One thing I've heard before is that payment processors loathe working with porn is that chargebacks occur much more often than in other industries. Customers are either ashamed of what they purchased, need the cover to tell their spouse that it was some hacker who used their credit card to watch the turd livestream, or think that Mastercard will happily refund any money they spend on shady pornographers.
This is an excellent point, and I'm glad you brought it up -- this came up more than once while I was doing my research. I just couldn't find a way to shoehorn it into the piece. At any rate: It seems clear that this is one of the factors making credit card companies skittish (but they DO like making money, so they have an incentive to find a way to make it work).
What they have tried to do, as far as I can tell, is to have two different rates for merchants, one for porn and one for not-porn. And that one reason that OnlyFans has been so successful is that it has a merchant account at the not-porn rates.
The problem with the "two rates" rule is that it makes it almost impossible for any business to do both porn and not-porn, which is why Pornhub is a successful business and all other YouTube competitors aren't.
Why did Substack-for-Porn decide on a name that makes them sound like a forum for either fanfic or ticket scalpers? I'm grateful we've moved on from peak app-madness where most names were just common words with all the vowels removed, but still.
Limp jokes aside -- moral panic is tiresome, and I sure wish we could do less of it as a nation. Nothing about human behavior is that simple or zero-sum, no matter how desperately all we lasciviously puritanical hypocrite weirdos seem to want it to be. The safety, autonomy, and economic efficiency a platform like OnlyFans brings someone who a couple of decades ago would have had to spend at least some time on the street or in the employ of potentially abusive "management" in some capacity is absolutely worth preserving.
Also, I don't think it's any of my business (thank God) if someone's soliciting cash to wield a spatula in the altogether with whatever part of their anatomy they so choose (lol) anymore than it is what consenting adults who live next door to me do in their own home (as long as they do so relatively quietly and without setting anything on fire) or which combination of individuals want to get legally bound to each other (my context here is marriage, but if there's some kind of underground BDSM notary service, that's totally cool too). I wonder if there's any chance we could someday see Nevada-like legalization spread to other states?
The polling I linked to in the third-to-last paragraph (this: https://bit.ly/3mLM1Qe) is interesting. It shows majorities in favor of decriminalization, including two-to-one majorities among young voters.
Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that one poll = any politician who supports decriminalization will be popular. I know the political valence of any issue has a lot to do with framing and circumstances and the median voter. But attitudes towards sex work do seem to be changing rapidly, and I think it's likely that pretty soon we'll see state-by-state experimentation with decriminalization/legalization, like we did with gay marriage and marijuana.
Somewhat by accident I discovered this morning that my understanding of Nevada prostitution law has been totally inaccurate up to now. Not only are all forms completely illegal in Las Vegas (not at all counterintuitive...), but state-licensed brothels are the only legal outlet and exist only within specific counties. [https://www.shouselaw.com/nv/blog/prostitution/counties-where-prostitution-is-legal-in-nevada/]
This has always been almost my exact opinion on this. I've written about it a bit, but I think there's definitely a hidden " Gateway drug" issue going on right under the surface on the left. They think that sex-work, while they support it, is still, you know, "wasting your potential." So I think a lot of people on the left philosophically agree that sex work is work they still pretty much sneer at it in the most patronizing way. Like I get why republicans don't like porn, god said not to, that's easy enough to understand, wrong but at least it's an ethos. The left thinks that if we normalize it though that somehow women will drop out of STEM majors and, yeah, "waste their potential." It's the same way the left was the side that "supported pot legalization" but, you know not in any real way because it just wasn't a good look.
It WILL be difficult for us to discuss this issue, since none of us have ever even once in our lives availed ourselves to erotic materials. Still, we must do our best.
Something really annoying about writing about sex work and about drugs is that "decriminalize" and "legalize" mean completely different things in the two areas.
In drugs, decriminalization means removing the legal penalties for possession, but without creating a legal market for production and distribution.
Legalization means creating a (regulated) legal market for the production and distribution of drugs.
In sex work, "toleration" means not arresting sex workers and their customers. "Decriminalization" means repealing the laws that make it a crime and that's it; "legalization" means retaining crimes for sex work that is outside of the regulated system and creating a regulated system.
If you decriminalized sex work, then brothels would be perfectly legal, subject to the same laws as any other business (and, critically, the same penalties for breaking them), so if you opened a brothel in a house, then that would be a zoning violation, just as if you opened a bodega there. But it wouldn't be any more serious than that. Under legalization, then you'd be committing the crime of running an unlicensed brothel - and most legalization schemes would leave that as the crime that there currently is of running a brothel, i.e. a felony and facing years of imprisonment.
Most sex workers seem to prefer decriminalization to legalization. Sex work would then be subject to the same laws as any other sex (eg consent, age limits) and any other work (minimum wage, non-discrimination, OSHA standards, etc).
The obvious explanation you're missing is that it was planned this way all along. OnlyFans new they were next on the chopping block, so they got ahead of it and created the narrative they wanted in a few easy steps:
1. "Ban" porn from the site
2. Which of course is followed by an immediate and strong backlash from the community and sex workers.
3. Reinstate it as planned.
4. Now anytime they are in the cross-hairs from banks, payment processors, regulators, etc, they can point to what happened. "See: look at all these people who rely on us for their livelihoods", etc.
Regardless of whether that was how they planned it, that seems to be how it worked out. They started with a pitchfork-wielding mob demanding that they stop hosting porn; now they have an pitchfork-wielding mob demanding that they host porn, which might be even larger and louder than the original pitchfork-wielding mob, and can be leveraged to pressure their financial partners.
I'm definitely open to the idea that there was a lot more going on here than OnlyFans claims; in particular, the timing of the second BBC article seems suspicious (OnlyFans might have been in "we have to do something, and FAST" mode). I don't know. I'm not sure that this really worked out well for them; they spent a week looking like skittish morons who don't understand their own business. Not the best look for attracting investors.
My interpretation was that OF was telling the bankers exactly what they needed to hear to let the spice- that is, cash accounts for the models- flow, while still negotiating about mid to long term steps to reduce the “illegal” content (as well as the child porn). The moment the bankers and OF came to an understanding, the ban was retracted.
The idea being that it’s better to keep the models from getting cut off *today* and scare them about a week from now, than to have their income cut off while the outside pressure builds.
Disclaimer- I’m not only a moron, I’m also not following this story too closely or have any knowledge of the industry; I’m just reading headlines and applying what I know about how humans work.
The space for sex work (and we should note that "sex work" encompasses a wide range of things, from stripping to camming to showing your genitals on the bus for $5) would be a lot more normal if anyone would articulate what a legal, ethical company looks like. That is: What are the best practices? What things should a company do to make people say "that's legal, that's fine"? Of course, no politician articulates those principles because they don't want to be Senator Porn, and the "it's actually about ABUSE" crowd also won't do it because it is NOT actually about abuse. So, banks operate in a state of perpetual uncertainty because there are no rules, just randomly-occurring hit pieces.
Reviewing content before it's posted will take a lot of manpower. Where do I apply?
One thing I've heard before is that payment processors loathe working with porn is that chargebacks occur much more often than in other industries. Customers are either ashamed of what they purchased, need the cover to tell their spouse that it was some hacker who used their credit card to watch the turd livestream, or think that Mastercard will happily refund any money they spend on shady pornographers.
This is an excellent point, and I'm glad you brought it up -- this came up more than once while I was doing my research. I just couldn't find a way to shoehorn it into the piece. At any rate: It seems clear that this is one of the factors making credit card companies skittish (but they DO like making money, so they have an incentive to find a way to make it work).
What they have tried to do, as far as I can tell, is to have two different rates for merchants, one for porn and one for not-porn. And that one reason that OnlyFans has been so successful is that it has a merchant account at the not-porn rates.
The problem with the "two rates" rule is that it makes it almost impossible for any business to do both porn and not-porn, which is why Pornhub is a successful business and all other YouTube competitors aren't.
Why did Substack-for-Porn decide on a name that makes them sound like a forum for either fanfic or ticket scalpers? I'm grateful we've moved on from peak app-madness where most names were just common words with all the vowels removed, but still.
Limp jokes aside -- moral panic is tiresome, and I sure wish we could do less of it as a nation. Nothing about human behavior is that simple or zero-sum, no matter how desperately all we lasciviously puritanical hypocrite weirdos seem to want it to be. The safety, autonomy, and economic efficiency a platform like OnlyFans brings someone who a couple of decades ago would have had to spend at least some time on the street or in the employ of potentially abusive "management" in some capacity is absolutely worth preserving.
Also, I don't think it's any of my business (thank God) if someone's soliciting cash to wield a spatula in the altogether with whatever part of their anatomy they so choose (lol) anymore than it is what consenting adults who live next door to me do in their own home (as long as they do so relatively quietly and without setting anything on fire) or which combination of individuals want to get legally bound to each other (my context here is marriage, but if there's some kind of underground BDSM notary service, that's totally cool too). I wonder if there's any chance we could someday see Nevada-like legalization spread to other states?
The polling I linked to in the third-to-last paragraph (this: https://bit.ly/3mLM1Qe) is interesting. It shows majorities in favor of decriminalization, including two-to-one majorities among young voters.
Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that one poll = any politician who supports decriminalization will be popular. I know the political valence of any issue has a lot to do with framing and circumstances and the median voter. But attitudes towards sex work do seem to be changing rapidly, and I think it's likely that pretty soon we'll see state-by-state experimentation with decriminalization/legalization, like we did with gay marriage and marijuana.
Somewhat by accident I discovered this morning that my understanding of Nevada prostitution law has been totally inaccurate up to now. Not only are all forms completely illegal in Las Vegas (not at all counterintuitive...), but state-licensed brothels are the only legal outlet and exist only within specific counties. [https://www.shouselaw.com/nv/blog/prostitution/counties-where-prostitution-is-legal-in-nevada/]
Plus Nevada hasn't passed laws protecting workers from being prosecuted over their clientele, so you get horrible miscarriages of justice like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/vegas-child-sex-trafficking-victims-jailed/
So... forget Nevada. Let's conjure up some totally new models that make more sense.
This has always been almost my exact opinion on this. I've written about it a bit, but I think there's definitely a hidden " Gateway drug" issue going on right under the surface on the left. They think that sex-work, while they support it, is still, you know, "wasting your potential." So I think a lot of people on the left philosophically agree that sex work is work they still pretty much sneer at it in the most patronizing way. Like I get why republicans don't like porn, god said not to, that's easy enough to understand, wrong but at least it's an ethos. The left thinks that if we normalize it though that somehow women will drop out of STEM majors and, yeah, "waste their potential." It's the same way the left was the side that "supported pot legalization" but, you know not in any real way because it just wasn't a good look.
Oh, so thaaat's why PornHub got rid of all those videos favorited by... uh... someone I don't know and never met.
It WILL be difficult for us to discuss this issue, since none of us have ever even once in our lives availed ourselves to erotic materials. Still, we must do our best.
Something really annoying about writing about sex work and about drugs is that "decriminalize" and "legalize" mean completely different things in the two areas.
In drugs, decriminalization means removing the legal penalties for possession, but without creating a legal market for production and distribution.
Legalization means creating a (regulated) legal market for the production and distribution of drugs.
In sex work, "toleration" means not arresting sex workers and their customers. "Decriminalization" means repealing the laws that make it a crime and that's it; "legalization" means retaining crimes for sex work that is outside of the regulated system and creating a regulated system.
If you decriminalized sex work, then brothels would be perfectly legal, subject to the same laws as any other business (and, critically, the same penalties for breaking them), so if you opened a brothel in a house, then that would be a zoning violation, just as if you opened a bodega there. But it wouldn't be any more serious than that. Under legalization, then you'd be committing the crime of running an unlicensed brothel - and most legalization schemes would leave that as the crime that there currently is of running a brothel, i.e. a felony and facing years of imprisonment.
Most sex workers seem to prefer decriminalization to legalization. Sex work would then be subject to the same laws as any other sex (eg consent, age limits) and any other work (minimum wage, non-discrimination, OSHA standards, etc).
The obvious explanation you're missing is that it was planned this way all along. OnlyFans new they were next on the chopping block, so they got ahead of it and created the narrative they wanted in a few easy steps:
1. "Ban" porn from the site
2. Which of course is followed by an immediate and strong backlash from the community and sex workers.
3. Reinstate it as planned.
4. Now anytime they are in the cross-hairs from banks, payment processors, regulators, etc, they can point to what happened. "See: look at all these people who rely on us for their livelihoods", etc.
Regardless of whether that was how they planned it, that seems to be how it worked out. They started with a pitchfork-wielding mob demanding that they stop hosting porn; now they have an pitchfork-wielding mob demanding that they host porn, which might be even larger and louder than the original pitchfork-wielding mob, and can be leveraged to pressure their financial partners.
Ahh. The “new Coke” strategy
It's also a little bit "The Hudsucker Proxy".
I'm definitely open to the idea that there was a lot more going on here than OnlyFans claims; in particular, the timing of the second BBC article seems suspicious (OnlyFans might have been in "we have to do something, and FAST" mode). I don't know. I'm not sure that this really worked out well for them; they spent a week looking like skittish morons who don't understand their own business. Not the best look for attracting investors.
My interpretation was that OF was telling the bankers exactly what they needed to hear to let the spice- that is, cash accounts for the models- flow, while still negotiating about mid to long term steps to reduce the “illegal” content (as well as the child porn). The moment the bankers and OF came to an understanding, the ban was retracted.
The idea being that it’s better to keep the models from getting cut off *today* and scare them about a week from now, than to have their income cut off while the outside pressure builds.
Disclaimer- I’m not only a moron, I’m also not following this story too closely or have any knowledge of the industry; I’m just reading headlines and applying what I know about how humans work.
The space for sex work (and we should note that "sex work" encompasses a wide range of things, from stripping to camming to showing your genitals on the bus for $5) would be a lot more normal if anyone would articulate what a legal, ethical company looks like. That is: What are the best practices? What things should a company do to make people say "that's legal, that's fine"? Of course, no politician articulates those principles because they don't want to be Senator Porn, and the "it's actually about ABUSE" crowd also won't do it because it is NOT actually about abuse. So, banks operate in a state of perpetual uncertainty because there are no rules, just randomly-occurring hit pieces.