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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

A lot of cam/onlyfans/... girls (and guys) are "managed" by people (pimps) in the same way as prostitutes (and strippers) are, but now digitally instead of physically (or, in many cases, both).

They lease a building, build "cubicles", make them look like bedrooms, throw in a bunch of girls/guys, who then do stuff there for their viewers, and managers (pimps) collect a part of the earned money. They have a schedule, have to meet quotas, etc. They also hire people to do their make-up, buy toys, manage their accounts, do accounting, price lists for "custom" photos/videos, and even dirty up the underwear that they then sell.

Porn is a huge industry, solo actresses are just a very small part of that, even if onlyfans would like you to believe otherwise.

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You’ll be really mad when you hear about all the other businesses that lease buildings and build cubicles and have people come there to do work while skimming off most of the profits. It’s an epidemic.

At what point does a manager stop being a pimp? Seems like everyone doing anything businessey that doesn't involve taking off their own clothes in anything even vaguely sex related gets called a pimp.

Is a strip club GM a pimp? The whole "maintain and operate facility" thing sounds a lot like a strip club.

I read an article by adult performer discussing her career and the “manger/pimp” distinction …

Basically “managers” are a thing when you have a large number of employers who need to coordinate.

Legit managers can look a lot like pimps. For example, they usually require employees “to be on time” and “always have a good attitude.”

But if someone isn’t on time, than everyone else is waiting, and typically not getting paid. So failing to show up on time means your coworkers are paying for you to do your own thing.

So there an element of “you know it when you see it.”

earlier in the thread someone provided a definition along the lines of: "a pimp is a manager who is allowed to use violence, drug addiction and other forms of non-consensual coercion."

I am under the impression that the distinction of a pimp is due to using violence, drugs, or other coercion on vulnerable subjects such as runaways, underage, or trafficked/kidnapped persons.

Yes, that's exactly what they do to (some) onlyfans creators.

https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/

The linked article links to another article describing the CEO of OnlyFans as facing accusations of theft and fraud[0].

In reality, it appears the owner of OnlyFans also owns MyFreeCams, which is a massive cam platform. The actual complaints of theft and fraud are accusations of randomly frozen accounts. Companies like PayPal and even banks periodically freeze accounts, but the CEOs of their company are not targeted in a manner such as the linked article.

Further, it is not uncommon to freeze accounts for suspected fraud. Cam platforms are ripe for money laundering with stolen credit cards. Thieves will steal a credit card and use it to pay a model on the platform that they’re working with. The model is paid weeks later and they’ve successfully laundered the money. It does not surprise me that some false positives happen, it’s a pretty tricky cat and mouse game.

The article also mentioned requiring people to switch to a bank in Belize. It’s not surprising given that adult payments and adult companies are routinely targeted by puritanical US and International financial institutions.

[0] https://forensicnews.net/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud...

So those are types of pimping.. sometimes put into a broad category of 'guerilla pimping'.

The main distinction of a pimp is someone who is willing to deal with all the bull shit of the business to help hoes - this was mainly protection from abusers and help with advertising, but also includes a ton of other help - rides, shelter, healthcare appts.

'pimping' became a pop slang term what, around the myspace time? and it's become synonymous with gaudy but cool glamour - 'those shoes are pimpin' - to also jest about 'control' - like "pimpin' these robots to get that paper (money)".. "you are being pimped by toptal".

After some years of research I would say not just most (51%) - but more like 99% of 'pimps' want nothing to do with underage, kidnapped, forced/coerced type hoes.

This is more of a stereotype that fits some groups' narratives who are often trying to get money to fight boogeymen.

Not to say that there shouldn't be money / resources dedicated to destroying the 1% who would use violence to traffic - but I've noticed how easy it is to skew the recently changing narrative / perceptions, and mostly the news is promoting false stereotypes to gain clicks and clout at the expense of real help.

This is not to say it's not completely different stats say, south of the border or Baltic or whatever.

As someone who personally knows people working in anti-trafficking efforts within the USA, whatever the actual numbers are, they are sadly far, far away from your 1% number. People have barely begun to shine a light in the darkness and hand-waving truth away as “stereotypes” is very harmful.

It's easy to fudge numbers if we all disagree on terms.

Sure you are right if you included the thousands of Asian hookers being coerced by some int'l trafficking org. Sure if you include the small number of Somali gangs doing kidnaps and sales.. some of the more hardcore gangs in the inner cities that actually use all sorts of methods for the overall syndicate -

sure - those people may be technically 'pimping' (at least some) - but I do not think that those types of people come to mind when someone is casually discussing 'pimps' - I believe people are more likely to conjure up someone in their mind more like snoop dogg or 'I'm gonna get you sucka' type of character. Or like 'money mike' the pimp in the next Friday movie by Kat Willaims.

I have come to learn that a majority of those types of people don't want underage or beat-down girls and they generally frown upon, and try to reduce drug use as well.

Like I said in original comment there are those out there that are using force or other coercion (we have your passport, and have your family in regime place X - do this or else jail and loss of family) - and they should be stopped.

It gets more fuzzy when you run into people who are voluntarily sex working for things like debts to flee a place - however it's easy to lump in those numbers.

My point was not to try to throw hard numbers at X amount of sex workers are not being forced, that too depends on how certain terms are defined of course as well.

My point was that many orgs included news orgs are happy to paint all sorts of things as 'trafficking' that are nothing more than people looking for sex or people who are looking for ways to trade it - without violence, and it's not accurate to think 'pimps' or 'pimping' is:

"the distinction of a pimp is due to using violence, drugs, or other coercion on vulnerable subjects such as runaways, underage, or trafficked/kidnapped persons."

as is the comment I was replying to, and trying to shed additional light on.

I've had an eye on that part of the industry for some years now (since '95).

My first full time club gig including finding and ejecting hoes and pimps (some are quite sneaky / hard to define) - you could say we hated pimps and despised hoes (it was believed they hurt our business and took clients from our business permanently)- for the first several years of that part of my past club/djing career.

It wasn't until hbo's pimps up series came out that I started looking deeper into all that and learned that many / most are there to help each other not trying to hurt each other - it's pretty complicated.

People have different definitions in their mind on many of the terms used in describing these things, so defining the terms instead of stereo typing is better - which was my point in the first place.

edited to add Kat W / Money Mike reference.

That's not pimping. For starters those girls aren't forced to do what they do. (Yeah, there probably is an overwhelming minority of cases where they are forced to show their tits. But let's not grasp at straws...)

https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/

I understand that some onlyfans creators are being exploited, but the freedom of those who aren't exploited (which are a majority) shouldn't be restricted because of that.

I think the difficulty is in knowing who is exploited and who is not.

Didn't you just describe all jobs in all countries? There are people who feel forced to do immoral or illegal things. For instance I was just reading about one server at a restaurant in USA. He accidentally dropped a steak on the floor but was told to wash it off and serve it to the customer anyways. The argument being the customer would get mad if his food came out later then the rest of his party.

How many factory style jobs do people work not because they want to but because circumstances force them to? How many employers exploit their workers because its unlikely the workers will fight back?

You may have replied to the wrong person. I didn’t describe jobs in any countries.

I don’t think comparing people working in factories to pimps and exploited sex workers (or perhaps pimps and fairly compensated sex workers). They are different things.

By this logic any job that offered a way to make money during covid could be called "preying on" people. Offering work when people need it is not predatory. I think there are a lot of consequences to this type of work that young women don't consider, not least that they will have a lot more trouble finding a husband (and maybe a job) in 8 years, but that doesn't by itself make the work predatory.

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