Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

dev.to

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 180 posts

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#41

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

caruana wrote: post #30
akanet wrote: post #14

This article is extremely alarming. The process the author is calling "cascade billing" is money laundering. This exact process of disguising the nature of transactions to get banking institutions to transfer funds is literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently. I am very familiar with the details of that case and am surprised to see someone be so cavalier with the details publicly. Many adult services pr…

They are selling content through different payment services, this is not money laundering, stop being an alarmist. "the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses" Illegally obtained money being they key term! > literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently. Also, incorrect. Backpage was taken down because they fac…

I wouldn't say that money needs to be "illegally obtained" to be classified as laundered. There are tax benefits to "laundering" legally obtained money, for example.

Although at this point we're just arguing semantics.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#42

Post by lowercased »

akanet wrote: post #14

This article is extremely alarming. The process the author is calling "cascade billing" is money laundering. This exact process of disguising the nature of transactions to get banking institutions to transfer funds is literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently. I am very familiar with the details of that case and am surprised to see someone be so cavalier with the details publicly. Many adult services pr…

> the author cops to being an accomplice to wire fraud

Can you not determine who the author is? Based on clues like the author's name in the article heading, and the comment poster's name being different? And the author posting a reply to the circled comment you posted indicating that this approach does happen, but is sketchy... seems to point to a reading comprehension problem here.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#43

Post by doombolt »

greyman wrote: post #28
LarryL wrote: post #17

The title of the article is misleading, it's not programming that is the real issue, it's billing (the progamming issues are just a part in the article). Since the Credit Card companies & banks create lots of problems as soon as sex is involved (see FetLife's misadventures in HN previous articles for instance) in addition to the big chargebacks issue, and given that customers lie a lot (because they can), I think tha…

> 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.

Why can't they just close the web page as opposed to affect other people's behavior? If that fails, go see a doctor with your own money.

E.g. I watch porn and I don't need their efforts on liberating me from it, thank you.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#44

Post by vortico »

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 statement, so less chance of "fake-angry" customers trying to force money back.

- The money goes directly to the content creators. No need for sketchy middleman services.

The disadvantage is that most people don't know how to use crypto. Therefore, laymen-friendly online wallets are the solution that basically baby users into uploading cash, clicking a big "send" button, and copy-pasting a wallet ID. I have not seen an online wallet simple enough for the average computer to use, but it's close.

A quick Google search shows a few sites that accept Bitcoin, but they probably make up less than 0.1% of the market. Why don't major sites use cryptocurrencies at least as an alternative option? It seems like a quick and easy 100%-commission payment method to me for the customers that are capable of it.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#45

Post by mratzloff »

lawn wrote: post #27
Rjevski wrote: post #23

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

It's a perfect fit for a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (title of Bitcoin's whitepaper) yes. This is the problem with permissioned transactions which cryptocurrencies remove. The only thing missing is adoption. With the fees and issues I don't understand why the porn business isn't pushing harder for cryptocurrency use on their sites. There's huge amount of money to be saved here.

It's almost like being paid a salary in an unregulated Internet Buck that landlords and grocery stores won't accept would make things difficult for people. ;-)

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#46

Post by akanet »

lowercased wrote: post #42
akanet wrote: post #14

This article is extremely alarming. The process the author is calling "cascade billing" is money laundering. This exact process of disguising the nature of transactions to get banking institutions to transfer funds is literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently. I am very familiar with the details of that case and am surprised to see someone be so cavalier with the details publicly. Many adult services pr…

> the author cops to being an accomplice to wire fraud Can you not determine who the author is? Based on clues like the author's name in the article heading, and the comment poster's name being different? And the author posting a reply to the circled comment you posted indicating that this approach does happen, but is sketchy... seems to point to a reading comprehension problem here.

You're being rude, but to answer your question directly: the author responded to the circled comment with an underlined statement admitting to have knowingly engaged in these services for use by his employer.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#47

Post by nkozyra »

greyman wrote: post #28
LarryL wrote: post #17

The title of the article is misleading, it's not programming that is the real issue, it's billing (the progamming issues are just a part in the article). Since the Credit Card companies & banks create lots of problems as soon as sex is involved (see FetLife's misadventures in HN previous articles for instance) in addition to the big chargebacks issue, and given that customers lie a lot (because they can), I think tha…

> 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.

It's impossible to view this in isolation. Did its perception in society contribute to the damage? If you're constantly told something you're doing is bad you'll want to stop. If you can't, you'll feel shame or worse.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#48

Post by akanet »

caruana wrote: post #30
akanet wrote: post #14

This article is extremely alarming. The process the author is calling "cascade billing" is money laundering. This exact process of disguising the nature of transactions to get banking institutions to transfer funds is literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently. I am very familiar with the details of that case and am surprised to see someone be so cavalier with the details publicly. Many adult services pr…

They are selling content through different payment services, this is not money laundering, stop being an alarmist. "the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses" Illegally obtained money being they key term! > literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently. Also, incorrect. Backpage was taken down because they fac…

Your mistake is in thinking that the money laundering is achieved by, say, generating a credit card charge for FOO when the item sold was BAR. Not so - the money laundering is in opening many merchant accounts purporting to be for selling FOO, generating profit sanitized as "clean," moving those profits between banks, and essentially deceiving payment processors to generate a profit.

This was, in fact, one of the actual mechanisms brought to bear against Backpage. Certainly the indictment was motivated by, you know, underage sex trafficking, but the enforcement mechanism used to achieve a verdict was mostly money laundering. You can read the indictment yourself: https://www.justice.gov/file/1050276/download. How many counts of trafficking vs money laundering do you see?

And finally, no, they are not "selling different content through other processors." These processors' entire business model is to create "legitimate," totally unrelated transactions to the credit card authorities, to take a cut, and pass back the funds to the merchant. I believe Backpage was instructing people trying to purchase ad inventory to go to a portal to purchase dog food for a while.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#49

Post by lawn »

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.

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 heuristics like requiring a sane fee and checking for double spend attempts for a couple of seconds.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#50

Post by shabda »

mratzloff wrote: post #45
lawn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a perfect fit for a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (title of Bitcoin's whitepaper) yes. This is the problem with permissioned transactions which cryptocurrencies remove. The only thing missing is adoption. With the fees and issues I don't understand why the porn business isn't pushing harder for cryptocurrency use on their sites. There's huge amount of money to be saved here.

It's almost like being paid a salary in an unregulated Internet Buck that landlords and grocery stores won't accept would make things difficult for people. ;-)

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