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Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

416 points by capableweb 6y ago

For reasons beyond this ask, I'm needing to use a payment processor that is fine with high-risk transactions (which the porn industry certainly fits in) so started looking around what adult websites are using. Many are using probiller, vendo and similar, since Stripe and others have rules against porn/adult industry, citing high risk transactions for this. But then I came across onlyfans.com, which is using Stripe for its payments, although Stripe has a strict "no porn" rule in their terms of service. How does this work? Onlyfans is by now a huge website, with lots of transactions, so it's surely not flying under the radar. It's the only adult website I could find that is using Stripe. Is it as simple as they have an agreement with Stripe to bypass the rule? Or am I missing something else obvious here?

maps7 6y ago
Probably cause Stripe likes money?
- european321 6y ago
  Of course they like money, that's why the rule is there in the first place. High amount of chargebacks and fraud costs them money.
- voxic11 6y ago
  A company I worked for tried to use Stripe but couldn't because they don't allow "fantasy sports leagues with cash prizes". They definitely aren't willing to make exceptions for everyone.
  - gowld 6y ago
    In practice, unregulated online gambling is much closer to fraud than porn.
- s_dev 6y ago
  They won't operate online pharmacies. Not because they aren't legit one but because there are so many bad actors out there they just won't engage with pharmacies -- we tried setting one of the up with a cashless solution but Stripe didn't want to.
raxxorrax 6y ago
Probably because the content is not public. I heard users just share cat pictures, so there is plausible deniability.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
0xy 6y ago
My guess is Onlyfans has a very low rate of chargebacks/fraud and negotiated a special deal with Stripe. The reason that rule is there is because most adult sites are dodgy.
- fl0wenol 6y ago
  I suspect Onlyfans (like Patreon) has social pressure going for it such that fewer people issue chargebacks because it'd be like yanking back money directly from a person and not a faceless company; like the social pressure against leaving a shitty tip at a restaurant.
hobofan 6y ago
Doesn't Patreon (which also has a lot of porn content) also use Stripe as a payment processor?
- breakingcups 6y ago
  Patreon did crack down on some extreme content, stating they were forced to do so by their payment provider(s).
  - dzhiurgis 6y ago
    Weird they wouldn't switch providers for specific use cases. Does Stripe require to be exclusive provider for site?
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      The other providers have similar rules.
    - lovegoblin 6y ago
      There are very few payment processors that will accept adult content, and those that do exist (e.g., CCBill) are both expensive - on the order of 10x the fees - and also a damn nightmare to work with. I can very easily imagine a scenario where Patreon looked at their options and decided it wasn't worth it.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    Are you referring to the censorship which is in the process of tanking the site? https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/1596377657-court-rules-against-patreon-fan-funding-service-in-key-case-over-cancelled-comedian https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/159637...
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      No, Patreon made much more broad changes a few years back (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3x5z/heres-how-patreon-politely-makes-it-impossible-for-adult-content-creators https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3x5z/heres-how-patreon-...) affecting all sorts of adult content. Benjamin got banned for saying stuff like: > Really what [Hitler] was trying to do was clean Germany, clean it of the parasites, of the fleas. He did not hate Jews. He hated filth and he was trying to clean up. and is similarly banned from Facebook, YouTube, PayPal and Twitter. They just don't have company-pays forced arbitration provisions that can be turned back on the company like Patreon does. DoorDash had the same DDoS issue with their arbitration clause, no free speech issues required. https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21133486/doordash-workers-10-million-forced-arbitration-class-action-supreme-court-backfired https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21133486/doordash-workers-10-m...
Hackbraten 6y ago
Why do you think the porn industry is prone to more fraud/risk?
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  A man orders porn and pays using his credit card. His wife looks at the statements and asks him what he’s up to. He denies having made the payment so the wife initiates a chargeback.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I kinda wonder if it isn't the kids doing it with a parents card.
    - wil421 6y ago
      My friend and I were 13 and called 1-900 numbers back when it was popular. We took his moms credit card and changed some numbers around. Eventually a number we made up worked. It was a hilarious moment but I was scared to death we would be found out. Nothing ever happened but somebody got a charge.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Do they not ask for a CVV or any other verification?
        soylentcola 6y ago
        We did something surprisingly similar once as stupid kids/teens and it was in the days before CVV. Just touch tone to enter a card number (although we did this little experiment from a payphone using a 1-800 (toll free) sex line). Typically, you entered a card number after some initial "pitch". AFAIK, 1-900 numbers only worked by billing you on your phone bill.
        6y ago
tootahe45 6y ago
Maybe Stripe CEO is a simp?
__ryan__ 6y ago
Onlyfans is a platform for content subscriptions. It just happens to be a popular platform for adult content. Also, it surely makes them a ton of money.
- wil421 6y ago
  Right and backpage was just a site for lonely singles looking to connect.
  - __ryan__ 6y ago
    Stripe’s TOS is there to protect itself. They can point to the “no porn” rule if they ever need to cut ties with OnlyFans, but until then, they will reap the benefits of their partnership. It’s a win-win for Stripe.
    - m11a 6y ago
      Pretty sure if a company intentionally refuses to enforce a provision of its terms (rather than not realising), it would be a bit more of a legal tangle if they decided to arbitrarily rely on said provision one day to cut ties. So I don't think that'd work.
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  You can say this about literally anything: Pornhub is just a platform for VOD. It just happens to be a popular platform for adult content.
  - __ryan__ 6y ago
    I think that’s a stretch. There _is_ a line and OnlyFans is at the very least _on_ it. While I am aware of the adult content on the site, the only people that I know of that use OnlyFans are subscribing to physical training, musical talent, or other creative content. Unironically.
  - andoriyu 6y ago
    It would be hard to pretend that resources named "pornhub" is not porn and just happened to host a lot of porn...
utf_8x 6y ago
My guess would be that Onlyfans do a lot of fraud prevention on their end and negotiated an exception with Stripe...
tyingq 6y ago
Somewhat related, a story that digs into who's running onlyfans.com: https://forensicnews.net/2020/08/13/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud-theft/ https://forensicnews.net/2020/08/13/onlyfans-faces-allegatio...
- everybodyknows 6y ago
  > Weeks before Radvinsky purchased the OnlyFans holding company in the United Kingdom, he received a $250,000 tax credit from the state of Illinois. “The purpose of the Angel Investment Tax Credit Program is to attract and encourage the placement of investment dollars into early-stage, innovative companies throughout Illinois.” Your tax dollars at work.
  - nipheld 6y ago
    > Your tax dollars at work ...creating high-tech well-paying jobs in the local area. Is that a problem?
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      You might think that if you'd never worked for a state finance authority, or for the state of Illinois. It's certainly what's on the press release.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago
    You know what a credit is?
    - djellybeans 6y ago
      It only takes the word "tax" to make many people internally scream. Crude heuristics, but hey it's human programming.
- us0r 6y ago
  This has to be the biggest pile of garbage I have ever read. No doubt the guy is probably not a saint but the article starts with the site being worth "between $810m and $936m." and ends with him pivoting into drug smuggling? according to "xoxgoldenfox"?
adwi 6y ago
My understanding is the rules are dictated by Visa/MC/Amex, and are largely based on chargeback risk for categories of merchants. There are likely further legal and pearl-clutchy reasons that combine to just out and out ban. Anecdote: we talked with every payment processor around for a product we were making that involved storing and spending value from a digital wallet. It was close enough to various Visa/MC rules and money transmitting statutes that the usual response was arguing for a few weeks about why we comply until higher management decided something akin to: well if you had a lot of volume we’d take the risk dealing with it, but you don’t so it’s not worth our time. Last ditch effort was Stripe, who said: sure! And we asked again with more detail, making sure they saw the same issues and wouldn’t make us tear it down in a month. They said: sure! Did it a third time higher up for diligence, and finally just came to the conclusion they have different priorities and are getting big enough to use their scale to throw some weight around for all the small merchants.
- preinheimer 6y ago
  +1 to the rules coming down from Visa & MC. Amex doesn't allow adult. There's a bit more nuance there, as the rules actually come from the bank issuing your merchant account, rather than some master "Visa" entity. So if you're a big player in the adult game you're going to work to find the right banks willing to issue you merchant accounts. Those banks will also have a compliance department which will look at your content and make sure it's inline with what they're willing to allow. If you want to make adult content where consensual adults do things together there's one group of banks you can go to. If you want to make niche content with acted out violence and such you're going to find a much smaller group of banks willing to issue you merchant accounts. Or possibly no banks at all. It's interesting that the thing deciding what adult content will be easily monetizable on the internet is small merchant account issuing banks. On the charging side I believe Stripe uses Wells Fargo, which has pretty strict rules. Source: worked for one of the large players in the adult market a while back. Some info may be dated. Note: one of the fun things about credit cards is that Visa and MC are issued by banks, and Amex is issued by Amex. There was a new fraud style a few years ago that amex was able to lock down pretty quick due to its centralized nature, while Visa and MC had a harder time. Note2: I may define fun differently than you.
euix 6y ago
How much of the internet traffic is actually pornography in general? I have heard a lot of anecdotal hearsay that it constitutes a majority.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  How would anyone know that? My guess is most of traffic is various intelligence agencies copying all other traffic in the world.
- barrkel 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's 80% spam, 80% pornography and 80% streaming video.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    The 80-20 rule strikes again. Such an amazing statistic.
- elorant 6y ago
  The thing about the online porn industry is that it's highly diversified which leads a lot of people into making wild assumptions about its size. I doubt porn traffic is that high. Stats show that one in three Internet users are viewing porn, but the thing is that porn isn't something you can spend more than 10-20 minutes consuming[1]. So if we say that the average user spends some three hours online on average every day[2], then porn is about 5% of that time. So one in three users online spend 5% of their time watching porn. In total I'd guess that doesn't account for more than 10% of global traffic, taking under consideration that video consumes much more bandwidth than other forms of content. That's all back of the envelope calculations off course. [1] https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2019-year-in-review#traffic https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2019-year-in-review#traffic [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/319732/daily-time-spent-online-device/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/319732/daily-time-spent-...
  - whatsmyusername 6y ago
    Maybe YOU can only spend 10-20 minutes :D
tzs 6y ago
How do you find out what payment processor(s) a given site uses? I know that some provide methods whereby a site can have the actual payment entry form served and processed by the payment processor instead of by the site's own server, so you'd be able to see from the user's end where they payment is actually being processed. I've never done a survey, but just anecdotally most sites I've encountered seem to not be using that option. Their payment entry form comes from their own site and posts back to it, where their own back-end handles dealing with their payment processor's API. Using the method where the user interacts directly with the payment processor does have the advantage that it simplifies PCI compliance. If your systems never even see the credit card, just receiving a token from the payment processor at the end of the transaction that you can use to initiate subsequent on-file or recurring transactions, most of PCI goes away for you. On the other hand, that also means that you are stuck with that payment processor for on-file or recurring transactions for that customer. Your token from payment processor X is completely worthless for doing charges at payment processor Y. If I was in a business that has a significantly above average risk of running into payment processor trouble so I might need to change processors, I'd want to store the credit cards myself. That makes it possible to change payment processors without having to get all of your subscription customers to come back and re-enter credit card information [1]. [1] Well...at least for now. I'm not sure if that will still be possible if the Visa stored credential framework ever actually becomes required. Briefly, under the SCF requirements when you store a credit card, you have to send a flag to Visa with the transaction saying you are storing it. On subsequent on-file or recurring transactions, you have to send a reference to the transaction that stored the card. The problem is that you reference that transaction by sending Visa's transaction number. But Visa's number for transactions is generally not the transaction number you get from your payment processor. The payment processor has its own transaction numbers and those are what you see. I believe MC is also doing SCF. Not sure about Discover and Amex. It was supposed to become mandatory something like two or three years ago, but payment processors kept asking for extensions.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > How do you find out what payment processor(s) a given site uses? I'm a developer so looking at what kind of request the application is doing when interacting with anything involving payments. In the case of OnlyFans it was easy as they make direct requests to Stripe. In other cases, I've looked at the data structures stored in the current page by using the JS console and compare it to the API docs of various payment processors.
therealmarv 6y ago
They are NOT using Stripe. Stripe has a no porn rule because they want to go public at some time and everything needs to look clean, also on their customer side. Also their (Stripe) backend banks don't tolerate porn. Also there is not only Stripe out there! Btw. you are in the wrong forum. Look on gfy.com forum for example
- capableweb 6y ago
  > They are NOT using Stripe Take a look at the requests their frontend is making and you'll see they are indeed using Stripe. At least they were last time I checked. > Also there is not only Stripe out there! Indeed, I listed some of the alternatives in my opening question, but is besides the point anyways, here we're discussing Stripe + OnlyFans. > Btw. you are in the wrong forum. Judging by the number of upvotes and comments, no, I'm not. > Look on gfy.com forum for example Thanks for the pointer, I'll take a look there.
larrik 6y ago
That's a good question, since Stripe backed out at the VERY last minute for a customer of mine who sells alcohol over the internet, despite repeated assurances it would be fine.
- edwinwee 6y ago
  Stripe can typically support alcohol businesses (assuming they hold the appropriate licenses). Could you get in touch at edwin@stripe.com and we can take another look?
mrdumas 6y ago
Since, I know a friend in this industry, let me explain what's going on here. Yes, OnlyFans uses Stripe, but that's not the entire story. In the adult/porn world, there's a high amount of chargebacks and fraud relative to low-risk industries like SaaS software. If you pass a certain chargeback threshold in the adult industry, your account is terminated, and no payment processor will do business with you. To reduce the likelihood of passing that chargeback threshold and being banned, OnlyFans uses "cascading payments", which essentially load balances the payments across multiple payment processors in order to reduce their chargeback ratios across their merchant accounts. The payment is either processed by Stripe, Securion, CCBill(the leading payment processor for adult), or another company. Last time I checked the network requests, I noticed it was storing the card on Stripe, CCBill, and Securion, but using CCBill or Securion to process the payment. I think Stripe is there for models on the site who don't sell adult content. OnlyFans probably does a check to see if the page is adult-related and if it is, then routes it to the correct payment processor.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- techsin101 6y ago
  loading across multiple providers won't alter the chargeback ratio so what is the point?
  - capableweb 6y ago
    You could (in theory) do some risk analysis and put the ones with the highest risk into the providers where you had the lowest chargeback. Wouldn't be 100% solution, but could get you there.
    - netsharc 6y ago
      I wonder if they do do that. In Germany there's a credit rating agency that more or less has a monopoly, and everyone has more or less a profile with data supplied by companies who've dealt with them commercially (e.g. if you signed a phone contract or opened a bank account). But sometimes their algorithm would also try to predict the chances of people not paying bills by things like the ZIP code where they live...
disillusioned 6y ago
Cascading payments might be the real answer, and shuffling higher risk charges to non-Stripe providers, but in my experience, Stripe can get pretty moralizing pretty quickly. We built an adult ecommerce site (purely toys for purchase, no porn) and because other adult toy sites had been successful on Stripe, Stripe assured us this wouldn't be a problem. Six months and several million dollars processed later, Stripe informs us we're going to be deplatformed because Wells Fargo (their banking partner) had reviewed our account (apparently because of its volume) and determined we violated their standards because of the nature of the toys. We did a bit of back and forth where Stripe suggested we alter the colors available (seriously) to assuage Wells Fargo's puritanical concerns, and Stripe insisted it wasn't _their_ moralizing, but rather Wells Fargo (paragons of fucking virtue as they are), but we weren't willing to compromise on the nature of our product or have our product's options or colors dictated to us by one of the most corrupt banks on the planet. We ended up deplatforming and moving to a high-risk processor who was willing to match our competitive Stripe rate. That processor sucks and their fraud protections are weak and their interface is garbage, but they're not telling us how to run our business. Was mostly disappointed that we went through an arduous review process with Stripe beforehand and received assurances we'd be fine since our chargeback rate is insanely low and we ship actual physical product and have no nudity on our site, but alas.
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  Unfortunately exactly 0% of this story surprises me. > That processor sucks and their fraud protections are weak and their interface is garbage I have three guesses and they're all CCBill.
  - telaandrews2 6y ago
    LOLZ I was waiting for someone to call them out. I haven't looked at their interface in decades, but last time I looked it was decades out of date. Payments is the most profitable niche in the porn industry.
    - lovegoblin 6y ago
tejasmanohar 6y ago
Many of the rules aren't rules. We ran a travel company and used Stripe in the past, which is also one of the disallowed industries. We got approval from Stripe after proving that we have a negligible fraud & chargeback rate due to being focused on business users
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  Yeah this is something I think a lot of people in this thread are missing: OnlyFans is probably big enough that they can negotiate their contract with Stripe.
- dotBen 6y ago
  This, one of the biggest blinkers technically-inclined founders have is that they forget or ignore that so much is relationship driven. Rules like Stripes (+ Wells Fargos) are not interpreted like code, everything is open to negotiation and degrees of freedom depending on the relationship established.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Those blinkers are called "not being utterly insane". The whole model of disruption is seeing a stupid practice saying. "No we aren't doing that stupid shit." watch practicioners of the existing stupid froth at the mouth and then either succeed or fail. Seriously that is why honor based lending died to banks centuries ago. Relationship driven is a fucking stupid way to do finance.
    - michannne 6y ago
      That's an ideal. At the end of the day these are human-run industries, relationships are a big part of that.
    - dotBen 6y ago
      Finance is totally relationship driven (and 'honor systems' isn't really a good example of it). My bank waives fees on everything because of my personal friendly relationship with my banker. They gave me preferred terms of my mortgage rate because of my formal relationship - it wasn't just the product of a formula at the end of the banker's computer screen. I know they'll do all sorts of shit for me because of the hard (account age, $$) and soft (personal) relationship. But my point is more broad - API agreements come to mind as an example, just because that is a space I've played in prior jobs. "But the API Ts&Cs say you can't do xx but they are doing xx". Yeah, they have a relationship and got a dispensation.
claydavisss 6y ago
OnlyFans is hip, edgy, and if you squint hard enough, a vehicle for feminist liberation. Hip waifs from SOMA are on OnlyFans, while BangBros has to slum it with Eastern Europeans. One is "cool", one is sleazy. That is the real answer.
gojomo 6y ago
Often, when the market doesn't provide an essential gateway service to a law-abiding subpopulation, some sort of 'public option' is proposed. Not enough market housing, offer public/subsidized options. Not enough low- or no-cost private education, offer public schools. Too little affordable healthcare/insurance, offer Medicaid, a 'public option', single-payer. Public transport. Should the government offer a 'public option' payment-processor of last resort, with guaranteed service for all legal but unpopular businesses? A service that couldn't reject camgirls, weed-sellers, Alex Jones, gun shops, etc?
- icelancer 6y ago
  We call this Bitcoin.
- Noos 6y ago
  You have this already. It's called "using checks and money orders." The problem is that people want the convenience credit cards use, and don't want to wait for the check to clear to get their stuff.
  - jimmydorry 6y ago
    Banks can and will close your account for any reason under the Sun. How do you write a check or receive one without a bank account? I'm not familiar enough with money orders, but I assume the same applies. Then, on top of all of that, you can't run a business through a personal account. So you still require a business type bank account, and the above options are terrible for any eCommerce site, which is pretty much the only kind of business that will be discussed here on HN.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      You can get a money order without a bank account. There's often a limit on the amount, so in some cases you may need to buy several in order to amass the full balance. You may also need to show ID. You can also cash a money order without a bank account.
  - 6y ago
truthwhisperer 6y ago
asking for a friend i think?
Sindrome 6y ago
There are other payment processors other than Stripe.... Ever heard of CCBill?
- rmoriz 6y ago
  Who is behind CCBill and what does it need to launch a competitor?
mudlus 6y ago
This thread is a aompelling argument for Bitcoin/LN as an intermediary--just saying. It's getting easier every day. Bisq for exchange will get easier over the next 5 years or so, too.
- orthecreedence 6y ago
  It would be nice to see Bisq start to get more liquidity. It seems like a really interesting way to sidestep traditional banking on/off ramps for crypto. It's almost like local bitcoins with ACH. I have to admit I don't fully understand how it handles disputes. I probably need to look a bit closer.
ecommerceguy 6y ago
We would use a multi-gateway round robin setup for volume over 50k per month. I'm more than willing to point you in the right direction.
bokohut 6y ago
As a payment processing fintech builder for several decades the many comments about diversifying across processors is correct. The misunderstanding here for many may be that knowledgeable business owners (merchants) always have more than one processing account each with a different entity holding the risk, think multiple banks. Having multiple processors, aside from the point of this question, directly relates to up time and availability of which nearly all rely on the "middleman" - Have a backup! However problem businesses and their business owners that get caught being nefarious earn a permanent place on the card brands "list" that forbids them from taking card payments in the future. An individual business can have multiple merchant accounts and as with anything else once one understands how a system works it can then be manipulated to fit ones need.
rglullis 6y ago
Would it be possible to sidestep the issue completely? Is your industry one that you could start pushing for cryptocurrency for payments? You'd be basically reducing your risk to zero and by using a stable token you would also have no volatility.
frankdenbow 6y ago
OnlyFans isnt a porn site in the same way that Twitter isnt a porn site. Many of the high profile users are in the adult industry but people use onlyfans for other types of content as well.
- dewlinedew 6y ago
  Yea me mum sells erotic art on there
- mfkp 6y ago
  I'd venture to say that 99% of onlyfans content (that people are paying for anyway) is porn. Just because there's a small subset of non-porn doesn't change the fact that they're selling access to porn. Twitter is a completely different story as they're selling advertising, not access to nudes.
bravura 6y ago
If anyone is interested in talking about fraud prediction or high risk adult payment transactions, I have been looking at this space and think there are some interesting opportunities. Email in profile.
Buy_Meds_Online 6y ago
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ocdtrekkie 6y ago

At least in the US, Netflix and Google/YouTube represent over 50% of web bandwidth use, I believe. Somewhat old statistics here: https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-youtube-gobble-up-half-of-internet-traffic/ https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-youtube-gobble-up-half-of-... and https://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/11/21/netflix-now-accounts-35-overall-us-internet-traffic/ https://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/11/21/netflix-now-accounts-... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/05/28/netflix-now-accounts-for-almost-37-percent-of-our-internet-traffic/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/05/28... (all from Sandvine, mind you) I would have to imagine that, also being a streaming video service, PornHub and the rest of MindGeek's properties consolidated probably take up another decent portion. Those of us just posting on Internet forums, reading news, and sending emails use a tiny minuscule portion of Internet traffic comparatively. There's a reason ISPs want to charge extra/differently for high bandwidth streaming video: It's the vast majority of what's loading up their networks.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> There's a reason ISPs want to charge extra/differently for high bandwidth streaming video: It's the vast majority of what's loading up their networks. Why not just charge by the byte and be done with it?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  That's actually more or less my preference: Straight metering. People who use the network less pay less, people who use the network pay more. And ISPs could then deliver all users access at the highest speeds their network can handle, rather than artificially speed throttling traffic. Internet billing should look more like your electric and natural gas bills.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    That's not possible: CDNs exist not just to reduce latency, but to reduce data-transfer costs by having content within the ISP's own network where data transfer is literally gratis to the ISP because it's running on their own hardware: they just charge companies like Netflix and Akami rent to sit within their network. By your proposal I would be paying the same per-byte rate for both Netflix and Vimeo, even though Netflix has a CDN and Vimeo doesn't - so Comcast would be profiteering from Netflix both ways and the Netflix data doesn't cost Comcast anything. That puts Vimeo at a disadvantage. Utility systems in most countries work on a grid system: natural-gas and electricity is pumped into the grid by supplier/producer companies, managed by the grid-infrastructure people, and measured at the point of consumption. This works because both natural-gas and electronic-potential are both fungible and do not originate on your utility-grid company's premises (assuming your utility-grid company is not also an energy-producer). Bytes transferred over the internet are not fungible, so it is incorrect to compare residential gas and electricity billing to residential Internet billing. Also consider that just as data itself isn't fungible, the value of that data varies tremendously: A high-quality VOIP connection is probably 128kbps and needs modest latency needs, but it absolutely has to always work - whereas Netflix et al. is high-bandwidth but not latency sensitive and occasional outages and poor routing is acceptable; disregarding network QOS, I'd still gladly pay far more per-byte for a hyper-reliable VOIP 128kbps connection than a 1Gbps link for Netflix.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Data doesn't have to have an exact fungible value for it to be a good way to divide up costs. Users torrenting terabytes a month should pay more than someone who mostly uses email and reads news articles. Also, note that Netflix gets its CDN boxes hosted for free. It "lets" ISPs host them, rather than paying for colocation space. Charging equally for data use regardless of CDNs or not would rebalance this effect. And finally, the largest cost for building out residential ISP networks is last mile. It's the most expensive part to build, maintain, and upgrade to support increasing usage. The CDN boxes are on the far end of this, so mostly irrelevant anyways to this point.

pottertheotter 6y ago
I'm not a web developer but I always assumed that happened on the backend, so it wouldn't be visible. I guess not?
- capableweb 6y ago
  Depends on the implementation, with Stripe you can embed their widgets directly on your website to save some development time, but you can also implement in the backend. Even though you would implement it in the backend, there is usually some details leaking (on purpose obviously) to the frontend, like identifiers (Stripes IDs are usually pretty easy to spot) or even the structure of the data can tell you which provider.
- zaroth 6y ago
  One of the easiest ways to ensure PCI compliance is never actually serving the credit card form from your server, and never seeing the response. Hence the front-end will load and send content to/from Stripe directly.
- justinholmes 6y ago
  Most websites can't/shouldn't store the card number, they embed Stripe JavaScript that sends card number to Stripe and get a token id to use on the backend later on. Can't store CCV or number without passing PCI compliance.
  - tzs 6y ago
    For the CVV you can't store it even if you have passed PCI compliance. You are only allowed to collect it for a specific transaction, and are required to forget it when that transaction is complete.
    - 8192kjshad09- 6y ago
      That can't be right. I entered my credit card information once into uber eats and I can buy food whenever without entering a CCV and my credit card is immediately charged. If this were true 1000s of large companies would not be PCI compliant.
      - athrun 6y ago
        Storing the CVV permanently is indeed strictly forbidden. The CVV is not used for purchases on a stored card.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - JoeMalt 6y ago
        It’s possible to process transactions without a CVV, but it often costs slightly more due to the increased fraud risk. In the case of Uber Eats, they’ve presumably decided the increase in purchases from removing that friction makes up for the higher fee.
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    Interesting. Do they literally embed Stripe JS? I'm not a front end developer and don't know a ton about web security, but it seems like a malicious/hacked site could still get the card number this way. The purpose of PCI compliance is to protect the number/info, so how would Stripe (and similar) get approved if they're creating a payment widget that allows third parties to snoop card numbers? Is this a PCI loophole, or is there some technical barrier preventing the third-party site from getting access?
    - realmod 6y ago
      Stripe JS uses an iframe for card number which blocks the site from accessing the number. And the only way to access the card number is either a security hole in the iframe message handling or in the browser.
      - adrianmonk 6y ago
        Thanks, that makes sense. It's <iframe>, not <script>. (They're embedding more than JS.)
      - gruez 6y ago
        Not really. It's true that the main site (parent of the iframe) wouldn't normally have access to the card numbers, but there's nothing preventing you from replacing the iframe entirely. There isn't an "address bar" for iframes, and people certainty aren't manually checking the address by right-clicking, so there's a very high chance you can get away with it. Even if some user checked and noticed the iframe was missing, there are enough sites that don't use iframes for payment processing (ie. they submit credit card numbers directly to their servers) that it wouldn't look out of place.
        realmod 6y ago
        Yeah that is true. I guess in the end you still have to trust the site unless it uses the stripe hosted checkout.
        adrianmonk 6y ago
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  The contents of the request should hopefully be encrypted, but you can easily see where the request is going.
- Kuraj 6y ago
  Very often it is an IFrame with embedded content from the payment processor.

fooey 6y ago

Chargeback ratio's are per account, but also have a minimum absolute threshold. So it's say, 2% chargeback AND at least 200 chargebacks before penalties kick in. In a past life I worked for a place who had a few hundred processing accounts to load balance it all out because their chargeback rates were way too high. If an account gets close, you just don't use it for a month, or you throw a bunch of "safe" recurring charges at it to dilute it, or you hold a batch and send them through right before the rollover. Lots of ways to play number games. Most of the execs did go to prison though, so don't take this as advice, but to be fair, the processors are the ones who told them to use those tactics.

folli 6y ago
They went to prison for load balancing, or how does this relate?
- thinkingkong 6y ago
  Gambling.
  - fooey 6y ago
    The business was just run of the mill "get rich on google" and "free government grant" garbage that was common in the 2000's. Ironically, they made so much money doing their regular business the owner bought a small US based bank and was running online poker processing through it. When "black friday" in the poker world happened, the bank failed and everything fell apart, but so far as I know, no one involved was ever charged with anything related.
- fooey 6y ago
  The technical reason was bank fraud for all the shell corporations they set up in the process. The bank claimed they had no idea they were all related, even though every application had the owners name on the paperwork. To be clear, it was a bad company. However, the bank 100% knew what was going on and the merchant accounts 100% knew what was going on. So long as they were making money, and chargebacks make them a lot of money, they were happy. In my opinion the people running the company were just naive enough to not know how to cover their asses as well as the money guys.
stickfigure 6y ago
Don't tease us like that! Sounds like a fantastic blog story.
- fooey 6y ago
  It's even better than you think. In the process two state AG's lost their careers, multiple US senators were implicated, a bank collapsed, there was kidnapping, human trafficking and drug running, and in the end created urban legends of gold bars being buried in the mountains to hide it from being seized by the feds. I don't know of anywhere that has it all written out, but here's a related NYT story with a fair bit of it: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/business/in-utah-a-local-hero-accused.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/business/in-utah-a-local-...
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    OH NO WAY! That guy played a role in the documentary Sons of Perdition, rescuing "lost boys" from the fundamentalist mormons. Sort of. I'd read that sometime after the movie release he was exposed as some sort of fraudster but this story just gets crazier...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vilifiedtwin 6y ago
Execs went to prison? Seems like they didn't like to share with local politicians...

rebelidealist 6y ago

"Last time I checked the network requests, I noticed it was storing the card on Stripe, CCBill, and Securion, but using CCBill or Securion to process the payment." Im curious about how to use Stripe to only store cards and let other processors make the charge. Would anyone have more info on this? Greatly appreciate it.

cj 6y ago
> how to use Stripe to only store cards and let other processors make the charge 1) Have the user submit their card info on your payment page 2) Simultaneously send the card info to the 3 processors 3) Then process the charge through just 1 of the 3 processors, leaving the others open to be used later (At least with Stripe) the process of saving a credit card to Stripe and actually charging the card are 2 independent API calls. Nothing stops you from saving card info to your payment processor(s) without actually charging it.
- m11a 6y ago
  To pull that off, they'd have to (technically) process the card info, which puts them in the scope for PCI compliance. By that point, I don't know why they'd send card info to 3 processors especially when they know, at that point, which processor they're gonna process it with. It would just make more sense to send it to the 1 processor the code ends up deciding to use.
  - cj 6y ago
    No, I don’t think that’s accurate. With stripe.js, you send the cc info directly to stripe from the browser. Stripe returns an identifier which you can use in the future to charge the card. Assuming other payment processors work similarly, you could easily send the credit card details to multiple payment processors directly from the browser to the payment processors, and then store the card identifiers from each processor (not the card number) in your database to charge it at a later date.
    - dylz 6y ago
      I can't think of any payment processor that would allow this without 3 separate entries. They would be upset or bring you into PCI scope if you were modifying or tampering with their single input SDK to send cardholder data elsewhere.
      - sumedh 6y ago
        Dont know about Stripe but Braintree has a forwarding API where the card details go to Braintree then Braintree forwards that data to another payment gateway you have signed up for, the other payment gateway sends a token to braintree which forwards that token to you. Then you have an option to make the payment on Braintree or the other payment gateway using that gateway's token.
    - m11a 6y ago
      Stripe.js creates an iframe hosted by Stripe which sends the card information directly to Stripe. The merchant cannot see or intercept that card info, during or after transmission, and thus cannot send it to another processor (at least not using the same payment card input boxes).
      - cj 6y ago
        Ah yes, Stripe.js v3 works the way you described. I was thinking of Stripe.js v2 which doesn’t require an iframe / supports custom payment forms.

DebtDeflation 6y ago

>where Stripe suggested we alter the colors available What? Like flesh colored was ok but definitely not green ones or something?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
discardable_dan 6y ago
I'd guess the opposite, from the story.
disillusioned 6y ago
The inverse of this. Here's their exact, hilarious wording: >Our banking partners recently notified us that they are no longer willing to support the sales of realistic sex toys. I understand that your products were designed to depict the body parts of mythological and fantastical creatures, and we have indicated this to our banking partners in an effort to advocate for continuing to support your business here on Stripe. As a result of these discussions, our banking partners have agreed that they are willing to continue supporting your business as long as you are not selling products that are colored such that they might be mistaken for human flesh.
- koolba 6y ago
  You should tell them to judge mythological sex toys not by the color of their skin, but by the context of their character.
- toxik 6y ago
  Wow, this is hysterical! A bank saying no to honest money because it’s sex toys, not even that, because it’s sex toys looking like human genitalia, — no not even that, because the toys are skin colored! I wonder if this would ever happen in Europe. I somehow feel that we’re more... open to these things. Do you know about Klarna?
  - nolok 6y ago
    I don't know about Europe in general, but my brick and mortar bank (one of the major banking chain in France with an agency in pretty much any city of over 5000 people) was perfectly fine with adult things being sold using one their group's online platform as long as I was ok with their elevated rates. I've seen lately that they're also responsible for payment processing on dorcel.com (the french porn group, adult content and toys). Dalenys ( https://www.dalenys.com/ https://www.dalenys.com/ ) -> natixis belgium -> natixis -> bpce group ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupe_BPCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupe_BPCE ) I've had awkward talk with them (mostly around the fact that I should not point out their parent group brand much near the adult content), but never in a million years would they tell me what color a dildo should be.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Interesting question. I checked out Klarna and Adyen which seems to be the most popular in Europe right now. Adyen lists "Adult entertainment, websites & content (such as)" as not allowed. https://www.adyen.com/dam/jcr:47f292a9-c9e2-4a69-8592-2e15ffdc7e61/List-of-prohibited-and-restricted-products-and-services-June-2017.pdf https://www.adyen.com/dam/jcr:47f292a9-c9e2-4a69-8592-2e15ff... Klarna lists "Adult, sexual or pornographic products and services, including live web cam" as not allowed. https://cdn.klarna.com/1.0/shared/content/policy/ethic/en_gb/merchant.pdf https://cdn.klarna.com/1.0/shared/content/policy/ethic/en_gb... Both of them expand it more to cover everything possible around adult content and the like.
    - tehbeard 6y ago
      ... And yet ... https://www.lovehoney.co.uk/help/about-klarna/ https://www.lovehoney.co.uk/help/about-klarna/ ... Whether they fly under "novelty items" or not, idk.
      - 7952 6y ago
        My guess is that the list of restricted things just means that you should talk to them first.
    - toxik 6y ago
      Strange, I would never have thought banks would have such moral hangups.
  - danudey 6y ago
    > because it’s sex toys looking like human genitalia Well, I think it might be the opposite of that: > I understand that your products were designed to depict the body parts of mythological and fantastical creatures
    - toxik 6y ago
      If you would read the next few words of my comment you would see that this is correctly reflected.
  - ragnese 6y ago
    >it’s sex toys looking like human genitalia Not that it matters, but reading the comment you replied to, it sounds like they are not shaped like human genitalia...
- atarian 6y ago
  Or maybe Stripe changed their minds about having you guys as customers and made up a reason for you to leave.
- Trias11 6y ago
  Offer toys in all black perhaps? :)
- zamfi 6y ago
  I have no skin in this game, but I have to wonder who is making these decisions and what their thought process is. What is the threat model, exactly? What eventuality is the bank seeking to avoid? Are there edge-case regulatory issues at play? Are there moral-consumer groups out there that run public pressure campaigns against banks that transact on adult toys that look too realistic? Is a corporate lawyer somewhere worried about photos of a realistic-looking appendage used explicitly being tied back to the bank -- but if it's painted green they can plausibly argue "hey it's definitely not real, look it's green!"? This just feels like such a spectacularly arbitrary line that I'm fascinated by the thought process.
  - dotBen 6y ago
    "I have no skin in this game" <golf clap>
  - CarbyAu 6y ago
    What I find weird is the thought process of: - pretend to fuck a human? No. Don't want to encourage that. - Fuck a unicorn/dragon/Dionysus? Sure, why not... Who is conservative enough to want to discourage the one thing literally required for humanity to survive; and yet is OK with mythical creatures?!?
    - volkl48 6y ago
      Usually there's overlap in those "designs" with the....appendages of common animals (even if not explicitly labeled as such). Someone on a moralizing crusade would probably label the company as supporting bestiality.
  - behringer 6y ago
    I know exactly how this happens because I have to deal with this all the time. Here's my guess: The boss ten years ago now dead said if it looks like a penis and is the right color of a penis then we can't sell it. Therefore, you gotta change the color. - Wells Fargo, probably.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
- outworlder 6y ago
  > I understand that your products were designed to depict the body parts of mythological and fantastical creatures, and we have indicated this to our banking partners in an effort to advocate for continuing to support your business here on Stripe. I'm crying. This is so ridiculous it crossed the line from appalling into hilarious. You haven't sued over this which is a shame. Think of the comical email threads that would've been unearthed during the discovery process!
- pyuser583 6y ago
  So dragon and unicorn dildos are OK, but human ones aren’t? WTF?
  - asya999 6y ago
    That actually makes sense (in a bizarre way) - fantasy vs. reality I guess...
    - pyuser583 6y ago
      I kind of get it. A similar rule applies to violence: killing a dragon is OK for kids, killing another human isn’t. But when I think of people pretending to have sex with dragons ... that’s kinda messed up. I guess “acceptability” is like pornography... you known it when you see it.
- bsder 6y ago
  Wells-Fargo deserve to go bankrupt, but I believe the problem is the non-uniform nature of the law around sex toys. Texas, for example, still has an idiotic law on the books that possession of more than 6 dildoes is illegal. Because of that, many online sex toy shops simply will not ship anything to Texas. The law has been struck down in US Federal court, but there have been convictions in state courts despite that. Talking about the raid on Forbidden Fruit in Austin, TX (Caution: NSFW): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1536504219830682 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15365042198306...
  - rkagerer 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing, that article is well worth the read. ...the confiscated items were paraded in front of a Grand Jury tasked with determining whether they were obscene...
UI_at_80x24 6y ago
I'm going to suggest that it's `whose flesh` colouring that they are most likely offended by.

fpgaminer 6y ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. It absolutely disgusts me the power that payment processors have over businesses. The sooner that industry is dismantled and made agnostic the better. I remember watching some BDSM website's documentary where they talked about how their payment processor dictated the kind of content they were allowed to make. It boggles my mind that people are okay with that. I also find it surprising the amount of back bending people will do to say that payment processors are only doing it because the transactions are high risk. Your story, the thousands of other public stories, and the payment processors themselves have made it absolutely clear that it isn't about the transaction risk. It's them imposing their religious beliefs upon others. With sex being such a huge part of our lives, why aren't we bending out backs to _help_ the sex industry thrive, instead of defending corrupt oligopolies?

sandworm101 6y ago
>> _help_ the sex industry thrive There are dark sides. It is not the friendly industry oft portrayed. It is an industry that thrives on the young and naive. It is regulated because it needs to be. Most common complaint heard by lawyers in the field: "I did the shoot, the movie is on the website, but I haven't been paid." Followed worryingly by: "They said I had to because I had signed a contract." The advice I give to anyone going to work on their first porn shoot: Bring a friend. Someone older, with a car, who will be on the set with you at all times.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > It is an industry that thrives on the young and naive. Some of it maybe. But not the toy selling business being discussed.
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  I would contest that if the industry wasn't demonized it wouldn't have a dark side.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Hollywood isn't daemonized, but I used to give basically the same advice. Industries that run on attractive young people, people looking at very short careers, tend towards evil. Ask any successful recording artist about their first record contracts. Taylor Swift is writing songs about that dark place.
    - fpgaminer 6y ago
      Fair enough, I can see that. I think a good portion of the evil in those industries comes from sexism, but that's really tangential to the topic and I appreciate your point. EDIT: I would like to expand my previous comment though. Whenever prostitution is legalized we see massive improvements in the lives of sex workers. It seems clear to me that further reducing the demonization of sex, sex workers, etc would lead to a better work place in those industries for similar reasons. There may be a baseline of evil, for the reasons you point out. I don't think that should stop us from working to at least reach that baseline, rather than just leaving the people and businesses that inhabit that crucial landscape to rot.
      - sqrt17 6y ago
        porn already works within a well-defined legal framework. There are model releases, people getting paid etc. So if a reputable porn company interacts with their models and their consumers, everything is well. However, there are still non-legal reasons that make it a special case - see the ancestor post about a bank wanting to dictate what a merchant can offer to their credit card customers, or the post about models being treated badly (not getting paid or having to do things that they didn't sign up for). In that case, there still seems to be a difference to non-porn modeling and acting in terms of standards and of recourse available. part of this is that there are more people paying for badly made porn than for badly made action movies
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > I think a good portion of the evil in those industries comes from sexism What do we mean by "sexism" here? You don't think it's enough that men would like to have sex with attractive women? Or is that fact itself sexism?
- areoform 6y ago
  Yes, conventional porn is a dark place. In my study of the problem, this fact underscores the importance of the Snapchat/Onlyfans revolution rather than taking away from it. Prohibition creates problems. It doesn't solve them. Prohibiting anyone from using conventional payment infrastructure simply pushes them into the arms of the (sometimes abusive) people who have the resources to work around the system. In this scenario, an individual can't work around the system. The nameless/faceless owners of the large porn groups can. This situation creates an inherent power imbalance that incentivizes coercion. In the Snapchat/Onlyfans model, coercion is eliminated by virtue of allowing people to express themselves, when they want and as they want in the privacy of their homes. They are the directors, gaffers, editors etc. and no one else can tell them what they can or can't do. A decentralized system is better at taking power away from those objectively awful people than any regulation or personal tips or oversight could.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I’m fine with regulating the adult industry for safety and what not, I just think that credit card agencies are possibly one of the last parties I would pick to be the regulator, second only to religious institutions.
stu2b50 6y ago
What? The above anecdote is literally about how the payment processor's bank is twisting their arm to deplatform OP's site.
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  I meant "payment processors" more generally, referring to the greater oligopoly of Visa, MasterCard, the major banks, etc. It's little consolation for the vast sex industry that it isn't Stripe et al's fault that they are deplatformed.
rumanator 6y ago
> With sex being such a huge part of our lives, why aren't we bending out backs to _help_ the sex industry thrive, instead of defending corrupt oligopolies? Because the "sex industry" is a bunch of corrupt oligopolies?! I mean, we're talking about a business that thrives on human trafficking and exploitation and preying on the weak and vulnerable and defenseless. We're talking about an industry whose business model depends on an endless supply of defenseless gullible victims that see their lives thrown into the furnace to keep it running for just another instance. Was it so long ago that one of the biggest porn sites in the history of the internet was caught knowingly hosting and refusing to take down videos of abducted underage girls getting raped? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/pornhub-petition-rape-abuse-videos-petition-revenge-porn-a9388076.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/pornhub-petition-ra... The banking industry is not innocent, but let's not pretend the sex industry is a paragon of virtue in comparison.

haltingproblem 6y ago

This is an incredibly frustrating read. I know, I know there are far worse things in the world but fucking Wells Fargo dictating to people when they evict homeowners who have no relationship with Wells Fargo, commit wholesale wire fraud, destroy people's credit and then turn around and lecture a honest business. This is why banking is a rent-seeking and though we need the financial industry they are ghoulish vampires sucking the lifeblood out of everything they touch. /rant

quickthrower2 6y ago
Where there is a lot of money on the table to be had, there will be psychopaths.
disillusioned 6y ago
This was my exact rant. Even more galling was that Wells Fargo was virtue signaling about something that... had no optics to them. Literally no one knows who our payment processor was, but if you even got as far as "Stripe," a _vanishingly small_ number of people know that Wells Fargo is their banking partner for US transactions. This isn't to suggest that WF should run their merchant processing business with no one watching for fraudulent or wantonly scam transactions, but to step in out of nowhere because the volume of actual real charges for real customers for real products was too high and you were busy clutching your pearls over what was being sold is just insane. As if it could somehow splash back on to Wells Fargo and, what, further sully their reputation? "Sure they may ruin people's lives and spawn fake accounts to hit numbers and silence anyone who speaks up and evict people incorrectly but at least they don't process transactions for flesh colored fantasy sex toys. That, sir, would be a bridge too far."
- Le0n_ 6y ago
  I think you're misinterpreting the scale of Wellsfargo. The CEO probably doesn't even know what onlyfans is, and they manage almost 2 trillion dollars.
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    The CEO knows their business model; it's to scratch out every last penny they can, however they can, just to fulfill some quarterly earnings report. Almost every public company is now a growth company, so it doesn't matter how much they already profit–what matters is that they profit more in the next 90 days. He/She doesn't need/care to know about onlyfans–they simply care about hitting their targets.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      ...so why would they want to leave money on the table by forcing Stripe to ditch a clearly profitable client company?
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        Reputational risk. Some journalist gets wind of an ad on Youtube that's playing for a neo-Nazi video, it gets written up as "$COMPANY is supporting Nazis!" despite the fact that it's largely out of the control of $COMPANY, several companies collectively freak out and pull advertising money, and everyone goes hunting for where their pipelines might lead to similar pearl-clutching associations and PR disasters.
        DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
        But that doesn't explain the documented unethical - if not illegal - conduct of Wells Fargo overall. Otherwise they'd be more like the Disney Co.
  - sky_rw 6y ago
    I think you are underestimating the scale of operation choke point.
lukifer 6y ago
> we need the financial industry Do we, though? I don't know whether the answer is distributed blockchains, or the Department of the Treasury creating an API for USD, or both; but the current banking system seems to me like the legacy code of feudal landed aristocrats. (I will never stop being disappointed that we didn't let the financial system crash in 2009.)
- chrisco255 6y ago
  An API for USD centrally controlled by the Treasury? Kiss your financial freedom goodbye. You gotta demand it be distributed blockchains or you'll be living in chains.
  - ballenf 6y ago
    At least you'd have due process and couldn't be deplatformed for legal activity. Now you have neither. The current system has zero privacy, so no change there. Not seeing the downside. Federally illegal activity like marijuana wouldn't benefit, but most things would.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Technically, any occurring "federally illegal" activity is just not successfully policed criminal activity. (States can't actually make something legal the federal government says is not legal. They can just decline to use their own resources to police it.) Generally speaking, most people would consider "not usable in crime" to be a feature rather than a bug. ;)
      - sneak 6y ago
        I don’t think there is as quite widespread consensus that all federal crimes are legitimately crime as you seem to think. Marijuana sales, for example, seem extremely popular. Just because there’s a law in place at some remote level of jurisdiction doesn’t mean it’s just, or has popular support.
xxpor 6y ago
Now this is actual cancel culture.
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
This is what capitalism looks like. The ones with the capital are the ones with power. Housing, health care, and even small businesses all live and die by the decisions of the people/institutions with capital. The average American celebrates capitalism, while at the same being forced to slave away for basics of human life to just barely scrape by.

bb88 6y ago

What I'm curious about is whether or not OnlyFans has bribed off Wells Fargo -- I mean it could be in a legal way for financial services that are non existent. In other words, Stripe allows OnlyFans because Wells Fargo has been bought off on the side. Ergo, Wells Fargo doesn't complain anymore. How much would that need to be with Wells Fargo? 10 million per year? 50 million? Does OnlyFans make enough to afford 100 million per year?

HenryBemis 6y ago
I read this on some legit news site a few days ago: apparently Bella Thorne, a formed Disney actress-turned-pornstar(?) joined OnlyFans and hit $1m in 24 hours. I don't follow OnlyFans progress and I have no idea how many "content creators" they got and what is the "fanbase", but if a 20yo nobody with a nice body can take $1m in 24h (then I assume that is with 1-3-6-... months subscriptions)(so she won't bring in another $1m the next day as well). OnlyFans keeps 15-20-25%? And Stripe/WF share a 1-2%? And OnlyFans has 10-20 people of that "caliber" like Mrs Thorne? They won't complain for a long time. I assume that the OP writing about millions, he/she means revenue, not Stripe/WF profits from the fees. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/26/entertainment/bella-thorne-only-fans-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/26/entertainment/bella-thorn... Edit: I couldn't remember the site, I DuckDuckGo-ed and this piece of news appears in many sites, I chose CNN as I didn't recognize most other "celebrity news" sites.
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  lmao Bella Thorne is not a "20yo nobody". She had tens of millions of followers before joining OnlyFans.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    I think "nobody" was relative here. I had never heard of her before this thread and looking at her career she isn't a nobody but she is very far from being an A-lister.
    - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
      You should have seen the massive amount of Bella thorne posts online before her onlyfans. Tons of 4chan threads, reddit posts, and subreddits for her pics, etc. (Though, the same could be said for any celeb, she was definitely a "thing"). She was pretty risqué in her social media photos/videos before onlyfans and garnered quite a following online because of it. Most of her popularity online had nothing to do with her acting career at all.
  - technion 6y ago
    She is also not a porn star. None of this content is nude. The running joke is that there are pap photos showing more skin than what people paid for here.
    - CapricornNoble 6y ago
      That's the hilarious part: now the same simps who spent a fortune hoping to see her nudes are upset: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-08-28/onlyfans-bella-thorne-transaction-limits-backlash https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-08-28/...
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    "She is a nobody": in my book she IS a nobody. Her achievement in life is eating well, working out, having a nice looking body, being genetically (or surgically) blessed with a good appearance and shows off her body parts for money. I do not want any harm to come to her (go to hell, drop dead, get sick, etc.) I wish her a long and healthy life. The only "positive" thing in her towards contributing to a better humanity is the words of donating to charity (aka tax breaks). Having sex in front of a camera is a profession, I get that, but she is still a nobody. A nobody with money. But still a nobody (in my book). I am not forcing anyone to have the same criteria of what I consider as "decent human being" that I have developed as my silly(?) standards. Nothing negative for her, but definitely nothing positive for her either. Just a zero.
- pyuser583 6y ago
  It’s been said before, but Bella Thorne isn’t a nobody. She has already existing fans she’s simply transferring to the platform.

simias 6y ago

I don't really understand the motivation behind this puritanism. I get why respectable institutions don't want to touch things like selling weed or prostitution since that's not legal everywhere and they could get in trouble. But sex toys? Who cares? Like, that's not a rhetorical question, literally "who cares?" Are people going to stop using Wells Fargo because they very indirectly help in the commerce of sex toys?

CobrastanJorji 6y ago
A conservative, evangelical Christian answer would probably be something like "the point is to please each other, and sex toys are about pleasing yourself" or "sex toys encourage masturbation, which is a sin." Then you'd point out that many sex toys are meant for partners to use together, and they might reply back "ah, but Genesis says that husband and wife should be one flesh, not flesh and plastic" but would probably ultimate agree that sex toys, when used exclusively between a cis-male and cis-female, married couple, could be not sinful in some circumstances. A cynic would probably say that, like many such issues, it's ultimately about maintaining control over women.
chki 6y ago
I would guess that yes, they are actually worried about certain religious groups no longer doing business with them because they "support" "immoral" practices.
rmrfrmrf 6y ago
Alabama, Georgia, and Texas have laws restricting the sale and possession of sex toys.
- lvturner 6y ago
  Seriously? I'm genuinely mind blown by this. What are the ownership restrictions? Is it blanket or just to certain categories or sizes of toys?
  - tclancy 6y ago
    You can have a blanket. It’s just that we need to know what happens under it.
  - dylz 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Obscenity_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Obscenity_Enforcement_Act > State Representative John Rogers of Birmingham has repeatedly introduced legislation to repeal the ban, but each bill has been defeated. > Exemptions exist for "bona fide medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial or law enforcement purposes." It looks like they're sold as educational devices or something equally absurd, fake pretext and all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute > In Burleson in 2004, Joanne Webb, a mother of three and a former schoolteacher, faced up to one year in prison for selling a vibrator to two undercover police officers posing as a married couple at a private party. > In 2007, a lingerie shop in Lubbock was raided, and items "deemed to be illegal by the Texas Penal Code" were confiscated. The clerk on duty at the time was arrested and may have had to register as a sex offender. What the fuck? Texas one seems like it was ruled unenforceable in 2008.
- stx 6y ago
  Yep, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute Looks like its never been enforced though. Really though laws that are not enforced are a bad thing because some day they could selectively be enforced. Also because they are not enforced and hence not affecting anyone, no one cares to get rid of them. "The Obscene Device Law is a Texas statute prohibiting the sale of sex toys. The law was introduced in 1973, and was last updated in 2003. While the law was never formally repealed, in 2008 a U.S. District Judge released a report declaring it to be "facially unconstitutional and unenforceable"."
  - someperson 6y ago
    > facially unconstitutional Given the context I thought this was a humorous typo for 'farcically'. but it appears to refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_challenge
asya999 6y ago
Sadly there are still US states where some sex toys are illegal (this is me rolling my eyes). https://www.mic.com/articles/131616/14-outdated-sex-laws-that-need-to-change-this-year-in-one-map https://www.mic.com/articles/131616/14-outdated-sex-laws-tha... is a pretty funny summary. Did I say funny? I meant tragic.
OJFord 6y ago
> I get why respectable institutions don't want to touch things like selling weed or prostitution since that's not legal everywhere and they could get in trouble. But sex toys? If that is the reason for the former, it's probably the reason for the latter too.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

colechristensen 6y ago

There are already two APIs operated by the Fed (not the treasury) Fedwire and ACH. The problem is the account. I do not want an account in the federal reserve or anywhere so closely coupled with the government. Nor do I want an account with a public ledger or any way distributed which doesn’t allow for transaction reversals (theft) which rules out blockchain. Actual banks are necessary.

kilburn 6y ago
I often see US citizens being very wary of the government. Would you care to explain why is that so? In cases such as this one it strikes me as really odd: I would say that as citizens you have much more leverage over the government's actions than over whatever bank does (including handing over your data to the government). Thus, how is it better to have an account in some random bank than in the federal reserve (or whatever)?
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Simple fear of authoritarian government oppression. It was also decided in the very early days of our government that a national government bank wasn't constitutional. With Snowden's revelations of things we mostly already knew, we can see that we don't really have much leverage over government abuse of power to collect and misuse data. The government is already doing broad data collections from private companies using secret courts... it would be a whole lot worse if the government already possessed the data. With private banks, I can choose which one I use. There is at least some motivation for that bank to be on my side, and I don't have to wait for an election cycle and hope that my issue fits in with my side on other issues and that side gets >50% after 2 or 4 years ... my bank does something I don't like and I can switch today. I don't trust my government to do a good job doing anything, or for anything my government does to not be vulnerable to political destruction (just look at the post office).
Nasrudith 6y ago
The concern is pretty strange since they already have that information thanks to banking regulations. There is nothing more to lose by doing it directly.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  They do not. Banks are required to report transactions above $10k, my bank knows when I go out to buy too many gas station snacks at 2am, my government does not.

rumanator 6y ago

> Do we, though? Why, yes? Isn't it blatantly obvious? What exactly leads you to believe we don't? > I don't know whether the answer is distributed blockchains, or the Department of the Treasury creating an API for USD, or both; I'm dumbfounded how someone even comes close to believe that any one of these ideas comes even close to provide the service that financial institutions provide. Either you have a very specific and very niche usecase in mind, or maybe you have absolutely no idea about the services that financial institutions provide to society. > but the current banking system seems to me like the legacy code of feudal landed aristocrats. This comment leads me to believe that you are confusing stuff that has no relation whatsoever. Your dislike of caricatures and ideological strawmen you associated with financial services has absolutely no relation with the services provided to society by the whole banking industry. Just because you don't like Scrooge McDuck that doesn't mean most of us don't depend on loans to, say, buy a house or a car or store our savings or pay for everyday stuff.

errantspark 6y ago
We don't need usury. I'm confident we could figure out how to make things work without it.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  We know how it works without it - stagnation and the those currently at the top staying there due to lack of capital. Usury is a religious fundamentalist term divorced from the systemics and the reality of what works and what doesn't.
  - krageon 6y ago
    > those currently at the top staying there And you're sure you're not describing the current day, but instead some hypothetical bad scenario if we had no financial sector? It seems to me that if we have this problem now and without a financial sector, that's not really related to them at all.
bartvk 6y ago
> or maybe you have absolutely no idea about the services that financial institutions provide to society. Your posts are interesting, reasonable and founded in facts. That said, I think there's an underlying emotion in other posts: fed up with the discrepancy between the everyday slough to improve your life, but then read about the money games that are played between commercial banks, the central banks and government.
m1rr0rman 6y ago
nice. also funny that some people here don't see a connection between their righteous indignation and companyX's policies that attempt to protect them from same :P