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Comment by throwmeawaydddy | Hacker News Reader

Fire up the throwaway!

Not 100% related to the article, but directly related.

I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult content"). I spent almost 2 years working on the frontend, devops, and building out the analytics engine (all pre-covid).

Anyway, on to the comment at hand.

We had a small number of users compared to OnlyFans (when I left, there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%).

We had phone support for our larger creator. One very common request was to instantly delete all data and stop processing future orders. Usually, the requester was in a pretty agitated/distraught state (I'd occasionally get escalated calls to "confirm" that all data would be deleted ASAP and no copies would be kept).

I spoke to a few of our creators and most would be desperate to scrub all of their content form the internet because:

a) A parent/relative found out.

b) A fellow employee at their 9-5 stumbled on their account.

c) A 'fan' went nuclear and was waging all out digital war. One creator had a former subscriber sending data dumps to all their Facebook and Instagram friends (they also spammed every public email address at their 'normal' workplace, which was a local government).

We would occasionally get demanding letters requesting the removal of content from third party sites (Pornhub, Reddit, etc). The creators would somehow be surprised when they realised we couldn't remove content from other websites.

The experience was very depressing.

View on HN

I think in general there are some pretty big costs that aren't fully understood to doing sex work, even outside of the social stigma of being found out by your friends and family, there are mental health costs that are often not talked about. A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the long run.

Social media in all forms grooms young naive women into feeling these types of careers are lucrative (which they can be) and even empowering, but I almost see it as drug dealing, with the drug being intimacy and attention, and by nature it is a transaction where the dealer always uses their own supply.

I feel like these dangerous aspects of sex work are often ignored in the current zeitgeist of de-stigmatizing, or of rebranding sex work in western society. While things like onlyfans have helped with issues of exploitation, it has really changed the game into one that is not well understood yet.

All valid points. I guess it’s difficult to simultaneously de-stigmatize and urge caution. Instead what happens is we encourage new people to try it, and then some of the people who have tried it share their experiences with the community. That’s how people end up learning about problems with it. Since it is an experimental phase there are more failures (went poorly for some folks).

We might say the same thing happens with bad crypto schemes. Young people get excited and they can lose a lot of money. Though the stakes are potentially higher when you lose your reputation.

And then the cycle of stigmatization begins again… Almost as if there is a purpose to it.

Is stigmatization always an objectively bad thing? I suppose it depends on your frame of reference. I don’t think any person should be stigmatized for what they do, but certain activities may well deserve it. I suppose that’s also a recurrent theme in the New Testament.

One thing I think ought to be stigmatized more is video game usage. I know many people (mostly men) my age (late adolescence) whose lives have been/were destroyed by chronic video game addiction. Similar with porn and “sex-work adjacent” things (on the consumer side).

I was 'cured' from videogames by meaningful interesting job. Once they kicks in, games become much less attractive.

I still play some titles sometimes that feed my SciFi or History interests, like MassEffect or Ck2/TotalWar, but I don't enjoy them like I used to.

I experienced something similar, but never realized anyone else might as well. Thanks for writing this.

Every thing that is used by the lower class to escape reality get stigmatized, and the more effective it is the more problematic society view it.

The decline in alcohol addictions is often attributed to gaming, particularly among men. I also personally prefer people who are addicted to games over those addicted to alcohol, and long term it is much safer for everyone involved.

I have never heard about such a link. I gotta go dig around. Thank you for the hint.

> The decline in alcohol addictions is often attributed to gaming, particularly among men.

I have never seen this. Like, this is literally first time I see this attribution being made.

Interesting, I have seen the link being discussed several times on national news, in particular to the decrease in teenage drinking. Some people also link this with lower amount of sex. There is also studies showing that heavy investment in gaming reduces the risk of excessive alcohol use and alcohol-related harm.

While I have not seen a study on it, I would expect to see a correlation between the need to escape reality and the use of tools that allow escaping. With this follow also a link with social status and class. It is why alcohol use traditionally was associated with the lower classes, and laws directed at consumption of alcohol was basically laws direct at the lower classes.

Color me skeptical.

> [0] "Descriptive data showed no general decline in binge drinking across European countries. In contrast to our prediction, the association between binge drinking and computer gaming was not negative [b = 0.26, one-sided 95% confidence interval (−∞, 0.47), P = 0.98, Bayes Factor = 0.21]. We found the same pattern of result in a secondary analysis on six Nordic countries that have experienced declines in adolescent drinking recent years. In analyses with covariates reflecting engagement in other activities, we only observed statistical evidence for an effect of going out."

[0]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.13226?af=R

Interesting. Maybe further studies are needed.

> [1] "Low-level gaming was positively associated with patterns of problematic alcohol use in the crude analyses; these associations became non-significant when controlling for demographic variables. High-level gaming was inversely associated with patterns of problematic alcohol use when controlling for demographics, personality, and mental health covariates."

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235285321...

All these are just symptoms, people coping with the current hell-world.

> One thing I think ought to be stigmatized more is video game usage. I know many people (mostly men) my age (late adolescence) whose lives have been/were destroyed by chronic video game addiction.

Why stigmatize something instead of the addiction itself? I knew someone who poured themselves into music production and fantasy to the detriment of everything else. Would you stigmatize music?

Perhaps if something is almost always destructive then some social or legal regulation is warranted. I don't see that with gaming, despite the damage caused by outliers.

Yes, fair point re: video games, I agree.

That said, perhaps there are some activities which are not addictions which are still destructive and should be stigmatized mainly to protect the person performing the activity (such becoming an "OnlyFans creator").

> A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the long run.

This is something that's really been bugging me when looking at Reddit's porn subs. There has been a really noticeable change in the last 2 years. Back then, a majority of the posters seemed to actually be amateurs getting their kicks from online exhibitionism. Now it's 99% OnlyFans advertising. I guess that professionalization was bound to happen.

But what bugs me are the titles: they used to be descriptions of the content, sometimes addressing the audience as a whole. But now, most titles personally address the viewer with things like "Be honest, would you lick it?".

I bet that raises engagement and gets subscriptions, but seems like a really bad idea in terms of, as you wrote, mental health for the women, and reinforcing toxic attitudes among the men.

The titles on sites like pornhub are a lot worse. Sometimes I feel like they're automatically generated or something, with weird sexual fantasies that aren't even remotely in the video. It's become a bit of a meme, and it certainly has always been present but for example the incest stuff, it's just disturbing to me to the point where I greatly prefer browsing on Reddit just because the titles are more tame.

Another cultural thing, they've recently started automatically translating the titles to my native language, and I don't know why but the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me. Automatic translation is always annoying but here it's especially jarring.

>the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me.

It's the other way around: you're less emotionally connected to your second language. You're not phased by the most scurrilous elements of English, because of a combination of factors (like the way your brain processes a second language, and the fact that you did not grow up in a native English culture). Whereas you have a primary connection to Dutch and its native culture, so you instinctively know what is vulgar or disgusting in a much more direct way.

This is so much true. It's almost like swearing in English is not swearing at all, even in semi-formal context. You can tell the worst swear in English you can think of, and it just sounds harmless compared to swearing in local language.

I'd posit English doesn't have swear words anymore.

I'm a native English speaker and I've noticed that swearing no longer feels like a big deal. Our media and online discourse are saturated with the worst swears our language has to bear, to the point none of it hits with gravity.

I also think some of it has to do with changing generational attitudes. Millennials and Gen Z use swearing as friendly banter. You can call your casual friend a "fucking asshole", and as long as you're smiling and laughing, it's an endearing gesture. And if it were truly meant as a jab, it doesn't even sting.

The only words you can't (and shouldn't!) say are racial epithets. Those are untouchable. It's almost like what swear words themselves felt like when I was a child and knew I would be punished for saying "shit" or "damn".

You haven't been to Australia I see.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/what-georg...

> In medieval Bristol, one casually referred to a glade called Fuckinggrove, while up in Chester, one could proudly sport a name like Roger Fuckbythenavel. Only later did fuck become a word so dirty that generations of lexicographers pretended that it didn’t exist. And just as a word can attain the power of profane status, it can lose it....

> More broadly, while the sacred status of most of the words Carlin mentioned has weakened considerably, new words have arisen that occupy the same place in the culture. Aunt Ruth might have walked out of the room rather than listen to Carlin's disquisition when her nephew Craig played it on his record player. She seems so old-fashioned today, but how many of us would be up for watching a hot new comedian on Netflix gabbing cockily about how we need to get over n[*****] and f[*****]?

Edit: in reply to dead comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27896373: I'm pretty sure your comment is dead because you didn't "prudishly" redact the words I did, but I can add the brackets if it makes you happy.

> She seems so old-fashioned today, but how many of us would be up for watching a hot new comedian on Netflix gabbing cockily about how we need to get over n*** and f***?

If you are using symbols indicating quotations, then you don't do unmarked editorial alterations. The quote from the article is “...get over nigger and faggot?”

By making the changes without marking them as editorial alterations (e.g., “...n[*****] and f[*****]”) you are misattributing your prudishness to the source article.

It does, it just depends on your register, and they also change regularly.

Shit and damn used to be taboo, but they haven't been now for a while. However (in the American dialect, I think) "cunt" is pretty taboo, as well as the various racial terms, and "fuck" can be taboo depending on the context (i.e. you wouldn't use it to address your server at a restaurant).

But I would definitely use “fuck” to address a shitty Windows server we are forced to use at work, even in the formal context.

no there are still words that are definitely forbidden to that degree. the reasons they are swears just are different due to cultural context. The worst swear you can say in english does not start with an F. It starts with an N.

Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter talks about exactly this progression of the profane.

> It's almost like swearing in English is not swearing at all

I feel the same way about apologizing in a 2nd language.

I'll overly apologize on minor inconveniences because the words don't carry the weight of saying "sorry, sorry, sorry" in English.

I speak a non-European language and my experience is exactly the same. Swearing in my native tongue just sounds extremely vulgar. Swearing in English - no problem.

I'm learning Russian and I seriously have to think twice if I want to swear in Russian because I feel like I'd be crossing a line, there's nothing casual about it.

I don't feel quite the same about Spanish, although the expletives that are more layered in metaphor amuse me more than anything else. Me cago en la leche!

> I feel like I'd be crossing a line

I suspect that has more to do with your own culture's relationship with Russia than something specific to the language.

Why would you doo-doo that?

I made the mistake when learning a second language of thinking that because those people were so comfortable swearing in English that they were just comfortable with swearing in general. So I threw around their swear words the same that they did mine.

I was astonished at their offense and didn't understand it for a long time.

> The titles on sites like pornhub are a lot worse.

I don't agree. Even the most misogynistic stuff there doesn't actively try to draw in the viewer to the same degree, and most importantly, it allows the women a much clearer separation of what they're doing before the camera and who they really are. They don't have to advertise it and tell random strangers "you can have that too!".

I feel like titles - both on PH and Youtube - tend to get optimized either automatically or by the uploaders themselves. It has overlaps with marketing and SEO, linkbait and optimizing page / article titles to draw in the most views.

Youtube also - sometimes - translates video titles, which in some cases is convenient (like Japanese videos). But that's the thing, from a Dutch standpoint you can read English titles just fine, but sites like Pornhub, Youtube are international affairs, and assuming everyone knows some English, while fair enough, is not actually a global truth and there's plenty of non-western countries where English is a lot more uncommon. I do believe 'our' generation (in NL) knows good English because we grew up with the early internet, which was a lot bigger if you could read and write English. But the current generation is landing in a much more internationalized internet.

>It has overlaps with marketing and SEO

Huh, I wonder if there are tools to do A B testing on sites like Pornhub..

pornhub does this implicitly: the videos you see are the highest engaging winners.

I think YouTube lets you put multiple titles, and it'll automatically use the more engaging one

They're gaming the algo in order to check the most boxes.

Every word you add is another tag or search your video is related to.

I'm turned off of the whole thing by how easy it is to end up watching something I would rather not, without knowing it.

For example, if you're just browsing for thumbnails that look good, and you click forward to the action, there's a decent chance you're unknowingly watching some kind of rape or exploitation scenario. Some are just silly, like stepmom's arm is stuck in the couch, but others are sleazy and many would be crimes in real life. I don't think such content should be censored, but it doesn't make a great fantasy for me, and I don't like the undercurrent of wondering if my engagement with whatever video I'm watching is contributing to some marketing drone saying, "The stepdad-punishing-teen-daughter-with-sex genre is trending, let's push it hard today!"

Another thing that vividly stuck in my mind was seeing a photo of an actress I recognized in a news headline: teen victim of car accident identified as 19-year-old runaway. The reason it stuck in my mind was the realization that I had been jerking off to her videos for easily four years, maybe longer. Such a thing shouldn't be shocking. If people will obtain forged proof of age documents to win Little League tournaments, they'll do it to make money, right? But that was pretty sobering and made it hard to look at young attractive women on my laptop without wondering how old they are and if maybe I should watch something else instead.

Don't get me wrong; I don't abstain completely. I've just developed a distaste that keeps me away a lot of the times when otherwise I would gladly partake.

> Now it's 99% OnlyFans advertising. I guess that professionalization was bound to happen.

It was, but the last couple of years have accelerated the process significantly beyond where it would otherwise have moved in this amount of time.

The pandemic had created changes in both the supply (people jobless without support, or at least support that fully covered their living costs, people at home and bored, etc.) and demand (people working at home taking breaks in a way they couldn't at the office, people at home not working and bored and able to pay for it (supported by furlough schemes for instance), and people unable to pay but similarly bored and so future "I spent my savings and got into dept on porn" stories.

> now, most titles personally address the viewer with things like

That sounds like the good ol' "call to action" of the advertising world, it engages the mind, even if only subconsciously, especially if the wording means it could be directed personally, and gets more attention. If course when most titles follow the pattern the benefit will drop off precipitously but the pattern will stick around until the next big idea comes along and saturates the market.

> and reinforcing toxic attitudes

Including the "abuse of power" fantasies, either directly or through "she made me do it" inversions. Though porn has always had these there seems to have been a mad scramble towards "step family" crap in the role play as porn makers have realised it is legal in most places and recent (or recently surfaced) big scandals have made their previous go-to options (like the casting couch) less palettible. All the mainstream providers pushing the same thing, and the smaller/independent ones following so they appear in "related content" lists, poses a threat of normalising these dynamics in some minds which can put already vulnerable people at greater risk.

Probably bad for the mental health of the men too. As the thread ancestor noted - sometimes "'fan[s]' [go] nuclear and was waging all out digital war.".

I'm guessing that is just a thing some men do but it is bound to be made worse by women correctly figuring out the high-engagement equilibrium is tantalising without promising. But a lot of them probably aren't going to realise that they're dealing with unexploded ordinance; that could foreseeably lead to some spectacular meltdowns for men who were already mental health edge cases when it dawns on them that their time is being wasted.

> aren't going to realise that they're dealing with unexploded ordinance

That's why in places like strip-clubs you usually have at least a couple of strongly-built bodyguards who can address this issue right there on the spot, on the Internet there is no such thing.

fyi, explosive "ordnance" is spelled without the i.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/506723/how-did-o...

This is in no way exclusive to porn. After running a B2C business for a while I realized that if, as an owner, you should be wary of some people, it needs to be your biggest, most vocal fans. They are the most emotionally attached, feeling they’ve personally invested their money, time and faith into your brand and they are the most violent when disappointed. At some point they all expect special treatment, which makes disappointment that much easier.

Of course not all fans are like this but it just takes a very vocal minority to create a big problem.

But then again, it takes some insanity to become a brand fan in the first place.

I’m sure that when trading desires and emotion like on OnlyFans, the things I’ve mentioned become 100x worse.

Your vocal B2C fans go digitally nuclear on you? What B2C industry are you in?

Any non-utilitarian B2C market with enthusiasts is like that - photography, fishing, drones, mountain biking… there’s endless drama in discussion forums, brand loyalty, flame wars and all of that reaches the vendors (especially the smaller ones which directly participate in communities).

> Your vocal B2C fans go digitally nuclear on you? What B2C industry are you in?

I've never experienced it as a target but I've seen fan rage explosions (not necessarily direct customers, depending on the particular industry, but entitled downstream fans targeting the upstream objects of fandom) in all of these non-sex-work industries:

film/television, music, video games, tabletop hobby gaming (particularly RPGs), sport, software (particularly open source), ...probably some that I am forgetting.

Did you read that thread about the Nvidia Shield yesterday? Or how about all the controversy over _The Last of Us 2_ having a trans character?

https://collider.com/last-of-us-2-controversy-explained/

Too many people have too much time on their hands.

There was the (hilariously unsuccessful) attempt to review bomb Factorio a few weeks ago, after some fans got upset about a video the lead dev linked to in a blog post. It seems to be most common in creative industries, eg. Video games, music, movies, etc. Probably because those are the products that people get the most emotionally attached to.

> Of course not all fans are like this but it just takes a very vocal minority to create a big problem.

Stock and currency trading forums were early instances of these challenges.

> This is in no way exclusive to porn.

After all, the origin of the term Stan is exactly about this kind of parasocial toxicity.

Personally addressing the reader makes them engage more, tempts them into engaging with the author in comments or, if they're thirsty, DMs. It's like youtube videos where a repeated pattern is direct questions to answer in the comments, invitations to share your thoughts, or even games like including "hidden words" in the video. There's not even a reward or anything for finding it, but it's apparently enough for some people to feel involved.

Is this wrong at all? I like YouTube, particularly creators like Gamers Nexus/ Hardware Unboxed for example, and like it when they engage in discussions on reddit or discord.

The internet connects people, sometimes 1:1, sometimes 1:N.

It's wrong when it deliberately creates a promise of closeness that is completely illusionary.

A Youtuber asking for comments they may or may not have the time to read is one thing, a camgirl writing 200 subscribers "Haven't seen you in a while, touching myself now imagining your dick inside me" is a very different thing.

I would argue that the same thing happens on Twitch, a completely fake "emotional" bond with your subscribers is created by live interacting with them. You also have whales tipping thousands of dollars.

It's "wrong" (in the sense we're discussing here, that is, morally) if the invitation to engagement isn't an honest desire to communicate with viewers, but merely a marketing strategy to lure in more viewers to maximize ad spend.

I was always under the impression a video with more comments does better in YouTube's algorithms, so those schemes seemed more about pumping up the comment count rather than attempting to artificially engage people.

> reinforcing toxic attitudes among the men.

Or it could just be normal, expected behaviour.

Expected by whom? I'm really not sure what you're trying to say.

I get strong 'it's just locker room talk' from their comment. Boys will be boys, etc.

> viewer with things like "Be honest, would you lick it?".

I bet that raises engagement and gets subscriptions, but seems like a really bad idea in terms of, as you wrote, mental health for the women, and reinforcing toxic attitudes among the men.

I believe since this is HN, it isn't a radical claim to suggest reading/ comprehension isn't the problem. But since I can't make guarantees I'll give a succinct answer in the interests of time.

Expected by whom?

The Pope.

> not well understood yet

I would say every culture around the world before the last 20 years or so understands this perfectly well. It's just the conclusions that this vast majority have come to do not agree with the current society.

That leads us now to express misunderstanding and bewilderement.

> there are mental health costs that are often not talked about

On the contrary, everyone is talking about mental costs, implying that they do not know what they are doing. I know a person who changed her work from being a cashier at a supermarket to a sex worker. Mentally, she benefited a lot. In one job, she felt like an automaton serving people. I other she had personal relationships with her clients. You can guess which is which.

Or another one, also from a sex worker:

"We don’t ask the barista, the plumber, or the mail person whether they really like their job as a measure of whether their industry should be criminalised. Imagine criminalising the whole clothing industry because of bad working conditions in some factories. Or health care. No, we understand that people who work under bad conditions need labour rights. That that is going to help them much more than criminalising their jobs. Why is this so difficult to understand when it comes to the sex industry?"

https://web.archive.org/web/20200220124433/http://rosieheart...

To make it clear - yes, there are risks, short and long-term. I guess some underestimate long-term risks (e.g. revealing one's face online, which is a point of no return; or if they ever do unprotected sex). Yet, "sex workers don't know what they are doing" is a patronizing approach.

My wife who is a sex worker is in therapy provided by her camsite because the work is so toxic. She was as pro-sex-work as you can be when she first started five years ago. It's majority trauma and I have to hear the stories every day.

The men who drive by want to cum as fast as possible with as little damage to their pocketbook as possible. So they drive in, maybe critique her appearance, say, "tits" or "ass" (usually it's just singulars as imperatives), cum, then leave.

She's started keeping a list of clients who say thank you. Almost none.

The far left has really hijacked the discourse around sex work and used language of empowerment to encourage young girls to get in and get what's theirs. Mostly what they're getting is trauma that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

I don't see how you are replying to the above comment. When has ever an exploited work force been thanked for their job?

When there exist no labor protection, the traditional approach when someone died on the job was to replace them with a new desperate person. Livestock in, livestock out.

Becoming a sex worker today in most countries is like becoming a coal miner of old. The only thing that matter is what you produce, and if you get hurt you will be replaced by someone just as desperate.

> I don't see how you are replying to the above comment. When has ever an exploited work force been thanked for their job?

You are narrowly focusing on a single sentence from a larger rebuttal to the notion that sex work is a healthier pursuit for women than retail.

I’m sorry for your wife.

However, I think it’s dangerous to shape the conversation about sex work solely around such cases. A person from my old flat share was a nurse on a terminal cancer ward for mostly children. > 90% of the patients died. They burned out within two years on the job. My aunt had to quit her job as hospital nurse because it physically ruined her body. She’s still suffering from that, decades later. A friend of mine spent his (then mandatory) social service caring for a quadriplegic person who deliberately tried to destroy my friend mentally, sort of their revenge for what happened to them. It took less than half a year for my friend to end up in stationary therapy, due to risk of self-harm and suicide. Yet, we don’t discuss these cases in terms of “being a nurse is a ruinous job. It needs to be banned.” - nor should we. Those cases need to be discussed in terms of “how can we ensure these jobs are safe and receive the support needed.” I believe that making sex work illegal and driving it back underground is not helping that conversation.

Two anecdote from different sides of the spectrum and you feel the one you disagree with is dangerous.

Just because normal jobs suck, doesn’t mean sex work is good.

I feel it’s dangerous shaping conversations around individual anecdotes. I can tell you multiple positive anecdotes from the nursing side as well. Another friend of mine did long-term individual care for a disabled person and they got along extremely well, even traveling and such. That friend considered that his dream job. My father’s current partner volunteers at a hospice. She considers that an important part of her social work. There’s sex workers talking on public record about how liberating that was to them.

What I’m saying is that deriving policy from anecdotes is dangerous.

You seemed to focus only only positive anecdotes, and then claim the negative ones are dangerous.

Anyone can cherry pick data and present a few cases to support their world view.

The point was that most people know that medical care at the RN and below levels is a shitshow of over-worked employees and understaffed facilities but if you pick anecdotes you can make it look like it's all unicorns and rainbows.

You seem to misunderstand my point, despite me spelling it out. I don’t consider anecdotes dangerous. I consider basing policy discussions/decisions on anecdotes dangerous, because anecdotes cannot capture sufficient data. What policy should we derive from my anecdote about my friend who was deliberately targeted by the person they were caring for? Ban nurse work because it’s unhealthy? Ensure sufficient oversight so that clients get filtered? Ensure mediation for volunteers in that space? It’s impossible to derive a reasonable policy in the individual level.

You denounce anecdotal evidence and then cite it, as evidence for your views.

What policy should we derive from your friends personal experience? None! Because we should consider all the data and not your friends story.

> You denounce anecdotal evidence and then cite it, as evidence for your views.

My explicitly expressed view is “do not base any policy discussion on anecdotes, even the ones I cited.” Recounting the anecdotes only shows that I can pick sufficient anecdotes to support both sides of the argument and as such, basing any reasonable discussion on them is futile.

> What policy should we derive from your friends personal experience? None! Because we should consider all the data and not your friends story.

Exactly.

Just stopped to say reality-wise..."The plural of anecdote IS data".

Lots of things are not “good” but we don’t make them illegal. Maybe it would be a lot better with legal protections afforded to workers in other industries.

> Just because normal jobs suck, doesn’t mean sex work is good.

Just because sex work sucks doesn't mean that you improve sex workers conditions by criminalizing their work while creating no legal opportunity.

Criminalizing sex work just makes it suck more, and the reduces the best case for people for whom it was their best available option (whether or not it still is.)

This logic could apply to any illegal trade.

Why do we make killers lives worse with criminalization of murder?

Because there are negative effects to individuals and societies at large.

Sex work is not the only way for people to support themselves, anymore than professional killers who can also find other means of work.

> This logic could apply to any illegal trade.

Well, no, because most illegal trades aren’t illegal to protect people voluntarily engaging in one side or the other of the trade.

> Why do we make killers lives worse with criminalization of murder?

No one argues for criminalization of murder to protect people who would be murderers if it was legal, but people do argue for criminalization of sex workers to protect people who would be sex workers from exploitive labor conditions (but tend to fail to have a narrative, when so doing, about how narrowing their options to include only options that they would, were legal sex work available, see as worse than legal sex work—including illegal sex work—does that.)

> I believe that making sex work illegal and driving it back underground is not helping that conversation.

I never indicated either of these would be solutions. I don't believe elevating sex work to a pedestal in the cultural consciousness is right or ethical. That is primarily what I am taking issue with. It can be lucrative but the toll on young women, often very young women, can be great. It's a damaging profession both to its consumers and to its creators.

Banning it will not stop it. What we need is to have a frank discussion about what it entails and stop the trend of fetishizing or glorifying it as a desirable career. It is by and large ugly and violent.

> It's a damaging profession both to its consumers and to its creators

With age and life experience, I'm actually finding it increadibly difficult to agree with this statement. Sex work might be damaging for many providers, that's for sure (although, as others mentioned, so are other professions deemed essential); but damaging for consumers, I don't know. If it were so bad, it wouldn't be "the oldest profession". (Male) society undoubtedly needs periodic release, and sex work is one of such valves.

I spent my early twenties in Buddhist monasteries. What I learned at the foot of these peaceful, shockingly kind monks was that the mind is all habits spun on the flywheel of action.

"Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking & pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness. If a monk keeps pursuing thinking imbued with sensuality, abandoning thinking imbued with renunciation, his mind is bent by that thinking imbued with sensuality."

We have a choice every time a thought, a desire, a feeling comes to us. We can follow it, pursue it, foment it. Or we can see it, acknowledge it, and drop it. People will do what they want and never have I advocated we tell people they can't do with their bodies whatever they want to do with them. But we can encourage a wiser eye in our consumption.

> Sex work might be damaging for many providers, that's for sure (although, as others mentioned, so are other professions deemed essential); but damaging for consumers, I don't know.

As Online sex work as increasingly adopted the 'influencer' mentality to it's marketing, I think it is damaging to consumers. Maybe you think things like NLP don't have an impact on you, but they certainly do on others. As other comments on this thread have mentioned many of the ads/content have become a lot more targeted.

This sounds about right. I think there's a growing consensus that making criminals of the workers doesn't help (you might lightly criminalize the buy side in some cases, but criminalizing the sell-side makes it harder to help workers who get in trouble), and I appreciate the discussion from any political corner that helps make that point.

On the other hand it's also weird to me to see progressive elements talk of normalizing such a personal commodification -- perhaps like some progressives, I am not sure there is as big a difference as we'd like to believe between selling one's spring days to be a cog in any commercial operation and selling participation in sexual gratification. But nobody talks of normalizing or glorifying the former! On the other hand, no one stigmatizes being a cog in a commercial operation. Maybe what's going on is that it's hard to argue for the dignity of removing personalized stigma without overcorrecting.

So the solution is probably conversations (like this one) elaborating on the dynamics of the ways it can go wrong. No one's freedom to choose or dignity if they choose sex work is hurt by clear-eyed explanations of the hazards.

> perhaps like some progressives, I am not sure there is as big a difference as we'd like to believe between selling one's spring days to be a cog in any commercial operation and selling participation in sexual gratification.

There is! In the first case, you work with colleagues who may become friends, you learn how to treat people and build stronger relationships. The "cog in [a] commercial operation" quip is an abstraction. Generally, people have relationships with their peers and are not "cogs."

Whereas on the other hand, the sex worker deals with people who treat them badly precisely because they've paid to do that. They even enjoy it. This is a twisted model of human relations, and the sex worker is both the enabler of that awful exchange and has a target on his or her back.

So the progressive "view" of this thing is absolutely insane. It's constructed from a position of privilege where the reality constructed by toying with such ideas need never be encountered.

In some conventional jobs, you have the opportunity to make friends with colleagues and otherwise build relationships. If you've never worked for an enterprise badly suffused with exploitative and adversarial interactions or known anyone who has, then you may want to re-examine the idea of who is constructing their opinions here from a position of privilege. And there is likewise a distribution of conditions under which sex work is done.

Speak to statistical distributions within each if you must (preferably from well-researched statistics including polls of people involved) but what's actually less than sane is the construction of a rigid dichotomy in which the abuse happens over here in this sex-work-bad-place and the positive-human-interaction stuff happens over here in happy-commercial-peer-space.

Sigh. So I'm writing from a position of privilege (I'm often accused of this).

However, if MY attitudes are adopted, then the locus of control returns to the individual. Who will do better in the end: the one who goes home every night feeling that the "enterprise [is] badly suffused with exploitative and adversarial interactions" or the one who takes personal responsibility for each interaction in which he or she is involved?

I know who I think will do better. Who will have a more positive impact on their surrounding environment. This may be unsophisticated.

> I don't believe elevating sex work to a pedestal in the cultural consciousness is right or ethical.

It's not being put on a pedestal. It's being pulled up from the gutters.

> It's a damaging profession both to its consumers and to its creators.

There are far more damaging professions that are well respected and accepted in the modern world. However, because the stigma attached to them is generally positive, they get more assistance and help with that damage. Sex workers don't get that benefit.

> What we need is to have a frank discussion about what it entails and stop the trend of fetishizing or glorifying it as a desirable career. It is by and large ugly and violent.

That starts by not treating it like it's "by and large ugly and violent." If you want to have meaningful change, start by respecting it. Otherwise, you are really just part of the problem.

Have you read my original comment upstream? If not, please understand the position I'm coming from first.

My wife is a sex worker. She has been for five years, four of those together with me. Before I met her, I was a part of a community of sex workers I had known since I was in my twenties so add 5 years more of direct experience with the lives and minds of those workers. My friend who has worked as a domme for the last decade once called me "a friend to sex workers". I deeply care for the people who choose this profession. Ten years ago, five years ago I would say you were right. But I have seen the damage first, second, and third hand.

> It's not being put on a pedestal. It's being pulled up from the gutters.

There is nothing to "pull up". To touch it is to touch a viper that will bite and hold on until you let go. The vast network of clients, which I hear of every day objectifies, commits violence, and minimizes the humanity of the people engaged in sex work.

Yes, it is "by and large ugly and violent". Violent to the prostitutes who risk their lives every time they meet a client, violent to the peace and stability of the mind. Ugly to peel back the spectacled layer and discover the worst of ourselves: covetous, vain and brutal.

I do not make this observation as one uninitiated. I write with the weight of a decade of contact with these people I call my wife and friends.

> If not, please understand the position I'm coming from first.

This doesn't change anything I said. Nor change the fact that your attitude is part of the problem. You are not unique in your point of view, but having that point of view doesn't mean your opinions are immediately valid.

> I do not make this observation as one uninitiated.

But you are. You are just an observer. You are not a SW yourself.

> I write with the weight of a decade of contact with these people

If that's true, then it should come as no surprise that there are more people in your position that disagree with your attitude. Otherwise, you don't know as much as you think you do.

Edit: In fact, I'll say that by using your position to push the narrative that what your wife does is "ugly and violent," you are doing more to support the idea that people should treat those like her in an "ugly and violent" way. If you don't respect what she does, why should others?

I encourage you to read and listen to the stories of sex workers who are speaking their experience directly. Here's a former sex worker I really like on TikTok who is part of a wave of Gen Z'ers who are pushing back on the narrative that sex work is somehow liberating, good, or healthy. [1]

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@profitfromtrauma/video/6926281617094...

> I encourage you to read and listen to the stories of sex workers who are speaking their experience directly.

I could say the same thing to you.

Because I have. I've been doing it for 20+ years now.

But also because you literally admit to ignoring sex workers. You can't just pick and choose those that support your narrative.

I'm done with this conversation. It's clear you aren't interesting in having a real discussion, and just pushing an agenda while at the same time insulting your friends, your wife, and ignoring the people you pretend to support.

> But also because you literally admit to ignoring sex workers. You can't just pick and choose those that support your narrative.

I never admitted to this, anywhere. In fact, I stated I've been listening for the last decade. Sex workers, especially women, experience extraordinary levels of violence, daily. [1] Sex work is violent, one of the most violent professions in the world.

My father used to drive prostitutes between their appointments to keep them safe because the level of danger to their person was so high. This is in Denmark, one of the safest countries in the world to live in. My friend who works as a domme in the Bay Area was stalked and physically harassed for a year by one particularly obsessive client.

I don't appreciate you using accusatory language to describe me or my relationship to my wife or friends. I never did anything of the sort to you, so please treat me with respect.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2725271/

> The men who drive by want to cum as fast as possible with as little damage to their pocketbook as possible

This cannot be true. Anyone can find ample porn online (definitely enough to cum) for free. Therefore it follows that people engaging with OnlyFans and other paid-for porn services must be getting something else out of it - the illusion of an intimate (two-way) relationship, the feeling of dominance (uttering commands that the performers then act out), novelty (a bit far-fetched, there's almost certainly more free porn online than anyone can watch in a lifetime, except maybe extremely niche interests...), or something else...

I'm not so sure that novelty is far fetched, speaking from my own experiences.

My porn tastes are not fully mainstream, but not far off the path either. You can definitely hit a point where it feels like every clip that matches your interests is one you've seen before. Every actor is one you've seen before. When visiting Pornhub or similar I noticed myself going straight for the "sort by newest" option more often.

And that's why I went to Chaturbate for the first time, because it's live video I've never seen before.

Chaturbate and other live cam sites have their own issues...the two-way stuff can be pretty creepy in both directions. But it is always fresh video and that is its own attraction, even with what seems like an endless sea of porn available.

She's my wife, please don't speculate on my (or her) honesty. The last thing sex workers need is more people mansplaining what their customers are looking for.

Camsites are expensive, especially camsites catering to the one-to-one format. Per minute the rate is extremely high and most men can't afford it so they take what they can get. The ones who pay for longer shows often have both specific fetishes not easily catered to and disposable income exceeding what most clients come prepared to spend. Or else the peak experience gets them cumming earlier than they expected and their guilt and shame drives them to leave as soon as they finish.

> She's my wife, please don't speculate on my (or her) honesty

Arguing that the facts seem to contradict your (or your wife’s) interpretation (an argument I am observing, not endorsing) of the situation is not questioning either of your honesty. People can draw false conclusions without lying.

This isn't going to be a welcome question or politically correct, but why do you let your wife continue to engage in something that is "majority trauma" and that makes her need therapy?

At a guess, because his wife is a human and gets to make her own decisions?

There was a time when family members intervened when they saw loved ones engaging in self-harm. This husband is watching his wife expose herself to trauma so great that she feels compelled to seek therapy, a therapy provided by the same corporation that is profiting off her trauma. The easy conclusion is that the corporation provides this therapy to keep the traumatized people who drive the company's profits from quitting the trauma, which would be the obvious solution. Loving someone does not mean supporting their every decision, especially when everyone involved seems to realize that the decision is harmful.

"There was a time when family members intervened when they saw loved ones engaging in self-harm."

Some people would call removing you loved one's agency to make their own decisions abuse.

Those people are stuck in a legalistic framework that privileges labels above reality.

I agree that the question further up did come off as rather paternalistic in a bad way but their central point has merit: by continuing to support his wife's decision to work in that environment, doesn't that make him an enabler for the abuse?

It's not clear to me how the OP has interacted with his wife in reality, and I don't have interest in judging them.

In the abstract, though, I think yes, if you see someone being abused repeatedly and you support and encourage them to continue going back to the abusive relationship, you are enabling the abuse.

I think your question presumes among other things that the wife has better career options and/or no need for money, or we have a better idea than the wife what career is best for her.

I don't think any of us have any idea what the facts of the situation is. So it's not clear to me anyone is "enabling" anything.

I firmly agree the OP should encourage his wife to stop engaging in self-destructive behavior.

(I also believe sex work is necessarily self-destructive, as it commodifies, commercializes and depersonalizes the closest, most intimate way of relating to and bonding with another human that we have.)

Your phrasing of "why do you let your wife..." implies OP can and should control whether his wife does this self-destructive behavior.

He can't, literally, and he should not try to.

He is responsible for his choices, not hers.

Yes, if he sees this as hurting her and he's not trying to persuade her to stop doing it, he's responsible for that inaction on his part, and I'd say he should take action.

But, he needs to always remember he does not and should not control her.

I hear this a lot and I feel that often people making this statement are being disingenuous. My wife and I are a team, if she is doing something that I don't like then I can ask her to stop, she can do the same for me. An extreme example but if your wife / husband was cheating on you, could you not ask them to stop as they "a human and gets to make their own decisions"? Same thing applies to work, a job can take over your entire life and affect everyone around you. My wife had a terrible job that she hated and I had her quit it, take a massive pay cut and do something else, she is much happier now. People are so much on their high horse of letting everyone do whatever they want but people don't exist in a void, their actions affect everyone around them.

Obviously you should not use violence or force to cause a change but if my wife was working in a profession such as this I would absolutely give an ultimatum of either stop or the kids and I are leaving. Sometime tough love is still love. With that said I don't know OP's situation and they will do whatever they think is best in a situation.

Yes, defining a boundary of what you're willing to put up with is vital when someone you love is being self-destructive.

That is knowing what you are going to do, and when, and communicating that to your partner.

It is not about controlling what they do, which is what the wording of "let your wife" implies (whether intentionally or not).

Oh good grief, why not use the same argument for heroine addicts? If someone you love is involved in something that is ruinous for them, you help them out.

You should try, for sure.

But you can't make them stop choosing to take the next hit.

All you can do is try to persuade them to stop.

Sometimes defining boundaries of what you'll tolerate is part of that, as I've described elsewhere in the thread.

That's about knowing what you will do and when, then communicating it to the others in the situation. It's not about controlling what they choose to do.

Why do people sell cheeseburgers at McDonalds? They need the cash.

The median OnlyFans account makes something like $180 gross, $136 net, per month. https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans Any minimum wage job provides more income. Selling cheeseburgers at McDonalds would be much more profitable than working OnlyFans for the majority of OnlyFans accounts.

If you’re in a bad financial place, $100/mo means keeping your car insurance current.

Being able to make some money with a self-defined schedule is appealing, and the idea of selling your own porn probably starts out as a thrill.

Like anything else, any job turns into a grind. A gig where you’re essentially a circus animal performing sex acts for a crowd probably becomes fairly numbing.

> The median OnlyFans account makes something like $180 gross, $136 net, per month. https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans Any minimum wage job provides more income.

OnlyFans creators aren't all from the US, or even the developed world, and minimum wage isn’t a global constant; also, the stat on median income you cite excludes tips, so it understates things potentially quite significantly.

My best friend is a cam model and could really use therapy, but she has no insurance. What cam site provides therapy?

My friend works for MFC, and is a "contractor", not an employee.

Can you give me a method of contacting you? Can be a throwaway email.

gdrew686 at gmail dot com

Thanks so much. Its awesome to know there is a site that cares enough about their models to provide support for therapy.

> The far left has really hijacked the discourse around sex work and used language of empowerment to encourage young girls to get in and get what's theirs.

No, it hasn't. The far left is anti-capitalist, and includes both pro-and-anti-sex-work factions; the attitude you describe is more that of the pro-sex-work portion of the pro-(possibly somewhat tamed)-capitalism center-to-center-left.

The pro-sex-work portion of the anti-capitalist (including far) left sees sex work largely as just work, and agrees with many of the (not explicitly gender-based) popular arguments about harms associated with sex work as accurate of sex work within a capitalist system, but not as particular too sex work, but rather as endemic to labor within capitalism.

I wouldn't describe the far left today as having anything to do with its foundations. What I've observed is a political group largely held together with an obsessive compulsion to root out any element not in line with its own brand of correct thought, which contains a variety of maximalist interpretations on everything from sex and gender to race and institutions.

It's a far left I've experienced both in the US and here in Denmark and I think it's largely the far left people think of when it is mentioned.

> I wouldn't describe the far left today as having anything to do with its foundations.

I wouldn't describe you as having any useful knowledge of the left (even to the extent of being able to identify the part that is the “far left”.)

> What I've observed is a political group largely held together with

The far left isn’t “held together” at all, but riven with fairly deep internal divisions. Whatever group you see that seems unitary and held together by anything is a much narrower faction than “the far left”, even if it happens to coincidentally overlap with it. In the particular case of the one held together by:

> an obsessive compulsion to root out any element not in line with its own brand of correct thought, which contains a variety of maximalist interpretations on everything from sex and gender to race and institutions.

It’s mostly a fairly narrow vocal largely petit-bourgeois faction of dilettantes inspired mainly by a weird blend of identity politics messages concocted by center-right groups to look progressive while preventing class solidarity occasionally (but not consistently; a lot of them are pretty much exclusively focussed on non-economic-class identity politics) mixed with progressive economic slogans that that are, at best, dubiously compatible with their particular brand of identity politics.

Being extremely generous based on the subset incorporating, however poorly, leftist economic messaging as a component of their platform, one might consider this group to overlap with the far left, but it certainly is not the same as the far left.

Yes, they have. The problem with the far left is that they demand everyone have the right to do whatever they want whenever they want, free from judgment, prejudice, responsibility, repercussions, and accountability.

Problem is that is in direct conflict with actual reality.

> The problem with the far left is that they demand everyone have the right to do whatever they want whenever they want, free from judgment, prejudice, responsibility, repercussions, and accountability.

No, they don't.

I mean, if you stop before “free from” that’s almost a good, though somewhat exaggerated, description of extreme libertarianism (whether left, right, or center) but even far left libertarians don’t believe in that being free from judgement, responsibiliry, repercussions, or accountability (but would probably agree with free from prejudice.)

And the non-libertarian far left doesn't even approximately match the description even before the “free from” part.

Most of the sex workers I've known personally started as strippers and for those who came away from it traumatized, the issues were mostly from either rape or drug addition.

Never being thanked never came up, but I suspect most people dealing with the public could relate to how shitty people can be. I wish we made a bigger deal about the mental health of folks working regular service/hospitality jobs and that companies made a better effort to protect their employees from rude customers and abuse.

Webcam stuff at least seems somewhat ideal in terms of safety and in reducing exposure to drugs. It also gives people the ability to instantly drop anyone making them uncomfortable or being obnoxious. I can't imagine most people going that route will have any lasting harm, especially as we move toward a society that wont judge and condemn men and women who do that kind of work. Right now, there are still risks to people when their employers or others in their lives find out they do sex work, but eventually I'd like to think that'll be a thing of the past.

While I agree it definitely has some disadvantages, these influencers turning OFs understand the trade off: my reputation, my private photos / videos for millions earned passively.

All influencers hoping to make decent money on OFs already need to have some kind of platform, so they already massively traded away their privacy. Selling a nudie is the next step if you're struggling to make money.

This guy (a fellow Software Engineer actually) is a growing YouTube channel who's doing a sort of vlog / reality show about his family and friends. Once he started approaching 1mln subs by consistently putting out great content, his friends and family launched their own social channels as well to benefit from the clout.

His mom and his girlfriend have their own YouTube channels but they're not as popular. Still, their onlyfans passed his YouTube's channel revenue in a very short time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQsp54kyMwE

> I feel like these dangerous aspects of sex work are often ignored in the current zeitgeist of de-stigmatizing,

I agree entirely. I heard of one young lady who started an OnlyFans, apparently did quite well, but decided to stop it because of the psychic damage.

I'm going to be heavily downvoted for this, but I'm going to say it anyway ...

We need to stop all the bullshit about how it empowers women. Certain sections of the Women's Lib movement are particularly to blame for this, and it is right to heavily censure them.

Sites like OnlyFans exploit lonely young men who are poor at making connections with women. It's morally wrong to engage in exploitative behaviour. Period. I don't care if they're "beta cucks", "incels", "losers", or whatever de-humanising manshaming words one cares to use, exploitative behaviour is still wrong.

Sure, if you bounce your tiddies over on OnlyFans then it doesn't make you literally worse than Hitler, but these people should be discouraged from what they're doing.

Is it worse than fast food restaurants, pizza joints, or bars exploiting customers who appear (in retrospect) prone to over-indulge?

This question is interesting because we don't even consider the opinion of the chicken that are being served.

You're making the implicit assumption that sex work is always inherently exploitative.

That is a common assumption shared both by social conservatives who think any sex outside marriage is wrong anyway, and certain feminist circles who seem to have a problem with seeing male sexuality as anything but a threat.

But I don't think that assumption is correct. Sure, sex work can be exploitative, and it often is. But it doesn't have to be. Just like the hospitality industry has an endemic problem with workers being exploited financially and tolerating verbally abusive behaviour from customers - yet nobody suggests restaurants in general are morally wrong and should be discouraged.

It is possible to do sex work in a non-exploitative way that maintains respect and boundaries between sex worker and client.

The problem is that you can increase short term profits by blurring boundaries, and the network effects of online platforms probaby magnify that.

The problem with sexwork is that it is based on the persistent and dangerous illusion that there are NO boundaries, either emotionally or physically, between the client and the customer. In many cases, the boundary is enforced by physics (time-space) but often it is not.

The appeal of sexwork products is that they can be used to simulate a needful human interaction, one that implies the highest degree of intimacy even when intimacy is explicitly not present.

The necessary deception inherent in the consumption of sexwork products is normally voluntarily performed by the consumer of the product, but even so, failure to successfully self deceive shifts the onus of deception onto the performer, either with or without their knowledge.

The complex and inherently (usually consensually) deceptive nature of sexwork makes it a minefield of misadventure and unintended consequences. Add some unstable people in there, and you have all of the necessary elements for extreme negative outcomes.

I think there is an argument to be made that for the 30 percent of the population on the backside of the bell curve of intelligence, emotional agency, or socialization there is a high probability of an inherently exploitative interaction with most live sexwork.

Are you suggesting men are the real victims here?

You assume he cares about who is a "real" victim.

To me, both statements are true.

Sex work is empowering because it gives opportunities to people that they wouldn't have otherwise.

It's also very exploitative and risky, both for workers and clients.

In an ideal world, we would find a way to make sex work less exploitative and risky. In the real world, prostitution is a complex problem as old as humanity itself...

But what about me? I'm not a beta cuck, incel or a loser (last one could be debatable). Yet I love OnlyFans, I love the amateur porn videos on PornHub, I love live webcams and all that stuff. I love that I actually pay for a lot of it! I certainly enjoy these things much more than traditional porn videos. My partner enjoys viewing some of these things with me. We may or may not have even partook a few times ourselves!

I don't see why I should be denied access to all of this fun paid sex stuff (consuming and producing) just because other people can't handle themselves. Should I also not be allowed to drink or gamble or play video games just because some other people abuse these hobbies in a dramatic and harmful fashion?

Sexualisation is a reflection of society. Ask women what they experience if they show up to work without makeup.

In my view, onlyfans is a net positive for society. Would you rather like sex trafficking? Because face it, humans have hormones, and our social norms encourage men to go for status and women for appearance.

These facts create the atmosphere for sex work.

“Ask women what they experience if they show up to work without makeup.”

My experience of not wearing makeup in lots of places, over many years: Nothing happens. It’s fine.

Sure you might not notice it. But 80% of others notice and comment on it.

They don't expirence anything directly, but through time they get better treatment versus their non makeup wearing counterparts.

Source? My office expirence, also my gf's master thesis was on how apperence affects office atmosphere.. (something in this line)

My observations are that it's typically other women who make comments about women not wearing makeup, not men. Or more generally speaking, it's other women who comment most on women's appearance (dress, makeup, hair, etc.) than men. Honestly, from what I've observed, most men seem rather oblivious to it most of the time (though obviously, not all the time).

I agree with this on you. But subconsciously women that look nice and have their apperence on point have bigger effect on me than women with "regular" apperence.. so I might not comment on it but it is a difference

Well sure, but that's also true of how you treat men (you may just not realize it consciously). To deny that appearance plays a role in how other people perceive you and treat you is to deny reality. It may not be fair, but it's a reality that's probably literally baked into our genes.

Men have no idea if you're wearing makeup and regularly think women aren't when they actually are.

Exactly. I've never heard a guy say "she would be cute if she wore some mascara" or "I can't believe she's not wearing lip liner".

I learned long ago that woman "get pretty" either for other woman or for themselves.

You can still have sex trafficking with OnlyFans in the mix, that's where the paying customers are and gangs will exploit that. Especially if it's easy to sign up.

I believe you, but honestly I think most jobs in modern society come with metal health costs, especially those in the "unskilled labor" category. Maybe sex work is worse, but maybe it isn't, at least for a certain kind of person.

I have known a lot of "dancers", I lived in a high rise next to an upscale joint.

The biggest problem is that their professional skills are fleecing men out of money.

"Who has deep pockets and how can I get the most money out of them?"

It's not like you can just turn off that mentality once they quit.

Sounds like training for enterprise sales or class action lawsuits?

You could say all the same things about video games. Serious mental health costs. Reinforce bad behaviors (like procrastination and inability to delay gratification). There are even almost nude characters in video games, mainstream ones like League of Legends. So very much reinforces objectification of women. And that’s okay, but if a bonafide woman wants to dress up as that character, suddenly Twitch’s audience complains.

> stigmatizing… rebranding…

People are just seeking equal treatment of what they do as men treat things like video games. While I would never wish upon anyone to be abused, and while I develop video games, I am not a blowhard, there are in absolute terms more people sick people aggregating in League of Legends than in Only Fans.

That is to say that some underlying trauma, like major depression or poverty, is concentrating people in endless video games playing and sex work, and that is the underlying problem.

I think you're mostly describing social stigma in your points.

Throwaway because hooooboy.

I started using a cam-girl's services when I was dealing with a break-up.

Where things went wrong was, this worker happened to be local to me, and happened to know the person who I broke up with. When I said I wanted to find someone with a personality like theirs but in real life, they offered to meet me in person.

The short version? I was catfished for 2 years while helping them build their career (their partner, who I never knew about despite asking if they had one before trying to enter a 'relationship', didn't want to be active in helping her, since he was a pre-med student and was worried about the social fallout between that and his family.)

I got to learn a lot about the industry, more specifically around Reddit. I also got to deal with the pain of trying to get my videos removed, polite requests didn't work and I had to go right up to legal threats to finally make it happen.

What I was able to figure out:

  - There are cases where this line of work results in a grooming 'feedback loop'. A surprising number of these girls had partners, many times said partners were successful individuals in other careers. And also involved in various other scenes (BDSM comes to mind.) It often struck me as a cover for predatory behavior; some of these workers will find it hard to shy away from the money that can be made, yet at the same time the constant barrage of misogynistic behavior from clients almost certainly has an effect on them. Their partner gets someone conditioned by the environment.
    - My abuser, last I was aware, was fairly resigned to working small office jobs and/or sticking to camming until they finally decide to have a child. When I first met them they wanted to be a teacher. Make of that what you will.

  - There were cases of extremely controlling behavior within the communities themselves. I heard stories of one of the more successful workers having a sort of 'ranch' for workers that wanted to come by and up their game (and, of course, play with them and their partner.) The ranch itself was almost cult-like with it's management of time and tasks.

  - A lot of these workers have serious mental health issues, often unresolved. Some of these women are abusive and manipulative towards their clients. I experienced this firsthand, and when I made the mistake of trying other camgirl's services long after the incident noted above, I had my consent regarding hypnosis violated by more than one. Unfortunately, the common case of stalkers/creeps means that predators are usually able to get away with their actions, because any attempts to call them out results in the perception that the victim is a stalker/creep for trying to pierce the corporate veil behind a bad actor in the industry.

FWIW, yeah, I went to a -lot- of therapy over what happened and in a much better place.

I don't see sex work as "drug dealing with intimacy and attention" any more then, say, twitch streaming; or podcasting. The whole media environment has been retooled to incentivize super-unhealthy (but perhaps unsurprising given our decades long trend towards individualism and isolation) parasocial relationships

"A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the long run."

Um, blaming the victim much? Those men have full agency not to be psychotic jerks towards them. No one is forcing them to abuse, harass, and/or threaten sex workers.

But I agree sex workers are being groomed and subsequently exploited by sites like onlyfans with unrealistic promises of quick money for relatively little work. But so are tech workers by sites like this and other VC funds, so should we ban venture capital too? It's once again the inclusion of sex that makes sex work distinct, no?

I wish we had a society that provided better preparation and opportunity to everyone, but we don't right now, and sex work beats living on the street or getting stuck in an abusive household IMO.

"I almost see it as drug dealing, with the drug being intimacy and attention, and by nature it is a transaction where the dealer always uses their own supply."

Which is an entirely new subject wherein societies that experimented with total legalization got a better outcome than societies that hyperfocus on drug wars. Neither choice seems ideal, but one does appear to be unambiguously better given the available data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream

I think it all reflects badly in how unsophisticated society still is with handling the most natural thing in the world--sex. The ridiculous morals of yesteryear still carry the day.

> The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%).

I used to work in the direct carrier billing department of a large telco and I'm still amazed by the phenomenon of whales. We'd get 98% of people spending 20 bucks on Spotify and the odd app here and there, and then there were people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills). Not the same level as what you're talking about but I couldn't help but wonder about the millionaire sitting on their couch playing terrible mobile games all day.

Why you should always report both mean and median!

Even if there is a large skew, the mean and median will be often still be pretty close together. Especially with a large sample size.

That's not how it works... The larger the skew, the farther away they are. If your median goes up significantly because of whales, that means they're not really "whales" as usually understood.

If you have 90 creators earning 5$ / month and 10 creators earning 50k$ / month, they earn 5,4k$ / month on average while the median is 5$ / month. On my books this is not close together.

If it’s somewhat Gaussian or normal sure. But if it’s a different distribution then this isn’t true at all.

What use is median in a Pareto distribution (which this phenomenon falls under)? From what I can tell median is useless, I can't think of a use case, and the internet fails to give me one. Average gives you an expected value to work with. Median though, can be worthless in a pareto distribution where the 90% of the value is in the top 10% of the distribution.

I feel like people have this default reaction to assert that median is as or more important than mean. When, in reality, median is useful for in only specific distributions.

I think people say "median", but what they are really interested are the moments of the distribution. Median just is a key moment in Guassian distributions, other distributions have different important moments, and median isn't necessarily one of them.

Mean and median give you strictly greater information than just mean (or just median).

Given assumptions about the distribution, you may even be able to fit (or at least narrow down) the exact shape based on these two values.

If the median and mean are significantly far from each other than that's an immediate indication that the distributon is skewed, and we also know to what side. If you know the sample size you can also get a degree of skew from this. I challenge you to tell me any other two numbers that can give you that much info by themselves with no knowledge of the underlying distribution.

> people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills).

Sounds like a very successful money laundering operation.

Why tho?

It ain't exactly a dry cleaners

It isn't. This is normal in mobile games.

How would that even work? I doubt anyone is buying accounts for even a fraction of the amount spent on microtransactions.

Money laundering is a challenge even in the more tightly regulated industry I worked in. Conversely at one of my previous employers some of our big spenders were publicly known high end rich.

At one of my former jobs, we had a tipping system where we took 15% off the top.

We stored every transaction and user in a graphDB. It was fun seeing normal flows, until you see the money laundering flows show up.

It was above my pay grade to deal with them, so I still don't know how that turned out.

OK, I'm channeling my inner Peter, Michael and Samir here, but how exactly do you launder money by spending it on Candy Crush? Is King supposedly in on the scheme?

I know more about the online poker industry than I wish I did.

This “whale” phenomenon describes exactly why online poker is so profitable for the site operators.

The profits don’t come from the masses of people cautiously playing on micro stakes tables, but the whales, who will give the poker rooms thousands each month in rake.

Do poker site operators not entice whales by offering rakeback deals and special discounts?

Poker is weird because the largest chunks of all monies go from one player to the other. But I assume rakes, at higher stakes, do add up really quickly...

They certainly do. They use loyalty clubs, rakeback deals, reward points (essentially a form of rakebak with lock in), comps, tournaments, and everything else you can think of to keep the whales engaged.

> But I assume rakes, at higher stakes, do add up really quickly...

I used to deal poker in a past life, here's an anecdote.

We started a low limit game and everyone (10 players) bought in for 60$ - 100$. Over the course of the next hour no one rebought and no new players came in. It was a pretty average game, no one was really 'hot'. After an hour one player noticed that everyone had less money than when the game started (even players that only won hands). He got up and left and I never saw him again.

We took a 5 + 1 rake (1 for jackpot) per hand. 40 hands an hour. 240$ removed from the table in that time span. Basically taking ~3 players money off of the table an hour.

I once worked in an unrelated industry where we had a customer who spent so much money with us, that we shipped them a free iPad out when theirs broke so they could resume spending silly amounts of money.

I interpreted that $5000 "average monthly payment" as what the average performer took home, rather than what the average paying viewer paid.

I read an article a few years back about one such "whale", the guy played Clash of Clans or something similar and claimed to spend something like $500/wk on iAP purchases.

Thing is when they asked him if he felt bad spending all that money on a game he said "oh no, I'm saving money, before I picked up this game I would go out in NYC with my friends and blow a grand every weekend".

I guess it's all relative.

I can tell something from a POV of a webcam. My ex-girlfriend was a webcam model on the biggest website (chatur), and she was successful. It was even before the rising and growth of OF, somewhere around 2017.

She was happy with her job, and as I know, she is still satisfied with the money she gets from it. Usually, it's around $500-1000 and even $2-3k for one day of work. It's happened because we live in a poor country where it's hard to find a job even with a degree, so you need to survive somehow. And we were younger and more naive.

Anyway, the thing is that she was part of the community of webcam models, and most of them working 4-8 hours a day and got around $300-500 in a week. Most of the money goes to 5% of models that appear on the first page.

It's a super competitive job, and your only way is to find regular customers who will visit all your streams to tip and talk about random things. There was an old dude who takes private and talked about his daughter and family issues. He was lonely and just want to speak anonymously to someone.

But there are also real creeps, one of them even somehow found out where we live and our city and travel here (to Eastern Europe from Korea) to report my ex to the police. He demands that she must have sex with him if she wants that to stop. He was nice to her, and everything was fine, but one day she rejects his request (some crazy fetish things), and he goes mad, and all that happened. You're right. The most significant fans are also the ones who go apeshit when something goes wrong for them, and it's scary to think about people like that and what they can do to break someone's life.

Our culture is sick. I don't judge you or your ex-girlfriend for doing it but the whole webcam business shouldn't be a thing. Governments should do more to help socially awkward people make real connections with others outside the internet. Instead people sit at home more and more and then lonely men pay to look at streams of women masturbating. If you got someone to time travel from 100 years ago they'd probably think we've gone full retard.

You think the government should stop people from jacking off?

You could ask the same about other addictive behavior. They do a lot to discourage people from smoking or injecting heroin. The government should force anyone into anything but but as societies we can at least discourage unhealthy behavior to a certain degree. And more importantly offer help to those willing to take it. Actually if you look around on social media there are many people who know their situation is messed up and are looking for ways out. No one cares about them though. No one is helping.

Very interesting. There are so many things Id like to say.

c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this.

--- While I find OF personally distasteful, I realize that I paid for sex the old fashioned way, "With a wedding ring, a house, a child and half the stuff when you leave." I can't help but see this as an acceleration of that. I know plenty of people in miserable marriages.

Women have always traded beauty for money. Just before it was through marriage.

---

and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room.

I'd wager that a much higher percentage than average of OF girls have likely been abuse victims at some point in their lives. There's this paradoxical thing where, yes, they're adults they have every right to sell pictures, but often what leads them to this is... abuse, which makes the whole thing very murky.

Source? Anecdotal-- having dated a cam girl, and my SO works with girls who have been abused and it's just depressing. I have very causal interactions with this girls, but, they'll either be afraid of you because you're a man, or recklessly flirt because you're a man, or in the case of neglect/absentee fathers-- cast you in the role of the male role-model they need. I have about 6 girls who call me "dad." :-/

One girl here actually gave someone a blowjob for a Lunchables snack pack (worth $2.99).

> c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this.

No, it wasn't blackmail. The creator never received any messages from the fan that went nuclear (they only know it was a 'fan' since they had the entire catalogue of pay-per-access content and some had very few purchases).

It seems they just woke up one day and said 'fuck it, time to wreck a life'. They persisted for a few months. From memory, they started with the creators LinkedIn account and then moved to Facebook -> Instagram -> mass emailing the creators 9-5 company.

The creator deleted most online accounts and started using an alias (which sadly the ex-fan also discovered and continued spamming).

> and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room.

Yeah, I think you're on the money with your core point. Very few of the creators I interacted with directly seemed to be thriving in other parts of life sadly.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

A childhood friend I had turned out to be one of the "crazy stalker" type individuals. I do not know what psychologically leads to this position, but I do know his family was very dysfunctional. I cut him off as a friend when he had a blowup because he discovered his g/f was also dating another friend of ours, and he went to the guys house to beat him up.

So, 20 years later I'm reading the local Facebook feed, and some poor woman has posted this crazy guy she met at a bar was sending her death threats and stalking her and the police were looking for him. And yea, it's my former friend. I replied that I had known him previously and hoped this was all a misunderstanding, but I'd be happy to talk to the police if needed.

And then the sardonic moment: numerous women replied saying, "Yea, he stalked me too." Including one gal I was fairly close to.

My point is only-- mental illness sucks and is widespread. I can see by some twisted logic he felt that stalking this woman was sort of, doing the work in the relationship, being devoted to her, and then being angry when she wasn't returning his affections, and somehow thinking that anger, would get her to fall in line.

I think OF invites these types of creeps and while unfortunate, it should not be unexpected.

stalkers are a weird lot.

I got one once by posting a single comment on an internet forum. I like to use aliases (thankfully) so all he could do is burn that one alias. They started following me around on different topics to continue the conversation.

My wife had a guy who would randomly show up at her work, house, friends, stores... He confused that they were in a band together that somehow she would want to hook up with him.

For this case some of these people think they have a relationship with the other end. They get emotionally attached but when they realize it is not going to be what they want they become unglued. It does not take much to set them off.

Not all psychological trauma is necessarily due to abuse.

When my wife was pregnant and we didn't know the gender yet I did a lot of reading on attachment theory and what truth there is to "daddy issues" etc. in case it was a girl. It's a trope, but there's something to it.

As it turns out we have a lovely baby boy. Now, to avoid traumatizing him...

Not surprised. I would just assume eventually some sexually frustrated person would try to doxx you at some point. I think there are even organized groups dedicated to doing just that. Sexually frustrated/not getting laid + seeing women making money off their sexuality ('unfair') makes some of these people incredibly angry.

This is a neat idea, but hugely speculative.

But also possibly be besides the point: the internet doesn't keep secrets.

A choice to put content out there in public form, is de-facto a choice to make it available to anyone. Whether they paid the $10 or not.

That's a reality that has to be contended with wherever someone sits on the fence about the morality of it all.

Not speculating, the group I'm referring to openly stated they thought it was unfair how much power women wield in the sexual marketplace and how they can be allowed to make money off their sex appeal.

I totally agree the content creators should assume the content will remain public forever and they will be doxxed at some point.

For anyone who wants proof, you only need to watch the twitch videos of some big gaming streamers. Trainwrecks is a perfect example of what pcbro141 just described. Kotaku has an article about the incidence [0].

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16654800/twitch-gaming-t...

The problem is that those people are the "whales" for these content creators. Normal people with healthy real-world relationships don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on online parasocial porn addictions. It's like someone selling crack and complaining about how they have to deal with crack addicts.

Except it’s nothing like selling crack and the platform isn’t doing enough to keep performers safe.

If a person has your full name (from your Instagram account you use to cross promote your OF) and naked pictures of you what can the platform do at that point to keep you safe?

Realistically the only thing that can be done is not caring about anyone seeing your naked pictures.

When somebody cares about seeing it enough to pay it becomes harder to pretend it's nothing.

Social media users are only just starting to realize that posting pictures when they're on vacation informs all their followers that they aren't at home and could be easily burgled; and the Bling Ring was over a decade ago ;)

Sites like OnlyFans could have mandatory training about not revealing sensitive details (close the curtains before you shoot, take your diploma off the wall, use a stage name, etc.). But yes, your face is a giveaway; and every day it becomes easier to turn a couple breadcrumbs into a full dossier of someone's life.

> Sites like OnlyFans could have mandatory training about not revealing sensitive details

That's a practical proposal that would help.

Onlyfans creator Aella did a guide on camgirling a few years back: https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impa...

How is not taking monetary advantage of lonely men who most likely never have normal human relationships not immoral? People spending money on these things are not your average Joe's. The whole idea is morally corrupt and onlyfans and the like are doing it on scale now.

who defines "normal human relationships", if we don't count various religions? IRL relationships can be just as addictive, toxic and financially perilous.

Taking advantage and having position of power are pretty well defined in current society, these relationships don't have an equal standing between parties.

You should get out of your echo bubble. I have a few friends spending on these types of services (and Twitch which seems to have evolved to host soft versions of OF-type content). They're sociable, principled people, who also have many "regular" relationships. It's not a zero-sum affair.

Looks like you're in a bubble yourself. It's well researched who are those men in that trap spending money. They are lonely and miserable, these so called relationships are toxic and take monetary advantage of them. You can't consent into toxic relationships. Your anecdotes don't matter much in the broad sense.

> It's well researched who are those men

Source needed. A quick Google search turned up nothing.

For someone accusing others of anecdotes, you've yet to provide any actual hard scientific data to support your own sweeping claims.

These are adults, they should be allowed to make bad decisions. Saying they "never had normal human relationships" is a bit condescending.

If those men (and women, I am sure) didn't have porn and onlyfans, they might not have anything at all to replace those. I don't think that's immoral. Both parties benefit, even if one benefits more than the other.

This sounds like libertarian talking point about business, I don't think it suits very well into the discussion.

Its not all men. I know women who also spend on these platforms just because they like to support certain creators. They have other normal relationships too.

I think it would be extremely difficult to achieve the scale OnlyFans has without a large number of “average Joe’s”. Your point about the idea being “morally corrupt” shows the true nature of your comment. Just because the practice or service doesn’t match your morals, does not make it immoral. Sex work is the oldest profession, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be a respectable platform for this kind of work.

The whole point of this thread is about how poorly OnlyFans is managing this complex space.

Both are morally questionable.

Plenty of drug dealers complain about having to deal with addicts, for what its worth. Signed, an ex-addict.

This is also very well-depicted in The Wire, which came from primary journalistic sources. "Dope fiends" are customers, but most dealers actually despise them. They're disrespected and abused constantly, as well a systematically exploited and tricked (at one point diluting doses is discussed, because of supply restrictions, and eventually deemed a good thing because "we will sell twice as many").

This disdain for their clients also has another insidious layer where dealers will occasionally spike a does with extremely high purity (in the heroin world, they'll use Fentanyl) often leading to an overdose. Because if your shit is so good someone died using it, that gets around the community and it's good for business.

You have no Idea how much time some people have. I'm on a platform where free users also can comment to your pictures and send messages to you. Most man are so primitive. Of course it's about sex, but please.

Was there some study that confirms they are sexually frustrated or is that only assumption? (People tend to assume sexual frustration where sometimes is person with normal sex life, actually.)

This summarizes my opinion on OF. I'm not sure if it's unethical or predatory, but I'm quite sure that most people posting content there are going to regret it very soon.

Why are you "quite sure"? What are the consequences of having naked photos of yourself out there in the world that would cause most people to regret it?

See the parent comment for multiple examples. Combine that with the fact that most of them will not make a significant amount of money. And even if they hit that lottery, it's probably only going to pay out while they're still young.

What's striking to me is that the negative consequences of sex work are not at all the sex work itself, but the stigma and trauma inflicted on sex workers by other people who ought to mind their own business, but clearly won't and from abuse by mentally ill mostly male sorts taking out their frustrations upon them in increasingly horrible ways.

I don't have a solution here. But I also agree that there are plenty of other horrible jobs in the world and it's also striking that the same people who lose their minds over sex work would not raise a peep over those other professions that have little or nothing to do with sex.

Judge not lest ye be judged? Yeah right.

> there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000

20k times $5,000 = $100M/month. Still quite impressive.

I'm sure their cut was somewhere in the 10-15%. There's no way there was an OnlyFans competitor a few years ago with a 1.2B USD revenue stream and it went without notice (or purchase).

OnlyFans just broke a 2B USD GMV after the COVID surge; and, at their 20% cut, that's a $400M per annum revenue stream.

Yeah, you're close on the cut (varied from 12.5% to 25% depending on purchase types).

The revenue was nowhere near 1.2B.

(I wrote the below in another comment, but it's relevant to this comment):

Both of the claims in my original comment are correct as stated:

* Roughly 20K active creators (VAL_A).

* An average monthly payout to creators of $5K (VAL_B).

HOWEVER, that does not mean that VAL_A * VAL_B = total monthly payout. The below details are relevant:

1. Not all active creators made money.

2. There was a payout minimum (well, a free payout minimum, which the majority of users waited to reach).

… heavily skewed by the top 5%. So the number is likely way, way lower than $100M (perhaps $8-10M?)

It's an average, so the skew doesn't matter for this.

Average = sum / count. Multiply both sides by count. Sum = count * average.

Neat! This does seem algebraically coherent. Unfortunately, it just doesn't make intuitive sense to my lizard brain.

Cool trick anyway, thanks for clearing it up!

It's the heart of the difference between the two statements:

- The average streamer makes $x

- Streamers make an average of $y

Very beautifully and succinctly summarized. :)

What do we mean by "average" streamer? Would median be a better term here?

Colloquially, the kind of results you'd expect if someone told you they're a streamer. If you wanted to be more precise then median would work, as would the mode.

Sorry, whats the difference here?

-avg streamer makes $x. Total = $x * # streamers

-streamers make an average of $y. Total = $y * # streamers

Average is always sum/n?

A streamer that is considered average - has an average number of followers and subscribers - could be expected to make about $X.

The average income of all streamers (including super popular streamers and streamers with 1 follower) makes is $y. Because the streamers in the top 1% make several orders of magnitude more money, $y is skewed higher than $x.

Just to chime in on this one.

You're obviously right mathematically.

Both of the claims in my original comment are correct as stated:

* Roughly 20K active creators (VAL_A).

* An average monthly payout to creators of $5K (VAL_B).

HOWEVER, that does not mean that VAL_A * VAL_B = total monthly payout. The below details are relevant:

1. Not all active creators made money.

2. There was a payout minimum (well, a free payout minimum, which the majority of users waited to reach).

I felt obligated to reply to this comment, because you're correct at interpreting my intent.

I should have been cleared with my numbers considering the audience (HN is a stat-aware place it appears!)

Both of my numbers were accurate as stated:

* There were 20K~ active creators.

* The average monthly payout was $5K.

HOWEVER, those numbers are not intended to be calculated together for a total payout valuation (doing that would assume every creator received a payout every month, which was not the case).

I think this is not correct. The 20K were the content creators and the payments were from the their subscribers which should be a lot more. Even more impressive!

Just to clarify, those two numbers are both accurate as stated (there were roughly 20K active creators and the average monthly payout was amount 5K).

However, those numbers can't be multiplied to get the monthly payout total.

1. A large portion of active creators made $0 per month.

2. There was a free payout minimum (otherwise you were charged a fee), so a lot of smaller creators would get their payouts every few months.

The total monthly payout was much less than 100M.

I feel like this is why there's relatively little competition on social networks and similar user-generated content platforms; moderation and customer support is heavily underestimated. From day one you need to have a full staff making sure no illegal or undesirable content is uploaded. I'm sure there's third party companies that can help / do it for you, but it's still a big problem to solve regardless.

"C" is a tough one and genuinely frightening. Not just the digital assault like you describe, but the danger of physical assault or other crimes.

But "A" and "B" are becoming less of a concern for a lot of people thanks to rapidly changing attitudes towards sex work. Most people I know who do some kind of sex work either aren't concerned about a family member of employer finding out, or their family members and employer already know about their work. I hope we can all do our part to continue pushing our society towards being more accepting and less damning of sexuality (market-oriented or otherwise).

The creators would somehow be surprised when they realised we couldn't remove content from other websites.

Don't you have skin in this, too? I would expect that you would want to protect your content in much the same way a film studio protects their content when it pops up on 3rd party sites. I don't know if you're being obtuse with your wording here, but whether or not your customers realized that you can't physically remove content from others sites directly is beside the point when there are well known legal options.

If I'm totally honest, I never thought of it this way, but humour me this: if OF and the like are considered distributors in the traditional sense of the entertainment world, would they typically be responsible for engaging in legal disputes over unauthorized distribution?

My feeble understanding of the law is that it would be more appropriate for copyright holders to sue in instances of illegal distribution. I understand why this isn't an option for most people (they don't have the resources a studio does), but I'm just trying to trace back who has the right to press for charges.

If a company gets revenue from exclusive content, they should do whatever it takes to make sure that content is exclusive. If a company gets revenue from content creators, they should do what it takes to attract and retain content creators. Whether or not the company owns the copyright in this case, based on these premises, whether that the company has the right to do it themselves, or on behalf of their content creators when they've been asked for this help, it's in the company's best interest to do it.

If we're discussing this from a "best interest" standpoint, then the studio is no longer obtaining revenue if it's being asked to delete all the content of a specific person on its own sites and thus any obligations of keeping content out of reach from other service providers cease. It's not in the studio's best interests to spend money litigating or issuing DMCA notices on behalf of a former associate.

I highly doubt that, I used to sell software on Envato marketplaces (ThemeForest/CodeCanyon) and even Envato can't do much as you are still the copyright holder, unless you give away all your rights to the seller.

So do your users assume their fans won’t make copies, somehow, of the content and share it?

It’s pretty sad that many people (lets face It mainly women) who make themselves visible on the internet and/or express an unpopular opinion on the face abuse - and I guess porn is no different, but it seems quite naive to assume that you can stay anonymous on onlyfans like sites.

> A 'fan' went nuclear and was waging all out digital war.

If I where to change profession it is things like this that would push me towards psychology. I am deeply fascinated by actions of, well, assholes. How are they broken and why?

I see it the other way around: Not being an asshole isn't the default, it's something you need to learn, and not everyone does. I actually have a sneaking suspicion that most people don't learn it, but just learn to fake it while others are watching.

I think that most animals are non-assholes by default, doing mostly what it takes to survive and live as peacefully as possible.

Go read about young male dolphins' sexual habits.

And what mother lions in packs do to cubs other than their own.

There are more examples than just those two.

I wonder if C is an unsolvable problem. There is some progress being made (revenge porn laws for example), but for the most part, law lags behind. Even if we had robust laws, I doubt law enforcement has the interest and resources to go after such "fans". If resources are stretched, they're gonna pick a murder case to solve than a digital stalker case. It would be more complicated if this so called fan happens to live in another country

I have seen this type of thing happen several times - and it often crosses international jurisdictions which makes it hard and slow.

I also believe there will/are people who will take over this kind of thing for a fee - like rather than running the low orbit pinger to cause damage which could be traced to you, you can pay someone in a another country 20 bucks to do it for you - claim the old, 'my phone was hacked' sucks for you game - hard to prove.

would be nice for facebook to detect when revenge pics are being shared to someone's fam/friends/work colleagues and stop the messages from going through / being seen.

But that's not going to stop emails being sent to employers / other places and such.

Having strong laws that are known may be a deterrent for some and that's great - but I don't think it's solvable - this kind of thing has been posted on hackforums/ewhoring scams / blackmail how-tos for a long time. And there will always be some crime group that'll send some emails for the cost of a subway card - and they'll update instructions for how to zip up files and bypass dns blocks and such to get the data they need to complete the task.

digital literacy about sharing pics with people who say they like you that later turn out not be the person you thought they were - things like that could help.

Teaching new 'performers' and others who want to share nudes for money that there will always be possibility that suck files are easily shared and can escape to others would be good too.

if you don't want others to see it or it to be shown in a court in public don't send it - internet, sms, etc.

We could also just all stop being prudes about nudity. I can't name a single other species that would shame because one of them is naked.

I’m not hating on these women, I understand they’re trying to make a living, and there is nothing wrong with what they’re doing.

What you described is the danger of getting into any kind business without fully understanding the risk, market, and potential outcomes.

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