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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

#51

Post by merinowool »

doombolt wrote: post #43
greyman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

World is full of do-gooders and forces willing to exploit them.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#52

Post by akanet »

bumholio wrote: post #40
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…

Money laundry means disguising illicit gains as lawful gains to hide the fact that you are breaking the law. In the Backpage case, the law that were broken pertained to child prostitution. Moving legal money around, no matter how complex, is not money laundry by itself. The intention here is to circumvent the high chargeback rate of porn by disguising the purchase from the customer's bank, thus making it harder for h…

You are mistaken, and I've mostly responded upwards in the thread, but I wanted to add that the fraud's purpose is not to prevent chargebacks, it's to be able to receive money at all. Mainstream processors refuse to work with these guys because the fraud rate is so high, so they try to get their transactions approved (in any way possible) by disguising them. It is still very easy for any customer to chargeback a credit card charge.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#53

Post by koboll »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #41
caruana wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i.e., what Paul Manafort is currently standing trial for

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#54

Post by jjeaff »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #37
greyman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'd say that gambling does a lot worse damage and that is much more widespread and "legitimate" (here in the UK at least). Online gambling sites are even advertised on primetime TV! Or for a better example of a perfectly above-board and healthy activity enjoyed by huge numbers of people that can become addictive and "a problem" - how about gaming? (I'm not trying to belittle your point or resort to "whataboutism" her…

With pornography, there is the added stigma of an industry that has a lot of exploitation, abuse, and sex trafficking.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#55

Post by kkop »

robinduckett wrote: post #7
latchkey wrote: post #2

As someone who spent 4 years working for Kink.com (NSFW) building and running their entire IT infrastructure, this guy brings up some valid points. We had to build some extremely complicated systems to handle payments, performance, security, etc. It was a really fun learning experience. We used top of the line equipment. We got lessons in scaling. Even came up with creative ways to tell people where I worked... 'Educ…

Don't need to be ashamed of working for kink.com, or any adult site in that matter, especially in this day and age. My fiance was upset at this news, to this day she is sad about it: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jan/25/porn-bdsm-ki... (I'm not really into it, but I fully believe in to each their own!)

I wouldn't necessarily hold it against anyone working in porn so much as working in the porn industry. The porn industry is violently against even basic things like condom use (and the list continues). Such resistance tends to mean justifying things with excuses. Since compromising would be to admit to responsibility. So why should I trust that someone working in such an environment isn't going to treat private data, important infrastructure or financial software the same? Random programmers from overall mediocre environments are quite easy to find whether it is porn or something else.

Edit: It is always funny how when you claim that people are biased and don't have arguments on Hacker News, they downvote you. People really can't get out of their heads. My point still stands. Good programmers doesn't have to go into controversial industries. They don't need excuses to justify how things "actually really are". The article says that the porn industry is "leading" in technology. That is bullshit. They might be leading in commercialization of certain technologies for a brief second, but that is all. How many programming languages did they invent? Zero.

Don't go into mediocre industry where people accept problems as a feature. All the people around will be there because they don't care about certain things and so won't you. You might not like it, that is up to you, but don't come complaining when you can't find a job after 40 because you haven't developed the skills companies are looking for at that age. Like identifying, solving and taking responsibility for larger problems.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#56

Post by caruana »

akanet wrote: post #48
caruana wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

My point is the issue is not as black and white as you are making it out to be (hence, don't be an alarmist). All things are subject to interpretation and your position attempts to definitively categorize this activity as fraudulent behavior based on a 1000 word essay by a developer.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#57

Post by bumholio »

akanet wrote: post #48
caruana wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

> essentially deceiving payment processors to generate a profit.

That's not an illegal act, unless you can cite relevant statutes being broken. It's a contract breach.

Your whole analogy to Backpage breaks down without the initial illegal action that produces the revenue stream and sets in motion the need to launder the money.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#58

Post by akanet »

bumholio wrote: post #57
akanet wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

> essentially deceiving payment processors to generate a profit. That's not an illegal act, unless you can cite relevant statutes being broken. It's a contract breach. Your whole analogy to Backpage breaks down without the initial illegal action that produces the revenue stream and sets in motion the need to launder the money.

You are being silly - breach of contract to deceive payment processors IS wire fraud and bank fraud, which are specific named federal crimes which cover exactly this use case. If you like, here's an excerpt from the Backpage indictment:

"the People now allege that Defendants conspired to orchestrate a bank fraud by misrepresenting to credit payment processors that they were not processing transactions from Backpage, and this misrepresentation would trigger a release of funds from banks. The overt acts alleged clarify that Defendants created multiple classified websites, and when applying for (at least one) merchant account, Defendant Ferrer omitted any reference to Backpage, despite intending to process Backpage transactions through the account. The People allege that credit payment processors, along with American Express, would not have knowingly processed the payments for Backpage and the banks would not have released funds absent Defendants’ trickery."

I encourage you to look through the sections concerning money laundering in the California indictment: https://www.oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press_releas...

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#59

Post by Retric »

shabda wrote: post #50
mratzloff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Programming in the Adult Entertainment Industry Is Broken

#60

Post by bumholio »

akanet wrote: post #58
bumholio wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> essentially deceiving payment processors to generate a profit. That's not an illegal act, unless you can cite relevant statutes being broken. It's a contract breach. Your whole analogy to Backpage breaks down without the initial illegal action that produces the revenue stream and sets in motion the need to launder the money.

You are being silly - breach of contract to deceive payment processors IS wire fraud and bank fraud, which are specific named federal crimes which cover exactly this use case. If you like, here's an excerpt from the Backpage indictment: "the People now allege that Defendants conspired to orchestrate a bank fraud by misrepresenting to credit payment processors that they were not processing transactions from Backpage,…

I think you should carefully read your quote - it includes the word "Backpage" four times, as in the illegal source of funds that created the laundry opportunity. Breach of contract with payment processors is certainly NOT wire fraud by itself, that's an absurd statement.
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