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OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in October
- sysadm1n 5y ago> The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos, provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy, the company said Thursday. This paragraph contradicts itself: - The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit Versus - Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos What is this article trying to say?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agonude is not the same thing as sexually explicit.
- CommieBobDole 5y agoThat's true, but I suspect that there's enough of an overlap on a site like OnlyFans that the Venn diagram is basically a circle.
- speeder 5y agoSeemly nudity is fine, sex is not.
- nickthegreek 5y agoLooks like OF is saying softcore only and is gonna call anything they don't like explicit based on the whim of the reviewer.
- rchaud 5y agoThe Brandi Maxx definition of pornography
- antcas 5y agoIsn't their whole business model "explicit"? I don't get how this will work out for them. Based on the Indie Hackers interview with two active Only Fans content makers, it also sounds like their app is kinda shitty and slow. Seems like they're opening the door wide open to a new competitor.
- Miner49er 5y agoA new competitor will face the exact same problem, unless they try and do something like accepting cryptocurrency.
- bruceb 5y agoThe winner here might actually be the majority of NSFW content makers on OF who are mortgaging their future reputations for very small payouts. (not a judgment on what they do but the reality of the situation)
- coderintherye 5y agoThe sub-headline is more interesting: "The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos, provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy"
- thrower123 5y agoIt sounds like they're trying to thread the needle and be Instagram with titties, or take up the tasteful softcore torch that Playboy used to carry.
- throwaway306744 5y agoTasteful softcore like the programmer's test image? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna
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- BitwiseFool 5y agoIf the issue is coming from banks and payment processors, why doesn't Patreon have this same kind of problem? They both fill the same niche, right? Edit: Apparently the same thing happened to them too. Thank you to the person who linked the other discussion below.
- jerf 5y agoThey do have this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801
- some_person 5y agoI wonder if that answers this question from 11 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790
- cblconfederate 5y agoWhat is it called when your greed for investor money ends up giving a giant opening for your competitor and destroying your business? Also how come even the most profitable company can't compete with deep SV pockets? Is this capitalism?
- rchaud 5y agoIt is, but it's not a very good one. Think about the billions that have gone into reinventing the taxi industry, the hotel industry and the food delivery industry. We don't call it 'picking winners' however, because it's not the filthy public sector doing it. And also because none of Uber, Airbnb or DoorDash can really be considered a 'win'. State-backed capitalism has its faults, but they usually try to move billions into a strategically important area that benefits a large enough section of the economy.
- cwkoss 5y agoI think "The Vine Effect" would be apt
- alpaca128 5y agoMaybe it's not investor money but issues with payment processors. Credit card companies don't like porn for some reason, and they're in a position where they can enforce such limits on many platforms.
- jerf 5y agoSo, serious question because I know very little about OnlyFans other than the general knowledge flowing around the internet: What does this leave of the site? Because my impression was certainly that this was the purpose of the site.
- carabiner 5y agoThere's cooking videos, yoga, gardening and other benign stuff on OF, believe it or not.
- da_big_ghey 5y agoYes but if somebody says "drop your OF" is not talking about gardening. Mostly it is known for sexual material.
- nickthegreek 5y agoPretty sure that content is not what is bringing in the monies.
- rchaud 5y agoWhy not just feature that stuff on the homepage? Most adult-oriented channels are run solo, so they're distributing links via social channels. Same as Twitter. It's awash in porn but you wouldn't really know it if you stuck to the default trends and searches.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoI watch several channels on YT, and I think they have excellent value (educational like 3Blue1Brown, entertaining like Davie504, musical like Ichika Nito and so on). I really enjoy watching/listening to them especially when I do something around the house like cleaning. But the moment they said they go OnlyFans and I have to pay $10 in order to watch them, I can't imagine I'd switch.
- fragmede 5y agoIs it OnlyFans or paying money for things that's the issue? Would you pay $10 on Paetreon or for YouTube premium? Would you pay $1 to OnlyFans? How about paying $10, but no one would know you were paying OnlyFans?
- biesnecker 5y agoAre there any major non-porn OnlyFans creators? I’ve never seen it referenced outside of adult content.
- bcheung 5y agoTo be specific, they are banning sexually explicit content (masturbation and sex), not nudity. A lot of OF creators only do nudes and nothing sexual. I personally know models making 6 figures and they don't even do nudes on OF.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y agoI don't know where to find a trustworthy list, but I've read that several of the biggest ones are fitness influencers and personal trainers who do preview videos on Instagram/YouTube/Twitch and use OnlyFans to post the full routine/program and provide individual consultation. Granted, there's not exactly a bright line between fitness content and softcore porn, but they're typically not put in the same category for administrative/policy purposes.
- jcun4128 5y agoCrypto payments maybe? As a medium before it's sold back to USD/regular fiat.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI'm a cryptocurrency advocate, but for the average person transacting with crypto is still insanely intimidating and a pain to set up properly. Maybe paying with stablecoins could work but that is still a lot to ask of your users who are accustomed to paying for things with a credit card. Want to buy something? Open a Coinbase or Gemini account, hook up ACH or wire transfers, wait a week for the deposit to be made, then send 'dollars' to this really long and complicated looking address. If you send it to the wrong address you are SOL.
- jcun4128 5y agoYeah I'm saying you'd have a service that does that for you, moves the money from credit (OF sub) to crypto back to fiat for the user (OF creator). I also realize about costs too... but like with CBP if you transact a lot of volume the fees go down so you could build it up. Well... I guess ultimately you still need that thing between the credit card and the service eg. stripe... idk if the porn thing is like a blanket protection against CP or something?
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI think the most important thing would be wrapping the destination address around an easy to view label. Maybe only allow transactions to trusted/verified addresses for partner companies and services.
- bcheung 5y agoCrypto payments hasn't taken off yet. It's beyond the scope of most people's ability to pay in crypto. To reach the masses you probably have to go with "know your customer" (KYC) requirements that are going to scare lots of people away when they have to upload photos of their passport and stuff like that to a website. And governments and banks are going to impose the same restrictions somehow. Unless they use a coin that is private, all transactions are going to be recorded in the blockchain and publicly viewable to everyone. Nobody wants their porn purchases to be public knowledge. It will probably eventually get there but probably at least 5 years out.
- paulgb 5y agoOstensibly, payment providers block this type of thing because it has higher fraud risk, but this makes me wonder: do countries where credit is less fundamental to payments have the same problem? My understanding is that in the UK, for example, you could make a deposit to a betting site with the same payment card you use to buy milk, since it's more secure than a credit card and the counterparty assumes less risk.
- cblconfederate 5y agoThat should be a myth by now. Would be interesting if e.g. Stripe could share the fraud statistics for onlyfans. The banks probably do this purely to keep up appearances and avoid potential bad PR.
- imglorp 5y agoI don't understand who appointed the banks became the keepers of puritanical propriety. They're terrified someone might see a boob or buy some weed, and the weight of the world rests on the banks to prevent that from happening.
- paulgb 5y ago> I don't understand who appointed the banks became the keepers of puritanical propriety. Congress, for one. There's a history of bills that are meant to target trafficking scooping up consensual practices as well (see also the Mann Act, SESTA/FOSTA). I'm not sure how influential the threat of something like this was here, but it can't help: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/human-trafficking-banking-bill-sex-workers_n_5b045577e4b0740c25e5efd1 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/human-trafficking-banking-bil...
- ryandvm 5y agoIt's probably not fraud so much as it is chargebacks from guys whose wives are asking "wtf is this OnlyFans charge?!?" "Ah shit, honey. Somebody must have stolen my card."
- tomc1985 5y agoSo long, OnlyFans. You started a golden age just as quickly as you ended it.
- mschuster91 5y agoGood luck surviving that exodus. Dropping porn killed Tumblr, Onlyfans doesn't have anything that makes it stand apart from competition like Patreon. For sex workers, there is ManyVids that will eat their lunch. Only benefit out of this, maybe nsfw Reddit will be worth a visit again when most of the OF ~~spammers~~sellers have gone.
- nickthegreek 5y agoThe ability to tip and unlock content in DMs as well as tip on posts makes OF different from patreon. Tips bring in ALOT of money to popular creators, way more than the monthly subscription.
- gpapilion 5y agoI've seen them brag about revenue, and it looks amazing. That said the porn industry if filled with liars, and I don't believe anything w/o and audited results.
- Ajay-p 5y agoThat is a lot of people who are suddenly going to need to find work...but I think a lot of the sexually themed OF's will migrate to other cam websites. I wonder how much money OF will lose because of this decision?
- _nothing 5y agoThis question isn't necessarily directed to you but your comment made me wonder: How do other cam sites handle payments and what makes them different than OF?
- fragmede 5y agoThey use payment processors that specialize in adult content - who charge exorbitant fees for the privilege. Adult payment processors charge 15-20% vs the 2.9%+30¢ Stripe charges, and is nowhere near as nice to use.
- peepholeoptim 5y agoYes, and the South American and Eastern Europe sex slave cammers will follow them, like what happened with Chaturbate and CamSoda. OnlyFans didn't have to worry about this because nobody's going to subscribe to an account of three gay Colombianos half-heartedly diddling some poor girl, or an anorexic Russian getting anal for six hours straight. OnlyFans succeeded by not being part of that race to the bottom.
- scelerat 5y agoPatreon made similar decisions about four years ago when they began to tighten their terms for NSFW creators. https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-27-patreon-adult-content-crowdfunding-uncertainty.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-27-patreon-adult-content-cr... Much of the pressure came from payment processing partners and banks, much like is described in this article. https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of-adult-content-creators https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of... It seems like for any crowdsourced funding platform there is a volume cap for NSFW content imposed by the need of those platforms to seek wider audiences and funding sources.
- vwoolf 5y agoI assume this will lead to Onlyfans's effective death, much as Tumblr's porn ban seems to have led to, or hastened, its death. Reddit seems to have resisted whatever calls it must be getting to eliminate porn. So far at least. It will ban or quarantine some heretical ideas, but porn is still there.
- alpaca128 5y agoReddit doesn't let people pay directly for content. You can gift awards but those aren't really worth anything.
- SlowRobotAhead 5y ago> Reddit doesn't let people pay directly for content. You can gift awards but those aren't really worth anything. Worth noting this scenario is even less similar than as you wrote it. Not only can’t you pay content creators on Reddit, but the awards, are you paying Reddit for hosting the creator. Reddit gets money, creator gets a png. It’s a really bad deal, and I’m not sure what kind of lunatic buys Reddit awards.
- fragmede 5y agoReddit's gone to lengths to hide it, so casual users aren't hitting it by accident two clicks off an unrelated Google search result page, not on "/r/all", which gets advertisers what they want, without the uproar that banning porn would cause.
- CryptoBanker 5y agoGoodbye OnlyFans
- mgarfias 5y agoRIP: their biz model
- fossuser 5y agoThere's clearly some sort of opportunity here for an Audius like decentralized application/protocol (with the UI figured out), or just applications on Urbit when that stack is ready enough. Centralized services like this will always fail eventually. We need better models than our current megacorp/client stack and the incentives that creates for most services. In this case though it may be a factor of liability changes on high risk content: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-trafficking-law-will-change-the-web/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-traf... It's not so much the tech companies and payment processors that are making policy, but a reaction from them to changes in government policy that increases their exposure.
- GDC7 5y agoWhy can't these websites simply find other banks to do business with? I mean also overseas, for sure the extra costs (if any) are better than basically killing the golden goose. The odds of Onlyfans becoming the huge phenomenon that it is were so slim, it seems like a waste of luck to just throw it all away because of banking problems.
- Arrath 5y agoWhy hasn't someone started a bank and/or payment processor without these puritanical moral qualms about adult content? Seems like the real golden goose, waiting to be had.
- rchaud 5y agoBecause that sounds more like an ideologically-driven venture than something that would be good business.
- Arrath 5y agoCall it "providing financial services to a neglected/stigmatized sector of the entertainment industry and bringing the benefits of official banking and regulations", then. Yes my first comment was probably worded with an inflammatory bent, but this does genuinely seem like an underserved sector. Akin to the problems legal marijuana grows and dispensaries have with accessing banking services (though in that case due to federal regs), the stances of the entrenched industry leaders seem to bring more negatives than would come from providing the needed services.
- rchaud 5y agoI understand, but there's usually a good reason why the underserved sectors are the way they are. For the payments industry I would imagine this market is simply not large enough to allow for economies of scale, so the services can't be priced at a level where it can be sustainable. It seems like an obvious area for crypto to stake a claim, but that doesn't appear to have happened.
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- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoReally weird that they are kicking off a large portion of their user base for inclusive reasons.
- TechBro8615 5y agoWhat an absolutely dumb move. Why not leave the thing on autopilot generating $400m a year, and start a new site for SFW simping?
- Saint_Genet 5y agoRemember when yahoo bought Tumblr for 1.1 billion, banned porn and later sold it for 3 million?
- justinzollars 5y agoLooks like I had the wrong link on my clipboard. This is what I intended to post: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-to-block-sexually-explicit-videos-starting-in-october?utm_source=twitter&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-...
- bcheung 5y agoWere they getting their credit card processing in the non-adult category. I know a bunch of adult credit card processors are in the range of 12-15% and OF only takes 20%. Maybe that is why they are cracking down on them. There are plenty of porn sites out there operating legally, wonder why the banks are giving them issue. My guess is that they presented themselves to banks as just ordinary non-adult transactions and now the banks are seeing that they are almost entirely adult so they want to put them into the higher and more expensive "high-risk" category and OF won't be able to get away with only taking 20% from the models. I guess I'm getting back into the adult website game. I work with tons of adult models as a photographer and got out of making websites due to OnlyFans.
- Shalomboy 5y agoI always felt like adult websites were tech unsavvy. Like they usually designed the site with plenty of love and care, but the structures holding that design up felt notably behind-the-times. Got a take on that?
- yvdriess 5y agoThe cliché is the inverse. Porn is always the first industry in making use of new technologies. VHS, DVD, www, streaming video etc.
- bcheung 5y agoUsed to be the case. They are far behind now. Just read the docs for CCBill. Most of adult is still PHP even for new stuff. And they usually work on the servers directly instead of using version control and staging servers. Only the really bigger adult companies adopt a modicum of modern programming practices.
- pvarangot 5y agoTheir primary payments processor was CCBill, so no, they were using "adult proof" providers. I think there's something going on on the adult payments industry that I don't know about. Either PornHub/OF got too big even for CCBill's approach to dealing with fraud, or CCBill is pulling the plug on websites that take market away from "traditional porn" probably because of pressure from the later.
- goldcd 5y agoOne of the current owners is the guy behind myfreecams - he knows how to run a porn site (and get cards to work on it). This split - and it's going to be a split (as they'd be insane to let that much porn money walk) is just to leave behind a nice investable onlyfans to rival patreon.
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- bregma 5y agoWhere are you supposed to go to find interesting images now? Asking for a friend.
- LatteLazy 5y agoPayment processors need to be declared a utility. Any legal business shouldnt have banks playing morality police.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThis supposedly coming soon system should ideally be able to serve as the electronic payment utility. https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...
- lnjarroyo 5y agoCuriously similar to "Pix" launched by brazilian central bank about a year ago. A quick Google search will show you dozens and dozens of countries getting instant payment systems promoted by their own central banks during the last years. Really makes you wonder who could be behind such a "coincidence".
- lotsofpulp 5y agoIf there is any conspiracy, it would have to be how the hell did it take so long for all these societies to come up with an electronic payment utility.
- lnjarroyo 5y agoWell, it's pretty simple, actually. Central banking is a monopoly, you don't need to be the best option if you're the only one. Curiously, all central banks start launching efficient payment systems as soon as crypto shows up. Not really affirming any conspiracy here since I'm very uneducated at the subject, I just thinks it's suspiciously interesting to a point I can't ignore, almost as if all those central banks were coordinating as part of a larger goal.
- LatteLazy 5y agoOne of the big issues in 2008 was that payments took multiple days to clear. That meant all the banks owed each other big chunks of money. That's not really a problem: if Bank A owes Bank B 1Bn and Bank B owes bank A 1.01 Bn, they're both solvent and you can just net them off to tell what your profit is. But if Bank A suddenly goes Bankrupt, Bank B might still owe Banks A's creditors but won't get paid. So Bank B is fucked now too, even though they weren't doing anything dumb. In turn other banks will be pulled down when Bank B fails. This is why Lehmans was bailed out (in theory, conspiracies aside) This is called Contagion, it's a type of counterparty risk: the risk that you make good deals and everything works out in your favour but the people who are meant to pay you welch. To reduce this, there has been a big push to cut the time between trades\deals and settlement of payments. Ideally we want it to be immediate. This is one reason central banks might be pushing this.
- ianhawes 5y agoThis seems incredibly odd given that OnlyFan's primary payment processor is CCBill, a massive payment processor focused solely on adult content. Here is opportunity #3928 for Stripe to step in and earn their valuation and flex their payment muscle and allow adult payments.
- Mindwipe 5y agoIt's very likely the pressure is coming from Visa and MasterCard (especially MC) rather than at the level of CCbill.
- Ansil849 5y agoHow so?
- Mindwipe 5y agoBecause CCbill can do nothing if MasterCard puts pressure on them, and MasterCard are putting pressure on adult content businesses and have been for years.
- Ansil849 5y agoI guess I just don't understand how payment processing works in this domain: are you saying MasterCard is basically saying that their credit cards cannot be used to purchase adult services such as these?
- lotsofpulp 5y agoMastercard (and Visa and AmEx and Discover) do not want their networks to be used by merchants selling pornography. I would think the only reason is the chargeback/fraud rates are too high in this type of business, as well as not wanting to be involved in a business where there may be a high chance of illegal content. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-14/mastercard-rewrites-rules-for-banks-backing-pornography-sellers https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-14/mastercar... >The banks will now have to ensure that sellers require “clear, unambiguous and documented consent” in adult content, the payments network said in a blog post Wednesday. The firms will also be required to ensure websites document the age and verify the identity of anyone depicted in pictures and videos as well as those uploading the content. >“The banks that connect merchants to our network will need to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content,” John Verdeschi, Mastercard’s senior vice president of customer engagement and performance, said in the post. Allowing merchants to sell pornography is probably not worth the hassle for the card networks.
- Mindwipe 5y agoVisa and MasterCard are pretty evil enterprises, and it's fairly inevitable at this point they will either need to be destroyed or regulated.
- viggity 5y agosmells like a publicity stunt to me. "omg. wtf, onlyfans, I won't be able to pay my bills" a million sex workers howl into social media. For 2 months. october rolls around, "we've decided to reverse course". So much free publicity.
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- toyg 5y agoIt's a risky game though, because you're opening the space to potential competitors for two months. That's some significant time to achieve network effects, and people who move out are unlikely to ever get back.
- findthewords 5y agoNo idea how this will play out, but this is very reminiscent of Yahoo and Tumblr: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tumblr-sold-to-wordpress https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tumblr-sold-to-wordpress
- skrtskrt 5y agoThis is going to be corporate suicide on a greater scale than Tumblr's policy. I say greater because OnlyFans is/was still on a massive upswing whereas Tumblr was 10 years past its peak already when the nails went in the coffin. Edit: I understand this is supposedly not their choice.
- ramesh31 5y agoIt's not like they have a choice. Their business was only ever viable at the behest of their payment provider. The reason no one has made an OnlyFans before, and the reason why people have tried and failed, entirely comes down to this.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoOh god I can’t believe I’m going to say this. Crypto/Bitcoin, in keeping with the relationship the Internet and adult content have. Congrats Coinbase, Venmo, and others enabling censorship resistant crypto payments on your revenue bump.
- mrRandomGuy 5y agoLOL This is would actually work! Holy crap if OnlyFans actually started accepting bitcoin that would be incredible
- traveltek 5y agotransaction fees would be too high, transactions would take too long, and the transactions would be public.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoOnlyFans could be the exchange. You send their public wallet the crypto buying a “OF coin” stable coin or similar (gift card funds essentially), they handle the distribution internally. Best practice would be for patrons and content producers to have dedicated wallets for OnlyFans transactions, to prevent data leakage from ledger analysis.
- lamontcg 5y agoApril 1st in August?
- Ansil849 5y agoThis doesn't make any sense. It's like if the Food Network suddenly announced that due to mounting pressure from advertisers, they would no longer be airing any cooking shows.
- tobyjsullivan 5y agoSo the history channel then?
- drcode 5y agoOr like MTV no longer showing music videos 24/7
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- fidesomnes 5y agoThis is racism against womyn and sexy workers.
- wayoutthere 5y agoIs there anything else on OnlyFans? Without porn, OnlyFans is just another Patreon knock-off.
- TillE 5y agoIt sounds like they'll basically continue to allow tasteful nudes, which is probably about half their content. So they're only killing an enormous fraction of their business, not the entire thing.
- nickthegreek 5y agohalf the content, 85% of the money.
- wayoutthere 5y agoActually yeah, from the content creators I know and have talked to, as long as you’re verified on the platform you can still post whatever. The assumption seems to be that solo stuff will still be fine, but maybe not the actual sex. But it will still effectively be a crackdown on marginalized sexualities seen as “deviant” (aka the trans and bdsm communities). That was honestly the majority of the sexual content on Tumblr back in the day; they were on Tumblr because the mainstream porn industry doesn’t create a space that isn’t exploitative and fetishy. The same is true on OF - trans men and women making porn are way disproportionately represented in the top creators lists. Sex work is how a lot of trans people have had to survive, and OF has made sex work much safer than it’s ever been. It would be a shame to lose an outlet like this — tempts me to go out and create one specifically for porn.
- ctoth 5y ago> But sex work still has a stigma. And OnlyFans is trying to raise money from outside investors at a valuation of more than $1 billion. > The company handled more than $2 billion in sales last year, and is on pace to more than double that this year. It keeps 20% of that figure. So they're killing the golden goose to placate outside money when they already are making ~800M a year? Something here doesn't really add up but I don't know enough about this field to see what I'm missing.
- djrogers 5y agoYour math is off - 20-% of 2b is $400m
- snypher 5y agoThey're doubling that this year, so 4b?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago>citing mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers Based on the tweet, I would presume their ability accept payment via the established payment networks is being threatened.
- pvarangot 5y agoYeah, they are basically screwing up their investors. They pumped up the valuation being a porn site and now will get a bunch of money with low dilution for hiring more executives and stuff probably with a stupid plan like "we are going to be the next Twitter" that will fail in like three years.
- mrRandomGuy 5y agoWho the fuck is using OnlyFans for something _other_ than porn?
- t-writescode 5y agoApparently the LTT OnlyFans was very popular when it was around.
- stonecharioteer 5y agoI did not need to imagine Linus playing with himself today.
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago..wearing pink furry earmuffs...
- Sebb767 5y agoAs a joke of them doing porn. I heard there are Minecraft Let's Plays on PornHub, but I doubt they'll cut of porn to go full in on Let's Plays (and if they did, it would probably kill them like this will kill OF).
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- TekMol 5y agomounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers HN is often sceptical about use cases for crypto beyond speculation. This looks like one.
- root_axis 5y agoSo why do you think they decided to ban sexually explicit content rather than use cryptocurrency?
- nathias 5y agobecause the payment providers have 99% of market share?
- cblconfederate 5y agoand 99% of their revenue was from porn so i guess this business-ending decision is close to cryptopayment-parity
- xur17 5y agoI imagine their options were: * switch to crypto entirely * keep credit cards, but block sexually explicit content I doubt there was middleground where they could accept crypto for sexually explicit content, but still accept credit cards for everything else. Which makes me think that a smart move here would be to spin off a second company that does allow this content, but only accepts payments in crypto. I suppose if they don't, there is a opportunity ripe for a competitor to take advantage of.
- root_axis 5y agoAnd why is this the case when a variety of cryptocurrencies are trivially available to the public.
- nathias 5y agoMaybe because they had 30 years in establishing complete domination of global online economy and all traffic even the one that ends up in crypto goes through them ... Also there is nothing trivial for the public.
- coldtea 5y agoUpcoming headline: "OnlyFans to close down business starting in November"
- dweekly 5y agoIt sure sounds like this was forced on them by their payment processors, not that this was a voluntary move. https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1428420774449266691?s=21 https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1428420774449266691?s=...
- l33t2328 5y agoThis is absolutely ridiculous. What if they decide people can no longer buy dildos or lube or condoms or guns or alcohol or meat on Fridays? There’s no law with respect to “payment neutrality”??
- emodendroket 5y agoWhy should there be? It seems absurd to MANDATE anyone participate in the sex trade. There are payment processors who specialize in adult content.
- marvin 5y agoAt the mercy of Visa and MasterCard, I would guess. Doesn't OnlyFans work with CCBill, who exclusively work with adult content providers? More info is needed to conclude, but it wouldn't surprise me if their upstream providers made demands.
- bcheung 5y agoI highly doubt they are going through CCBill. They are too expensive at volume. Since they are only charging models 20% I suspect they tried to pretend to not be adult, which they probably weren't in the beginning. But not it is almost all adult and CC processors know that and want their higher cut.
- emodendroket 5y agoThere is this from January, where MasterCard wanted sellers of adult content to have more stringent verification of the age and consent of performers in the wake of the PornHub scandal, which I’ve seen people speculating may be related: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-updates-policy-for-adult-content-sellers https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-upda... These aren’t explicitly linked in the story but it would make sense IMO
- bruceb 5y agoThe winner here is a majority of OF performers who are mortgaging their future reputation for present small payouts.
- watwut 5y agoIsnt that kind of ridiculous? If there is a case for cancel culture, free speech or capitalism issue, this sounds like it. Few powerful players systematically destroying speech and business because they don't like it.
- croes 5y agoSo I can buy porn in a store but not online? What's next? They are payment providers not the moral police. That's one of the advantages of cash.
- nathias 5y agoImagine there was a huge oligopoly of payment providers that had full control of global online economy explicitly regulating content.
- epa 5y agoThis is what happens when you have risk adverse execs getting paid too much.
- weezin 5y agoSue Visa and MC for anti-trust and start working on crypto payments immediately.
- post_break 5y agoThis makes me think of Operation Choke Point. I understand payment processors need to limit fraud and risk, but at what point do they get to determine what a legal business does? I understand the mental gymnastics involved to think a private business gets to choose who they do business with, but when there are only a handful of businesses doing the processing what then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
- yellow_lead 5y agoA reason governments like monopolies - they centralize control. This applies to many industries: telecom, cellphones, social media, etc.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
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- Freak_NL 5y agoWhy can PornHub successfully sell a premium porn service but OnlyFans cannot? Is it just the size of the company?
- emodendroket 5y agoI don't know if you were aware but PornHub had a massive scandal with the content people were uploading that led to them basically deleting the majority of user contributions altogether. So maybe not so easy for them either.
- Freak_NL 5y agoWasn't that a copyright issue? People uploading stuff for which they didn't own the authorship rights? OnlyFans does not seem to have that problem at any significant scale at all, so why can't they figure out a way to handle payments for porn?
- emodendroket 5y agoNo, it was primarily about various forms of nonconsensual and underage content.
- LegitShady 5y agopornhub is having this issue exactly. They got PNG'd by all the payment processors. They only have crypto payment options now. My bet is pornhub is doing a lot worse now than they were before. https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news
- Freak_NL 5y agoTheir FAQ is still showing that they offer credit card payments via Probiller, but clicking onwards does indeed show them temporarily not accepting credit card payments, defaulting to a SEPA transfer instead.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoIs there a difference between the title and "OnlyFans to shut down in October"? I literally didn't know OnlyFans had anything else besides porn/porn-esque material.
- emodendroket 5y agoAt some point I think they intended to be something line a competitor to Patreon. It also sounds like they're going to keep allowing softcore content.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago> It also sounds like they're going to keep allowing softcore content. That is such puritanical nonsense. You can show naked people rubbing together, but the moment you show a penis in a vagina, Satan comes to get you.
- ramesh31 5y agoDigital pimpin' ain't easy. If it was, everyone would do it.
- ctoth 5y agoFrom my understanding, one of the major reasons that payment processors don't like porn is the regretful customer problem, which makes this sort of content a lot more likely to be disputed/have chargebacks. One of the oft-mentioned downsides to Cryptocurrency is the 'no takebacks' property. Perhaps these two things fit together? Also avoids the problem of payment processors dictating morality.
- danielmg 5y agoThe fact that crypto isn't even a thing with these sites tells you everything you need to know about the future of crypto. It's a speculation-bubble and a circle-jerk all in one. It has no future in retail or p2p payments. People need the safety nets the existing payment schemes, processors, banks, and regulators provide. See "push payment fraud" in my country (UK) as an example.
- drenvuk 5y agoPayment processors need to be regulated in a way to prevent this stuff from happening. This is financial censorship for legal activities.
- Sargos 5y agoI'm not sure the government has a problem with this as they just passed FOSTA-SESTA which nearly makes porn illegal.
- buzzwords 5y agoAnyone know if there are any legal recourse for them?
- bdcravens 5y agoAccording to OnlyFans, nudity is still allowed (be interesting to see where they draw the line regarding what's explicit)
- digitcatphd 5y agoThe company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos. Makes sense
- digitcatphd 5y ago"The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos" Makes sense
- SlowRobotAhead 5y ago> Makes sense Does it? Nude is ok, but sexual isn’t? What if I find nude sexual, what if I find sexual separate from nudity? Why business is it of payment processors to say what is OK when it comes to sexuality?
- digitcatphd 5y agolol, mate you seem personally offended by this satirical statement pointing out the conflicting logic
- savant_penguin 5y agoNext up Google blocks search and Twitter blocks politics
- gregoriol 5y agoOne reason often cited for payment processors not wanting adult companies is because of high level of chargebacks, but I don't understand this in the situation at hand here: it is not that this company is going to stop accepting payments, it is that they are going to prevent sexual content and keep nudity, so it shouldn't change much the behavior expected around those chargebacks?
- 8eye 5y agoi’ll say it, who wants to go co-founder on a new startup idea?
- moneywoes 5y agoWhy not lol
- orliesaurus 5y agoi'm down
- ma9o 5y agoDown. I'm actually working on this problem as of now :)
- candylifter 5y agoLet’s do it
- ScionOfDesign 5y agoThis is a topic I've been researching for years. I run an adult game company myself. If there are other technical people willing to work on something to solve this problem at its core, I'd help.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/ETIG3 https://archive.is/ETIG3
- noxer 5y agoWho's the first to makes a CryptoOnlyFans? I see 2 losers here OnlyFans and the banks.
- jbverschoor 5y agoBanks, payment processors are the police officers, or rather soldiers of the world. They're really just helping the adoption to mainstream crypto.
- rvz 5y ago> The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers, according to the company. Fintech's finest financially suffocating OnlyFans, forcing them to ban explicit videos off of their platform. Somebody has got to lose.
- Loeffelmaenn 5y agoIt really doesn't sit right with me that payment processors can emit such a huge pressure that OnlyFans is willing to loose 99.9% of their userbase becuase they just have no other choice.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agoIts almost as if Yarvin had a point when he described The Cathedral.
- perardi 5y agoWow, you spend years thinking crypto is convoluted nonsense…and then something comes along that impacts a lot of your friends, and you start to change your mind. I have a fair number† of friends and acquaintances who have OnlyFans. Some for side income, some for a substantial portion of their livelihood. And to see that get taken away because the payment processors want them to fall in line…I guess I’m on the crypto train now. †Yes, I have a slightly strange life, I know.
- im3w1l 5y agoI'm curious, what fraction of their material, income is nudes (still allowed) and what fraction is sexually explicit?
- perardi 5y ago…well I am not going to go through and do a full audit, but a fair bit is explicit, and realistically people are paying for the videos and not the stills.
- bob33212 5y agoSomeone else will replicate of
- perardi 5y agoSustainably? Or will they replicate, survive for a while, get to a critical mass, and then get nuked from orbit by Visa?
- bob33212 5y agoIf crypto was ever going to be useful, this is where it will do it.
- breadzeppelin__ 5y agoadult industry once again on the cutting edge of tech
- jwond 5y agoIt seems a lot of people in this post are opposed to payment processors pressuring OnlyFans to do this. When Google, Apple, Amazon, et al. simultaneously took actions that resulted in the shutdown of Gab it seemed a lot of people supported it. Now they could very well be completely disjoint groups, but I’d be interested if anyone who opposes the payment processors pressuring OnlyFans but supported the actions taken against Gab could explain how they reconcile the two positions. In both cases we have companies with dominant positions in the market denying or threatening to deny crucial services to another company.
- ribosometronome 5y agoAre you surprised folk agree with things that fit their morals and disagree with ones that don't? Gab was being used to promote hate, violence, and misinformation. Onlyfans is not those things. This feels akin to saying something like, "Oh, you were onboard when the government criminalized murder, how do you feel now that they're criminalizing weed?!"
- jwond 5y ago> Gab was being used to promote hate, violence, and misinformation So is every other social media site
- ribosometronome 5y agoGab was created as a reaction to other social media sites trying to remove that content. They're clearly different beasts even if Facebook and Twitter don't do nearly good enough of a job at tackling it.
- stale2002 5y agoThe point is that people who talk about a slippery slope were correct. The more that you let large and powerful organizations, get away with targeting groups that you don't like, the more likely that those powerful organizations are going to be able to turn the guns on you, or your favorite cause, when public opinion doesn't go your way. Neutral platforms, that don't discrimination, protects your enemies as well as your self. The slippery slope is real. The people who oppose neutral platforms have made their bed. Now we'll see if they change their mind once they have to lay in it.
- claaams 5y agoWhose daughter at the payment processor was doing onlyfans that got them all riled up?
- uncoder0 5y agoYou joke... but having personally seen how many decisions are made this way at high levels of corporations and even government this is rather plausible.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- barbazoo 5y ago> The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers, according to the company. What's their argument here, is there a law being broken or is the pressure motivated by ethics or something else?
- jefftechentin 5y agoI remember PH having the same issue. Do payment processors take on liability for facilitating sexual content that is illegal in some way? Is it a PR thing? Is mastercard owned by the Holy See? What's the deal?
- HaloZero 5y agoMost likely it's about FOSTA-SESTA in the United States which exempts you from Section 230.
- taylodl 5y agoSadly I know girls who are using OnlyFans to keep a roof over their heads and stay out of abusive relationships. Whether we like what they're doing to make money OnlyFans was providing them a much-needed revenue stream. Now that's being taken away from them by the morality police who won't be affected by the consequences of their own decisions.
- throwaway5752 5y agoWith all due respect, the fact that anyone is forced into porn to get housing be safe from abusive partners is the indictment of a society. I get that it's a de facto situation for some, but let's not drop the onus on "morality police", payment processors, and OnlyFans for a massive societal failure to help vulnerable people. You could take that argument as far as you want (prostitution, drug sales, etc). There is some level of dignity that everyone's entitled to. If someone does OF by choice because they love it, good for them. If someone is compelled to in order to feed their kids or leave an abusive partner, then we should all be ashamed of that.
- theshrike79 5y agoIt doesn't have to be "porn". People are making huge bank with content you could post on Instagram without fear of being banned.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- beiller 5y agoYou make the claim they are forced but do you have any sources for that claim? All I can say for sure is that now, they are forced out of porn. This problem is not directly a morality problem. It is a chargeback issue. More like chargebacks via stigmiziation of sexuality but that is just an opinion.
- handmodel 5y agoI do not consume OF but tbh if I was an attractive girl I would probably choose making 80k a year on OF over 30k a year as a hostess or factory worker or whatever. I don't think it is exploitative or has less dignity than these.
- jdlyga 5y agoL O fucking L. That's literally what it's for.
- skizm 5y ago> They’ll still be allowed to put up nude photos and videos, provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy, the company said Thursday.
- bcheung 5y ago...for how long? They just promised they would be inclusive of adult sex workers only months ago to combat the rumors which apparently were true.
- dotcoma 5y agoWhy are they shooting themselves in the foot? Wasn't (soft) porn their business model?
- yholio 5y agoI 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.
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago> 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.
- smt88 5y agoI 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.
- tomc1985 5y agoWhile 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...
- zokula 5y agoNobody was being harmed on Pornhub. Don't feed the lying anti-sex work media.
- isatty 5y agoSo nobody learnt anything from whatever Tumblr pulled. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Amazing.
- eykanal 5y agoFrom the comments here, it sounds like the main issue is payment processors needing to accommodate "vice laws" or something. Can someone explain why OnlyFans can't simply use non-US payment processors to get around this? My understanding is that many European countries are much less concerned with vice than the US.
- temp20210816 5y agoProblem with these sites is that how do you ensure that everything is voluntary? You might end up making money for a pimp or human trafficking group. This is a real concern especially on the cam content. It’s quite tempting business for some pimp on low-income country to get house, few cameras and put ladies to work. Kind of same issues with the porn in general, but I assume there’s lots of paperwork happening on background for large production companies.
- nikkinana 5y agoFinally.
- phendrenad2 5y agoWhy is Bloomberg the primary source for this? OnlyFans is too cowardly to make a press release? Anyway, it seems like OF is about to accomplish an epic maneuver: raise money at a $1 billion valuation based on a product you just cancelled.
- orliesaurus 5y agoUnexpected.
- perlgeek 5y ago> Starting in October, the company will prohibit creators from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website [...]. They’ll still be allowed to put up nude photos and videos, provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy. So nude is OK but it may not sexually explicit? That seems like a very fine line to walk, with much associated drama.
- stronglikedan 5y agoIt's been a pretty well established line with the MPAA for decades, so they can likely use that standard out of the box.
- _trampeltier 5y agoThere was even a AskHN question here a while ago (1..3 years) from somebody ot of this kind of business. A part of the discussion was also how OnlyFans just can do it. The fall of Wirecard (and new owner) was a problem for Pornhub last year. I the most early case I know was Fetlife .. it had been over 10 years now..
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Grakel 5y agoMcDonald's to stop selling burgers and fries.
- hume_annoyed 5y agoSuper-cool vendor lock-in strategy, and neatly, the unwritten terms of service "host your new content here, we have X videos of you doing Y, Z,,," and it is totally normal and ok now. /s
- onionisafruit 5y agoI think this is a rule to keep payment processors happy that won't be enforced. How are they going to find these sexually explicit videos among all the nude videos they still allow? Maybe they have software that can distinguish between a nude video and a sexually explicit nude video. If not they need to either review videos that are posted or rely on users to report sexually explicit videos. I doubt they want to manually review all uploaded videos, so that leaves user reports. Who is going to report an onlyfans account they subscribe to for posting an explicit video? Probably nobody.
- tibbon 5y agoSo uhh... time to raise some funds and launch a crypto-payments version of OF?
- stevenicr 5y agoThinking I might build a version or two of this. If someone's raising money, maybe we should partner on it. I'd need help with ads / marketing for this kind of scale.. the other parts shouldn't be a problem.
- raitom 5y agoCongrats on making the dumbest business decision ever made!
- lucymort 5y agoWe're building an alternative to OnlyFans! And we're hiring a Head of Engineering and a Senior Engineer! https://angel.co/l/2vyMwb https://angel.co/l/2vyMwb https://angel.co/l/2vA8yr https://angel.co/l/2vA8yr HMU lucy@sunroom.so
- ScionOfDesign 5y agoI'm curious, what cloud or SaaS solutions are your company using? Many of the cloud solutions I've looked at explicitly forbid pornographic, explicit, or 'obscene' content. Do you self-host instead? Atlassian Cloud, for example, forbids hosting any of that sort of content on their services, which could make development difficult. With their server subscriptions gone, this is even more of an issue. Places like Azure will host the content internally, but don't allow you to share the content publicly in any way that ties it back to them. Such as sharing an explicit image on OneDrive or hosting a website that pings back to their IP space. How do you get around these challenges in development?
- moron4hire 5y agoWait, so what are they going to do without their only source of revenue? I was pretty well under the impression that OF pretty much only hosted camgirl accounts. I mean, other than the token "thought influencers" they probably bought to try to give themselves a glimmer of legitimacy. It's so bad that other social media sites (well, TikTok, I don't know about others) completely ban mention of OnlyFans under the assumption it's just porn.
- lucymort 5y agoWe're building an alternative to OnlyFans! And we're hiring a Head of Engineering and a Senior Engineer. https://angel.co/l/2vyMwb https://angel.co/l/2vyMwb https://angel.co/l/2vA8yr https://angel.co/l/2vA8yr HMU lucy@sunroom.so
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cbdumas 5y agoA few comments here are drawing a parallel between tech companies shutting down Gab (temporarily) and payment processing companies forcing this move from OnlyFans (which from the outside looking in appears tantamount to shutting them down). Regardless of how you perceive the two specific cases, I think they make people uncomfortable because in both cases they demonstrate the power that large tech platforms have over law-abiding companies. It seems to me that the government needs to take some of that power back from tech companies by clearly delineating which services can and cannot be refused and in what circumstances. For instance, I think it is perfectly right for Google to remove Gab from their app store if they wish, but I think it would be wrong if Gab was refused internet service by their ISP, for example. Similarly, as we transition to a cashless world I think there need to be limits on the authority that payment processors can exercise over which businesses are allowed to receive payments and which are not.
- standardUser 5y agoI genuinely don't understand. If PornHub and Chaturbate can accept major credit cards for explicit sexual material, why can't OnlyFans?
- bitwize 5y ago> OnlyFans to block profit starting in October ftfy
- albertTJames 5y ago(Conservative ∩ Woke) == {e : e ∊ (bland ⋃ tedious)}
- meltedcapacitor 5y agoThis is asking for a partnership with shopify: onlyfans could automatically generate a t-shirt/coffee cup store on shopify and a t-shirt fulfillment partner, and creators could perform for fans who buy a lot of t-shirts ("buy 3 t-shirts and I'll take off mine for you!") with smooth bidirectional API integration etc. Card processors can't ban all these people buying t-shirts.
- throwaway8358 5y agoWith all the focus on "local" now, maybe society just needs to go back to good ol' fashioned red light districts with brothels where Johns can make cash payments to the Madams that credit card companies and Apple/Google Pay can't block. Instead of paying with a credit card to see pixelated computer-screen boobies that are 3000 miles away, maybe just go to a local "gentleman's club" and see actual in-the-flesh nude women or something, ya know?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- drummer 5y agoThis is why we need fully private and untraceable cryptocurrencies like monero, pirate chain and mobilecoin. Someone should tell the people at onlyfans.
- thepasswordis 5y agoGood. Onlyfans is extremely exploitative, and part of the business model is to groom underage girls into doing pornography. There have been many news reports of only fans ignoring reports that underage girls are selling pornography of themselves on their website; something which onlyfans profits off of. They are pimps, and seem to be okay with pimping out children and encouraging children to enter the sex trade. I hope that some of them end up in prison. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983.amp
- Minor49er 5y agoQuite a sad state that we're in when this true and insightful comment has been voted to the bottom of the entire reply section
- rubyist5eva 5y agoI have zero sympathy.
- MelvinButtsESQ 5y agoWhat an absolute shame. Not particularly because I use OF, but because they feel the need to do this, due to public pressure, pressure from banks, etc. When are we going to stop moral policing (literally via power of the state and figuratively) consensual adult activities?
- fnord77 5y agois this like Ford saying they're going to stop making vehicles?
- systematical 5y agoIsn't that the point of their site?
- MelvinButtsESQ 5y agoSex work is legitimate work. They should not be shame and pushed to the fringes as we do here in the US, both by power of state and morality. I cringe at the number of people, mostly women of course, who are going to lose their livelihood because of "virtual Karens" imposing THEIR moral beliefs on others via power of the state.
- boraturan 5y agojust create your next OnlyFans with Alvin5.com
- chadlavi 5y agoWhat's next, twitch banning gaming?
- mkl95 5y agoPorn app bans porn. Serious onion vibes
- Barrin92 5y agoAbsolutely terrible that companies feel the need to drop sex workers, many of whom depend on the platform to make a living. Don't even blame onlyfans because it's the demands of banks and VCs in this case and society at large who still treat sex workers like some kind of caste of undesirables they don't want to be associated with.
- Giorgi 5y agoOF will probably die off and clone will emerge in the country that US can't pressure into complying. Like it happened with torrent trackers.
- throwaway888abc 5y agoLet's make TrueFans ?
- andy_ppp 5y agoDoes anyone else here feel the Onlyfans phenomenon is just exploiting sad lonely men who’d be better off leaving the house, doing some exercise and trying to eat healthier and build their IRL social networks? This whole cam-girls making a fortune this way seems somehow more dishonest than normal porn to me, maybe because it’s about these guys (who can never have relationships with these women) building a personal and intimate relationship as one of her “fans”. I almost see this as being like gambling where people need to acknowledge maybe how powerful sex is and being a technology that should be regulated similarly. I wonder if nobody calls out this exploitation because society keeps suggesting that all men are privileged, which is definitely not true for at least 60% of the male population. Anyway I’ll probably get downvoted for this but these double standards have been irritating me for a while :-)
- perardi 5y agoWell among other things: way to utterly and entirely ignore the LGBT creators on there who are making money but also creating erotic content for their communities.
- andy_ppp 5y agoIt is a correct reading that my comment didn’t make assumptions about those creators or communities. That’s because it was about something else, that I think consuming this kind of porn is particularly bad because it is largely lonely low status men obsessing about and giving money to rich powerful women on OnlyFans. I find it interesting to point out there might be an unfavourable power dynamic here in the opposite way to how it usually occurs within our society.
- throwaway306744 5y ago> rich powerful women on OnlyFans Are they powerful though? Or rich even? They might have momentary reach like some celebrities and influencers but does that extend to effecting consumer behavior and would advertisers work with them?
- noobermin 5y agoQuestion, what is the open source/decentralized alternative for these? Just cryptocurrency? The unfortunate part of crypto I think for the public is that it's highly volatile and only used by people who want to speculate with it. It feels like the only way to solve the payment processor issue is to somehow have a change to US laws that no longer criminalize sex work.
- AzzieElbab 5y agoOF should complain to ftc or whoever that the payment processors bullying disproportionally effects women and lgbtq community. I am not being sarcastic
- midrus 5y agoIs it today April 1st in any part of the world I'm not aware?
- GuB-42 5y ago> In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and the continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines So, they are trying to get inclusive by excluding most of their community... I understand it is bullshit and the only reason they do it is because porn is a difficult investment, with a lot of credit card fraud and limited opportunities for partnership. But still, OnlyFans made a name for itself with porn, and even managed the impressive feat of staying mostly clean regarding abuse and copyright infringement. It is a difficult niche to fit in, but by abandoning it, they will compete with everyone else, including Google, Facebook, etc... and I don't think they will stand a chance. It is like, say, a shop that sells craft beer next to Walmart. Craft beer suppliers may be unreliable, have limited stock, with wild variation in quality, etc... it is much easier to deal with large industrial breweries, but if you stop selling craft beer because it is too hard, people will not buy your new, "guaranteed profit" industrial beer, they will go to Walmart, because Walmart if bigger and can negotiate lower prices, and people can get their beers with their groceries. The only reason the craft beer shop can make money is because they do the kind of thing Walmart refuses to do.
- throw_m239339 5y ago"Diversity" and "inclusivity" are weasel words, they mean absolutely nothing when it comes to corporate speech, it's something you throw in a PR statement to appeal to young people who vote left and political pundits, nothing more.
- dbg31415 5y ago"History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes." Prediction: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38963007 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38963007 Also relevant... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_o8vYUU-jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_o8vYUU-jo
- IdontRememberIt 5y agoCC processing business is hold by 2 American companies. When they warn you (through your CC acquirer), you have zero negotiation power. Comply or die. You can use proxies if you are a small company. But at onlyFans' level, the solutions are limited. PS: By experience, I can also confirm that most of the CC acquirers evaluate your business not on its legality but on its morality. PS2: With mandatory 3DS2, the excuse of high fraud/complains rates (which were true 10 years ago) does not make sense anymore.
- majani 5y agoThe real reason is probably that "adult Patreon" probably isn't a sustainable business model. The incentive for famous influencers to scam users with photos and videos that are only technically nude is just too high, and that will result in charge backs galore.
- SamEdosa 5y agoMore money for Twitter. I would venture to say Twitter has more sexually explicit content then OnlyFans.
- meeshoo 5y agoIsn't it funny how porn-related news generate such great interest and such fiery intellectual debates on HN?
- ChildOfChaos 5y agoSo they are shutting down the site?
- murphyslab 5y agoAt the end of July I started noticing odd ads for that site while browsing reddit on mobile. Out of curiosity, I started collecting screenshots of the ads. They have been trying to pivot for a little while now: https://i.imgur.com/Kh6zMga.png https://i.imgur.com/Kh6zMga.png
- tailius 5y agoIdiotic. Ceding to puritanical, moralizing PHBs is weak and throws away their core business model. They might as well declare bankruptcy and get it over with. Leadership with backbone would deleverage themselves from controlling investors and utilize other payment methods like crypto.
- newbamboo 5y agoIf it can happen to porn it can happen to crypto. History is a pendulum. Those who believe otherwise may be right, but nobody is right forever.
- rednerrus 5y agoIsn't this the case for Cum Rocket?!?
- booleandilemma 5y agoWow, this is like if Apple said they were going to stop making iPhones.
- k12sosse 5y agoEspecially if you consider that you could just web search for free iPhones, ask your friends older brother to go buy some iPhones for you from the corner store, or work on your appearance and conversational skills and go get someone to give you a free iPhone IRL. I never understood this subscriber minded concept of "Porn as a Service". Back in my day we'd just steal our dad's iPhone and share it among friends (assuming everyone took care of the iPhone and didn't spill any liquids on it). Even in the 80s and 90s you could just throw a rock and there was a 50% chance it'd land on an iPhone. It's even easier now, there's entire websites dedicated to hoarding images and videos of iPhones on various hosting sites. From an access-to-iPhone perspective, this is non-news. From a "MUH RIGHTS" perspective, I get why people are upset, but you also gotta see it from the billing perspective. It's their payment processing and they'll do with it what they want. But I mean ccBill exists and offers rates of 10-15%.. just earn less, I guess.
- taurath 5y agoThe marketplace desperately needs payment processors that handle adult content. Arguments against it scale down to "because there is exploitation, we shouldn't have any porn". This is the drug war mentality. Guess where it leads
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- devwastaken 5y agoReason for crypto right here. They're not going to stop offering payment processing to crypto sites.
- dang 5y agoThis thread has 1300+ comments; to see the rest, click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237274&p=4 (Comments like this will go away when we turn off pagination. Sorry for the annoyance.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yalogin 5y agoI actually thought it was a porn site just like the many other streaming video sites. If the founder had non-porn consumer app ambitions, why not just clone it and form another site? They are just giving until October for some other app to fill the void. I am sure pornhub or someone will jump in and take their money.
- rodarmor 5y agoFortunately, if you're feeling entrepreneurial, you can spin up an Agora* instance and start selling whatever you want for Lightning Payments. * https://github.com/agora-org/agora/ https://github.com/agora-org/agora/
- greyivy 5y agoThis is not accessible to 90% of SWers, and if it is, it will not earn them a living.
- busymom0 5y agoPayment processors are totally cool with exploitation of kids with Cuties but lord forbid if consensual adults want to share sexual content, then that's a problem!
- 1680168l 5y agoShould be entitled, "OnlyFans to voluntarily shut down". Good for them. On to more upstanding work.
- xwdv 5y agoWow wow wow, this is incredible for startups who were trying to get in this space but were having a tough time competing with OnlyFans. It will be a transfer of wealth.
- hakube 5y agoThey're done.
- neonihil 5y agoAha, so OnlyFans is closing business. Sweet. Anybody interested in building a clone and taking over of their core business?
- greyivy 5y agoConsidering thousands and thousands of people will lose their only source of income, this is far from "sweet". Please stay far away from the industry if you lack such basic empathy.
- overip 5y agoOnlyFans going out of business in November.
- alvah 5y agoI haven't fact-checked, but this OF creator posted screenshots of her chat with OF support denying the Bloomberg article & stating sexually explicit stills and videos will still be allowed: https://mobile.twitter.com/ShyCutieMFC/status/1428502429151072262 https://mobile.twitter.com/ShyCutieMFC/status/14285024291510...
- Waterluvian 5y agoIs this the terminal stage of a tech startup? Your entire business model was crushed by payment companies so you pivot in whatever direction you think you can.
- nobody0 5y agoWhen they cross the river, they burn the bridge.
- vmception 5y agoOnlyFans is going to pivot from streamers pretending to fuck themselves to VCs actually fucking themselves
- rzz3 5y agoWhat? This is the only reason people use onlyfans period…
- graderjs 5y agoThe terrible thing is this probably pushes performers to more predatory platforms / aggregators. I bet this move could somehow be traced to machinations from the big porn industry players. I think if people want to make money doing this stuff and they're legally of age in a place they do it, and if they're not hurting anyone, then you shouldn't get in their way. If it's a free choice to engage in it and they are not trafficed nor coerced nor debt trapped, it should be a way that people can access to generate income or express themselves is that if that's what they choose. I've heard of onlyfans but I've never even seen any content on there and the screenshots I've seen have just been sort of racy but not explicit and i don't know anything about the background of this decision, but... just in general I think it's easy and useful to frame it from the point of view of freedom of expression and commerce versus a moral panic or crackdown on independent content creators who are empowering themselves with content in a market that pays premiums and they can achieve a better standard of life than by doing other things, and it's better than them working at the behest of or in contract to someone else. So from that point of view I think it's a great thing that people could do this (like uber for racy content or if you want to take it to the extreme: Uber for explicit content) and it's really sad that this platform seems to now be disallowing that I think to the great harm and detriment of all the people who could formerly freely engaged in making their money that way.
- brodouevencode 5y agoIt speaks volumes that this post, only 7 hours old at this point, is one of the most commented on, voted on posts within recent history.
- cphoover 5y agoWhy not use something like plaid and then do direct bank transfers rather than use credit cards. You could also accept cryptocurrencies. This decision will kill their business
- ashtonkem 5y agoMight as well just close up shop tomorrow; they’d keep more money that way rather than spending it all on servers and salary.
- solmag 5y ago> Only two hits for 'trafficking' in the discussion The absolute state of liberal cum brain.
- dang 5y agoBreaking the site guidelines will get you banned here. Please review the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- r3tardd3stroyer 5y agoHN: OOOOH UH OH APPLE IS GOING TO SCAN MY PHONE FOR CHILD PORNOGRAPHY OH NOO ALSO HN: UH OHH NO NO NO, ONLYFANS IS GOING TO REMOVE PORNOGRAPHIC CONTENT, OH NO I DON'T FEEL SO GOOD
- intellix 5y agoI didn't even know that OnlyFans had non-porn content but I guess the name makes sense. I feel like their brand is known for porn and if it's gone the name is too tainted to succeed in anything else.
- thrown 5y agoI wonder how this will affect internet culture as a whole. What will the sex workers do now? There can only be so many successful bathtub streams on Twitch
- anovikov 5y agoThis is good because it will mean an upsurge of competitors. I personally know several. In general, internet is mostly about porn or sex (Tinder, Facebook which is really for hookups when it's not for paid political propaganda), or for illegal activity (fintech, darknets) or for scam (adtech, freelance sites). I wonder what people who opt for "none of the above" are thinking.
- jhanschoo 5y agoIt seems to me that the adult industry in the US is pigeonholed into that, and it seems to me that taboo is a factor in it. In comparison, Japan's DMM is primarily known for its adult products, but is also very well diversified.
- holoduke 5y agoAmerican absurdity. Selling violence and killing off thousands of people with their arms is no big deal, but a bit of nudity is.
- mikequinlan 5y agoThe BBC claims that this is due to an investigation it did. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865
- rambojazz 5y agoI always thought that was their entire business model.
- antender 5y agoBasically, the site is rebranding as OnlyBans :)
- Folcon 5y agoI may be being very naive here, so it would be great for someone to point out where I'm missing a trick, but if they make $2 billion in revenue and keep 20% of that, why don't they found or buy a small bank? I mean granted it's not their core business area, but it's a huge risk factor for them, so an acquisition doesn't seem out of the question to mitigate that risk... According to here[0], banks need approx $20 million in startup capital. Now I don't know what onlyfan's costs are, but they seem to be sitting on a lot more than that or alternatively they could get financing. Is there a reason this isn't a direction they've explored? The fact that they've not swapped to a more expensive payment provider implies that it's not a good option, but that may be a simpler solution, or they could provide a competitive option in this space? - [0]: https://howtostartanllc.com/business-ideas/bank https://howtostartanllc.com/business-ideas/bank
- firloop 5y agoLikely, the restrictions are coming at the card network level rather than the bank level. Building a Visa/Mastercard network is a much harder proposition than just buying a bank, especially as it pertains to consumer distribution.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- onlyfansfan 5y agoA question to you entrepreneurial types. Why does an globally established and growing company with a proven business model want to raise a billion dollar investment? It's money they'll have to pay back with interest and I assume there would be other strings attached (like the high risk implied by the title of this article). How is possibly better than organic growth at this point where they are probably close to market saturation (in the sense that further exponential growth is implausible)?
- rawoke083600 5y agoLol i thought that was OnlyFans primary focus ??
- lightwave25 5y agoBut today's not April 1st and the source is not The Onion. I don't understand.
- kwonkicker 5y agoOnly thing that can compete with this is if pornhub decided to ban porn.
- swat535 5y agoThe everlasting war against the human naked body continues. I genuinely struggle to understand the obsession of these payment processors have to block services that focus on displaying the naked human form. Are we as a species so despicable that a nipple offends us? We are all born naked and are essentially part of the larger ecosystem on this planet. Sure, I could understand the high chargeback rates argument , but then again, huge Bahamuts like MC and Visa can surely absorb the cost here. These systems provide a safe channel for sex workers to profit _directly_ from their services and yet here we have society pushing them to an unsafe alley to profit. I hope the hypocrisy of western nations supporting the sexual liberation of women whilst cracking down on their ability to do as they please with their bodies should not go unnoticed . The extreme religious institutions and people supporting these policies should go down in history as villains. I sincerely hope that future generations drive change and that one day we can look back at this time and chuckle.
- hakfoo 5y agoThe thing I never understood: The argument seems to be that "our payment partners don't like explicit content". I think the same excuse was thrown around for Tumblr's porn ban too. * If this was a single (or small number of) player(s) objecting, why aren't they being competed around? Any payment platform that refuses to service the porn industry is, by its very nature, leaving money on the table. * Again, if we're dealing with a centralized point of objection, I could see "name and shame" pushback being very effective. Imagine the backlash from both porn enthusiasts and libertarians closing their accounts if they said "It's XYZ Bank, they don't want you buying pornography." * The worst-case scenario I could imagine is that it's at the card-brand level, driven by non-US/EU regulations. They can switch from (for example) Stripe to Braintree to Auth.net, but they can't escape Visa and Mastercard so easily. They might feel the need to regulate because it's required as a condition of market entry in, say, China or the Middle East. But that still opens the door for domestic-focused alternatives (ACH? The old ATM-centric debit card networks?) In fact, in today's politically charged environment, I could see momentum to explicitly develop a payment product designed for "Western Sensibilites and Values" with an explicit "Hell no, it doesn't work in Beijing/Moscow/Baghdad" message. Suddenly, supporting pornography is a patriotic endeavour that you can use to demand special treatment and subsidy. * Why now, when they're trying to go public? It's not like people suddenly woke up and said "OnlyFans had PORN?" If they maintained their relationships with their payment processors until now, it's not like there's a sudden, earth shattering revelation here. I'm wondering if maybe the truth is less dramatic and grand. The angle I could see is that a hypothetical "OnlyFans - Porn" is a lower merchant risk profile than "OF as it stands". The high merchant fees for that industry are a well-established cost centre. If they could say "we slashed our merchant fees nn%" it looks good while preening the balance sheet for the IPO. However, I'm skeptical if that's the case-- any sort of "digital video delivery" and "subscription service" are still pretty high risk merchant types. I'd also think it's still less of a revenue risk to just split the business: a high-fee porn-only site and a cheaper-to-operate non-porn site, using shared technology.