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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

#221

Post by scoopertrooper »

dbspin wrote: post #176
bostonalt wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compa…

Commenter above isn't defending those things though... And in fact revenge porn, CP and other awful content appear across all social platforms. And just like Pornhub they remove them when notified. Thought experiment, what happened to piracy when Napster shut down? What would adding subscription options and regulating Napster have done. Would it have created spotify a decade earlier and disincenvtised the development…

> While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.

So, this article alleges that MindGeek only hires 80 moderators to monitor million of videos being uploaded each year despite taking in 460 million dollars in revenue? That's pretty damning, if true. It's little wonder so much is getting through.

You refer to the amount of problematic content as "microscopic" and "vanishingly small", but on what basis do you believe that? On one hand we have an article filled with some pretty horrific examples of abuse being broadcast on PornHub, on the other I guess we have your gut feeling about this whole thing?

> Thought experiment, what happened to piracy when Napster shut down? What would adding subscription options and regulating Napster have done. Would it have created spotify a decade earlier and disincenvtised the development of Gnutella, bitorrent etc?

I don't even know what you're trying to say here. Sites like PornHub already adopt a model that fairly closely resembles Spotify when you think about it. In any event, it sounds almost like you're making the argument that a little child abuse is just the price we need to pay for innovation. No thanks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...

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

#222

Post by bob33212 »

neaanopri wrote: post #135
nonameiguess wrote: post #64

At least this explains why normal porn sites keep living on perfectly well using MasterCard and Visa. They already have to follow regulatory requirements to demonstrate they are complying with age and consent laws, each video includes a front-matter frame saying where you can get the documentation of their compliance, and many include behind-the-scenes extra content showing all of the performers presenting government…

If that's the case why can't OF impose these requirements on their creators?

The reason some creators use OF is because of the convenience. If you make it takes weeks and tons of work to get on the platform, they might as well start their own site.

Also from a legal perspective it is very risky to take on that liability for so many creators. All it would take is one screw up on checking date of birth on an ID, and now OF is accessory to sex crimes.

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

#223

Post by ehsankia »

relax88 wrote: post #114
Miner49er wrote: post #54

So the timing of this, and the Apple's CSAM is interesting. Are companies facing a legal liability or afraid of facing one in the future? Are they worried that they could potentially be liable under FOSTA-SESTA?

I think this is highly likely to be the thing causing these changes in the porn industry. I’m skeptical that we would be seeing the large scale changes to sites like Craigslist, Pornhub, and OnlyFans just because of a NYT article and some prude Christian activists.

> and some prude Christian activists

And where do you think FOSTA-SESTA, the legal troubles and the sudden shift of mind from payment processors comes from? Do you think they randomly started to care out of nowhere?

At a high level, yes companies are being forced by payment processors and legal troubles, but if you dig a bit deeper, it almost always trace back to christian fundamentalist lobbyists such as Exodus Cry

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

#224

Post by throwaway444590 »

isoskeles wrote: post #158
fouric wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 art…

not just pornhub but from all their other sites too. huge amount of content vanished

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

#225

Post by afavour »

surge wrote: post #143
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…

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…

Let's look at this from the reverse angle:

Did PornHub have revenge porn, child trafficking, etc. on the site? Yes. The twitter thread concedes this point. So this isn't "just a hit piece with unverified out of context accusations". Is that fair game to report on? I'd certainly say it is.

If you're going to publish a potentially explosive article about something, is it better or worse to reach out to sponsors, partners etc proactively to get their reaction in the published piece, or should you surprise them with it? IMO the former makes sense. To suggest that these sponsors would somehow not be at all affected if a reporter didn't call them up doesn't match with reality at all. We've seen too many viral boycotts to count at this point.

> They've done this numerous times not even giving those accused to respond

Well, how long is long enough? If you were required to wait for someone to respond before publishing it would be a fantastic stalling tactic, wouldn't it? You could just keep putting it off and off.

The problem here, IMO, is twofold: there is a payment processing duopoly, and societal mores are still very puritanical. These are the cause of the problem, not the article. Yes, Kristof wrote an article that resonated with those two factors but what's the alternative, not publish controversial stories that might have a negative effect?

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

#226

Post by acdha »

xg15 wrote: post #179
acdha wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the thread wasn't defending trafficking. It's claiming that the forces that push the anti-trafficking rules have a hidden agenda, which is not about trafficking at all: They want to get rid of the whole sex industry for religious reasons, specifically including the legal and consensual part. That's a different goal altogether.

I’m aware: that’s the reason why I mentioned that topic - transparency is what helps the reader know why a topic is getting a spike in coverage and let’s them decide whether they share all of the goals of the groups pushing it.

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

#227

Post by Auracle »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #111
mchusma wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If you are going to be a legal dualolopy, then you can't cut off payments like you can't cut off power or water. Personally I breaking thei anti-trust behavior entirely, so people have options.

It's the high chargeback rate.

They could simply automatically raise fees depending on chargeback rate. It’s not a particularly hard problem to solve.

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

#228

Post by that_guy_iain »

relax88 wrote: post #142
neaanopri wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case why can't OF impose these requirements on their creators?

Presumably because of the costs of verification and record keeping. A single adult video studio might have a maximum of a few hundred people who they have to keep records for. Those people are paid per shoot, and the content is owned by the studio. There is a high ratio of revenue to number of people whose records must be kept. On OnlyFans, they have a huge amount of people producing a small volume of content and mak…

Also, they need to view the footage before it's published. Studios do this when they're editing it. It's literally part of their process. A big one will deal with processing four 60 minute videos a day maybe? Onlyfans would presummely be dealing with multiple minutes of footage per minute of the day they would need to screen.

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

#229

Post by zozbot234 »

xg15 wrote: post #179
acdha wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the thread wasn't defending trafficking. It's claiming that the forces that push the anti-trafficking rules have a hidden agenda, which is not about trafficking at all: They want to get rid of the whole sex industry for religious reasons, specifically including the legal and consensual part. That's a different goal altogether.

The problem with that kind of argument is that these rules are what everyone pushes to deter traffickers. No one has seriously managed to come up with a viable alternate policy that averts this kind of collateral damage on bona-fide sex work. It's much like saying that all the efforts that are now saving elephants from being poached to extinction are just some shadowy "anti-ivory agenda" rather than being undertaken for the sake of the elephants. Terribly bad faith argument.

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

#230

Post by davikrr »

kjgkjhfkjf wrote: post #13

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

These comments about Twitter are really getting tiring. See any Foone thread and you'll almost always realize it's getting derailed by a huge comment thread complaining about Twitter.
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