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Comment by yholio | Hacker News Reader

I can understand the business reasons for cleaning up the OnlyFans brand. But I can't, for the life of me, understand why they are killing a cash cow instead of spining it off into a side business.

Clone the full experience on a dedicated site, OnlyFantasy.com, duplicate the whole userbase, and give a simple warning that I can find my favorite stars on another site. In time, the user bases will diverge naturally depending on interests.

Yes, the payment processors will bark at the porn site. Move to a more expensive processor for that site only, pay 5%, 10% fee, it doesn't really matter, it's free money.

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> Yes, the payment processors will bark at the porn site. Move to a more expensive processor for that site only, pay 5%, 10% fee, it doesn't really matter, it's free money.

If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card, a smaller company will have no chance at all. We're seeing a sterilization of legitimate porn on the internet, done by legitimate tax paying western companies. It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those constraints, which is kind of a sad state of affairs for free speech, separation of church and state, and policing in general.

I totally agree that OnlyFans is a legitimate and ethical site, but let's not kid ourselves about PornHub. It was mostly pirated content with a lot of videos of people being harmed.

While both those things are true, the 'mostly' part is not. There are a lot of couples and singles posting their exploits and OnlyFans creators trying to drive traffic to their feed. What are you searching for that got you those results??

Let's not kid ourselves about PornHub...

Nobody was being harmed on Pornhub. Don't feed the lying anti-sex work media.

They were, In 2020 they removed over 600,000 videos that contained abuse.

https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-first-transparency-report-1...

There were many examples of voyeur, creepshot, revenge and ex-partner videos.

None of which had the consent of all parties involved.

Having those on porn sites is fundamentally harmless. No one stumbles across a coworkers revenge porn in practice, they get sent it by a vengeful person who acquired it by other means.

Sending a pic or video is not substantially more difficult than sending a link. The revenge porn stuff is a red herring.

So in your opinion, revenge porn is harmless unless an acquaintance sees it?

That's an incredibly repulsive take. It's also increasingly illegal, so your opinion of it is thankfully irrelevant.

Also consider that we will eventually have face search for the internet, so someone could take a photo of you from LinkedIn and find all the places that face appears.

You are grossly misinformed. So much so I have to wonder why. PornHub JUST took down 600k videos of minors and consensual acts. https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-first-transparency-report-1...

Either you're commenting without being informed, or you're intentionally lying. Either way, you are harming people.

What about the company Girls Do Porn that PH refused to take down?

Some of those were literal rape videos.

> I totally agree that OnlyFans is a legitimate and ethical site

"IRL", abusive relationships can be hidden in plain site from people who think they know the couple well. How do you stand any chance of knowing there isn't an abusive pimp behind the camera of an onlyfans account? Ultimately you only have intuition and guesswork to go off of, but both are fallible. Even if the platform itself is trusted and does a good job of verifying identities, that doesn't preclude abuse.

This is no different to buying any kind of service or good. How do you know that cheap editing job on fiverr is not made by an enslaved worker?

> How do you know that cheap editing job on fiverr is not made by an enslaved worker?

That's my point, you don't and can't. You should be cognizant of the possibility of abuse, not write off the possibility. Don't pretend to know when you couldn't possibly know. People who claim that abuse doesn't exist on Onlyfans are almost certainly wrong. How much abuse content exists on OF is unknown; unknown to everybody in this conversation, and unknown even to OF. Whether OF is ethical depends on how much abusive content is on OF, which none of us know, and how much abuse somebody thinks should be tolerated, which is subjective.

Anybody who claims that Onlyfans is ethical is making a claim about the rate of abuse which they can't back up.

That's a high standard for being considered "ethical". I'd argue that as long as the platform incentivizes voluntary work more than forced work, it goes in the right direction and is thus "ethical", or at least not "unethical".

What the platform incentivizes is not all there is to consider. Actual outcome must also be considered. Nike can go through all the motions of incentivizing the use of ethical labor in their factories, but if it turns out that despite their efforts, a significant portion of their sneakers are made by child slave labor, then I'm not going to go around claiming Nike is an ethical business. Maybe I'll buy a pair of Nike shoes anyway, because I don't see a better option, but I still won't claim that Nike is ethical. I'll leave extolling the virtue of Nike to the Nike PR department. Anyway, intentions do count for something I think, but outcome is more important.

Note that I am not claiming Onlyfans is unethical. I don't know if Onlyfans is ethical or not. I don't know what the rate of abuse content on Onlyfans is. That's information I simply don't have. Furthermore, I'm not even sure what rate of abuse content society should tolerate from a company. Probably if these are only isolated incidents that are swiftly recognized and rectified, it shouldn't damn the whole platform. Also, I think it probably matters whether that rate is trending up or down, but I don't have any information about either possible trend. I lack the information I need to support the claim that Onlyfans is ethical, and I think the rest of you do as well.

Why are you holding them to a higher standard than any other business? They're ethical in the sense that they follow the same ordinary business ethics standard that we apply to everyone else; none of us know and none of us can possibly know how much abuse is going on in, say, Apple's supply chain, but few would say that means they're an unethical company.

I don't understand the argument you are trying to make.

Are you arguing that all sex work should be illegal because it is possible that there is an unhealthy relationship involved?

Would you also extend that to the modeling industry as well?

What about professional cheerleading?

Hooters waitresses?

If there is a couple who decides for the guy to be a stay at home dad, and the wife pays the bills via sex work, is he a pimp?

What if you reverse the genders in the above?

I know couples in both situations. I wouldn't characterize their relationships as abusive, but you might?

I need to amend my comment here. OF's model is legitimate and ethical (let people post media of themselves, rather than being pimped out by a porn production company).

Unfortunately, the company seems to be pretty morally bankrupt: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22633411/onlyfans-banned-...

But also a business opportunity for someone, with high margins.

Eventually this will just drive BTC adoption. Perhaps OF had a reason not to go with this option, but other parties will step up.

While that might help them accept payments, they'll likely then have troubling converting that back to USD and doing normal business banking.

While crypto could fix those issues as well, it's just layers and layers of segments that need wide adoption (B2B transactions, payroll, benefits, etc.)

Well, sure, it would have been easier not to get blackballed. We don't live in a just world.

Sure Jess. Any day now...

Gonna be hard to get people to spend a speculative asset, too many people had a couple bitcoins years ago (and everyone had the chance) kicking themselves, I think, for it to be seen as money.

>We're seeing a sterilization of legitimate porn on the internet, done by legitimate tax paying western companies. It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those constraints,

Why wouldn't it just revert back to how it was before all the amateur stuff got monetized over the past 5yr or so.

The thing is, only fans is significantly safer then street prostitution. As in, some people are getting back into serious risk.

Kind of like when they closed backpage. It went back - to situation I which sex seller risk more.

There's a lot of people who are now in the habit of doing that and know how much money they can make. They're not all going to quietly go back to their old jobs.

Free speech, separation of church and state has nothing to do with it. Not wanting to be associated with rape, child and revenge porn (variations on non-consent) is all it is.

User submitted content is so much harder to verify facts about (consent in particular) and as long as the user submitted content is sexual in nature, it is legal plutonium.

> User submitted content is so much harder to verify facts about

That doesn't seem to be stopping e-Bay and such. I don't believe that payment processors have any idea what are people buying and selling.

Ebay has the same kind of rules, prohibiting "sexually oriented materials" and allowing nudity "only in limited situations". (https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...)

Stolen items are fenced on eBay. The payment processors don't have an issue with actual crimes like theft but want to impose a moral code on legal behavior.

It’s not about morals, it’s about chargebacks. That’s why.

Then you charge a higher merchant fee.

They could do that. Or they could choose not to be involved in that sort of business.

How is banning theft any less arbitrary than banning porn?

Can you explain in more detail? I just don't see the analogy you're drawing here. People may sometimes fence stolen items on Ebay, but you're not allowed to, and payment processors would definitely cut them off if you were.

Maybe that people may sometimes post illegal porn on OnlyFans but you're not allowed to either?

User-traded goods on e-Bay are also much harder to verify facts about than goods from a brick-and-mortar shop. Doesn't seem to prevent e-Bay from operating.

Be realistic, if I offer stolen set of fancy hubcaps or something (ie something potentially expensive but doesn't have a serial # like a computer) there's no real way to tell if it's legit or not. If I offer porn for sale and there's an anti-porn policy, they can just say 'welp this is porn to us.'

Like how would you distinguish between a stolen item and a used item without requiring people to keep every receipt for anything they ever buy? This is not an endorsement of their anti-porn policy, just observing that that it's easy for them to implement that in contrast to your theft example.

Except "sexually oriented materials" are not the same thing as illegal goods. I was NOT talking about "sexually oriented materials".

c'mon man

As of this year you can no longer sell on eBay without going through full KYC, including SSN (not EIN), providing a physical bank account, etc. If you are selling as a company, including a multi-owner or multi-person company you are still required to provide full personal details for the people involved and any beneficial owners.

A lot of the attacks against amateur porn and sex work are by religious groups masking their actual motive by focusing on consent verification. Verification raises the barrier and makes performers much more vulnerable since their legal identities are attached to their work.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war...

So what? There are legitimate arguments to having consent verification, and the things they prevent are about as far from victimless crimes as you can get- what happens on the internet, stays on the internet, leading to a lifetime of re-victimization.

Just because people you don't like are for something does not mean that you must automatically be against it.

"So what?" as a response to a post explaining how a policy puts certain people at risk, regardless of what the policy is and who those certain people are, makes how you view those people quite a lot clearer than you may have intended.

The person I responded to implied that the arguments in favor of consent verification were made in bad faith because some people might also oppose porn in general.

It is a logical fallacy. The risk of de-anonymization doesn't go away because their consent wasn't verified- tattoos, birthmarks, backgrounds of images and video, etc are still there.

Not only that, but that same risk still applies to people whose videos were posted without consent. What's worse than being raped and having your video put online? Knowing that everyone you ever work with may have seen it, for the rest of your life.

Also, if you read the article the post attached, it literally opens with a woman who had to impersonate a lawyer to get porn of her taken off of pornhub.

"How I view those people" seems to be your imagination, not mine.

Context and quantification are needed, not sensationalism. Yes there are real accounts of abuse. The problem is that the policies adopted aren't actually directed at solving those problems with minimum harm to people involved; they are directed at eliminating sex work.

How many problems occur, what kind, what protocols would address the problems without needlessly harming performers and consumers?

> What's worse than being raped and having your video put online? Knowing that everyone you ever work with may have seen it, for the rest of your life.

There's no mechanism I can imagine that would make this situation true. HOW would everyone have seen it? Are you aware of just how many porn videos/pictures there are in the world?

You'd be well served to post a stat for how many people have had their coworkers see their rape videos, I'd bet $$$ that it's a negligible number compared to the livelihood issues suffered by onlyfans removing all those creators.

By this logic, separation of church and state doesn't matter to you as long as you can construct some legitimate arguments in favor of theocracy.

No, the logic is that separation of church and state is a red herring.

Payment processors are choosing to not associate with businesses that cannot demonstrate that legal consent was gained from everyone involved in the production of the videos.

There's neither church nor state involved here.

This is just a variation of the ontological argument.

You say there's neither church nor state, but then you cite payment processors and legal consent, which are both constructs that are determined by the state. And the content that's in question is sexual consent. The idea that there should be an additional mind (e.g. a legal mind) regulating the behaviors of sexual participants is an old religious conservative idea.

If you still insist that the church in this sense has no meaning, and that this isn't a question of church and state, then you don't believe that there is fundamentally a problem of church and state at all, which in itself is an old religious conservative idea.

I am saying that state isnt involved in the sense that the state isn't compelling payment processors to make these decisions through regulation. Church isn't involved because there is no establishment of religion. I have presented, in several places, non-theological reasons why payment processors may be making the decisions they are.

If you want to count "choosing to not support a business that enables rapists and child porn" as exclusively an old conservative idea, I guess you are missing the mark by quite a lot.

You've contradicted yourself multiple times. You've used the legal categories of rape and child pornography to try to justify the motives of a legal entity. The entire basis of motivation that you yourself have presented is instantiated within the context of a state authority.

The institution of a church in the theological sense has nothing to do with a legally registered organization. The domain of the church, in the sense of "separation of church and state", is in the psychology and interal belief structures of the mass of people. The Enlightenment thinkers who asserted a separation of church and state were not making an assertion about mere legal technicality.

> The institution of a church in the theological sense has nothing to do with a legally registered organization. The domain of the church, in the sense of "separation of church and state", is in the psychology and interal belief structures of the mass of people. The Enlightenment thinkers who asserted a separation of church and state were not making an assertion about mere legal technicality.

Just pointing out that this seems to be your own interpretation and isn't held in any legal doctrine I've been able to find.

In-fact it doesn't have a lot of historical or academic backing either: Historically, the separation of church and state was about removing the special benefits of state-sanctioned religions so that other churches could exist.

That was explicitly about the legally registered organisation, and you can see this now in how legally registered churches are constantly trying to find ways to legally divorce themselves from linked entities so those entities can receive state funding. That is 100% about the legally registered organisations.

> Let us now consider what a church is. A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.

Where do you see "legally registered organization" in this defintion?

Of course, within existing legal doctrine, "separation of church and state" could only refer to legal technicalities. And that's the whole point I was making, that separation goes both ways. For you to redefine the idea behind separation of church and state in merely legal terms is itself a breach of that separation.

The idea of separation of Church and State came from the Reformation, and it was explicitly about separation of the legal entities. And they were legal entities - notably under Calvin the Genevan Consistory was the entity in charge of religious life and it was separated to the civil authorities.

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_kingdoms_doctrine#Response...

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

In any case, this has nothing to do with consent laws, which are entirely a matter for the state.

You've misunderstood your own sources. The Lutheran doctrine of two kingdoms, according to which the church is not a legal entity but which exists in the spiritual kingdom, was a way to protect the church from the law and other secular authorities. This doctrine was then adopted by Calvinists, one way of which is the way that you're talking about.

> this has nothing to do with consent laws, which are entirely a matter for the state.

That's what I've been saying. And it has nothing to do with my point.

> You say there's neither church nor state, but then you cite payment processors and legal consent, which are both constructs that are determined by the state. And the content that's in question is sexual consent.

I don't think many people who believe in the separation of church and state would think that implies that the state doesn't have the ability to make and enforce laws around consent.

I don't think we should expect a policy to serve the stated purpose when the people driving it have entirely different reasons for pushing it.

For example, when states strengthen regulations on abortion clinics with the stated goal of improving patient safety, but the driving forces behind the legislation are anti-abortion groups who know that rural abortion providers will have to close, creating large unserved areas... will those laws help or hurt the safety of women who want abortions?

Likewise, we should be wary of consent verification laws that are pushed by groups whose supporters are opposed to legal pornography.

In both cases the goal is not to protect women. The goal is to take something morally wrong and make it seedy, underground, and dangerous, like morally wrong things are supposed to be.

"but the driving forces behind the legislation are anti-abortion groups"

This is the definition of an ad hominem, which is what the whole separation of church and state discussion is, since neither church nor state are involved here.

We arent discussing regulations, we are discussing payment processors choosing to not do business with video hosts who cannot prove legal consent was obtained from all involved.

If you ran a business, would you want to make money off of rape and child pornography? The payment processors chose "no", and that is their right.

Ad hominem is an appropriate form of reasoning in this case, although in context you might pronounce it "cui bono." It's reasonable to expect that when a group pushes a policy, the details of the policy will be engineered to serve their goals, and the policy will be tweaked over time to serve their goals better. Corporations want to make them happy so they can do business in peace. What will make them happy? Will it make them happy if most porn is created by workers who enjoy robust assurances that their autonomy, consent, and medical safety will be respected? Or would they regard that as a nightmare of legitimized industrial-scale psychological harm to women?

In porn as in abortion, prohibitionists are numerous and committed enough to be a force to reckoned with, but they strategically justify their work using reasons that the rest of society finds persuasive. Anti-abortionists believe that abortion is inherently wrong, but they talk about women's safety while they shut down clinics.

The difference is, the groups who care about the safety of women will look at the details and say, the effect of this supposed "reproductive safety" bill is that thousands of women will lose access to legal abortion. Even if it targets shortcomings at poorly staffed, decrepit facilities, they won't support it if it actually makes women less safe. Overall, will shutting down OnlyFans payments make things better or worse for the women on it? People who aren't asking that question don't actually care.

It is still the inverse of an appeal to authority. Both "Agree about X because Y agreed" and "Disagree about X because Y agreed" are faulty logic.

Replacing skepticism and critical analysis isn't doing anyone any favors, and it doesn't make the matter at hand an issue of church or state.

In the case of identity verification:

The Craigslist shutdown seemed mostly driven by anti-sex work motivations

The Pornhub identity verification changes were driven by women who had been tricked into having their videos appeared and sued Pornhub over their inability to get them taken down: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pornhub-lawsuit-nonconsensual-v...

So yes - motivation is important. The identity verification requirements for performers on porn sites are at least partially driven by actual victim complaints.

So it is at least partially to protect women.

> what happens on the internet, stays on the internet, leading to a lifetime of re-victimization

Nonsense. The odds of you stumbling upon a particular porn photo or video are miniscule unless you are specifically searching for it or it's very popular (which is very hard and not going to happen for unwilling pictures).

Particularly as most sites would take down images of you on request.

> Verification raises the barrier and makes performers much more vulnerable since their legal identities are attached to their work.

Producers should have been doing this anyway.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

> "... create and maintain individually identifiable records pertaining to every performer portrayed in such a visual depiction."

The industrial producers have been doing that for decades. The problem is that the real goal of these groups is to make sex work harder, not safer.

For example, research on the take-down of reputable sex work sites harms workers by removing their opportunities for safe work.

> the financial situation of the vast majority of research participants has deteriorated, as has their ability to access community and screen clients.

https://antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/artic...

Yep. It's pure FUD used to moralize and control behavior of consenting adults. It's one step removed from criminalizing homosexuality and abortions.

Verification is obviously necessary to prevent revenge porn.

If that inconveniences performers, then that’s their problem to deal with. We shouldn’t be focused on making things easy for performers if that happens at the expense of allowing revenge porn.

Revenge porn is just another form of harassment. The problem isn't it being uploaded to pornhub, the problem is a dickhead sending it to all the victims contacts. It becomes a non-issue with reactive takedowns and going after those who repeatedly upload it as you would any other form of deliberate harassment.

Going after porn sites does nothing really to stop the harassment (they can just send the pic or video directly rather than a link).

I’m of the impression that consent is a legitimate problem? Lots of pornography is wrapped up in sex trafficking never mind revenge porn, or so I’ve heard.

Consent is a real issue. The problem is advocates apply pressure to eliminate sex work even under clear consent, because safety isn't their actual goal. See OnlyFans, Craigslist for example.

I don't see how a payment processor is "being associated" with the content. Deciding whether that sort of thing is happening really shouldn't be their purview.

Because Exodus Cry campaigned for it

https://mobile.twitter.com/GustavoTurnerX/status/14284408173...

This is why I love HN, you gave me a surprising, but after evaluating your links trustworthy explanation.

Thank you!

If anyone else is wondering Exodus Cry is an organization which originated out of a weekly prayer group founded 2007 [0], they apparently lobbied Mastercard to only accept providers which verify the identity of all performers & review content before any upload [1]. Which is almost impossible for the tubes / onlyfans => no more payment

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry

[1] https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/protecting...

> I don't see how a payment processor is "being associated" with the content

They are literally facilitating the transaction.... Handling payments which determine access to the content is very much "being associated".

> Deciding whether that sort of thing is happening really shouldn't be their purview.

That is their purview. Who they choose to process payments for, and the various rates based on content and risk, is the entire purpose of their business.

Risk I understand. But that's not really an issue here. These are relatively small payments, and it is easy to see what percentage end up causing them trouble. I doubt it is any higher than anything else.

Content, no. My email provider doesn't get involved in what I am emailing (even though they might be "facilitating" a crime or other unsavory), the car dealership doesn't get involved in what I am going to use the car for. I mean by your logic a grocery store could ask what business you are in, and not sell you food because that is facilitating what you are doing.

Sure, if law enforcement and courts get involved, then they can stop being a provider.

But to suggest that it somehow reflects badly on the credit card company that they are used on a porn site is ridiculous.

> My email provider doesn't get involved in what I am emailing (even though they might be "facilitating" a crime or other unsavory),

I guarantee you they do. This is right from SendGrid:

__Twilio SendGrid Email prohibits sending of any content that is illegal or content that is harmful, unwanted, inappropriate, objectionable, confirmed to be criminal misinformation, or otherwise poses a threat to the public, even if the content is permissible by law. This content is not allowed, regardless of user consent.__

They then have a huge list of prohibited topics. Pornography, misinformation, hate speech, etc.

I recommend you check your provider TOS.

> the car dealership doesn't get involved in what I am going to use the car for

Car dealerships are free to refuse you service for any reason, other than being a protected class. I guarantee there is a long list of activities you could tell a dealership you'd do, and they'd refuse you service.

> I mean by your logic a grocery store could ask what business you are in, and not sell you food because that is facilitating what you are doing.

Yes, this is literally the case, lol. Not just by logic, but by actual reality. A grocery store can refuse you service for any reason other than discrimination of a protected class.

You need to update yourself with the laws in this country.

> But to suggest that it somehow reflects badly on the credit card company that they are used on a porn site is ridiculous.

They are free to do business with anyone they see fit. Pornography comes with the significant risk of actual harm to people. Therefore, they don't want to be involved.

If you don't like it, maybe capitalism isn't for you.

"If you don't like it, maybe capitalism isn't for you."

I'm kinda on the fence, but you're making a good case against it.

My understanding is that this industry has way higher than average chargeback/fraud rates, which is really what discourages payment processors/banks from wanting to support them.

Selling porn site accounts is a popular way to turn stolen credit card details into untraceable cryptocurrencies.

That means there is already an userbase for crypto porn.

The first commercial use of any technology is porn ;)

Or Pizza.

Though whether that's a convenient excuse for prudishness or not, we'll never know (because you can't collect data on chargebacks if you don't allow any sex sites to make charges in the first place).

Banks are notoriously risk-averse. This is a disruption waiting to happen for the first person who can crack handling sex-worker credit card payments despite the banks.

True, but I think there's obvious legs to it. Some common reasons for fraud are:

* Laundering money (buy accounts with stolen cards, sell them using crypto to people who don't want to be associated with the accounts).

* People falsely claiming fraud to cover up the payments (ex. a spouse finding out about them).

* More specific to OF, people paying for private/custom content and then filing a chargeback.

I think people being prudish is kind of what allows this market to be ripe with fraud. I'm not sure there's a way to "disrupt" this industry using credit cards just due to the inherent tendency for fraud in the market.

Yeah, I get that. I think things are changing. Younger people are more willing to be open about their use of porn, and more accepting of things like OF.

I don't think there's anything intrinsic about the sex industry that makes it more fraudulent. I think it's much more about the prudishness and societal attitudes that makes it so. Also the long association with organised crime, obviously.

I wonder how this works in countries (like the Scandinavians) where the sex industry is more accepted and there's less prudishness? Are the banks still excluding them there?

>Banks are notoriously risk-averse.

Except in 2008 when they were idiotic. I felt the need to point out that one specific data point among the trend that otherwise agrees with you.

I think there's a huge difference between the investment arms of banks, who deal with risk a lot, and the retail arms of banks, who avoid it whenever possible.

Look into "Operation Choke Point". It was an Obama era DOJ program to control payment processors in order to block things they didn't like.

Why can't the payment processor just come to an agreement with OnlyFans to hold back some reserve funds to cover the high chargeback/fraud rate?

Because of your chargeback rate is persistently high enough, the payment networks will cut you off irrespective of processor.

If it was just covering the chargebacks it'd be easy.

Porn sites still exist and they accept credit card payments all the time. The major credit networks do not censor them.

Then, it's simply a question of the fee structure.

Yes and no. Credit card companies are fine with the professionally produced stuff, because everyone signs model releases and shows ID. It seems like they are fine with softcore amateur stuff like showing vulva and nipples.

What they don't like is hard-core amateur stuff. Its hard to verify the models there. You see titles like "I brought my tinder date home and rode him/her hard" in a video title and you start to wonder if this person consented to being in a paid film, or if they are of legal age. My guess is onlyfans will ban anything involving two or more people. It will become instagram with tits and parasocial relationships.

> It will become instagram with tits and parasocial relationships.

Instagram is already Instagram with tits and parasocial relationships.

the free speech issue has been settled: it is no longer a core value in western societies

it's all who/whom now

i don't like it, but that's the reality

> If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card, a smaller company will have no chance at all. We're seeing a sterilization of legitimate porn on the internet, done by legitimate tax paying western companies. It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those constraints, which is kind of a sad state of affairs for free speech, separation of church and state, and policing in general.

Welcome to the "free(ish) market." As I've said before, people love to say they're in favor of the "free market," until they get one. There is no law preventing any payment processor from accepting clients in the adult content space. They do it simply because of risk and to protect their corporate image.

Well, there may not be laws against it, but the government doesn't always play by the rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

The chokepoint isn't the government in this case, but rather the major card brands (Visa, MasterCard, American Express). In the US, these brands have embedded morality clauses that prohibit these payments from riding their rails[1].

That being said, most US debit networks (Star, Pulse, Coop, etc) don't have these restrictions. It does damage the user experience to limit your card acceptance to most debit cards.

1 - https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-upda...

It's that weird American kind of funny that you can't pay for porn with an American Express credit card, but you can buy guns and a few crates of ammo.

I know, why can't we have both?

You're slicing the baloney pretty thin if you agree that the government has taken action against these same financial institutions, with respect to their processing similar payments, but it's completely unrelated to the current situation, and that the financial institutions should act as if nothing's ever happened before.

Or non-action. Europe and Australia have regulated/reduced credit card interchange fees, but USA has not.

This whole “pay with card to get a lot of points!” thing while also allowing processors to have anti-competitive terms forbidding surcharges for credit card payments is a huuuuuuuge boon for their industry.

It's really pretty crazy when you think about it. My card is 2% cash back everywhere. Discover is basically letting me steal 2% of the revenue of every shop I visit and the shops can't do anything about it.

This is a perfect opportunity for 1 credit card company to step in / step up and differentiate themselves from the rest.

I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard of Star, Pulse, and Coop before. Probably has something to do with the Durbin Amendment.

I wonder which morality clause they used for blocking payments to Wikileaks?

This is where you build a UX around buying some crypto-token in the check-out flow via a simple redirect to a partner, fix your credit card issue, and the partner immediately gets you a USDC transfer after charging the credit card.

Yes, there are companies out there that will do this.

> They do it simply because of risk and to protect their corporate image.

They're only allowed to operate because they're licensed by the government, and the government can yank their license at any time.

Okay, so, let me ask you a question: there are payment processors that process adult transactions; has a single one had its license pulled because of that? I can't find a single instance of that happening, only more instances of adult content providers being targeted this way: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are...

Perhaps not, but it's not exactly leaving them alone either: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-doj-forcing-ba...

So? Spin off everything "risky" into another corporate entity, and charge more. The simple fact that they don't do this tells me they just don't want to.

This is America, nobody will ever take seriously the argument that it's not the government doing it when they can get cheap internet points by saying "but muh freedoms!1!!"

If an article asking questions about it from 2014 is the most compelling piece of evidence that this is a serious issue then I'd say it isn't particularly compelling.

Note that the "Operation Chokepoint" wasn't just about porn - it was also shutting down payday lenders and firearm dealers. The operation was stopped by the government in 2016 and bipartisan legislation passed in 2017 to stop it happening again: https://www.forbes.com/sites/norbertmichel/2018/11/05/newly-...

I'm not aware of any instances of payment processors getting shut down, but government administrations have indeed had policies of greater scrutiny of "vice" businesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

Yeah. But, supposedly, in a free market, if there's demand for it (a payment processor that accepts porn), there would be supply. Someone would come up with a company devoted to just that.

The problem isn't that you need an alternative to PayPal, you need an alternative to Visa and MasterCard.

That's a lot harder because they have more of a network effect. People have a Visa or MasterCard because it's widely accepted and it's widely accepted because a lot of people have one.

The solution to this is to make it easier for people to get or accept the alternative payment network. Only now you're into regulatory barriers.

The critical feature of PornCard is that you don't have to give your name, right? Except that they're specifically prohibited from offering that.

The regulatory cost of establishing a new card is effectively the same whether you have a hundred users or a billion, so high regulatory costs put a disproportionate disadvantage on small and upstart networks, which would then have to charge higher fees, which would then cause no one to accept them.

The regulations destroy competition and without competition you don't have a free market.

If only there was a Standardized Electronic Payments API supported by all banks, perhaps with interoperable bank account numbers. Then you could just send money to any account without the need for credit card providers.

Target date 2023: https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...

In India its called UPI. Maybe others can pick up on this innovation?

Banks still control what you can do with UPI. Several banks threatened to close customer accounts if they traded crypto currency.

I wonder if FedNow would help, whenever that is supposedly supposed to show up. Then there wouldn't necessarily be a need for intermediary payment networks in the first place.

I hope these have two different accounts and you can only -push- payments with a unique transaction idea. I hate the current system of the input and output account having the same number for banks.

> The problem isn't that you need an alternative to PayPal, you need an alternative to Visa and MasterCard.

Isn’t that exactly what crypto is?

It's far too fractured, speculative and volatile to be any sort of competition. It was probably started with those intentions and stable coins are trying to do that but the major coins are all pretty useless at this point for proper transactions. No large site wants to touch crypto as a viable payment method. Plus the reputation of being used for drugs and blackmail is hampering Bitcoin

Thank you! It’s incredible that I had to wade through so many comments discussing this news without getting to the heart of it. Network effects breed centralization via a lack of competition. Companies whose products or services have network effects can abuse that power in many ways, including discriminating against customers or content, as Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Stripe regularly do. This compels everyone to have to act the way these companies dictate, which is a huge problem for any free society.

I agree with you that some regulations are harmful and are just plain old regulatory capture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) that protects the big incumbents. But we need well-targeted regulation for this situation where the size of existing networks prevents new payment processors from participating and having a shot in the economy. one option is that once you’re above a certain size, providers benefiting from network effects must be treated like a government entity, just like we regulate utilities. After all, services like payment processing are incredibly fundamental to our society’s operation. Another option is to force interoperability so that a new small business doesn’t face an insurmountable barrier to competition.

It’s a Monopoly. Or in this case of Visa/MasterCard, a duopoly. There are laws to break up monopolies/duopolies. In the case of an oligarchy, there are laws to break up anticompetitive behavior and collusions.

Well, where is it? If it doesn't exist, then why? What economic theory predicts the status quo?

BTW, the theory of the "free market" also predicts that there should be no long term economic profit, ever, provided that perfect competition exists.

This is a common misconception (I blame American politics). In _perfect competition_ this would hold true; however a _free_ market is not guaranteed to be competitive, much less close to _perfect_ competition.

It's not just competition, in credit card space, you basically have a duopoly with Visa and Mastercard.

If we were talking about bars, then yes, you have thousands of bars, and if legal, it wouldnt be hard to find a naked bar. But with two companies, you're far away from free-anything.

Absolutely that's why we have to have regulations. The larger companies get the more they tend toward being monopolies and warping the idea of free markets.

Where this always falls short is when there is not enough demand make it possible to run a business on said demand.

This is usually startups biggest problem - there exists demand, but not enough demand in the right mix to be able to make a living/business/millions/etc... filling it.

"if there's demand for it (a payment processor that accepts porn), there would be supply"

There are hindreds of millions of consumers not enough demand?

The reason nobody can compete is because of regulations. If it was a free market, there wouldn't be so many regulations, and people would be able to compete.

The unfortunate truth is that anarchy is better than a weak democracy, because weak democracies just become oligarchies with more steps.

Ofc, a strong democracy is better than either, and regulations are extremely important. But in this case, those regulations are more for the oligarchs than the people.

If you really want a great example of anarchy vs oligarchy, take note that the anarchy of the private world ran Trump into the ground repeatedly and called him a loser while our public world gave him all the power it could and started a cult. Anarchy isn't great, but it's better than that.

Wow, this is sooo disingenuous I can not believe it is even being said

Aside from the fact that where a metric ton of regulations targeting processing adult content payments under the guide of "protecting the children"

There is another metric ton of regulations around creating and operating a payment processing system. There is a reason no competitors to paypal have really emerged. That reason is GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS..

Please stop saying people do not like a free market when they get one as there is NOTHING FREE MARKET about the banking industry in either the world or the US

How many of those government regulations were written by private companies who lobbied (read bribed) politicians to pass them specifically to keep out competitors? Government regulation is a very important tool, but like any tool it can be abused and used in harmful ways, especially if you don't do anything meaningful to prevent it.

The libertarian free market folks are 100% in agreement with the "those rules were written by the businesses that are supposed to follow them" point. Businesses love the regulations that protect their market share. They may be pro-free-market when times are good, but when times are bad they cry foul about speculators and lobby for bailouts. I'm sure if I was a business I'd do the same :)

Government Regulation is not an important tool, and it will ALWAYS be abused in harmful ways. This has always been true, and will always be true

The Stronger and more centralized the government, the more abuse and harm will come

Weak, distributed government power is the only resolution to corruption, people never want to admit that however.

Government should be limited to the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense of Individual rights, and nothing more

> it will ALWAYS be abused in harmful ways. This has always been true, and will always be true

This is demonstrably false. There are countless regulations that are vital to your every day life which serve absolutely no nefarious purpose.

Your flaw is assuming that corruption can only come from government. You risk allowing yourself to be ruled and abused by corrupt corporations (many of which are larger and have more money than some governments).

Make no mistake, there will always be people who will try to take advantage of you. They will flock to places where they have power over others. Some of them will end up in government and some of them will end up in corporations. As a citizen, you may have the power to vote out the ones that exist in governments. You have zero power over who is employed at a corporation.

You want to weaken the thing you have at least some measure of control over to allow yourself to be ruled over by something you have no ability to control or influence.

I don't understand the willingness to subjugate yourself before powerful corporations while also tying your own hands behind your back as you bend over for them. Is it because you believe that they will be benevolent rulers? History shows us they will not. Does it make it easier to pretend that you aren't being ruled? History shows us you most assuredly will be.

Maybe it's because we don't talk much about the long history of abuses people suffer when they allow themselves to be ruled by corporations. Maybe you think that those horrific abuses which happen even today overseas could never happen to you even if you weaken the government which currently protects you from those very same conditions. It's a bit like watching someone beg to be enslaved while insisting they'll somehow have freed themselves once they are...

>>>You risk allowing yourself to be ruled and abused by corrupt corporations

Absent Government there can be no corporations, Business sure, but business absent government looks very different

Corporations are fictional entities created by government regulations namely liability shields, to facilitate investment.

>As a citizen, you may have the power to vote out the ones that exist in governments

Reality says other wise, as a citizen my vote only carries the measure if there is a tie, there as never been a tie...

This mystical rose colored view of democracy does not match reality.

>You have zero power over who is employed at a corporation.

I would say my power to say who is employed at a corporation is about the same as my power to say who is in power in government, that is not even talking about who I have the option to vote for.

In my entire life I do not believe a Single person I have ever voted for as ever won the election... I do not vote for either Republicans or Democrats

>>I don't understand the willingness to subjugate yourself before powerful corporations

that is because you have confused my position. Allow me to restate it. I am not opposed to Government.. I am opposed to the type of government we have, I believe the constitution did not do enough to limit government.

Government should only be empowered to protect the individual rights. Specifically negative individual rights. Not "Human rights" which are often defined to include positive rights, things like Housing, Health Care, and all manner of other things the government must provide..

Government should not be the parent, the nanny, or the sovereign over the people. The type of government found in most of the "First World" is a complete inversion of what government should be, subservient to the people, not sovereign over them

Read The Law by Frederic Bastiat to glean an understanding of where I believe government regulations, and law should be at and how it should be limited

This pedantic argument is so tired. This is not about arguing over the details of some economic model. The problem is culturally pushing some neopuritan nonsense, always in a highly selective way as you can always find a ton of contradictions. Not to mention when you consider the practicality of outright banning entire market categories in order to combat tiny edge cases.

These conversations should be about the end results and not just blindly accepting a culture of overreacting to every sort of risk.

Forcing companies to middleman sales at gun point isn't any better of a solution either, nor is it even probable, which is really the only other economic model (besides some true-scotsman bitcoin solution).

Trying to work with the system is better than abandoning it for some pipedream or throwing up our hands like there's no solution.

I think there's an expectation from people who casually support economic libertarianism, that the social compact will not come to bear on commercial enterprise when governance is removed. Anyone who thinks a little deeper about it knows it won't play out this way, and that reputation is part and parcel of the product, and public opinion will always need to reckoned with by any enterprise that wants to scale.

"This is not about arguing over the details of some economic model. The problem is culturally pushing some neopuritan nonsense"

The problem is these companies have accumulated so much power, they can push anything they want on you. They can reach into your device, scan you files, canxell your transaction, etc. and there is fuck all you cam do about it.

sounds like a free market model to me.

Anyhow free-market is a meaningless label akin to socialism.

People misuse it so much that it lost any meaning.

Free-market means legislative anarchy of anything to do with markets. The moment the is a mandate ie corn subsidies, banned substances its no longer free by the definition.

> The problem is culturally pushing some neopuritan nonsense, always in a highly selective way as you can always find a ton of contradiction

But are you willing to argue the same for every minor group of content/business that gets selected out but the same economic model ?

We'll be pushing en masse against banning porn. Will we also be doing the same for every single category of legit business that credit card companies won't touch for any reason they feel like ?

That seems highly unrealistic to me, and we're basically saying to minority groups that the day Mastercard doesn't want them as customers they're done and done.

I refuse to believe this is some free market issue of payment processors wanting the right to not interact with businesses they find morally objectionable.

This is about liability and regulation. The processors are scared to process these transactions. It's not that they don't want to.

You can prove that, right? Because, as I said, there's no law against processing porn payments, and risk can be mitigated by just charging more. Your refusal to believe anything is irrelevant.

Why is the burden of proof what's important? Can you prove that it isn't.

How does one go about proving the intent of a company? That concept is irrelevant

The problem exists because payment processing is a duopoly, not a free market (something that, in the case of a natural monopoly, can only be maintained through vigorous regulation).

Payment processing is not a natural monopoly. The fact that it is a duopoly demonstrates that there could be competition in the space, so you can't use that as an excuse.

They remain a duopoly rather than a monopoly only because they're already the subject of massive (though still inadequate) antitrust action. An economic modelling result I saw once suggested that a competitive market requires that the top four competitors own no more than a combined 60% of the market.

Do you think prostitution should be legal?

Yes.

I think this is a tough one, and I'm not sure where I stand on this.

On the one hand I don't think the government should be able to tell you what you can and can't do with your body. If you want to sell your body, you should be able to.

But on the other hand, if you legalise it then you open the door to people being exploited, and I'm aware that people are exploited now in prostitution, obviously, but I feel if it's legal it might be harder to punish those that do.

So maybe on balance it's better for it to be illegal if it protects at least some people.

> I feel if it's legal it might be harder to punish those that do.

Or it could be easier because it becomes regulated and controlled?

How do you think keeping it illegal keeps sex workers more safe?

Sex work should be legal. I do not want to use the word “prostitution” as it carries unnecessary stigma. The main consideration is the safety of sex workers. Exploitation does exist but victims are hesitant to go law enforcement precisely because sex work is illegal. On the flip side people organizing sex work enterprises (aka “pimps” and “madams”) are already breaking the law so for them application of violence is not out of the framework.

Prostitution is a subset of sex work

Absolutely.

People are going to do what they want to do. When you ban something that's the end of your regulation on it. So it goes underground and becomes less safe for everybody that's involved with it.

When you legalize it you can be more nuanced with the regulation, ultimately making it safer and having better outcomes for a huge majority of the people involved. You won't get 100% but it's certainly better than the 0% you're getting with a ban.

Of course the more you over-regulate and create effective bans the lower that % of people following your regulations is going to be and you're back to square one. Take a look at the history of abortions through being banned, coming into legality, and then back into over-regulation/effective ban in some places. Rate of abortions doesn't go down meaningfully when they're explicitly or implicitly illegal but rate of complications from abortions goes way up.

An anecdote for you: someone I know was instrumental in getting the "condoms in porn" law architected in LA county. The goal was to normalize condom use in the face of multiple STD epidemics including HIV. On the surface this is great. But porn with condoms is insanely less popular than porn without condoms - effectively making this new law a ban on producing porn in LA county. So what happened? Productions either went half an hour down the road to the next county or they just stopped actually filing permits and went unregulated meaning no more enforcement of the regimen of testing etc that porn actors were previously required to adhere to, leading to less safe outcomes for the folks involved and no meaningful increase in the amount of porn featuring condom use.

I assume you're from Russia, Africa, China, or the USA, where prostitution is not legal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_law#/media/File:P...

Yes

It really seems weird to me that with all the countries that allow various forms of sex work, payment processing is still such a bottleneck.

As I understand it, independent providers doing 100% legal work in their countries live in terror of their payments being cut off due to the factors mentioned above.

Where is the CoinBase of legal erotica?

That was "SpankChain", I believe.

Which is a scam along with any other porn themed coin. Every sex worker I’ve ever met holds bitcoin (maybe ether if they newer in this space). Sex workers know what is money and what is a fraud.

I wonder if crypto has finally found its "killer app". Pseudo privacy, no charge backs, permissionless.

That's what it was back in the Silk Road times, wasn't it? Hopefully it will go back to that

For consumers, “no chargebacks” is an anti feature. Chargebacks are common by porn consumers for both invalid reasons—-like denying that you did bought porn to a spouse—and valid reasons—like a shady site over charging you. Both things are quite common in this space.

With crypto you can not be overcharged because you approve the transaction before any money is sent vs giving the site the details to pull money from your account.

I still agree that no chargebacks is an issue though.

That actually undermines the gym-style business model of a lot of porn sites where they rely on people subscribing and not using it much.

PH is having problems due to so much "user uploaded" content that they can not verify the identity of the actors contained within. The difference now is that Mastercard is enforcing the rules rather than the US Government which had USC2257 in place for many years with the same requirements. The difference this time is that MC is global(and controls these sites income) and USGov is not, so MC is actually able to enforce this. Adult content sites with their IDs in order(as all US based ones should have already) will have no problem under the new rules. It's not a closing down of the business its actual enforcement of rules that have been on the books for 20+ years by a private entity instead of the lax USGov.

Lets be real, if PH had a way to take monies without having to clean up to save face for the card issuers, it would still be business as usual.

I wonder if the reason "sexually explicit content" isn't allowed is because that generally involves a partner. I believe OF requires ID verification before you can do _anything_ as a creator, so they're trying to curb that by making it essentially a solo website.

It might be a better idea to require all participants in videos to have their OF account linked and tagged in the video.

It’s my understanding that PornHub have purged out non-verified content to fully comply with things such as USC2257 and gone further than the letter of the law in a desire to clean up their image and yet MasterCard, Visa and Discover still refuse them.

This is not as simple as “follow the law”. OnlyFans already appears to require sufficient identification that at least for account owners they pass the USC2257 bar, so content featuring just the account holder should completely pass legal scrutiny in the USA.

Yet they still have this pressure from MasterCard and the discussion isn’t about type of adult content (performers other than the account holder) it’s about all adult content. This is someone who saw the successful pressure tactics work on PornHub and wants to go further.

It’s also important to remember that MasterCard and Visa don’t directly offer services to anyone but banks/payment processors, so while there are “high risk” payment processors such as CCBill, etc, MasterCard as network operators are saying “for these specific people… no”.

I find it utterly fascinating that Reddit is able to maintain such a huge porn collection with relatively little attention. I wish I knew what percentage of submissions were in NSFW subreddits, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were the majority.

Maybe it's because they're not trying to make money off of it? I don't think they run ads on NSFW subreddits.

I wonder if there's a market for something like how strip clubs operate -- where the artist pays OnlyFans to stream there, and then the artist collects their income some other way (e.g. Patreon, or just direct cash equivalents). That could in theory keep OnlyFans good with their payment processors, while still keeping this revenue stream at least somewhat open.

Given how janky the last few years of website updates on reddit have been, the sheer user hostility might be reason enough alongside 0 monetization that keeps it afloat.

> I find it utterly fascinating that Reddit is able to maintain such a huge porn collection with relatively little attention.

I suspect they're working in the same direction, no? For example a few months back they removed NSFW from /r/all. They didn't just make it user-config'd SFW by default, to my knowledge you cannot browse NSFW content on /r/all. So they sort of ghosted that entire genre on their site.

Maybe they'll stop there?

There was all kinds of nsfw (including porn) stuff on r/all this morning for me.

There are NSFW posts but it's never porn, mostly random things you might not want to open at work even though they're harmless.

I would love to see reddits real internal financial reports. I'm wonder if they've ever actually turned a profit...

The problem with r/all is that iy does not show "all" since a long time.

They removed political spam and porn, but also lots of subreddits opt out to be shown there (e.g. sports subreddits).

As much as I hated the political spam from various TD clones, it is sad that there is no way to see "real" r/all and perhaps one that allows to remove porn and politics.

Yea i also used to enjoy it more when i believed it to be literally "all" - as far as i can tell it's an alternate front page. My wife and i have different /r/all's for example, meaning they seem to rank links similarly to your subscribed frontpage.

The web is far more interesting to me when not curated for what something thinks i want.

>I find it utterly fascinating that Reddit is able to maintain such a huge porn collection with relatively little attention. I wish I knew what percentage of submissions were in NSFW subreddits, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were the majority.

All reddit NSFW content has been removed from /r/popular and /r/all about two months ago.

I think they're getting ready for an IPO.

All that porn probably won't be there anymore in a few years.

> All reddit NSFW content has been removed from /r/popular and /r/all about two months ago. I think they're getting ready for an IPO.

Bingo. Back in the days one of the most popular subreddit was /r/jailbait (I won't explain what that is here, you can search for it in DuckDuckGo in private mode). Back in the days free speech was huge on Reddit and the admins did quite the mental gymnastics to appease the concerns of the community over free speech. Of course this was done just around the time they got investor money.

Not that I mourn the loss of this kind of content but it really makes you think how low free speech have fallen in terms of priorities going from "we won't even ban jailbait" to "let's ban distasteful subs" and being more prude than my religious grandma in certain aspects. Now it's nearly impossible to post a link in the default subs and nearly all the top comments are obviously bought accounts.

> It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those constraints

Maybe by accelerating adoption and normalization of cryptocurrency.

Looks like we found the killer app for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin for nefarious purposes. Who would have thought?

It's my understanding that PH is the only adult site with this issue. They got in hot water because of a series of high-profile lawsuits and media pieces about exploitation videos on their platform.

OF would likely not run into this because all of its content creators are verified and can only post videos of themselves or videos they have the rights to; it's not a free-for-all upload fest like PH used to be.

> If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card, a smaller company will have no chance at all.

According to the article, they value themselves over 1 billion. That's not a small company in my books.

Sounds like some (large & credible) international company with less puritanical execs than those in the USA need to start a new credit card company or payment service

PH got in trouble due to a NYT hit piece and is usual this is usually more of a corporate maneuver than an actual article done in the name of the public interest. See Pewdiepie who got one just about when he got a deal with Disney; surely pure coincidence.

The fact is, MindGeek, who operates PH and the others, is the reason all the corporate porn studios stopped making profits. When was the last time you saw a full length > 90 minutes porn movie produced after ~2010? This used to be a huge industry just as big than Hollywood.

A few days later low and behold the first thing MindGeek does is to stop people from downloading videos and only accept payments for studio made videos.

"Think of the children" is a meme at this point and should raise eyebrows whenever it is raised up as an argument.

that actually opens up a market for a new payment processor that is capable of dealing with these kind of payments. i honestly wonder if onlyfans explored and exhausted that route thoroughly

> Clone the full experience on a dedicated site, OnlyFantasy.com

You are, absolutely, a genius.

Even more so if the GP owns the OnlyFantasy domain.

> Clone the full experience on a dedicated site, OnlyFantasy.com, duplicate the whole userbase, and give a simple warning that I can find my favorite stars on another site. In time, the user bases will diverge naturally depending on interests.

This is exactly what Gfycat did. They took the same backend infrastructure, made it into a porn site (Redgifs), and moved all the porn gifs on Gfycat over to the new site.

Stripe is their payment processor and they're _full aware_ of what Onlyfans' content mostly is.

There was a thread on this a year ago [1]. The leading theories seem to be that they use Stripe for SFW content and others (ex. CCBill) for NSFW content.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790

Stripe should solve for nsfw paid content. That industry is ripe for disruption.

The problem is that the industry is ripe with fraud, even from what were legitimate customers. I listed some examples elsewhere, but I'll repeat:

* Money laundering by people making anonymous accounts with stolen credit cards and then selling them to people using crypto (so that they're not associated with the account).

* Customer's spouses/SO finding out about it and the customer claiming fraud to chargeback and cover it up.

* (More OF specific) Customers making a large payment for custom content and then filing a chargeback after they get it. This is more or less a problem with all digital goods, but probably more of a problem with custom content.

Most banks/payment processors don't want to touch this industry since it poisons their image to others in the network. For example, if Stripe started serving the industry and fraud went up, that ruins Stripe's image to all the banks they interconnect with. It's just segment that isn't worth serving at the expense of all your other markets.

Even if someone made a bespoke payment processor for the industry, banks would just stop working with them.

In reality, the fraud problem really needs to be dealt with first. If your "customers" are going to be bad actors then there's really nothing you can do on the payment side to solve that.

You don’t even need an anonymous account as much as you just need an account: they have plausible deniability.

Chaturbate had this issue some years ago where entrepreneurial individuals would just go direct to the model for a cut.

Stripe has more than enough runway in non-nsfw markets to disrupt. NSFW is a hard (read -> $$$) problem to solve. This would be a financially stupid (read -> poor ROI) endeavor to pursue for them.

MasterCard calls the shot and they were drive into this by Exodus Cry campaign https://mobile.twitter.com/GustavoTurnerX/status/14284408173...

Once you reach a certain size and payment processors are barking at your content, the answer becomes: “start your own payment processor” an amusing side note is today I learned onlyfans didn’t just host people’s porn videos.

You will discover new Eastern European "friends" who will "discourage" you from becoming an adult-services payment processor. That entire market is cornered, and they don't like to share.

I see. Whenever you have one of those seemingly great business ideas where you think. “Why has no one ever thought of this?” I wonder how often “new friends” are the reason that no one else has done it.

Probably impossible as someone mentioned it might be due to FOSTA-SESTA which is intended to curb online sex work, which is arguably what onlyfans currently enabled right now. They probably determined it's too risky to continue.

Here are the details how MasterCard got into the censorship business https://mobile.twitter.com/GustavoTurnerX/status/14284408173...

OTOH OnlyFans could have complied, and the requirements are not impossible, though harsh.

It's especially odd given that their parent company already owns an explicit porn site called MyFreeCams.

What other brand do they have?

Also, there seriously needs to be a reckoning with the payment processor issue, somehow.

Exactly, you can't clean up the OF brand because its brand as it is commonly known is 18 to 30yr olds selling nudes. And this seems to be its big customer demographic. There is no significant "other brand" to split off. If it wants to start a Patreon competitor with the same backend fine, but that's a new brand. It's literally a meme among younger people: "oh yeah that OF charge it's a cooking class" or "yoga sessions" or some shit. This is the Colgate Dinner problem: you can't apply a toothpaste brand to frozen food, you can't apply an amateur porn brand to patreon stuff. If i'm a chick trying to sell some non-porn subscription content I cannot use that brand because everyone will think it is porn and write me off as another thot.

Companies can be very self-deluded about what they are.

See, eg, Uber's nonsensical pursuit of self-driving vehicles. Like they thought their big value was being a taxi app (fairly trivial), and not the actual hard thing which is recruiting and managing a ton of drivers.

Or a willingness to lose a truckload of cash subsidizing cheap rides.

In these cases, it's usually not the payment processors' call.

Visa & Mastercard are happy to ban an entire company from their platform (see PornHub).

It seemed like they were gonna do that. They launched OFTV which was a non-nude platform, which could get on Apple/Google app stores. That was very recently too. Then suddenly this news comes out. Very strange...

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