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The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

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Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#281

Post by mkr-hn »

bobthepanda wrote: post #272
mkr-hn wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far every option has a usability problem that's been solved by companies with the same KYC requirements as credit card processors. This will remain the case as long as people also want to transact in fiat currency, and that will be true as long as it's how people pay the bills and buy food. Any crypto-only platform that solves the problem of everyone needing a copy of the ledger and gains meaningful adoption will…

FedNow would also make this theoretically possible, no? No middle man, just transfer money between accounts.

A government program has to abide by First Amendment protections. Most restrictions payment processors and banks put in probably wouldn't survive a civil rights lawsuit.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#282

Post by pavedwalden »

theelous3 wrote: post #60

As far as I was aware, the main reason banks don't want to deal with porn is the huge rate of chargebacks that occur. Post nut clarity is apparently a financial problem.

Businesses with high chargeback rates might get rejected by some payment processors, but there's usually another one willing to take them on in exchange for higher fees.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#283

Post by ephbit »

imtringued wrote: post #250
Kiro wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is but people on Hacker News refuse to acknowledge this because they are angry that they missed out. Techies "who should have known" are embarrassed and jealous so they do everything in their power to dismiss BTC.

>It is but people on Hacker News refuse to acknowledge this because they are angry that they missed out. Maybe you shouldn't create a money system where it is possible to miss out? The fact that regular working people do not want to subsidize "investors" is a pretty strong incentive to avoid Bitcoin altogether.

Isn't it a mostly unavoidable characteristic of p2p distributed systems (when they're not introduced top down by governments) that they grow from "practically zero users" to (maybe) mass adoption?

I'd think that it's almost inherent for any currency like technology that - over the course of its adoption process - the value goes through various phases of increase. At least for currencies with deflationary supply.

There might be blockchain based cryptocurrencies out there that try to prevent early adopters from becoming excessively rich mostly out of luck, but apparently these alternatives lack the incentive to even get to wide adoption.

Yes, early adopters would become unfairly rich, were bitcoin to make it to wide adoption ... but something makes me hope that a btc wealth distribution with Gini coefficient close to 1 would be a temporary thing. A phase that the whole thing would pass through towards a less unequal distribution, where the increase in value and thus the aspect of speculation would become less relevant and the aspect of btc as a payment system or value store would become more relevant.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#284

Post by pennaMan »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #179
pennaMan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of asking the payment processor monopoly to censor things you don't like you can.... you know.... not indulge in things you don't like instead of ruining it for everyone who does like it? The market speaks out with wallets not with hypocritical outrage nor moral high grounding nor virtue signaling and especially not straight up random censorship of legal buisnesses. And last time i checked onlyfans was wildly…

Outrage and virtue signalling is mostly noise. It only works on businesses when it becomes a credible risk of monetary losses. > Instead of asking the payment processor monopoly to censor things you don't like There's no monopoly here. There are many payment processing options, but their differ in their level of service and transaction fees. Both of which get better with scale . So while everyone wants to use the maj…

So if Visa and Mastercard refuse service to your legal business because they don't like you, what options do you have?

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#286

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ajross wrote: post #235
treebot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of charge back is really a small issue. I don't think it applies here. Crypto does solve this problem. Even if there's the lack of charge back, it still overcomes the censorship problem, which traditional systems do not. So do you want censorship + charge back? Or no censorship and no charge back? In this case, I think it's clearly the latter.

You're missing the point. "Chargeback" happens to be a mechanism that exists to promote trust in the market. Trust is the requirement, not mechanism. Right now no one uses crypto to send folks $20 a month for n00dz. Period. No one does this. Why? Trust. Crypto providers don't trust they won't be hacked. Crypto consumers don't trust they aren't being scammed. There's no trust. But their Visa card or OnlyFans account?…

The traditional banking mechanisms are designed to pull money from accounts. That requires a way to correct errors and fraud. If the only way to transact is for a verified account owner to push the money out, a chargeback isn't needed as much.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#287

Post by OJFord »

pessimizer wrote: post #25

The 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…

I don't think it's getting causation wrong, it's just confusing 'accountable to [in its opinion] the wrong entities' with 'unaccountable'.

The banks are accountable to their boards which are accountable to their shareholders, which (the ones that matter) are increasingly .. I hate to use the word but 'woke' activists - nudging companies in the 'right' direction either from a moral standpoint or from a perceived moral standpoint of customers/public at large.

Progressively (as in a simple progression over time, not the political sense) investing in/lending to/providing the current account for, defence/tobacco/oil/sex are becoming bad looks, to the big voteholders even if not in general.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#288

Post by vidarh »

isthisreality wrote: post #169
vidarh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between a platform that can be easily replaced choosing not to serve certain content, and infrastructure providers choosing to deny service. I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition. I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being allowed to choose, because their position then makes them eff…

> the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition The competition is not apples to apples. Instead, you have ideological bubbles like Gab, and you have the incumbent network (Twitter) which "normies" use by default. The problem with the default network applying ideological censorship is that it limits the average person's exposure to the marketplace of ideas. In the context of a controversial…

Competition is not apples to apples, but it is possible. You have no realistic options to take payments from a mass audience if payment networks cuts you off - that is a huge difference.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#289

Post by vidarh »

luckylion wrote: post #161
vidarh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between a platform that can be easily replaced choosing not to serve certain content, and infrastructure providers choosing to deny service. I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition. I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being allowed to choose, because their position then makes them eff…

In this case, OnlyFans made the choice (and reversed it), not the payment provider. Granted, they did it because of the payment provider, but Twitter etc don't make their decisions in a vacuum either, they react to different kinds of pressure. That said, the same people made the same arguments ("private businesses, no rules should apply") with payment providers boycotting Gab, but turn around now. Will they learn tha…

Onlyfans made the "choice" the way someone with a gun to their head makes a "choice".

It's meaningless to suggest they had one.

And I'm a concrete example of someone who considers Gab a haven of extremism, but who still believes payment processors should not be allowed to boycott legal businesses.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#290

Post by throwaways885 »

imtringued wrote: post #208
evgen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the dirty little secret that everyone clutching their pearls over the OnlyFans 'scandal' won't talk about. There are plenty of providers who will deal with porn, but porn customers are shit customers who no one wants -- the fraud and chargeback rate is incredibly high so the cost of processing payments is equally high. The advantage that crypto brings to porn payments is not the pretend anonymity, it is that…

That just means that chargebacks cannot be offered as part of payment processing.

And what happens when real fraud does occur?
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