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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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doesn't onlyfans work with credit cards? same for almost all porn sites. the fees are high at times, but it seems to work

It only works because those websites censor everything that offends American puritan sensibilities. This is sort of why fansly exists, it has much laxer content policies than OnlyFans.

Know what Fansly also doesn't support? My credit card provider. (German national bank, via MasterCard)

Have you seen the wild shit at OF ? I struggle to think of what OF policies do not allow, violent simulations of rape or what ?

Puritans are not what they used to be I guess.

Even "softcore" urination is banned there, for example. Also public nudity is a very gray area and, from my understanding, de-facto prohibited.

Odd, when far more fucked up fetishes (e.g. feedism) aren't. I also think they're banning public nudity not because of puritans but because allowing it'd mean being seen as promoting criminal activity as it's typically illegal.

Information may be out of date at this point but I was acquainted with someone who ran the backend for several porn sites about a decade ago. Not large ones, medium sized independent contractor stuff. Porn credit card software infrastructure as he told it was a beautiful mess of chaining together every credit card processing API and library from every provider you could find that hadn't banned you and running the credit card details through each of them of them until you got a transaction that didn't bounce. And given the rate of banning from various providers usually from disputes (honey I didn't sign up for BackdoorSluts9.com, someone must have stolen my credit card details, let's dispute this obviously false charge) but sometimes legitimately violating TOS, it was a constant cycle of updating. He was looking at licensing out his meta billing library/service to other contacts in the industry given how much time-effort was being sunk into solving the problem that sounded like it affected a lot of the smaller players in the market.

did you actually not hear about the recent time Visa and mastercard made pornhub, the king of the porn space, bend the knee? More truthfully it was the NYT that put out a report that single handedly knocked the largest porn company on the internet out of existence until it purged more than half of its content off the site. The only thing stopping this weapon from being turned directly against dissidents is precedent, and barely at that. Can you say it would surprise you if DeSantis donations were cut off mid campaign if he looked dominant?

there are 1000s of porn sites and all seem to be doing fine except for that one and a few others maybe. That is the risk of allowing anyone to upload anything without moderation or screening, which they have fixed, and is a problem that was unique to pornhub. Most porn sites screen the performers for age. This risk is not just limited to porn sites, any site that allows user generated content is at risk of being cut off. if porn is so badly threatened by this, why are so many sites .

The only thing stopping this weapon from being turned directly against dissidents is precedent, and barely at that

It's also possible to oppose government overreach but still think crypto is an impractical solution

If you can appease this latest demand by the censors then there is not problem

Is this even convincing to you? I genuinely don't know if it's worse faith to assume you're making this objection in good faith or not. You don't see why someone might be concerned that two, demonstrably cowardly, corporations being able to basically wipe any business on the internet out of existence if pressed hard enough should be concerning?

Yes, I saw the blasphemers crushed under the boot of the master but look at all the prosperous people whom have not yet had their insides turned into a fine slush by the master! Surely this is an optimal system!

corporations being able to basically wipe any business on the internet out of existence if pressed hard enough should be concerning?

I am just talking about bitcoin not being viable as a payment alternative. This does not imply supporting tyranny . The collapse of SilkRoad showed how hard this is, at least in the US, and this was with 2013 technology. Feds are much better at tracking crypto.

Are you under the impression that you cannot buy drugs on the internet using cryptocurrencies? It was not a technological failure that got Dread Captain Roberts(PBUH) taken down. And if the feds can track Monero transactions they've shown no indication.

And if the feds can track Monero transactions they've shown no indication.

That is possibly mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence. The feds try to track onramps/offramps of Monero to BTC or to fiat. This is partly why so few exchanges accept it. I think in fairness Monero is the most viable of the cryptos since it does have a practical use case. It seems like a bargain for this reason relative to the others. BTC seems most suitable for 'grey market' activity, stuff where the feds will not get involved, but not mainstream in which credit card is faster and more convenient . To bring this back to adoption, even if every porn site uses BTC , this is still small relative to the overall economy. Porn is not that big in terms of GDP despite all the traffic it gets. For someone buying goods on Amazon or Walmart, bitcoin probably offers no advantage over what already exists.