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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

#111

Post by swift532 »

Retric wrote: post #59
shabda wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument might have been valid in 2015. Today converting BTC to USD is nearly automated if you so want.

Bitcoin is not viable due to it’s high transaction fees and low transaction rate. Some random Alt coin might work, but getting PornCoin adopted is difficult.

You don't have to have PornCoin, they can use an exchange like Binance which has a lot of different currencies supported, and the customer could pay in any one of these. Or they could use Request Network if that pans out.

And lastly, Bitcoin fees currently aren't large and you can get a confirmation with a few cents fee. That might stop being so if it becomes too popular again, but if off chain solutions like Lightning Network pan out, then that'd be sorted out.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#112

Post by bena »

vortico wrote: post #44
Rjevski wrote: post #23

Seems like cryptocurrencies would be the way to go for this.

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.

And what happens in that 15 minutes? Does the user have access to the site in that time? If so, what happens when the transaction doesn't validate? Just lock out their access? Ok. You can download quite a bit in 15 minutes. And then you can just run another fraudulent transaction to regain access.

> - as certain as wiring money. There's no chance a customer can force money back from you once paid.

Which is great for actual fraud. Especially when you make it super easy to do. Like buying coins online and clicking a button.

You do realize the issue is that neither side of a payment fully trusts the other, right? We can't just pass the ball to whichever side when it's most convenient. Cash works because it's in person. You see me, I see you. I hand you cash, you hand me a product/perform a service.

> anonymous

Bitcoin is not anonymous. It's at best pseudonymous. Not to mention, if the bitcoin can reach you, you are reachable. It can be made difficult, but no matter what there has to be a path back to you in order for you to receive the coins.

And you are ignoring that crypto is incredibly volatile. I think bitcoin went from near $20,000 to $6000 in this year alone. Imagine losing 70% of your value just because. That that $5 you collected from Joe Shmoe in January became $1.50. It's why a lot of businesses started backing off of it. It's just too volatile to be used as a currency. And let's not pretend that there's any other crypto worth talking about other than bitcoin. Ethereum, Litecoin, BCH, etc all follow bitcoin.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#113

Post by Bluestrike2 »

phyzome wrote: post #105
moneylaundering wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Yes.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#114

Post by Retric »

swift532 wrote: post #111
Retric wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not viable due to it’s high transaction fees and low transaction rate. Some random Alt coin might work, but getting PornCoin adopted is difficult.

You don't have to have PornCoin, they can use an exchange like Binance which has a lot of different currencies supported, and the customer could pay in any one of these. Or they could use Request Network if that pans out. And lastly, Bitcoin fees currently aren't large and you can get a confirmation with a few cents fee. That might stop being so if it becomes too popular again, but if off chain solutions like Lightni…

For the average person to buy something you need to buy a coin, that's 1 transaction on the block chain. They need to buy something with that coin that's transaction #2. The merchant needs to sell that coin that's transaction #3. Granted #1 and #3 can be much larger reducing the costs, but the average user is likely to be splitting #1 across a small number of transactions.

Further 2 exchange fees sit on of those 3 coin transactions.

In theory you can have an exchange handle all 5 of these transactions, but then your using the exchanges book's not a block chain.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#115

Post by pavel_lishin »

vortico wrote: post #98
pavel_lishin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The disadvantage is that most people don't know how to use crypto. To expand on this, it's hard to turn crypto into rent. You mentioned the friendly online wallets - they're almost a necessity if you want to accept bitcoin, and then turn it into fiat currency. The idea of directly paying content producers is great ( mumble mumble some middlemen do add value ), but it doesn't do them much good if they can't buy a ga…

The customer doesn't need to use crypto for rent or milk. And the customer shouldn't care about the idea of paying content producers directly, that's not the point. The customer uses a fiat -> crypto exchange/wallet combo service, sends a payment in crypto to the content producer, the content producer exchanges it back to fiat currency. The overhead of this is much less than 30-60% as mentioned in the article, and it…

Right, sorry, I wasn't clear. The producer is the one who's going to have a problem.

If I'm SquirtyBoy on PornoTron, I still have to convert BitCoin/Ethereum/Whatever into cash so my landlord doesn't kick me out onto the street.

(Unless you mean consumers should be paying PornoTron in cryptocurrency, which PornoTron then exchanges into fiat currency, and then pays SquirtyBoys in that. I think I mistook what you meant by "middle men" - I thought you meant things like PornTube, whereas you apparently meant Stripe/Paypal/etc.)

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#116

Post by Delmania »

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…

Should we consider banking a disreputable industry because of actors like Goldman Sachs? Should we consider mining a disreputable industry because of the deaths and cover ups? How about human trafficking for diamond mines? Should we consider the jewelry industry disreputable? How iPhone productions and Foxconn? Seriously the list can go on, every industry has parts of it that are less than reputable. If you think porn is somehow worse, that’s because of your morality or religions beliefs and not the facts.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#117

Post by xutopia »

asimpletune wrote: post #87

Do developers make more or less working in adult entertainment?

In Montreal I see a lot of junior developers making quite a bit more money than they would in other companies. I don't know any senior developers in the field though.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#118

Post by karrotwaltz »

moneylaundering wrote: post #72
stef25 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a t-shirt and get access to my members only blog / porn site. I can see how it's against the rules of the payment provider but this wouldn't be fraud would it?

The elements for federal and state money laundering charges would be there. Lying to a bank, in a tri-partite merchant account agreement, email, or phone call, and then obtaining services from that bank, can come down on you as bank fraud, wire fraud, or mail fraud. Once you’re buttoned up on fraud, subsequent transfers of funds can be charged as money laundering. This is true for most states and under federal law. I…

Bundling a physical good with a digital one has been done before, so if I understand correctly the only problem here is that the usage of a t-shirt is purely to circumvent the ban from the bank (due to high chargeback rate)...

In that case, and theoretically, bundling the physical good with a digital access right from the start would be perfectly legal right?

It would still be a dodgy way to reduce chargebacks, but assuming no bank ban occurs, it shouldn't be a breach of contract.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#119

Post by vortico »

bena wrote: post #112
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. And what happens in that 15 minutes? Does the user have access to the site in that time? If so, what happens when the transaction doesn't validate? Just lock out their access? Ok. You can download quite a bit in 15 minutes. And then you can just run another fraudulent transaction to regain access. > - as certain as wiring money. There'…

>And what happens in that 15 minutes?

They can beat off to a free site I guess. Nobody's in that much of a rush. In fact, most pay sites take a few minutes after a CC transaction is made because as the article suggests, their transaction passes through a number of middlemen. Most customers are in fact surprised when they can access a pay site immediately after closing the payment window. Most are happy to wait a few minutes for the email containing their password.

>You do realize the issue is that neither side of a payment fully trusts the other, right?

There are many reputable porn sites and many review websites and communities that support their reputation. The customer cannot be trusted by the website at all, but it is the norm, not the exception for the customer to trust the website.

>Bitcoin is not anonymous

Yes, but for this discussion, it is completely anonymous. Your wife cannot figure out the owner of the porn site's wallet ID. For all she knows, it's a pizza parlor.

>And you are ignoring that crypto is incredibly volatile

You're missing the point. In the day between when the Bitcoin arrives in someone's Coinbase account and when they purchase the subscription, the value is going to change less than 1%. At the end of the day, it's a USD -> USD transfer, just with much much lower overhead than 30-60% as described in the article.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#120

Post by lmm »

neoform wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who upload content and content producers have no necessary relationship. Paying uploaders is not a rebuttal to a charge that tube sites are dominated by piracy and don't pay content producers.

We only pay people we've confirmed are in the videos. Your comment doesn't just apply to porn tubes but all tubes. Youtube has tons of pirated content, they take it down when reported, just like us.

Youtube has content-id which these other sites have no equivalent to.
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