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Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

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Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#231

Post by thaumasiotes »

fpgaminer wrote: post #172
sandworm101 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood isn't daemonized, but I used to give basically the same advice. Industries that run on attractive young people, people looking at very short careers, tend towards evil. Ask any successful recording artist about their first record contracts. Taylor Swift is writing songs about that dark place.

Fair enough, I can see that. I think a good portion of the evil in those industries comes from sexism, but that's really tangential to the topic and I appreciate your point. EDIT: I would like to expand my previous comment though. Whenever prostitution is legalized we see massive improvements in the lives of sex workers. It seems clear to me that further reducing the demonization of sex, sex workers, etc would lead t…

> I think a good portion of the evil in those industries comes from sexism

What do we mean by "sexism" here? You don't think it's enough that men would like to have sex with attractive women? Or is that fact itself sexism?

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#232

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

haltingproblem wrote: post #145
disillusioned wrote: post #87

Cascading payments might be the real answer, and shuffling higher risk charges to non-Stripe providers, but in my experience, Stripe can get pretty moralizing pretty quickly. We built an adult ecommerce site (purely toys for purchase, no porn) and because other adult toy sites had been successful on Stripe, Stripe assured us this wouldn't be a problem. Six months and several million dollars processed later, Stripe in…

This is an incredibly frustrating read. I know, I know there are far worse things in the world but fucking Wells Fargo dictating to people when they evict homeowners who have no relationship with Wells Fargo, commit wholesale wire fraud, destroy people's credit and then turn around and lecture a honest business. This is why banking is a rent-seeking and though we need the financial industry they are ghoulish vampires…

This is what capitalism looks like. The ones with the capital are the ones with power. Housing, health care, and even small businesses all live and die by the decisions of the people/institutions with capital. The average American celebrates capitalism, while at the same being forced to slave away for basics of human life to just barely scrape by.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#233

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

Le0n_ wrote: post #226
disillusioned wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my exact rant. Even more galling was that Wells Fargo was virtue signaling about something that... had no optics to them. Literally no one knows who our payment processor was, but if you even got as far as "Stripe," a _vanishingly small_ number of people know that Wells Fargo is their banking partner for US transactions. This isn't to suggest that WF should run their merchant processing business with no one…

I think you're misinterpreting the scale of Wellsfargo. The CEO probably doesn't even know what onlyfans is, and they manage almost 2 trillion dollars.

The CEO knows their business model; it's to scratch out every last penny they can, however they can, just to fulfill some quarterly earnings report. Almost every public company is now a growth company, so it doesn't matter how much they already profit–what matters is that they profit more in the next 90 days. He/She doesn't need/care to know about onlyfans–they simply care about hitting their targets.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#234

Post by ultrarunner »

throwawaysea wrote: post #214
disillusioned wrote: post #87

Cascading payments might be the real answer, and shuffling higher risk charges to non-Stripe providers, but in my experience, Stripe can get pretty moralizing pretty quickly. We built an adult ecommerce site (purely toys for purchase, no porn) and because other adult toy sites had been successful on Stripe, Stripe assured us this wouldn't be a problem. Six months and several million dollars processed later, Stripe in…

We need all platform providers, such as payment utilities, to stop bringing their personal morals and politics to the table. If not, we need to regulate them or build government provided equivalents that don’t have the same vulnerabilities or split them up on anti trust grounds.

I'm not sure it's a given that "government provided equivalents" would be less political (or culturally slow-moving, as it were) than the situation now. I also had not considered that the banking sector is lightly regulated. Are you suggesting a re-envisioning of the banking sector as a sort of public utility?

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#235

Post by lvturner »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #194
simias wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the motivation behind this puritanism. I get why respectable institutions don't want to touch things like selling weed or prostitution since that's not legal everywhere and they could get in trouble. But sex toys? Who cares? Like, that's not a rhetorical question, literally "who cares?" Are people going to stop using Wells Fargo because they very indirectly help in the commerce of sex toys?

Alabama, Georgia, and Texas have laws restricting the sale and possession of sex toys.

Seriously?

I'm genuinely mind blown by this.

What are the ownership restrictions? Is it blanket or just to certain categories or sizes of toys?

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#236

Post by downandout »

disillusioned wrote: post #87

Cascading payments might be the real answer, and shuffling higher risk charges to non-Stripe providers, but in my experience, Stripe can get pretty moralizing pretty quickly. We built an adult ecommerce site (purely toys for purchase, no porn) and because other adult toy sites had been successful on Stripe, Stripe assured us this wouldn't be a problem. Six months and several million dollars processed later, Stripe in…

Out of curiosity...what merchant processor do you use now? Have they imposed a rolling reserve, and if so, how much and how long is it?

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#237

Post by 8192kjshad09- »

tzs wrote: post #76
justinholmes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most websites can't/shouldn't store the card number, they embed Stripe JavaScript that sends card number to Stripe and get a token id to use on the backend later on. Can't store CCV or number without passing PCI compliance.

For the CVV you can't store it even if you have passed PCI compliance. You are only allowed to collect it for a specific transaction, and are required to forget it when that transaction is complete.

That can't be right. I entered my credit card information once into uber eats and I can buy food whenever without entering a CCV and my credit card is immediately charged.

If this were true 1000s of large companies would not be PCI compliant.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#238

Post by m11a »

cj wrote: post #184
rebelidealist wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Last time I checked the network requests, I noticed it was storing the card on Stripe, CCBill, and Securion, but using CCBill or Securion to process the payment." Im curious about how to use Stripe to only store cards and let other processors make the charge. Would anyone have more info on this? Greatly appreciate it.

> how to use Stripe to only store cards and let other processors make the charge 1) Have the user submit their card info on your payment page 2) Simultaneously send the card info to the 3 processors 3) Then process the charge through just 1 of the 3 processors, leaving the others open to be used later (At least with Stripe) the process of saving a credit card to Stripe and actually charging the card are 2 independent…

To pull that off, they'd have to (technically) process the card info, which puts them in the scope for PCI compliance. By that point, I don't know why they'd send card info to 3 processors especially when they know, at that point, which processor they're gonna process it with. It would just make more sense to send it to the 1 processor the code ends up deciding to use.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#239

Post by m11a »

__ryan__ wrote: post #54
wil421 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right and backpage was just a site for lonely singles looking to connect.

Stripe’s TOS is there to protect itself. They can point to the “no porn” rule if they ever need to cut ties with OnlyFans, but until then, they will reap the benefits of their partnership. It’s a win-win for Stripe.

Pretty sure if a company intentionally refuses to enforce a provision of its terms (rather than not realising), it would be a bit more of a legal tangle if they decided to arbitrarily rely on said provision one day to cut ties. So I don't think that'd work.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#240

Post by sneak »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #216
ballenf wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you'd have due process and couldn't be deplatformed for legal activity. Now you have neither. The current system has zero privacy, so no change there. Not seeing the downside. Federally illegal activity like marijuana wouldn't benefit, but most things would.

Technically, any occurring "federally illegal" activity is just not successfully policed criminal activity. (States can't actually make something legal the federal government says is not legal. They can just decline to use their own resources to police it.) Generally speaking, most people would consider "not usable in crime" to be a feature rather than a bug. ;)

I don’t think there is as quite widespread consensus that all federal crimes are legitimately crime as you seem to think.

Marijuana sales, for example, seem extremely popular.

Just because there’s a law in place at some remote level of jurisdiction doesn’t mean it’s just, or has popular support.

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