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Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

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Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#31

Post by ceejayoz »

throwaways885 wrote: post #29
breakingcups wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon did crack down on some extreme content, stating they were forced to do so by their payment provider(s).

Are you referring to the censorship which is in the process of tanking the site? https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/159637...

No, Patreon made much more broad changes a few years back (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3x5z/heres-how-patreon-...) affecting all sorts of adult content.

Benjamin got banned for saying stuff like:

> Really what [Hitler] was trying to do was clean Germany, clean it of the parasites, of the fleas. He did not hate Jews. He hated filth and he was trying to clean up.

and is similarly banned from Facebook, YouTube, PayPal and Twitter. They just don't have company-pays forced arbitration provisions that can be turned back on the company like Patreon does.

DoorDash had the same DDoS issue with their arbitration clause, no free speech issues required. https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21133486/doordash-workers-10-m...

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#32

Post by preinheimer »

adwi wrote: post #22

My understanding is the rules are dictated by Visa/MC/Amex, and are largely based on chargeback risk for categories of merchants. There are likely further legal and pearl-clutchy reasons that combine to just out and out ban. Anecdote: we talked with every payment processor around for a product we were making that involved storing and spending value from a digital wallet. It was close enough to various Visa/MC rules a…

+1 to the rules coming down from Visa & MC. Amex doesn't allow adult.

There's a bit more nuance there, as the rules actually come from the bank issuing your merchant account, rather than some master "Visa" entity. So if you're a big player in the adult game you're going to work to find the right banks willing to issue you merchant accounts.

Those banks will also have a compliance department which will look at your content and make sure it's inline with what they're willing to allow. If you want to make adult content where consensual adults do things together there's one group of banks you can go to. If you want to make niche content with acted out violence and such you're going to find a much smaller group of banks willing to issue you merchant accounts. Or possibly no banks at all. It's interesting that the thing deciding what adult content will be easily monetizable on the internet is small merchant account issuing banks.

On the charging side I believe Stripe uses Wells Fargo, which has pretty strict rules.

Source: worked for one of the large players in the adult market a while back. Some info may be dated.

Note: one of the fun things about credit cards is that Visa and MC are issued by banks, and Amex is issued by Amex. There was a new fraud style a few years ago that amex was able to lock down pretty quick due to its centralized nature, while Visa and MC had a harder time.

Note2: I may define fun differently than you.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#33

Post by elorant »

euix wrote: post #25

How much of the internet traffic is actually pornography in general? I have heard a lot of anecdotal hearsay that it constitutes a majority.

The thing about the online porn industry is that it's highly diversified which leads a lot of people into making wild assumptions about its size. I doubt porn traffic is that high. Stats show that one in three Internet users are viewing porn, but the thing is that porn isn't something you can spend more than 10-20 minutes consuming[1]. So if we say that the average user spends some three hours online on average every day[2], then porn is about 5% of that time. So one in three users online spend 5% of their time watching porn. In total I'd guess that doesn't account for more than 10% of global traffic, taking under consideration that video consumes much more bandwidth than other forms of content.

That's all back of the envelope calculations off course.

[1] https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2019-year-in-review#traffic

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/319732/daily-time-spent-...

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#34

Post by tyingq »

euix wrote: post #25

How much of the internet traffic is actually pornography in general? I have heard a lot of anecdotal hearsay that it constitutes a majority.

This article doesn't guesstimate by bandwidth, but by "use", and seems reasonably well researched.

It ends up with "somewhere between 4 and 15 percent of web use involves porn."

There's some interesting sub-stats on percentage of porn related searches, etc.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201611...

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#35

Post by everybodyknows »

tyingq wrote: post #20

Somewhat related, a story that digs into who's running onlyfans.com: https://forensicnews.net/2020/08/13/onlyfans-faces-allegatio...

> Weeks before Radvinsky purchased the OnlyFans holding company in the United Kingdom, he received a $250,000 tax credit from the state of Illinois. “The purpose of the Angel Investment Tax Credit Program is to attract and encourage the placement of investment dollars into early-stage, innovative companies throughout Illinois.”

Your tax dollars at work.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#36

Post by gowld »

tyingq wrote: post #34
euix wrote: post #25

How much of the internet traffic is actually pornography in general? I have heard a lot of anecdotal hearsay that it constitutes a majority.

This article doesn't guesstimate by bandwidth, but by "use", and seems reasonably well researched. It ends up with "somewhere between 4 and 15 percent of web use involves porn." There's some interesting sub-stats on percentage of porn related searches, etc. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201611...

That's grossly inflated. Their source is that 4% of the top million websites are porn. That doesn't mean at least 4% of web use is porn.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#37

Post by gowld »

voxic11 wrote: post #14
maps7 wrote: post #2

Probably cause Stripe likes money?

A company I worked for tried to use Stripe but couldn't because they don't allow "fantasy sports leagues with cash prizes". They definitely aren't willing to make exceptions for everyone.

In practice, unregulated online gambling is much closer to fraud than porn.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#38

Post by throwaways885 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #31
throwaways885 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the censorship which is in the process of tanking the site? https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/159637...

No, Patreon made much more broad changes a few years back ( https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3x5z/heres-how-patreon-... ) affecting all sorts of adult content. Benjamin got banned for saying stuff like: > Really what [Hitler] was trying to do was clean Germany, clean it of the parasites, of the fleas. He did not hate Jews. He hated filth and he was trying to clean up. and is similarly banned from Facebook, YouTub…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#39

Post by [deleted] »

gowld wrote: post #36
tyingq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article doesn't guesstimate by bandwidth, but by "use", and seems reasonably well researched. It ends up with "somewhere between 4 and 15 percent of web use involves porn." There's some interesting sub-stats on percentage of porn related searches, etc. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201611...

That's grossly inflated. Their source is that 4% of the top million websites are porn. That doesn't mean at least 4% of web use is porn.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#40

Post by nipheld »

everybodyknows wrote: post #35
tyingq wrote: post #20

Somewhat related, a story that digs into who's running onlyfans.com: https://forensicnews.net/2020/08/13/onlyfans-faces-allegatio...

> Weeks before Radvinsky purchased the OnlyFans holding company in the United Kingdom, he received a $250,000 tax credit from the state of Illinois. “The purpose of the Angel Investment Tax Credit Program is to attract and encourage the placement of investment dollars into early-stage, innovative companies throughout Illinois.” Your tax dollars at work.

> Your tax dollars at work

...creating high-tech well-paying jobs in the local area. Is that a problem?

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