5 ms·

Apparently it's not just OnlyFans and GoFundMe that like punching themselves in the nads. Mind boggling how these businesses make these decisions. Even if the s

Apparently it's not just OnlyFans and GoFundMe that like punching themselves in the nads. Mind boggling how these businesses make these decisions. Even if the strategy is to pivot, bungling the PR on this scale is just awful.

mschuster91 5y ago
Onlyfans saw what happened to Pornhub after Christian fundamentalist groups targetted them and were (IMO rightfully) scared that they would be the next in the crosshairs.
- contravariant 5y ago
  I must have missed that, what exactly ended happened?
  - ChoGGi 5y ago
    They lost Visa and MasterCard https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30441276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30441276
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    The banks reversed course after a huge shitstorm [1] that included a number of high-profile influencers... and the attempt of the fundamentalist groups to find actually objectionable material like "revenge porn", stolen content and pornography produced under extortionary conditions like Pornhub hosted failed, which killed their leverage. Additionally, the censorship debate started discussions in Europe to create an European-based, discrimination-free payment network [2] - and that would have been a bigger threat to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly's profits than the risk of angering a bunch of Evangelical nutcases in the US. Meanwhile as for Pornhub, they still only have Bitcoin, Ethereum and shitcoins, and IIRC direct bank wire transfers as payment method. [1]: https://time.com/6092947/onlyfans-sexual-content-ban/ https://time.com/6092947/onlyfans-sexual-content-ban/ [2]: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/european-payments-initiative-die-letzte-chance-fuer-ein-100.html https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/european-payments-initi...
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      FYI, Visa and Mastercard are not banks.
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      This is just a rehash of stereotypes. The main thrust of the attack against pornhub started after the NYT article that documented quite a few examples of revenge porn, lack of moderation from pornhub, etc. Maybe you should go read that since you don't seem aware that there are actual examples of what you say they weren't able to find. & NYT isn't exactly known to be a source of evangelical propaganda/zeal. You can choose to ignore that, but to say that it was all the evil american evangelists boogeyman is just non sense. It's a tired trope that you often see coming from some europeans that have a very weird and misinformed view of American society. And ignoring the insane amounts of documented abuse in the porn industry. Visa and Mastercard were also concerned by the potential for prostitution that onlyfans could have, and after what happened to backpage they did not need any outside pressure. Payment processors have always been hostile to porn. This is all so widely documented that I just really fail to see how you got to that conclusion.
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        > The main thrust of the attack against pornhub started after the NYT article that documented quite a few examples of revenge porn, lack of moderation from pornhub, etc. I won't say PornHub isn't without issues. But: Facebook, Twitter and Reddit have also been accused of the very same things and yet no one is calling for their ban. > NYT isn't exactly known to be a source of evangelical propaganda/zeal The particular author - Nick Kristof - is [1]. > And ignoring the insane amounts of documented abuse in the porn industry. No one is ignoring that. The answer isn't to ban porn sites or prostitution, the answer is to go after the abusers directly, to establish a culture of holding people accountable. > Visa and Mastercard were also concerned by the potential for prostitution that onlyfans could have, and after what happened to backpage they did not need any outside pressure. Payment processors have always been hostile to porn. Yeah, and why is that? Because again of a campaign driven by anti-sex-work activists and politicians and AGs wanting an easy target for political gain [2], timed together with the passing of FOSTA/SESTA, yet another campaign by the same groups [3]. To this day, the government wasn't able to hold trial against the people behind Backpage, further giving evidence to the fact that the situation isn't as clear as the abolitionists painted it. > Payment processors have always been hostile to porn. Because online porn (in contrast to physical media) has incredibly high fraud rates - from legitimately stolen credit cards that have been used to buy premium accounts over men having their purchases found out by their wives and attempting to deflect by saying their card details got stole to clear cases of "post-nut regret" aka chargeback fraud. > It's a tired trope that you often see coming from some europeans that have a very weird and misinformed view of American society. You correctly identified me being an European. And you can hardly blaming us for our beliefs when you managed to elect an Evangelical nutcase to Vice President and the GQP is has been running efforts wherever they can to screw over sex workers, transgender and non-heterosexual people wherever the fuck they can. [1]: https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war-pornhub https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war... [2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/backpage-is-bad-banning-it-would-be-worse https://www.thedailybeast.com/backpage-is-bad-banning-it-wou... [3]: https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart-sex-trafficking-instead-its-sparked-a-movement/ https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart...
  - vincentmarle 5y ago
    The crusade on Pornhub started with this NYTimes column by Nicholas Kristof: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
- hyperbovine 5y ago
  The immediately vanished into a poof! of sanctimony and are no longer in the Alexa top 50. Oh wait...
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    Pornhub isn't dependent on the credit card railroads to function as a business; Pornhub/MindGeek is largely ad supported. OnlyFans is subscription based; losing Mastercard/Visa would have ended the platform.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      On the other hand, does OnlyFans have any future beyond adult content? Even if they announce their pivot tomorrow, I can't imagine anyone using it given the history associated with that brand, but rebranding also means essentially starting from scratch in a market with existing competition (Patreon, LiberaPay, etc) that already have a critical mass of creators.
      - nomel 5y ago
        > does OnlyFans have any future beyond adult content? From a development cost perspective, moving into non-adult content would just require a page reskin and a domain name purchase. It would all be advertising.
        chii 5y ago
        Patreon was the goto place, until they decided to reject adult content - which spawned OnlyFans. I doubt OnlyFans can pivot - they'd just be competing with patreon, which i dont think they will win if so. The OnlyFan niche is quite strong, and they would be stupid to pivot now. Case in point - the words "onlyfan" has become a verbage like google has.
acdha 5y ago
It's definitely not well executed but I think it's more complicated than you're portraying it because the competition isn't even. The size of the social network is definitely a factor but that's been built up by Google subsidizing YouTube for years and YouTube's costs can be artificially low because Google keeps a higher percentage of the ad revenue from their own ad network — they conspicuously still don't report profitability for YouTube — and heavily favors YouTube in search results to keep usage high. Right now, if I search for “Lois van Baarle” on Google I see her Twitter account and then a bunch of YouTube hits. I have to add "Vimeo" to the query before I see a single hit from her preferred platform before the third page of results.
- Analemma_ 5y ago
  If this is true it seems pretty blatantly anticompetitive and a good reason for the EU to hit Google with another few €billion in fines until they knock it off.
sxv 5y ago
Also Couchsurfing in May 2020 (RIP) [0] [0]https://www.inputmag.com/features/rise-and-ruin-of-couchsurfing https://www.inputmag.com/features/rise-and-ruin-of-couchsurf...

mschuster91 5y ago

Onlyfans saw what happened to Pornhub after Christian fundamentalist groups targetted them and were (IMO rightfully) scared that they would be the next in the crosshairs.

contravariant 5y ago
I must have missed that, what exactly ended happened?
- ChoGGi 5y ago
  They lost Visa and MasterCard https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30441276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30441276
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The banks reversed course after a huge shitstorm [1] that included a number of high-profile influencers... and the attempt of the fundamentalist groups to find actually objectionable material like "revenge porn", stolen content and pornography produced under extortionary conditions like Pornhub hosted failed, which killed their leverage. Additionally, the censorship debate started discussions in Europe to create an European-based, discrimination-free payment network [2] - and that would have been a bigger threat to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly's profits than the risk of angering a bunch of Evangelical nutcases in the US. Meanwhile as for Pornhub, they still only have Bitcoin, Ethereum and shitcoins, and IIRC direct bank wire transfers as payment method. [1]: https://time.com/6092947/onlyfans-sexual-content-ban/ https://time.com/6092947/onlyfans-sexual-content-ban/ [2]: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/european-payments-initiative-die-letzte-chance-fuer-ein-100.html https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/european-payments-initi...
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    FYI, Visa and Mastercard are not banks.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    This is just a rehash of stereotypes. The main thrust of the attack against pornhub started after the NYT article that documented quite a few examples of revenge porn, lack of moderation from pornhub, etc. Maybe you should go read that since you don't seem aware that there are actual examples of what you say they weren't able to find. & NYT isn't exactly known to be a source of evangelical propaganda/zeal. You can choose to ignore that, but to say that it was all the evil american evangelists boogeyman is just non sense. It's a tired trope that you often see coming from some europeans that have a very weird and misinformed view of American society. And ignoring the insane amounts of documented abuse in the porn industry. Visa and Mastercard were also concerned by the potential for prostitution that onlyfans could have, and after what happened to backpage they did not need any outside pressure. Payment processors have always been hostile to porn. This is all so widely documented that I just really fail to see how you got to that conclusion.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > The main thrust of the attack against pornhub started after the NYT article that documented quite a few examples of revenge porn, lack of moderation from pornhub, etc. I won't say PornHub isn't without issues. But: Facebook, Twitter and Reddit have also been accused of the very same things and yet no one is calling for their ban. > NYT isn't exactly known to be a source of evangelical propaganda/zeal The particular author - Nick Kristof - is [1]. > And ignoring the insane amounts of documented abuse in the porn industry. No one is ignoring that. The answer isn't to ban porn sites or prostitution, the answer is to go after the abusers directly, to establish a culture of holding people accountable. > Visa and Mastercard were also concerned by the potential for prostitution that onlyfans could have, and after what happened to backpage they did not need any outside pressure. Payment processors have always been hostile to porn. Yeah, and why is that? Because again of a campaign driven by anti-sex-work activists and politicians and AGs wanting an easy target for political gain [2], timed together with the passing of FOSTA/SESTA, yet another campaign by the same groups [3]. To this day, the government wasn't able to hold trial against the people behind Backpage, further giving evidence to the fact that the situation isn't as clear as the abolitionists painted it. > Payment processors have always been hostile to porn. Because online porn (in contrast to physical media) has incredibly high fraud rates - from legitimately stolen credit cards that have been used to buy premium accounts over men having their purchases found out by their wives and attempting to deflect by saying their card details got stole to clear cases of "post-nut regret" aka chargeback fraud. > It's a tired trope that you often see coming from some europeans that have a very weird and misinformed view of American society. You correctly identified me being an European. And you can hardly blaming us for our beliefs when you managed to elect an Evangelical nutcase to Vice President and the GQP is has been running efforts wherever they can to screw over sex workers, transgender and non-heterosexual people wherever the fuck they can. [1]: https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war-pornhub https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war... [2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/backpage-is-bad-banning-it-would-be-worse https://www.thedailybeast.com/backpage-is-bad-banning-it-wou... [3]: https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart-sex-trafficking-instead-its-sparked-a-movement/ https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart...
- vincentmarle 5y ago
  The crusade on Pornhub started with this NYTimes column by Nicholas Kristof: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
hyperbovine 5y ago
The immediately vanished into a poof! of sanctimony and are no longer in the Alexa top 50. Oh wait...
- nemothekid 5y ago
  Pornhub isn't dependent on the credit card railroads to function as a business; Pornhub/MindGeek is largely ad supported. OnlyFans is subscription based; losing Mastercard/Visa would have ended the platform.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    On the other hand, does OnlyFans have any future beyond adult content? Even if they announce their pivot tomorrow, I can't imagine anyone using it given the history associated with that brand, but rebranding also means essentially starting from scratch in a market with existing competition (Patreon, LiberaPay, etc) that already have a critical mass of creators.
    - nomel 5y ago
      > does OnlyFans have any future beyond adult content? From a development cost perspective, moving into non-adult content would just require a page reskin and a domain name purchase. It would all be advertising.
      - chii 5y ago
        Patreon was the goto place, until they decided to reject adult content - which spawned OnlyFans. I doubt OnlyFans can pivot - they'd just be competing with patreon, which i dont think they will win if so. The OnlyFan niche is quite strong, and they would be stupid to pivot now. Case in point - the words "onlyfan" has become a verbage like google has.

acdha 5y ago

It's definitely not well executed but I think it's more complicated than you're portraying it because the competition isn't even. The size of the social network is definitely a factor but that's been built up by Google subsidizing YouTube for years and YouTube's costs can be artificially low because Google keeps a higher percentage of the ad revenue from their own ad network — they conspicuously still don't report profitability for YouTube — and heavily favors YouTube in search results to keep usage high. Right now, if I search for “Lois van Baarle” on Google I see her Twitter account and then a bunch of YouTube hits. I have to add "Vimeo" to the query before I see a single hit from her preferred platform before the third page of results.

Analemma_ 5y ago
If this is true it seems pretty blatantly anticompetitive and a good reason for the EU to hit Google with another few €billion in fines until they knock it off.

sxv 5y ago

Also Couchsurfing in May 2020 (RIP) [0] [0]https://www.inputmag.com/features/rise-and-ruin-of-couchsurfing https://www.inputmag.com/features/rise-and-ruin-of-couchsurf...