I say greater because OnlyFans is/was still on a massive upswing whereas Tumblr was 10 years past its peak already when the nails went in the coffin.
Edit: I understand this is supposedly not their choice.
Voat only became "Reddit for white supremacists" because Reddit was pushing many of those users off their platform. Only Fans only became "Patreon for sex work" because Patreon didn't want those users on their platform. Anyone who wasn't one of those groups was better off just sticking with Reddit and Patreon and that only became truer as the reputation became more and more ingrained with the platform's brand.
This seems like an opportunity, not a problem. Since most platforms simply don't get traction at all, you have something. It's opportunity that involves problems (or "challenges") but you've gotten somewhere on the market chessboard. And most "growth hacks" present challenges.
That said, it's hard to believe that onlyfans wasn't aware they were effective a porn site. Maybe Voat was more naive since white supremacy doesn't monetize the way porn does but I'd be skeptical there too. The Internet has a zillion places for any population to go so there isn't a single "off-brand" that a undesirable population X is fated to go to.
Have a look at the front page of Voat. I’m not even gonna check it myself because I’ve seen enough. I guarantee you that 50% or more of everything on the front page of Voat at any moment will be very obviously white supremacist type content. They know. And by letting those people dominate their platform for so long, they are effectively saying that white supremacists are welcome on their site, and that they are ok with giving a platform to people who are looking to spread hate against others based on ethnicity and nationality.
Voat shut down last year (I actually wasn't aware until reading this thread and trying to check the frontpage)
It doesn't appear to be ran on the same codebase or the same database as the "old" Voat, but it can essentially be considered "back".
This time the site above did actually have some content that match the description. Looking at the top 10 on the front page, 8 is anti-vaccination discussions and 2 is anti-jew. That is significant more than any of the other sites I have looked at, and for once I can verify what the person claim to be true.
(As usual people demonstrate how appreciated independent verification is).
It is both. If money is the primary driver you should simply accept the opportunity and pivot. However I would guess that the people who founded, worked at, and invested in these companies before the brand change were probably a little uneasy about that "growth hack". I know I would leave any company that to pivoted to white supremacy or porn. The former for personal moral reasons and the latter because our societal morality creates a stigma that isn't worth dealing with.
Plus this content is generally kicked off the original platform for some reason other than morals. It is usually because users are abandoning the platform or other companies are refusing to work with them. Embracing this content can therefore result in headaches like payment processors or cloud providers refusing to work with you.
The amount of money in porn overall is vast, generally estimated in the billions.[1] Some pariahs get a lot of money.
I'd agree on white supremacy, still.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/porn-could-bigger-economic-in...
And it's only fans
Unfortunately when I first set it up, I wasn't concerned about visibility haha. But while it's all fans, most of the content is heavily electric fan related
It reminds me of a "Ken M" post, but like a joke that just keeps working, even if you tell variants of it over and over.
I really miss the "old days" when the internet was full of single purpose, dumb-if-you-think-too-much-about-it, hilarious sites (crappy taxidermy, ThatWillBuffOut.com, graphjam, etc.) and this is as close as we can get these days. Only. Fans.
Yes,there was a time when Patreon meant porn. But now a lot of mainstream artists, YouTubers, etc. using Patreon.
Anything newsworthy will likely get reposted online somewhere within the hour anyway.
Otherwise it's just a PG13 version of itself with similar sexual undertones.
It's corporate suicide and it makes zero sense that they aren't fighting it. It's a valuable market, it's ethically sound and they are making the world a better place by having a safe place for adult performers to sell their services.
https://onlyfans.com/nathanflorence https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/17/onlyfans-pivot-porn-backi...
I would imagine it's very trivial to have a "Show me explicit content" setting.
Edit: Side note, I don’t know why porn is so shameful, especially concerning adults posting high quality content, it’s their art.
But more likely, it's OnlyFans' lax moderation[1] along with their recent attempt to raise capital have caused greater scrutiny by governments of illegal activity taking place on their platform.
[1] Quick summary by The Verge of a longer BBC article: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632797/onlyfans-prohibi...
That's quite the assumption.
> so chargebacks in this sector are extremely high.
Or,
1. Many of these transactions will be impulse decisions that are made during periods of reduced cognitive function so will have higher rates of regret than other content.
2. People might not want to admit that they made the purchase when their partner/guardians find out about the charge.
Do you really think the critique of Only Fans is aimed at the consumers' experience, rather than contributing to the norm that it's OK for men to pay women to do what the men want?
If you can flip it and it sounds right then you can’t have it both ways, that’s hypocritical.
Is it really such a mystery?
Mostly every religion prohibits sexual freedom and most every government has deeply religious members in the legislature. There is no separation of the church's morals and political ones.
Which means yes, I'm suggesting a ban on religion in the political space. I don't mean you can't be a politician if you're religious, I mean you should be fired if you ever fall back on religious grounds while executing your responsibility.
Strange how the more religious the political leadership, the less freedoms you find in that society, regardless of religion (and like all generalisations, there are plenty of exceptions to that sweeping statement).
This is really not meant as an assault on religion, but let's not pretend that Church is not a political institution. You can have a legislative and judicial political leadership, or a religious one.
But I don't believe it's possible to have both (and call yourself a free country)
In the UK, the head of state is also the head of the state church, and things aren't too bad.
In Germany, the government is currently run by the Christian Democratic Union (and a few allies), and things seem reasonably secular.
I'm not sure how requiring age check relates to being non-secular either. I'm not religious, but I don't think children should watch porn.
So in many areas UK has less freedoms than poor authoritarian countries. I cant say anything about Germany since I havent lived there.
cryptocurrency? Revenue taxes crypto gains so I doubt that.
> almost all fintech companies will ban your account
I believe revolut operates in the UK and allows you to trade in btc.
And what do you suggest to use? Trade crypto to cash? And then how will I put said cash on bank account without getting on check list?
In UK even if you have 1000 GBP in cash they look at you like you're drug dealer.
> I believe revolut operates in the UK and allows you to trade in btc.
Revolut itself is shady and at least until recently didnt have or used any banking license in UK. And it's can ban you at any moment for no reason.
And Germany is far from secular too - for example church taxes (even if you can opt out) are still collected via the government. There is also much more censorship in video games than in most other countries.
Or use a better ISP.
In other news US post office caught delivering mail to churches, synagogues and mosques. Religious conspiracy or completely normal?
> even if you can opt out
You had to be opted in in the first place, you don't get randomly assigned to one of the religious groups that signed up for that service.
> There is also much more censorship in video games than in most other countries.
Gotta love how quickly school shooters got blamed on video games. Can't blame the government, can't blame the poor parents who were barely even aware of their kids existence in the months leading up to the shooting, lets blame and censor games the kid never played.
You have GOT to be joking!
Do you not see the difference between the government delivering postal mail to everyone, and the government collecting money for churches only - money that you have to explicitly opt-out of giving?
Will the government collect debts that other people owe me? Hell, no! So why should the government collecting church taxes for them?
I would be quite a bit richer if the government collected only church taxes. Would have been nice if I could have opted out of paying for that mess in Afghanistan.
> Will the government collect debts that other people owe me?
No, but maybe you could start a movement to have it recognize other, non religious, groups for this service.
Is it true that torrent sites are blocked for adults and consensual BDSM like spanking is considered illegal pornography?
I can't really believe it till I hear it from a person.
I had no idea. This completely changes my view of the UK and the world suddenly seems much darker.
Yes, there's an overlap there, but your use of the expression "a ban on religion in the political space" highlights the problem. To frame it first as a political problem in the sense of political parties and professional politicians misses where the harm is being done; and to expand the definition of "political space" in your ban to include private financial operators would ban religion entirely.
And that's also not possible to do while calling yourself a free country.
I'm certainly not anti-religious (I'm no atheist myself), but I'm very anti-moral crusading against the business of consenting adults whatever form it takes.
Powerful "Blame your political opponents" move and damn those Chesterton fences.
On a more serious note, it is not just porn and it's all about gene survival.
Men who do not care about the sexual freedom of their partners tend to got the way of Dodo. (for obvious reasons).
But I grant you that they may a live a more pleasant and relaxed life.
I can't speak for others, but my partner and I have a monogamous relationship because we like each other. We don't need government coercion.
(edited to make it sound less ominous)
Religions are just old ideologies centered on an anthropomorphic metaphor. It's not possible to exist without ideology -- even if it's something neoliberal and pared-down.
And, people will create institutions to provide them with additional structure, if the State isn't giving it to them. They'll organize around a priest, or a VP of DEI; they'll choose a holy book (Atlas Shrugged, the Koran, Das Kapital), and so on. And, lo and behold, those alternative structures will start coercing people too.
> prohibits sexual freedom
The older I get, the more I think "freedom" is a trap. What is the alcoholic's freedom to drink? The procrastinator's freedom to watch YouTube videos?
Odysseus, before sailing past the Sirens, was wise enough to ask his sailors to tie him to the mast.
I know you say you're self-motivated, but how many of you would really accomplish much without at least a little pressure from a boss, from perf review, or from your peers at least? "But I'm the CEO!", you say. Well, do you ever work harder as you prep for a board meeting?
I will do a dangerous thing now and, although essentially secular, make an Old Testament reference: What of Onan's freedom from responsibility for Tamar (i.e., his choice to leave her abandoned after Er's death), freedom from responsibility for the children he would have had with her? (People have myopically and stupidly focused on the "mechanics" of that story while missing the point.)
What if the consequences of your "freedom" don't hit you for many years? What if, as an individual, you simply don't have enough time in your life to make the mistake and learn from it?
I know a few people who were "free" to completely fuck up their lives, and they're belatedly figuring it out now, usually when it's too late.
Freedom is a very multifaceted word. On one hand, it means being free from coercion from others to do or not do what you want. On the other, it also means being free to do what you want without being forced into it by your own mind.
Most people have no freedom over their own minds, they would be slaves even if no laws applied to them and they had infinite money. Restricting physical freedom to guide those people even makes sense, as I would say those people are the majority.
But why the fuck would I accept that? I choose what I do and what I feel, why should I submit to others rules "for my own good" when my own mind has shown itself capable of choosing the correct option even when it hurts? Why should I limit my potential so every idiot who can't go 5 seconds without his little dopamine hits won't find a way to kill himself by the time he's 40? Why are the lives of the unaccomplished masses more important than my own?
Admittedly, this isn't a huge problem in my life, since to quote the New Testament, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move". Yet I feel like this kind of paternalism stunts the growth of those who would one day learn true freedom from themselves too. If you are shepherded into behaving, you do not learn why one must behave that way.
The context of your quote is especially apt for a discussion of (structure as a defense against) addiction, since it's about a man who was, in the understanding of the day, "possessed by a demon", and who was cured.
Now -- this is sort of an aside -- I'll admit that my first reaction to
> this isn't a huge problem in my life, since [Bible quote about how, with faith, anything is possible]
was negative, because it felt like how my mental caricature of an Evangelical (note acceptable prejudice) would brag ("look how much faith I have"). As was my reaction to
> Why should I limit my potential [...]? Why are the lives of the unaccomplished masses more important than my own?
which had more ego than... my culture teaches to put out there.
But, to look for the important point, it was that if someone were to really go all in on Christianity (in the "radical" sense), instead of just keeping it at arm's length and looking for some wisdom here and there (my approach -- and borrowing not just from Christianity), then they'd start with faith, not the thing I'm calling structure, because -- the idea goes -- all the good deeds, all the behaviors, and so on, stem from faith; if you really believe, the rest will follow.
Or, using "Law" as a synonym for "structure", there is Galatians 3:23-26, which seems very on-the-nose:
23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Anyway, long story short, I think I see your point, which -- unless I have just projected a whole ton of additional meanings -- would be to emphasize Faith.
(That, I'm afraid, may be beyond me.)
Yes. Structure can turn an animal into a man, but only faith can elevate him above that.
I do not much like the word faith, as it evokes in me the image of the "Christian faithful" all praying on their knees, hoping for a better future if they follow everything the two-faced priest says. Ultimately it achieves nothing, as blind structure following without feeling for anything deeper than that within yourself is a soulless activity. If you couldn't tell from those last two sentences, I'm not actually Christian. I have rather strong feelings towards them, since I have seen them pull the greatest trick of all: convincing the masses that religion is extrinsically rather than intrinsically motivated. "Faith" nowadays is orthopraxy.
The world is much more complicated than that, of course, and it is not the Christians who did it, or anyone in particular in my opinion. Religion is as much spiritualism as culture, and Western faith before them was explicitly orthopractic. But I feel much more at home criticizing a religion I have experienced, rather than far off ones.
As to my Matthew quote: it has a lot of meaning to me. It is the expression of a universal truth, that true faith (or true will, or spirit, the alchemist's gold and so on and so forth) is the power to change oneself, and thus change the world. Admittedly, the full story (Jesus heals the boy, who does nothing) does not reflect that, which ties back into my hatred of Christianity as a religion that teaches the masses to be powerless and seek their spiritual salvation in others, when it is readily available to them.
(I quote Bible passages with a perverse enjoyment, though)
> Creators will continue to be allowed to post content containing nudity as long as it is consistent with our Acceptable Use Policy.
>These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers.[1]
I do think OnlyFans has a lot of potential with the features it offers: It combines the core functionality important for content creators of youtube, instagram and patreon. That is, except for discovery, which is notoriously bad.
[1]https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/onlyfans-bans-explicit-con...
The norm is still heavily enforced.
OnlyFans is doing this allegedly because of a push by their payment processors and their investors.
I used to work for a company that did payment processing for high-risk sites (pornography and gambling), and before that I worked for a company that ran high-risk sites (pornography and gambling).
Those types of sites are high-risk because of a relatively large risk of fraud and chargebacks. Fraud and chargebacks are both bad things that cost both merchants and payment processors a lot of time and money, and they want to eliminate as much as possible.
This is why it's not as simple as a "Show me explicit content" setting - it's not about people seeing porn if they don't want to, it's about the banks not wanting to deal with the trouble that adult-focused sites tend to bring.
Basically only just a image problem is keeping this industry from a huge amount of important infrastructure development.
Imagine that YouTube was to shut down next week.
how many startups do you think would be created to address that market?
How many uniquely innovative new ideas for attracting the former YT user base would be executed with lasting qualities that are beneficial to society and video producers and professional consumers?
Homogeneity is the developer crown / throne.
But homogeneous behemoth oligarchies prevent any serious development in any way capable of being subsumed by the oligarchs at marginal and not meaningful cost?
Can't any number, if a multitude is necessary then how about a multitude of global entrepreneurs less worried about their CVs appearance and capable of the work that we do for very much less for the same lifestyle, can't we find enough cut away / vanity intermediaries to take any public rap to enable the creation of a host of new companies in this sector all wanting to hire American talent and use American IP to develop the most advanced features for video sites serving this user base right now and just step in?
Even if they lose the bulk of their customers, they will still have a bigger network than if they had started with the same platform, but without the porn.
The company is probably assuming they can pivot, and maybe they can, but I doubt it
It was always weird but also kind of fascinating to dive in to.
Also, weird that they would give up an entire market because of prude payment providers. Are these providers from Afghanistan? They should not have that much power over their customers.
Maybe a crypto spin off could work.
No one corporate wants to be actively involved in paying sex workers.
I think that slowly corporations are going to dismiss the loud puritanical few that complain about it and that those who do will find advertising their brands along side porn is extremely profitable. Corporations have been using sex to sell their products for ages specifically because it's so effective. It's just a matter of time until they start being honest about it.
0. https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/onlyfans-ban-pornograp...
https://www.salon.com/2020/12/30/the-anti-porn-religious-lob...
The government really did screw over websites like Craigslist and Backpage, but that was due to changes which would have made the site operators responsible for the content their users post which I don't think would have an impact on someone like mastercard.
I suspect the payment processors must support the anti-porn agenda since I doubt they really fear that any appreciable number of people will resort to using cash only for the rest of their lives in protest. It's entirely within Visa's power to say "If you don't like porn don't pay for it, but it isn't our place to police what free people can do with their money. Our role is simply to facilitate any legal transaction. If you feel something shouldn't be legal speak to your representatives and change the laws"
Onlyfans and sites similar often attract the small fetish sex workers because the demand isn't big enough for a major company to pick up on them on a regular basis but the demand is enough they can make serious money freelancing.
The problem from the credit card companies' point of view is that "I got caught by my wife" isn't a valid chargeback reason, so the vendor can dispute the chargeback, have every incentive to do so, and that's not a fight Visa want to get into.
Payment processors are required to maintain a certain chargeback rate with the card companies and so that risk gets passed on to the merchants.
This is all exceedingly well documented and a Google search away if you'd like to learn the inner workings of it.
You're looking for cumrocket . io (no, not joking) and their own Token Cumrocket / $Cummies which is on BSC (Binance Smart Chain).
“The live CUMROCKET price today is $0.053191 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $4,789,810 USD. CUMROCKET is up 61.03% in the last 24 hours.”
I always felt porn was an exploitative business so was never into it, But I gained respect for OnlyFans as a platform because it enabled people to move from dangerous, risky work to relatively safe work. As with any content platform, I understand that only perhaps top 5% might make sustainable business out of it but still it's a choice available.
Now they've blown it, In order to chase after scale OnlyFans has decided to sacrifice their original customers. Fans of those music artists who are supposedly joining now should inform them that OnlyFans is robbing the livelihood and would be pushing many back to dangerous physical-sex work.
[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/211-aella-savannah-solo
What about not getting into this and, thus, not being exposed to any risks? Sex-work nowadays is the matter of choice, it's not how it used to be in pre-internet era.
Unfortunately it's often the only choice, If not we wouldn't be still finding women from poor countries dead in locked shipping containers in the harbors of developed countries.
Just a note that Tumblr's anti-porn policy has been fairly leaky and users basically adapted to it. After a decline, the site now hosts nearly as much porn as previously.
The problem is that onlyfans has a much bigger spotlight on it. So yeah, one wonders how people justify just killing their product.
But agreed that I didn’t know OnlyFans had any meaningful non-porn content. And the business sense in this seems 100% geared towards a short term payout with no regard for what happens afterward.
"The children selling explicit videos on OnlyFans"
======================
Schools have shared anonymous reports of pupils using the site, including a 16-year-old who boasted to her careers adviser about the amount of money she made on the site, and showed off her "exuberant" spending on Instagram.
Underage creators and users of the site include victims of prior sexual abuse and those with mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, according to Childline counsellor notes. UK police forces say children have complained about their images being uploaded to the site without consent, and one 17-year-old reported being blackmailed.
Missing children are appearing in OnlyFans videos, according to a US watchdog, which also says it has received reports of child sexual exploitation.
"It is increasingly clear that OnlyFans is being used by children," says chief constable Simon Bailey, the UK's child protection lead.
"The company is not doing enough to put in place the safeguards that prevent children exploiting the opportunity to generate money, but also for children to be exploited."
In a statement, OnlyFans says it could not respond specifically to the anonymous reports we were told about without the account details.
======================
The anti-vice authoritarians will always come after any lucrative porn enterprise with these sensationalized stories. I'm surprised there are still people out there that eat it up.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/the-child-protection-and-o...
Try to use the excuse under a judge that the children are the ones fooling your obvious flawed registration system to see how that will go.
WHOA! That's not true.
At least one of her fellow "actors" went to jail for it and I think some of the staff only avoided jail by cutting plea bargains but still wound up with felonies.
There is a reason why so many people were angry when Traci Lords started getting "legitimate" roles after having destroyed a lot of people's lives.
Child porn is a strict liability crime in most cases of the US. Yeah, the justice system generally applies some common sense (ie. not convicting two 16 year olds sending each other selfies), but that is completely at the whim of the system and doesn't always hold true.
>Our reading of the relevant Supreme Court opinions, particularly Smith v. California, suggests that the first amendment does not permit the imposition of criminal sanctions on the basis of strict liability where doing so would seriously chill protected speech. While Congress may take steps to punish severely those who knowingly subject minors to sexual exploitation, and even those who commit such abuse recklessly or negligently, it may not impose very serious criminal sanctions on those who have diligently investigated the matter and formed a reasonable good-faith belief that they are engaged in activities protected by the first amendment.
[1]https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/858...
> Gottesman was found guilty of violating the 1977 Child Sexual Exploitation Act, but appealed the lower court verdict all the way to U. S. Supreme Court, claiming that he should not be held liable for using underage girls if they lied about their age.
Yet this is also commented from 2011:
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/a-short-history-of-undera...
> No one, including Lords or her scene partners, ever went to jail over the scandal, but it led to several court cases and tougher laws regulating the adult industry.
"Never went to jail" does not exclude "Cut a deal but still wound up with a felony conviction". However, apparently my memory was faulty about someone going to jail.
Unfortunately, everything about the case is old enough that it doesn't appear well in search engines. And that's without the fact that everything is going to be drowned out in search engines by being proximate to "traci lords".
Why would the BBC or the police be worthy of trust? It’s ironic to trust their word when the article goes over the ways the site tries to verify identity and hence age, and they seem reasonable, far more reasonable than trusting the police because they’re the police.
I’m not going to post up my passport but I didn’t come down in the last shower.
Claims about this "damaging" them seem about as speculative as 1960s claims that homosexual behaviour is damaging.
While the idea of a six year old uploading naked pics makes me extremely uncomfortable I think that's a parenting issue (something has probably gone very wrong and that's what needs fixing, not the symptom of posting online), not something to be governed at the payment processor level.
What happens when X or Y minority group claims the test is biased against them?
Also your claim is that an intelligent person who could perform well on an examination wouldn't also make risky sexual decisions when they are young?
Good question. Perhaps a more in-depth analysis of the person would be required to understand why they are not passing the test.
What happens when X or Y minority group claims the test is biased against them?
This is an existing pattern and I would defer to the legal system to mirror the existing processes. This pattern is replete throughout all intersections of society and government.
Also your claim is that an intelligent person who could perform well on an examination wouldn't also make risky sexual decisions when they are young?
I never said intelligent. I said "if a person is mentally competent to make legal, financial, contractual and overall life decisions". These things are not directly tied to intelligence alone and intelligence can be interpreted to mean many different things. The test would be written and reviewed yearly by clinical psychologists, biologists and lawyers. The current process for this that already exists depends entirely on a judge which is just a more experienced lawyer and a single persons judgement call that may be biased by their personal beliefs. I believe my suggestion would be a vast improvement over the existing system and would make it easier for kids put into precarious situations to move forward in life rather than sitting in emergency foster care at the mercy of strangers if they don't actually require it.
I personally know of a few people including a close friend that went through this process. She was declared an adult at age 14 and was appointed guardianship over her brother as the legal guardian with full custody. She handled this perfectly but all of this was the decision of a single judge. This is of course not the same as legally being at the age of majority/consent. In my method, there would be certifications for different aspects of responsibility much like endorsements for a car or aircraft license. These would be endorsements on their state ID.
The reality of course though is that not every child has a responsible parent, and many children have parents who would happily exploit their children to make a couple thousand extra dollars (which really sucks, but it's also just how the world is). So as a general legal policy, putting the burden on parents may lead to substantially more harm of children.
However those sites now all have strong 230 compliance regimes, and I gather OnlyFans doesn't. OnlyFans could have implemented something similar. PornHub went down that route when confronted with similar pressure - they got of rid of all video's that went compliant. But OnlyFans.com have chosen not to. I wonder why?
Tinder was initially sometimes described as an app to find people nearby who want to hook up. Like a one-night-stand-radar. It quickly positioned itself as more traditional dating app (although very focused on visuals).
And although not sexual, I think what happend to YikYak is similar. They started as this anarchic platform where you anonymously could talk shit about local topics and people. And then they realized that is probably not what they want because it causes outrage, so they tried to nerf that aspect (which is the whole allure of the platform).
Sometimes the sanitizing works (Snapchat), sometimes it kills the app (Tumblr, YikYak). But in any case I'd wish there would still be a place for the anarchic, 'unmoral', wild ideas in our society.
> OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business.
HN:
s/of the pornography //>> OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business.
>HN:
> s/of the pornography //.
…is getting out business?
Without porn, onlyfans will do maybe $100M in 2022. It’s the difference between a $1.5B valuation and a $20B valuation.
s/getting \(.* \)the pornography /going \1/
-- Jamie Zawinski
1) There is a high chargeback and dispute rate on porn. I don't know why.
2) OnlyFans has underage performers who get on there using fake IDs and there is not a very good way to stop that.
Crypto/Bitcoin, in keeping with the relationship the Internet and adult content have. Congrats Coinbase, Venmo, and others enabling censorship resistant crypto payments on your revenue bump.
Best practice would be for patrons and content producers to have dedicated wallets for OnlyFans transactions, to prevent data leakage from ledger analysis.
Onlyfans depends on joe average being able to do this (and not being scared off at the mention of the word "crypto")
I think crypto is about 5 - 10 years away from this point
With current tech this would just be a mobile wallet that holds stablecoins with some sort of built in funding mechanism.
The issue is getting money from Coinbase into Wells Fargo or wherever, not getting it into Coinbase.
As usual crypto is a solution that didnt solve the problem: how do you detect underage porn so that you can mark your profits in general.
Yes, crypto incurs drag from fees and inconvenience for a platform to transact in it, but it can’t turn your payments off overnight.
(and I make these comments as a crypto skeptic)
Think Privacy.com/Lithic.com but using crypto and instant fiat->crypto conversions when the payments are made. No chargebacks, no refunds. The crypto or stablecoin are decentralized rails.
You'd have to build your own infrastructure, but you could make an actual credit card. It would have to be super jank at first (you might even have to cut actual physical checks at first). Fundamentally, a credit card is just you paying for somebody's transactions, and billing them at the end of the month (and suing them if they don't pay up).
It would be slow, and the service would be horrible, but the people accepting your money don't have a ton of other options.
And fundamentally the reason that credit cards have that customer trust is that they make it easy for customers to get refunds when the product isn't delivered, which is very hard to do for an Onlyfans-like business where there's no way to "return faulty goods" - standing in the middle between clients who think they didn't get what they paid for and sellers who think someone just wants to copy their pics without paying is not going to be a fun place to be.
The service promises huge amounts of money to, lets be honest, young women, to post nude photos of themselves. How much are you willing to be that every single photo, every video, of what has to be in the terabytes, is of someone over the age of 18. That no one 17 or younger, lured in by promises of big money, lied about their age to get it? That the platform's age verification system is 100% bulletproof and can't be fooled by photoshop.
Rather, the obvious reading of that is that onlyfans isn't primarily or deliberately hosting illegal content.
The meme is dumb and should die imho.
And yet, that isn't happening to the same degree as visa or mastercard.
So, for whatever reason, visa and mastercard are currently, successfully, forcing OnlyFans to do this kind of policy change, whereas coinbase is not.
When the actual rubber meets the road, crypto is defacto, not as censored as visa or mastercard.
The "private by default" criticism is misleading:
- While this is important in a design which mixes your transaction with a limited set of other recent transactions, in Zcash the privacy set is all of the shielded transactions ever.
- It's not a "default" technically, it's a choice of transparent and shielded, both of which are useful. "Default" is a wallet UX question. I think the latest reference wallet auto-shields things so you don't have to remember to shield what comes in from a transparent transaction.
At the moment I'm pretty sure they don't. At least, not via card-based payment systems.
https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news
from february
Sadly it doesn't seem to be working out as the crypto-enthusiast author might have wanted.
I get they are less popular in the US but are probably, hmm, 70% of cards in Europe? So that’s a viable option.
Source: almost accidentally undid an in-shop payment because their processor was based in a different town where i had never been. Realised at the last moment where the charge came from; bank was willing to undo.
Surely if the risk of fraud is an issue, the processing companies could simply price it into their models and charge the vendor a premium for it.
The main difference is that a gambler will keep throwing money (and encouraged to do so via dark patterns to keep the margins), whereas post-nut clarity is the main barrier to maintain the margins in porn.
What I don’t understand is the selective enforcement – why doesn’t this happen more often? Who is pressuring the payment networks?
In general merchants don't deal with client cards directly but through payment processors. The chargeback process is usually manual (meaning it requires non-negligible resources) plus it impacts the fees the card cartel collects (if the chargeback is accepted).
High risk payment processors generally agree to pay card cartels for the fee lost if chargebacks are accepted, and sometimes even perform refunds to stay within a threshold of chargebacks. This, plus extra fraud monitoring/protection makes their service more expensive.
You don't need a processor in Monaco, CCBill or PaymentCloud are US based and offer that. Now, they shave a significant chunk of the transaction in flat+percentage fees, it can be anywhere from 4 to 15% depending on your profile.
This is like saying "drugs are bad because of all the violence" when the violence is mostly a symptom of how we treat drugs.
Patreon?
"Network effects" doesn't mean jack, this isn't surfacing a plumber to a user on facebook because friends of friends have reviewed them in their local area..
They have a solid brand, it isn't what they want, but change that and what else is there?
I laughed reading the title, because it sounds just like 'TikTok bans dances', 'Instagram bans food and candid shots that aren't' to me. I don't use any of these sites, but that's the reputation they have/association I have for them; rebranding away from it when the core is so simple just seems nuts.
I really have no idea. I also don't know whether rebranding is the right choice.
But they have the code, the infrastructure, the marketing department, and all the revenue from their adult services days. So that seems like a pretty big head start over just a clone of their web UI.
(Also, we're talking like it has a massive employee count, is that the case? Could be just a handful for all I know.)
EDIT to add :
If you argue ad absurdam that everyone is going to be exposed to everyone for moral judgement of their rights to online existence, then maybe we need a more sophisticated and practically judicious and efficient system of adjudication of the legal entitlements and freedoms endowed to everyone, than "I know it when I see it ".
This needs a logical codex. Literally a logical reduction of the comprehensive semantics used to describe unacceptable content. From which we can apply triage to emergency cases of accused indecency. Too many cases are heard so immediately in the courts of public opprobrium exclusively in hostile environments where the most sympathetic media is bound and restricted from venturing any actual support virtually ensuring that the rights of the publisher are lost. This is ignoring the issues of commercial withdrawal of essential services.
My liberal translation:
It's crazy that companies try to scale workforce like you scale compute units in the cloud. This wouldn't be the same if the workforce organized itself in unions, both against the platform and the moral police.
If arguing that everyone on these platforms would be judged in front of everyone else, maybe a legal framework dictating what people can and cannot do is the way to go (I think it sarcastically implies that the "everything which is not forbidden is allowed" principle would be violated).
Edit: it's very complex to describe what unacceptable content is. This will cause many cases of indecency accusations, which will turn the public against them, leaving no freedom of media per se.
Strong disagree. They lined their coffers and now it's time to pivot. In fact, it's probably the perfect time to pivot. They are still relatively unknown, and their reputation hasn't been tarnished. Patreon is ripe for disruption.
Pornography is not how you become a billion-dollar unicorn, which is I'm sure what they're eyeing (especially after their most recent raise).
Onlyfans is synonymous with camgirls and porn
Are you sure about that? This company seems pretty well known in the creator space, but not for hosting anything other than porn. At least in all communities I follow, having an OnlyFans account is synonymous with selling porn.
> Pornography is not how you become a billion-dollar unicorn
Pornhub would like to have a word with you. I'd say that, in fact, porn is one of the easiest ways to get there (as shown, for example, by OFs enormous growth).
OnlyFans is instagram but for porn. If they want to escape that, they're gonna have to rebrand.
1. Onlyfans is extremely well know to the point of being a meme, you couldn't be more wrong. Like what rock would you have to be hiding under to not have heard of OF?
2. Exactly what about Patreon seems ripe for disruption? Looking for something specific here, hopefully something that wouldn't apply to most every other company.
3. ??? But only-fans literally became a billion-dollar unicorn on the back of porn. Like, I'm speechless, really, I am.
Whereas for example GPB and other Mario players have TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and so on, full of Mario, because duh, that's what they do. Why would you expect say, Pangea Panga's Twitter to be about dinosaur fossils, Defender to do TikTok dances or CarlSagan42 to... OK, Carl is different.
I've not seen anybody ask Geek (another popular Mario player) whether she's on OnlyFans but I would expect that if they did ask that they'd get banned from her chat, because again, nobody thinks "Oh yeah, I bet she'd charge money for Mario videos" the implication would be that it's porn.
I disagree. OnlyFans is well-known in streamer/gamer/internet/Tumblr/Twitter culture. Ask anyone on the street and most people won't know about the porn connection. They probably won't even know what OF is.
> 3. ??? But only-fans literally became a billion-dollar unicorn on the back of porn. Like, I'm speechless, really, I am.
They haven't, though. They "only" made ~400 million last year and can't find investors (did you even read through the Axios report?). Porn is bad for business. I'm surprised people are surprised. Patreon literally did this exact same thing[1] (ditched explicit content after initially allowing it).
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of...
It's been mentioned in jokes, multiple times, in prime time current affairs shows in my country.
I expect almost everyone I know under the age of 60 knows what it is. From my under 18 relatives, through the accountants and builders and electricians, to the coffee shop owners, bar staff... and of course all the systems & software people I work with.
Yeah I'm not sure how to respond, since you don't seem to understand anything the same way I do. Like zero points agreement here, which is why I opened with we must be living in a different reality.
When you somebody says a "billion dollar unicorn" they are talking about valuation not revenue. Also the vast majority, effectively all of OF's revenue is related to the adult content they are going to be removing.