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Comment by YuriNiyazov | Hacker News Reader

How can you have an article like this without a single mention of OnlyFans?

Probably because it disproves the headline, given that all of these people getting kicked off of SFW sites have a popular sanctuary where they can continue making money doing the things they want. A true monopoly has no sanctuaries.

How long before cloud and hosting providers kick sites like OnlyFans off for fear of legal liability? Especially if things like SESTA become law, they'll lose whatever common-carrier protections they may have.

OF uses a Canadian payment processor because American card providers don't allow a site like OF in their terms of service, so there's that. However I don't think any cloud provider has taken any moral stance on the content they host other than the bare minimum legal requirements. AWS dropped Parler because it promoted an actual riot/insurrection in real life. AWS continues to host pretty much anything else so long as you keep paying them. Hell, even if you stop paying them, they'll let you freeload for months before they actually decide to close your account. Getting kicked off is a pretty low risk ATM.

> However I don't think any cloud provider has taken any moral stance on the content they host other than the bare minimum legal requirements

So what happens if a law like FOSTA-SESTA comes along and threatens legal penalties for cloud providers like AWS who knowingly host porn? Wouldn't that change "the bare minimum legal requirements"? And then later, the US, Canada, EU, and other countries sign a treaty to regularize "sex trafficking" laws and Canadian payment processors drop OF and similar?

Yes, of course some of them will go further offshore, into the fringes of the internet, to find hosting, but it will still hurt them, just like the way torrent sites have been hurt by similar moves? https://torrentfreak.com/googles-new-downranking-hits-pirate...

It's a what-if just like everything else. Congress could ban computers tomorrow too and we'd all be out of a job. So far they haven't and there isn't a real risk of them doing so. Even SESTA doesn't ban hosting outright, it just complicates payment for content. A treaty like you're talking about doesn't appear to be on the table, at least not soon, and probably won't be given that other countries are much more sex-positive than the US is (prostitution is legal in many places in Europe, for example).

Also cryptocurrencies/telegram/signal/ya hell instagram/twitter/tiktok... seems like thousands of tiktokers also have an onlyfans..

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