Silly me, thinking the real scandal is that our daughters are forced to sell nudes to survive.
Those nudes fuel property values so it is all good.
The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
251–260 of 372 posts
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#252Silly me, thinking the real scandal is that our daughters are forced to sell nudes to survive.
Many businesses cannot hire enough employees. Everywhere I walk I see help wanted signs. Hourly rates are going up. Are they being forced to sell something, or a conscious choice?
That's a new problem. The problem he is talking about existed for thousands of years.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#253It's tremendously easy to be concerned about unaccountable power opposing your own narrative.
It's just the usual progression of authoritarianism.
First they come for your enemies, then your neighbors, then your friends and family and then they come for you.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Banks have no morals, as long as the price is right
You're describing the average business. Businesses are primarily there to make money.
It's amazing how pwople dont see the fundamental tension between "western values" like individual freedoms and unbridled capitalism "values" (i.e. profit). Those motivations are sometimes pulling in opposite directions. Which will win? Which should win?
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does anyone know the specific reason banks find the adult industry risky?
Two reasons. One is the higher incidence of chargebacks. You don't have to ask if something is naughty -- just look for the chargebacks and it'll tell you. What happens is someone charges a thing, their partner sees it on the CC statement and asks about it, the first person is ashamed to admit it so they act shocked and insist it MUST be fraud because THEY would never charge something like that, and to keep up appear…
My impression was that payment processors, not banks, were on the hook for chargebacks, but I may misremember?
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really doesn't. Crypto solves anonymity, making it possible for operations to take payments in ways that can't be regulated based on content. It doesn't solve trust. In fact existing solutions fall way, way, short of what consumers already have. A provider that accepts crypto is 100% unaccountable. You can't do a chargeback on Bitcoin. You get what you get once you make that payment. Now, it's true that there is a…
What does this have to do with trust? Clearly the current users trust OnlyFans, and I doubt very many people are worried they’re going to disappear in the middle of the night and turn off the porn. “Yeah I’ll throw $50 into this OnlyFans subscription, but only if I can get a chargeback if I’m not happy with the performer” said nobody ever.
It's probably more like "I'll throw $50 into this OnlyFans subscription, but only if I can get a chargeback if it's actually just a bunch of cat pictures." There's a lot of scams on the internet, adult industry or no.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cartels pay their bills, and have very effective ways to collect from people who want to skip paying theirs. If you had billions to invest and transact with, you'd have banks bending over backwards for your business too.
I’d guess billions of dollars flow through pornhub, they’re the 10th most visited website in the world. They apparently have still had incredible difficulty getting anyone to process payments for them.
I expect that you are off by several orders of magnitude.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if it's really a great market that's underserved, then you should launch a payment processor that serves the market. People think this is about morality, but it's a lot more about the cost of operating in that market. I bet that there are way more claims of fraud, money laundering investigations, subpoenas and other overhead that the banks don't want to deal with. Like teenagers stealing credit cards to pay c…
A payment processor is useless without the possibility to pay with a credit card. And that means you depend on Visa, Mastercard and Amex.
Not necessarily, there are plenty of bills that cant be paid with credit cards - the credit cards themselves for example.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is not unique to banking in the least . It’s pretty typical for most industries to follow a company that does something the others want but don’t want to be the first one to do. Price increases are a great example. One company will take an increase and most follow. And how is this chilling of protected speech? The constitution guarantees free speech, not payment for speech. There is nothing stop these workers fr…
> There is nothing stop these workers from sharing their content/speech.
So how do you share things legally on the internet without involving a private business who can stop you?
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#260The 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 Guardian probably means "accountable to the general public", or whichever faction they favour right now.