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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

#161
post #143
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…

It's the same crap as the ad-pocalypse. Journalists with an agenda use a disingenuous tactic, if they have a problem with a person or entity, they'll call up their sponsors, business partners, vendors, etc, and say "we're writing an article on X's platform which has been found to have (controversial material framed in a negative context), are we to believe that you're supportive and would your company care to comment…

Defending CP and revenge porn is such an odd hill to die on.

Please tell me what was wrong about the NYT's opinion piece? That it painted a visceral picture of a literal child whose exploitations continued to be put on PornHub to profit off of?

You give a lot of generic accusations without anything substantial.

Are you upset that companies now have to answer for their actions? Why is that a bad thing? A private company isn't a government, if MasterCard or Visa doesn't want to do business with certain risk prone sectors why should they be forced to?

Your reason for being upset is frankly odd and extremely dismissive of real issues, that companies are profiting off of CP, but decide to get upset that a news story can effect the public zeitgeist?

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

#162

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…

> 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…

If PG&E weren't compelled by law to provide their services to all, I know they would cave to similar pressure w.r.t CSAM...

"Your company provided the electricity to take these pictures. Now that you know are you going to continue to facilitate known predators?"

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

#163
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally been all over the news, with journalists and analysts directly linking the column with the changes at both PornHub in December and at MasterCard in April -- and these are the people who follow this professionally. You can Google it yourself trivially, you don't need to ask someone on HN to get it. But if you somehow don't trust that and you're asking for someone to report on the confidential goings-on…

Ok, well for those of us that didn't read the exact same set of articles you did, you sound like a guy making stuff up...so send some links.

This article from December 2020 exactly supports what OP is saying- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/10/pornhub-mast...

Just like you, I hadn't read the exact same articles as GP. But I was able to find this article in seconds on google as GP suggested.

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

#164
post #121

The winner here might actually be the majority of NSFW content makers on OF who are mortgaging their future reputations for very small payouts. (not a judgment on what they do but the reality of the situation

You post this exact comment on every recent thread about OF.

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

#165
post #48

How far away is crypto from being a viable alternative payment processor? The problems I see are the translation layer between fiat and crypto, the fluctuation of value of tokens, the long confirmation process of many tokens, the environmental impact, and the physical infrastructure (atms, etc). Each individual problems seems solvable, and it would be a significant historical event if banking was moved to these decen…

Banking is already decentralised. There is more than one bank. I think you might be thinking about "central banking", but central banks don't provide banking services.

Yeah, but how does it help with essentially duopoly of payment processors? How does it help with the US finance industry exporting their rules under ultimatum "either you comply or you will be excluded from the world financial system"?

We saw how it played out with funding of WikiLeaks for example. We need cryptocurrency to avoid this happening again.

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

#166
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…

The other question to ask is whether that piece came out of the blue or because someone was talking it up with Kristof. The author of that twitter thread thinks it’s inspired by an evangelical group (Exodus Cry) and it seems highly unlikely that they’d only be talking with him. It seems more likely that companies like MasterCard are hearing from them, politicians who are getting lobbied by their supporters, etc. and the NYT editorial was more like the final straw than the trigger.

It’s important to note that this isn’t wrong or malicious: many things most of us approve of (e.g. ending child labor, environmental reforms, banning dogfights, etc.) followed the same process. The concern is transparency and whether it’s effective at the stated goals: for example, I think trafficking is evil but I also think that the best way to support it is by ensuring fewer people are financially desperate rather than driving them underground where abuse is more likely and harder to prevent.

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

#167

The world really needs an alternative to these tweet serials. They're extremely annoying to read.

The world has an alternative since the web was born. Just host HTML page somewhere. Those who use twitter just don't care about their readers convenience. That's why I generally avoid any twitter links.

[deleted]

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

#168

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…

> 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…

> But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with?

The average layperson would care if MasterCard got hit with a headline like:

"MasterCard processed payments for Very Bad People for months/years!".

Layperson: Guess I'm calling my congressman and switching to Visa!

I assume MasterCard would (a) retain some very good PR firms to assist with keeping their image clean and (b) distance themselves from anything that might tarnish their image, like, well, regular porn websites.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of any legal safeguard you might legislate into place, it's radioactive PR to be associated in any way with sex trafficking and child porn.

I'm not sure it is. When people hear "PornHub is disseminating / profiting off revenge porn", does anyone think "shame on their payment processors"? I think the outrage is directed at the operators of the websites themselves.

Some of this is going to come down to legal liability. Someone who suffers because of child or revenge porn at OF or PH might realize that there isn't enough money at those companies and will instead direct lawsuits at "the companies that enabled the behavior." Even if unsuccessful, the legal fees could be enormous.

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

#170
post #143
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…

It's the same crap as the ad-pocalypse. Journalists with an agenda use a disingenuous tactic, if they have a problem with a person or entity, they'll call up their sponsors, business partners, vendors, etc, and say "we're writing an article on X's platform which has been found to have (controversial material framed in a negative context), are we to believe that you're supportive and would your company care to comment…

No. If a journalist asking uncomfortable questions about your business endangers your business, then the problem is not the journalist, the problem is your business.

If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months.

But in the porn hub story, the uncomfortable truth is that there was a lot of involuntary porn on the platform. The NYT story just made it a bit harder to ignore that uncomfortable fact.

And it's not like mastercard just changed their policy on a whim based on a single NYT story; credit card networks have always been known to kick all kinds of sex related services off the platform. Sex related businesses have been complaining about that for ever.

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