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Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

bbc.com

41–50 of 175 posts

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#41

Moody doesn’t seem to care about the abuse or victims that is rampant in the industry, she just wants to get paid.

If you can get paid reliably then abusers have less leverage in the first place. I've been friends with a lot of sex workers and their #1 gripe is that prohibitionist types create the conditions for abuse.

A lot of the people being mentioned as abused aren't sex workers and do not want to be sex workers. They don't want to be paid for or involved in sex work.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#42

Moody doesn’t seem to care about the abuse or victims that is rampant in the industry, she just wants to get paid.

Few seem to care enough about the abuse that exists in Hollywood and in tech, so why the hullabaloo over sex work? Oh, yeah - sexism against women because they're not supposed to be sexual.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#43
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the problem, as stated in the article. It's payments being cut off by card networks.

The article also says the following. Credit card giants Visa, Mastercard and Discover have blocked all payments to Pornhub, after the adult site was accused of being "infested" with child abuse and rape-related videos. So if PH solves that problem I don't see why they couldn't be back in business.

This misses some historical context around credit cards and online pornography companies where credit card companies basically just refuse to be allowed to be used for online porn, primarily around chargebacks.

If they’ve found an excuse to not need to work with PornHub, they could easily retain that for perpetuity because credit card companies don’t like being associated with the porn industry.

I’ll be surprised if PornHub ends up working directly with the major credit cards again.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not so much. North American developed countries aren't shining examples of labor protection champions. I'd refer to parts of Europe [1] and New Zealand [2] on how to protect sex workers in a more substantial way. [1] https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/Declaration_bookle... [2] https://www.nzpc.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Model

Well that and the labor protections we do provide end up primarily benefiting businesses and unions over the individual workers themselves.

Same here in Europe. I don't believe it's possible to have unions (or governments) that work for the individual.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would really be ideal if some of these sex workers could get their own platform. Then they'll go after the platform infrastructure (AWS), or any other fundamental aspect. Peer pressure. We've been warning for ages: the Cancel Everyone game the NYT and others with very loud voices are playing is a dangerous one.

OnlyFans seems to be having no issues. I do find it funny how "this site is filled with a lot of rape and child porn" is being framed as "it's being cancelled for no reason." No, there is a reason and other sites with better policies aren't being targeted.

There was a documentary earlier this year about how many underaged people were selling on Onlyfans.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5e7dad06-c48d-4509-b3...

But there's a dark side: the documentary found evidence of the age verification process being circumvented, meaning under-18s were able to illegally sell explicit content of themselves on the site.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#46

Similar to the recent actions by Twitter, Google, Apple and Amazon; Visa and Mastercard are private companies and can do whatever they want. Anyone who has an issue with what Visa/MC did must also take issue with the others.

I'm willing to revise my take on the "big tech takedown" when someone explains to me how a random member of the American public can pay a pornographic performer/model without using Visa/Mastercard and in less than 24 hours.

If there were no alternatives to Twitter, Android, iOS and AWS then I'd be as unhappy about that as I am about Visa/Mastercard's decision here.

However, it's my judgement that there are alternatives to these technology platforms to do what recently became less easy for some people to do. I don't believe there are any viable alternatives for payment processing.

Show me how I'm wrong.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#48

How do you ensure that the person performing sex work is being compensated for sex work, versus some form of exploitation (whether that's the platform or an individual exploiting)? A sex worker union [1] who can negotiate with distribution companies and platforms, lobby legislators and payment facilitators (who should not be prohibiting payments for legal business transactions), and ensure quality working conditions…

UBI

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way you ensure any other person isn’t being exploited. Society provides resources allowing the person to have the opportunity to not be leveraged into exploitation as their only option.

Yeah, not so much. North American developed countries aren't shining examples of labor protection champions. I'd refer to parts of Europe [1] and New Zealand [2] on how to protect sex workers in a more substantial way. [1] https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/Declaration_bookle... [2] https://www.nzpc.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Model

Sex workers are vastly exploited in Europe too, sadly.

Not all of them are, but it does not seem like the issue has been solved.

Re: Sex workers say 'defunding Pornhub' puts their livelihoods at risk

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the problem, as stated in the article. It's payments being cut off by card networks.

Isn't that because PornHub didn't verify anything and was filled with content that exploited people? In the end, the issue seems to be PornHub rather than the card networks.

They removed all unverified content a month ago. So that's clearly not an issue anymore.
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