I honestly did not know they did anything besides porn. They have a really bad marketing department as I bet most people only know of them via porn (or I run in a slightly more degenerate circle).
It’s a recent push toward more mainstream performers. For example, there are pro surfers who are popular youtube vloggers (e.g. Nathan Florence) who recently started onlyfans channels. Nathan’s is a fitness training channel. It threw a lot of people off guard. And I strongly suspect that onlyfans paid him to start this channel.
This is pretty stupid though, to throw away the business you have for the business you might have, there is heaps of porn on Twitter, looking at it is optional. Why can't it just co-exist with other "acceptable" content ?
I would imagine it's very trivial to have a "Show me explicit content" setting.
Edit: Side note, I don’t know why porn is so shameful, especially concerning adults posting high quality content, it’s their art.
Mostly every religion prohibits sexual freedom and most every government has deeply religious members in the legislature. There is no separation of the church's morals and political ones.
Which means yes, I'm suggesting a ban on religion in the political space. I don't mean you can't be a politician if you're religious, I mean you should be fired if you ever fall back on religious grounds while executing your responsibility.
Strange how the more religious the political leadership, the less freedoms you find in that society, regardless of religion (and like all generalisations, there are plenty of exceptions to that sweeping statement).
This is really not meant as an assault on religion, but let's not pretend that Church is not a political institution. You can have a legislative and judicial political leadership, or a religious one.
But I don't believe it's possible to have both (and call yourself a free country)
> I'm suggesting a ban on religion in the political space.
Religions are just old ideologies centered on an anthropomorphic metaphor. It's not possible to exist without ideology -- even if it's something neoliberal and pared-down.
And, people will create institutions to provide them with additional structure, if the State isn't giving it to them. They'll organize around a priest, or a VP of DEI; they'll choose a holy book (Atlas Shrugged, the Koran, Das Kapital), and so on. And, lo and behold, those alternative structures will start coercing people too.
> prohibits sexual freedom
The older I get, the more I think "freedom" is a trap. What is the alcoholic's freedom to drink? The procrastinator's freedom to watch YouTube videos?
Odysseus, before sailing past the Sirens, was wise enough to ask his sailors to tie him to the mast.
I know you say you're self-motivated, but how many of you would really accomplish much without at least a little pressure from a boss, from perf review, or from your peers at least? "But I'm the CEO!", you say. Well, do you ever work harder as you prep for a board meeting?
I will do a dangerous thing now and, although essentially secular, make an Old Testament reference: What of Onan's freedom from responsibility for Tamar (i.e., his choice to leave her abandoned after Er's death), freedom from responsibility for the children he would have had with her? (People have myopically and stupidly focused on the "mechanics" of that story while missing the point.)
What if the consequences of your "freedom" don't hit you for many years? What if, as an individual, you simply don't have enough time in your life to make the mistake and learn from it?
I know a few people who were "free" to completely fuck up their lives, and they're belatedly figuring it out now, usually when it's too late.
I'd like to start by saying I respect your arguments.
Freedom is a very multifaceted word. On one hand, it means being free from coercion from others to do or not do what you want. On the other, it also means being free to do what you want without being forced into it by your own mind.
Most people have no freedom over their own minds, they would be slaves even if no laws applied to them and they had infinite money. Restricting physical freedom to guide those people even makes sense, as I would say those people are the majority.
But why the fuck would I accept that? I choose what I do and what I feel, why should I submit to others rules "for my own good" when my own mind has shown itself capable of choosing the correct option even when it hurts? Why should I limit my potential so every idiot who can't go 5 seconds without his little dopamine hits won't find a way to kill himself by the time he's 40? Why are the lives of the unaccomplished masses more important than my own?
Admittedly, this isn't a huge problem in my life, since to quote the New Testament, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move". Yet I feel like this kind of paternalism stunts the growth of those who would one day learn true freedom from themselves too. If you are shepherded into behaving, you do not learn why one must behave that way.
> if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain
The context of your quote is especially apt for a discussion of (structure as a defense against) addiction, since it's about a man who was, in the understanding of the day, "possessed by a demon", and who was cured.
Now -- this is sort of an aside -- I'll admit that my first reaction to
> this isn't a huge problem in my life, since [Bible quote about how, with faith, anything is possible]
was negative, because it felt like how my mental caricature of an Evangelical (note acceptable prejudice) would brag ("look how much faith I have"). As was my reaction to
> Why should I limit my potential [...]? Why are the lives of the unaccomplished masses more important than my own?
which had more ego than... my culture teaches to put out there.
But, to look for the important point, it was that if someone were to really go all in on Christianity (in the "radical" sense), instead of just keeping it at arm's length and looking for some wisdom here and there (my approach -- and borrowing not just from Christianity), then they'd start with faith, not the thing I'm calling structure, because -- the idea goes -- all the good deeds, all the behaviors, and so on, stem from faith; if you really believe, the rest will follow.
Or, using "Law" as a synonym for "structure", there is Galatians 3:23-26, which seems very on-the-nose:
23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
(So as not to just quote scripture out of context, I will note that there is much more subtext here: Galatians 3 is in large part about whether Christianity is going to be catholic (open to all), or more narrowly Jewish. I feel it builds to the climax of Galatians 3:28, which answers that: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.")
Anyway, long story short, I think I see your point, which -- unless I have just projected a whole ton of additional meanings -- would be to emphasize Faith.
> Anyway, long story short, I think I see your point, which -- unless I have just projected a whole ton of additional meanings -- would be to emphasize Faith.
Yes. Structure can turn an animal into a man, but only faith can elevate him above that.
I do not much like the word faith, as it evokes in me the image of the "Christian faithful" all praying on their knees, hoping for a better future if they follow everything the two-faced priest says. Ultimately it achieves nothing, as blind structure following without feeling for anything deeper than that within yourself is a soulless activity. If you couldn't tell from those last two sentences, I'm not actually Christian. I have rather strong feelings towards them, since I have seen them pull the greatest trick of all: convincing the masses that religion is extrinsically rather than intrinsically motivated. "Faith" nowadays is orthopraxy.
The world is much more complicated than that, of course, and it is not the Christians who did it, or anyone in particular in my opinion. Religion is as much spiritualism as culture, and Western faith before them was explicitly orthopractic. But I feel much more at home criticizing a religion I have experienced, rather than far off ones.
As to my Matthew quote: it has a lot of meaning to me. It is the expression of a universal truth, that true faith (or true will, or spirit, the alchemist's gold and so on and so forth) is the power to change oneself, and thus change the world. Admittedly, the full story (Jesus heals the boy, who does nothing) does not reflect that, which ties back into my hatred of Christianity as a religion that teaches the masses to be powerless and seek their spiritual salvation in others, when it is readily available to them.
(I quote Bible passages with a perverse enjoyment, though)
UK is as close to police / surveillance state as it can get: a lot of things are benned, privacy is severely limited, internet is censored, strong crypto isn't exactly legal (even though no one been thrown in jail, yet), banking banned crypto and have severe KYC requirements, etc.
So in many areas UK has less freedoms than poor authoritarian countries. I cant say anything about Germany since I havent lived there.
Have a reference for strong crypto being illegal? I know the government store a month of all our personal correspondence (due to the snoopers charter) but Afaict crypto is still legal.
It is legal, but with caveat that you have to provide decryption keys on court order and refusing to do so is illegal. It wasn't heavily used against anyone as far as I aware, but it's can always change.
Banks don't care if you paid taxes. Most of major banks will close your account if they suspect crypto-related transactions. And almost all fintech companies will ban your account if you even just buy crypto with a card payment: Wise, Monzo, Starling, etc.
crypto-related transactions is a different thing from banning banks from dealing in crypto. If banks don't want to deal with the Due-dil that's fair & fine to me. You don't need a bank to use an exchange.
> almost all fintech companies will ban your account
I believe revolut operates in the UK and allows you to trade in btc.
In the UK you literally have to ask your ISP before you are allowed to see porn (or use a different name server).
And Germany is far from secular too - for example church taxes (even if you can opt out) are still collected via the government. There is also much more censorship in video games than in most other countries.
> for example church taxes (even if you can opt out) are still collected via the government.
In other news US post office caught delivering mail to churches, synagogues and mosques. Religious conspiracy or completely normal?
> even if you can opt out
You had to be opted in in the first place, you don't get randomly assigned to one of the religious groups that signed up for that service.
> There is also much more censorship in video games than in most other countries.
Gotta love how quickly school shooters got blamed on video games. Can't blame the government, can't blame the poor parents who were barely even aware of their kids existence in the months leading up to the shooting, lets blame and censor games the kid never played.
> In other news US post office caught delivering mail to churches, synagogues and mosques.
You have GOT to be joking!
Do you not see the difference between the government delivering postal mail to everyone, and the government collecting money for churches only - money that you have to explicitly opt-out of giving?
Will the government collect debts that other people owe me? Hell, no! So why should the government collecting church taxes for them?
> and the government collecting money for churches only
I would be quite a bit richer if the government collected only church taxes. Would have been nice if I could have opted out of paying for that mess in Afghanistan.
> Will the government collect debts that other people owe me?
No, but maybe you could start a movement to have it recognize other, non religious, groups for this service.
I would suggest that giving religious institutions tax-free status in the US is a form of subsidy. That’s why it’s such a problem when they begin to preach in a partisan manner.
There are a lot of churches in the US, though. If we only paid taxes that went to churches - who knows - it might reach Afghanistan levels. Plus, there would be even more “private contractors from god” getting into the game.
The equivalent would be for each existing organisation (or individual) to have a box listed to check in the tax form (that is the privilege). That would be a long form, though.
People's political views are generally interwoven with their notion of morality and in the case of the religious, that morality is informed by their religion. The idea that you can separate religion and politics is misguided at best.
Also, even if you remove religion something else will surely take its place. It seems that notions of aggressive conventionality and "crush the unclean" are somewhat baked into a percentage of society, and I definitely think the really hostile climate of the pandemic has added evidence to this theory. There's always going to be a nasty, moralistic, curtain-twitcher segment of society no matter what name or organisation they give it. Sometimes they hide behind religion, sometimes they hide behind politics, sometimes it's another label entirely but what they all have in common is an excessive bias when it comes to the emotion of disgust.
I'm certainly not anti-religious (I'm no atheist myself), but I'm very anti-moral crusading against the business of consenting adults whatever form it takes.
The Unholy Trinity: State, Church and the Market. Despite the common belief to the contrary, they can never be truly separated. They're only distinct in the sense a continuous multimodal distribution has "distinct" modes - the boundaries are fuzzy. Ultimately, they all serve the goal of social coordination, and they all work with means of coercing people to do things for other people.
It's not the political leadership, it's the financial levers. Visa and Mastercard, specifically.
Yes, there's an overlap there, but your use of the expression "a ban on religion in the political space" highlights the problem. To frame it first as a political problem in the sense of political parties and professional politicians misses where the harm is being done; and to expand the definition of "political space" in your ban to include private financial operators would ban religion entirely.
And that's also not possible to do while calling yourself a free country.
As long as there is an expectation of content providers doing porn, most content creators will shy away of being part of the platform. Their own response to the news published by Bloomberg includes this line:
> Creators will continue to be allowed to post content containing nudity as long as it is consistent with our Acceptable Use Policy.
>These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers.[1]
I do think OnlyFans has a lot of potential with the features it offers: It combines the core functionality important for content creators of youtube, instagram and patreon. That is, except for discovery, which is notoriously bad.
OnlyFans is doing this allegedly because of a push by their payment processors and their investors.
I used to work for a company that did payment processing for high-risk sites (pornography and gambling), and before that I worked for a company that ran high-risk sites (pornography and gambling).
Those types of sites are high-risk because of a relatively large risk of fraud and chargebacks. Fraud and chargebacks are both bad things that cost both merchants and payment processors a lot of time and money, and they want to eliminate as much as possible.
This is why it's not as simple as a "Show me explicit content" setting - it's not about people seeing porn if they don't want to, it's about the banks not wanting to deal with the trouble that adult-focused sites tend to bring.
Economically, some people get ashamed, embarrassed or outright offended that paying for sexually explicit material somehow makes that person property that owe them anything they like in return, so chargebacks in this sector are extremely high.
But more likely, it's OnlyFans' lax moderation[1] along with their recent attempt to raise capital have caused greater scrutiny by governments of illegal activity taking place on their platform.
> Economically, some people get ashamed, embarrassed or outright offended that paying for sexually explicit material somehow makes that person property that owe them anything they like in return
That's quite the assumption.
> so chargebacks in this sector are extremely high.
Or,
1. Many of these transactions will be impulse decisions that are made during periods of reduced cognitive function so will have higher rates of regret than other content.
2. People might not want to admit that they made the purchase when their partner/guardians find out about the charge.
A friend of a friend is a very very popular performer on onlyfans, and my friend noted that she is flush in amazon gift cards (at least when he told me this like 2 years ago). That seems to be the primary mode of payment because it looks innocuous in bank/credit card records.
Aren't there also issues of borderline fraudulent behavior from some of the creators? IOW Content producer claims they update on X or Y cadence, in reality they update a fraction of that time (or never) or the quality of content they produce is a fraction of what they use to get people to initially sign up for the service.
AFAIK the reason why OnlyFans is getting rid of porn is because they didnt moderate properly, so there were cases of CSAM and more and they were on the brink of having their payment providers cancel on them like what happened to pornhub a few months ago
Payment processing being a public utility would result in less access to payment processing for services with a combination of high chargeback/fraud rates and opposition from some sections of the public
The payment processors don't care about the health of the company, they care about their own survival. If a report is publicly released that there's a significant amount of CSAM material being sold on OnlyFans and they are knowingly facilitating it, the potential costs to them both in legal troubles and PR is substantially greater than the revenue they get from OnlyFans. Worst case scenario is OnlyFans goes bust and some new company comes along with a similar business model but better moderation.
>Why can't it just co-exist with other "acceptable" content?
Do you really think the critique of Only Fans is aimed at the consumers' experience, rather than contributing to the norm that it's OK for men to pay women to do what the men want?
If PCCCI conformity and compliance can be done programmatically and the interfaces and tAPIs standardised, a uniform hardened virtual machine created commercially with multiple levels of support for complimentary up and down stream support / integration / development / consulting / services brokerage, isn't it possible to finance a very significant development in Linux security and privacy when some kind of economic opportunity like this comes along with just the right characteristics to attract sufficient attention and commitment?
Basically only just a image problem is keeping this industry from a huge amount of important infrastructure development.
Imagine that YouTube was to shut down next week.
how many startups do you think would be created to address that market?
How many uniquely innovative new ideas for attracting the former YT user base would be executed with lasting qualities that are beneficial to society and video producers and professional consumers?
Homogeneity is the developer crown / throne.
But homogeneous behemoth oligarchies prevent any serious development in any way capable of being subsumed by the oligarchs at marginal and not meaningful cost?
Can't any number, if a multitude is necessary then how about a multitude of global entrepreneurs less worried about their CVs appearance and capable of the work that we do for very much less for the same lifestyle, can't we find enough cut away / vanity intermediaries to take any public rap to enable the creation of a host of new companies in this sector all wanting to hire American talent and use American IP to develop the most advanced features for video sites serving this user base right now and just step in?
It is the same problem that Voat had. If you are are a platform that prioritizes minimal moderation in a market dominated by someone who doesn't, the primary reason to use your platform is because that content isn't allowed on the market leader.
Voat only became "Reddit for white supremacists" because Reddit was pushing many of those users off their platform. Only Fans only became "Patreon for sex work" because Patreon didn't want those users on their platform. Anyone who wasn't one of those groups was better off just sticking with Reddit and Patreon and that only became truer as the reputation became more and more ingrained with the platform's brand.
It is the same problem that Voat had. If you are are a platform that prioritizes minimal moderation in a market dominated by someone who doesn't, the primary reason to use your platform is because that content isn't allowed on the market leader.
This seems like an opportunity, not a problem. Since most platforms simply don't get traction at all, you have something. It's opportunity that involves problems (or "challenges") but you've gotten somewhere on the market chessboard. And most "growth hacks" present challenges.
That said, it's hard to believe that onlyfans wasn't aware they were effective a porn site. Maybe Voat was more naive since white supremacy doesn't monetize the way porn does but I'd be skeptical there too. The Internet has a zillion places for any population to go so there isn't a single "off-brand" that a undesirable population X is fated to go to.
> Maybe Voat was more naive since white supremacy doesn't monetize the way porn does but I'd be skeptical there too.
Have a look at the front page of Voat. I’m not even gonna check it myself because I’ve seen enough. I guarantee you that 50% or more of everything on the front page of Voat at any moment will be very obviously white supremacist type content. They know. And by letting those people dominate their platform for so long, they are effectively saying that white supremacists are welcome on their site, and that they are ok with giving a platform to people who are looking to spread hate against others based on ethnicity and nationality.
A site which calls itself Voat and uses Voat branding is back under the domain voat.xyz and it has a higher percentage of extremist content than the old Voat (if you can believe that).
It doesn't appear to be ran on the same codebase or the same database as the "old" Voat, but it can essentially be considered "back".
I have tried to verify every single time in the past when people on HN have pointed at a reddit alternative or subreddit with claims of extremist content, and every single time I have found nothing. When I point this out I have gotten replies (and downvotes) that the content is actually there but hidden in dead comments, which then archive.org do not display. It always leaves me without any way to verify the claim.
This time the site above did actually have some content that match the description. Looking at the top 10 on the front page, 8 is anti-vaccination discussions and 2 is anti-jew. That is significant more than any of the other sites I have looked at, and for once I can verify what the person claim to be true.
(As usual people demonstrate how appreciated independent verification is).
Voat.co was started by reddit altright. It was less racist when it was on reddit. Mostly memes and the racist stuff was, for the most part, modded down and few and far between.
It is both. If money is the primary driver you should simply accept the opportunity and pivot. However I would guess that the people who founded, worked at, and invested in these companies before the brand change were probably a little uneasy about that "growth hack". I know I would leave any company that to pivoted to white supremacy or porn. The former for personal moral reasons and the latter because our societal morality creates a stigma that isn't worth dealing with.
Plus this content is generally kicked off the original platform for some reason other than morals. It is usually because users are abandoning the platform or other companies are refusing to work with them. Embracing this content can therefore result in headaches like payment processors or cloud providers refusing to work with you.
IDK... if money is all that concerns you, I'd say stay away from porn, or white supremacy. Not much money in being a pariah, usually. As you say, employees may leave. Investors may leave. Banks may try to drop you.
Just because the market is big doesn't mean it's easy to get a slice. The food industry is absolutely huge and also very brutal. Margins are razor thin and people get crushed constantly.
But that’s a different argument. The point was that being in the porn industry was being a pariah. This simply is not the case and the porn industry is huge.
Unfortunately when I first set it up, I wasn't concerned about visibility haha. But while it's all fans, most of the content is heavily electric fan related
Liked. Cannot wait for fan photos, videos and other fan related content on my wall. It will be MUCH better than what usually lands there.
I really miss the "old days" when the internet was full of single purpose, dumb-if-you-think-too-much-about-it, hilarious sites (crappy taxidermy, ThatWillBuffOut.com, graphjam, etc.) and this is as close as we can get these days. Only. Fans.
When was that? I've been supporting people on Patreon since 2014 and it's basically been the same mix of independent comic artists and Youtubers the entire time. I know there was a ruckus when they kicked porn off the site, but I never knew they were on there in the first place.
When I first heard about it, people were comparing it to Patreon. Then it became porn because of some weird loophole in how credit card companies work. Credit cards and pornography is its whole massive side discussion.
I really thought it was meant to be Patreon for Porn. I've never heard about it an any context other than porn. Until now, if you'd asked me, I'd have confidently stated it was conceived as a porn site. This is truly news to me that it wasn't meant to be a porn site.
But Twitch is already established as a billion-dollar company (acquired, no less) providing SFW streaming services. I could understand staying out of the porn market in their case. But OnlyFans is _only_ associated with erotic content.
It's corporate suicide and it makes zero sense that they aren't fighting it. It's a valuable market, it's ethically sound and they are making the world a better place by having a safe place for adult performers to sell their services.
They’ve been pushing hard for celebrities for a while. But TBH I’m not sure what more you get here in some picture-based fan club than you’ll find on Instagram.
Anything newsworthy will likely get reposted online somewhere within the hour anyway.
Otherwise it's just a PG13 version of itself with similar sexual undertones.
My understanding of it was purely regarding porn. Or, as an open platform focusing on paid user generated content which naturally was a cesspool for porn. Interesting enough, after a debate about would you date a girl who had an OF account, I went decided to visit browse site last week and couldn't find anything other than highly sexually provocative but legit sounding channels. Mostly of the fitness type because yoga pants and other form fitting attire. But, I actually found no porn. I suppose you have to know what to search for, or who you want to follow. I never saw any content because I didn't pay for any.
My understanding is that you get the porn after subscribing to a certain creator, but I haven't really even been to the site, so my view might be completely off.
They're probably not promoting the pornographic content because they don't want that to be their brand. The way to end up on the porn is to be following someone on another platform who is either already posting dirty content on that platform and now wants to monetize it or by following someone who is popular for some other reason but then realizes they can get a lot more money out of their fanbase by selling nudes.
There actually was quite a bit of SFW content on their before the big purge. Quite a few people choosing to use it as a weird alternative to YouTube for their non-porn gaming stuff and also using it reupload/mirror content from YouTube.
It was always weird but also kind of fascinating to dive in to.
Even if they lose the bulk of their customers, they will still have a bigger network than if they had started with the same platform, but without the porn.
Sure, but its a much smaller network than they had when they applied for financing at their desired valuation. Why would I give them a valuation of a billion dollars if they suddenly lose some large (by some estimates 60+ %) portion of their income. I think this begins their slow demise.
Is it really their own fault for not doing marketing?
They were open to have porn on the platform, and then it just swarmed to them. People did the marketing for them.
Actually I'd have to say a good marketing department. I think it was part of a long-term plan to be relevant to broad audiences, and come out through the woodwork already strong.
