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This 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
by skrtskrt 5y ago
This 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.
- bserge 5y agoOnlyFanBucks heh. Don't actually need crypto for that, but if it's better, then whatever.
- cody8295 5y agoOr just use a private crypto like Monero
- majewsky 5y agoIf the problem is scrutiny from investors, I don't think it's a viable solution to become a payment processor and therefore attract additional scrutiny from banking regulators.
- sureklix 5y agoYou still have to go through an on-ramp provider or OF does the on-ramp but then probably lots of reg headache. Plus I bet impulse buying is the way to activate OF users. One way to solve this can be to find an on-ramp solution w/ UX on par with card payments and then handle pay-in and pay-outs via Zcash or Monero or using Aztec protocol.
- glennvtx 5y agoLightning fixes all that.
- skinnymuch 5y agoIt’s not that special. Other adult sites and shadier stuff push crypto or only do crypto
- Alex3917 5y agoGetting a payment provider an adult business using crypto is going to be even harder than getting a payment provider for just an adult business.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoIt took me minutes to setup a Coinbase account to send funds to SciHub. As long as OnlyFans isn’t hosting illegal content and they’re meeting financial regulations (no laundering, robust accounting), I don’t see a blocker. Yes, you’re going to have to meet up with fiat rails somewhere, which is where incumbent crypto exchanges operating legally come in (Coinbase, Gemini, Fidelity Digital Custodial).
- davesmylie 5y agoIt's easy enough for someone with basic tech skills to do this sure. Onlyfans depends on joe average being able to do this (and not being scared off at the mention of the word "crypto") I think crypto is about 5 - 10 years away from this point
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- marvin 5y agoThis would be the perfect spark for such a shift.
- xur17 5y agoI agree it's a ways off from a user experience point of view, but people are willing to put up with a lot of "effort" if it's something they really want. This very well could be the impetus necessary to make crypto used more broadly for payments. With current tech this would just be a mobile wallet that holds stablecoins with some sort of built in funding mechanism.
- Alex3917 5y ago> It took me minutes to setup a Coinbase account to send funds to SciHub. The issue is getting money from Coinbase into Wells Fargo or wherever, not getting it into Coinbase.
- cblconfederate 5y agoAnd as always, porn leads the way
- bcheung 5y agoHaving worked as an adult programmer, they are really far behind technology trends. You're lucky if they use version control and staging servers.
- rejectedandsad 5y agoSomehow there is this meme that porn sites are technically impressive due to their scale/small video playback enhancements, neglecting that they have a slightly more captive audience that will forgive small hitches than most streaming video providers. The meme is dumb and should die imho.
- gowld 5y agoIt's not about quality of product. It's about motivation to deploy new technologies for the experience it enables.
- Shish2k 5y agoHaving worked at a porn site and a FAANG, I’d say my porn work was more impressive — because payment processors / ad providers / hosting companies / etc are so anti-adult-content, getting anything done is a lot harder.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jjeaff 5y agoHate to break it to you, but all these processors that are facilitating crypto are actively policing what you do with it. They will restrict you or kick you off their platform for using crypto for things they don't want you to use it for.
- tyingq 5y agoCurious how much work they put into this. Do they follow coinbase->private wallet->multiple payees at different times for lower amounts?
- paulpauper 5y agoThey have very advanced risk compliance. They know about Every trick in the book.. all tracked. You would need to do way more than that.
- grandmczeb 5y agoCoinbase has an extremely advanced chain analysis system. Simple tricks like that are unlikely to defeat it. https://www.coinbase.com/analytics https://www.coinbase.com/analytics
- tayo42 5y agoDark net people are pretty confident about tumbling. Or what about just converting coins.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y agoTransferring your coins to a tumbler flags your wallet address in tools like Chainalysis. They can't see where you sent them post-tumble, but they can see that you sent them to a tumbler, and that alone will be flagged on your account.
- SilverRed 5y agoCan you explain what the features on this page are being used for? Are you suggesting that if you buy coins from coinbase and they later detect that you are using them to pay for adult content that they will block your account?
- rodneyg_ 5y agoCoinbase, Venmo, and others are not enabling censorship resistant crypto payments. Coinbase does track who and where you send your crypto to, so in theory they can control what you do with it. The workaround would be to send your crypto to wallets not associated with them, even still.
- adrusi 5y agoCoinbase and Venmo's role is analogous to a bank that offers account holders debit cards that can access CC networks, not the organizations in control of the CC networks themselves.
- stale2002 5y ago> so in theory they can control what you do with it. And yet, that isn't happening to the same degree as visa or mastercard. So, for whatever reason, visa and mastercard are currently, successfully, forcing OnlyFans to do this kind of policy change, whereas coinbase is not. When the actual rubber meets the road, crypto is defacto, not as censored as visa or mastercard.
- lmm 5y agoYou could say the same about, say, Amex or Discover being de facto not as censored as Visa and Mastercard. The pressure is on Visa and Mastercard because they're where the vast majority of the money flow comes from.
- bcheung 5y agoBut most coins are public ledger. And the "know your customer" exchanges are not allowing privacy protecting coins.
- abecedarius 5y agoZcash is on Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, ...
- lui8906 5y agoAnd Zcash is not private by default (though can be shielded). Monero is private by default and is also available on Kraken and others.
- abecedarius 5y agoGood point about exchanges with Monero. (It's also on Coinbase, of the others I listed.) The "private by default" criticism is misleading: - While this is important in a design which mixes your transaction with a limited set of other recent transactions, in Zcash the privacy set is all of the shielded transactions ever. - It's not a "default" technically, it's a choice of transparent and shielded, both of which are useful. "Default" is a wallet UX question. I think the latest reference wallet auto-shields things so you don't have to remember to shield what comes in from a transparent transaction.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 3np 5y agoMaybe OnlyFans talk to these guys and see if they can worm something out https://spankchain.com/ https://spankchain.com/
- dj_gitmo 5y agoThis is the first time I've seen x-rated Corporate Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
- gogopuppygogo 5y agoCensorship resistant currencies are more like Monero…
- thinkmassive 5y agoHeh, there are already multiple streaming payments platforms built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, and they're not oblivious to this market: https://twitter.com/get_zion/status/1428417401297723397 https://twitter.com/get_zion/status/1428417401297723397
- x0x0 5y agoRight, but... is that 99% of their content, 99.9%, or 99.99%? Cause I bet it's at least 99%.
- gtirloni 5y agoHow do sites like Pornhub get paid then? Why can't OnlyFans switch to whatever provider they use?
- tshaddox 5y agoDon't pornography companies typically use payment processors that are considered pretty shady? Or, these days I'd imagine most of them accept cryptocurrency.
- gowld 5y agoThey are "shady" only by circular reasoning, because they handle porn.
- tylerhou 5y agoObjectively, they also charge much higher fees because of the high chargeback rates associated with porn. They also tend to process other unsavory transactions, which also have higher chargeback rates; hence they are "shady."
- lol768 5y ago> How do sites like Pornhub get paid then? At the moment I'm pretty sure they don't. At least, not via card-based payment systems.
- LegitShady 5y agopornhub is having exactly this issue. https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/pornhub-crypto-news from february
- dvdkon 5y ago> "This is good for adoption! Next up, Onlyfans." Sadly it doesn't seem to be working out as the crypto-enthusiast author might have wanted.
- rich_sasha 5y agoNothing particularly noble about porn, but it irks me that payment providers act as unofficial censors of business. Why should legal businesses be denied access to the de facto legal tender of 21st century? And on a whim of unelected CEOs...
- mdoms 5y agoI suspect it has less to do with their puritanical values and more to do with the enormous amount of fraud in the industry and the customer support load it places on them from the husbands, wives and children who swear up and down they aren't responsible for the charges found on the bill.
- rich_sasha 5y agoWell, ok, disable credit cards. But debit cards don’t have these protections, transactions are essentially immutable. I get they are less popular in the US but are probably, hmm, 70% of cards in Europe? So that’s a viable option.
- mdoms 5y agoMy Visa debit card has all of these protections.
- yurishimo 5y agoYeah, Visa and Mastercard debit cards carry the same fraud/abuse protections as a credit card. They usually don't cover all the extra crap the credit cards do (car rentals, etc) but they will absolutely give you your money back and perform chargebacks in cases of fraud or denial of services tendered.
- SilverRed 5y agoDebit cards have exactly the same fraud protections as credit cards as far as I know in Australia.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> The reason no one has made an OnlyFans before Patreon?
- buzzwords 5y agoThat was one first thought too
- tootie 5y agoOF is a creator platform at heart and not necessarily tied to sexually explicit content except by reputation. There is a likely a huge non-porn market for helping creators of all types monetize their content. The question will be if they can actually get people to completely change their mind about what the platform is for.
- fred_is_fred 5y agoYes there is a huge market for non-porn and it's all on Patreon.
- Kye 5y agoAnd there's Ko-fi for people who do the things that go on Patreon and find Patreon lacking, but want a platform with name recognition. They even added memberships and Discord integration recently.
- maccolgan 5y agoFor this use case, Patreon & OpenCollective (yes, OpenCollective) is far more established and offers many more features than OF. What's the point in using OF then?
- paulryanrogers 5y agoNetwork effects. Start with taboo yet high demand market then pivot.
- tehbeard 5y agoHow and where and what USP (Unique Selling Point) is there to OF that Patreon/OpenCollective are missing? "Network effects" doesn't mean jack, this isn't surfacing a plumber to a user on facebook because friends of friends have reviewed them in their local area..
- Sebb767 5y agoI'm not a market strategist, but I think you don't start to capitalize on the network effect by cutting away 95% of your network.
- joe_the_user 5y agoThis is going to be corporate suicide on a greater scale than Tumblr's policy. Just a note that Tumblr's anti-porn policy has been fairly leaky and users basically adapted to it. After a decline, the site now hosts nearly as much porn as previously. The problem is that onlyfans has a much bigger spotlight on it. So yeah, one wonders how people justify just killing their product.
- busymom0 5y agoHow did they adapt to it? Asking as someone who didn't know Tumblr was still around.
- bobbytit 5y agoI did not even know they had slipped!
- hellotomyrars 5y agoEven still they went from selling for a billion to being sold for three million. Maybe not entirely fair to blame it purely on the anti-porn push, as the general trends of social media platforms isn’t particularly kind to most companies, but it sure didn’t help. But agreed that I didn’t know OnlyFans had any meaningful non-porn content. And the business sense in this seems 100% geared towards a short term payout with no regard for what happens afterward.
- sonicggg 5y agoSounds like a great opportunity for another player to step in and fill the vacuum, given that OnlyFans already proved there's a market for this. Just like Vine vs TikTok. Also, weird that they would give up an entire market because of prude payment providers. Are these providers from Afghanistan? They should not have that much power over their customers. Maybe a crypto spin off could work.
- jachee 5y agoAnyone who does will face the same pressure from payout vendors. No one corporate wants to be actively involved in paying sex workers.
- autoexec 5y agoIs this still true? Porn sites seem to have no problems selling ad space, although it may not be to major brands. I suspect that eventually even that will change. How many people are really so put off by human sexuality that they'll refuse to buy a product that advertises on a porn site? How many of those people are going to porn sites to see those ads in the first place? I think that slowly corporations are going to dismiss the loud puritanical few that complain about it and that those who do will find advertising their brands along side porn is extremely profitable. Corporations have been using sex to sell their products for ages specifically because it's so effective. It's just a matter of time until they start being honest about it.
- jachee 5y agoThe original article in Variety[0] there’s a quote that specifically states “complying with our banks’ and payout vendors’ policies.” as the reason for the change. This seems to allude that the direct payments to the sex workers themselves are what were at-odds with those policies. 0. https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/onlyfans-ban-pornography-sexually-explicit-1235044904/ https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/onlyfans-ban-pornograp...
- 5y ago
- cryptonector 5y agoI think a lot of governments are starting to decide that social media and porn are a terrible waste of resources. If so, they're not wrong.
- cryptonector 5y agoTFA: > OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business. HN: s/of the pornography //
- frutiger 5y ago>TFA: >> OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business. >HN: > s/of the pornography //. …is getting out business?
- quickthrowman 5y agoPatreon’s 2020 annual net revenue is estimated at $80M. Last year onlyfans did $375M net revenue and 2021 is…was projected at $1.2B Without porn, onlyfans will do maybe $100M in 2022. It’s the difference between a $1.5B valuation and a $20B valuation.
- qzw 5y agoSome people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. -- Jamie Zawinski
- 5y ago
- belter 5y agoThis is the least of their problems and I am amazed none of their executives is not yet in jail: "The children selling explicit videos on OnlyFans" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983
- belter 5y agoFrom the article...I am also amazed at the downvotes. ====================== Schools have shared anonymous reports of pupils using the site, including a 16-year-old who boasted to her careers adviser about the amount of money she made on the site, and showed off her "exuberant" spending on Instagram. Underage creators and users of the site include victims of prior sexual abuse and those with mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, according to Childline counsellor notes. UK police forces say children have complained about their images being uploaded to the site without consent, and one 17-year-old reported being blackmailed. Missing children are appearing in OnlyFans videos, according to a US watchdog, which also says it has received reports of child sexual exploitation. "It is increasingly clear that OnlyFans is being used by children," says chief constable Simon Bailey, the UK's child protection lead. "The company is not doing enough to put in place the safeguards that prevent children exploiting the opportunity to generate money, but also for children to be exploited." In a statement, OnlyFans says it could not respond specifically to the anonymous reports we were told about without the account details. ======================
- hackinthebochs 5y agoNo verification will be bulletproof, and persistent people will occasionally get around it. I'm not sure what responsibility OnlyFans has beyond taking reasonable measures to prevent circumventing verification. The article mentions someone using their older sister's license as verification. Presumably they look similar. And that's somehow OnlyFan's fault? There's no reason why the executives would have any sort of personal liability. The anti-vice authoritarians will always come after any lucrative porn enterprise with these sensationalized stories. I'm surprised there are still people out there that eat it up.
- belter 5y ago
- wonderwonder 5y agoI honestly did not know they did anything besides porn. They have a really bad marketing department as I bet most people only know of them via porn (or I run in a slightly more degenerate circle).
- redisman 5y agoNot at all. If someone told anyone I know they have a onlyfans, I can’t think of anyone who would assume anything other than porn
- slg 5y agoIt is the same problem that Voat had. If you are are a platform that prioritizes minimal moderation in a market dominated by someone who doesn't, the primary reason to use your platform is because that content isn't allowed on the market leader. Voat only became "Reddit for white supremacists" because Reddit was pushing many of those users off their platform. Only Fans only became "Patreon for sex work" because Patreon didn't want those users on their platform. Anyone who wasn't one of those groups was better off just sticking with Reddit and Patreon and that only became truer as the reputation became more and more ingrained with the platform's brand.
- joe_the_user 5y agoIt is the same problem that Voat had. If you are are a platform that prioritizes minimal moderation in a market dominated by someone who doesn't, the primary reason to use your platform is because that content isn't allowed on the market leader. This seems like an opportunity, not a problem. Since most platforms simply don't get traction at all, you have something. It's opportunity that involves problems (or "challenges") but you've gotten somewhere on the market chessboard. And most "growth hacks" present challenges. That said, it's hard to believe that onlyfans wasn't aware they were effective a porn site. Maybe Voat was more naive since white supremacy doesn't monetize the way porn does but I'd be skeptical there too. The Internet has a zillion places for any population to go so there isn't a single "off-brand" that a undesirable population X is fated to go to.
- dvt 5y ago> This is going to be corporate suicide on a greater scale than Tumblr's policy. Strong disagree. They lined their coffers and now it's time to pivot. In fact, it's probably the perfect time to pivot. They are still relatively unknown, and their reputation hasn't been tarnished. Patreon is ripe for disruption. Pornography is not how you become a billion-dollar unicorn, which is I'm sure what they're eyeing (especially after their most recent raise).
- TrackerFF 5y agoI don't know - OF has one type of users, Patreon has another type of users. OF would need to completely re-brand themselves, name change and all - because seriously, what non-adult (or those very close to adult content) content-creators would use OF as a platform for their work? Onlyfans is synonymous with camgirls and porn
- Sebb767 5y ago> They are still relatively unknown, and their reputation hasn't been tarnished. Are you sure about that? This company seems pretty well known in the creator space, but not for hosting anything other than porn. At least in all communities I follow, having an OnlyFans account is synonymous with selling porn. > Pornography is not how you become a billion-dollar unicorn Pornhub would like to have a word with you. I'd say that, in fact, porn is one of the easiest ways to get there (as shown, for example, by OFs enormous growth).
- ljm 5y agoIf a top-notch sushi chef puts OnlyFans on their business card, I'm not going to expect them to be preparing fish on their page. They would be doing it on tiktok though. OnlyFans is instagram but for porn. If they want to escape that, they're gonna have to rebrand.
- deeviant 5y agoYou absolutely must be living in an alternate reality than I am. 1. Onlyfans is extremely well know to the point of being a meme, you couldn't be more wrong. Like what rock would you have to be hiding under to not have heard of OF? 2. Exactly what about Patreon seems ripe for disruption? Looking for something specific here, hopefully something that wouldn't apply to most every other company. 3. ??? But only-fans literally became a billion-dollar unicorn on the back of porn. Like, I'm speechless, really, I am.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Cullinet 5y agoI'm thinking of the wider insanity to create a economy so large as to almost acquire Web Scale, but only for a financial customer base of individuals who are lacking in the necessary skills and knowledge and motivation and experience to organise themselves into the pressure groups you absolutely have to have prepared to defend your business in the morality courts of post WWII America. Larry Flynt had his work cut out for him with much more modest content. EDIT to add : If you argue ad absurdam that everyone is going to be exposed to everyone for moral judgement of their rights to online existence, then maybe we need a more sophisticated and practically judicious and efficient system of adjudication of the legal entitlements and freedoms endowed to everyone, than "I know it when I see it ". This needs a logical codex. Literally a logical reduction of the comprehensive semantics used to describe unacceptable content. From which we can apply triage to emergency cases of accused indecency. Too many cases are heard so immediately in the courts of public opprobrium exclusively in hostile environments where the most sympathetic media is bound and restricted from venturing any actual support virtually ensuring that the rights of the publisher are lost. This is ignoring the issues of commercial withdrawal of essential services.
- imwillofficial 5y agoYou used many words and said nothing.
- iab 5y agoIts the inverse of the "Kevin from the office" meme
- nindalf 5y agoWhy pursue brevity in speech when a veritable volley of verbiage will provide the necessary and sufficient verisimilitude?
- imwillofficial 5y agoVerbosity and grandiloquence is no replacement for clarity of thought
- stjohnswarts 5y agoJust because they think they need to always be growing, rather than just raking in the cash. Their value will go to 1/4 practically overnight is what I'm guessing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dillondoyle 5y agoWhy isn't it their choice given the huge profit numbers presented in the leaked pitch deck? Are their server costs really more than hundreds of millions?
- ggggtez 5y agoI feel like Tumblr was actually growing when they made they change (which promptly killed their growth). I don't see how Only Fans is going to remain solvent without their core creators.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoI read that sex-workers have lost their livelihood during the pandemic due to lockdowns and have become more vulnerable. Then I read the interview of Aella, A OnlyFans creator making 5-figures on IndieHackers[1]. I always felt porn was an exploitative business so was never into it, But I gained respect for OnlyFans as a platform because it enabled people to move from dangerous, risky work to relatively safe work. As with any content platform, I understand that only perhaps top 5% might make sustainable business out of it but still it's a choice available. Now they've blown it, In order to chase after scale OnlyFans has decided to sacrifice their original customers. Fans of those music artists who are supposedly joining now should inform them that OnlyFans is robbing the livelihood and would be pushing many back to dangerous physical-sex work. [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/211-aella-savannah-solo https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/211-aella-savannah-solo
- bladelessninja2 5y ago> I gained respect for OnlyFans as a platform because it enabled people to move from dangerous, risky work to relatively safe work What about not getting into this and, thus, not being exposed to any risks? Sex-work nowadays is the matter of choice, it's not how it used to be in pre-internet era.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago> What about not getting into this and, thus, not being exposed to any risks? Sex-work nowadays is the matter of choice, it's not how it used to be in pre-internet era. Unfortunately it's often the only choice, If not we wouldn't be still finding women from poor countries dead in locked shipping containers in the harbors of developed countries.
- kergonath 5y agoThat has nothing to do with Only Fans, though. I wish we could have a grown-up discussion without someone shutting it down with “but trafficking” (quite often from a right-wing nutter who does not give a fig about the people in question, though I am not saying that you are). Trafficking and exploitation are bad, but it’s not unique to porn, and you can have porn without it.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoPossibly, but they will raise funds or do an IPO with the inertia and numbers from their porn days. One of the founders would be bought out in the next investment round.
- captainmuon 5y agoThis seems almost like an automatism by now, that platforms pivot away from sexual content after a while. Remember, in the beginning Snapchat was considered a sexting app where you could safely send nudes, although it was not advertized as such. They moved to a more regular social app after some time. Tinder was initially sometimes described as an app to find people nearby who want to hook up. Like a one-night-stand-radar. It quickly positioned itself as more traditional dating app (although very focused on visuals). And although not sexual, I think what happend to YikYak is similar. They started as this anarchic platform where you anonymously could talk shit about local topics and people. And then they realized that is probably not what they want because it causes outrage, so they tried to nerf that aspect (which is the whole allure of the platform). Sometimes the sanitizing works (Snapchat), sometimes it kills the app (Tumblr, YikYak). But in any case I'd wish there would still be a place for the anarchic, 'unmoral', wild ideas in our society.
- onetimeusename 5y agoThis is a late reply but my interpretation of the events is that the payment processors drove this decision and I think that would be for one or two reasons. 1) There is a high chargeback and dispute rate on porn. I don't know why. 2) OnlyFans has underage performers who get on there using fake IDs and there is not a very good way to stop that.