to some service to watch it--there was
| no price to watch it once.
|
| The other things I did recently: 1) paused Google YTTV
| because NBA season was over 2) canceled Netflix because I
| never watch it
|
| I've been watching content (some of it very old, like
| _The Larry Sanders Show_ ) on HBO Max, but the app on
| Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch
| it on PLeX.
|
| The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple
| seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I
| have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| > The Amazon app/UI is _HORRIBLE_ , too.
|
| Zero control over playback speed is the deal killer for
| me.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I was pretty pissed off to discover the HBO Max Roku app
| is such garbage - after paying for HBO Max for a year.
| vageli wrote:
| > The Amazon app/UI is _HORRIBLE_ , too. Like multiple
| seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I
| have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
|
| Not only that but I've even seen the seasons presented in
| no order whatsoever: i.e Season 2 followed by Season 8.
| It is nonsensical.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Ironically, the biggest russian torrent site is just a
| phpbb forum and it is _wonderfully_ organized and very
| well moderated. Easy to find the content you want.
|
| Fun fact: previously it tried to cooperate with the
| content owners and removed content by request, so the UX
| was considerably worse. But then, someone successfully
| litigated to block them 'forever' in Russia, so... They
| restored all prevoiusly removed content and now it has
| almost everything I ever wanted. Great win!
| anothernewdude wrote:
| It's harder to study now that torrents aren't the only
| alternative.
| rusk wrote:
| These files are so simple to distribute - there's no
| engineering challenge and it's very hard to justify building
| a moat. That's one thing the notables you list did, beyond
| merely gatekeeping content.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Well there is BitTorrent and filesharing but they made it
| illegal
| munk-a wrote:
| It's never been more legal than it is today - it's not like
| in 1997 KaZaA and Morpheus were bastions of legal activity.
| funnyThing7 wrote:
| For a very long time in the Netherlands you could
| download movies and music from unauthorized sources, as
| you were indirectly paying content creators because of
| "copy taxes" on data drives, burnable discs etc. It was
| sort of a loophole but it was completely legal. Those
| were the days.
|
| Then suddenly the highest court disallowed it. Guess
| what, we still pay the copy tax.
|
| Clarification: The copy tax was meant to compensate
| copyright owners for consumers making copies (for private
| use) of purchased media. It was widely interpreted as to
| allow downloading from the internet as well (even from
| pirated sources).
| munk-a wrote:
| Ah sorry yes - my comment was made from an
| American/Canadian perspective - I know that other parts
| of the world have been significantly more progressive in
| the past.
| [deleted]
| jstanley wrote:
| Why is piracy of games for a 20-year-old console a problem?
| Is anyone still selling _new_ games for those consoles?
| kevingadd wrote:
| The rightsholder wants to be able to sell the game to you
| again on a new platform to keep collecting revenue off it
| aeturnum wrote:
| People getting ROMs to play on another device doesn't
| stop them from doing that any more than the original
| systems and game carts stop them.
| jjav wrote:
| If that's the motivation, it's pretty misguided, since it
| is a completely different motivation to buy. I buy (or
| pirate if I can't) the old games for nostalgia fun, not
| so much for the gameplay or graphics. I then also buy the
| new game for the modern experience & gameplay.
| kadoban wrote:
| They want to have the option to resell you the exact same
| game emulated on the new systems too, see Wii Virtual
| Console I think it was called, and NES classic system,
| all of those.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Yes actually. You can still buy brand new copies of titles
| like Kingdom Hearts, FFXII and others for PS2 directly from
| Amazon.com and not a third party seller. For a while Square
| Enix was selling PS1 versions of FF games too although they
| have seemed to have stopped in the last few years.
| mkw2000 wrote:
| like 7 , maybe 8 people
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Because copyright holders like the idea of reselling the
| same games to you hundreds of times. Nintendo resells the
| exact same games to people every time they launch a
| console. Companies create low effort compilations all the
| time.
|
| You'd think they'd make their money and move on to new
| creations. You make something, it's successful, you make
| your money for 5 years or so and then it's public domain.
| You'd have to make new stuff to make more money. No.
| Copyright holders feel entitled to extract value out of
| their "property" essentially forever. It's the ultimate in
| rent seeking.
| dmarlow wrote:
| It's funny how the wheel goes round and round. I loved it
| when Netflix had a lot more content, but now that each
| studio/production/company offers its own, it's ending up like
| nothing more than streaming a la carte and people are
| returning to piracy rather than spend hundreds across various
| streaming services (like cable/dish...).
| markpapadakis wrote:
| Apologies for linking to something I wrote; I believe
| convenience is addictive:
| https://markpapadakis.medium.com/convenience-is-
| key-2aad97d5...
| fnord77 wrote:
| there'd probably be a netflix for ROMs if there were enough
| demand (I imagine the copyright holders would get onboard if
| the demand and $$ was there)
| kbenson wrote:
| I can see it now. Most ROMs would be available, but
| Nintendo would be notably absent from any of the platforms
| and only allow their ROMs to be streamed from their own
| service.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >Nintendo would be notably absent from any of the
| platforms and only allow their ROMs to be streamed from
| their own service.
|
| They already do this, you need a Switch online
| subscription to access the NES/SNES ROMs they have
| available
| kbenson wrote:
| Oh, I know, but in the theoretical world where there's a
| Netflix like subscription, I would assume that means a
| lot of different IP was also gathered there, like Sega,
| Atari, older Playstation and Xbox titles, etc.
|
| There's not a lot of incentive for some of those groups
| to come together, but I imagine even if most could be
| assembled, Nintendo would be particularly resistant.
| crtasm wrote:
| Until then, archive.org has lots playable in-browser.
|
| e.g. https://archive.org/details/internetarcade
|
| https://archive.org/details/sega_genesis_library
|
| https://archive.org/details/atari_8bit_library_games
| knodi123 wrote:
| haha, the genesis library is about 90% just different
| hacked versions of Sonic 1, with different sprites
| replacing Sonic. And one I found particularly cute,
| "Sonic's Unexciting Quest", which starts in a level
| called "Straight Line Zone".
| crtasm wrote:
| That one sounds hilarious.
|
| I didn't know how to filter out the romhacks, if you
| scroll down the majority of the collection is original
| games.
| ansible wrote:
| I doubt that's going to happen any time soon. Nintendo
| would rather publish its old games on its own store. Ditto
| for Microsoft and Sony. The older consoles now usually have
| a collection of ports for old games sold on the newer
| platforms, though those don't always behave true to the
| original platforms without special hardware.
| jandrese wrote:
| The only thing that prevents this from existing is the
| licensing nightmare of trying to track down who still owns
| the rights to those old ROMs. So many defunct companies and
| cases where even the people who worked on it have no idea
| who currently owns the rights.
|
| Had we kept the 28 year copyright duration from 1831 almost
| all ROM images would be in the Public Domain now.
| unilynx wrote:
| There should be a rule that if an IP was broadly
| commercialized at any point (eg. offered at a retail
| store) the owner can't resist any abandonware offering
| unless he's still offering the IP at RAND terms
|
| That still protects the individual artists and perhaps
| the Banskys but doesn't unnecessarily lock up these old
| games
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It's difficult in some cases but demand is absolutely the
| main driver.
|
| Much like Netflix, the reality is that people aren't
| actually very interested in old shows apart from a
| handful of super famous perennials which are already
| available anyway.
|
| They say they are in surveys, but consumer behaviour does
| not back that up. They just use newer content in
| practice.
| jandrese wrote:
| There is always interest in old shows, but not enough to
| deal with the licensing issues. You could have much wider
| libraries if the licensing was less of a nightmare.
| tialaramex wrote:
| And some of the licensing conflicts are because of an
| alliance that existed and made sense in say 1995 and
| today seems like inexplicable nonsense.
|
| For example indie creator studio makes video game for the
| PS1. It's a huge hit, they go on to make other popular
| games, and one day Microsoft buys them, morphs them into
| an in-house team. And then one day you realise you're
| arguing that, Microsoft (now the owner of the license)
| should release this Sony Playstation game. No. Not going
| to happen.
|
| When this stuff happens for individual humans, often even
| if the money doesn't mean anything to one person who is
| an obstacle, it _does_ mean something to their co-
| creators and they 'll do it for that. For example it
| would be possible for Alan Moore to have blocked a _lot_
| of stuff that uses his work, from the V for Vendetta
| movie (which lots of people liked but I felt missed the
| whole point) to the re-issues of Miracleman, but while
| Alan doesn 't care about money, the artists on that work
| do, and him blocking it would hurt them. So e.g. that's
| why modern copies of Moore's seminal run on Miracleman
| say they're by "The Original Author" in big text but
| never mention Moore by name, that's his condition, he
| doesn't want the Mouse's money, but his artists do.
|
| Corporations don't care though. If they can inconvenience
| a modern competitor by snuffing out an important cultural
| artefact that is exactly what they'll do.
|
| I'd actually advocate outright abolition of copyright.
| The associated moral rights have some place, but
| copyright is almost entirely a means for corporations to
| try to control culture for their own profit and we don't
| need it. But 28 years is a more acceptable middle ground
| I guess.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Sorry that should credit Moore as "The Original Writer"
| for Miracleman not "The Original Author". Had to go check
| my actual copies of the books.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| The issue is that the VG industry is pretty far behind in
| this respect, not that there's a lack of demand. Just look
| at how the NES/SNES classic consoles sold out in the blink
| of an eye and there were mass shortages.
|
| The demand is there, it's just a question of having a
| convenient enough package
| brundolf wrote:
| I think Nintendo in particular revels in the scarcity.
| They value their IP above all else, and they know that's
| what their customers value, and they want to squeeze it
| for every last drop of fan loyalty they can. See the
| artificially limited-time (digital!) release of "Mario 3D
| All-Stars":
| https://www.nintendo.com/products/detail/super-
| mario-3d-all-...
| toyg wrote:
| Sony kinda wrote the book on artificial scarcity with the
| first 2-3 playstations...
| netgash wrote:
| Probably not. Most cartridge games outside of first party
| titles are mired in a confusing mess of IP ownership.
| Consider what happens when the developer doesn't exist
| anymore, the publisher was acquired, the brand for the
| franchise is owned by one company, and the code for the
| original game is owned by a different company, which has no
| interest in making games.
| kipchak wrote:
| GameTap had a Decent collection of Sega consoles and arcade
| titles back in the day, though it unfortunately never got
| off the ground. Nintendo has been particularly aggressive
| regarding ligating against ROMs historically and sold them
| as individual units, though with the Switch's online
| service's free NES/SNES games it seems like they're dipping
| their toes into the model. I think the risk to them is if
| someone winds up playing say the GB version of Link's
| Awakening for free instead of the $60 remake.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I worked on GameTap! Old ROM websites at the time had
| these click-through agreements that would say things like
| "you may only download these ROMs if you have explicit,
| written permission from the publisher" and I may be on of
| the only living people who've clicked one of those "I
| agree" links in good faith.
|
| Technically, GameTap had some really neat little
| features. For example, it would track your high score for
| most emulated games, and for really old games where the
| score would rollover to zero, it noticed that and would
| let you see your effective grand total score. So there
| would be a global Galaga leaderboard that could happily
| go into the millions.
|
| Regarding the success of the service, Gametap was live
| for a few years. It totally had its shot. GameTap was
| regularly advertised on TV. It had a pretty big library
| covering a dozen or so platforms: Several Ataris,
| ColecoVision, Intellivision, Sega, PC games, and more.
| They did a few high profile things like buying some
| failed MMOs and keeping the servers running for all
| GameTap subscribers.
|
| At the end, I think it turned out that the folks who get
| really excited about playing ColecoVision games are the
| same folks who are very comfortable downloading ROMs.
| Romulus968 wrote:
| "ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old
| consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content
| easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so they're
| still widely pirated."
|
| The only example I can think of is Nintendo Online. You can
| play select NES and SNES games on the Switch with a N.O.
| subscription.
|
| I collect ROMs, I've got damned near 4Tb worth. I collect for
| two reasons:
|
| 1. Archiving 2. Most of the "good" vintage games carry
| ridiculous prices. Games that had over 10 million copies
| pressed going for $100+. Even if we assume 1 million were
| destroyed, that's still 9 million copies floating about. Not
| exactly rare or worth $100.
| mattl wrote:
| How are there 4TB of ROMs? Does that number include non ROM
| dumps like CD, DVD and BD games too?
| joemi wrote:
| CD, DVD and BD are all ROMs too. In a computer (and
| therefore videogame console) sense, these all are
| technically called CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and BD-ROM.
| mattl wrote:
| I'd think of them as ISOs. But I can see why they'd be
| considered ROMs too.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I swapped my NES cart of Dragion Warrior IV with a friend
| for his copy of Dragon Warrior III in high school; it was
| supposed to be temporary but we both went off to college
| and never saw each other again. I looked into buying a copy
| of DW IV online and choked on the prices ($150 cart only).
| Apparently that game was a limited run though.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| Yep, I recently bought Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3. I'll
| buy 4 soon, but wow - it is not cheap. I play them on a
| Retron 5 which can play NES, SNES, GBA, Sega, and even
| Famicon cartridges. It also lets you set hot keys and
| toggle turbo mode. It's pretty great.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Game prices are part rarity, part demand. Pokemon games
| aren't rare, but they're always in demand so they always
| command decent prices. Plus even if millions of copies were
| sold the majority might not be English versions which are
| often most popular. Chrono Trigger for example sold
| millions in Japan and can easily be picked up for less than
| $20 in Japanese. US copies sold more like 500,000 and
| collectors outside the US are interested as well since
| English is much more of a common 1st or 2nd language than
| Japanese.
| asdff wrote:
| It's ridiculous that games like super smash bros are the
| same price whether you buy them new on a switch or used for
| a 25 year old n64. No clue why nintendo bothers ending
| production runs on games when they know people still buy
| sell and play 30 year old titles. They could just license
| the reruns to someone else to produce the cartriges and
| disks and make money hand over fist. It always seems like
| nintendo has blinders on and self sabotages with stuff like
| this all the time (nintendo online being a huge fail
| compared to something like xbox live which has been around
| for almost 20 years now). In my opinion they could easily
| overtake xbox and playstation marketshare just by being
| smarter with their IP and taking back this market that is
| currently totally owned by people on ebay and craigslist
| because of nintendo's short sightedness with their
| production runs.
| lobocinza wrote:
| I don't think they can undertake Xbox/Playstation.
| Nintendo is a niche while Xbox/Playstation another. I
| guess they just want people to buy newer consoles and
| games, which make sense for them.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't think selling smash bros 64 again will hurt their
| nintendo switch sales very much.
| mod50ack wrote:
| They did this for a number of years on Wii/Wii U. You
| could buy Smash 64 from them for $10. It wasn't nearly as
| popular as their current games. Paper Mario 64 for $10
| was sick, though. Loved it after having played TTYD.
| dTal wrote:
| For that matter - why not sell N64-compatible consoles?
| You could make them incredibly cheaply now, and they're
| definitely still in demand. Are they scared of
| cannibalizing their "high end"?
| desine wrote:
| Why do you think they would be cheap? Many of the
| relevant chips have been out of production for decades.
| Sure you can emulate a lot on a logic device like an
| FPGA, but those are still expensive compared to a
| microprocessor, and your engineering costs will go up.
| Then you're facing stiff competition- a vintage gamers
| ideal is exact hardware. Any sort of emulation will have
| slight quirks- timing changes, mildly perceptible audio
| frequency shifts, etc. if your product isn't an exact
| match for the hardware, it's competing with the hundreds
| of ARM based emulation oriented systems that popped up
| after the RetroPi concept took off. And for what, a few
| thousands units of sales? Most people fall into "fine
| with emulation + ROM". A select few stick with vintage
| hardware, which is not expensive. The market for "very
| close to original hardware but not quite" is a hard sell.
| TillE wrote:
| You're Nintendo, you have all the original specs, you can
| literally make an exact clone on an FPGA (or whatever's
| cheapest).
|
| I don't disagree that the market is small, though. But
| Nintendo does have a chronic problem of under-
| manufacturing desirable hardware. Like, if you want a
| SNES Classic (good emulator, fantastic controllers),
| you'll have to pay 2-3x the original price. Nintendo
| could do another run of them every year for basically no
| effort, and they just...don't.
| mod50ack wrote:
| The other thing is that a lot of games from 20 years ago
| can't even be bought anymore from the original source. But
| from ten years ago is even worse --- you just CAN'T get any
| piece of WiiWare without pirating it. You can't buy it used.
| samstave wrote:
| The RES addon has been a godsend for reddit for YEARS.
|
| I love to browse by /r/all -- but I have spent a long while
| +Filtering out so many subreddit - and running it with Res and
| adblock etc... I have a super sleek and fun experience on
| Reddit with my 15-year-old account...
|
| Some memes are cool - most are lame.
|
| I have never been interested in 4chan nor twitter (I think
| twitter is the new "National Inquirer type" -- I think of
| tweets as those horrific multi colored snippet boxes on the
| front of tabloids.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > People really do just want a one click solution for creating
| adult content
|
| They want a solution for _distributing_ adult content and
| _getting paid for it._
|
| By far, the single biggest hurdle here is payment processing -
| as evidenced by this whole OnlyFans fiasco. It's Visa and
| Mastercard who are pressuring OF - they've been doing this to
| sex workers for decades, but finally picked a fight big enough
| that it's getting real media backlash.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| > My biggest shock was how much "PR" was generated on Reddit
|
| And the winner ist: _viggity_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237827
| newbamboo wrote:
| It is in keeping with the general theme of things.
| whymauri wrote:
| it's pretty huge
|
| COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard. There's
| huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge
| groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine. Across the
| whole world, too*. Many can easily make more than min wage, and
| in certain niches you probably don't even have to be
| 'conventionally beautiful' (sorry to use this term, but it's
| important I think) to make a living or solid portion of a
| living on there.
|
| For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial
| jobs with a risk of COVID?
|
| And if you price model right, you don't need thousands of fans,
| just a couple really dedicated superfans/whales.
|
| * Consider the value of dollars/euros/pounds in poorer
| countries!
| ronnier wrote:
| > huge groups who are sexually repressed
|
| Men I assume given the amounts of money they'll spend on OF
| and the m/f ratios on dating apps?
| acituan wrote:
| > COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard
|
| Aren't women over-represented on the supply side while men on
| the demand side though? I don't think gen-z as a wholesale
| cohort makes sense.
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| Women are also overrepresented on the side of loosing job.
|
| Mostly artly because women work in segments that were hit
| harder - services and the like. And partly because
| childcare is more on them, mothers were even more likely to
| loose jobs.
| [deleted]
| treesknees wrote:
| Bhad Bhabie (cash me outside meme girl) made over $1M in 6
| hours and said she could retire right now from the amount of
| money she has made off OF. And she's not doing "porn" or even
| posting fully nude photos.
|
| There's a big movement to gain a lot of followers on social
| media like TikTok and then redirect those followers to their
| $5/month OnlyFans. There are a lot of people making a living
| or at least significantly boosting their income from this
| model, and they don't have to leave the house to do it.
|
| https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-
| hop/9550662/b...
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| OF is probably similar to Etsy, where the 95th percentile
| make millions and the median income is $0.
| toyg wrote:
| that's just the web for you, really. 95 percentile is
| FAANG and friends, median income is peanuts.
| redisman wrote:
| Every "social" or user generated platform is like that.
| Handful of people make serious money, then a small middle
| class and 90% are just trying to chase their dream while
| making <$100 a month
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| OF is significantly different from other social media in
| that the adult market has a lot of really weird market
| factors that make even new market participants able to
| access significant revenue. Most OF people aren't making
| 10 million, but it's better to compare OF to patreon
| where most small users are still pulling in a few hundred
| dollars a month at least - and that's a pretty
| significant amount if you've graduated from school into a
| pandemic market.
| dwater wrote:
| I have an acquaintance who I know made ~$1500 in 2 weeks,
| just after work occasionally. She had been on the site
| already, the only reason I know the amount made during
| that time is she did it as a fundraiser and donated it
| all to a non-profit. I'm sure it's a distribution with a
| long tail, but I think it's probably easier to have a
| side gig on OF provide you with a little supplemental
| income rather than Etsy.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Twitch is certainly that way as well.
|
| The median viewer count is likely single digits.
|
| Though I can say with considerable certainty that a lot
| of wannabe Twitch streamers think that being a streamer
| just means having people watch you play a game, which
| _may_ be true for story-driven games that don 't get a
| lot of viewers, since it creates a more movie-like
| experience, and _may_ be true for highly-competitive
| games where you can watch someone make amazing plays. But
| for the rest, you need to have the charisma and
| creativity to create entertaining commentary and audience
| interaction.
|
| Nobody wants to watch an average Joe play World of
| Warcraft.
| kd5bjo wrote:
| In the Justin.tv days, the median viewer count was zero:
| At any given time, 2/3 of the live channels had literally
| nobody watching.
| Anther wrote:
| I was proud of my JTV channel. I actually used to vlog
| and chat to people. They regularly featured me too. I
| wonder how much I could have made in today's market..
| oblio wrote:
| Taleb -> Extremistan.
|
| It's super toxic for society since it's literally "winner
| takes all".
| randycupertino wrote:
| I can't speak to Bhad Bhabie's Only Fans, but I will say
| her song Gucci Flipflops is a good jam:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsp7IOr7Q9A
| pelasaco wrote:
| In Germany, all Craftsmen are just laughing. Tiler,
| Carpenter, electrician, etc.. all of them have enough to do,
| can choose their clients and their wages. I understand that
| HN always will tend to talk about CS, but Craftsmen are doing
| their 40k/year, easily. The Salary potential is just
| increasing.
| scns wrote:
| Well, some of those destroy your body in 25 years
| (Roofer/back, Tiler/knees), as a Carpenter you have to work
| with toxic laquer without getting compensated for it like
| Painters do. If you don't have your own shop at 40 you are
| pretty much screwed.
| yitchelle wrote:
| Comparing jobs solely based on income is a nonsense
| comparison.
|
| The two class of jobs are so different. Scalability,
| physicality, career path, longevity etc all comes into
| picture.
|
| The discussion has been going around in cycles for many
| years.
| pelasaco wrote:
| What I wanted to point was that talking about
| "employability", people don't have to go to a university
| to get a degree and then try to find a job. There are
| other great ways to make enough money to don't have to
| end on OnlyFans.
| asdff wrote:
| In Germany there must be an undersupply of these laborers.
| Come to California and you will find electricians with
| years of experience, all sorts of craftsman, woodworkers,
| tilers, roofers, hvac specialists, approaching you with
| your three cans of paint and asking you for work in the
| home depot parking lot. Maybe that's just what happens
| though when you get your working experience in another
| country like Mexico or El Salvador and these trades in the
| U.S. are protected by a licensing process that doesn't care
| about relevant unlicensed experience.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > approaching you with your three cans of paint and
| asking you for work in the home depot parking lot. Maybe
| that's just what happens though
|
| Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding.
| It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.
| asdff wrote:
| I live where the median home is 900k and there is still
| no shortage of handymen and general contractor labor here
| if you are willing to pay for work under the table. It's
| an interesting dynamic.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| It's not an issue of how expensive houses is, it's an
| issue of how many houses are being built. California has
| the slowest housing starts of any major state in the
| country. That same carpenter would have his pick of job
| sites in Florida.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The licensing process helps make sure that the
| electrician that has 10 years of experience in El
| Salvador understands American wiring codes and practices
| before he does something that'll burn your house down.
|
| For sure there are common skills that all electricians
| share regardless of country, but there are still
| significant differences between countries, like in the UK
| ring circuits are common, but are against code in the
| USA.
|
| _licensing process that doesn 't care about relevant
| unlicensed experience_
|
| The problem with unlicensed experience is that it
| provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring
| practice. Like when I found that my house had several
| MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or
| someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers
| with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe
| situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving
| breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg,
| which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when
| I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put
| a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage
| outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant
| 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.
| asdff wrote:
| What is ironic about your examples is that you had all
| these problems with unlicensed work in a place where
| licensing is still required. So whats the point of the
| license even if so much work is done that isn't licensed?
| People who will cheap out will cheap out no matter what
| the laws say, and people who pay for good work will
| continue to pay for good work.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| In my jurisdiction, minor electrical work can be done by
| the homeowner (as long as it's a single family home). I
| think technically even major electrical word can be done
| by the homeowner as long as it's inspected and signed
| off, though it's possible that the inspector will require
| electrician signoff first.
|
| But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador
| can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner
| may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa,
| you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it
| more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been
| doing this work for 20 years back home"
| anonAndOn wrote:
| >all sorts of craftsman, woodworkers, tilers, roofers,
| hvac specialists
|
| He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair,
| house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and
| general dentistry (if you ask).
| yvdriess wrote:
| Not Germany, but similar situation in Belgium:
|
| Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first
| 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a
| university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get
| into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5
| years head start when saving for your first house loan.
| After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours,
| weekend and night shifts.
|
| After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The
| craftsmen either they worked their way into a more
| supervising role or are not able or willing to do the
| lucrative labor hours.
|
| The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed
| to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are
| simply not enough to replace the
| lostandbored wrote:
| Your comment was cut off at the end, mate.
| lugged wrote:
| You know Devs can relatively easily get around 250k in NY /
| SF right?
|
| Trades are solid career choices but it's hard work and you
| expire at about the same rate as a software dev.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| So sick of seeing these wildly inflated numbers, they
| increase after every post I'm sure. Most of us here who
| are software devs are not earning close to 150k, stop
| using a few SF salaries as the baseline for the rest of
| us. It is really annoying.
| yolovoe wrote:
| I only have 1 YOE and I'll say the numbers sound right. A
| friend with 2 YOE got 2 290K offers. Another
| friend/former co-worker with 8 YOE got a 400K+ offer.
|
| These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based
| companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.
|
| You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads
| (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places
| like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar
| is very high at these places.
| raztogt21 wrote:
| Is easily doable have 2 100k jobs without burnout. Do you
| really spend 8 hours coding each day?
| dlp211 wrote:
| Ok, so let's not use inflated Numbers for the trades
| either. According to the BLS, the median Software
| Developer makes $110k. The median carpenter makes $34k.
| There are also nearly 5x the number of Developer jobs
| then carpenters.
|
| It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k,
| welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
|
| Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc,
| the story is similar to developers, high median salary
| with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I know that your talking about the US, but I assure you
| no Danish carpenters work for $34K, unless they are still
| in training. You can easily triple that $34K which places
| you nicely in the same area as a developer with 10 to 15
| years of experience.
|
| The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely
| high even compared to one of the most expensive countries
| in the world.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Sorry, but without some sort of source, I am skeptical,
| but also acknowledge that different markets and economies
| will reward labor in different ways. So when it comes to
| the US this is a common talking point on the English
| speaking internet, "the trades pay well", "my buddy makes
| $150k a year as a carpenter, so you should think about
| becoming a carpenter too", etc. The fundamental problem
| is that while yes, there are people who make good money
| in the trades, on average, it simply isn't true, as
| opposed to being a software engineer, where the average
| employee is compensated quite well.
| hluska wrote:
| My sister has a trade and has talked about the salary
| distribution enough that I think it's going to be very
| hard for anyone to ever agree on numbers.
|
| She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller)
| group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere
| whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work
| seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there's
| nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into
| double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes
| home after work and their overtime is limited to
| nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two
| groups that if they're analyzed together, the
| statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the
| typical tradesperson.
| dlp211 wrote:
| I actually wouldn't be surprised to find that most labor
| markets are bi-modal (but certainly not all). Which is
| why I used median wage and not average wage, because the
| median is very likely to grab the common tradespersons
| compensation experience whereas the average is likely to
| be skewed high by the upper distribution group.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Median Danish carpenter makes $63k/yr. Very few make over
| $75k
|
| https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/carpenter/denmark
| User23 wrote:
| The big upside of the trades is that after working for
| journeyman wages for a while, learning the job, and
| establishing a reputation, it becomes possible to own
| your own business, either by founding or buying out a
| retiring boomer, of which there are many. At that point
| your earning potential skyrockets into the millions.
| dlp211 wrote:
| The problem with this is the same as assuming that every
| developer is earning a GAFAM salary. It just isn't
| applicable to the average employee in the given
| profession. I'm also extremely skeptical that yearly
| profit potential is in the millions for trade businesses
| except in extremely rare cases.
| User23 wrote:
| It's pretty easy to search business broker websites for
| $1 million and up EBITDA businesses. I can't answer your
| question about prevalence from that since I don't know on
| average what percentage are for sale.
|
| I do know though that it's pretty common for the seller
| to write the note financing the deal, especially when the
| buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is
| often within reach.
|
| Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking
| businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits
| into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense
| competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn't be
| my first pick.
| AngryData wrote:
| If you start selling millions in contracts, then are
| really doing trades any more? You are a business manager
| and you need business management skills. Many people go
| into trades specifically to avoid that kind of life, they
| could have gotten a business degree instead if that is
| what they wanted.
| com2kid wrote:
| > It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is
| $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
|
| A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr
| minimum, and that is after the employers cut.
|
| A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over
| 100/hr.
|
| An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.
|
| Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax
| burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving
| between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of
| that.
|
| The trades people I know are booked out _months_. The
| general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and
| he comes in at an affordable $60 /hr!
|
| Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater,
| have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to
| live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they
| designed themselves.
| jjav wrote:
| It really puts in context how software development isn't
| a particularly good career, depressingly.
|
| The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in
| both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that
| have established themselves have very flexible work
| schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when
| they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work
| is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or
| take time off, that's also possible without
| repercussions.
|
| Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+
| hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation"
| (aka don't dare take vacation ever).
|
| Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile
| soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Keep in mind that most trade work isn't mentally
| stimulating. That may sound fine to you, but as someone
| who bounces back and forth between a job that is and
| isn't - it can be rough in it's own way.
|
| It's boring and you can practically feel your brain turn
| to slush.
| sharken wrote:
| I feel the same way - even a well paid but not mentally
| stimulating job would suck.
|
| Getting challenges on the job is a requirement for a good
| job.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I've never worked 60 hours. I've managed 40h or under for
| 20+ years. I've worked two full time jobs and have done
| 60h for periods. I would not recommend it.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Meanwhile in software land it 's either great pay at 60+
| hours a week, or nothing_
|
| This is just not true. There are loads of FAANG
| developers making well into 6 figures with 40 hour weeks.
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| > But since work is per job, when they want to work a few
| hours a week or take time off, that's also possible
| without repercussions.
|
| I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't
| think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day
| of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's
| something you learn to live with but I appreciate that
| the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Sure but now you're talking about an above median plumber
| in an above median col area. A similarly above average
| software dev in Seattle is probably pulling in 250k/year
| all in.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Median Journeyman Plumber in Seattle earns $40/hr
|
| https://www.indeed.com/career/journeyman-
| plumber/salaries/Se...
| AngryData wrote:
| People do that with every job it seems. Always somebody
| talking about random tradesmen making $100k+ but in the
| vast majority of cases they make nowhere near that.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| If you're in the US, don't be annoyed with these numbers;
| learn from them. If you get on LinkedIn and expect >
| $200k, you may be surprised by what you can achieve.
|
| You should line up several interviews all in the same
| week and play the offers against one another. At least
| one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That
| highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will
| need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims
| that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs,
| and you may be _shocked_ at the amount of compensation
| you can get.
|
| You can actually do it.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I make $200k as a mid-level and that's considered low.
| I'm not in NYC.
|
| Side note - fan of your username.
| ipaddr wrote:
| What languages do you use?
| Game_Ender wrote:
| They are not inflated numbers they are what you can get
| working for a set of top companies with deep pockets
| competing over the same talent. It varies but 150k is
| _entry level_ comp pretty much anywhere they hire in the
| United States [0].
|
| It's not "fair" but it's worth your time to look into
| getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the
| most market value their.
|
| 0 - http://levels.fyi
| jshen wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted because this is
| accurate. If you are a low level dev at a big company in
| a major city you will get a salary of at least $100k, a
| bonus, and stock options. They easily combine to get you
| to $150k, and I'm talking entry level roles, it goes up
| considerably from there.
| jdsfighter wrote:
| Well I'm obviously in the wrong market then! Down here in
| Oklahoma, I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and I'm only at
| $110k, plus around $10k in bonuses a year. There's very
| few opportunities for salary increases unless I start
| looking for remote work outside of the state or I opt to
| move into a management role.
|
| Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the
| $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry
| level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.
| jshen wrote:
| People make more in big cities, it's actually been
| studied across the globe and the data is rather
| compelling.
| [deleted]
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I don't know the breakdown, but I'm a (remote) dev in
| Arkansas making right at $150k with ~10 years experience.
|
| The numbers aren't inflated, they're just not equally
| distributed.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Ok, but I'm not from NY/SF but I'm assuming based on the
| small amount of time that I spent there, that every thing
| is more expensive there, including housing and medical
| care... In Germany (Europe?) I would say that a Software
| Developer salary floats between 30k/y - 100k/y.
| aerosmile wrote:
| It's actually a more complex topic that it appears at
| first. Some things are much more expensive, but some are
| identical to everywhere else - eg:
|
| - vacations
|
| - cars
|
| - all online purchases
|
| - most hobbies
|
| - etc...
|
| When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than
| before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car.
| Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up
| to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also
| lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.
| jshen wrote:
| Yeah, it's more expensive in the big cities, but if you
| by a house you tend to profit from that increase. It's
| hard to see that when in the early stages of your career,
| but I'm glad I stuck it out and didn't move to a low cost
| area.
|
| Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my
| home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in
| my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and
| my house has appreciated a ton.
|
| If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city,
| stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock
| options that are worth something, but a house when you
| can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all
| likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss
| called it the "get rich slowly plan". As a person that
| grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I
| can assure you it pays off.
| bradlys wrote:
| I don't know if the price increases will keep happening
| at the same historical rates. Although it isn't out of
| the realm of possibility, I have a hard time believing
| that the houses in my neighborhood in 5-10 years will go
| from $2-3m to $4-6m.
|
| Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn't buy it for the
| sake of expecting it to go up in value. I'd buy it
| because you need housing.
| forty wrote:
| Yes buy a house. If it goes up you are (potentially)
| rich, if it goes down, you have a house :)
| zsmi wrote:
| > I don't know if the price increases will keep happening
| at the same historical rates.
|
| Although you're not wrong, and crashes absolutely happen,
| I feel like I have been hearing that for at least 30
| years now.
|
| Just when it seems like things can't continue, the market
| always seems to find a way to support the higher prices.
|
| For example:
| https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/what-is-
| the-40-year...
|
| It's probably only a matter of time until the 40 is the
| new 30 year loan for everyone...
| jshen wrote:
| It's not hard to believe. First, the big caveat, what I'm
| about to say ignores the possibility of huge catastrophe
| (environmental collapse, world war, meteor hits the
| earth) because if such a catastrophe happens, most of
| this won't matter a whole lot.
|
| Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if
| your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in
| a big city, the populations are growing faster than new
| housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space
| to build many new single family homes so those will go up
| even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.
|
| I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble.
| Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it,
| and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower
| than rents for a comparable place.
|
| Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around
| exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and
| our population has historically (there are signs this
| might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our
| environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does,
| things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.
|
| Edit: also, I'm not suggesting that your home value will
| double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My
| point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| And in Germany senior devs make 50-100kEUR. You can't
| compare salaries without taking location into account.
| scrps wrote:
| I had to have my HVAC system repaired and I got to talking
| to the guy who was working on it and during the course of
| our conversation we started talking about pay... 100k-200k
| USD/yr he said wasn't unusual once you were done with
| school and got a little experience. I was floored, I called
| a family friend who does HVAC and he said that was about
| right. If I didn't love CS I'd be working in HVAC right
| now.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Median HVAC tech salary is $50k. Is it possible to make
| $200k or higher? Sure. But the HVAC people pulling down
| that comp are generally at that level primarily because
| of their business skills not their HVAC skills.
|
| It'd be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or
| cook, because of a small business owner who opened a
| restaurant.
|
| https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-
| Average-HV...
| crescentfresh wrote:
| Craftsmen who are willing to do a small job for me are so
| hard to find right now, they're busy enough NONE of them in
| my area need the business. Every quote I get is either
| overblown "to make it worth my time", or I simply get
| declined. Ontario, Canada.
| hippich wrote:
| similar thing happens in Austin, TX area. It took me
| several months to find a general contractor to just give
| me an estimate for the repairs (and he charged quite a
| lot for just that)
| AngryData wrote:
| Many trades are boom/bust cycle industries and it is in
| boom mode right now on top of inflated material prices.
| This is just the wrong time to need/want one.
| hluska wrote:
| That's interesting- this is the third time I've heard
| this about Ontario in less than a week. Do you have any
| idea what's driving this? Another person in the same boat
| believes that a lot of people are fixing up homes to sell
| while the market is hot. Another person believes that
| it's a supply problem - trades people left Ontario for
| Alberta, lost their jobs there and can't afford to move
| back.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| In my experience, having been a homeowner in Alberta
| first, then Ontario second - it's similar to software
| development...
|
| Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large
| amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating
| existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are
| quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away.
| (So... technical debt...)
|
| As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take
| small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my
| primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was
| reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for
| tradespeople.
| munk-a wrote:
| Ontario and BC have _extremely_ hot housing markets and
| the demand is off the charts - a lot of tilers and
| plumbers in BC get sucked into reno contracting companies
| and simply have enough work to keep them busy for years.
| I don 't think there was an exodus to Alberta -
| tradesfolk bring in serious cash in Canada so they can
| definitely afford to live in hot areas... I'd be more
| curious if it was actually early retirement that was
| driving things with tradesfolk building up enough of a
| nest egg that they can afford to retire early.
| polote wrote:
| The success of OF is more a question of demand than offer
| honestly. During the lockdowns they were a lot of guys with
| money to spend but could not spend it on social activities,
| so a lot of it went on internet websites.
|
| But there is also a more long term trend of people having
| less and less sex and more and more porno consumption. But
| that can't go forever, at one point if all girls in the world
| are on sex workers then they will be much more offer than
| demand.
|
| A girl on OF, to make a living, let's say 3k per month, needs
| to have 300 guys paying for her. But a guy is not paying for
| 300 girls, maybe 10 max, so the platform needs to have 30
| times more guys than girls. Which is unsustainable in a world
| with 50% girls/50% guys.
|
| Which is a good news imho. The day that having sex for girls
| is a normal thing (No this is not normal thing today). Then a
| lot of things will be much simpler for everyone
| caractacus wrote:
| A long-term trend of less sex and more porno? Could you
| show some stats on this?
|
| I only question that line because I can't even deal with
| the rest of your post.
| polote wrote:
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarti
| cle...
| neil_s wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that link! Interesting that the study
| notes that the drop in sexual activity was mostly in low-
| income/underemployed men, and students. So probably not
| the demand side of OF.
| Kye wrote:
| There are plenty of bi and gay people, or people whose porn
| interests diverge from their attractions. It's only a
| problem if you assume everyone is 100% heterosexual.
| zodiakzz wrote:
| Females just have different/complex drives/needs for sexual
| attraction than males, who are mostly just drived by
| libido/horniness. You can observe this in nature too. Seems
| the males are the "abnormal" ones here, addicted to
| chemical reactions in the brain. (Didn't expect to see this
| line of thinking on HN...).
| polote wrote:
| Even if they do have different needs that men (I feel so
| too, but have not scientifically studied the subject) you
| can't ignore the pressure of the society all their life
| on the topic
| handmodel wrote:
| I would love to see their metrics. I would imagine, like
| most things, they have a ton of whales so that even if a
| minority of guys subscribe to 50 girls there probably are
| plenty of people with addictions shelling out $500 or $1000
| a month on this stuff. And this people could represent the
| majority of all payments on the site.
|
| It also seems (from actual published data) that the
| distribution is super weighted towards the top performers.
| That being said, even an extra 1k a month is pretty sick
| for posting topless photos if your regular income is less
| than 40k or you are in school.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| everthing is a pareto distribution, across both buyers
| and sellers. Would be neat to see a better breakdown
| though.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage,
| menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
|
| Because after shit pay being the desk girl at Walmart Tire
| Center for 2yr you can easily convert that into a service
| writer job <fast forward 40yr> and then retire from your job
| as regional support manager for <company that makes
| industrial doodad>
|
| Compare with thotting around on the internet where you can
| make a ton of money up front but you're basically racing the
| clock because your body won't be nearly as lucrative of an
| income at 30 and you'll be starting from square one-ish. Can
| you potentially take the cash and pivot into a career that
| will carry you to retirement? Sure, but it takes a work ethic
| and level of discipline that is uncommon.
|
| It's like the female equivalent of being a marine rifleman
| for several enlistments. You get out at ~30 with few
| marketable skills, hopefully a good work ethic and a high
| liklihood of f-ed up knees.
| Alan_Dillman wrote:
| There is no reason one cannot thot and do something else.
| Many of them seem to be enrolled in advanced education.
| Likewise, a good thot income can fund a future, either
| going to school at 30, when you have a much better idea of
| who you are, or funding a more traditional business, or
| snapping up a few properties.
|
| Likewise, they might be cagey enough to learn the backend
| of their backend business, and come out of it with video
| editing skills and whatnot, possibly segueing into an
| advanced education in media.
| jollybean wrote:
| Advanced education is a rough form for most sex workers
| as most companies will not hire people who have their
| porn all over. Certainly not in America and definitely
| not in the rest of the world. Sometimes we think of
| Europe as being more 'liberal' for example, but they are
| really more communitarian. Open minded but still
| culturally very traditional.
|
| For some professions and companies it won't matter but
| for others it'll matter a lot.
|
| Because we have just started with all of this, and we
| also don't know the future, it's hard to 'price in' what
| the future cost of doing this kind of work with respect
| to future options.
|
| That said, Sylvester Stallone did porn films, but that's
| also a specific industry, pre-internet.
| pope_meat wrote:
| That's too many regional managers, I don't think the
| economy will support that.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| A growing economy can support more managers in the
| future. A stagnant economy will not.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The economy won't support that many Walmart Tire Centers
| either. That was just an example. My point was that there
| are paths from these "crap jobs" to "real career" and
| traveling said paths require about the same level of "how
| do I tee up my next move for more money" long term
| thinking as being a successful camgirl.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Yes, because it's impossible to ever change careers or
| apply your work ethic to gaining new skills. The idea that
| you don't have marketable skills having been in the
| military is also the biggest piece of bunk I've ever heard
| and you really have no idea what you are talking about.
|
| -former infantryman
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| When you leave the military with an infantry MOS and
| without leadership experience (which is the situation
| most people who quit after 4yr are in) all you have is a
| proven ability to work hard and put up with bullshit.
| You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been a
| warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period of
| time and on lower ground than someone who at least has
| industry adjacent experience. Being able to show up and
| work hard confers a much stronger advantage than it used
| to when applying for entry level jobs but it's not
| particularly unique. Yes you can apply a your work ethic
| to learning skills but that requires a kind of self-
| starting that we both know not everyone in the military
| develops.
| dlp211 wrote:
| If you do a 4 year stint in the infantry and don't come
| away with some sort of leadership experience, the problem
| isn't your lack of experience, it's you didn't take
| advantage of the opportunities presented to you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > When you leave the military with an infantry MOS and
| without leadership experience all you have is a proven
| ability to work hard and put up with bullshit.
|
| But, from the contact I've had with the military (been
| close to several people who have either enlisted or
| commossioned experience, did the ROTC basic camp but
| chose not to contract) that's not particularly likely
| unless you are either actively avoiding or completely
| unsuited for leadership.
|
| And even then you'll probably have some leadership
| experience.
|
| > You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been
| a warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period
| of time and on lower ground than someone who at least has
| industry adjacent experience.
|
| Even if you somehow manage to be in that place skill-wise
| (and I think, _leadership skills aside_ , that's
| unlikely), you are still better off _career_ -wise,
| because essentially all public and many, especially
| large, private employers apply systematic positive
| preference for veterans in hiring.
| jollybean wrote:
| This is kind of a narrow view.
|
| You've learned a variety of skills, probably had to face
| some challenging missions, been exposed to other
| cultures, learned to work within an organization,
| probably have highly conscientious posture.
|
| Anyone in 10 years and never had a leadership position at
| all you'd have to question a bit (they should for sure be
| sergeant) but ideally would be prepared to be a regional
| manager for retail or Wallmart Center Manager. The more
| easy going and communicative would work in sales. Almost
| anything operationally oriented.
|
| Contrast that with a sex worker who will unfortunately
| have a narrow set of options because a lot of companies
| just won't hire for that reason.
| [deleted]
| Aeolun wrote:
| Just out of curiosity. What are the marketable skills you
| gain from that?
|
| I can think of a few obvious ones just thinking about
| 'military', but wonder if there's anything specific to
| being an infantryman?
| watwut wrote:
| Reality check is that desk girl don't have as much upward
| mobility as you suggest. Most of low level employees in
| these jobs don't have the opportunity to go much up.
| clevergadget wrote:
| when the take is so bad you need to go look and see if it
| matches other takes the person has posted. 'high liklihood
| of f-ed up knees' dear god who raised you and why. 'easily
| convert that into a service writer job' this is bias
| confirming insanity. There is no easy conversion from tire
| center desk girl to anything but tire center desk girl II
| for 3% more pay.
| notyourday wrote:
| > For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage,
| menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
|
| Median OF revenue per creator is $180/mo for equivalent of a
| full time job.
|
| https://sea.mashable.com/culture/17130/top-onlyfans-
| creators....
| enedil wrote:
| Which is around the minimal wage in places such as Ukraine
| (which isn't the ultimate low either).
| dijit wrote:
| > Median OF revenue per creator is $180/mo
|
| Many factors can lead to this, but that's not surprising,
| the law of distributions when it comes to things like this
| is that there are incredible earners and then a massive
| drop off and long tail.
|
| > for equivalent of a full time job.
|
| You added this, I don't doubt that some people put in a lot
| more effort than the monetary amount they get back- but the
| inverse is also true and no source claims that "you get
| $180 for a full time workload", because that's impossible
| to measure at scale.
| mzs wrote:
| FWIW that's an average not median income with a ton of
| caveats ^ from the source. I'm confident though that only
| the first two screens of OF content creators make the bulk
| of the income though.
|
| ^ https://mrq.com/blog/only-fans
|
| > https://ranking-fans.com/ - Seedlist and Fans Sorted by
| total fans; accounts where fans are not available have been
| excluded. Many accounts listed as having the most fans are
| free accounts used by OnlyFans models who also possess paid
| accounts. However, as fan numbers were only available for
| the free accounts, these have been disregarded for the
| purposes of this story. Likewise, "free" accounts where
| subscription is free but photos provided required payment
| have been disregarded. Accordingly, the only data shown is
| for paid accounts with high subscriber numbers. In some
| cases, models possessed multiple paid accounts. In these
| cases, only the one with the highest subscriber numbers has
| been tracked. Monthly earnings are based exclusively on the
| individual account assuming no media requires additional
| payment and disregarding tips and similar voluntary costs.
| Similarly, free trials and discounts have been excluded.
| Accordingly, all monthly earnings are estimates reflecting
| the monthly payments of subscribers over the long term.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard.
|
| Gen-Z is less sexually active than previous generations.
| Significantly so. They've been exposed to porn at an earlier
| age (owing to earlier access to the internet and the ubiquity
| of pornography online). Porn use was already common among
| them. The lockdown made things worse, but the status quo was
| already in place.
|
| > There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then
| there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to
| quarantine.
|
| This false anthropology must die. Pornography is incredibly
| harmful to those that consume it. It enslaves a person to his
| passions. It feeds his lusts and deranges his desires. It
| makes him or her incapable of relating to the opposite sex in
| a healthy way, whether in the strictly sexual sphere or not.
| Lust blunts the mind and renders one incapable of thinking
| clearly. The consumption of pornography only feeds the sexual
| passions, further entrenching lust and often generating
| paraphilias and fetishes as the titillating novelty wears
| off. Emotions become disordered. Someone who has a porn habit
| becomes locked in him or herself. The stereotype of a lonely
| and smarmy 40 year old locked in his parents' basement
| masturbating to porn is a pithy illustration in many ways. It
| is the image of an emasculated, impotent wretch deranged by
| his vices and disorders. This has nothing to do with his lack
| of a sexual relationship and everything to do with how he
| views sexuality. He is not master of himself.
|
| Frankly, we'd be better off permitting (regulated)
| prostitution. There seem to be plenty of women willing to
| provide these services and plenty of men who are slaves to
| their lusts (men tend to be more vulnerable to porn addiction
| and lust than women, but yes, it is true that it is not a
| problem exclusive to men). At least with prostitution, you're
| having sex with a human being instead of abusing yourself
| alone in your room. But ultimately, our view of sexuality
| must be restored to a healthy one and not the depraved one
| proposed by liberalism. I suspect the "asexual movement" is a
| subconscious reaction against the obsession with sex in our
| society. Excess in one direction tends to produce excess in
| the other. But maybe it will at least legitimize celibacy
| again. You don't _need_ sex to have a happy life, contrary to
| the propaganda of the last few decades or so.
|
| I will add that porn use is an industry fueled both by a
| corrupt society and people in power who recognize that those
| who are slaves to their passions (and lust is but one of
| them) are easy to control. Oligarchies are prone to let such
| vices flourish because it keeps the populace impotent and
| consumed with themselves instead of threatening the usurpers
| who have managed to gain tyrannical control. Porn appeals to
| prurient interest which is why it is so useful in
| psychological warfare (a rather stark example is the
| broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by
| the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?).
| Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has
| truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into
| sex robots.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Wow, I've never seen such a prudish comment so amply
| stated.
|
| > Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It
| has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them
| into sex robots.
|
| This is entirely based on nothing. Even worse, it ignores
| the much more direct and relevant innovations in the area
| of controlling populations - propaganda and advertising.
|
| > a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on
| captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think
| they were trying to liberate them?
|
| No, they were trying to shock and humiliate Muslim
| sensibilities, similar to stashing pork on busses.
| Sexuality is not some secret sauce of controlling people -
| there are much more direct ways of doing so, especially
| with the power of a state like Israel.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I wouldn't put it so prudishly.
|
| Or rather: Paradoxically, what's truly prudish -- and I
| mean this literally, "overly prudent" -- is to short-
| circuit your sex drive with porn, because you fear the
| consequences of real sex.
|
| Lust is good. It helps you overcome social risk aversion,
| and bond with another person.
|
| But that's the point: You have to have those relationships.
|
| You'll be happiest if you have lots of sex, as part of how
| you form and participate in a committed relationship. And
| your "base" urges, far from being bad, can help drive that.
| sbilstein wrote:
| what? most folks have looked at porn. most folks end up
| just alright.
| kazinator wrote:
| People turned out all right even when it was possible to
| watch bloody executions in the streets of what is now the
| developed world.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| I can't believe I am reading this in 2021, seriously.
| okprod wrote:
| I think OF has also become a one-click outlet for
| nontraditional sex workers, e.g., those who wouldn't otherwise
| have done this type of stuff. From what I've read OF has even
| more "amateurs" than platforms like MyFreeCams.
| southeastern wrote:
| Part of the reason they've gotten so much heat is because of
| cases of underage girls selling photos on that site for some
| time before they're caught. I don't know if they've found a
| solution to that problem or just come to some agreement with
| their payment processors
| belorn wrote:
| Wondering what the memes were and this article
| (https://www.newsweek.com/onlyfans-memes-flood-internet-
| after...) displayed some. There is also
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/onlyfans-adult-
| content.... Are those that an correct representation of the
| memes?
| Crontab wrote:
| I've noticed that a large portion of women submitting in the
| /r/Gonewild subreddit have an OF these days.
| Grakel wrote:
| OF has ruined amateur porn. What used to be genuine and
| casual is now mostly bored-eyed pros with bad lighting.
| [deleted]
| jldl805 wrote:
| You've summarized all my most important thoughts into two
| succinct sentences, thank you.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| It's the opposite for me. The value for amateur porn is
| that they don't look or act like traditional porn stars. I
| don't find much value in abstract notions like "genuine
| interest".
| kraftman wrote:
| That's simply not true, because /r/gonewild are extremely
| strict about not allowing OF creators. They can post under a
| seperate account but any mention of they're main account or
| OF results in a swift permanent ban.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| /r/gonewild is actually one of the few subreddits that
| prohibits posts from sellers. But every subreddit that
| doesn't outright prohibit sellers is flooded with them. The
| OF girls all got kicked off of Facebook, Instagram, Snapshot,
| etc... Reddit is comparatively more friendly to sex workers
| as far as site wide policy goes.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Of course there was a big outcry. It's like if Etsy announced
| they were gonna ban candles, or Kickstarter said they were
| gonna ban dice and cards. You think all those people would want
| to go create their own sites? You think it would make any sense
| for them to do that? Come on
| marc_io wrote:
| It could be better for some of them in the long run, who
| knows. The fact is that there's no absolute security in
| either choice, but with a personal website at least you are
| in control, you have your "domain".
| [deleted]
| makecheck wrote:
| I think there is a general issue with platforms "conveniently
| benefiting" from _massive_ growth from _all_ their users, until
| one day they suddenly decide who /what they want to "allow". This
| exclusion can take different forms, e.g. exclusion by suddenly
| imposing high subscription fees (not just "moral" exclusion).
|
| It'd be really interesting to see if these platforms would ever
| have gotten so big/popular without their now-excluded audiences.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| People predicted this very transparent publicity ploy when the
| news first broke. There are no surprises here, other than perhaps
| how quickly they played their hand.
| anonu wrote:
| all press is good press. But doesn't this damage your brand? In
| this short week I am sure both sides of the marketplace have
| tried to figure out - what other options are out there? I'm
| sure the real winners are those smaller platforms.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I think the brand-strengthening generated by the outrage from
| people with accounts coming to Onlyfans' defense and rallying
| support, far outweighs any potential negative outcome of
| customers looking for alternate solutions, especially when
| the decision to reverse course came so quickly.
|
| There were I think literally hundreds of thousands of people
| on social media expressing support for Onlyfans.
| jchw wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Adult content is heavily policed by
| many important parties, including PayPal and mainstream payment
| processors. It's certainly possible, but it's wishful thinking
| IMO.
|
| Some were pointing to specific new restrictions coming from
| MasterCard as an example.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Regardless, people predicted that Onlyfans would do a full
| 180 on their decision shortly after, and here we are, a few
| days after and they have done a full 180.
| jchw wrote:
| Yes, people predicted the 180, I just disagree that they
| planned this all along necessarily.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| big relief. I can still follow my favourite artist
| everyone wrote:
| So Visa and Mastercard have been pressuring only fans to do this.
| Threatening to withdraw their services. It is extremely worrying
| that these credit card companies can decide what media society at
| large can consume.
|
| What I am most curious about though, is why? Why do Visa and
| Mastercard give a shit what business their clients are in?
| rtkwe wrote:
| The big one is the BBC report that found they weren't doing a
| good job keeping under age people from signing up as creators
| and posting.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865
| everyone wrote:
| Do Visa and Mastercard ever face penalties for any crimes
| committed by users of their services? Probably a large
| percentage of their users are criminal in some way.
| asdff wrote:
| So much underage alcohol is purchased with visas and
| mastercards its absurd. I've never seen anyone pay cash all
| through college and at any given campus bar or liquor store
| half the kids are underage.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The relationship between payment processors and Onlyfans is
| a lot closer than the one between them and stores/bars etc.
| that are selling to underaged kids. (Also underaged
| drinking is a lot less intensely prosecuted than underaged
| porn) Usually they don't have any direct relationship with
| the stores at all and their card processing goes through
| another company that provides the machines and access to
| the MC/Visa/et al payment processing, that's how it was
| with my family's stores at least when we started taking
| cards, the machines all came through another company and
| our contract was with them.
| Whatarethese wrote:
| They were making money hand over fist so I really dont understand
| why they initially took this step. I really think only fans will
| die eventually because of the trust they lost.
| merricksb wrote:
| More active discussion at top of front page:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300966
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! We'll merge those threads.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I've never understood the appeal of OnlyFans.
|
| If your goal is to consume adult content, then you can get it in
| massive amounts for free, and without using an app.
|
| If your goal is to make money from online sex work, the ~$180
| average monthly earnings are simply appaling when you compare
| them to traditional porn sites, where some workers earn that
| money in a day.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Your average porn girl might make more to start, but unless
| they really take off, they aren't making very much. Also they
| get paid per shoot, not based on views. With OF they get
| monthly recurring revenue for their content. Performers can
| chat with their admirers to keep them interested and it's more
| of a patron/artist relationship I guess. With OF, they also
| have full control over the content they make, when it goes out,
| how long it stays out there and all that.
|
| For viewers, it's definitely harder to browse than a regular
| porn site or pornhub or something, but if you end up finding a
| few pages you like, chatting, buying mementos. It becomes a lot
| more immersive than just scrolling around an ocean of videos.
| harryf wrote:
| This is a great video that explains the success of OnlyFans -
| https://youtu.be/nsK_6VSmlMI
|
| Also this video does a reasonable job of analyzing the UX and
| understanding the user base https://youtu.be/auG2E53dFas
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If your goal is to make money from online sex work, the ~$180
| average monthly earnings are simply appaling
|
| That "average", as is pointed out every time the statistic gets
| raised including when the story focusing on it was itself on
| HN, both includes conpletely inactive accounts and excludes
| tips--which are a significant (possibly the major) source of
| income for most performers--so it has nothing to do with the
| actual experience of active content producers on the site.
| tinco wrote:
| I don't use OnlyFans personally, but I can clearly see the
| appeal of it. Right up front is the personal connection, these
| creators are posting updates on their lives and their looks and
| more traditional content daily. It's like a watered down
| girlfriend experience. And that's also how it's marketed, you
| pay specifically for the person you're interested in, not to
| some shady porn production company that swaps out actors every
| other film. Of course this money goes through OnlyFans, but
| it's a lot more transparent.
|
| I think that feeling of personal connection and more direct
| involvement is a complement to our modern lifestyle, and a very
| sharp contrast with the "oh my lord, I can see her bare ankles"
| sort of content that media like Playboy were based on.
|
| And the average monthly earnings say absolutely nothing,
| setting up an OnlyFans takes very little effort, so the average
| is heavily skewed to non-committal or non-talented producers.
| What I've heard is that very average producers make serious
| money on the platform, I bet if you take the top 10.000
| producers on OF, and you compare the top 10.000 porn actors,
| you'll find that the OF producers make a lot more money on
| average.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> ~$180 average monthly earnings ... compare to traditional
| porn sites, where some workers earn that money in a day._
|
| That is not a valid comparison. _Some_ OF publishers probably
| make that much in a day. Comparing the average on one venue to
| the outliers of another doesn 't really tell you anything
| useful.
|
| Furthermore, I suspect most traditional porn work is paid per
| shoot with nothing per view or per repeat, and there are
| relatively limited opportunities for fresh shoots because of
| the reusability of the content from each shoot. OF is a
| completely different model, the recurring income is likely to
| be considerably more significant than one-off income in that
| model. You'd have to do some proper analysis on figures
| gathered over months (or longer) to get any useful picture
| comparing overall income from these platforms.
|
| Additionally, OF less likely involves interacting with people
| you don't know, in environments you are not familiar with, and
| other potential safety or level-of-ickyness concerns, so money
| is not the only consideration.
|
| _> compare to traditional porn_
|
| And another thing: Cam girls have been around for decades. OF
| in the sense being discussed here _is_ traditional porn of a
| sort.
| Kiro wrote:
| No need for "probably". The top creators on OnlyFans make
| several hundreds of thousands dollars a day.
| moksly wrote:
| Platforms like onlyfans sell two products. They sell safe/clean
| sex work to a variety of people who would never get into
| regular sex work. And they sell the feeling of mattering and a
| sense of human connection to people who suffer from loneliness.
|
| The only weird part is why the popular OnlyFans sex workers
| stay on the platform instead of moving to their own where they
| wouldn't have to pay 20% to the platform. I'm sure there is a
| reasonable explanation for that though, maybe it's hard to keep
| the same subscribers?
| josh_p wrote:
| Are you suggesting content creators should run their own
| website? If they have the time & skills, sure. But running
| your own website is expensive in both time and money.
| marc_io wrote:
| It's not expensive, difficult or very time consuming to
| have a static website connected to a email marketing or
| newsletter service in order to communicate directly to
| people and improve the services offered. Basic marketing
| strategy. There's no need to run the entire business on
| their own.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > It's not expensive
|
| It absolutely is, because you still need to get paid, and
| unfortunately 18-20% fees are completely normal for
| adult-content payment processing. And OF clearly does a
| lot more than just payment processing.
| marc_io wrote:
| Each one of those things can be done for free until a
| certain point (e-mail marketing) or completely free
| (static sites/hosting). Feel free to ping me if you need
| concrete examples of services that can do that - and
| there are many.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >The only weird part is why the popular OnlyFans sex workers
| stay on the platform instead of moving to their own where
| they wouldn't have to pay 20% to the platform.
|
| Discoverability. The same reason why Youtube content creators
| stick with the platform.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| It's literally no different from YouTube/Twitch/etc: people see
| the big earners and think "hey, I could do that" without
| realizing it's a pyramid scheme.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| Not a user, but I think OnlyFans is less about consuming porn
| and more about forming parasocial relationships through
| subscriptions.
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| I'm sure everybody has their reasons. But on your second point.
| My guess is that the $180 average on OF is WAY higher than the
| Average monthly income on any other site for this type of
| content. Some workers may earn massively more on other sites,
| but certainly not the majority.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Your mistake is thinking that porn is a generic concept that
| people consume. Almost no one would not be satisfied with a
| generic porn channel that showed random content of random ages,
| random body types, random genders, etc. Everyone has some
| criteria when it comes to porn they consume. Some people just
| have more specific criteria than others.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| The appeal is it's easy for women to become online prostitutes
| and make ridiculous money from incels and sexual predators. I
| thought women could aspire to something more than this but I
| guess this is progress although regressive.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| They basically did the 'suprised-pikachu' face when creators that
| posted explicit content closed their accounts, after being told
| the content they created would be banned
| favorited wrote:
| While lying to those creators, claiming that pornography* would
| still be allowed.
|
| *just not the kind of pornography that any of those performers
| create
| killDNoiz wrote:
| I'm a real sucker when it comes to love & as a geologist, most of
| the time I'm hardly around. Even though I'm always away, I never
| go a day without calling or face timing my wife & kids especially
| when the network is good at the sites. I noticed my wife started
| avoiding my calls & one day the strangest thing happened. I
| called many times and she didn't answer. Minutes later my phone
| rang & it seemed to be a pocket dialed. To my shock were sounds
| of my wife moaning. The next day I was conflicted with how I
| should confront her so I chose to share my experience with a
| close friend. My Friend introduced me to a professional guy he
| met on reddit who knows of his way around the internet. He showed
| me the mother load. Conversations, voice notes and nude pictures
| that she shared with her lover (she doesn't even send me nudes &
| I know how many times I've asked). She was living a secret life.
| although i am still in shock I'm just glad i was introduced to
| THEJAMIEHOOKUP@gmail.com
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| > "OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide
| a home for all creators," the company said.
|
| Interesting statement considering they already categorically ban
| some sex toys and acts. Not exactly inclusive.
| pW9GLKxm9taFEhz wrote:
| I guess it wasn't really a requirement imposed on them by
| Mastercard as they claimed.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| That's not very charitable. The pressure could be very real. We
| still don't know whether they will survive the decision they've
| made.
| pW9GLKxm9taFEhz wrote:
| Was it charitable for them to blame Mastercard when they are
| now blaming banks?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Or they came up with ways of placating MC/Visa around better
| moderation.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Anybody else think this feels suspiciously like a planned set of
| moves to generate hype?
| toofy wrote:
| White this is temporarily great news for sex workers, its worth
| keeping a couple things in mind:
|
| This would seem to be in large part an extension of the wider
| religious right and groups similar to the Moral Majority's push
| from previous decades to remove sexuality or "objectional
| content" from the public sphere.
|
| This recent OnlyFans (and PornHub) pressure were driven in large
| part by pressure from Exodus Cry and NCOSE both of whoms ultimate
| goal is to remove sexually explicit content from the internet.
|
| NCOSE has been around since 1962 but was previously called
| "Morality in Media" [0] They are attempting to obscure it now,
| but Morality in Media was open that they were a "Faith Based
| Organization" at the time. It seems like with the name change
| they are trying to obscure their foundations. You might remember
| them as the group who tried to make it illegal to sell Playboy
| magazines on military bases and who wanted to do away with
| "obscene language." Their group were the inspiration for George
| Carlin's bit "7 words".
|
| Exodus Cry is an evangelical christian group who are open about
| their intentions to abolish sexually explicit content from the
| internet. [1]
|
| I think its probably worth paying a little bit of attention to
| the undercurrents here because my guess is we're only seeing the
| beginnings of the religious right's ramp up. I think they'll
| probably try to grab momentum from some of the other more ...
| conpsiratorial(?) groups that have some popularity currently.
|
| I think we'd be making a fairly serious mistake to underestimate
| these two groups.
|
| Ill also be interested to see how they make use out of some more
| dark money style groups as they move forward in attempts to
| obscure who is behind the pressure campaigns.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180401043101/https://endsexual...
|
| [1] https://exoduscry.com/abolitionist/
| wubbert wrote:
| I thought Pornhub banned unverified content because MasterCard
| added them to a blacklist over them repeatedly not deleting
| illegal content?
| toofy wrote:
| I don't like copy and pasting my other comments directly, so
| ill just link to it [0] but the short answer is, they're
| pretty open about their pressure campaigns towards payment
| processors. There was also quite a lot of exposing during the
| PornHub debacle.
|
| the linked comment has quite a few links attached.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28304164
| judge2020 wrote:
| My understanding is that these action committees are the ones
| that pressured the banks and payment processors (whose
| partial functions are shielding their partner banks from bad
| PR) to do so.
| wubbert wrote:
| I didn't read anything about those organizations being
| involved in any of the stories about the Pornhub thing. Do
| you have any evidence of them being involved or are you
| just speculating?
| bilkow wrote:
| According to wikipedia, the Traffickinghub campaign,
| created by Exodus Cry's Director of Abolition, resulted
| on the credit cards ban.
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry#Traffick
| inghub_camp...
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| I thought the main cause of this was a recent law change
| regarding liability around sex trafficking:
| https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-traf...
|
| Rather than risk this liability it's easier for payment
| processors to just not work with high risk sites.
| toofy wrote:
| NCOSE pressure campaign was heavily directed against payment
| companies. They're quite open about it. [0]
|
| The first link is directly to NCOSE (Morality in Media) but
| heres a few other articles with quite a bit more information.
| [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
|
| [0] https://ncose.salsalabs.org/thankyou_mastercard_visa/inde
| x.h...
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being-
| blamed-on...
|
| [2] https://knock-la.com/onlyfans-bans-sex-work/
|
| [3] https://reason.com/2021/08/20/why-onlyfans-is-double-
| crossin...
|
| [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52543508
|
| [5] https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-reasons-why-
| onlyfans-...
|
| [6] https://avn.com/business/articles/legal/mastercard-visa-
| ban-...
|
| [7] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pornhub-
| policy/pornhub-pu...
| immmmmm wrote:
| i was not aware of these pressures, but on the other not
| surprised.
|
| i do fully agree with you, and even perhaps think in a broader
| sense, that we must watch these extreme religious/ extreme
| nationalist movements, from a sharper eye.
|
| also, as climate change will proceed by cutting ressources,
| food and water from the poorest, as well as causing wars and
| possibly massive migration, these groups will only become
| stronger.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know about the NCOSE or Exodus Cry.
| vmception wrote:
| Nah its just the payment processors
|
| Its only a matter of time before a service relying on a
| Metamask extension on a cheap Layer2 is extremely popular
|
| This will be much much harder to police so its kinda of
| counterproductive to go after permissioned centralized services
| as it accelerates the inevitable
| pushrax wrote:
| This seems somewhat plausible, but how do you know these
| organizations have anything to do with OnlyFans?
| toofy wrote:
| They're open about it, but its been written about pretty
| extensively. One of my other comments [0] has a number of
| links. Including a couple which discuss their involvement in
| PornHub takedown as well.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28304164
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Whether they did or not, it is encouraged to be aware of them
| and to seek ways to weaken their efforts to impose their
| beliefs upon non-believers.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| This is looking like a failed mission from my perspective. If
| anything I think today people in general are more understanding
| and accepting of sex work and sex workers.
|
| If anything Christianity is on the decline due to mass
| hypocrisy.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I was under the impression that this was a matter of pragmatism
| by the payment processors to avoid the chargebacks that adult-
| oriented industries are known for. I haven't heard any source
| say that this was for Puritanical reasons at all.
| crescentfresh wrote:
| The momentum from these groups against OnlyFans (and others)
| started last year when covid hit and porn consumption in
| general "went up".
|
| https://reason.com/2020/04/24/people-stuck-at-home-are-
| makin...
| floatingatoll wrote:
| If it was just about chargebacks, they'd just raise fees to
| cover them, which they've already done (with approximately
| 10x higher fees in sex industry card processing).
| willcipriano wrote:
| > similar to the Moral Majority's push from previous decades to
| remove sexuality or "objectional content" from the public
| sphere.
|
| "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes" - Mark
| Twain
| alex_young wrote:
| On the one hand I love the spirit of this quote, but on the
| other, it's pretty solidly not a Twain quote:
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
| willcipriano wrote:
| I was going to mention that but I went for a more laconic
| approach. I didn't want it to appear like I had written it,
| but a long explanation about how it's commonly attributed
| to Mark Twain but may not be him seemed to make the comment
| worse.
| [deleted]
| pope_meat wrote:
| Sigh
|
| Why can't these cults just follow their own rules, why the hell
| are you trying to take ME to your miserable heaven.
| losteric wrote:
| Fighting an outside "other" simplifies maintaining social
| cohesion within the cult, therefore sustaining exploitation
| of cultists.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| This needs to be more widely understood.
|
| Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons don't just go door-to-door
| to spread their word. They know that the extreme majority
| of people they ring are going to just shut the door in
| their face. Leadership knows this, and it's a tool. After
| they get repeatedly rejected, church leadership can say
| "They don't love you, but WE do!" and it further solidifies
| their belief in their religion.
|
| It's all about creating another "us vs them" scenario.
| tenfourwookie wrote:
| Because like all churches, they make money from it.
|
| Anecdote: I went to a charismatic non-denominational new wave
| evangelical thing in Maui, for reasons I will not explain,
| call it amusement. I paid particular attention to the pastor
| before and after the collection plate, and it amused me so
| much that I went back to confirm what I had first seen: that
| every ounce of his charisma (and boy was he loaded in that
| dept.) drained from his Animus as soon as the collection
| plate was full. He would disappear into the background to
| suffer the remaining service until which time he could count
| his winnings.
| reydequeso wrote:
| >I think they'll probably try to grab momentum from some of the
| other more ... conpsiratorial(?) groups that have some
| popularity currently.
|
| if they do as you say, which i think is quite plausible, it'll
| be interesting to see how they fit in the more anti-semetic and
| end-of-days thoughts that are foundational to those groups.
| toofy wrote:
| Im sure we'll see the end-of-days stuff a bit--a lot of the
| "this degeneracy, this porn, it is proof that civilization is
| falling apart and the end is near." only packaged in a way
| that will resonate with the puritanical types.
| cirgue wrote:
| How much of a role did these groups play in anyone's decision
| making here? I've never gotten the impression that either of
| these groups to be especially influential outside of getting
| congressional reps to occasionally sponsor symbolic legislative
| fights. Like you can run all the media that you want but
| ultimately banning porn from the internet is a pretty quixotic
| endeavor and the stakeholders in OF know this. Where's the
| leverage?
| noptd wrote:
| Wrt influence, much of it comes from the association that
| these groups have worked hard to build between porn and sex
| trafficking. Simply disliking porn because of religious
| and/or conservative values is easy to dismiss for a large
| majority of people.
|
| However, if "sinful" adult content and sex work becomes
| synonymous with non-consent, hurting children, etc, their
| arguments become far more difficult to dismiss without
| looking badly in the public eye. Especially for our
| politicians where discourse is limited to extended soundbytes
| and debates that leave no room for nuance or deeper
| discussion.
| toofy wrote:
| I think what the sibling to this comment has brought up is
| important to understand.
|
| These groups are entirely trying to alter the definition of
| "sex trafficking." Or rather, attempting to make the phrase
| so broad as to be meaningless.
|
| Sex trafficking brings in images of humans being thrown into
| a container against their will, shipped overseas in darkness,
| and then maybe drugged up and pimped out in hidden shady
| backstreet houses.
|
| These groups like Exodus Cry and NCOSE are attempting to
| conflate that above image with grown and often well educated
| people who are choosing to be their own bosses.
|
| You can see this conflation all over their websites and in
| many of their press releases.
|
| How much of an influence did they have in this and the
| pornhub debacle? I mean, i don't know how we could accurately
| measure this. But it would appear their pressure campaigns
| are heavily funded, very active, and then during those
| campaigns many of their goals were met. So I guess it's up to
| you to decide how much influence they really played.
|
| My point is simply for us to notice this now.
| 63 wrote:
| I'm curious how much this may have impacted their users
| regardless. I imagine that a lot of people learned that relying
| on a single platform is dangerous and how important it is to
| diversify your online profile. I don't think people will trust
| Onlyfans anymore.
| dalbasal wrote:
| That's decreasingly a risk you can avoid, whether you are an
| only fans user/model/entertainer (what's the OF equivalent of a
| youtuber?) or OnlyFans itself.
|
| It's risky to be dependant on an App store, cloud computing
| platform, social media platform, payment processor, etc. They
| might change their rules, ban you over a rumour, or just
| quietly change their recommendation or advertising algorithms
| to exclude you. There aren't a lot of substitutes, and even if
| there were, switching can mean leaving behind users.
|
| OTOH, you have no choice. All the opportunities are on these
| platforms, not just risks.
|
| To be a youtuber, you need to be on youtube. Diversifying to
| other platforms is doing stuff other than being a youtuber is
| hard. You can't just take your users, revenue model and such
| with you. You could try also doing IG or OF, but in the same
| sense that you can also practice law on the side. Sure, it
| gives you security, but not in a portfolio kind of a sense.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| There's a lot of upstart clones that are using their own
| cryptocurrencies. Not sure how much they'll fare though now
| with OF retracting their decision.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| OnlyFans proved the market. Now it needs competition.
|
| But all actors are at the mercy of a few payment providers and
| their regulators.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| Network effects will always win, regardless of the
| trustworthiness of the platform.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| As demonstrated time and again by Facebook.
| wongarsu wrote:
| And youtube. Creators constantly want to move away from
| youtube with it's content-id with incredibly slow appeals
| process that makes most types of fair use nearly
| impossible, it's demonetization that intransparently makes
| your videos unprofitable because you said the wrong word or
| made the wrong sound, the blatant favoritism when it comes
| to the "trending" page, etc.
|
| But the viewers are on youtube, and network effects keep
| the viewers from switching. So there's just a graveyard of
| failed youtube alternatives.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| I think streaming video is a different beast, because the
| market is littered with loss leaders. It's hard for
| content creators to switch to another platform when the
| only profitable ones are subscription based (and not
| competitive).
|
| Even Youtube, for all its users and being part of an
| existing advertising company, struggles to break even
| (reportedly).
| marc_io wrote:
| That's true, until the viewer profile change or
| disappear, which happens very, very slowly, but it
| happens anyway. It happened several times in history.
| Nothing lasts forever.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| As a viewer, I would prefer watching content on other
| platforms. Problem is: there's none. Someone will mention
| PeerTube, but no... It doesn't work as well, not easy to
| navigate. The whole federation thing makes it harder to
| find content on a platform that already doesn't have most
| of the well known creators.
| max46 wrote:
| The part that you are missing is that all of alternatives
| to YouTube pay creators little or no ad money and have
| far worse search engine/discoverability. If a creator is
| getting demonetized on youtube, moving to a platform with
| no monetization would not solve their problem.
|
| And sooner or later, any platform that becomes popular
| would have to implement a content ID system and and have
| to deal with ban/demonetization waves every time
| Twitter/journalists discover a new type of offensive
| content on the platform.
| wongarsu wrote:
| There have been plenty of (mostly short-lived)
| competitors that paid out more per view than YouTube. But
| that's obviously meaningless if there are barely any
| viewers on the platform.
|
| I agree that content ID is a necessary system in
| principle. Not legally necessary, but it's a system that
| solves real problems YouTube had before its existence.
| The problems with it are largely around YouTube heavily
| favoring recent content, while simultaneously having a
| support that takes weeks to even look at your case if you
| can't raise a twitter storm. They are trying to
| completely automate a problem that's full of subtlety and
| rife with abuse, and then don't give you any way to
| resolve it when it goes wrong. Other platforms don't have
| to choose the same path
| Fernicia wrote:
| What non-trust related network effects work in OnlyFans'
| favour?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| By network effects it's meant that all the buyers will go
| to OnlyFans because all the sellers are there, and all the
| sellers will stay there because that's where all the buyers
| are.
|
| I don't see how trust is directly related to that, it's a
| competing concern.
| NickGott wrote:
| This is why trust busting of monopoly social media platforms
| is so crucially important.
| devNoise wrote:
| I believe a lot of the sex workers expected this to happen at
| some point. Tumblr burned them when they got bought. So they
| might have some diversification, but their main focus has been
| OnlyFans. That was the platform that gave the best ROI.
| kiba wrote:
| One of the advice that a popular youtube said is to start a
| newsletter, which is how you own your audience, as opposed to
| being at the mercy of the youtube algorithm.
|
| I thought this was a good advice to take for a long while
| before a youtuber mentioned it, but I wasn't a content creator.
|
| I think it's a good idea to have your own website as well.
| elliekelly wrote:
| That's definitely good advice for an established content
| creator who has an audience but it doesn't solve the problem
| of reach. If I start a newsletter today I have no
| subscribers. How do I find them? If it's an innocuous topic
| I'd probably start by sending my newsletter to friends and
| family and by posting links on social media. For the typical
| OF creator that isn't really an option. Most links to
| pornographic content hosted on an unknown site are assumed to
| be spam or a scam.
| Kye wrote:
| There's a thousand niches on AD (After Dark) Twitter. A lot
| of accounts have short videos, then link to an OnlyFans
| page for longer videos. I don't know how effective it is.
| Kye wrote:
| This advice is older than YouTube. It was repeated endlessly
| back when bloggers were chasing views trading blows with
| response posts. The original QRT dunk.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Exactly. This is the method for being able to say you
| predicted 100% of the stock moves over the last year -
| while getting endorsements from people who followed your
| recommendations.
|
| Send out A/B newsletters. Group A gets a version which says
| a stock will go down. The B group's newsletter says the
| same stock will go up. Rinse and repeat. You are guaranteed
| to have a path to victory...
|
| In other words, don't believe everything you read or watch,
| even if it is from a newsletter or youtube account with
| 100% success.
| koffiezet wrote:
| People here don't seem to realise all this was from pressure from
| fundamentalist christian groups like Exodus Cry, which managed to
| collect 2 million signatures pretending to want to protect sex
| workers and be anti-trafficking.
|
| Their end-goal however is a lot simpler: get rid of all porn.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Where is the source for this?
|
| What actual leverage do these groups have over the banking and
| processing systems that were actually forcing the changes to
| OnlyFans? Shouldn't there be some statements that it was 2
| million signatures that had an effect somewhere? And if so, why
| retract? Did someone get 3 million reddit karma to keep it, and
| now someone else needs 4 million survey responses to ban porn
| again?
|
| I looked an was not able to find evidence. Only these groups
| happy with the plan and congratulating themselves based on
| seemingly nothing.
| lostgame wrote:
| Because the early 1900's prohibition and the war on drugs has
| totally shown us ridding us of something there is massive
| demand for totally works!
| TchoBeer wrote:
| We seem to be managing to get rid of smoking.
| watwut wrote:
| It was not made illegal. Cigarettes are available
| everywhere.
|
| It was made uncool. The product placement in movies and
| such disappeared, so you don't see super cool hero looking
| awesome as he smokes while going to do something important.
|
| Ads targeted at kids are illegal. Everyone knows it is
| unhealthy. There isnless social pressure to smoke.
| asdff wrote:
| Now you get netflix movies where the protagonist is
| ripping on a vape that looks like a light saber.
| skohan wrote:
| There was also a massive PR campaign against it. I grew
| up in the 90's and there was an insane amount of anti-
| smoking messaging to kids my age.
| lostgame wrote:
| ...smoking was never - and still isn't - illegal.
|
| It's just not relevant to my point. That's harm reduction -
| which should be applied to drugs as well. Nothing to do
| with prohibition.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Porn isn't illegal either.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Meanwhile my platform for Henry Winkler impersonators goes
| unloved.
| [deleted]
| gerpsh wrote:
| OnlyFonz?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Why do I feel like this was a publicity stunt?
|
| I still refused to go past the landing page.
| leros wrote:
| I doubt it. It sounds like OnlyFans had established themselves
| pretty well. I think this would only spook people as it creates
| uncertainty about the future.
| matrix2596 wrote:
| Nothing like (good/bad) publicity!
| dalbasal wrote:
| Brand, vision for the product and such are one thing. Vague
| demands and pressures by the financial sector are another.
|
| Partly due to actual risk, and partially because of stigma...
| payment processing costs are substantially higher in "sin
| sectors." Often they use specialised services targeting just
| these industries.
|
| I assume financing has similar issues. Merchant banks don't want
| to add a porn bond to their portfolio, and those who do want a
| premium. Premiums count for a lot these days. A valuation anti-
| premium, at the extreme end, might turn a billion dollar company
| into a $100m. Private tech company valuations can be quite
| squishy.
|
| We have so much structure in the economy now. High finance has
| always been structured, but the lower tiers were more significant
| when startup valuations were more modest. Once valuations hit
| billions, finance is high finance more or less by definition.
| That means the high finance cabal has a lot of say.
|
| Meanwhile, users are structured by Google, FB and a handful of
| others. AWS is gradually becoming both monopolistic and
| opinionated. Payments systems are bottlenecked, with a structure
| related to the high finance structure.
|
| What does and doesn't get built, or succeeds in a highly
| structured world is different to a more free market situation.
| cletus wrote:
| Does anyone think this was a failed pivot from the p0rn and the
| backlash was so great that they backpedaled?
|
| It actually reminds me of Ebay. Ebay became big with online
| auctions but as soon as they did they seemed to want to no longer
| be in the auction business. Instead they wanted to be in the
| online retail business. Maybe because there was more money per
| customer. Maybe because online retail was larger. Personally I
| always found Ebay's retail move to be weird and off-brand with a
| subpar user experience.
|
| Something about this Onlyfans move just doesn't sit right. Like
| who were the banks or payment processors that supposedly forced
| this? I haven't seen anyone claim responsibility (officially or
| not).
| polynomial wrote:
| Etsy would be another fine example: starting off as a platform
| for artisanal, craft and maker communities, then at scale
| opening the floodgates to become a market for mass produced
| factory knockoffs and junk, infuriating and adversely affecting
| their original user base.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| No, I think they wanted to pressure payment providers to
| relent, by redirecting public fury that way. Seems like it
| worked.
| coderintherye wrote:
| No. They call out the specific banks here:
| https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca04...
| mastersummoner wrote:
| Unfortunately that's behind a paywall.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| https://archive.is/Aqx8x
| stemlord wrote:
| Interesting they say they were hiring hundreds of new
| mods to enforce the no porn policy, wonder how many
| employees theyre now un-hiring?
| [deleted]
| purerandomness wrote:
| Install a browser extension that bypasses paywalls, like
| [0]
|
| [0] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-
| firefox-clea...
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| >OnlyFans declined to name its current banking partners,
| citing a desire to improve relations.
|
| Sounds like they requested a new deal in exchange for not
| naming them.
| PrincessJas wrote:
| Oh no, the epic redditors will be angry at them!
|
| Lol, like they care.
|
| Worst. Blackmail. Ever.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| I suspect OnlyFans cobbled together a "honeypot" deal.
|
| This would explain why Pornhub, etc. lost their payment
| processing but OnlyFans feels confident they won't.
| [deleted]
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Not sure what that means? Like to 'catch' CP posters? From
| what I've read the payment processing is mostly charge back
| %s, mixed with religious driven activism against sex work.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| >mixed with religious driven activism against sex work.
|
| Is there any evidence that this played any significant part
| or is it just a conspiracy theory? The CEO said:
|
| >"The change in policy, we had no choice -- the short
| answer is banks,"
|
| >Stokely claimed OnlyFans had been unfairly targeted by
| media reports into "incidents of illegal content" that
| failed to mention how porn-free social media platforms
| grapple with similar issues. "Banks read the same media as
| everyone else," he said.
|
| >Stokely said he would "absolutely" welcome porn back were
| the banking environment to change.
| judge2020 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28304164
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| That's just a link dump. Is there any evidence that their
| campaign is linked to the decisions made by OF?
| judge2020 wrote:
| It's not a link dump, it's sources that aren't condensed
| HN comments.
|
| If you really don't want to read them, maybe read the
| short Wikipedia excerpt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exo
| dus_Cry#Traffickinghub_camp...
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| That's about Visa, MasterCard, and PornHub. This thread
| is about OnlyFans and _banks_, not payment processors.
| Are banks swayed by religious groups to block payments
| related to adult materials?
|
| Edit: Also even for PornHub, it is alleged that Nicholas
| Kristof's actions [1] had an important impact on the
| decisions surrounding PornHub, and Kristof is a self-
| described progressive who doesn't seem to act on
| religious grounds, so I don't really see sufficient
| evidence that religious groups play a significant role at
| all.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Kristof#Child_
| pornogr...
| rodgerd wrote:
| They change in processor heart seemed to happen after people
| started making a lot of noise that Mastercard explicitly
| refused to block payments to terrorist and other awful
| groups, but keeps going after sex workers.
|
| I don't think the cards companies particularly want
| regulators taking a much closer look at where they're making
| their money.
| bigdollopenergy wrote:
| Doubt it. This IMO is probably the best PR maneuver ever
| conceived. I doubt they ever planned to do it.
|
| The BBC was just about to release a long-researched expose
| about all the moderation issues they have and how child porn
| and abuse were going unchecked on their platform. This was a
| supposed to be a huge deal that could destroy them if the media
| at large rallied around that story like they did with Pornhub.
| By making this announcement before it came out they stole the
| narrative and switched the focus away from that problem and
| towards the issue of what are all the sex workers going to do
| when they suddenly lose their income and also just how crazy
| the announcement was in of itself.
|
| They did it with perfect timing and drummed up such a fuss with
| such a wild and seemingly out of nowhere change that when that
| article actually dropped, it was merely background noise and
| not the primary focus of media coverage. The media likes to
| hyper-focus on issues for a short period of time (with a few
| exceptions, trump/covid/amazon being a few) and then quickly
| move on regardless of whether the issue/story has finished or
| resolved itself in anyway. Which is what will likely happen
| here, OnlyFans will likely make it through this mostly
| unscathed and with a ton of publicity.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > The BBC was just about to drop a long-researched expose
|
| Source?
| bigdollopenergy wrote:
| It's been an ongoing story ramping up since May, but this I
| believe is the main story with all the research they did.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Ah, I now realize you meant 'drop' as in 'release', I
| misread the context and thought you meant 'drop' as in
| 'abandon'. My mistake!
| skohan wrote:
| If anything I thought maybe it was a publicity stunt.
| toofy wrote:
| I could see why this might be your first thought, but I
| suspect this move might have hurt OF more than helping,
| simply because most of the people who formerly/currently call
| OF home have now lost any sense of stability.
|
| Tho, as we've seen in the past, network effect will likely
| play a huge part in most of the content creators staying with
| OF. However I just can't imagine the feeling of
| safety/permanence in platform choice will return for most of
| them.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Or maybe it helped OF, because they got to call out
| Mastercard / Visa and maybe negotiate a better deal out of
| it?
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| Since when does Mastercard / Visa care about minor
| backlash like this and why would they? Most of the
| hysteria died down pretty quickly, and it's not like
| people were going to boycott the biggest payment
| processors by far.
| akiselev wrote:
| Antitrust is trending again, especially with tech, and
| the Visa/Mastercard duopoly has so far managed to escape
| the public's attention. Those two are no strangers to
| that world and that kind of publicity can actually hurt
| them long term.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| I checked the FT link pasted in this thread, and the
| founder seems to claim that it was an issue strictly with
| the banks, not with the payment processors:
|
| >"We're already fully compliant with the new Mastercard
| rules, so that had no bearing on the decision," he said.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069c
| a04...
| akiselev wrote:
| At this point, I don't take any of the press releases at
| face value beyond the immediate effects they describe -
| all I know is they announced a future ban on adult
| content and then reversed course.
|
| _> "We're already fully compliant with the new
| Mastercard rules, so that had no bearing on the
| decision,"_
|
| Reading between the lines, that could easily mean _"
| We're already fully compliant with MC's rules but they
| still won't let the banks do business with us, so we
| needed to put publish pressure on MC"_
| skohan wrote:
| I don't know if they have much to worry about. Where would
| those creators move? Is there any even remotely comparable
| platform in terms of user-base and pop-culture penetration?
| If you were worried about stability would you really feel
| better moving to some unknown upstart competitor?
| xmprt wrote:
| Creators have been doing this for years before OnlyFans
| and can continue to do it even if OnlyFans dies today.
| OnlyFans definitely made things a lot easier, especially
| for their audience, but I don't think we should paint
| creators like they're helpless without OF. It's not like
| Youtube where people have become dependent on it after
| almost 2 decades of use.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> Where would those creators move?
|
| Chaturbate has existed for time, existed through this;
| was the OnlyFans before OnlyFans, and continues to seem
| to thrive. Simple answer.
| babelfish wrote:
| I know several creators (sex workers) who moved to other
| platforms (such as JustForFans) in anticipation of the
| ban and don't plan on returning
| toofy wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I brought up the network effect that OF
| brings.
|
| I'm sure OF will be fine, I just hope they feel it a bit
| because this has to have shaken the foundations for a lot
| people who relied on them.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| They do viral marketing all the time. Go to any meme page and
| even some newspapers and you'll find "wow this mother who has
| an only fans is causing trouble at her school because other
| Dad's have been caught out!!! Dads! sign up here"
|
| Watching people fall for their marketing is like being in a
| state of depression with the human race.
| nomel wrote:
| Telling your source of revenue that they're being removed
| from the platform, prompting many to seek other platforms,
| and absolutely destroying their confidence, is not a sane
| viral marketing move. I don't think they're that
| disconnected from reality.
|
| This is like threatening to raise taxes to attract
| corporations.
| collegeburner wrote:
| No it really does happen its just not so common among older
| people, I know people who got in trouble with their gf
| because they were caught subscribing to the OF of some
| other girl they both knew. Only half the appeal is random
| people selling nudes, the other half is the hot chick from
| your high school class selling them.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Tbh evangelists or whatever the fuck they're named have broken my
| balls, if you're so attached why don't you go to meet him in
| person and leave the rest of us in peace
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Well, maybe they realized that sexually explicit stuff is their
| only reason to exist.
|
| Otherwise I can't see why people wouldn't flock to, say, Patreon.
| killDNoiz wrote:
| its crazy how a friend of mine's wive hired a hacker
| thejamiehookup@gmail.com so she could go through his only fans
| account and found out a lot of shit he got going on. i think
| ecplicit content should be band tho.
| [deleted]
| d3nj4l wrote:
| "Suspended"
|
| aka they're waiting for all of this to blow over.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| I think it's more likely that the banks and Mastercard that
| were pulling service to them freaked out about being trending
| topics for three days and agreed to reinstate everything.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I have to think there must also be some requirement that
| OnlyFans work harder to prevent underage porn as well. Half
| the news I heard about this mentioned how much of it was on
| there.
| adjkant wrote:
| While there may be some, it is worthwhile looking into
| where that news was coming from. Much of that push was
| coming from NCOSE, which is pretty much a literal
| puritanical force. They had success recently with Pornhub,
| and then moved to OnlyFans.
|
| NCOSE taking credit themselves for pressuring the payment
| processors:
| https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/exploitation-
| webs...
|
| NCOSE is more or less using the "for the children" approach
| to try and stomp out all pronogrpahy generally. Their
| president "has helped draft ordinances to end or curb the
| impact of sexually oriented businesses such as pornography
| shops, strip clubs, and related establishments" according
| to their own website. Members of their board have founded
| and led pushes to ban and discourage all pornohprahy
| entirely.
|
| https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/staff/
|
| https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/board/
|
| A critique on the Pornhub article / case, describing its
| reliance on evangelical groups:
| https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-
| war...
|
| No doubt that _some_ positive changes came in the Pornhub
| case, hence the significant lack of public pushback there.
| But I think their true goals are being exposed as they try
| to push further. Pushing on a platform that has become a
| key income source for many during a global pandemic was
| probably not the best idea for them in hindsight. It also
| got them a lot of public attention they probably didn 't
| want, in good part due to a large voice and push over many
| recent months by sex workers, many of whom got a voice in
| articles in the media recently instead of only sources
| similar to NCOSE.
| favorited wrote:
| NCOSE is the renamed successor to the puritanical group
| "Morality in Media," which was literally founded by some
| Catholic priests to oppose everything from pornography to
| blasphemy in Monty Python films.
|
| They don't give a shit about children or sex trafficking-
| it's all about eliminating availability of things that
| the Religious Right deemed verboten in the 1960s.
| spcebar wrote:
| IMO think the only worse PR nightmare than banning adult
| content on your adult content platform is reversing your
| reversal on that ban.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I suppose? But then again it's hard to know what was going on
| behind the scenes. Did the CEO just save the company from
| their vendors bankrupting them in a daring display of finger
| pointing brinkmanship?
| sct202 wrote:
| Sometimes you just have to threaten to blow the whole
| business up before anyone goes to bat for you behind the
| scenes.
| elliekelly wrote:
| If this was actually the strategy behind the move I
| really admire management's tenacity. I'm having a hard
| time connecting the dots as to how or why a bank/payment
| processor would suddenly reverse course on their decision
| because of the bad PR suffered by another company.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Maybe? The timeline suggests that they got some sort of
| assurance from banks they work with, they will not not be
| bothered. Founder just blamed banks for the whole thing the
| other day.
|
| https://people.com/human-interest/onlyfans-founder-says-bank...
| d3nj4l wrote:
| I struggle to imagine any bank suddenly deciding they're OK
| with adult content after all. Apart from the moral outrage
| risks (like the ones OnlyFans itself has been facing wrt the
| literal kids on their platform), they don't want to
| accidentally run afoul of sex trafficking laws either.
| There's just too many risks in adult content. It's really
| surprising OnlyFans got as far as it did with adult content.
|
| Plus, something like a small company blaming banks is
| everyday business for those banks. It won't hurt their PR
| much in the long term, especially since the older, more
| conservative sections of the public won't care or be more
| supportive of the banks here. It sucks but that's how the
| world is.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I mostly agree with analysis.
|
| I am not sure I agree with 'suddently' characterization.
| They are not suddenly OK with it. Founder complained to
| their peer at the financial institution. Onlyfans was
| probably trying to take care of it internally for a good
| while ( CYA applies at most financial institutions so it
| was taking longer than most businesses are used to ). It
| was only after media outburst that an executive decision
| was made.
|
| I am relatively certain that behind the scenes, the case of
| Onlyfans was argued by compliance, legal, PR, sales and
| their personal rep.
|
| "It's really surprising OnlyFans got as far as it did with
| adult content."
|
| I am not. You are not allowed to touch lgbtq+ community
| now. They are way too vocal and companies too scared to
| agitate them. And a fair amount of complaints came from
| them.
| hhsbz wrote:
| This is never going to blow over. It is as if YouTube had a
| plan to disable video uploads.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Funny.
|
| Onlyfans banning adult content is like Nike banning tennis
| shoes.
|
| We're a loafer company now!
| [deleted]
| adriancr wrote:
| They are probably looking for alternative payment methods.
| (coinbase payment processor and accept cryptocurrencies?)
|
| Or they got some guarantees from banks that they won't get
| banned.
|
| Their options are to die like tumbler or fight a bit. Moving
| away from traditional payment processors might cause problems
| for them as well.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| >(coinbase payment processor and accept cryptocurrencies?)
|
| https://www.coinbase.com/legal/prohibited
| adriancr wrote:
| Oh damn... I wasn't expecting this from them...
|
| > Adult Content and Services: Pornography and other obscene
| materials (including literature, imagery and other media);
| ...
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Why would a service that desperately tries to get
| normalized shoot itself in the leg like that and allow
| something controversial?
| d3nj4l wrote:
| A lot of th epromise of crypto to a lot of enthusiasts is
| freedom - freedom from traditional oversight. This can be
| both good, like being able to send money to people in
| countries with awful currencies, or bad, like when you
| don't have regulations to protect people. So it is kind
| of disappointing to see Coinbase basically reinvent
| traditional banking but on the blockchain, because then,
| what's the point?
| fleddr wrote:
| You don't need Coinbase to move crypto. Sex workers were
| some of the first to use Bitcoin as an alternative
| payment. Meaning, a direct wallet to wallet payment.
|
| However, some have indicated that it's not great. Many of
| their customers supposedly are drunk men. They greatly
| struggle to make the payment this way, and you can
| imagine that in this context it can't take too long, or
| the "mood" is gone.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| They are trying to get normalized with mainstream
| America, not get normalized with the usual crypto
| fanatics. That means they need to have access to fiat
| financial systems which in turn means they need to not be
| associated with anything the old guard generally doesn't
| like. That includes adult content.
| XorNot wrote:
| Sex work isn't controversial, it's just a magnet for
| fraud. The first thing someone does with a stolen payment
| method is usually go and spend it on porn - or if you're
| advanced, sets up a money laundering scheme to spend it
| on "porn" and circulate it back to themselves. It's just
| the nature of the business.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Really? The first thing someone does with a stolen credit
| card is to go pay for porn? I would guess so few people
| pay for porn willingly that that would be a great way to
| trip all sorts of fraud alarms.
|
| Anecdotally, I had a credit card number get compromised a
| few years ago. They used it at a Babys-R-Us on the
| opposite coast. I'm pretty sure they weren't buying porn.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I think this is thinking about it backwards. The payment
| industry are discriminating here on the proportion of
| payments to porn sites which are fraudulent or disputed,
| not the proportion of fraudulent or disputed charges
| which are to porn sites. It can be simultaneously true
| that the vast majority of fraudulent/disputed payments
| are _not_ to porn sites and that a very large portion of
| payments to porn sites are fraudulent or disputed.
| XorNot wrote:
| A stolen credit card number doesn't generally go and
| "spend big" - they go buy luxury items they want. There's
| no end of "my credit card got done and they went and
| spent $50 on gas and beer" stories.
|
| At the other side of that there is equally no end of
| "went and signed up for premium porn content" or PPV
| cable or whatever - and that's what payment processors
| tend to get unhappy about.
|
| EDIT: Or more accurately, the relative ratio.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Gas, especially. Because you can pay at the pump, you can
| see if the card is still live without ever seeing a human
| being. Thieves love that.
|
| On the other hand, if the cops were actually interested
| in prosecuting such things, they left their license
| plates on the security camera...
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| They just released an app on the app stores days prior to the
| "ban" announcement. Nice PR stunt for some downloads. But obvious
| manipulation if the walled-gardens cared about that sort of
| thing.
| scns wrote:
| My first thought after reading the title was: OnlyFans refrains
| from commiting suicide.
| barelysapient wrote:
| I doubt OnlyFans ever intended to actually do this.
|
| Just a creative marketing blitz to drum up awareness.
|
| Next up, McDonald's to stop selling Cheeseburgers and Tesla to
| stop making cars.
| skohan wrote:
| IIRC the "new coke" was exactly that. They never intended to
| change coke, but loss aversion was an effective lever in
| wresting mindshare away from the pepsi challenge.
| koffiezet wrote:
| It was mainly due to pressure from their payment providers, who
| in turn were pressured by fundamentalist christian groups like
| exodus cry under the mantle of "protecting sex workers" and
| "anti trafficking", but their actual end-goal is banning porn
| completely.
|
| They started out with pornhub, which as a direct result of that
| deleted a ton of their content. OF seeing how these groups
| could effectively pressure the biggest fish in the porn
| industry through the creditcard companies, they found
| themselves between a rock and a hard place.
| mzs wrote:
| Very unlikely, the last week porn stars have been posting to IG
| where they have moved to from OF, ex:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/p/CS322xbNbfU/
| Romanulus wrote:
| OnlyFans needs to make their own bank/payment processor...
| SpankBank?
| nikolay wrote:
| I thought they were forced. It seems it was just a PR stunt.
| apricot wrote:
| Their free Reddit ad campaign is over now.
| ipsin wrote:
| I doubt this nets out as "free". The campaign was "this ship is
| sinking" (for people doing adult content), and subscribers and
| content creators have been acting accordingly.
| IncRnd wrote:
| You have to realize this was marketing. Coca Cola did this, and
| brought their earlier recipe back within three months. Plus this
| generated greater product interest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
| globular-toast wrote:
| This was actually the top story on the BBC Radio 1 news this
| afternoon. I'd never, not once, heard OnlyFans mentioned outside
| of niche internet communities before today. The "ban" was an
| excellent move by the marketing department.
|
| I have a _really_ bad feeling about further popularisation of
| porn, though. This is going to be so, so bad for society.
| tyingq wrote:
| I understand they may be bound by what's available to them.
|
| But the plan to just throw out the essential core of their
| business model seemed obviously doomed. Banning the only part of
| your business that makes money. Heh.
|
| Edit: Other comments that "the plan" might have been meant to be
| ridiculous...to drum up more press coverage, make sense to me.
| arwinamogul wrote:
| They did mention that it's going to be adjusted set of rules when
| it comes to content. I see this moving to crypto for payment.
| balozi wrote:
| I suspect the payment processing argument is a convenient red
| herring. Adult sites and their transaction service providers
| process payments all the time, some at incredible scale.
| howolduis wrote:
| what if this was a big scam to get web archivists to freak out
| and subscribe to as many people before their content is gone
| forever? /s
| hermitsings wrote:
| Good
| belter wrote:
| These companies, most seem to admire here, just because they make
| a lot of money, are going from bad to worst.
|
| First....
|
| - They made money on stealing your privacy.
|
| - Then they made money on taking your rest and piece of mind
| inviting your neighbors to make money from renting their
| mattresses.
|
| - Then they made money from making you do "gig's" with zero hours
| contract style type of work...But making you believe you are a
| contractor.
|
| - Then they made money from reading your email and showing you
| announcements.
|
| - Then they made money by tracking your location and selling your
| buying habits.
|
| - Now they are making money by inviting you to sell your soul and
| exhibit yourself naked for money.
|
| Is anybody working on something that matters or is it only money
| that matters?
| kbenson wrote:
| > - Now they are making money by inviting you to sell your soul
| and exhibit yourself naked for money.
|
| Actually, they were trying to _stop_ the naked part, and that
| 's what people were up in arms about.
|
| And given it was the people that were upset, not the company
| because it couldn't take advantage of the people in this way,
| I'm not sure how that works with your premise.
| belter wrote:
| They said they were only stopping because of the banks. There
| is also something very strange going on there, because other
| porn sites were able to clean their act by implementing
| regulations demanded by the payment providers, but not
| OnlyFans. I feel we still have to hear the full story on
| this.
| anaganisk wrote:
| But we're making the world a better place by open sourcing our
| Nth JavaScript framework and a new database. But on a serious
| note, that part community just looks away, because the answer
| is not easy. Popular sentiment on HN is privacy, freedom and
| de-centralisation . Yet major portion of community works with
| companies that break at-least one of those.
| traveler01 wrote:
| As a Gen-Z also recently graduated (less than 5 years), I can
| assure you, the fact these platforms are so big is because being
| graduated isn't worth anything these days. You are lucky or you
| are not.
| mathgenius wrote:
| > being graduated isn't worth anything these days
|
| I'm gen-X and it's been like this for as long as i've been
| around too.
|
| Degree says "this one is reliable / knows how to finish stuff".
| That's it.
| CPLX wrote:
| I'm Gen X too and I don't think that's really accurate.
|
| I feel like the job market has changed pretty markedly since
| I was a grad in the late 90's, and that it's just way more
| all or nothing.
|
| You either can get a job with benefits and a career track and
| 4 years later you're better off, or you're literally going
| nowhere, every year of your job is the same as the year prior
| and you have nothing to show.
|
| There's no more thing where you get a real, genuine, full
| time, but low-skill entry level job and try to prove
| yourself. You can't prove yourself in low-skill jobs any
| more, nobody is watching and nobody cares. In short "you
| can't get there from here."
|
| I'm speaking entirely anecdotally for sure, but with that
| said it really does seem fundamentally not the same _at all_
| as what I faced as a new grad.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, and once you get on a track, you're pretty much there
| for good. There's a narrow range of "promotions" within
| that track, but no jumping tracks anymore. If you're
| flipping burgers at McDonalds, you can't just "hard-work"
| your way to owning that store. If you're 3rd junior
| engineer from the left at your tech company, you can hard-
| work your way up to senior, maybe even principal engineer,
| but you will statistically never be able to hard-work your
| way to CEO. If you're a nurse, you're never going to hard-
| work your way to being a doctor. And so on. The higher-
| status jobs are all gate-kept by social class pedigree and
| credentialism.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I partially agree with your sentiment. But isn't this one of
| the most commercially relevant skills to demonstrate to a
| potential employer?
|
| In finance, it is "tradition" for people _without_
| certifications to dump on those with certifications, such as
| CFA & CPA, but most of these haters miss the point. It is
| really hard to motivate yourself to finish. Once you have the
| cert, it is a good indicator that the person can get things
| done! Interestingly, when I interview fresh grads, if they
| have anything that demonstrates tenacity, like sports or
| playing musical instruments ... or something that takes time
| and skill to accomplish, I am always curious to hear about
| their experiences of personal growth.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Not to be that guy, but a very small percentage of people might
| get lucky to get an opportunity at something, not to keep it.
| Time and time again I've found that what people refer to as
| luck (aside from inheritance or lottery) is sheer hard work and
| discipline.
| pdpi wrote:
| Some important steps in my career were basically down to
| sheer dumb luck. I will happily claim responsibility for
| putting myself in a position where lightning _could strike_ ,
| and was prepared to take advantage of the lightning strike,
| but it actually striking was, again, sheer dumb luck.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Again, dumb luck might have given you the opportunity, but
| dumb luck didn't keep that thing going, you either
| consciously cheat or you're working hard to keep the thing
| that dumb luck gave you the opportunity for.
|
| The point is we all get dumb luck opportunities, not all
| keep them though
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Come on, there was never an era when "graduation" was worth
| anything. I graduated a small university in Normandy, France
| and work in an investment bank in Hong Kong.
|
| You think they care I graduated at all? :D Be intelligent, know
| things, be creative and always end a job interview with the
| guys telling you you interviewed them.
|
| Graduating is worth nothing. Whatever you learned while at
| university is worth a lot to get a free internship. Whatever
| you learned during the internship is worth a bit. Always been
| so, always will be.
| cpach wrote:
| That's troubling. I don't know where you live but at least in
| my locale many employers seem hesitant to hire newly-grads,
| even if they need to increase staff. Many companies seem to
| expect some other company to take care of the training.
|
| A degree is nice but until someone has gained experience that
| person first needs a company to take a chance on them.
| after_care wrote:
| When I graduated (5-10 years ago) internships were the best
| way to grain experience and stand out a bit above the rest in
| the full time hiring portion.
|
| 1. The company that hired the interns received a fantastic
| deal on labor. I think the company that hired me did it
| because they had an extra fully equipped desk that was going
| to waste without someone coding on it.
|
| 2. Not every student earned an internship, so gaining one was
| real feather in the hat.
|
| 3. Not every intern would have accomplished the same amount.
| Just like school and life, the more you put into an
| internship the more you get out.
|
| 4. It jump started my professional network of people actually
| in industry.
| Kye wrote:
| The hard part is finding one that's paid, or pays enough.
| Most people can't afford to do un(der)paid labor for the
| prospect of maybe, possibly, but maybe not getting a job.
| Being able to do unpaid labor selects for people with other
| things working in their favor.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Almost all tech internships are paid (for people with CS
| or engineering majors). Only really shady companies would
| try to get away with not paying a technical intern. In
| most cases these folks are doing real work, not just
| fetching coffee.
| Kadin wrote:
| Most tech internships are paid. Someone in a CS program
| at a recognizable school with a strong program should
| _definitely_ not be signing up for unpaid internships (at
| least not at for-profit corps).
|
| I just finished supervising the summer interns embedded
| with my team at work, and we definitely paid everyone,
| allowed remote work, and brought everyone into the HQ for
| a week towards the end (flights, hotel, transpo, meals
| all comped) to give presentations, network in person with
| the team, do field trips / team building stuff, etc. I
| like to think we do a better-than-average job, but it's
| pretty close to what you need to be doing if you want to
| attract good talent to your internship program.
| cpach wrote:
| Internships is a good thing, if the terms are reasonable.
| But IMHO there should also be other ways to get a foot in
| the door.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| I mean luck is always a factor, but let's be real, the
| major/career path someone chooses to study in college is a much
| bigger determinant of your prospects after graduation.
|
| I still can't understand how people can willingly choose any
| number of majors/careers that are very well known to have a
| weak job market and salary range, and then act surprised when
| it's tough after graduating.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The last half you wrote is so real and devastating to many.
| And few get the advice they need at 17 or 18 years old to
| make a more commercially relevant decision! If you are from
| an upper-middle class (and above) family, no worries --
| anything will do. For all others, choose wisely.
| CabSauce wrote:
| Getting a degree in a field that has jobs helps too.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Which field "has jobs" anymore? Putting aside the humanities,
| STEM degrees these days aren't even a guarantee of a job.
| Biology/chemistry jobs generally require graduate school or
| medical school, engineering jobs aren't as lucrative or
| stable as they once were, and math either implies becoming an
| actuary (i.e. more certification), a quant (insanely
| competitive) or a programmer. I'm not saying these routes are
| impossible, but it's harder than you'd think to pick a field
| that "has jobs". More than a few of my friends who did STEM
| degrees have ended up in tech for that reason.
| elliekelly wrote:
| The problem with college is the cost, not the degrees people
| choose to pursue. And blaming students for studying things
| that aren't in demand is a straw man.
|
| A lot can change in the four years between enrollment and
| graduation. For example, I went to college in 2006 when the
| finance sector was booming. I graduated in 2010 when it very
| much wasn't. By the time the jobs had evaporated it was much
| too late to change my course of study. And I certainly
| couldn't go back and renegotiate the tuition or interest rate
| on my loans.
|
| I'm sure the same could be said about people who went to
| school for anything relating to tourism or hospitality who
| have graduated into the pandemic. If you're a new chef,
| pilot, hair dresser, massage therapist, looking to work in
| hotel management, etc. the job market that existed when you
| began your studies is entirely different from the job market
| you've just graduated into.
| adriand wrote:
| And the same can happen in tech! When I started college in
| the late 90s in software engineering, the market was
| booming. A year before I graduated the dot-com crash took
| place and the jobs evaporated. That was the catalyst for
| pursuing an entrepreneurial path (I had no choice) but in
| spite of things working out, I always try to be thankful
| for my good fortune and remember that it can change in an
| instant.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Can you expand on the entrepreneurial path you took?
| Guthur wrote:
| If you are going to uni to do vocational training such as
| hairdressing, massage and being a chef then something is
| really screwed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| hairdressers and chefs can't have well rounded
| educations? going to vocational school is a completely
| different experience. you're not being asked to read
| literature at a trade school. you're not asked to take
| history classes, or even basic sciences. sure, these are
| positives to people that don't care, but i'm not sure
| that's a full education? you're definitely trained in
| your field, but is that a full education? i would
| recommend at least 2 years at community college on top of
| (before?) vocational school. i'm not knocking vocational
| schools, but i'm suggesting not knocking someone
| attending a college taking one of these types of careers
| Guthur wrote:
| I'm not knocking them, but if what you say is the case it
| would appear orthogonal to their career choice and so
| complaining that your college was expensive and you can't
| get a job is incoherent.
| Kye wrote:
| I finished a network admin degree just as all the entry-
| level jobs were being sucked up by SaaS and a few IT firms
| that weren't hiring. At least the state scholarship paid
| for most of it, so I had no debt.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| You've just made as much of a straw man (by listing jobs
| that evaporated over 4 years) as the comment you were
| replying to.
|
| The fact is that some jobs will always be in demand. Some
| jobs will almost always be in higher demand.
|
| And the rest of jobs... won't.
|
| Get a degree linked with the former, you'll have more
| opportunities. Get a degree linked with the latter, and you
| won't.
| whymauri wrote:
| It helps, but for many it was/is not enough. Trust me, the
| job search was brutal even as a computer science graduate
| from MIT. I had an offer and it was revoked (and companies
| that I had offers from pre-pandemic would not engage
| anymore). I'm almost certain that I have classmates who had
| OF at one point during the last year and I know for certain
| from Twitter there's Ivy League, Cal, and Stanford students
| on there.
|
| Especially at the beginning of the pandemic when nobody knew
| how long it might last and the stock market was free diving
| to what was seemingly oblivion.
|
| I guess my point is that in mid 2020, it felt like there were
| no degrees that had plentiful jobs short of being:
|
| 1. A close-to-graduating worker in health or medicine.
|
| 2. A finance-compatible major from a Top 15 school with
| exceptional math, statistics, and inference ability. Likely,
| previous internships. And there really weren't that many of
| these.
|
| Jobs at software companies that were typically not
| competitive were getting flooded by top grads and early
| career applicants w/ 1-3 years of experience who had offers
| revoked or got laid off. I fought tooth and nail for the
| offers I got, and the company I joined ended up being
| terrible -- so go figure.
|
| Now consider that there are like, 500k students *not from top
| schools* graduating in STEM that same year. Suddenly the
| 'study something useful' mantra fell apart in the matter of
| months (weeks?).
| borski wrote:
| As an MIT alum - if you had an offer rescinded please let
| the careers office know. Companies are not allowed to do
| that if engaging with MIT students in a meaningful way
| (career fairs, etc.) and MIT can and does penalize them for
| this (banning from fairs, etc.)
| dkarl wrote:
| I think this is a sign of companies not knowing how to get
| useful work out of junior developers with only a few years
| of experience, much less fresh college graduates. This is
| an extremely challenging problem at small scales, and one
| that most companies simply aren't up to. In my experience,
| listening to engineering management discuss these matters,
| the few people who entertain the idea of hiring junior
| developers do so for fairly abstract reasons: a sense of
| moral obligation, a sense of contributing to the health of
| the industry, a desire to challenge the software
| engineering team to mature in its practices, etc. I'm sure
| there are companies out there that know how to employ a
| junior developer at the going rate and actually get their
| money's worth, but it isn't common knowledge, and I haven't
| seen anybody succeed at it firsthand. If my experience is
| typical, we're just overall shitty as an industry at using
| young talent.
|
| That creates a problem of incentives, where purely self-
| serving organizations will let other companies bear the
| expense of employing junior developers and helping them
| learn the ropes, and then hire them when they're worth it.
|
| As an aside, professional soccer solves this by granting a
| team certain rights to the players it develops, so if a
| player is trained in Team A's youth academy, and Team B
| wants to sign them at age 18, Team B pays a fee to Team A.
| Team A may agree to reduce the fee in exchange for a share
| of any subsequent sale, so if the player develops into a
| top professional and is sold to Team C at age 22, both Team
| A and Team B benefit financially.
| shagie wrote:
| > That creates a problem of incentives, where purely
| self-serving organizations will let other companies bear
| the expense of employing junior developers and helping
| them learn the ropes, and then hire them when they're
| worth it.
|
| With juniors being able to be easily enticed away with a
| bump in salary at a well known company it becomes the
| situation that the only companies that can afford to hire
| juniors are those that pay enough to make it so that they
| _aren 't_ enticed away as easily.
|
| This then leads to other companies not interested in
| hiring juniors - not because they don't want them or that
| they aren't willing to train them, but rather that they
| can't compete with the big tech company compensation.
|
| The result of that is then that you see only job postings
| for mid and seniors... not so much because they will hit
| the ground with less training, but that they're likely
| more mature and less likely to be poached (they're
| stereotypically interested in settling down and raising a
| family).
|
| Ultimately, if everyone and every organization is
| similarly self interested, there is no reason to hire a
| junior dev unless you can pay them top dollar to avoid
| the possibility of them getting poached by another org
| before they've been able to produce a positive return on
| investment... or that the overall income of the org is
| large enough that the loss in the ROI isn't substantial.
| city41 wrote:
| When I graduated with my CS degree in 2002 the job search
| was brutal. I hang out in cscareerquestions on Reddit and a
| common theme seems to be getting that first junior dev job
| is really hard. Is this just an unfair reality all junior
| devs face?
| edgyquant wrote:
| I think there's just a lot of competition. I never was
| able to land a junior dev position and gave up (was self
| taught, though.) I just decided to go freelance and work
| on personal projects until I had a portfolio and was able
| to get hired as a mid-level engineer.
| powerslacker wrote:
| Getting that first job is almost always the hardest. I
| went through nearly 100 interviews (I have no degree)
| before I got hired. I wouldn't call it unfair though.
| I've been on the other side of the interview table since
| then and I can tell you that the vast majority of
| applicants to a junior role are so far from employable
| that its barely worth it to hire a junior. No one wants
| to wait years for an employee to become productive. The
| fact is that most schools are not preparing graduates to
| work in the industry. I know several CS graduates who
| were almost totally unfamiliar with SQL databases.
| Considering that the vast majority of SE work these days
| is on the web, it is shocking that there isn't more focus
| on fundamental web technology.
| ratww wrote:
| It definitely seems so. Whenever I post an internship or
| junior position on Indeed or LinkedIn I get hundreds of
| resumes.
|
| Whenever I need someone more experienced, it's either
| hired by recommendation, or we need a headhunter. Salary
| is never the issue, it's just that senior devs complain
| about getting swamped with offers, so they don't even
| have to look anymore.
|
| It's almost like a game theory problem: people have to
| apply to hundreds of companies to have a shot because
| everyone is also doing the same.
|
| That, and some companies seem to be shifting towards
| preferring having a low number of experienced developers
| rather than a larger number of entry-level: I know of a
| few companies that paused junior and mid-level hirings
| after getting big investments.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Joel Spolsky has written about this problem extensively.
| The best devs are not available and are not looking. I
| have seen many, many LinkedIn profiles for people who are
| insanely technical (much more than me) who literally
| write: "Headhunters: Go away!" LOL.
| brianwawok wrote:
| What is unemployment among software devs? It's real real
| low.
|
| As someone who hires devs, I could easily hire 2-3 devs
| right now. However I live in a tier3 city, and don't want
| to do the remote dev thing right now. If I post a remote
| job I get 5,000 candidates, if I post a local job I get
| 0-3.
|
| As a new grad, I bet winning a remote job would be hard.
| But pick a city, any city. Always looking for devs. If
| still not landing jobs, its a matter of interview skills
| and non-school resume experience.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| Yeah MIT CS grad on OF means
|
| 1) Bottom 5% tier grad who has less than zero social
| skills, thus would also be a low earner on OF
|
| 2) Extremely picky about jobs. Instead chose OF for
| lifestyle/earning reasons.
|
| 3) Serious health, legal, psychological, or family
| problems that would prevent them from any job and
| probably also would have made attaining their degree very
| difficult. This is MIT OnlyFans person I feel the saddest
| for.
|
| 4) Some other 1/1000 possibility
|
| The idea MIT grads are on OF in mass just to make enough
| to eat and put a roof over their heads is some serious
| sympathy farming.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Hey "quantumBerry" -- What a username to behold!
|
| While I find this post witty and well-written ("some
| serious sympathy farming"!), I don't follow where the
| parent post was suggesting anything about MIT CS grads on
| OnlyFans. Do I misunderstand? (Zero trolling.)
| fsn4dN69ey wrote:
| The parent comment two levels above mentioned fellow MIT
| CS classmates having OF.
| whymauri wrote:
| Yeah, all I was saying is that statistically, it's likely
| that I overlapped with an undergrad(s) at MIT who
| has/have an OF. And that I know for certain from Twitter
| that there are undergrads from similar schools who have
| OF.
|
| I never prequalified it specifically with 'CS' -- by the
| way, a lot of the discussion in the thread has tunnel-
| visioned on CS, but I'm pretty sure that's not the only
| STEM degree HN would consider 'useful' (if we loop back
| to the comment I replied to).
|
| There's physics, math, engineering, and much, much more
| -- and all of those had an even worse job market than CS
| with the exclusion of those jumping into quantitative
| finance. The point of the original comment is to
| highlight how you can do everything 'right' according to
| the poster and, by necessity or tragedy resulting from a
| global pandemic, may still end up relying on sex work to
| make ends meet for a period of time.
|
| The circumstances of the pandemic are only further
| exacerbated for the hundreds of thousands of STEM
| graduates not coming from top schools or internships.
| Finally, I'd like to note that my original comment (way
| up in the chain) was neither about STEM nor top schools,
| so I hold that my observation there still holds weight.
|
| TL;DR: the concept that Gen-Z job hunters can simply go
| to 'the good school' and get 'the good degree' for 'the
| good job' is entirely subverted in a pandemic, leading to
| an especially dire job situation for those who are less
| privileged in education or training. This, coupled with
| social distancing, was the perfect social context for
| OnlyFan's recent hypergrowth.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Thank you for this excellent, thoughtful reply.
|
| This point: "may still end up relying on sex work to make
| ends meet for a period of time". I grew up in a family
| and culture that shamed sex workers, but when I became an
| adult, I learned that that the truth is much more
| nuanced! I hope OnlyFans can continue to provide a safe
| space for sex workers when and how they wish to work.
|
| Your tl;dr: I agree and experienced it myself, first
| hand. The year that you graduate is a roll of the dice in
| real life. If the economy is strong, you'll mostly do
| fine; if the economy is in a nosedive, most people are
| screwed, even hotties on OnlyFans with an MIT CS degree!
| whymauri wrote:
| >I learned that that the truth is much more nuanced!
|
| Yes! Absolutely, I tried a couple times to re-write that
| bit without getting too verbose and kinda gave up. I
| agree with you -- there are people who absolutely just
| vibe with sex work and they should be empowered to do it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Maybe in the US? The UK market for tech is insanely hot.
| But perhaps it was previously underpriced.
| adventured wrote:
| No. Tech employment in the US remains hot as well.
| Unemployment for people in the tech industry with a
| degree is about 1-2%. For a software developer with a
| degree, it's sub 1%.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > I have classmates who had OF
|
| What is OF?
| toofy wrote:
| OnlyFans. OF is what it's called often in common
| conversations.
|
| "What's your OF?" "I setup an OF at _blahblahblah_ "
| whymauri wrote:
| Sorry, OF is the abbreviation for OnlyFans.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It sounds like you're talking about the very beginning of
| the pandemic when everyone was just trying to figure out
| what the hell was happening. That seems entirely separate
| from the topic of the value of a degree these days. I had a
| similar situation finishing school as the last recession
| hit, but that wasn't so sudden. Someone else is talking
| about it being brutal graduating in 2002. The common theme
| here seems to be graduating right after crashes or right
| after pandemics hit sucks.
| platz wrote:
| Well when you apply at GAFAM you're competing against a
| very specific talent pool, and it's a buyers market. Maybe
| try applying at a smaller company?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I am not MIT, but rather shabby mid-tier state uni, and my
| experience was nearly identical when job hunting in 2002/3
| after graduation. With some distance, the hardest part
| emotionally, is that one or two years when you are only 22
| years old is a LONG time to find a job!
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| I wanted to add to your list of degrees of plentiful jobs..
| but electrical engineering grads have no shortage of people
| competing to hire them.
|
| If you include associate degrees, you can add all the
| skilled trades to that list. To be clear, I'm talking about
| all the associate applied science
| w/[electricial|plumbing|pipefitting|welding] programs out
| there.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| There are about three fields like that now.
|
| The median bachelor's degree in math or physics obtained in
| 2021 is basically worthless.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A bachelors in math or physics from a decent school should
| indicate that you have the capacity to learn difficult
| concepts, work with data, and you should have some
| experience with programming.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Sorry, but that doesn't translate into employability in
| 2021.
|
| I have mentored math and physics students for six years
| now and even the good ones are having an increasingly
| hard time finding employment, and not for lack of trying.
| It's not uncommon to hear of seniors sending, say, 100
| applications only to get ghosted on 99 of them.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Try convincing the median HR drone of that.
| quaffapint wrote:
| I would agree with this. A large portion of tech people I
| work with are not CS grads. I myself have a math degree.
| You do need to show that you can program and know your
| stuff, but you can still do that with personal/side
| projects/etc. Once you get your first job, then you're
| good to go and most won't care about your degree. I think
| now it's more a challenge of getting junior level jobs
| across the board.
| pjbeam wrote:
| Same here, math undergrad; not terribly difficult to
| start my career with and is now an advantage I think,
| albeit a small one.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Just curious what you would say those fields are.
|
| Off the top of my head CS is steadily looking like one of
| the only degrees worth anything and I'd still argue the
| value of that given the prevalence of self taught
| developers. Decent starting salaries for the most part, and
| very good starting salaries if you're particularly good at
| certain things and an otherwise unheard of ceiling. Though
| I'm generalizing at the moment, I feel the industry is more
| complex than that.
|
| Nursing seems ok. Salaries appear good at first, but the
| nurses I know also work ungodly hours.
|
| Some traditional engineering fields seem ok in terms of
| employability, but wages don't seem that great and many of
| the roles I've seen in those fields want a MS/MEng.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Nursing, yes. Pre-COVID it looked like it might have
| gotten saturated but since then demand has spiked.
|
| Physical therapy seems to be doing well too.
|
| The other one in my head was pharmacy, but I guess one
| needs a Pharm. D to continue on. Being a pharmacy tech
| also sucks, objectively.
|
| CS, maybe. Engineering degrees from anything less than a
| large state school or tier one are probably better off
| trying to get into one for their masters. That's why I
| said "median" BS degree above.
|
| Law is entirely saturated and dead.
|
| Ironically, I see a lot of humanities students doing well
| post-graduation because they went in with low
| expectations. But society continues to dunk on them for
| basically no reason.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The other one in my head was pharmacy, but I guess one
| needs a Pharm. D to continue on. Being a pharmacy tech
| also sucks, objectively.
|
| A Pharm D is currently one of the worst investments.
| Their wages have been declining since at least 2015, and
| stagnant since 2010.
|
| They have no ability to generate revenue other than
| hawking bullshit vitamins and supplements, because they
| have no negotiating power against the people that pay
| them (managed care organizations and governments). And a
| few big employers compose of most of the market that buys
| Pharm D labor (CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, Walmart).
|
| Not to mention that you have to work evenings, weekends,
| nights, and deal with the general public. Checkout the
| pharmacy forums on sdnforum or Reddit, they are super
| depressing.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Doesn't help when you don't have the foot in the door because
| your family is not traditionally professional.
|
| I had to ask one of my old graduate project partners for a
| referral to my current (and first, at 27) tech job and I
| still feel dirty and guilty that I got it so easily and
| managed to escape the trap of being extremely qualified while
| making min wage in a dusty shithole of a warehouse.
|
| "It's not what you know, it's who you know" was a phrase of
| derision growing up, but it's how the world works now.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "It's not what you know, it's who you know" was a phrase
| of derision growing up, but it's how the world works now.
|
| It was always a phrase of derision _for the naivete of
| those who think it has ever been different_ , because it
| has _always_ been how the world works.
|
| You just didn't understand it until it bit you, and then
| you mistook it for some recent change, even though you
| apparently grew up with people telling you how it is.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| True, I always interpreted it as "incompetent people will
| sometimes be picked over you by virtue of their
| connections" but the reality is much, much worse IMO:
| "from a young age, optimize your social network for the
| career you want, else play the application lottery"
| lelanthran wrote:
| > "It's not what you know, it's who you know"
|
| Close. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.
| pwned1 wrote:
| Every single job I've had in my adult life (I'm 42 years
| old now) was because I knew someone. It pays to know people
| and make friends/connections.
|
| I got started with an unpaid internship in high school
| (every school should require that) and life grew out of
| that.
|
| [edit] And my family was anything but "traditionally
| professional." I had no connections whatsoever through my
| family.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| My anecdata are somewhat counter to this.
|
| I got my first part-time tech support job during college
| via a connection. My aunt was a white collar
| professional, she ran the fundraising for a non-profit
| with an annual budget in the millions of dollars. Some
| software they used for managing donations was developed
| by a small local company, and she recommended I apply for
| work there because she was always in touch with their
| support and thought I could do the job. So I wrote a
| cover letter and name dropped my aunt's name, who they
| knew as a client. They interviewed me and hired me. I
| don't know how much my aunt helped but I can grant that
| this connection was a privilege many don't have.
|
| After that, the rest of my jobs were without any
| connection. In the winter of my senior year at college I
| started applying to big companies through their websites.
| A big insurance company responded and flew me in for an
| interview. I was thrilled by this chance, I had never
| been treated so well. The recruiter told me to save
| receipts for food and taxis etc, I was so unused to this
| that I don't think u ever submitted them, I couldn't
| believe they'd pay for all that. Anyway they hired me.
|
| After that my LinkedIn profile did most of the work. I
| responded to recruiter spam and got interviews.
|
| One job-hop was driven by a semi-connection: I was moving
| cities and wanted to find a new job, so I went to a bunch
| of tech meetups. One was a python meetup, which has
| nothing to do with my tech stack and I know very little
| python. At the end, I approached one of the lecturers and
| told him that while I didn't understand anything he
| talked about, I got his joke and I thought they were
| funny. He said that he and some friends were going for
| drinks, would I like to join? "Sure." So we sat and
| talked, at the end he asked if I'm looking for a job, I
| said yes, he told me to send him my CV which I did. Then
| nothing... then a week later he responds telling me he
| posted on a forum for veterans of a particular military
| unit he was in, where he wrote that he thought I was a
| good candidate. Then suddenly my phone started
| ringing...I had interviewsin the new city and ultimately
| offers.
|
| Bottom line: there are multiple ways to success. Good
| fortune is a common thread though, you do need luck and
| serendipity, and professional family connections
| certainly don't hurt.
| jkestner wrote:
| Pretty much the same here. Many of those connections were
| from school, going all the way back to elementary. So as
| a parent now, I feel like part of my job, for better or
| worse, is to nurture their friendships and maintain them
| with playdates once they aren't in the same school.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| I can't say I blame you, but it really leads to a society
| stratified on uncontrollable factors and puts a bullet in
| the idea of meritocracy. You can't control who your
| parents are or the culture you grew up in, but these have
| no impact on your job performance unless you live in a
| highly nepotistic society.
|
| Maybe an "affirmative action" type program for the
| socially disadvantaged is necessary, but I can't see that
| gaining much support when addressing the more glaring
| disparities (racial, gender) is controversial enough.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I have the same issues as you as well and no, you can't
| control who your parents are and the culture you grow up
| in.
|
| But you can control who your friends are. And you can
| choose to surround yourself with motivated people.
|
| >puts a bullet in the idea of meritocracy. I don't feel
| the same way, as this sits at the boundary of the
| workplace. My understanding of meritocracy is that,
| reward is based on performance inside the company. But
| until you have hired and had someone working for some
| time, you have no way of evaluating them.
|
| We try to mitigate hiring bad employees with things like
| resumes, interviews and skill tests but those are not
| perfect. I, for example, suck at writing a resume. How
| many people have you seen on this site rage about "leet
| code tests"?
|
| So, another "tool" companies use are personal
| connections. John, a great worker whom I trust, refers
| Frank. I still have to interview him but it give me
| another data point.
|
| As a society, we have drifted away from the local
| community organizations (i.e. churches) that allowed
| people to build up good connections. We have tried to
| replace them, things like Linkedin but I am not sure how
| good of a job they do. Anything done on the internet
| gives me more of an ethereal feeling as opposed to the
| more permanent feeling of face to face personal
| connections.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure that is necessary. While I think
| connections will take you further, nurturing
| relationships in the community, as an adult, is also very
| useful. This is something anyone can do provided they can
| get wherever things are happening. Which in a lot of
| cases is online.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Do you also make an effort to include children from lower
| socio-economic backgrounds? That is a good way to
| contribute to a flatter society, that depends less upon
| "the privileged people I know to help me get a job".
| pastage wrote:
| Honestly being on the other end hiring people without
| referals is very draining, but my best hires have been
| without referals.
| ativzzz wrote:
| YMMV. I've gotten all my jobs by mass applying, going to
| career fairs (to be fair this was through my university),
| having an updated LinkedIn, etc. None were by referral.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It's how the world has always worked, which is why it's a
| phrase in the first place.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| It's fucked up is what it is.
|
| Right now my coworkers like me, my manager gave me a
| glowing review, the company is willing to buy me certs
| and I have been assigned to the subteam responsible for
| our core functionality.
|
| 8 months ago I was self-harming and ready to off myself
| because of endlessly firing applications into the void
| and reaching the end of my finances.
|
| I can clearly perform under the stress of work, school,
| achievement, things breaking but the way the labour
| market is structured almost broke me which has to tell
| you something.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| As parent was telling you, that's always been America.
|
| Except historically, most jobs have been less safe.
|
| You get crap jobs in your teens to have work history. You
| go to college to get a degree. You make friends at
| college, network, and maybe get an internship. You
| leverage all of the previous to get your first job. You
| leverage your first job and network to get your second
| job.
|
| It's not easy. But it is how the world works. Why do you
| think so many people in white collar jobs have imposter
| syndrome?
| danans wrote:
| > 8 months ago I was self-harming and ready to off myself
| because of endlessly firing applications into the void
| and reaching the end of my finances
|
| I am sorry you experienced this. Many of us have
| experienced similar things in our careers. When I did, I
| had my brother's couch I could crash on while I figured
| things out, and to be honest, parents who could help me
| with rent when my post dotcom-bust job paid peanuts.
|
| To the extent that your difficulties were exacerbated by
| an insufficient social safety net is perhaps the greatest
| indictment of our society. Incentive structures matter,
| and structures that put people at the brink between
| achievement and self harm do a lot of damage to our human
| capital.
|
| Not everyone will be pushed to the point of self-harm,
| but the proximity between destitution and achievement is
| too close, especially for those without family and
| community safety nets.
| sureglymop wrote:
| See the thing is, there is no such thing as meritocracy.
| What I don't understand is why people choose the fantasy of
| "working their way up" instead of putting some of those
| efforts into political activism and engagement. That's
| what's needed to actually tackle the systematic problems at
| hand.
|
| We need more political education, especially among younger
| people just entering the job market. Period.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Absolutely, and that has always been the case, even in
| vocations. There was a time where being a tv or vacuum
| repairman was a pretty good, middle class-ish job. Then the
| times came where that's not really the case. Picking a career
| path _does_ have a little bit of luck in it, but that 's like
| thinking it's lucky to not hit a door when going through a
| doorway. If you stop, think and open the door, you're less
| likely to get hit by a door, even though that doesn't
| guarantee it.
|
| And yes, this is coming from a guy who has been smacked in
| the face by someone else opening the door on me. Same with
| picking a poor career choice pre housing crash in 2008. Adapt
| and overcome.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| That's basically shooting at a moving target, though.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| As someone who has life experience, I can assure you that your
| lamentations are not special. "It's not what you know, but who
| you know" isn't a saying that originated in the 2010s.
| [deleted]
| sgregnt wrote:
| Can you please share what have you studied in your
| undergraduate? Or roughly what area? My experience is very
| different, to me it looks like the market is very hot now even
| after covid (talking about: Busness analysis and Engineering)
| treesknees wrote:
| That's not exactly true. It's not that an undergraduate degree
| is worthless, but it's become pretty standard. You may not
| stand above the rest with just a degree, but you certainly fall
| below the rest without one.
|
| I don't mean this from an intelligence or skill perspective,
| some of the smartest people I know don't have college degrees.
| But when the big companies are recruiting from college career
| fairs or listing it as a job requirement, you can and will be
| passed over for jobs because you don't have one.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > But when the big companies are recruiting from college
| career fairs or listing it as a job requirement, you can and
| will be passed over for jobs because you don't have one.
|
| I've started to get the impression that even in software
| development there are certain domains or industries you would
| be hard pressed to get into without a degree, simply because
| majority of entry levels are done through campus recruitment.
| Oras wrote:
| To confirm your point, Google Jobs has introduced a beta
| field called "educationRequirements" which can be any of the
| following values:
|
| - high school. - associate degree. - bachelor degree. -
| professional certificate. - postgraduate degree.
|
| Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/st
| ructure...
| wernercd wrote:
| Add to that the fact that not all degrees are equal... there
| are plenty of "degree factories" that pump out useless people
| who don't know anything marketable.
|
| Having a degree is, as you've said, a requirement (I have a 2
| year... I'm out on some jobs because of it)...
|
| Not having a degree is bad. Having a useless degree is worse
| as you now (generally) have the debt of a paper that means
| nothing.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > Having a useless degree
|
| Do you mean a degree in weird subjects, or from non-famous
| colleges?
| xwdv wrote:
| Weird subjects.
| echelon wrote:
| You don't need a degree for software, but you do for certain
| subfields.
|
| You won't be able to do biotech or practice law or medicine
| without credentials.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There are (a few, but they exist) states that will allow
| you to practice law without a JD - you have to pass the
| bar, though.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Generally my takeaway from stories about working for big
| consultancies is exclusively "don't work for big
| consultancies".
| gambiting wrote:
| I have a friend who worked for 5 years at a big consultancy
| company and he got stonewalled for getting promoted to a team
| lead role because he didn't have a masters degree. Like, he
| was getting top marks every year at performance review,
| clearly knew how to do the job, but some internal policy
| somewhere said that you can't be a lead without a masters
| degree, sorry.
|
| He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for
| him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time,
| and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was. Still,
| I'd say it was an absolute waste of time and he ended up
| switching companies a year later anyway.
| gamesbrainiac wrote:
| That might me the case at larger consultancies. Also, some
| jobs even require a PhD, because it is super specialized.
| But overall, the ROI of degrees have plummeted. A friend of
| mine finished a Mechanical Engineering degree and couldn't
| find decent paying work for 2 years. He then moved onto
| website design.
| nradov wrote:
| Your friend may have struggled but overall Mechanical
| Engineering is one of the top 10 highest salary college
| majors. Most graduates are doing pretty well.
|
| https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-
| reports/valueofcollegemajors/
| coliveira wrote:
| The ones that get jobs, you mean.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Almost didn't catch the fact that the data he pointed out
| only really counts people who actually got jobs. What
| kids need nowadays is to know which majors generate the
| largest _percentage_ of graduates who get work in their
| respective fields. That would be a better indicator of
| your chances of being hired after college.
|
| It does most of these kids no good to know that a given
| type of engineer can make 150k right out of college, if
| less than 2% of them are actually able to secure work in
| the field right out of college. In fact, I'd wager that
| prior to going into a field, most kids would rather know
| about the "less than 2% are able to secure work" part
| rather than the "150K starting salary" part.
| Fiahil wrote:
| In France you can get a degree (or at least an equivalent)
| from professional experience. You have to go through skill
| validation for that!
| majormajor wrote:
| This is certainly a common thing at large companies, but it
| also is one that goes back ten to twenty years, possibly
| more. Millenials hit this frequently, it's not just a Gen Z
| change.
| fridif wrote:
| Your friend was working for a bureaucratic company.
|
| Source: I know plenty of engineers without any formal
| degrees working for big money at real companies.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If they dont have formal degrees, then "engineer" is a
| loose term. They would not be professional engineers
| (PE/PEng).
| fridif wrote:
| This is the reason why our country will die a soon
| approaching death: the people who built all of our
| engines for WW2 were not certified engineers.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Unpopular idea, but that is why I use the word "engineer"
| sparingly. Engineers doing real engineering is becoming a
| smaller part of making tech products, especially
| software.
|
| Software developers can be at least as highly skilled and
| intelligent as can be engineers, but, most of the time,
| they are engaged in a highly skilled craft rather than
| engineering. Making software is sometimes more creative
| and more integrative than engineering.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Also software can change radically in ways physical
| engineering doesn't - we may continue to make refinements
| to steel alloys, but you won't come in to work tomorrow
| and discover that everyone is now building bridges out of
| glass.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| But a software engineer isn't a member of a state-
| sanctioned professional association. They cannot be
| struck off for bad behaviors, nor are they licensed to do
| anything beyond the norms of any other citizen. They are
| not members of a true profession like
| doctors/lawyers/engineers.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I'm not sure what "state-sanction professional
| association" means but there are many professional
| associations like IEEE (covering tech as a whole) or ACM
| (that covers computing specifically).
|
| There's also ABET - Accreditation Board for Engineering
| and Technology - which establishes formal requirements
| and standards for the teaching of Software Engineering as
| a discipline: https://www.abet.org/accreditation/
|
| So I think those pieces are there, they're just not the
| norm yet.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I'm personally in favor of such an organization but it
| really goes against the meritocratic spirit of tech. Lots
| of us have used tech to bootstrap a better life through
| sheer mastery and not a "professional" track
| sandworm101 wrote:
| State sanctioned means there is law mandating that only
| one group is in charge of the profession and they,
| outside government, regulate that profession. Lawyers
| only have one bar association in each state. Doctors have
| only one medical board.
| fridif wrote:
| The State of Oregon already tried to sue someone who was
| a software engineer for not being a "certified
| 'Engineer'" and the state's own supreme court ruled in
| favor of the defendant.
| xkqd wrote:
| Saying that here will be unpopular.
|
| But it's important to keep in mind that in many countries
| "engineer" is a protected term with qualification
| requirements and not simply a job title.
| rendall wrote:
| There is no software engineer professional accreditation,
| the way there is for, say, civil engineer
| [deleted]
| kbenson wrote:
| > He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay
| for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare
| time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was.
|
| Well, at least he scored a degree out of it.
|
| I'm torn on this. I'm not sure I see it all that different
| than if they wanted to make sure someone they were moving
| into a managerial role had knowledge to back it up, and
| wanted them to take managerial courses. It's good that the
| company paid for the courses, a bit less good that it was
| in personal time (but it's also theoretically beneficial
| for the person and isn't tied to the company, so I don't
| fault that much).
|
| If they outright offer this path in in this situation and
| it doesn't have to be brought up by the employee, I think
| that's a pretty acceptable solution to requiring that
| degree for the position, if the company thinks it's really
| important to have for some reason.
| nradov wrote:
| A Master's degree is what you make of it. A student who
| only wants the credential for short-term career purposes
| can skate through without much work or learning. But if you
| have it the opportunity to attend then why not put in some
| effort and learn interesting, challenging topics? I find
| that usually opens up unexpected opportunities later.
|
| It's a bit silly for employers to focus on arbitrary
| educational credentials instead of actual ability. But on
| the other hand for large organizations managing thousands
| of employees it's challenging to treat everyone as a unique
| individual. Some level of forced standardization is the
| only way to make it work efficiently at scale.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| At a consultancy, credentials you can market when "selling"
| your consultants is part of the job. Depending on the
| field, a certain level of accredited knowledge (i.e., from
| a degree, or certification perhaps) is part of how the
| bill-rate is justified for employees at given levels.
|
| We don't have an education lock on certain roles/levels at
| the company I work for, but we do have roles at certain
| levels that require a given certification no matter how
| proficient one is in the specified tech. This isn't a
| small-brain move that misses the forest of knowledge for
| the trees of credentials, but a recognition that it will be
| more challenging to staff that employee at a given level
| without it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > This isn't a small-brain move that misses the forest of
| knowledge for the trees of credentials
|
| It is a second-order small-brain move: the clients are
| the ones missing the forest for the trees, while your
| company is just going with the flow. I get it, my company
| did the same thing, but in the end it's one of those "how
| business is done" things that add together to create a
| culture we all freely admit makes no sense.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I think viewed uncharitably, it makes no sense. But I
| think it is plenty logical on its own. The reality is my
| org. - and many like it - have choices. We're not
| choosing between an incompetent person with a relevant
| credential and a competent person without one, we're
| choosing among many competent individuals (as far as
| we've assessed), and verifiable (marketable) indicators
| of competence beyond us "vouching" for them is an
| extremely valuable resource. It may not be ideal for a
| given person's career, but I don't think it has that much
| effect on our clients' outcomes.
|
| I'm sure there have been exceptions to this, and firms
| that aren't as confident in the capabilities of their
| people may suffer more.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > part of how the bill-rate is justified for employees at
| given levels
|
| "This guy is absolute garbage, but he has a masters
| degree, so we charge more for him."
| sandbags wrote:
| The industry term is leverage but, fundamentally, yes.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I have a friend who worked for 5 years at a big
| consultancy company and he got stonewalled for getting
| promoted to a team lead role because he didn't have a
| masters degree. Like, he was getting top marks every year
| at performance review, clearly knew how to do the job, but
| some internal policy somewhere said that you can't be a
| lead without a masters degree, sorry.
|
| Well, that's part of the job - are you able to figure out
| what needs to be done to reach the objective, and then do
| that? No? Well, no promotion for you.
|
| > He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay
| for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare
| time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was.
|
| Seems like your friend did figure out what hurdles to jump.
|
| Part of the reason that employers require advanced degrees
| is so that they are assured that the individual in question
| can figure out what steps need to be taken to fulfill an
| objective, and then take those steps.
| ruined wrote:
| >Part of the reason that employers require advanced
| degrees is so that they are assured that the individual
| in question can figure out what steps need to be taken to
| fulfill an objective, and then take those steps.
|
| it seems like if some individual has been working with
| you for years, you should probably have access to better
| metrics for this than degree/no degree, such as personal
| acquaintance and familiarity
| lelanthran wrote:
| > it seems like if some individual has been working with
| you for years, you should probably have access to better
| metrics for this than degree/no degree, such as personal
| acquaintance and familiarity
|
| But it isn't about the employee's competence, so how
| would metrics help? It's about the employee's compliance.
|
| Look at it from the point of view of the organisation,
| not the point of view of an individual within the
| organisation: an individual literally gets told what
| steps are needed to reach some objective, and _then they
| fail to take those steps!_
|
| That does not bode well for that individual in terms of
| making business decisions, hence they shouldn't be in a
| position of more power and/or influence anyway, because
| they are unable to achieve an objective even when it is
| spelled out to them.
| philipov wrote:
| Or, they achieved the objective, but they found their own
| solution instead of _being forced to have it spelled out
| for them_. I commonly encounter people who have these
| degrees but are unable to figure out how to accomplish an
| objective unless every step is presented as a bullet-
| point list in the task description.
|
| Having a degree is not the objective, being able to do
| the work is. Confusing the two is an example of a cargo
| cult. I don't want people working under me who are
| incapable of understanding which objectives are
| important.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Or, they achieved the objective, but they found their
| own solution instead of being forced to have it spelled
| out for them.
|
| The objective here is getting the promotion.
|
| > I commonly encounter people who have these degrees but
| are unable to figure out how to accomplish an objective
| unless every step is presented as a bullet-point list in
| the task description.
|
| Irrelevant - the company isn't using the degree as an
| indicator of competence, they are using it as an
| indicator of compliance.
|
| > Having a degree is not the objective,
|
| You're correct. Getting the promotion is the objective.
|
| > being able to do the work is.
|
| Being able to do the work is irrelevant if the candidate
| does not meet the minimum requirements set by the
| organisation.
| saxonww wrote:
| This is the common refrain, but I think it's equally
| likely that it boils down to "I did this, so you should
| have to do this, too."
| lelanthran wrote:
| > This is the common refrain, but I think it's equally
| likely that it boils down to "I did this, so you should
| have to do this, too."
|
| The reason is probably irrelevant: the organisation tells
| you what steps to take to get a promotion. If you fail to
| take those steps they consider you unsuitable for the
| promotion, not because they consider those steps to prove
| your capability, but because you have demonstrated an
| unwillingness to meet the minimum requirements.
|
| _Why_ the minimum requirements are what they are is
| irrelevant.
| newobj wrote:
| Is there a more worthless degree than a CS MS? No offense
| to anyone who has one, only my condolences.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I disagree. By that logic any CS degree is worthless. I
| have two years of college under my belt but work as a
| lead engineer at a well funded startup. I didn't need
| college to get good but that doesn't mean it doesn't help
| 90% of people to do so. I imagine that same is true of a
| masters degree, certain people will definitely benefit
| from it.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Worthless? Probably depends on the degree. Miseducation is
| worse than the absence of education. STEM at least has some
| _market value_ , but man does not live by bread alone and
| market value alone does not elevate the university above the
| level of trade school. Trade schools are a good thing.
| Turning universities into glorified trade schools (which they
| are) is not.
|
| People need more of the intangible but true. A consumerist
| society is condemned to wallow in mediocrity and misery. It
| does not rise to the level of human dignity and maintains a
| level of existence better suited to worms than men.
| jimbokun wrote:
| American universities do not really seem to be playing the
| role of exploring deep questions or search for meaning or
| knowledge for knowledge sake, either.
|
| It's mostly about expanding the gravy train of
| administrative staff and shiny new dormitories and eating
| facilities and gyms, alongside a narrow ideological
| political indoctrination with little enthusiasm for debate
| or considering unpopular opinions.
|
| Without the trade school aspect it's difficult to see what
| value they still provide.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You've never been to an american university, have you?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Graduated from one.
| treesknees wrote:
| You may get as philosophical as you want on the topic of
| whether degrees are necessary. As someone who did college
| recruiting for my company I can say first hand that degrees
| don't mean anything about someone's skillset. I've talked
| to hundreds of students with a 4.0 and a degree that
| couldn't tell me the Big-O of a hash vs searching a list.
| But if you are working in a field where the job
| requirements list a bachelor's degree and you don't have
| one, you are automatically at the bottom of the list. If I
| have 3 positions open and 25 similar candidates, things
| like fulfilling the job requirements (like having a degree)
| start coming into play.
|
| Very obviously if you are working in a field that does not
| list that as a requirement, then of course you don't need
| one. But it's still not worthless. As someone pointed out
| in another thread, if you're trying to move up in a
| company, a degree can be the differentiator.
| MAGZine wrote:
| > If I have 3 positions open and 25 similar candidates,
| things like fulfilling the job requirements (like having
| a degree) start coming into play.
|
| The problem is when jobs don't truly need the knowledge
| granted from a degree, and is just used to thin the
| heard, because hiding managers don't know what else to
| look for.
|
| The value is thus generated by convenience to the hiring
| manager rather than possession of relevant job knowledge.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A degree at least means a candidate can probably read and
| write. I meet too many 20-somethings who think they are
| hot stuff because they can make a website dance, but are
| totally incapable of creating a document explaining how
| they did it.
|
| My favorite legal recruiter question: give them a topic
| to research online, one where you know the wikipedia
| entry is wrong. Not many without post-secondary research
| experiance would pass that one.
| [deleted]
| edoceo wrote:
| If you know where Wikipedia is incorrect you fix it. They
| let almost anyone edit.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Edit yes, but whether your edit survives whatever person
| is king of that particular corner of wikipedia is another
| matter. Try making an edit from a brand new account.
| Correcting errors on a website isnt worth such fights.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is also my experience with Wiki. After having a few
| edits reversed that were obviously wrong (with sources!),
| I gave up. Ignoring the problem of edits, I still love
| reading Wiki.
| rayiner wrote:
| Boomer elites have driven our young people into penury,
| desperation, and sex work. Great.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Well, not just elites. This is the policy everyone voted for:
| less taxes (causing young folks to go heavily into debt for
| worthless degree credentials), less social safety nets, a
| generational wealth transfer from the young to the old.
|
| The results are exactly what you'd expect, and older
| generations should absolutely be worried when their cohort
| has shrunk through death to a minority voting bloc.
| Retric wrote:
| I don't think taxes on regular people have dropped, we
| simply pretend social Security, Medicare, State and local,
| + fees don't count as taxes. Which means we can "lower"
| federal taxes by providing less federal support to state
| projects.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Look at the historical level of public college education
| funding and correlate to student loan debt.
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-
| hig...
|
| > Deep state cuts in funding for higher education over
| the last decade have contributed to rapid, significant
| tuition increases and pushed more of the costs of college
| to students, making it harder for them to enroll and
| graduate. These cuts also have worsened racial and class
| inequality, since rising tuition can deter low-income
| students and students of color from college.
|
| > Overall state funding for public two- and four-year
| colleges in the school year ending in 2018 was more than
| $6.6 billion below what it was in 2008 just before the
| Great Recession fully took hold, after adjusting for
| inflation.[1] In the most difficult years after the
| recession, colleges responded to significant funding cuts
| by increasing tuition, reducing faculty, limiting course
| offerings, and in some cases closing campuses. Funding
| has rebounded somewhat, but costs remain high and
| services in some places have not returned.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/how-student-debt-
| became-a-1p... (How student debt became a $1.6 trillion
| crisis)
|
| > Then, during the Reagan Era and the Tax Revolt of the
| 1980s, states passed tax and expenditure limitations,
| restrictions that state governments create to limit the
| amount they can tax or spend.
|
| > "And that meant that state budgets came under threat,"
| explains Deming. "And so states that used to basically
| highly subsidize a college education for many people
| started to cut back in various ways, either by raising
| tuition or by spending less."
|
| > Reagan cut higher education funding and student aid,
| and college costs boomed as a result.
|
| > The College Board estimates that during the 1980-1981
| school year, on average, it cost students the modern
| equivalent of $17,410 to attend a private college and
| $7,900 to attend a public college -- including tuition,
| fees, room and board. By 1990, those costs increased to
| $26,050 and $9,800, respectively.
| foolinaround wrote:
| a lot of it can be attributed to spending in non-
| academics - like administration, sports, etc. these need
| to be reduced.
|
| Similar to ROTC programs for Army in conjunction with
| local colleges, why not special sports programs
| administered seperately but just co-located with regular
| colleges that go along with the scheduling, etc?
|
| Administrative expenses need to be chopped from the
| outside, there is no way the current folks are going to
| reduce that.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I agree this is also a deficiency (wasteful spending) to
| be solved for.
| Retric wrote:
| Sports alone are generally close to self funding at many
| universities with plenty showing net profits. It's not
| just top schools that benefit, giving alums a reason to
| visit and specifically care about the school has knock on
| effects to general donations as well as funding athletic
| scholarships that pay the full tuition amount.
|
| Some athletic fees are excessive, but encouraging
| students to use the pool, gym etc has real benefits to
| student health and can be scaled to actual usage levels.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > Sports alone are generally close to self funding
|
| do the funds come from students fees?
| Retric wrote:
| For major sports it's mostly donations, game tickets, TV
| broadcast rights, concession stands, merchandise, etc.
|
| As an example Virginia Tech football tickets are start at
| ~500$/season breaks down as 8$/game fee + 400 base price
| + variable required donation and can go up well over 2k a
| season for the better seats. It's a 35,000 seat stadium
| that's largely full so your talking a minimum of 20+
| million in annual ticket sales just for Football.
|
| By comparison VT has 39,000 students and the athletic fee
| is 163$ + a recreational Sports Fee of 163$, together
| it's 5% of tuition. Which collectively adds up to a
| similar scale as just one sports ticket sales, but covers
| general facilities used by any student. Looking across
| all sports and revenue streams the recreational sports
| fee clearly isn't the major funding source and as
| football etc contribute indirectly to the schools general
| fund their clearly close to break even if not a
| significant money maker.
|
| https://www.bursar.vt.edu/content/dam/bursar_vt_edu/tuiti
| on/...
|
| https://hokiesports.evenue.net/cgi-
| bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEvent...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Less taxes does not mean dropped taxes. More succinctly,
| the proportion of government expenditures going towards
| younger people's education has decreased than
| expenditures going towards older people or other
| populations.
| syshum wrote:
| >> less taxes (causing young folks to go heavily into debt
| for worthless degree credentials)
|
| So let me understand this thought process? It is better for
| Taxpayers to pay for "worthless degree credentials"
|
| The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are concerned
| is credential-ism itself. A standard public education
| should be good enough for a person to obtain a good middle
| class job, a K-12 education should be good enough for
| 50-60% of all jobs in the market
|
| That fact that it is not, is a huge indictment of both the
| private sector demanding too much, and the public school
| system no providing proper standard of education.
|
| K-12 SHOULD NOT be "college prep" like it is being treated
| today, and a person SHOULD NOT need a 4 year degree to do
| the most basic jobs in society, up to and including
| computer programming or other general IT work.
|
| I think you have it in your mind that the government can
| solve all of these problems with higher taxes and more
| spending, when in reality government is almost exclusively
| to blame for the majority of the problems
|
| More government will not solve it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I disagree with you about government as the solution.
| First, the government should cover, at no cost, two years
| of community college. Second, employers should be unable
| to mandate higher education that requires candidates to
| go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt if employers
| can't show that credential isn't materially required to
| perform a role's functions.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Second, employers should be unable to mandate higher
| education that requires candidates to go into tens of
| thousands of dollars of debt if employers can't show that
| credential isn't materially required to perform a role's
| functions.
|
| Will be difficult to enforce. Employers can always look
| at the degree and secretly use it as a criterion, while
| being prepared to claim there was something else about
| the candidate that led them to hire her.
| syshum wrote:
| >>First, the government should cover, at no cost, two
| years of community college
|
| I am honestly not opposed to that... But I still believe
| we should have a better Public Education system less
| focused on "college prep" and more focused on actual
| education, preparing people for Life, Jobs, etc as an
| adult.
|
| The 2 years of Community College should be Vocational
| Training for the chosen field after your General
| Education is done in the K-12.
|
| But many people go to Community College to complete their
| General Education College requirements for their 4 year
| degree..
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are
| concerned is credential-ism itself. A standard public
| education should be good enough for a person to obtain a
| good middle class job, a K-12 education should be good
| enough for 50-60% of all jobs in the market
|
| Why? What if the markets' supply and demand curves
| indicate need for people with more than high school
| education, and an oversupply of people with just high
| school education?
|
| Note that I think US public school education standards
| are basically non existent, and there should be a massive
| retooling to ensure higher standards (including
| standardized testing) and more focus on actual skills in
| high school so that at 18 the kid comes out with
| something usable.
|
| But I do not see how or why our society can guarantee
| someone a certain class of living with an arbitrary
| amount of education.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Theoretically, yes.
|
| But there are far more jobs demanding a college degree
| where it's not required to be successful at that job,
| than jobs requiring college degree skills and knowledge
| but accepting under qualified high school graduates.
| syshum wrote:
| >>What if the markets' supply and demand curves indicate
| need for people with more than high school education
|
| Then that indicates the high school education is not
| stringent enough for the market, and should be adjusted
| accordingly
|
| > and an oversupply of people with just high school
| education?
|
| The market is showing currently an extreme lack of
| qualified people. if the market is saying there is an "
| oversupply of people with just high school education" but
| there are millions of jobs open, that means the market is
| telling us that a High School Diploma is meaningless to
| the market, which as you point out that is what many
| employers are saying. They are hire people with a High
| School Diploma and it is a crap shoot where they have
| basic levels of education or not because in many schools
| its a participation award not a skills award
|
| This has driven employers to respond with demanding
| higher levels of "education" in an effort so screen
| people..
| jimbokun wrote:
| > The market is showing currently an extreme lack of
| qualified people.
|
| But many of those jobs are in sectors like food service,
| where a high school degree is more than sufficient.
| syshum wrote:
| I would disagree with that given the state of many high
| schools where people are "graduating" functionally
| illiterate.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The market is showing currently an extreme lack of
| qualified people.
|
| And/or a lack of commensurate wages to incentivize
| qualified people.
|
| We agree on the situation as it currently is of high
| school being worthless since you pass just for showing up
| at least half the days of the school year.
|
| But supposed there is a future where K-12 education is
| rigorous and we improve to the point that calculus and
| basic physics/chem/bio are as normal as reading and
| writing, then I can envision a situation where K-12 might
| not be enough.
| fallingknife wrote:
| 50-60%? I would say 90.
| slingnow wrote:
| Damn, that's one a hell of a leap!
| LightG wrote:
| Yes, think 2001: Space Odyssey, the jump from monkeys to
| spaceships.
|
| It still happened though.
| cpach wrote:
| It's troubling indeed. Out of curiosity, what kind of policy
| reform would you like to see in the US in order to cope with
| this dilemma?
| rayiner wrote:
| Our subsidizing and marketing college for everyone is the
| root problem, and it's calling all sorts of knock-on
| effects. This not only leaves people in debt and causes
| young people to put off productive life, but have created a
| surplus of people with useless degrees that are going in
| and remaking various aspects of life and politics into an
| academic mold according to academic theories that have
| little real-world value.
|
| If we're not willing to end massive subsidies for higher
| education (and we're not) we should use the government's
| massive leverage (by virtue of that flow of dollars) to
| impose tight enrollment caps on various degrees, and shut
| down universities that aren't creating economic value. We
| should also create alternative credentialing systems that
| cut universities out of the picture, because degrees are
| often just used as a proxy for intelligence and work ethic.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28301239.
| epa wrote:
| Perfectly executed marketing campaign
| boublepop wrote:
| In reality they always knew it made no sense, but the amount of
| free PR they got from every major news outlet across the world
| posting essentially: "Popular pornographic app only available for
| a short while!" Is absolutely insane, and made the full circus
| with it all.
|
| It's like Red Bull leaning into the "dangerous drink" coverage.
| dfdz wrote:
| Here my conspiracy theory, which closely related to what you
| are saying.
|
| The BBC was investigating OnlyFans and found damaging stuff[1].
| The leadership at OnlyFans was trying to think of a way to
| avoid the resulting bad press so they come up with the
| brilliant idea of announcing an upcoming Ban on all sexual
| material.
|
| This will keep distracted while they work on improving their
| content moderation. When ready, they can announce their new
| policy: sexual content will be allowed, but with better
| moderation! (Exactly what they should have been doing all
| along).
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58273914
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The cynic in me believe they may be involved in a honeypot
| operation, which will ensure they continue operating while
| not having to deal with backlash.
| pphysch wrote:
| How do you advertise a porn platform to the mainstream? By
| (briefly) pretending it's not a porn platform and getting
| coverage in virtually every major news provider!
| mdoms wrote:
| I don't think this was a PR stunt. OF relies on the talent to
| bring viewers, so publicly signaling to your talent "your job
| here is not safe, you should explore other options" seems far
| too risky a move to make intentionally.
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