Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Internet Is for Porn

themargins.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 460 posts

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#51

Post by alisonkisk »

zthrowaway wrote: post #45
vsareto wrote: post #20

I'm glad that monetized platforms like Twitch and OnlyFans exist. It's an accessible way for the younger generations to make ludicrous amounts of money for not too much up-front investment. There's definitely work and downsides involved, just not like some lesser paid, more credentialed professions. Hopefully this puts pressure on the essential jobs in society to actually raise compensation in comparison. The rest of…

The only investment being that they're selling their body for money, and generating a negative presence online that doesn't help their future career aspirations. I don't think this is a good thing to encourage young people to do.

They are selling pictures of their body. The body gets nearly no wear and tear for the work.

There's only negative presence in the sense of haters. Would you also encourage young people to avoid being Black, or Muslim, because that's a "negative presence"?

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#52

Post by morelisp »

lumberjack wrote: post #39
spaceribs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you say this comment is virtually pimping an idea? What a culturally inflammatory term you've chosen for any service that does anything to help facilitate sex work.

They are literal pimps doing literal pimp work: recruiting young girls, connecting them with clients, and taking a cut of the profit, while keeping control of the whole business. It is not my fault you are offended. I would have no problem if these sex workers setup their own site and did their own business directly with their clients. No pimp would be involved then. There would be no recruiting, which is also where…

> if these sex workers setup their own site and did their own business directly with their clients

That's exactly what they can't do. No major hosting providers allow pornographic content; none of the mainstream payment processors will handle the money; no advertisers will run their campaigns to find customers. This is specifically because of moral panic like yours driving anti-pimping regulations.

OnlyFans isn't great - none of these more-than-a-payment-processor-less-than-an-agency platforms are. But if your outrage is truly about exploitative work and not oh look someone's having sex, there are dozens of organizations you should be lining up to take down first.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#53

Post by kodah »

fullshark wrote: post #36
kodah wrote: post #29

Porn always reminds me of other classical debates that have no end like guns and abortion. The camps of folks in the middle who are cognitively capable of making a difference can't because the outsized voices on either side of them are screaming for either total freedom or total shutdown. They actively fear monger people out of action so no real progress is made. It prevents the best coders and business people from w…

> My basis for that is that virtually anything sex related, apart from toys, cannot be purchased with credit or debit cards. Most porn can be bought with credit cards, at least in the USA. Mainstream payment processing companies like stripe may not be willing to do it but if you go try to buy (legal) porn right now with a credit card you will be able to do it.

Sort of!

I remember this being discussed a number of years ago: https://fetlife.com/help/can-i-use-a-credit-card-to-support-...

You could argue the merits of the website (I am not a member) but at the end of the day if you can only use BitCoin or a bank account then the policies have failed businesses, consumers, and content creators.

I don't know where the lines lie for decency in credit card payments or what they consider acceptable risk, but I would point back to my original assertion. If you cannot pay the best coders, the best business people, then those worries will not be solved.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#54

Post by postingpals »

corobo wrote: post #47
navdb wrote: post #14

For those looking to escape porn: https://nofap.com/

Someone has seriously made a business out of nerds talking about their penises? That's amazing.

Someone made a business out of nerds talking about how they think business works, and you're in it. Pretty amazing too.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#55

Post by corobo »

vsareto wrote: post #20

I'm glad that monetized platforms like Twitch and OnlyFans exist. It's an accessible way for the younger generations to make ludicrous amounts of money for not too much up-front investment. There's definitely work and downsides involved, just not like some lesser paid, more credentialed professions. Hopefully this puts pressure on the essential jobs in society to actually raise compensation in comparison. The rest of…

> The rest of us boring, unattractive folks

The battle cry of the can't be arsed. The difference between them and you is you applied for the desk job.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#57

Post by vsareto »

zthrowaway wrote: post #45
vsareto wrote: post #20

I'm glad that monetized platforms like Twitch and OnlyFans exist. It's an accessible way for the younger generations to make ludicrous amounts of money for not too much up-front investment. There's definitely work and downsides involved, just not like some lesser paid, more credentialed professions. Hopefully this puts pressure on the essential jobs in society to actually raise compensation in comparison. The rest of…

The only investment being that they're selling their body for money, and generating a negative presence online that doesn't help their future career aspirations. I don't think this is a good thing to encourage young people to do.

There's way more work that goes into making and maintaining that presence than just showing up with a body or personality. A lot is marketing, but it's not like traditional marketing you'd be taught at a university. They're figuring a lot of it out by trial and error, which is some amount of risk of getting it wrong. And popularity can swing quickly and dramatically so you can get fired by the internet mobs (more risk).

Not sure why it's a negative presence, either. Anyone who thinks it was a negative presence is not really someone you'd want a job from after making $10,000 - $100,000 a month.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#59

Post by monkin »

randomperson321 wrote: post #11

I didn't appreciate this article's tone. It seems to somehow suggest Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are evil for not having made the collective decision to launch porn startups. It takes me about five seconds to think of good reasons to not get involved in that business, that have nothing to do with being a bad person.

And, I in 5 second can give you many reasons why SV should get into porn, and make it less taboo, but more open.

It’s like with legalization of marijuana, mostly good things can come out from helping regulate this business and cutting off traffickers and other weird people who only want to do harm or get rich upon it.

On other hand SV is hugely hypocritical about this... :)

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#60

Post by claudeganon »

seibelj wrote: post #26
DanBC wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you feel if your underage daughter did not want to work in porn, but someone covertly recorded her having sex and uploaded it to pornhub? Because that's what was happening: mass unconsensual sharing of images, including images of children.

Google also indexes and returns results for websites that host not only illegal underage porn but terrorism websites, racist websites, etc. and profit from it but we give them a pass? You are making a “what about this??” argument and ignoring that they have mechanisms in place to remove illegal content which any website that allows user-generated content cannot control. My critique is more about the wide disapproval…

Pornhub was widely damaging to the “the vast majority of legitimate employees“ in the industry. It built itself by stealing their work using the paper-thin ruse of “user-uploaded” videos, pushing down wages, working conditions and establishing itself as a quasi-monopoly player who could further set terms to its advantage and against sex worker and smaller companies. This has all been quite well documented.

The conflation of puritanical objections to pornography with opposition to their regime of theft and worse is nothing other than a cynical maneuver meant to distract from the operation and consequences of their enterprise.

Post reply on HN