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Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#41

Post by rcfox »

itengelhardt wrote: post #13
couchand wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rybchin said she suspects it has something to do with tech being dominated by men, who might be nervous about working with a sex-toy startup: “All these companies are run by men, and they don’t appreciate a woman’s pleasure.” I don't know whether this really is the underlying issue, but damn, it's unfortunate how plausible it is. And the reaction from Stripe to the reporter's request for comment all but confirms.

IMHO the problem is not that men "don't appreciate a woman's pleasure" - that is some serious bullshit in my opinion. Most men love it when their SO enjoys sex. The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Just think about what kind of outrage it would cause if Stripe had a single prostitute or porn website use their service to receive payments. (For the sake of argument assume the p…

> The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US.

Porn is illegal in the US?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#42

Post by frequentflyeru »

It just surprises me that mainstream brands haven't embraced advertising on porn sites. There is no reason why there couldn't be a Hulu style high end porn site with real ads from like Budweiser, Old Spice, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Comedy Central. There might be backlash for the first company to advertise but after that I can't imagine people would care.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#43

Post by MrJagil »

http://www.pornmd.com/ is a very interesting site.

For one, it scrapes all the top sites.

For another, you can see what people search for in which region. I.e. I am in Denmark and danish people apparently wants to see danish porn. I wasn't aware of that.

For a third, they have a live-search which is quite interesting. (and amusingly, read aloud by porn actors here: http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1025156889)

For a fourth, they also have a chrome extension, which if nothing else is curious as the adult industry has so far shied away from apps and such (I believe because of regulations).

Another interesting take is http://www.porniq.com The site speaks for itself.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#44

Post by sudokent »

selmnoo wrote: post #40
sudokent wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not, anything classified as "High Risk" cannot be serviced by Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc. Again, from my research, it is because the partner banks will not allow them to.

Hm, okay. Though, it's not clear to me why porn sites en masse would be classified as "High Risk"? Are you sure this is always the case? How are current popular porn sites doing this? And, now that Stripe is quite big, don't they have some leverage over the banks to be able to say they do want porn sites et al. to be able to work with Stripe?

That makes two of us! Porn en masse shouldn't be, but it is.

As for Stripe's size, they are a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket compared to the world markets. Heck compared to a U.S based hedge fund they'd be tiny. I'm guessing they have very little leverage.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#46

Post by icebraining »

_bfhp wrote: post #26

Is porn really "taboo"? Or is the idea merely useful for justifying the state of the industry? What is OP's response to Robert Jensen [1], Germaine Greer [2], Corina Taylor [3], Clara Bennathan [4], Meghan Murphy [5], and Gail Dines [6] [7]? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbxBJf9UtWg [2] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/24/society [3] https://www.thepinkcross.org/pinkcross-articles/october-2011... [4] h…

I don't think you know what "taboo" means. It doesn't mean it's not harmful.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#47

Post by durkie »

rcfox wrote: post #41
itengelhardt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the problem is not that men "don't appreciate a woman's pleasure" - that is some serious bullshit in my opinion. Most men love it when their SO enjoys sex. The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Just think about what kind of outrage it would cause if Stripe had a single prostitute or porn website use their service to receive payments. (For the sake of argument assume the p…

> The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Porn is illegal in the US?

It's not ouright illegal, but it's becoming more and more onerous to work in the adult industry because of things like this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/the-banks-w...

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#48

Post by snug »

My girlfriends company, https://zivity.com is testing out some waters on a few things. Zivity has been around for awhile, where you pay for votes and you vote on your favorite sets, and pays out pretty well to their artist. Right now they are testing a sexy crowdfunding site, where you vote for which theme you want to win. Live Preview/Beta (https://fund.okidokiokami.com/)

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#50

Post by devNoise »

selmnoo wrote: post #40
sudokent wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not, anything classified as "High Risk" cannot be serviced by Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc. Again, from my research, it is because the partner banks will not allow them to.

Hm, okay. Though, it's not clear to me why porn sites en masse would be classified as "High Risk"? Are you sure this is always the case? How are current popular porn sites doing this? And, now that Stripe is quite big, don't they have some leverage over the banks to be able to say they do want porn sites et al. to be able to work with Stripe?

The porn sites are classified as "high risk" because the banks believe/know that type of business has above average chargebacks. Apparently banks want to keep their chargebacks to a minimum.
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