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No. If a journalist asking uncomfortable questions about your business endangers your business, then the problem is not the journalist, the problem is your busi

by yarcob 5y ago

No. If a journalist asking uncomfortable questions about your business endangers your business, then the problem is not the journalist, the problem is your business. If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months. But in the porn hub story, the uncomfortable truth is that there was a lot of involuntary porn on the platform. The NYT story just made it a bit harder to ignore that uncomfortable fact. And it's not like mastercard just changed their policy on a whim based on a single NYT story; credit card networks have always been known to kick all kinds of sex related services off the platform. Sex related businesses have been complaining about that for ever.

antattack 5y ago
"If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months." This heavily depends on the audience. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
- pc86 5y ago
  What exactly is the dog whistle here?
crdrost 5y ago
Thank you. Hearing these stories I always feel like commenters treat the companies involved as having no real agency. “Of course the New York Times article came out, so even if the information was sensationalized or whatever, MasterCard had to cut them off... It was out of MasterCard’s hands...” No, they made a political-humanitarian choice to use their gatekeeping to influence the world. Same with Apple choosing to go to war with CSAM, we can talk about worries about their methods or whatever but these big companies are making their own choices and they could choose to just ignore the problems with marketing spend, do like Amazon does and purchase ads about how green they are and how they improve local communities and whatever. They chose to instead take their own moral stances and act accordingly, they weren't forced to by some article. And as far as I can tell it's not a purely calculated profit move either. For that better OnlyFans and PornHub also have agency. So yes MasterCard is making a decision to put financial pressure on a sleazy industry overall, but then PornHub is making their own choices to screw over indie creators and bank on their bigger porn producers. They could instead say, “hey, the indie porn market is about to face this stressor, we could lean into it and become their main ally and then we will basically corner the market on the indie/amateur stuff as others flee.” The business case is not at all open-and-shut you-must-screw-over-the-indie-producers. The story link above acts like this decision was forced; that decision is not forced upon them either. OnlyFans doesn't have to stop doing adult content. They are choosing to pivot away, we'll see if their choice is successful.
Manuel_D 5y ago
There's a difference between asking uncomfortable questions and asking loaded questions that misrepresent reality. The description of the CSAM & revenge porn issue in mainstream media painted the picture that this was a substantial portion of the site's content. In reality few would ever encounter such content, and PornHub did everything feasible to try and remove and report it. No joke, outlets highlighted the fact that "dozens" of instances of this kind of illegal content was found as though this was some kind of epidemic. The fact that incidents measure in the dozens, when 6.8 million videos were uploaded to the site in 2019 alone[1] strikes me more as testament to the rarity of this content. 1. https://www.pcmag.com/news/pornhub-reveals-explicit-traffic-numbers?amp=true https://www.pcmag.com/news/pornhub-reveals-explicit-traffic-...
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > ...and PornHub did everything feasible to try and remove and report it. That's demonstrably not true, since PornHub did do more in response to the mainstream media coverage (e.g. finally require some kind of age verification for uploaders and purge unverified content). The only way they could be contextualized to have done "everything feasible" is within a fundamentally flawed model that they created, but it's precisely that model that needed to be reformed.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    I stand by what I actually wrote: that they did everything feasible to remove and report illegal content. Having more extensive verification of uploaders does not an expanded effort to remove and report illegal content that gets posted, but rather an effort to prevent said content from being uploaded in the first place. And as you pointed out, this comes with tradeoffs in the form of a more onerous sign up process. To be even more pedantic, they still haven't done everything they can do: they could shut down their whole site and eliminate 100% of illegal material with 100% confidence. Which, I suspect, is the goal of those propping up the narrative that PornHub was some sort of wild west where child pornography was welcome.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
bko 5y ago
I'm surprised the post didn't mention Operation Choke Point, an Obama era regulation that put more restrictions on payment processing for certain categories. I think it's easy to point to "religious groups" and op-eds and not to the overall regulatory push into more aspects of the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
- colpabar 5y ago
  from the same article > On August 17, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice, under the Trump Administration, announced that the Obama Administration's Operation Choke Point would officially end, stating that it was hurting legitimate businesses instead of preventing fraud as intended. maybe Biden has done something?
  - bko 5y ago
    Or how NY Times framed it: > Banks Tried to Curb Gun Sales. Now Republicans Are Trying to Stop Them. [0] Corporations like predictability. When you see regulations going back and forth with administration to administration, companies just pick the worst case scenario and go by that. That's why you didn't see any cars lower fuel mileage just because limitations were lifted during the last administration. I imagine MC and Visa are definitely anticipating more restrictions and don't want to be caught flat footed. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/politics/banks-gun-sales-republicans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/politics/banks-gun-sal...
    - foerbert 5y ago
      I'm not sure that reasoning would apply to something like payment processing. It absolutely makes sense when you are manufacturing a physical good. No point in designing a thing that you might not be able to sell for very long, particularly when you're dealing with something like automobiles. Plus honestly, which car buyer wants less miles per gallon? Payment processing though is rather different. You can do it today and make some money, and tomorrow you can stop. It's obviously not quite so agile, but the point roughly holds. Unless Visa and Mastercard require years of payments from OF to pay for their costs of starting to do business with OF... there's no real point to not doing this now. They can stop later if needed without a real problem.
smsm42 5y ago
In a perfect world where all people are rational, and the media is largely truthful and professional, politicians are incorruptible and bound by laws, and businesses love to take care of their clients - sure, it may work that way. In a real world, where people are prone to moral panics, the press is driven by clicks and agendas, politicians are corrupt and routinely abuse power, and businesses love to cover their asses - a single accusation in anything sex-related could cause a lot of damage to any business, whether truthful or not.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
That's not really a fair claim. Journalists are human and some will do anything to up their game whether they're being honest or not or can corroborate their story. Thus they call it an opinion piece rather than "news". Whether that's the case here is up to anyone who wants to research it.
jbverschoor 5y ago
Except the ones that make them big $$$. Same with banks. It’s never about anything moral or legal. It’s always a risk-reward issue. Banks are more than happy to work, as long as they can profit enough
jollybean 5y ago
"If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months." Definintely disagree. Stories can be published that are sided, contain bad facts, are missing highly relevant facts, and the narrative can be set in the public consciousness as a matter of record forever.

by yarcob 5y ago

antattack 5y ago

"If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months." This heavily depends on the audience. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus

pc86 5y ago
What exactly is the dog whistle here?

crdrost 5y ago

Thank you. Hearing these stories I always feel like commenters treat the companies involved as having no real agency. “Of course the New York Times article came out, so even if the information was sensationalized or whatever, MasterCard had to cut them off... It was out of MasterCard’s hands...” No, they made a political-humanitarian choice to use their gatekeeping to influence the world. Same with Apple choosing to go to war with CSAM, we can talk about worries about their methods or whatever but these big companies are making their own choices and they could choose to just ignore the problems with marketing spend, do like Amazon does and purchase ads about how green they are and how they improve local communities and whatever. They chose to instead take their own moral stances and act accordingly, they weren't forced to by some article. And as far as I can tell it's not a purely calculated profit move either. For that better OnlyFans and PornHub also have agency. So yes MasterCard is making a decision to put financial pressure on a sleazy industry overall, but then PornHub is making their own choices to screw over indie creators and bank on their bigger porn producers. They could instead say, “hey, the indie porn market is about to face this stressor, we could lean into it and become their main ally and then we will basically corner the market on the indie/amateur stuff as others flee.” The business case is not at all open-and-shut you-must-screw-over-the-indie-producers. The story link above acts like this decision was forced; that decision is not forced upon them either. OnlyFans doesn't have to stop doing adult content. They are choosing to pivot away, we'll see if their choice is successful.

Manuel_D 5y ago

There's a difference between asking uncomfortable questions and asking loaded questions that misrepresent reality. The description of the CSAM & revenge porn issue in mainstream media painted the picture that this was a substantial portion of the site's content. In reality few would ever encounter such content, and PornHub did everything feasible to try and remove and report it. No joke, outlets highlighted the fact that "dozens" of instances of this kind of illegal content was found as though this was some kind of epidemic. The fact that incidents measure in the dozens, when 6.8 million videos were uploaded to the site in 2019 alone[1] strikes me more as testament to the rarity of this content. 1. https://www.pcmag.com/news/pornhub-reveals-explicit-traffic-numbers?amp=true https://www.pcmag.com/news/pornhub-reveals-explicit-traffic-...

tablespoon 5y ago
> ...and PornHub did everything feasible to try and remove and report it. That's demonstrably not true, since PornHub did do more in response to the mainstream media coverage (e.g. finally require some kind of age verification for uploaders and purge unverified content). The only way they could be contextualized to have done "everything feasible" is within a fundamentally flawed model that they created, but it's precisely that model that needed to be reformed.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  I stand by what I actually wrote: that they did everything feasible to remove and report illegal content. Having more extensive verification of uploaders does not an expanded effort to remove and report illegal content that gets posted, but rather an effort to prevent said content from being uploaded in the first place. And as you pointed out, this comes with tradeoffs in the form of a more onerous sign up process. To be even more pedantic, they still haven't done everything they can do: they could shut down their whole site and eliminate 100% of illegal material with 100% confidence. Which, I suspect, is the goal of those propping up the narrative that PornHub was some sort of wild west where child pornography was welcome.
  - tablespoon 5y ago

bko 5y ago

I'm surprised the post didn't mention Operation Choke Point, an Obama era regulation that put more restrictions on payment processing for certain categories. I think it's easy to point to "religious groups" and op-eds and not to the overall regulatory push into more aspects of the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

colpabar 5y ago
from the same article > On August 17, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice, under the Trump Administration, announced that the Obama Administration's Operation Choke Point would officially end, stating that it was hurting legitimate businesses instead of preventing fraud as intended. maybe Biden has done something?
- bko 5y ago
  Or how NY Times framed it: > Banks Tried to Curb Gun Sales. Now Republicans Are Trying to Stop Them. [0] Corporations like predictability. When you see regulations going back and forth with administration to administration, companies just pick the worst case scenario and go by that. That's why you didn't see any cars lower fuel mileage just because limitations were lifted during the last administration. I imagine MC and Visa are definitely anticipating more restrictions and don't want to be caught flat footed. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/politics/banks-gun-sales-republicans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/politics/banks-gun-sal...
  - foerbert 5y ago
    I'm not sure that reasoning would apply to something like payment processing. It absolutely makes sense when you are manufacturing a physical good. No point in designing a thing that you might not be able to sell for very long, particularly when you're dealing with something like automobiles. Plus honestly, which car buyer wants less miles per gallon? Payment processing though is rather different. You can do it today and make some money, and tomorrow you can stop. It's obviously not quite so agile, but the point roughly holds. Unless Visa and Mastercard require years of payments from OF to pay for their costs of starting to do business with OF... there's no real point to not doing this now. They can stop later if needed without a real problem.

smsm42 5y ago

In a perfect world where all people are rational, and the media is largely truthful and professional, politicians are incorruptible and bound by laws, and businesses love to take care of their clients - sure, it may work that way. In a real world, where people are prone to moral panics, the press is driven by clicks and agendas, politicians are corrupt and routinely abuse power, and businesses love to cover their asses - a single accusation in anything sex-related could cause a lot of damage to any business, whether truthful or not.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

That's not really a fair claim. Journalists are human and some will do anything to up their game whether they're being honest or not or can corroborate their story. Thus they call it an opinion piece rather than "news". Whether that's the case here is up to anyone who wants to research it.

jbverschoor 5y ago

Except the ones that make them big $$$. Same with banks. It’s never about anything moral or legal. It’s always a risk-reward issue. Banks are more than happy to work, as long as they can profit enough

jollybean 5y ago

"If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months." Definintely disagree. Stories can be published that are sided, contain bad facts, are missing highly relevant facts, and the narrative can be set in the public consciousness as a matter of record forever.