It's kinda scary how finance and payment processing companies can just destroy a company and a whole bunch of people's livelihoods by themselves just because they decide they don't like what they sell, and have no oversight whatsoever preventing them from doing this.
Tinfoil hat time: giant capital wants more labor doing menial jobs rather than making enough to not need a minimum wage job because of OF and are willing to tear down what they're invested in to do so. They won't stop shutting up about the "labor shortage" as is.
I absolutely think there’s an element to this. We see OnlyFans and think of the people on our lives who have turned to it as a source of income. Rich fucks see OnlyFans and think of the article they read about how many workers are supposedly quitting their jobs to pursue sex work
I’ve read the average OF creator only makes like $200. I love a conspiracy as much as anyone but idk if that’s what’s going on here.
Yeah I’ve read that if you look at the time people put in to their patreons, most creators are probably earning less than minimum wage. It’s definitely not the get rich quick that some people believe it to be, even if you get the occasional Bella Thorne to prop up that narrative.
That’s probably what is going on, to some degree. But imo that creates a realistic picture of the typical OF content creator experience.
I envision there’s many people who signed up and didn’t post anything. Or they posted for a while but never got more than like $100/ month. I haven’t looked at the numbers but if it’s similar to patreon, for every one popular creator I’d bet there’s like 60 accounts that went nowhere.
90% of people made an OF and then abandoned it, driving down the average. For the remainder, it's a real job for half of them. I'd say sex work represents a significant abdication from the traditional labor market.
Correct. Texas and other states are raising minimum age to work in strip clubs from 18 to 21.
Eh, I’m pretty sure the population of people not hot enough to make it only OnlyFans is big enough to keep capital supplied with labor.
Same thing happened with weed shops in California after it became legal (and is still happening). You have to pay in cash. You can use cards but they charge you an ATM fee and give you change back from the nearest $5 interval.
All because finance institutions don't want to touch those transactions.
Yeah, OP has a very good point, but a lot of private sector decisions like this are partly (and in some cases, mostly) driven by the risk of operating in legal grey areas. It's the same process by which sanctions that technically allow food, medicine, etc. have the practical effect of choking those things off (banks don't want to run the risk of financing something that falls outside what's legal and getting assets frozen/seized).
Of course there's plenty to be said about the massive influence private companies have in writing laws in the first place, what laws the government chooses to enforce, and what laws private companies choose to flout.
There’s a reason banks have giant departments dedicated just to compliance and internal audits. It’s certainly not out of the goodness of their hearts
There's a 0.0% of the Feds seizing a major bank's funds because it's from weed sales. They don't do it because the bank owners also don't want weed to be legal - Capitalist class solidarity.
Won’t be the last time it’ll happen either. Sex workers building up institutional power is very disruptive and tends to put power the hands of The Wrong People
protestant moralism manifesting in capital is as american as apple pie
Cryptocurrency is unironically is a stop gap for this issue (and it also helps the whole "US sanctions" thing), but of course it's Bad because it's evil nerds making money.
Yeah. I wonder if there's any good writing about that :thinkin-lenin:
Absolutely. I have no idea how PH and all bypass it. These financial institutions have way too much power.
Edit: And also, the rich fucks at the top of OF are not gonna get punished even if the company tanks. It's the creators who're suffering and will suffer.
Pretty sure PH gets by it because they're just so big they can afford to review all content to appease the credit card companies
Ah interesting. Yeah so same situation with them being pressured into it by credit card companies
? I've never seen or met an ML that didn't acknowledge that sex work is labor and should be organized accordingly
Its rare but I've bumped into like two who were worryingly concerned about "moral removed" or whatever... Only online though.
I’ve gotten into arguments with dudes at genzodong and moretankiechapo back in the day. I assume their young but some internet mls def have trouble separating the industry from worker with respect to sex work.
There are MLs who come to it because it says it's practical and theoretical, and then there are MLs who like it because they heard it was authoritarian but had free stuff, and you can usually tell which are which.
I feel like they're welcome among the MLs here on hexbear. but I am trying to be less "online" and maybe that's the key descriptor
I said it yesterday but do what video games did to get around EULA. Instead of buying porn directly, buy “in game” credits that can trade for porn. Don’t even need a blockchain or shitty crypto.
Hmmm this seems like a good idea. You'd think if this would work they would do it. But then again the i dont think people who control these sites are actually that smart ..
this worked just fine for getting children addicted to gambling on mobile apps for fake prizes.
I totally never spent $250 on Dragonvale on accident when I was younger… :crush:
If only an environmentally-friendly, non-volatile cryptocurrency was possible...
All the useful properties of a cryptocurrency could be done with a centralized server that generates tokens at a fixed rate and offers transaction management, with like a discarded netbook's worth of computing power.
It wouldn't be decentralized or crypto though, so you wouldn't have weird libertarians propping up the value.
It’s possible, just not in a completely decentralized system optimizing for energy consumption. I think this is an area where the liberal assumption of individual humans being the atomic unit of operation really bites the whole system in the ass. There are absolutely no means of governance built in. I understand that’s the point, but it’s some real “invisible hand” logic.
Yeah that's the problem. They use credit card companies and it's those companies that are causing this change to onlyfans
What is materially different about Pornhub that allows them to continue operating?
the companies that process payments for "shady stuff" give you shittier terms and rates
They would have to start their own bank. Maybe they could find some way to seemlessly integrate crypto currency that wouldn't get their shell bank corporation black balled.
FWIW, the gun nuts have also been dealing with similar issues and threats thereof. This issue may be new to many of us, but it is not new.
Isn't this what happened to tumblr when it got bought out by a new company, it had to purge it's adult content?
If I remember right, that was because the Apple Store threatened to delist them. Which is also way too much power.
Quite often industrial and commercial circles complain of the “terrorism” of the banks. And it is not surprising that such complaints are heard, for the big banks “command”, as will be seen from the following example. On November 19, 1901, one of the big, so- called Berlin “D” banks (the names of the four biggest banks begin with the letter D) wrote to the Board of Directors of the German Central Northwest Cement Syndicate in the following terms: “As we learn from the notice you published in a certain newspaper of the 18th inst., we must reckon with the possibility that the next general meeting of your syndicate, to be held on the 30th of this month, may decide on measures which are likely to effect changes in your enterprise which are unacceptable to us. We deeply regret that, for these reasons, we are obliged henceforth to withdraw the credit which had hitherto been allowed you.... But if the said next general meeting does not decide upon measures which are unacceptable to us, and if we receive suitable guarantees on this matter for the future, we shall be quite willing to open negotiations with you on the grant of a new credit.”
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - Lenin, p.30 :back-to-me:
This starting-point could perhaps be placed at an even later date, for it was the crisis of 1900 that enormously accelerated and intensified the process of concentration of industry and of banking, consolidated that process, for the first time transformed the connection with industry into the actual monopoly of the big banks, and made this connection much closer and more active.” Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital.
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - Lenin, p.32 :back-to-me:
I saw some people saying fundamentalist Christian organizations were the one putting the pressure on Mastercard. Not sure if it's factual but not hard to believe. I'm sure that's all it takes too, some org that has some sway making a big fuss and MC just caving easily since they probably are not stoked about it already. It's fucked how much power credit agencies have
Our comrades at corner spati had an episode talking to sex workers and their issues with payments and legality. Onlyfans gone will prolly be big blow, they also talked about crypto being not a great solution, but a solution :sadness:
Frankly, I don’t see a way around this other than crypto. It’s the only disruptive financial tech that’s still usable by every day people even after it’s been coopted by capital. And that really sucks because it basically means that anyone looking to use crypto as intended is forced to gamble just by holding money. You can’t exactly buy government bonds to compensate for the risk if you’re a political dissident
I wonder if there could possibly be a service, pay for something with your credit card, it automatically buys crypto at current value, sends it over to the seller, and then sells that crypto and exchanges it for real currency.
Isn't the price so volatile that it could change over the course of that transaction tho
The intermediary would have to depend on it in order to take a cut and cover the card fees
That’s still an intermediary which could itself be suspended by credit card companies
you don't need to deal with speculative coins. stablecoins are a thing: https://www.circle.com/en/usdc
