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Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

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Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#101

Post by vortico »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #76
vortico wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely. I barely use Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies at all (because USD works great for everything I do), but cryptocurrencies are perfect for this industry because they are - fast enough. 15 minutes to validate a transaction is sufficient for a porn site. - as certain as wiring money. There's no chance a customer can force money back from you once paid. - anonymous. Your wife won't find out in a bank st…

> anonymous. Your wife won't find out in a bank statement, so less chance of "fake-angry" customers trying to force money back. Right, she'll think you're buying drugs instead when she sees the charge for cryptocurrency.

Very easy to defend, since there are infinite possibilities of what a Coinbase transaction in your bank statement could mean. "I wanted to try out crypto so I bought a takeout pizza" he might say. Not the case with CC-Bill or AcmeMiddlemanHoldings.

And regardless of how the interaction plays out between the wife and husband, the end result will never be a chargeback, so the content provider wins anyway.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#102

Post by turnitoff »

moneylaundering wrote: post #82
oliwarner wrote: post #69

We're what's broken. Our prudish approach to adult entertainment. "Joe" would have a happier life if he and his wife were open about how much money they were each spending on porn. They might learn something about each other. Hiding it in layers of shell billing companies isn't just ridiculous at the technical level described here, it's unhealthy . Also needs to be noted that —as others have said— card processing com…

Your assertion regarding adult CNP risk is incorrect, they do in fact have much higher levels of fraud and chargebacks. The card networks came down on this category because of chargebacks, not because porn is bad. I would also point out Adult CNP is far from the only category to get this treatment, but they are one of the only high risk categories that have four major banks more than happy to take their business. Tra…

Exactly this. Adult and high risk in general are an absolute quagmire, and all actors are trying to "outcompete" with one another, making the situation worse and worse.

Risk from transactions: stolen credit cards get default checked on adult sites (digital good delivery instantly verifies if the card is still useable).

Bad faith merchants. This goes from outright scams to the still widely used practice of "card banging", when they tack on added services or hit you with a huge fee after your free trial ends (which is not presented to the customer).

Affiliates screwing sites, sites screwing affiliates.

Billing support building more and more barriers for customers to get a hold of them or to cancel subscriptions.

And then let's not even get into the industry's backbone, content producers...

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#103

Post by bena »

mrweasel wrote: post #77
bumholio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this approach, and the related proposals like 3D Secure and Bitcoin, is precisely that it puts a low ceiling on what the site is allowed to charge to exactly what the customer is willing to spend on porn. The bread and butter of porn and most other internet subscription models is to get hold of the consumer credit card data and then setup a long run recurring payment stream, on the expectation that w…

I don't think I understand the issue with using 3D Secure, or Verified by VISA. It's something customers are already accustom when shopping online. You're buying a high risk item, from the perspective of the sell, similarly to downloadable content, or high price electronics. Solution like 3D Secure seems ideal in this case. Companies like Stripe could easily say: Yes, we do accept payments for adult sites, but 3D Sec…

The problem is the customer on that side. The adult entertainment industry would love to use standard billing methods.

But what happens is that the customer invariably screams "I was hacked" when the line item comes on the bill. Then the chargeback happens anyway. Sure, the merchant isn't held financially liable for it, but they are still noted as having that chargeback. And they'll still hit that high percentage of "fraudulent charges".

And that's the real problem. Nobody will touch them because it costs too much to do so.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#104

Post by bena »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #37
greyman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, to REALLY solve the problem you'd "only" need people to stop seeing sex (and porn) as bad, dirty, taboo, etc. But this won't happen anytime soon :-((( It won't, since it is not universally true, that seeing porn is not bad. There are thousands of personal accounts, or even a whole communities of people, who are trying to get rid of porn watching due to damage it brought to their lives.

I'd say that gambling does a lot worse damage and that is much more widespread and "legitimate" (here in the UK at least). Online gambling sites are even advertised on primetime TV! Or for a better example of a perfectly above-board and healthy activity enjoyed by huge numbers of people that can become addictive and "a problem" - how about gaming? (I'm not trying to belittle your point or resort to "whataboutism" her…

Here in the US, on every lottery and gambling advertisement, there is a small notice or disclaimer for gambling addiction hotlines.

So yeah, like you, I'm not buying the entire "because some people are addicted" angle either. We are sold addictive substances all the time.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#105

Post by phyzome »

moneylaundering wrote: post #82
oliwarner wrote: post #69

We're what's broken. Our prudish approach to adult entertainment. "Joe" would have a happier life if he and his wife were open about how much money they were each spending on porn. They might learn something about each other. Hiding it in layers of shell billing companies isn't just ridiculous at the technical level described here, it's unhealthy . Also needs to be noted that —as others have said— card processing com…

Your assertion regarding adult CNP risk is incorrect, they do in fact have much higher levels of fraud and chargebacks. The card networks came down on this category because of chargebacks, not because porn is bad. I would also point out Adult CNP is far from the only category to get this treatment, but they are one of the only high risk categories that have four major banks more than happy to take their business. Tra…

Does CNP mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction ?

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#107

Post by wodenokoto »

mrweasel wrote: post #85
wodenokoto wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason porn magazine aren't delivered in see-through plastic like other magazines and instead are delivered in white envelopes.

I don't know where you live, but porn magazines are in see-through plastic, just like other magazines. They're just on the top shelf, that's all.

Not when you subscribe to them and they arrive in your mailbox!

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#108

Post by ta230493 »

philtar wrote: post #90
marikio wrote: post #71

There are a few companies/orgs trying to solve these issues: https://spankchain.com/ https://www.iliac.io/ But porn doesn't have high margins. No one (except the large distributors like Mindgeek - Pornhub, Redtube, YouPorn) is making much money. Especially these small sites that are being built. After you subtract legal, production, performer fees you're left with almost nothing. I worked in the Adult Industry for se…

> Porn performers/activists are the kindest, sweetest, most intelligent group of folks I've ever worked with. I'm finding it difficult to believe this given that it's known that pornography is known to be an industry riddled with violence, hard drugs, human trafficking and so on and so forth. Edit: As soon as I posted this I see the other commenter outed you as having an inherent benefit from tricking people into bel…

From my limited experience talking to people working in this space, the violence / human trafficking portion is not really a problem in the adult entertainment space. At least, many models definitely work voluntarily. I think trafficking is more of a potential issue at the shady ends of prostitution.

The downside of the adult entertainment industry is that you did hear of tales of questionable employers... it's less "violence" and more environments and/or tactics that sometimes seemed shady or unethical. There was also tales of drugs, sure. Also the pay is often relatively lousy. IMHO your best bet to avoid shady places is to support models / producers / etc. at an individual level, which is more possible these days thanks to the Internet.

(To be honest the industry it reminded me of the most is the music industry. Which has similar bits of shady employers / work environments here and there, similar drug issues, similar lousy pay, and a similar scenario where the best way to avoid the shady parts is directly supporting the non-shady artists and venues as much as possible.)

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#109

Post by swift532 »

lawn wrote: post #49
vortico wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely. I barely use Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies at all (because USD works great for everything I do), but cryptocurrencies are perfect for this industry because they are - fast enough. 15 minutes to validate a transaction is sufficient for a porn site. - as certain as wiring money. There's no chance a customer can force money back from you once paid. - anonymous. Your wife won't find out in a bank st…

> fast enough. 15 minutes to validate a transaction is sufficient for a porn site. There's a thing called 0-conf where you accept a transaction even before it's included in a block. This is used by BitPay, the worlds largest Bitcoin payment processor, to accept Bitcoin Cash in just a couple of seconds. It's safe enough (there's always a risk/reward trade-off) for smaller purchases if you just use a few simple heurist…

They can convert it back into a national currency through an exchange like Bitstamp, paying a fee of 0.25% for conversion to dollars/euros and however much the fee for wiring money is(it's surely less than 1%).

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#110

Post by sametmax »

philtar wrote: post #90
marikio wrote: post #71

There are a few companies/orgs trying to solve these issues: https://spankchain.com/ https://www.iliac.io/ But porn doesn't have high margins. No one (except the large distributors like Mindgeek - Pornhub, Redtube, YouPorn) is making much money. Especially these small sites that are being built. After you subtract legal, production, performer fees you're left with almost nothing. I worked in the Adult Industry for se…

> Porn performers/activists are the kindest, sweetest, most intelligent group of folks I've ever worked with. I'm finding it difficult to believe this given that it's known that pornography is known to be an industry riddled with violence, hard drugs, human trafficking and so on and so forth. Edit: As soon as I posted this I see the other commenter outed you as having an inherent benefit from tricking people into bel…

Not saying the industry is reputable, but the people are super nice and really don't judge.
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