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PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

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Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like something that should be handled by law enforcement, not your bank.

Sesta/Fosta potentially make Pornhub/Paypal liable.

Pornhub is Canadian, not American (their HQ is Montreal). Of course PayPal is American and Pornhub has plenty of dealings with the US, so your point stands.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it is a bootstrapping problem. Bitcoin solved an interesting technical problem, so people started using it. Once people started getting interested, companies popped up to sell it, but notably there was a base of users prior to that. By contrast, the barrier to entry for a new system denominated in USD is much higher. People can't really start using it until there's a company around to support it, and…

Bitcoin (and all other cryptocoins) are just not usable for mass transactions. Buying anything with bitcoin takes over 10 minutes, often times over an hour for shops that are paranoid and require 3+ confirmations. During the peak bubble time, I remember buying something with bitcoin taking 2 hours!! This technical problem has not been solved and the "lightning network" just turns exchanges like Coinbase into a bank o…

Ethereum is already a lot faster than that, and will probably get to Eth2.0 with sharding and PoS in the not too distant future. Then your ETH transactions will be blazing fast, secure, and cheap as chips.

Of course, they've been saying all of that is not so far away for a couple years now, but we will see. I'm tentatively optimistic.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m being down voted, but sex workers are some times deprived of bank services because of their jobs. Literally told to take their banking else where. How does using crypto help? Does it’s use suddenly make you immune from banks finding out your source of income? https://www.sbs.com.au/news/banks-accused-of-slut-shaming-fo...

The answer is that crypto transactions are censored much less frequently then PayPal transactions. That's why it helps. PayPal censorship is much more common than crypto censorship. > Does it’s use suddenly make you immune from banks finding out your source of income? No, it doesn't make you immune. Being 100% immune to anything at all is literally impossible. But it seems like it makes it less likely.

You said that you transfer crypto to your bank and you are not deplatformed.

My point is the banks don’t care about crypto. They care about your occupation. If you deposited cash, you may still have no bank account.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#394

A contributor once wrote on hn about the huge market for a porn friendly payment system. Key feature, must not look suspicious on credit card bill...

There are plenty of porn friendly payment providers. They just cost a lot of money relative to "normal" merchants because of a few simple reasons: 1) Chargebacks -- people chargeback the shit out of these kinds of transactions. Significant other sees the bill, gets pissed / confused about the charge / whatever and gets it charged back. 2) Fraud -- people use stolen CC's to pay for this kind of thing. 3) Porn operator…

Used to work in a business that sold porn DVDs and had to deal with chargebacks. We had an inbound sales call center, and a customer service one where you could cancel.

Among the chargebacks, fraud is the most common reason code, but the amount of true fraud such as stolen credit cards is astoundingly low to the point of being almost non-existent. I would say 90% of cases were the angry spouse and the man denying it. The most common actual fraud you would see is a relative who lives in the house using it, say a grandson using grandma's credit card or adult children running up a $4k tab after their parent died.

Also I had to find friendly merchant banks, the problem with this is it is very much a two-way trust street. Just as there are tons of shady porn providers, there are tons of shady merchant banks. Some will hold your money for no reason and can jeopardize your whole business, so we always had everything spread across multiple banks but that could still be problematic.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#395
Banks and other financial institutions are all about minimizing risk. If there is a risk that an account enables sex trafficking or money laundering there may be an internal policy to close the account as well as an obligation under anti money laundering laws to report it to the government. It comes down to the risk appetite of the bank. The bank stands to be fined if it is found not to have reported on suspicious activity and there is reputational risk as well. This is the reason a lot of banks would choose to de-risk and close the accounts.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#396
post #135

Financial deplatforming is a monster, long-term trend to watch over the next decades. Deplatforming happens with sex workers. It also happens in the US marijuana industry. It happens with perfectly legal political content. The number of ways in which someone, somewhere will be offended by products or services for sale is growing, driven by a rapidly improving worldwide communication network and delivery system, and b…

I like how this is spun in a way as if PayPal has a vendetta against specific forms of income alone.

Nevermind the sex industry is probably the biggest attractor for fraudulent charges and overall sketchy business.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had several friends in the adult industry have their checking accounts closed at a several major banks as well. Traditional banking should definitely not be discriminating against fully legal activities.

Can anyone explain how this even happens? Who could possibly threaten a bank over handling financial transactions for sex workers? And what could they possibly threaten the bank with? Even if it's some big business like Chick-fil-A... Presumably they only bank with one bank, and presumably the porn and sex work industry has more money at that bank than Chick-fil-A. How's this actually work? It's not making sense to m…

I doubt anyone is threatening banks on this based on moral grounds.

I suspect it's just fraud, people using stolen credit cards and bank details to pay for porn (because porn can be delivered digitally)

So these accounts disproportionately show up in the fraud department and the fraud department spends more time dealing with those accounts than the profit generated.

Eventually, the bank or payment processor decides it would be less effort just to get rid of the customers causing issues. The moral questions probably means nobody internally feels like defending them.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#398
post #135

Financial deplatforming is a monster, long-term trend to watch over the next decades. Deplatforming happens with sex workers. It also happens in the US marijuana industry. It happens with perfectly legal political content. The number of ways in which someone, somewhere will be offended by products or services for sale is growing, driven by a rapidly improving worldwide communication network and delivery system, and b…

PayPal is an accessible platform that works is a wide variety of scenarios — it’s almost unique in that respect.

Most forms of sex work are illegal in the US and other jurisdictions, and sites like PornHub are compliance nightmares where all manner of sleazy or illegal actions are likely happening. PayPal doesn’t want to be the financier for the next scandalous “amateur” producer.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#399

A contributor once wrote on hn about the huge market for a porn friendly payment system. Key feature, must not look suspicious on credit card bill...

Have worked in men's and women's porn. Women have this solved, all their porn is from Amazon. Historically don't chargeback so that hurdle never existed.

I wouldn't be surprised if more than half of Kindle revenue and certainly more than half of Kindle profits were just women's porn. Amazon occasionally has half-hearted crackdowns because some conservative finds it and complains.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had several friends in the adult industry have their checking accounts closed at a several major banks as well. Traditional banking should definitely not be discriminating against fully legal activities.

This debate is currently brewing in Australia, except its against providing services to mining companies. When is right / wrong to boycott? And who should be allowed to? (Persons or companies) Context: in Australia the prime minister (Scott Morrison) is looking into laws to ban boycotts by companies (who are being compelled by people / public opinion)

Thats a really good counter point and I can't think of any way the situations are different other than my morals saying working for pornhub is ok but trashing the planet is not. Of course thats totally subjective and someone could be of the opinion that working for pornhub is not ok.
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