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OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
- yeldarb 5y agoWonder if this was all a publicity stunt to put pressure on their payment processors.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoPossibly. The amount of coverage this got in the financial press (particularly the FT) would seem to support this theory. Additionally, it's interesting that the reversal happened after he named the banks in his FT interview yesterday.
- tandr 5y agoSince FT article is paywalled, would you be kind to quote these names here?
- LeftHandPath 5y agoIf so, I think that's a good thing. This should bring attention to payment processors' ability to effectively kill any type of business they don't agree with. I'm not sure what the solution is. Should banks be forced to behave as a common carrier? Or do we want private companies to be able to ban the public from purchasing things like pornography and firearms by stopping adults from completing legal transactions?
- actually_a_dog 5y agoLet's turn the question around instead: why shouldn't banks be forced to behave as common carriers, at least when it comes to things like processing payments, providing checking accounts, and other such basic services? What good does it do to start a business, only to be told by the banking industry that you can't open a bank account for your perfectly legal business? I'm not sure if I'd include lending in "basic services." That seems a bit more debatable to me.
- bluGill 5y agoI'd include lending in basic services. However it would tie it to pure risk, along with don't let a customer get into too much debt. Pure risk means you only get to look at risk from an actuarial/numbers perspective, nothing more. Too much debt I'm not quite sure how to word into proper legalise but that needs to be done before we can actually do this - maybe just better bankruptcy laws so that risk goes up too high before the customer has too much debt?
- actually_a_dog 5y agoThe sticking point in my mind for lending is that risk undoubtedly varies by industry. It's not really very sensible to force banks to lend money to businesses without considering what industry they're in. At that point, how do you differentiate a sensible underwriting decision from unfair discrimination?
- dsr_ 5y agoInterest rate and documentation. Pretend that a batch of YC startups are all getting loans rather than ownership purchases. What effective interest rate are they paying? What is the default rate where the startup dies before acquisition/profitability/IPO? Write a heuristic to determine a fair interest rate given the current prevailing rates, financial history of the company in question, financial history of similar companies, and similar objective and quantifiable subjective factors. Document it. When someone complains, demonstrate to your regulator that your procedure was fair, reasonable, and applied evenhandedly, and to the extent possible is consistent with actual outcomes.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoI'm not sure what you're getting at here. Any new batch of startups is so risky, I can't imagine a bank lending them a cent at any non-usurious interest rate until they've been in business for a few years.
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- the-dude 5y agoDutch banks terminated accounts of Corona-critics / anti-vax'ers / conspiracy nuts ( you choose how to call them ). I wonder if climate change critics are next.
- sethammons 5y agoWow, source? I'm not opposed to looking it up, but a claim like that will come across stronger if you link something
- the-dude 5y agoDutch source : https://www.metronieuws.nl/in-het-nieuws/binnenland/2021/08/banken-blokkeren-rekeningen-antivax-viruswaarheid/ https://www.metronieuws.nl/in-het-nieuws/binnenland/2021/08/... When I submitted it, I tried to find English sources, but couldn't.
- glitchc 5y agoPayment processors are heavily regulated by govts in the jurisdictions they operate in. They're not operating in isolation, rather they act as choke points for policy enforcement.
- ikerdanzel 5y agoAmerican companies can only understand lawsuit. Microsoft, Google, Apple as examples in the pasts have been sued to behave. Banks are predominantly protected from lawsuits. Allows class action lawsuits and send ceos to death sentences like what commonly happen in China, problems will auto resolve. Bankers in America rarely get jail sentences. Even Madoff managed to get off several times while a black guy peddling something legit will get shot first and as question later.
- alphabetting 5y agoI doubt it. I'd imagine one of their top priorities is relationship with models on their site. It's not like they have some crazy proprietary platform that couldn't be copied. If it came out this was a head fake it would damage that trust with models.
- smt88 5y agoThe CEO actually blamed banks, not payment processors. He specifically said MasterCard was not to blame, but name-dropped banks that he did blame. I don't think payment processors would care at all because they're an oligopoly. I doubt most banks would care much either, but maybe they are afraid of losing business from large-volume merchants. Most likely some alternative banks stepped up and told OnlyFans they'd love to work with them.
- kilroy123 5y agoI figured it was some kind of publicity stunt from the beginning. There is no way they didn't know this would kill the company.
- ibejoeb 5y agoAbsolutely. They may indeed have had pressure from the banks, but this is a solvable problem. They're servicing pornhub. If this is just about KYC, they can roll out or use one of the myriad identity verification services.
- EE84M3i 5y agoThe tweet from their official account[1] reads: Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard. We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change. OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators. This seems to match your theory. [1]: https://twitter.com/OnlyFans/status/1430499277302816773 https://twitter.com/OnlyFans/status/1430499277302816773
- ziml77 5y agoGiven that people predictably started leaving the platform, I doubt it. There isn't a social network or content discoverability aspect to the service, so hopping to somewhere else is easy. And people will remain wary of OnlyFans since they could try to restrict content again since they've already shown from the original announcement that they don't really care about supporting NSFW content creators
- onion2k 5y agoOne effect of the proposed ban would presumably to motivate content creators to look for alternative platforms. If it was a publicity stunt it seems like it would have had a pretty big downside.
- d3nj4l 5y ago"Suspended" aka they're waiting for all of this to blow over.
- Mindwipe 5y agoI think it's more likely that the banks and Mastercard that were pulling service to them freaked out about being trending topics for three days and agreed to reinstate everything.
- wccrawford 5y agoI have to think there must also be some requirement that OnlyFans work harder to prevent underage porn as well. Half the news I heard about this mentioned how much of it was on there.
- adjkant 5y agoWhile there may be some, it is worthwhile looking into where that news was coming from. Much of that push was coming from NCOSE, which is pretty much a literal puritanical force. They had success recently with Pornhub, and then moved to OnlyFans. NCOSE taking credit themselves for pressuring the payment processors: https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/exploitation-website-onlyfans-forced-to-change-thanks-to-ncoses-work-with-payment-processors/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/exploitation-webs... NCOSE is more or less using the "for the children" approach to try and stomp out all pronogrpahy generally. Their president "has helped draft ordinances to end or curb the impact of sexually oriented businesses such as pornography shops, strip clubs, and related establishments" according to their own website. Members of their board have founded and led pushes to ban and discourage all pornohprahy entirely. https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/staff/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/staff/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/board/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/board/ A critique on the Pornhub article / case, describing its reliance on evangelical groups: https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war-pornhub https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war... No doubt that some positive changes came in the Pornhub case, hence the significant lack of public pushback there. But I think their true goals are being exposed as they try to push further. Pushing on a platform that has become a key income source for many during a global pandemic was probably not the best idea for them in hindsight. It also got them a lot of public attention they probably didn't want, in good part due to a large voice and push over many recent months by sex workers, many of whom got a voice in articles in the media recently instead of only sources similar to NCOSE.
- TheMagicHorsey 5y agoIt's extraordinary that payment processors don't have any regulations that force them to serve businesses in a neutral fashion. It's weird that they're allowed to play morality police with the Internet even though they have no formal governmental role as such. You'd think that once the government decides what is and isn't acceptable, the processors would follow that lead. But instead they go a different, more restrictive way. I guess they want to be everyone's prudish uncle, instead of payment processors.
- imglorp 5y agoThere is lobbying/regulatory/activist pressure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry
- paulgb 5y agoExactly, I don't believe that payment processors want to play the role of gatekeepers (after all, they lose revenue for every customer they turn down). They probably just want to show that they can self-regulate to give Congress less of a reason to pass something like this[1]. I think people underestimate how much moral regulation in the US actually comes top-down under the guise of anti-trafficking law (remember SESTA/FOSTA and how it killed Craigslist personals?) [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/808/text?r=8&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/808/...
- axelroze 5y agoThe bigger you are the stronger is the pull of the average.
- simonh 5y agoI don't see how common carrier type regulation in the financial services industry could work. You're essentially forcing people to lend out or risk their money with anyone who asks regardless of their financial status or the risk profile of their business. Surely choosing what business risks you are willing to take must be some sort of right? The only way out of that would be blanket government insurance for payment processors, but that would essentially be a massive subsidy and open to rampant abuses.
- throwawaymanbot 5y agoAlthough not an onlyfans fan, these new Puritan times are dangerous for everything the West supposedly stands for. The bankers who allegedly have laundered drug money and goodness knows who elses dirty money, now seem to have an issue with those who use the platform safely and responsibly (and all the rest of the OF users) on that platform.
- ren_engineer 5y agoif they are smart they'll move to crypto and hopefully start a movement away from these centralized payment processors. Stuff like this might finally be what causes mainstream adoption
- ibejoeb 5y agoI can't be the only one who's not hot on crypto. Do we really want a world where even the simplest transaction is permanently recorded publicly and cryptographically sealed? The governments will just mandate custodial wallets and we'll be back in the same place with respect to things like forfeitability.
- lunarboy 5y agoI still don't understand this argument, maybe because I just don't understand enough about crypto currency itself. What coin is stable enough to use as currency? Unless OnlyFans could pay its employees and services with that said coin (who could then use it elsewhere directly), the company would still have to convert to fiat currency right? And wouldn't that itself affect the coin price?
- skohan 5y agoI am very much a cryptocurrency skeptic, but you could imagine a token which is only used as a medium of exchange. I.e. you convert your USD into the token immediately before making the payment, and the recipient converts it back to USD milliseconds later.
- flerchin 5y agoaka "Our valuation is dropping like a rock"
- amelius 5y ago"But look, now it's soaring like never before"
- doikor 5y agoMore likely "we managed to get a deal in place with our payment processor". The only reason why they were going to do this was their payment processor saying they would stop processing their payments.
- Pxtl 5y agoAFAIK a relevant credit card company said "we haven't done anything"
- doikor 5y agoWell Mastercard did update their rules. They did not specifically go and say anything to onlyfans but onlyfans investors/banks looked at the new rules and interpreted them as "well this is now super risky of being shut down at any time" and stopped pumping in more money / loans. Only way to continue from there is to get an actual promise/contract from the processor that no we will not shutdown your stuff on a whim. (or the nuclear option of getting rid of this risky content) Here are the updated rules https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/protecting-our-network-protecting-you-preventing-illegal-adult-content-on-our-network/ https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/protecting... Basically starting October 15th every new piece of content uploaded to OnlyFans needs to be reviewed and have age verification done for all the people involved.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y agoBut if I'm an investor, I would be worried that Visa/Mastercard could get pressed by one of the anti-porn groups at any moment, and then poof, there goes my investment. It's better from a risk perspective to go ahead and get OF into compliance by banning adult material before buying into the platform.
- 300bps 5y agoSo it was a publicity stunt after all.
- TillE 5y agoThe extremely quick turnaround does suggest this as one of the more plausible explanations, but it's an incredibly stupid, counterproductive publicity stunt if so.
- danjac 5y agoWhat's next? YouTube banning videos? SoundCloud banning music?
- dudul 5y agoI would love to see the transcript of the conversations to implement this ban in the 1st place. What did they think would happen?
- mcphage 5y agoIt's possible that all this is what they knew would happen, but they needed to go through it to get some leverage on someone upstream.
- mothsonasloth 5y agoWhen are we going to see a Medium or Substack for pornographic content? Even better an opensource LAMP or MEAN stack to host your own adult entertainment site?
- rattray 5y agoThe hard part is the banking and payments side of things. That's where a new entrant would be useful (but unfortunately also ~impossible in the US).
- rootsudo 5y agoJust a better argument to force crypto, get a few exclusivity models and even if you have one or a few porn sex worker influences as a loss leader, you gain leverage - then it's worth it.
- janetacarr 5y agoI wish this were true, but it's not that simple. For businesses, there is a lot of 'unknowns' with Crypto. It's regulated differently across jurisdictions, and Crypto in the USA is subject to things like anti-money-laundering and different taxable events when it's exchanged.
- kamarg 5y agoMany of the adult sites that have tried using crypto for payments have reported that less than two percent of their users are willing to pay with crypto. Until it becomes as easy as using a credit card or PayPal, crypto isn't going to be the savior of adult content.
- psychometry 5y agoI'm sure these puritanical payment gateways and processors have no problem taking fees for sales of guns, cigarettes, and all varieties of snake oil. But porn? No that's simply too much!
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- andy_ppp 5y agoI guess you can expect companies to start using the defence of many politicians, just create as much noise and kick up as much dirt as possible distracting from whatever the main issue is (in this case child porn on your platform [1]). They were never going to ban adult content were they. Cynical in the extreme. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58255865 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58255865 EDIT: I’ve updated this comment with a BBC investigation that suggests they had quite lax child porn policies. Do any of the down-voters really believe OnlyFans were genuine about removing all adult content?
- vermilingua 5y agoI guess you’re just using the offence of many current politicians, attack everything you disagree with under the pretense that it aids paedophiles.
- andy_ppp 5y agoNot at all, I was just wondering if OnlyFans banning adult content was a distraction tactic (from the BBC investigation or something else), it seems extremely likely as it doesn’t make any sense for a porn site to ban pornography!
- ddtaylor 5y agoWhat makes you think that OF is any different than any other platform? Do you think they all struggle with this problem or do you think it's unique to OF?
- wolf550e 5y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865
- pc86 5y agoWhat evidence do you have that there was that sort of content on the platform?
- ToddWBurgess 5y agoThe headline should have "For Now" appended to the end
- haasted 5y agoIsn't "OnlyFans without sexual content" basically Patreon?
- TaupeRanger 5y agoHasn't this comment been made 100 times ready?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- haasted 5y agoPossibly. Haven't read through all 5k comments on the previous posts. Also, it was actually meant as a genuine question, not a snarky drive-by comment. I have only superficial knowledge of both platforms, so it would be nice to know whether there are some fundamental differences beyond "NSFW / Not NSFW".
- pacbard 5y agoI guess they offer similar subscription services but it seems to me (at least) that they serve completely different niches. For example, if a content creator says "check out my OnlyFans for subscriber-only content" versus "check out my Patreon for subscriber-only content", I would expect that they are selling completely different things. Another parallel could be comparing HomeDepot and HobbyLobby. Both stores sell you things for DIY stuff, but they target different kinds of DIYers (even if they could sell some of the same items).
- evancox100 5y agoYa, you’d suspect one is selling porn and one isn’t, at least that’s what I would have done.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FalconSensei 5y ago
- rootsudo 5y agoMy biggest shock was how much "PR" was generated on Reddit, and how many sexworkers really do use the platform. I knew it was a thing, I knew of the memes, but to see both sides in arms over a company vs branding, creating their own website and content - and vanity domain as well. People really do just want a one click solution for creating adult content, and consuming adult content. And the memes, I think they're pretty toxic, 4chan, incel, reddit, twitter memes - I never knew there was that much angst.
- whymauri 5y agoit's pretty huge COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard. There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine. Across the whole world, too*. Many can easily make more than min wage, and in certain niches you probably don't even have to be 'conventionally beautiful' (sorry to use this term, but it's important I think) to make a living or solid portion of a living on there. For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial jobs with a risk of COVID? And if you price model right, you don't need thousands of fans, just a couple really dedicated superfans/whales. * Consider the value of dollars/euros/pounds in poorer countries!
- treesknees 5y agoBhad Bhabie (cash me outside meme girl) made over $1M in 6 hours and said she could retire right now from the amount of money she has made off OF. And she's not doing "porn" or even posting fully nude photos. There's a big movement to gain a lot of followers on social media like TikTok and then redirect those followers to their $5/month OnlyFans. There are a lot of people making a living or at least significantly boosting their income from this model, and they don't have to leave the house to do it. https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9550662/bhad-bhabie-earns-1-million-dollars-onlyfans https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9550662/b...
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoOF is probably similar to Etsy, where the 95th percentile make millions and the median income is $0.
- 63 5y agoI'm curious how much this may have impacted their users regardless. I imagine that a lot of people learned that relying on a single platform is dangerous and how important it is to diversify your online profile. I don't think people will trust Onlyfans anymore.
- Jgrubb 5y agoNetwork effects will always win, regardless of the trustworthiness of the platform.
- BarryMilo 5y agoAs demonstrated time and again by Facebook.
- wongarsu 5y agoAnd youtube. Creators constantly want to move away from youtube with it's content-id with incredibly slow appeals process that makes most types of fair use nearly impossible, it's demonetization that intransparently makes your videos unprofitable because you said the wrong word or made the wrong sound, the blatant favoritism when it comes to the "trending" page, etc. But the viewers are on youtube, and network effects keep the viewers from switching. So there's just a graveyard of failed youtube alternatives.
- marc_io 5y agoThat's true, until the viewer profile change or disappear, which happens very, very slowly, but it happens anyway. It happened several times in history. Nothing lasts forever.
- minsc__and__boo 5y agoI think streaming video is a different beast, because the market is littered with loss leaders. It's hard for content creators to switch to another platform when the only profitable ones are subscription based (and not competitive). Even Youtube, for all its users and being part of an existing advertising company, struggles to break even (reportedly).
- matrix2596 5y agoNothing like (good/bad) publicity!
- BrianOnHN 5y agoThey just released an app on the app stores days prior to the "ban" announcement. Nice PR stunt for some downloads. But obvious manipulation if the walled-gardens cared about that sort of thing.
- apricot 5y agoTheir free Reddit ad campaign is over now.
- ipsin 5y agoI doubt this nets out as "free". The campaign was "this ship is sinking" (for people doing adult content), and subscribers and content creators have been acting accordingly.
- traveler01 5y agoAs a Gen-Z also recently graduated (less than 5 years), I can assure you, the fact these platforms are so big is because being graduated isn't worth anything these days. You are lucky or you are not.
- CabSauce 5y agoGetting a degree in a field that has jobs helps too.
- whymauri 5y agoIt helps, but for many it was/is not enough. Trust me, the job search was brutal even as a computer science graduate from MIT. I had an offer and it was revoked (and companies that I had offers from pre-pandemic would not engage anymore). I'm almost certain that I have classmates who had OF at one point during the last year and I know for certain from Twitter there's Ivy League, Cal, and Stanford students on there. Especially at the beginning of the pandemic when nobody knew how long it might last and the stock market was free diving to what was seemingly oblivion. I guess my point is that in mid 2020, it felt like there were no degrees that had plentiful jobs short of being: 1. A close-to-graduating worker in health or medicine. 2. A finance-compatible major from a Top 15 school with exceptional math, statistics, and inference ability. Likely, previous internships. And there really weren't that many of these. Jobs at software companies that were typically not competitive were getting flooded by top grads and early career applicants w/ 1-3 years of experience who had offers revoked or got laid off. I fought tooth and nail for the offers I got, and the company I joined ended up being terrible -- so go figure. Now consider that there are like, 500k students *not from top schools* graduating in STEM that same year. Suddenly the 'study something useful' mantra fell apart in the matter of months (weeks?).
- brianwawok 5y agoWhat is unemployment among software devs? It's real real low. As someone who hires devs, I could easily hire 2-3 devs right now. However I live in a tier3 city, and don't want to do the remote dev thing right now. If I post a remote job I get 5,000 candidates, if I post a local job I get 0-3. As a new grad, I bet winning a remote job would be hard. But pick a city, any city. Always looking for devs. If still not landing jobs, its a matter of interview skills and non-school resume experience.
- duxup 5y agoMy understanding was that they were being cut off by payment processors and banks and that drove the decision. Was this resolved?
- busymom0 5y agoI would also like to know on whether it's possible for someone to start their own payment processors? There are tutorials on how to start an ISP, so should be possible for payment processors too no?
- Daedren 5y agoNo because the banks from which the payments come from must support said processors. Many countries have their own local payment processors, but it's still only a country-wide thing.
- busymom0 5y agoSo I guess starting a bank is the next step?
- elliekelly 5y agoPayment processing isn’t something a bank gets to decide on their own either. It’s decided by a group. In the US it’s NACHA:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACHA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACHA
- jtbayly 5y agoI don’t see any mention of payment processing in there. Have another link?
- LegitShady 5y agoSounds like a cartel gatekeeping the role of processor, and then the processors can put pressure on any business to do what they want or face “the consequences” which means no income (aside from crypto which most people don’t know how to use).
- cblconfederate 5y ago"Onlyfans decides not to go under"
- anothernewdude 5y agoI don't understand the platform at all. I understand it's huge in the adult space, but it seems impossible to actually find anything on the platform. There's no discoverability (as far as I can tell). Is the discoverability problem solved by other platforms?
- TillE 5y agoWell, it's like Patreon. Nobody goes to the index of patreon.com to browse.
- asdff 5y ago> Is the discoverability problem solved by other platforms? Reddit, snapchat, and instagram mainly
- vmception 5y agoYes, the discoverability is solved by other platforms, most people have a personal or desired personal connection to the creators, and find their only fans through the creator, or communities the creator set up. People don't pay for anonymous porn. People that only consume anonymous porn are not in this market at all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jfoster 5y agoThey know their platform. I presume that prior to the announcement they had tried everything they could to continue BAU. The fact that they're able to now reverse the announcement makes me wonder what changed. Did they find a new banking or payout partner? Existing ones had a change of heart? Feels like there would be more to it than these possibilities.
- dannyw 5y agoBanks: if we ban onlyfans and other widely popular services, a decent number of people might actually turn into crypto and make our business extinct.
- jfoster 5y agoBut OF didn't announce a move to crypto payments. They announced that they were wiping out a massive amount of their current business in order to stick with traditional payments.
- SilverRed 5y agoOr more likely, it might raise eyebrows at how payment processors control the world right now and lead to some kind of legal action.
- jliptzin 5y agoMy guess is they are just paying higher transaction fees now
- jfoster 5y agoThat would make sense from a perspective of the transactions being higher risk, so higher transaction fees could cover the additional risk. Why would they not have explored that option in the first place, though?
- jliptzin 5y agoProbably just a ploy to make the payment processors think they would actually go through with banning porn on their platform. No one actually cares about the porn except a very small percentage of mostly religious nut jobs. They just wanted more money.
- delaaxe 5y agoSo are they going to use stablecoins/doge?
- 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 planned move that was now canceled). 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)?
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoInvestments aren’t loans, so you don’t have to pay it back the way a loan might be.
- onlyfansfan 5y agoThanks, I guess I was wrong on that count. It makes sense. The first part continues to baffle me. If I have a proven profit of $X/year and I have the market captured (speaking on the order of 10% or 50%, doesn't matter), how does it make sense to seek investment in the order of 100*X? What's the goal? Why not just keep milking the proven cash cow and stop growing and risking?
- eloisant 5y agoThat's a different strategy - you can be shooting for a sustainable medium size company, or try to become a tech behemoth. Both choices are valids, but investors tend to push you towards growing forever. So if your board is already controlled by investors (as opposed to founders or employees), they'll encourage you to raise more to grow more.
- tinco 5y agoIt doesn't really make sense in my opinion, so maybe I'm the wrong person to answer, but I think it's a game of statistics. OF has captured a certain market, and is making a certain amount of money. Of companies like that, a small but not insignificant number grows to super major size, the size that can do an IPO and exit for billions. The current owners are OF are trying to capitalize on the value investors put on that possibility, and on the reduced risk of having so much money invested. With each investment round the risk of failure goes down a little, and the risk of major success goes up a little. A major example of this is Facebook. It was profitable and well established, why would they need extra investment or an IPO? Then out of nowhere Facebook bought Instagram, and Whatsapp, and it is clear now that without those two acquisitions Facebook could have been in serious trouble. The absolute crapton of cash they got effectively took away risk. So it's a chance to de-risk and cash out of OF, and let the big boys play on taking OF to an IPO.
- sergiotapia 5y agoThese women were grooming children on apps like Tiktok. Good riddance!
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoWell, maybe they realized that sexually explicit stuff is their only reason to exist. Otherwise I can't see why people wouldn't flock to, say, Patreon.
- arwinamogul 5y agoThey did mention that it's going to be adjusted set of rules when it comes to content. I see this moving to crypto for payment.
- balozi 5y agoI suspect the payment processing argument is a convenient red herring. Adult sites and their transaction service providers process payments all the time, some at incredible scale.
- howolduis 5y agowhat if this was a big scam to get web archivists to freak out and subscribe to as many people before their content is gone forever? /s
- gootler 5y agoNothing like a great sex place! I wish they would move to oculus and get me some vr, then I wouldn't have a need for women at all, yay!
- PaulHoule 5y agoOnlyFans had creators that weren't pornographic?
- merricksb 5y agoMore active discussion at top of front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300966
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoThanks! We'll merge those threads.
- mkl95 5y agoI've never understood the appeal of OnlyFans. If your goal is to consume adult content, then you can get it in massive amounts for free, and without using an app. If your goal is to make money from online sex work, the ~$180 average monthly earnings are simply appaling when you compare them to traditional porn sites, where some workers earn that money in a day.
- WesleyLivesay 5y agoI'm sure everybody has their reasons. But on your second point. My guess is that the $180 average on OF is WAY higher than the Average monthly income on any other site for this type of content. Some workers may earn massively more on other sites, but certainly not the majority.
- wombat-man 5y agoYour average porn girl might make more to start, but unless they really take off, they aren't making very much. Also they get paid per shoot, not based on views. With OF they get monthly recurring revenue for their content. Performers can chat with their admirers to keep them interested and it's more of a patron/artist relationship I guess. With OF, they also have full control over the content they make, when it goes out, how long it stays out there and all that. For viewers, it's definitely harder to browse than a regular porn site or pornhub or something, but if you end up finding a few pages you like, chatting, buying mementos. It becomes a lot more immersive than just scrolling around an ocean of videos.
- harryf 5y agoThis is a great video that explains the success of OnlyFans - https://youtu.be/nsK_6VSmlMI https://youtu.be/nsK_6VSmlMI Also this video does a reasonable job of analyzing the UX and understanding the user base https://youtu.be/auG2E53dFas https://youtu.be/auG2E53dFas
- dragonwriter 5y ago> If your goal is to make money from online sex work, the ~$180 average monthly earnings are simply appaling That “average”, as is pointed out every time the statistic gets raised including when the story focusing on it was itself on HN, both includes conpletely inactive accounts and excludes tips—which are a significant (possibly the major) source of income for most performers—so it has nothing to do with the actual experience of active content producers on the site.
- pW9GLKxm9taFEhz 5y agoI guess it wasn't really a requirement imposed on them by Mastercard as they claimed.
- DangitBobby 5y agoThat's not very charitable. The pressure could be very real. We still don't know whether they will survive the decision they've made.
- pW9GLKxm9taFEhz 5y agoWas it charitable for them to blame Mastercard when they are now blaming banks?
- rtkwe 5y agoOr they came up with ways of placating MC/Visa around better moderation.
- robertlagrant 5y agoMeanwhile my platform for Henry Winkler impersonators goes unloved.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gerpsh 5y agoOnlyFonz?
- robertlagrant 5y agoYou win the fridge!
- IncRnd 5y agoYou have to realize this was marketing. Coca Cola did this, and brought their earlier recipe back within three months. Plus this generated greater product interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- killDNoiz 5y agoI'm a real sucker when it comes to love & as a geologist, most of the time I'm hardly around. Even though I'm always away, I never go a day without calling or face timing my wife & kids especially when the network is good at the sites. I noticed my wife started avoiding my calls & one day the strangest thing happened. I called many times and she didn't answer. Minutes later my phone rang & it seemed to be a pocket dialed. To my shock were sounds of my wife moaning. The next day I was conflicted with how I should confront her so I chose to share my experience with a close friend. My Friend introduced me to a professional guy he met on reddit who knows of his way around the internet. He showed me the mother load. Conversations, voice notes and nude pictures that she shared with her lover (she doesn't even send me nudes & I know how many times I've asked). She was living a secret life. although i am still in shock I'm just glad i was introduced to THEJAMIEHOOKUP@gmail.com
- ohdannyboy 5y agoI wonder if this was the plan from the beginning. Perhaps the bankers and business people with no connection to reality just wouldn't believe how disastrous that policy would be, so they make the announcement and use the backlash to get the point across.
- gmoore 5y agoHow did they not see this backlash coming?
- StrLght 5y agoThat was a bloody genius marketing: do something absolutely unexpected first – gain a lot of articles on this, announce complete 180 just a week later – same thing, tons of articles about your company.
- kleiba 5y agocomplete 360 :-)
- jordache 5y agolol these weak people. Just stick to your business driven decisions.
- dalbasal 5y agoBrand, vision for the product and such are one thing. Vague demands and pressures by the financial sector are another. Partly due to actual risk, and partially because of stigma... payment processing costs are substantially higher in "sin sectors." Often they use specialised services targeting just these industries. I assume financing has similar issues. Merchant banks don't want to add a porn bond to their portfolio, and those who do want a premium. Premiums count for a lot these days. A valuation anti-premium, at the extreme end, might turn a billion dollar company into a $100m. Private tech company valuations can be quite squishy. We have so much structure in the economy now. High finance has always been structured, but the lower tiers were more significant when startup valuations were more modest. Once valuations hit billions, finance is high finance more or less by definition. That means the high finance cabal has a lot of say. Meanwhile, users are structured by Google, FB and a handful of others. AWS is gradually becoming both monopolistic and opinionated. Payments systems are bottlenecked, with a structure related to the high finance structure. What does and doesn't get built, or succeeds in a highly structured world is different to a more free market situation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- barelysapient 5y agoI doubt OnlyFans ever intended to actually do this. Just a creative marketing blitz to drum up awareness. Next up, McDonald's to stop selling Cheeseburgers and Tesla to stop making cars.
- koffiezet 5y agoIt was mainly due to pressure from their payment providers, who in turn were pressured by fundamentalist christian groups like exodus cry under the mantle of "protecting sex workers" and "anti trafficking", but their actual end-goal is banning porn completely. They started out with pornhub, which as a direct result of that deleted a ton of their content. OF seeing how these groups could effectively pressure the biggest fish in the porn industry through the creditcard companies, they found themselves between a rock and a hard place.
- mzs 5y agoVery unlikely, the last week porn stars have been posting to IG where they have moved to from OF, ex: https://www.instagram.com/p/CS322xbNbfU/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CS322xbNbfU/
- skohan 5y agoIIRC the "new coke" was exactly that. They never intended to change coke, but loss aversion was an effective lever in wresting mindshare away from the pepsi challenge.
- tyingq 5y agoI understand they may be bound by what's available to them. But the plan to just throw out the essential core of their business model seemed obviously doomed. Banning the only part of your business that makes money. Heh. Edit: Other comments that "the plan" might have been meant to be ridiculous...to drum up more press coverage, make sense to me.
- ajay-b 5y agoThousands of jobs saved.
- bArray 5y ago> The company has struggled to attract outside investors and the move was done at the request of at the request of its banking and payout partners, it said. Reads a little weird. It was a request of a request, from a friend of a friend?
- Veen 5y agoIt's just bad proofreading. The writer probably duplicated "at the request of" and the editor didn't catch it.
- killDNoiz 5y agoits crazy how a friend of mine's wive hired a hacker thejamiehookup@gmail.com so she could go through his only fans account and found out a lot of shit he got going on. i think ecplicit content should be band tho.
- boublepop 5y agoIn reality they always knew it made no sense, but the amount of free PR they got from every major news outlet across the world posting essentially: “Popular pornographic app only available for a short while!” Is absolutely insane, and made the full circus with it all. It’s like Red Bull leaning into the “dangerous drink” coverage.
- pphysch 5y agoHow do you advertise a porn platform to the mainstream? By (briefly) pretending it's not a porn platform and getting coverage in virtually every major news provider!
- SilverRed 5y agoBecause now everyone is invested in the news event, they are likely to hear about the reversal of the decision.
- dfdz 5y agoHere my conspiracy theory, which closely related to what you are saying. The BBC was investigating OnlyFans and found damaging stuff[1]. The leadership at OnlyFans was trying to think of a way to avoid the resulting bad press so they come up with the brilliant idea of announcing an upcoming Ban on all sexual material. This will keep distracted while they work on improving their content moderation. When ready, they can announce their new policy: sexual content will be allowed, but with better moderation! (Exactly what they should have been doing all along). [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58273914 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58273914
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoThe cynic in me believe they may be involved in a honeypot operation, which will ensure they continue operating while not having to deal with backlash.
- mdoms 5y agoI don't think this was a PR stunt. OF relies on the talent to bring viewers, so publicly signaling to your talent "your job here is not safe, you should explore other options" seems far too risky a move to make intentionally.
- dmix 5y ago> He said BNY Mellon “flagged and rejected” every wire transfer linked to the firm, while Britain’s Metro Bank in 2019 closed OnlyFans’ corporate account with short notice So it wasn’t just the credit card merchants but wire transfers and corporate bank accounts. So stupid… at least CC merchants can blame chargebacks or something. I guess it’d help if laws were clarified, in the UK where they are based as well. Maybe we’ll find out if something changed soon.
- pornel 5y agoMaybe because British Board of Film Censors jurisdiction has been extended to online porn, and face-sitting and fisting is banned in the UK? (although that ban is older than OnlyFans itself) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-30454773 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-30454773
- seanieb 5y agoWhere’s Ireland’s IDA now?
- busymom0 5y agoIs British board of film censors considered a government entity? Is so, then aren't those considered part of free expression?
- lmm 5y agoAnd? The US constitution doesn't apply in Britain for obvious reasons.
- busymom0 5y agoI never talked about the US constitution. > Under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, “everyone has the right to freedom of expression” in the UK. But the law states that this freedom “may be subject to formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society”. My question is why this doesn't apply to those 2 sexual acts?
- noasaservice 5y agoLets remind people why this happened in the first place: extremist christian org "Exodus Cry" petitioned high power people in board roles to defund sex work companies. Exodus cry's mission is seeking the abolition of the legal commercial sex industry, including pornography, strip clubs and sex work, as well as illegal sex trafficking. So, their gameplan is to always claim the last one (illegal sex trafficking) and child porn, to greatly muddy the waters of legitimate sex work. https://reason.com/2021/08/20/why-onlyfans-is-double-crossing-sex-workers/ https://reason.com/2021/08/20/why-onlyfans-is-double-crossin... Exodus Cry previously went after PornHub after they made claims of child porn and sex trafficking. PH ended up getting disconnected from payment processors, and they ended up deleting 14 million videos down to their verified members only. Long story short: the drug war failed. And banning sex work for similar temperance reasons will only help people be LESS safe and run sex work underground (with no legal protections). Then again, that's this slimy christian org's goal.
- makecheck 5y agoI think there is a general issue with platforms “conveniently benefiting” from massive growth from all their users, until one day they suddenly decide who/what they want to “allow”. This exclusion can take different forms, e.g. exclusion by suddenly imposing high subscription fees (not just “moral” exclusion). It’d be really interesting to see if these platforms would ever have gotten so big/popular without their now-excluded audiences.
- koffiezet 5y agoPeople here don't seem to realise all this was from pressure from fundamentalist christian groups like Exodus Cry, which managed to collect 2 million signatures pretending to want to protect sex workers and be anti-trafficking. Their end-goal however is a lot simpler: get rid of all porn.
- lostgame 5y agoBecause the early 1900’s prohibition and the war on drugs has totally shown us ridding us of something there is massive demand for totally works!
- TchoBeer 5y agoWe seem to be managing to get rid of smoking.
- watwut 5y agoIt was not made illegal. Cigarettes are available everywhere. It was made uncool. The product placement in movies and such disappeared, so you don't see super cool hero looking awesome as he smokes while going to do something important. Ads targeted at kids are illegal. Everyone knows it is unhealthy. There isnless social pressure to smoke.
- lostgame 5y ago...smoking was never - and still isn’t - illegal. It’s just not relevant to my point. That’s harm reduction - which should be applied to drugs as well. Nothing to do with prohibition.
- hermitsings 5y agoGood
- belter 5y agoThese companies, most seem to admire here, just because they make a lot of money, are going from bad to worst. First.... - They made money on stealing your privacy. - Then they made money on taking your rest and piece of mind inviting your neighbors to make money from renting their mattresses. - Then they made money from making you do "gig's" with zero hours contract style type of work...But making you believe you are a contractor. - Then they made money from reading your email and showing you announcements. - Then they made money by tracking your location and selling your buying habits. - Now they are making money by inviting you to sell your soul and exhibit yourself naked for money. Is anybody working on something that matters or is it only money that matters?
- kbenson 5y ago> - Now they are making money by inviting you to sell your soul and exhibit yourself naked for money. Actually, they were trying to stop the naked part, and that's what people were up in arms about. And given it was the people that were upset, not the company because it couldn't take advantage of the people in this way, I'm not sure how that works with your premise.
- belter 5y agoThey said they were only stopping because of the banks. There is also something very strange going on there, because other porn sites were able to clean their act by implementing regulations demanded by the payment providers, but not OnlyFans. I feel we still have to hear the full story on this.
- anaganisk 5y agoBut we’re making the world a better place by open sourcing our Nth JavaScript framework and a new database. But on a serious note, that part community just looks away, because the answer is not easy. Popular sentiment on HN is privacy, freedom and de-centralisation . Yet major portion of community works with companies that break at-least one of those.
- fnord77 5y agocontent creators will now have persistent anxiety about OF pulling the plug in the future. They'll hedge with other platforms. I think OF killed itself and this backtracking will not save it.
- everyone 5y agoSo Visa and Mastercard have been pressuring only fans to do this. Threatening to withdraw their services. It is extremely worrying that these credit card companies can decide what media society at large can consume. What I am most curious about though, is why? Why do Visa and Mastercard give a shit what business their clients are in?
- rtkwe 5y agoThe big one is the BBC report that found they weren't doing a good job keeping under age people from signing up as creators and posting. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865
- everyone 5y agoDo Visa and Mastercard ever face penalties for any crimes committed by users of their services? Probably a large percentage of their users are criminal in some way.
- asdff 5y agoSo much underage alcohol is purchased with visas and mastercards its absurd. I've never seen anyone pay cash all through college and at any given campus bar or liquor store half the kids are underage.
- rtkwe 5y agoThe relationship between payment processors and Onlyfans is a lot closer than the one between them and stores/bars etc. that are selling to underaged kids. (Also underaged drinking is a lot less intensely prosecuted than underaged porn) Usually they don't have any direct relationship with the stores at all and their card processing goes through another company that provides the machines and access to the MC/Visa/et al payment processing, that's how it was with my family's stores at least when we started taking cards, the machines all came through another company and our contract was with them.
- Romanulus 5y agoOnlyFans needs to make their own bank/payment processor... SpankBank?
- nikolay 5y agoI thought they were forced. It seems it was just a PR stunt.
- mogadsheu 5y agoI suspected something like this would happen. As an adult company they thrive on controversy. If they found a group willing to invest at the scale that they need, sparking controversy like this is low hanging fruit for exposure and (hopefully) a quick boost to growth that an investor would want.
- Whatarethese 5y agoThey were making money hand over fist so I really dont understand why they initially took this step. I really think only fans will die eventually because of the trust they lost.
- toofy 5y agoWhite this is temporarily great news for sex workers, its worth keeping a couple things in mind: This would seem to be in large part an extension of the wider religious right and groups similar to the Moral Majority's push from previous decades to remove sexuality or "objectional content" from the public sphere. This recent OnlyFans (and PornHub) pressure were driven in large part by pressure from Exodus Cry and NCOSE both of whoms ultimate goal is to remove sexually explicit content from the internet. NCOSE has been around since 1962 but was previously called "Morality in Media" [0] They are attempting to obscure it now, but Morality in Media was open that they were a "Faith Based Organization" at the time. It seems like with the name change they are trying to obscure their foundations. You might remember them as the group who tried to make it illegal to sell Playboy magazines on military bases and who wanted to do away with "obscene language." Their group were the inspiration for George Carlin's bit "7 words". Exodus Cry is an evangelical christian group who are open about their intentions to abolish sexually explicit content from the internet. [1] I think its probably worth paying a little bit of attention to the undercurrents here because my guess is we're only seeing the beginnings of the religious right's ramp up. I think they'll probably try to grab momentum from some of the other more ... conpsiratorial(?) groups that have some popularity currently. I think we'd be making a fairly serious mistake to underestimate these two groups. Ill also be interested to see how they make use out of some more dark money style groups as they move forward in attempts to obscure who is behind the pressure campaigns. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20180401043101/https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180401043101/https://endsexual... [1] https://exoduscry.com/abolitionist/ https://exoduscry.com/abolitionist/
- rootsudo 5y agoInteresting, I did not know about the NCOSE or Exodus Cry.
- pushrax 5y agoThis seems somewhat plausible, but how do you know these organizations have anything to do with OnlyFans?
- floatingatoll 5y ago
- cletus 5y agoDoes anyone think this was a failed pivot from the p0rn and the backlash was so great that they backpedaled? It actually reminds me of Ebay. Ebay became big with online auctions but as soon as they did they seemed to want to no longer be in the auction business. Instead they wanted to be in the online retail business. Maybe because there was more money per customer. Maybe because online retail was larger. Personally I always found Ebay's retail move to be weird and off-brand with a subpar user experience. Something about this Onlyfans move just doesn't sit right. Like who were the banks or payment processors that supposedly forced this? I haven't seen anyone claim responsibility (officially or not).
- coderintherye 5y agoNo. They call out the specific banks here: https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca0480b https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca04...
- mastersummoner 5y agoUnfortunately that's behind a paywall.
- purerandomness 5y agoInstall a browser extension that bypasses paywalls, like [0] [0] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
- iso8859-1 5y agohttps://archive.is/Aqx8x https://archive.is/Aqx8x
- stemlord 5y agoInteresting they say they were hiring hundreds of new mods to enforce the no porn policy, wonder how many employees theyre now un-hiring?
- jtbayly 5y agoAnybody else think this feels suspiciously like a planned set of moves to generate hype?
- RedComet 5y agoAh, so it was a marketing scheme the entire time. How modern.
- LatteLazy 5y agoVery few commebtors here seem aware that onlyfans were being forced to do this by their payment providers. So its not a publicity stunt, so much as "publicity forces others to reconsider their crazy decisions".
- lnxg33k1 5y agoTbh evangelists or whatever the fuck they're named have broken my balls, if you're so attached why don't you go to meet him in person and leave the rest of us in peace
- epa 5y agoPerfectly executed marketing campaign
- SinParadise 5y agoThe fact that this even went anywhere is indicative of some serious, serious disconnect between the decision-makers and the reality of the situation.
- scns 5y agoMy first thought after reading the title was: OnlyFans refrains from commiting suicide.
- sokoloff 5y agoGenius two-step marketing. People who knew nothing about OnlyFans: “Hmm, this company I’ve never heard of is making the news for banning explicit sexual content.” A few days later, on several mainstream reporting channels, “Just kidding, OnlyFans will continue to have steamy hot explicit sexual content available for a low, low monthly price.”
- gambiting 5y agoIn fact I subbed one couple on OF just few days ago because I thought OF was going to kick them out and I wanted the content before that happened. Anecdotal, I know, but I wonder how many other people did the same.
- anigbrowl 5y agoIs there any evidence that this was the plan, or are you just trying to show solidarity for other business people?
- sokoloff 5y agoI’m hypothesizing a tactic that would turn out to be brilliant (and funny as hell). I doubt it was the actual plan.
- npteljes 5y agoI mean, yes, public relations as a whole is getting better and better.
- bcheung 5y agoThe damage is already done. I was doing a photoshoot at my house with 2 models that have OnlyFans accounts. When the news hit they literally signed up for other platforms within an hour. The other platforms are capitalizing on the news and finding ways to make migration to their platform as easy as possible.
- mzkply 5y agoI doubt it. With all this PR and every boomer on the planet now knowing exactly what OnlyFans is... their user base will explode, and models will come right back. They couldn't have hoped for more free marketing if they tried... genius.
- throwawaylolx 5y agoSo now they'll come back because OF still has the larger community.
- bcheung 5y agoI think they may stick around because it has the user base and why not, they are already making money so no point giving that up. But now models will diversify across multiple platforms because the writing is on the wall. They may lose their income at any point so they are going to have backups.
- thrown 5y agoPeople will forget this ever happened in a couple weeks. By then, they'll be angry about something new. The old models won't use new platforms because it's so much easier to just stay on OnlyFans. They already chose the easiest career path with the most short-term gain, I don't see how they're suddenly going to start thinking long-term. I don't think these people think long-term at all, if they did they probably wouldn't do this. Soon enough, new models will be joining without any knowledge that this ever happened. It'll get memory-holed in weeks.
- 5y ago
- ddingus 5y agoOf course they did!. It was that or give up the company basically.
- FalconSensei 5y agoThey basically did the 'suprised-pikachu' face when creators that posted explicit content closed their accounts, after being told the content they created would be banned
- favorited 5y agoWhile lying to those creators, claiming that pornography* would still be allowed. *just not the kind of pornography that any of those performers create
- eurasiantiger 5y ago> “OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators,” the company said. Interesting statement considering they already categorically ban some sex toys and acts. Not exactly inclusive.
- globular-toast 5y agoThis was actually the top story on the BBC Radio 1 news this afternoon. I'd never, not once, heard OnlyFans mentioned outside of niche internet communities before today. The "ban" was an excellent move by the marketing department. I have a really bad feeling about further popularisation of porn, though. This is going to be so, so bad for society.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoWhy do I feel like this was a publicity stunt? I still refused to go past the landing page.
- leros 5y agoI doubt it. It sounds like OnlyFans had established themselves pretty well. I think this would only spook people as it creates uncertainty about the future.
- truthwhisperer 5y agobig relief. I can still follow my favourite artist
- riwsky 5y ago“Fans cans planned ban stans panned”
- lanevorockz 5y agoOf Course not ... We live in decadence, seeing China take over while the west is eaten away by a bunch of narcisists. I think it's just obvious to assume we will all be living in some form of Democrat North Korea soon enough.
- l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y agoI seriously thought that onlyfans was catered to porn.
- Ansil849 5y agoPeople predicted this very transparent publicity ploy when the news first broke. There are no surprises here, other than perhaps how quickly they played their hand.
- anonu 5y agoall press is good press. But doesn't this damage your brand? In this short week I am sure both sides of the marketplace have tried to figure out - what other options are out there? I'm sure the real winners are those smaller platforms.
- Ansil849 5y agoI think the brand-strengthening generated by the outrage from people with accounts coming to Onlyfans' defense and rallying support, far outweighs any potential negative outcome of customers looking for alternate solutions, especially when the decision to reverse course came so quickly. There were I think literally hundreds of thousands of people on social media expressing support for Onlyfans.
- jchw 5y agoI don’t think this is true. Adult content is heavily policed by many important parties, including PayPal and mainstream payment processors. It’s certainly possible, but it’s wishful thinking IMO. Some were pointing to specific new restrictions coming from MasterCard as an example.
- m0zg 5y agoCooler heads prevailed it sounds like. Not a fan of the site, but I'm in favor of sex workers actually getting paid, rather than just exploited and left homeless and penniless after a few years. Net-net, it's an improvement over the status quo.
- Vaslo 5y agoReally good summary of the situation pre-dropped ban on this short podcast. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-onlyfans-banned-sexual-content/5EA29F8C-AD33-4F8D-AF88-818D012DBCEA https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-onlyfans-banned...
- solarkraft 5y ago> “We pay over 1 million creators over $300 million every month, and making sure that these funds get to creators involves using the banking sector,” according to Stokely. Because several banks have cut off OnlyFans from making wire transfers Why is that allowed?
- cbozeman 5y agoJuSt MaKe YoUr OwN pAyMeNt PrOcEsSoR aNd StArT yOuR oWn BaNk! So sick of that argument... A 'free' society means people being 'free' to make decisions that are within their rights and don't break the law.
- guerrilla 5y ago> JuSt MaKe YoUr OwN pAyMeNt PrOcEsSoR aNd StArT yOuR oWn BaNk! I know you're right and I agree, but we should also do that, for other reasons. A large, diverse and competitive market of mutual credit unions could really democratize capital.
- kangaroozach 5y agoHow about there are people who make $200M a year on the platform. Outrageous.
- feer392529 5y agoThe whole situation is such a, for lack of a better word, cultural shock to me. Pronographic website ceasing to allow sexual content causes major news and longest discussions...
- vmception 5y agoBasically, what you are familiar with is how everyone pretends the consumer side only exists of people you don't know. And those people, we like to imagine, are people we don't want to know. People that lack any ability to integrate into society. Especially the ones that pay for any of it. So that's always been a lie. The people that pay for porn or sex are all socioeconomic classes, all levels of attractiveness, all levels of social integration. It has never been possible to simultaneously assume someone that is entertained by sex workers "can't get sex" any other way while also assuming that anyone that gets a windfall of cash does "hookers and blow" pretty much immediately. In the mean time, there has been a push to normalize and validate sex work. Because the similarities and issues to all other labor are too numerous to treat sex work differently in its own category. But, in this process, people still pretend that the consumer side doesn't exist and that the consumer side isn't all socioeconomic classes. People want to invalidate and vilify anybody that admits to being a consumer of sex work, because this makes them comfortable to imagine the world doesnt have these readily available options. This is something akin to the silly "swedish/nordic model", where sex work is legalized and the consumer side is criminalized. What you are seeing is people being allies to sex workers as a proxy for continued and expanded consumption. Where sex workers, which happens to also consist of a lot of marginalized groups, are able to amplify their voices against prohibitions now, and the allies are people interested in all social justice topics as well as the consumer side that finds it convenient to normalize sex work, but can't really yet talk about being a consumer even of legal things like websites. Its pretty cool, I mean, I'm willing to normalize the consumptive side so that people don't have to start all their posts with weird disclaimers like "I'm not on OnlyFans and would never pay for porn but". Alright.
- Thorentis 5y agoSo when are we going to address the gender pay gap on OF?
- vmception 5y agoWe aren't. That's limited to employers, of which OnlyFans is not for the creators. But of course, we can work on inclusion, but we have to recognize that the vast majority of the market for sex work is men, so the distribution of men interested in people born and/or currently identifying as men will have to be taken into account.
- npteljes 5y agoWhy would that be a valid talking point?
- globular-toast 5y agoI'm not sure, but it seems to be considered a valid talking point in other industries.
- npteljes 5y agoIndeed, it's a valid point when the people in question are directly employed, and do the same work.
- globular-toast 5y agoThat seems like a technical loophole, like zero hour contract workers not having any rights. It doesn't mean it's OK and shouldn't be discussed.
- nailer 5y agoDirect link: https://twitter.com/onlyfans/status/1430499277302816773?s=21 https://twitter.com/onlyfans/status/1430499277302816773?s=21
- ofou 5y ago(◔_◔) go to http://xn--mk8hq2b.ml/ http://xn--mk8hq2b.ml/ to live chat about this story
- matthewmorgan 5y agoWhy does this porn site get so much free advertising?
- valprop1 5y agoBut you see the whole point that Onlyfans Management says about dropping the plan is to "protect the creators". But this seems far from reality. This article from wired sums it up: https://www.wired.com/story/onlyfans-reverse-porn-ban-creators/ https://www.wired.com/story/onlyfans-reverse-porn-ban-creato...
- xyzzy21 5y agoWell, at least this means every man still has an automatic litmus test to reject women who will never make good girlfriends, wives or mothers: "Do you have an OnlyFans account? Yes? Ok, bye!"