The most troubling thing, that is somewhat observable in today's threads, is that ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized. People favor legal structures analogous to Don't Ask Don't Tell. This tees up a system of cascading effects:
- Sex workers must now navigate a very fluid monetary system. Sex workers must be paid in cash, Bitcoin, etc. Then they have to somehow represent this money to the federal government to pay their taxes.
- Everyone around sex workers are considered criminals. Unknowingly rent a property to a sex worker? You're a criminal. Date a sex worker? Suspected to be a criminal. Lend money to a sex worker? Criminal. Use sex work services? Definitely a criminal.
This system shoves sex workers into an intentional class system that prohibits them from owning property, prohibits their use of public services, prohibits their utilization of our monetary system. All of these things, when used, don't just benefit the sex workers - they benefit you.
One of the uncomfortable conversations that many people don't want to have is that sex work is heavily used by society and yet neglected constantly, thereby making it dangerous for both sex workers and the users, even making it more dangerous at times.
>ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized
100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course.
The OP appears to be mostly talking about porn, but your points seem to be mostly addressing prostitution.
Prostitution has long considered an disreputable and undesirable activity, and it along with other types of sex work are often tightly coupled with involuntary exploitation. A lot of the stuff that you're criticizing derives from attempts to continue to legally discourage prostitution while preventing the legal system from further punishing women who are being exploited.
> Everyone around sex workers are considered criminals. Unknowingly rent a property to a sex worker? You're a criminal. Date a sex worker? Suspected to be a criminal. Lend money to a sex worker? Criminal. Use sex work services? Definitely a criminal.
> One of the uncomfortable conversations that many people don't want to have is that sex work is heavily used by society and yet neglected constantly, thereby making it dangerous for both sex workers and the users, even making it more dangerous at times.
I have heard this familiar argument made for the legalization of narcotics.
What is "funny" is that this view is held by two very different groups of people.
- Moralist conservatives which despise sex work and sex workers for ideological and religious reasons
- Progressives which think it's degrading and negative that somebody is forced to sell their sex to survive (which is a noble thought), and therefore think banning sex work will help that goal (we all know how that went wrt drugs...)
I investigated this a few years ago in Australia. Sex work is legal in Australia, kinda. It is legal to exchange sexual services for money, but supporting and assisting such a transaction is illegal. So a landlord who rents a property to a sex worker is breaking the law. A payment processor who processes the card transaction is breaking the law, and so on. There are some clauses around managing establishments that basically make brothels just, barely, within the law.
It's a ridiculous position in that it almost forces sex workers onto the street or into brothels (which often take a huge chunk of each transaction). There was no way of getting my client (I was freelancing for a sex worker to try and solve some of their tech issues) any reasonable ability to process credit cards. Or do a wide range of things that we'd consider normal for a small business (like set up a Stripe account, or even a business bank account, or rent an office).
Ostracizing sex work has become fully normalized, so unfortunately people read this and immediately think, "Why not pretend to be someone else?", "Why not just do other illegal things (like tax evasion)?"
This is why so many sex workers prefer decriminalization to legalization. Because many times legalization comes with these shotgun laws that prevent anyone from helping out a sex worker in any way without facing legal consequences that were built to be severe enough to punish the worst sex traffickers.
Do you want to pay your ex-marine brother to sit in the next room to make sure you're safe?
You can't, he'd face severe penalties for supporting the transaction.
> Despite a user base of over 130 million, OnlyFans has failed to attract venture capital
I don't get why that's a problem? They already built their platform, it works, they're the gold standard and they have a massive paying userbase! Why do they need VC money? Why would you want to dilute your stock rather than just build with your already existing, sizeable revenue stream?
It's not a problem now, but in a strictly rational economy a company that was so obviously going to acquire a massive paying userbase should have had no issue finding investors back when it would have been useful.
Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers from accidentally hosting terabytes of kiddie porn.
Usually it makes sense to take investor money if you want to grow faster than your revenue stream allows. It lets you potentially capture the market before your competition.
But I don't think that there's much direct competition to OnlyFans, or that there is a market which is easy to capture by copycatting them.
Hence, they can afford to not take any investment. This is similar to how GitHub operated and grew for the first few years.
It would have been useful early to pay for hosting. OF may not exist today if not for the great de-porning of Tumblr that happened about a year after they started as a business.
Especially because it also means that potential OnlyFans competitor will come across the same fate. So there is no need to worry about them (unless the owners intended to get massive cash asap).
"It also establishes a precedent, allowing private companies to set opaque, moralizing, and arbitrary censorship terms without oversight."
Yes, this is done with other things as well.
On one hand, I think that the free market would create payment processors willing to work with the groups rejected by others.
On the other hand, it seems that many financial things are set by international organizations, which the processors would still need to follow to be included in the central systems, such as the coding (does adult content have its own code, or is it under entertainment?).
All this time, and technology hasn't solved this issue? Wasn't bitcoin supposed to be applicable here - anonymous transactions? Wasn't the internet supposed to enable humans to interact at will without censorship?
Technology can’t solve primarily cultural issues. The second bitcoin tries to perform the same financial services as a bank (mortgages, lending, checking, savings, interest, etc) that institution using bitcoin will need to do the same “know your customer” behavior that makes it hard for sex workers to get the same financial services.
They do, but not if you use a commercial platform.
Host your own infrastructure (ftp/email/www/etc.) and use Btc, and you will have a lot more liberty but not "reach"... so you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Bitcoin actually does play a big role in the online sex industry. Many sex workers and businsses online accept bitcoin and even prefer it. But then there's the problem that the US, and other, government are actively trying to regulate the Bitcoin to fiat gateways out of existence and make it too honerous for them to run their businesses the same way that sex worker businesses are attacked by the payment processors. So once you start working in cryptocurrency not only are the payment processors attacking you now you have the government attacking you too.
yes, but for the regular person getting bitcoin is still high friction.
I mean on a world when adding one extra step on your checkout will drop your conversion rate, getting people to buy btc before probably pushes you into being unprofitable.
this will be true when and IF bitcoin gets to be ubiquitous
Why doesn't the argument "private companies can do whatever they want, so if you don't like being arbitrarily banned by the incumbents, then start your own bank and payment processor" apply here?
Content creators are also self-censoring to avoid automatic moderation (YouTube demonetization and TikTok shadowbanning). Things like "sex" and "death" are euphemized or not said (see things like "unalive" instead of "dead", "heckmet" instead of "helmet".
> Excessive chargebacks plague many industries: auctions, online gaming, event ticket sales, multilevel marketing, and more. But when your business is regarded as a reputational liability—as porn is—payment processors are quick to blacklist.
It sounds like a combination of tangible and intangible stuff. There are cultural aspects behind it but also legit financial concerns.
While many people on here are glorifying the workers in certain 1st world countries, I doubt it's representative of most sex workers worldwide. There's a ton of coercion and exploitation, and most countries don't have the sort of social safety net that ensures it's actually a real choice. I would imagine that's why banks at large have generally steered away from the industry - if 90% of the business is super shady and exposes them to excess risk, it's not worth it to sort out the 10% that's not. If there were a processor targeting the industry, the fees would probably be through the roof to account for this. That's just the markets at work.
Kind of related to the financial aspects of this article: why is the housing market treated as the basis/most important part of the US economy and not, specifically, energy or finance? The article talks about financial institutions' ability to hinder or even halt growth altogether, and we saw similar actions being taken in Canada last year with the truckers. With regards to energy, I've heard that the cheaper energy is to produce in a nation, the wealthier it tends to be.
At least in the US it's because of deliberate policy decisions after WWII around home ownership. Massive government agencies are explicitly tasked with getting the percentage of Americans owning homes as high as possible.
Energy and finance are important, but don't directly involve individuals as much, and people are VERY emotionally tied into their home and it's value.
If all houses suddenly lost 50% overnight, and mortgages were slashed simultaneously to compensate, it wouldn't be that big of a deal but everyone would freak the hell out. It's much easier to inflate the currency than it is to allow home prices to drop.
The only thing special about sex workers in this situation is the politicized nature of their work. The industry they work in, and they way they conduct their business, simply doesn’t align very well with the risk management strategies of conventional financial institutions. Any form of non-conventional work is going to run into exactly the same problems.
I know this because the same thing happens to me. Nearly all my income comes from InfoSec-related contract work, and most of my customers are overseas. This is a very non-conventional working arrangement, so when conventional financial institutions apply their routine risk assessment processes to my situation, it produces a lot of “computer says no” outcomes. For instance I was recently told that I would need to provide 90% collateral in order to get a car loan, despite being able to prove having a very high income over the past 12 months.
Clearly a stupid situation, but with a perfectly rational explanation. The problem here is a tiny niche of customers not being catered to by large institutions. The reason for this is because tiny niches of customers are typically not worth the effort to large institutions. But that conclusion is unlikely to attract much outrage traffic…
This is about financial institutions protecting themselves from regulators. Higher risk clients get higher rates or excluded- some just aren’t worth the risk. Different banks have different risk tolerance, and certainly that varies per locale as well. Rules that are locale-specific are hard to accommodate.
Crypto is a solution if you believe that crypto is regulator-proof. I’m inclined to not think it is. Sure, Monero, etc. As soon as “Terrorists” are using it, regulators will find a way to monitor, control, outlaw, or even break it. By any means necessary.
I see 3 approaches:
- find a way to make locale-specific compliance easier for enterprises. Locale is hard with anon web traffic, and maybe other systems as well.
- make a national law for sex worker payment rights. Banks are good at complying with national laws. Our current political climate may not permit this.
- weaken the power and scope of US financial regulators. Certainly those affected by SWIFT sanctions would love to see it, I’m sure. Our current administration is very committed to keeping and enhancing its resources and reach.
In other words, a world in which payment processors and content platforms rule unchallenged is a problem not just for porn creators and consumers. It also establishes a precedent, allowing private companies to set opaque, moralizing, and arbitrary censorship terms without oversight
They've only just noticed this after years of WrongThinkers being deplatformed?
Ostracizing sex work has always been the case for thousands of years in every successful culture and religion.
In fact, cultures that allowed widespread open sex work have always failed. (No, Amsterdam’s red light district is not “widespread”).
Just because it’s 2022 does not mean things should automatically change. Even Onlyfans performers, strippers and pr0n stars are openly shunned or relegated to non “wifely” roles.
This is because there are super deep lizard brain biological reasons why cultures have always done this.
And it will still take a few more generations before no one bats an eye (25+ years).
Yes, it would be better if it were safe and legal. Would probably be better for it’s consumers and providers.
But in the end the biological imperative to “be fruitful and multiply”, which is deeper than many of us would like to admit - is going to always fight back.
Railing against this ostracism is like railing against the sky being blue.
Among Swedish feminists and the left, sex work is completely unacceptable and prostitution is pretty much equated with rape. Is this not true for other countries?
Most people (not only the religious) wouldn't want their wife, husband, child, mother, close friends etc to be a prostitute or pornographic artist, in a very emotional sense that goes far beyond e.g. having a low status job.
It's completely unsurprising that it's frowned upon.
I would hope it would be. Pornographers use the courts to enforce their copyrights and other business arrangements. A good test for an anti-censorship payment processor would be handling payments for legal sex work.
[+] [-] _ktx2|3 years ago|reply
- Sex workers must now navigate a very fluid monetary system. Sex workers must be paid in cash, Bitcoin, etc. Then they have to somehow represent this money to the federal government to pay their taxes.
- Everyone around sex workers are considered criminals. Unknowingly rent a property to a sex worker? You're a criminal. Date a sex worker? Suspected to be a criminal. Lend money to a sex worker? Criminal. Use sex work services? Definitely a criminal.
This system shoves sex workers into an intentional class system that prohibits them from owning property, prohibits their use of public services, prohibits their utilization of our monetary system. All of these things, when used, don't just benefit the sex workers - they benefit you.
One of the uncomfortable conversations that many people don't want to have is that sex work is heavily used by society and yet neglected constantly, thereby making it dangerous for both sex workers and the users, even making it more dangerous at times.
[+] [-] npteljes|3 years ago|reply
100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course.
[+] [-] tablespoon|3 years ago|reply
Prostitution has long considered an disreputable and undesirable activity, and it along with other types of sex work are often tightly coupled with involuntary exploitation. A lot of the stuff that you're criticizing derives from attempts to continue to legally discourage prostitution while preventing the legal system from further punishing women who are being exploited.
[+] [-] rurban|3 years ago|reply
Only in those third world countries where prostitution is still illegal. In the modern world not. https://prostitution.procon.org/countries-and-their-prostitu...
[+] [-] s_ting765|3 years ago|reply
I have heard this familiar argument made for the legalization of narcotics.
[+] [-] andrepd|3 years ago|reply
- Moralist conservatives which despise sex work and sex workers for ideological and religious reasons
- Progressives which think it's degrading and negative that somebody is forced to sell their sex to survive (which is a noble thought), and therefore think banning sex work will help that goal (we all know how that went wrt drugs...)
[+] [-] kylebenzle|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] marcus_holmes|3 years ago|reply
It's a ridiculous position in that it almost forces sex workers onto the street or into brothels (which often take a huge chunk of each transaction). There was no way of getting my client (I was freelancing for a sex worker to try and solve some of their tech issues) any reasonable ability to process credit cards. Or do a wide range of things that we'd consider normal for a small business (like set up a Stripe account, or even a business bank account, or rent an office).
This needs to change.
[+] [-] kodah|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fknorangesite|3 years ago|reply
Exactly. It makes sex work more dangerous, not less.
[+] [-] JamesBarney|3 years ago|reply
Do you want to pay your ex-marine brother to sit in the next room to make sure you're safe? You can't, he'd face severe penalties for supporting the transaction.
[+] [-] osrec|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallscratch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a-user-you-like|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charles_f|3 years ago|reply
I don't get why that's a problem? They already built their platform, it works, they're the gold standard and they have a massive paying userbase! Why do they need VC money? Why would you want to dilute your stock rather than just build with your already existing, sizeable revenue stream?
[+] [-] jjk166|3 years ago|reply
Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers from accidentally hosting terabytes of kiddie porn.
[+] [-] nine_k|3 years ago|reply
But I don't think that there's much direct competition to OnlyFans, or that there is a market which is easy to capture by copycatting them.
Hence, they can afford to not take any investment. This is similar to how GitHub operated and grew for the first few years.
[+] [-] rtkwe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kreco|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwie_wayward|3 years ago|reply
I posit this as an explanation. I think "go big or go home" is a terrible mindset.
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
Yes, this is done with other things as well.
On one hand, I think that the free market would create payment processors willing to work with the groups rejected by others.
On the other hand, it seems that many financial things are set by international organizations, which the processors would still need to follow to be included in the central systems, such as the coding (does adult content have its own code, or is it under entertainment?).
[+] [-] fareesh|3 years ago|reply
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/21-ashley-mathews-aka-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHNBCVGH34c&themeRefresh=1
[+] [-] mvdwoord|3 years ago|reply
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-porns-silliest-new-tren...
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamoyedFurFluff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zivkovicp|3 years ago|reply
Host your own infrastructure (ftp/email/www/etc.) and use Btc, and you will have a lot more liberty but not "reach"... so you can't have your cake and eat it too.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[+] [-] superkuh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fknorangesite|3 years ago|reply
Accepting bitcoin is all well and good, but it doesn't help you much if your customers aren't able/willing to pay with it.
[+] [-] manuelabeledo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DennisP|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kobalsky|3 years ago|reply
I mean on a world when adding one extra step on your checkout will drop your conversion rate, getting people to buy btc before probably pushes you into being unprofitable.
this will be true when and IF bitcoin gets to be ubiquitous
[+] [-] seydor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephcsible|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JTbane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl95|3 years ago|reply
It sounds like a combination of tangible and intangible stuff. There are cultural aspects behind it but also legit financial concerns.
[+] [-] JustLurking2022|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mockapapella|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
Energy and finance are important, but don't directly involve individuals as much, and people are VERY emotionally tied into their home and it's value.
If all houses suddenly lost 50% overnight, and mortgages were slashed simultaneously to compensate, it wouldn't be that big of a deal but everyone would freak the hell out. It's much easier to inflate the currency than it is to allow home prices to drop.
[+] [-] AmericanChopper|3 years ago|reply
I know this because the same thing happens to me. Nearly all my income comes from InfoSec-related contract work, and most of my customers are overseas. This is a very non-conventional working arrangement, so when conventional financial institutions apply their routine risk assessment processes to my situation, it produces a lot of “computer says no” outcomes. For instance I was recently told that I would need to provide 90% collateral in order to get a car loan, despite being able to prove having a very high income over the past 12 months.
Clearly a stupid situation, but with a perfectly rational explanation. The problem here is a tiny niche of customers not being catered to by large institutions. The reason for this is because tiny niches of customers are typically not worth the effort to large institutions. But that conclusion is unlikely to attract much outrage traffic…
[+] [-] reilly3000|3 years ago|reply
Crypto is a solution if you believe that crypto is regulator-proof. I’m inclined to not think it is. Sure, Monero, etc. As soon as “Terrorists” are using it, regulators will find a way to monitor, control, outlaw, or even break it. By any means necessary.
I see 3 approaches: - find a way to make locale-specific compliance easier for enterprises. Locale is hard with anon web traffic, and maybe other systems as well.
- make a national law for sex worker payment rights. Banks are good at complying with national laws. Our current political climate may not permit this.
- weaken the power and scope of US financial regulators. Certainly those affected by SWIFT sanctions would love to see it, I’m sure. Our current administration is very committed to keeping and enhancing its resources and reach.
[+] [-] mellosouls|3 years ago|reply
They've only just noticed this after years of WrongThinkers being deplatformed?
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eric4smith|3 years ago|reply
In fact, cultures that allowed widespread open sex work have always failed. (No, Amsterdam’s red light district is not “widespread”).
Just because it’s 2022 does not mean things should automatically change. Even Onlyfans performers, strippers and pr0n stars are openly shunned or relegated to non “wifely” roles.
This is because there are super deep lizard brain biological reasons why cultures have always done this.
And it will still take a few more generations before no one bats an eye (25+ years).
Yes, it would be better if it were safe and legal. Would probably be better for it’s consumers and providers.
But in the end the biological imperative to “be fruitful and multiply”, which is deeper than many of us would like to admit - is going to always fight back.
Railing against this ostracism is like railing against the sky being blue.
[+] [-] roenxi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway22032|3 years ago|reply
It's completely unsurprising that it's frowned upon.
[+] [-] faitswulff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|3 years ago|reply