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The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

theguardian.com

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Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#51

Post by ashtonkem »

pessimizer wrote: post #25

The reason the banks, and through the banks OnlyFans, attack sex is because they are accountable, and don't wish to take risks unless they are very profitable risks. The real danger of platforms and banks is how happy they are to censor for the government, or simply the loudest, richest mouth, in order to keep the profit flowing. If you want to fix it, you put in legal protections for people to do business, rather th…

The issue is that the banks all move in lock step, undermining the basic principle of the free market.

If one bank decides it doesn’t want to deal with porn, fine. But when all the banks decide that, that’s very very bad. The cumulative effect is a chilling of protected speech in a way that congress could never legally get away with.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#52

Post by pjc50 »

whythre wrote: post #47
snarf21 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the article goes to the wrong place. The real cause is that most organizations (government, financial institutions, media conglomerates, etc.) are largely controlled by old rich white guys and they don't like people doing things. They are the ones pushing their "morality". We need more diverse and younger people in these positions to evolve our culture more quickly.

I mean, ‘the Patriarchy’ is the old chestnut explanation for most societal ills. Any evidence that it was corrupt old white men? The banks are bowing to external pressure and I am not convinced those voices are the ones necessarily representative of ‘the Patriarchy.’

The external pressure in the US is coming mostly from evangelical Christians, who literally worship the divine Father figure.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#53

Post by ziml77 »

gregd wrote: post #10

So do I have to be THAT guy? Fine. Crypto solves this issue...

At least with Bitcoin, it's costly to pay privately. I need to set up another wallet and then get funding into it in a way that isn't linked to my main wallet. That involves either giving cash to an exchange or sending the money through a tumbler. There's fees to pay the exchange or tumbler, fees paid to the miners for the transfer into the wallet, and then fees paid to the miners for the transfers out of the wallet (and another fee paid the miners for the tumbler since there's 2 legs to that transfer).

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#54

Post by LinuxBender »

londons_explore wrote: post #46
LinuxBender wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that banks don't really care about sex. At least the one I worked for didn't seem to care. They will take all the money they can get. The more they have, the more they can lend out based on the fractional reserve system. They do care if people are not investing money in their banks and there are investors that don't wish to be associated with adult related organizations. Perhaps there is a way to…

Are chargeback rates higher for porn businesses? If so, that alone could be a reason to stop servicing them.

Chargebacks are more common in adult businesses and banks often eat some of this cost. This puts more onus on the banking customers to implement some protections and ID verification that may be seen as cumbersome to small businesses, startups, etc... There are banking and credit sites that provide tips and techniques to minimize charge-backs. Banks can also help businesses learn how to implement these measures, but admittedly there is still an operating cost to this. Here is a past thread talking about some aspects of these issues. [1]

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538460

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#56

Post by treis »

snarf21 wrote: post #37
pessimizer wrote: post #25

The reason the banks, and through the banks OnlyFans, attack sex is because they are accountable, and don't wish to take risks unless they are very profitable risks. The real danger of platforms and banks is how happy they are to censor for the government, or simply the loudest, richest mouth, in order to keep the profit flowing. If you want to fix it, you put in legal protections for people to do business, rather th…

Agreed, the article goes to the wrong place. The real cause is that most organizations (government, financial institutions, media conglomerates, etc.) are largely controlled by old rich white guys and they don't like people doing things. They are the ones pushing their "morality". We need more diverse and younger people in these positions to evolve our culture more quickly.

They're not pearl clutching church goers enforcing their morality on everyone. They're concerned about real objective harm like revenge porn, videos of sexual assault, leaked videos, child porn, and so on.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#57

Post by chii »

Sebb767 wrote: post #33
gregd wrote: post #10

So do I have to be THAT guy? Fine. Crypto solves this issue...

These people, especially in porn, live by impulsive spending (buying the subscription, sending tips). The high delay and extremely large sign-up burden [0], combined with the fees, would probably ruin a lot of their income. Remember, they compete with a free offering. [0] Most people don't own crypto yet, so they'd need to learn about it, create an exchange account, verify it, fill it up and then they can pay. Compar…

CC also went through a similar transformation that crypto would have to.

The problem is that noone wants to take the risk to transform crypto into as convenient a service as credit cards, when credit cards have such a first-mover advantage.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#58

Post by quotemstr »

This is rich coming from The Guardian, which for years has been in favor of private actors censoring their ideological opponents. Today, when their face is getting eaten by leopards, they're worried about "unaccountable power", but tomorrow, they'll be demanding others be kicked off the internet.
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