Hacker News Reader

Comment by ianhawes | Hacker News Reader

Many adult performers started using OnlyFans because it allowed them to refer their own non-adult social media following (i.e. IG/TikTok/Twitter/Reddit) to an adult friendly platform that didn’t take an insane cut.

What most people don’t realize is that traditional cam platforms like LiveJasmin and Streamate allocate a 30% cut for themselves and a 30% cut for the referring affiliate, typically a porn site. The remaining 40% is allocated to the model - 30% if the model uses a studio.

Another unspoken player is the credit card processor who typically captures 10% of the revenue for “risk”.

View on HN

I don't know why the scare quotes on risk. It is absolutely there in this industry. Chargeback rates are crazy from the kid who swesrs he didn't steal his mom's credit card or the husband who promises he wasn't the one buying this stuff, it must have been a hacker. This is also not entirely unfounded because some areas of this indistry are very easy to juice revenue from stolen credit cards.

There is a reason that even with those high fees to be made, most processors will not touch the industry.

The answer is deeper still. Remove charge backs so the credit card companies become "dumb" utilities rather than some sort of service that can provide "value add". I actually don't know why it's even a genuine thing other than it's digital so "you can". In every other realm we deal with this concept using courts, police and as plain old fraud.

Why would you want to remove charge backs? If you pay for something and don't get it, have your payment instrument stolen, get tricked by a scam, etc then charge backs seem like an excellent tool to have. Charge backs are also not independent of the courts, if you trigger an illegitimate charge back then the counterparty can sue you.

No need to remove chargebacks. But there does need to be an electronic analogue to paying with cash, a utility provided by the federal government. Supposedly it is being worked on and called "FedNow".

https://frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/

What are the odds that FedNow will service the adult industry?

Pretty good given the first ammendment and lack of other rationale such as scarcity of airwaved. A pretext to deny would be difficult for domestic companies.

The feds have been pressuring financial services companies to "de-platform" legal businesses, including those in the adult industry, for years.

The govt's pretext has been "reputational risk." Isn't it nice of the feds to tell a bank that "someone" might not think well of them if they provide services to "those" people?

It is established law that a business that acts at govt behest is a state actor, so that "pressure" is enough to bring the 1st amendment in. That is, if there's a 1st amendment argument. However, said de-plaforming doesn't seem to succumbed to a 1st amendment challenge.

Maybe such a business would win with a first amendment argument on FedNow, but how many can survive until that decision comes down?

>The feds have been pressuring financial services companies to "de-platform" legal businesses, including those in the adult industry, for years.

Source? I have never heard of this.

https://www.freespeechcoalition.com/blog/blog/2018/09/07/ban...

and https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-252B-6265