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A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

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Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#151

Post by aerosmile »

masklinn wrote: post #61
twic wrote: post #29

Seen this thread going around, but it seems like it skips over the important bit. > So why the rule changes? Because last December the New York Times published an opinion piece by Nick Kristof caller “The Children of Pornhub” that accused the site and its parent company of profiting off revenge porn, child porn and sex trafficking. How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financia…

> How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financial infrastructure company changes its rules'? In my experience, huge companies do not make changes like this purely on the basis of newspaper columns. The amounts are minor as far as payment processors are concerned, but those payment processors want to avoid governments getting up their grill. By acting "proactively" on anything w…

Very insightful comment. When you run a gazillion dollar company, you don't care about a billion here or there from porn sites, you care about not losing your gazillion dollar business. There are plenty of examples where CEOs were not conservative enough and it cost them big time - just look at Facebook's loosey goosey approach to political advertising, which in the end turned the entire country against them. From a business perspective, it's better to take a small financial hit but continue to run your business without any additional regulatory oversight.

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#153

Post by throwaway306744 »

crazygringo wrote: post #99
twic wrote: post #29

Seen this thread going around, but it seems like it skips over the important bit. > So why the rule changes? Because last December the New York Times published an opinion piece by Nick Kristof caller “The Children of Pornhub” that accused the site and its parent company of profiting off revenge porn, child porn and sex trafficking. How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financia…

Honestly, in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column. It's not common, but it's what happened here. It was an incredibly visible and influential accusation that seemingly came out of nowhere from arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the country, and legitimate businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex traf…

> businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex trafficking

With PornHub that makes sense because the type of content they provide is the crux of their businesss.

But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with? I would not even think to blame PG&E for providing electricity, even if the recipient turned out to be doing some super illegal things with that electricity.

So I am not convinced by reputation damage to payment processors. I am more convinced by unacceptably high chargebacks and fraud, but even there it is hard to explain the about face that payment processors have made here. Curious!

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#154

Post by colinmhayes »

runawaybottle wrote: post #90
twic wrote: post #29

Seen this thread going around, but it seems like it skips over the important bit. > So why the rule changes? Because last December the New York Times published an opinion piece by Nick Kristof caller “The Children of Pornhub” that accused the site and its parent company of profiting off revenge porn, child porn and sex trafficking. How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financia…

There’s more money to be made as an acceptable platform that isn’t seen as a porn site. Many women on Twitch already do sexualized streams. Twitch is not seen as taboo. It’s just a bigger market when people can feel like they aren’t a complete sex worker, and can actually share that they are on OnlyFans, same way they can share their Twitch.

The not being seen as a porn site ship has sailed for OnlyFans.

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#155

Post by MattGaiser »

twic wrote: post #29

Seen this thread going around, but it seems like it skips over the important bit. > So why the rule changes? Because last December the New York Times published an opinion piece by Nick Kristof caller “The Children of Pornhub” that accused the site and its parent company of profiting off revenge porn, child porn and sex trafficking. How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financia…

Child sexual exploitation is pretty much the worst thing you can do as far as society is concerned. Such people are considered low in prison.

So I think the possible brand damage alone could have caused a panic, simply because this particular type of damage could be absolutely horrendous.

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#156

Post by speeder »

fouric wrote: post #106
crazygringo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column. It's not common, but it's what happened here. It was an incredibly visible and influential accusation that seemingly came out of nowhere from arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the country, and legitimate businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex traf…

You say "it's what happened here" and "But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way" - but you haven't actually provided any evidence for it, just repeated assertions that it's true. Can you show anything aside from just speculation?

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#157

Post by dageshi »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #137
altendo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that it's an assumption for now, but a reasonable one to make. I think it's unlikely that Visa exposes itself to legal risks where MasterCard is not - why give your competitor an edge like that?

That assumes that there actually are legal risks, and that there isn’t more money to be made by continuing to process these payments.

For Mastercard and Visa the money to be made is a rounding error on a rounding error, there are lots of other industries that don't have the same PR risks as adult content does.

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#158

Post by isoskeles »

fouric wrote: post #106
crazygringo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column. It's not common, but it's what happened here. It was an incredibly visible and influential accusation that seemingly came out of nowhere from arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the country, and legitimate businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex traf…

You say "it's what happened here" and "But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way" - but you haven't actually provided any evidence for it, just repeated assertions that it's true. Can you show anything aside from just speculation?

Given PornHub removed a bunch of videos after that article came out, it seems reasonable to conclude that either the article was responsible, or the article made the idea popular enough. At this point, I’m not sure what the difference is, but I am sure that people denying the article played a role are the ones speculating here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornhub

> In December 2020, following a New York Times article on such content, payment processors Mastercard and Visa cut their services to Pornhub. On 14 December 2020, Pornhub removed all videos by unverified users.[15] This reduced the content from 13 million to 4 million videos.[16]

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#159

Post by btown »

fouric wrote: post #106
crazygringo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column. It's not common, but it's what happened here. It was an incredibly visible and influential accusation that seemingly came out of nowhere from arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the country, and legitimate businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex traf…

You say "it's what happened here" and "But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way" - but you haven't actually provided any evidence for it, just repeated assertions that it's true. Can you show anything aside from just speculation?

This was posted in another thread here, but it seems that activist investor Bill Ackman was the link in this case, and his personal interest (and general notoriety for extremely aggressive attacks on companies he believes are vulnerable) almost certainly played a part in him making this a five-alarm fire at Mastercard:

> Ackman, who has four daughters, was outraged when he read how one teenager ended up a Pornhub victim... An influential shareholder activist, Ackman immediately thought about the growing interest in ethical, or ESG, investing... He was friendly with Mastercard’s then-CEO Ajay Banga, whom he had met through a mutual friend. Ackman texted Banga, providing a link to Kristof’s story with his tweet: “Amex, VISA and MasterCard should immediately withhold payments or withdraw until this is fixed. PayPal has already done so.” ... Banga quickly wrote back: “We’re on it.”

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman

Re: A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong

#160

Post by inetknght »

dijit wrote: post #79
MBCook wrote: post #57

There was also a recent BBC investigation into OnlyFans that found they constantly bent their rules for popular content makers and had a real problem with sub-18 people on the platform. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865

The content they’re talking about is reprehensible. (Beastiality, incest, prostitution) but I’m wary of things being labelled “illegal” since in the UK, facesitting, spanking and “water sports” are illegal. So it’s easy to cite 1 case of beastiality and later say there are “200,000 illegal articles” when 199,999 could be spanking.

> prostitution

I argue: prostitution is illegal but not reprehensible.

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