onlyfans – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: This One Weird Trick To Save The Open Internet

from the ctrl-alt-speech dept

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.

In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Alex Feerst, former General Counsel and head of trust & safety at Medium, and co-founder of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. Together they cover:

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Filed Under: canada, content moderation, eu, eu commission, oversight board, section 230
Companies: google, meta, onlyfans, tiktok

OnlyFans Throws The Open Internet Under The Bus

from the only-regulatory-moats dept

It’s always disappointing when an internet company that should know better decides to throw the open internet it relies on under the bus.

You would think that a site like OnlyFans would know better. You expect this sorta thing from Meta or Google or Netflix, which have reached a size where they’re more willing to compromise with open internet principles in order to help build themselves a politically convenient compliance nightmare for smaller competitors.

But you would have thought OnlyFans was still new enough that it wouldn’t join those pulling up the ladder behind them. After all, it’s run into its own struggles with what happens when moralizing politicians try to stifle the open internet.

Apparently, though, the company doesn’t care much to support the open internet.

The Economist recently had a big story about attempts to regulate speech online. The piece is not a bad summary of how politicians everywhere are trying to become the speech police. There’s some talk of Section 230, the various dumb state laws about content moderation, the DSA in the EU, attempts in Turkey and Brazil to clamp down on online speech, and much more.

However, what caught my eye was the discussion about the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a very problematic bill that we’ve spoken about plenty of times. And, the Economist actually got a quote from OnlyFans seeming to endorse the age verification aspects of the bill:

The most controversial part of Britain’s bill, a requirement that platforms identify content that is “legal but harmful” (eg, material that encourages eating disorders) has been dropped where adults are concerned. But there remains a duty to limit its availability to children, which in turn implies the need for widespread age checks. Tech firms say they can guess users’ ages from things like their search history and mouse movements, but that a strict duty to verify users’ age would threaten anonymity.

Some suspect that their real objection is the price. “I don’t think ‘It costs money and is hard’ is an excuse,” says Keily Blair, chief operations officer of OnlyFans, a porn-centric platform which checks the age of its users and doesn’t see why others shouldn’t do the same. Yet some platforms are adamant: the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, says it has no intention of verifying users’ age.

Look, if you want to do age verification, that’s on you, but making it mandatory is a nightmare for the open internet. First, as noted, it destroys anonymity. Second, it puts more user data at risk, for no good reason (to verify ages you have to collect sensitive data). Third, even if it is about the expense, tons of websites can’t afford that nonsense, which will serve no purpose and won’t actually keep anyone safe.

The fact that OnlyFans voluntarily decides to verify ages has a lot more to do with OnlyFans’ business model, content, and target audience. But it’s no excuse for saying that everyone else should have to deal with the same compliance nightmare despite very different products and audiences.

Apparently, this willingness to throw the open internet under the bus isn’t new. That quote seemed so out of place that I went looking, and apparently the company came out fully in favor of the Online Safety Bill last fall.

Blair hopes the Online Safety Bill, which imposes a “duty of care” on social media platforms, will bring her rivals up to the same standard the company believes it upholds.

“We want everyone to be as safe as we are. Anything that pushes people in that direction is a good thing for society,” she says. But now the bill has been pushed back, companies may be slower to act. “I’m disappointed because some people need a stick to make changes. Unfortunately, the law often is that stick.”

There’s an astounding lack of understanding about basic policy issues here, and ones that seem likely to come back to bite OnlyFans. What a “duty of care” actually means is the requirement to litigate any time anything bad happens to anyone on your site. Because each time something bad happens someone will sue, and sites will have to spend a ridiculous about of time, money, and resources to explain why they were appropriate in their “care.” Even if a site thinks it will win, it still creates a massive mess of nonsense and wasted time and money.

Later in that same article, Blair also made it clear that she has no clue how freedom of expression actually works, which is quite stunning given the content that OnlyFans regularly hosts on its own site:

What did she make of those accusations that the legislation would suppress freedom of speech? “Freedom of expression and online safety aren’t a binary choice,” she says. “The reality is that freedom of expression has always been curtailed by the law. There’s always been boundaries in place from a legal standpoint to protect around what we think is acceptable in a modern society to say and not. That’s why we have rules around hate speech.

“People often say things and do things on the internet that they would only do behind a keyboard,” she adds. “People feel emboldened to behave in certain ways sometimes. It’s right to have the same protection online as you do walking down the street.”

It’s unclear here if OnlyFans’ execs are just ignorant, foolish, believe that they can withstand the litigation onslaught while others can’t… or some combination of all three. Or maybe they see themselves as a regulatory target and think they’ll get a better deal by playing nice with regulators. But, nonetheless, it’s still disappointing that a site that has benefited so much from the open internet and freedom of expression has decided to support throwing it all away.

Filed Under: age verification, free expression, keily blair, online safety bill, online speech, open internet, uk
Companies: onlyfans

As Prudes Drive Social Media Takedowns, Museums Embrace… OnlyFans?

from the didn't-see-that-one-coming dept

Over the last few years, we’ve seen more and more focus on using content moderation efforts to stamp out anything even remotely upsetting to certain loud interest groups. In particular, we’ve seen NCOSE, formerly “Morality in Media,” spending the past few years whipping up a frenzy about “pornography” online. They were one of the key campaigners for FOSTA, which they flat out admitted was step one in their plan to ban all pornography online. Recently, we’ve discussed how MasterCard had put in place ridiculous new rules that were making life difficult for tons of websites. Some of the websites noted that Mastercard told them it was taking direction from… NCOSE. Perhaps not surprisingly, just recently, NCOSE gave MasterCard its “Corporate Leadership Award” and praised the company for cracking down on pornography (which NCOSE considers the same as sex trafficking or child sexual abuse).

Of course, all of this has some real world impact. We’ve talked about how eBay, pressured to remove such content because of FOSTA and its payment processors, has been erasing LGBTQ history (something, it seems, NCOSE is happy about). And, of course, just recently, OnlyFans came close to prohibiting all sexually explicit material following threats from its financial partners — only to eventually work out a deal to make sure it could continue hosting adult content.

But all of this online prudishness has other consequences. Scott Nover, over at Quartz, has an amazing story about how museums in Vienna are finding that images of classic paintings are being removed from all over the internet. Though, they’ve come up with a somewhat creative (and surprising) solution: the museums are setting up OnlyFans accounts, since the company is one of the remaining few which is able to post nude images without running afoul of content moderation rules. Incredibly, the effort is being run by Vienna’s Tourist Board.

The Vienna Tourist Board said its museums have faced a litany of online challenges. After the Natural History Museum Vienna posted images of the Venus of Willendorf, a 25,000-year-old Paleolithic limestone figurine, Facebook deleted the images and called them pornographic. The Albertina Museum had its TikTok account suspended in July for showing nudes from the Japanese artist and photographer ??Nobuyoshi Araki, CNN reported. And the Leopold Museum, which houses modern Austrian art, has struggled to advertise on social media because of the bans on nudity.

Even advertising the new OnlyFans account on other social media proved difficult, the board said. Twitter rejected links to the board?s website because it linked out to the OnlyFans account. (Twitter allows nudity on its platform as long as the account and images are labeled as such.) Facebook and Instagram only allowed ads featuring the Venus of Willendorf and a nude painting by Amedeo Modigliani after the tourist board explained the context to the platforms, but other images by artists Egon Schiele and Peter Paul Rubens were rejected.

This is all kind of ridiculous, but certainly falls into the Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem collection of the impossibility of content moderation at scale. Of course, it also recalls the case in France where Facebook took down an classic 1866 oil painting by Gustave Courbet, in which the court initially ruled that Facebook could not take down the image. Facebook has (for many years now) had exceptions to its nudity rule for “art,” but figuring out how to enforce that kind of thing is notoriously difficult.

And when you have prudish, moralizing busybodies like NCOSE pressuring companies to wipe out any and all nudity, it’s no surprise that this kind of thing is the result. But, really, all of this seems likely to backfire in the end. Cordoning off even artistic nudity into sites like OnlyFans… also means that more and more people may be introduced to OnlyFans “for the paintings,” only to discover what else is available there.

Filed Under: content moderation, museums, nudity, paintings, pornography, prudes, social media, vienna, vienna tourist bouard
Companies: onlyfans

Bankers As Content Moderators

from the money-rules-everything dept

In August, porn-subscription platform OnlyFans announced that it would no longer permit pornography, blaming pressure from banks. The porn policy was rescinded after a backlash from platform users, but the incident illustrates how a handful of heavily regulated financial service providers can act as meta-moderators by shaping the content policies of platforms that rely on them.

How did banks acquire such power over OnlyFans? Although people sometimes express themselves for free, they usually demand compensation. Polemicists, scientists, poets, and, yes, pornographers all need a paying audience to put food on their tables. Unless the audience is paying in cash, their money must move through payment processors, banks, and other financial intermediaries. If no payment is processed, no performance will be forthcoming.

OnlyFans relies on financial intermediaries in several ways. It must be able to accept payments from users, send payments to content creators, and raise capital from investors. Each of these activities requires the services of a bank or payment processor. In an interview with the Financial Times, OnlyFans CEO Tim Stockey pointed to banks’ refusals to process payments to content creators as the pressure behind the proposed policy change.

“We pay over one million creators over $300m every month, and making sure that these funds get to creators involves using the banking sector,” he said, singling out Bank of New York Mellon as having “flagged and rejected” every wire connected to the company, “making it difficult to pay our creators.”

BNY Mellon processes a trillion dollars of transfers a day. At this scale, OnlyFans’ $300 million a month in creator payments could be lost in a rounding error. Like individual users on massive social media platforms, the patronage of any one website or business doesn’t matter to financial intermediaries. Banks often refuse service to the sex industry because of its association with illegal prostitution. In the face of bad press or potential regulatory scrutiny, it is usually easier, and in the long run, cheaper, to simply sever ties with the offending business.

This leaves an excluded firm like OnlyFans with few options. OnlyFans cannot simply become a payment processor. Financial intermediaries are heavily regulated. OnlyFans is unlikely to clear the regulatory hurdles, and even if it could, compliance with anti-money laundering laws would strip its users of anonymity.

Financial intermediaries are uniquely positioned to police speech because they are heavily regulated. While Section 230 keeps the costs of starting a speech platform low, banking regulation makes it difficult and expensive to enter the financial services market. There are hundreds of domain registrars, but only a handful of major payment processors. This disparity makes the denial of payment processing one of the most effective levers for controlling speech.

Banks have the same rights of conscience as other firms, but regulation gives their decisions added weight. Financial intermediaries are in the business of making money, not curating for a particular audience, so they have less incentive to moderate than publishers. However, when financial intermediaries moderate, regulation prevents alternative service providers from entering the market.

Peer-to-peer payment systems, such as cryptocurrency, offer a solution that circumvents intermediaries entirely. However, cryptocurrency has proven difficult to use as money at scale. OnlyFans was able to grow to its current size through access to the traditional banking system. At this stage, it cannot easily abandon it. OnlyFans would lose many users if it required buyers and sellers to maintain cryptocurrency wallets. The platform’s current investors would likely balk at issuing a token to raise additional capital. Decentralized alternatives are, for the moment, unworkably convoluted.

While financial intermediaries’ power to moderate is not absolute, they can keep unwanted speech at the fringes of society and prevent it from being very profitable. This is not merely a problem for porn. Many sorts of legal but disfavored speech are vulnerable to financial deplatforming. Gab, a social media platform popular with the alt-right, has been barred from PayPal, Venmo, Square, and Stripe. It eventually found a home with Second Amendment Processing, an alternative payment processor originally created to serve gun stores.

Commercial banks have faced pressure to cease serving gun stores from both activists and the government in Operation Choke Point. Operation Choke Point sought to discourage banks from serving porn actors, payday lenders, gun merchants, and a host of other “risky” customers. The FDIC threatened banks with “unsatisfactory Community Reinvestment Act ratings, compliance rating downgrades, restitution to consumers, and the pursuit of civil money penalties,” if they failed to follow the government’s risk guidance. Operation Choke Point officially ended in 2017, but it set the tone for banks’ treatment of covered businesses. Because the banking sector is highly regulated, it is very susceptible to informal government pressure—regulators have many ways to interfere with disobedient banks.

In 2011, when Wikileaks published a trove of leaked State Department cables, Senator Joe Lieberman pressured nearly every service Wikileaks used to ban the organization. Wikileaks was deplatformed by its web host, its domain name service, and even its data visualization software provider. Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, and Western Union all prohibited donations to Wikileaks. Wikileaks was able to quickly move to European web hosts and domain name services beyond the reach of Senator Lieberman. But even Swiss bank PostFinance refused Wikileaks’ business. Unlike foreign web hosting and domain registration services, foreign banks are still part of a global financial system for which America largely sets the rules.

Denied access to banking services, Wikileaks became an early adopter of Bitcoin. Simply sending money to a small organization was simple enough that even in 2011, Bitcoin could offer Wikileaks a viable alternative to the traditional financial system. It also probably helped that Wikileaks’ cause was popular with the sort of people already using Bitcoin in 2011.

While cryptocurrency has come a long way in the past decade, adoption is still limited, and alternatives to traditional methods of raising capital are still in their infancy. Bitcoin offered Wikileaks a way out, and some OnlyFans content creators may turn to decentralized alternatives. But as a business, OnlyFans remains at the mercy of the banking industry. Financial intermediaries cannot stamp out disfavored speech, but they can cap the size of platforms that host it. Sitting behind and above the commercial internet, payment processors and banks retain a unique capability to set rules for platforms, and, in turn, platform users.

Will Duffield is a Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute

Techdirt and EFF are collaborating on this Techdirt Greenhouse discussion. On October 6th from 9am to noon PT, we’ll have many of this series’ authors discussing and debating their pieces in front of a live virtual audience (register to attend here). On October 7th, we’ll be hosting a smaller workshop focused on coming up with concrete steps we can take to make sure providers, policymakers, and others understand the risks and challenges of infrastructure moderation, and how to respond to those risks.

Filed Under: banks, content moderation, infrastructure, money, payment processors
Companies: onlyfans, wikileaks

Satire Site Gets Ridiculous Threat Letter From Baseball Team; cc's Barbra Streisand In Its Response

from the that's-how-you-do-it dept

The Popehat signal went up and it was for a good cause (even if it’s ridiculous that it was needed). The satirical site “Takoma Torch,” which is an attempt at being a sort of local The Onion for a suburb outside of DC, posted an article making light of the nearby town of Olney, Maryland and its new Cal Ripken Collegiate League baseball team. Playing off of the recent drama regarding the company OnlyFans, Takoma Torch’s Eric Saul wrote up an amusing article about “OlneyFans.” You can click through to read the story, but the opening gives you the gist:

Within hours of going live, ?OlneyFans,? the website for Upper Montgomery County?s new Cal Ripken Collegiate League baseball team, crashed this week due to unusually high web traffic.

?We knew that starting a new baseball team in Olney would be popular, especially with males between the ages of 13 and 55,? said marketing director Brock Jacobs. ?But when our site registration exceeded the entire population of Maryland after announcing a free footlong on opening day against Bethesda Big Train, we realized our huge oversight.?

There are a few more such paragraphs and it’s somewhat amusing. Except, apparently, to the very, very foolish people who run the Olney Community Baseball Team who found someone who is apparently a real lawyer, Andrew Schwartz, to write one of the dumbest threat letters we’ve seen in a while. Schwartz, who specializes in business law, employment law, and real estate law seems to know fuck all about how free speech works.

The letter has some real whoppers in there.

Olney Baseball has learned that The Takoma Torch has circulated communications that use the name, image, or likeness of Olney Baseball in a false, misleading, and/or defamatory manner. For instance, on September 8, 2021, The Takoma Torch published an article entitled “OlneyFans Website for MoCo’s New Baseball Team Crashes Due to Unusually High Traffic” (the “Article”). No one from or on behalf of Olney Baseball was contacted, interviewed, or consulted about the Article. The Article contains numerous false and misleading statements, and it misrepresents the Olney Baseball organization. For instance, and not by way of limitation, Olney Baseball: (i) does not have a website; (ii) the individuals purportedly quoted in the Article have no relationship with Olney Baseball and they are not in any way affiliated with Olney Baseball; (iii) the individuals quoted in the Article have no authority to comment or speak on behalf of Olney Baseball; and (iv) the Article references a purported logo for Olney Baseball; however, Olney Baseball does not have any logo at this time.

Talk about missing the joke. The letter goes on to talk about all the time and money they’ve wasted investigating this matter and demanding The Takoma Torch cease and desist “all activities, including, but not limited to, publication, dissemination, distribution, sharing, posting and all use of or reference to the Olney Baseball name, image, and likeness in connection with any article, post, communication, and/or comment in whatever medium and in any forum.” They also demand the article be taken down and all the usual legal mumbo jumbo designed to scare people.

Thankfully, the Takoma Torch and Eric Saul seem to know enough not to be intimidated, and made public their response. It’s too good.

Thank you for your recent submission of a satirical legal threat. Even though our writing team found it to be extremely hilarious, unfortunately, it did not technically meet our qualifications of containing fewer than 300 words and have a punchy headline, so we will not accept it at this time. Perhaps you could have used “Olney Makes History with First Baseball Team to Lack a Sense of Humor,” or even “Lawyers Has Ball to Make Baseless Claims Against Satirical Baseball Story.” Either one of these headlines would have been acceptable.

There’s more, but the best part, by far, is the signoff.

Why, yes, that is a “cc: Barbara Streisand” which caused half the internet to alert me to it (Psst: Eric, for future reference, her name is now actually Barbra without the extra “a”).

And, given how often I’ve seen this type story come up, it appears that the Streisand Effect is alive and well. Saul has said his traffic went up more than 10x, to the point that his hosting company even alerted him that his traffic was “booming.”

Of course, some of the backstory behind all of this makes it even crazier. According to the Washingtonian, Eric Saul of the Takoma Torch knows the owner of the baseball team and had even done him favors in the past:

Saul said he was bewildered by the letter. For starters, he says, ?The guy suing me is my friend!? Indeed, Jeff Schwaber, the managing partner at Stein Sperling, confirms that Saul and Tony Korson, the CEO of Koa Sports, an organization behind the team, have coached baseball together and that Saul designed the interior of Koa Sports? facility for free. Korson called Saul about the article on Friday, Saul says, and he agreed to remove the original graphic for the story, which showed an artist?s rendering of the team?s potential field, and replace it with an aerial photo. ?I thought that was the end of it,? he says.

Some thanks he gets for designing the interior of their facility for free!

Incredibly, rather than backing down, the lawyers at Stein Sperling seem to be doubling down. Again from the Washingtonian:

Schwaber says the problem, from his client?s point of view, is that the baseball team is a new organization whose name is being ?deliberately confused? with a site known for adult content. But Takoma Torch is clearly a humor publication, I said. Doesn?t the precedent in the Supreme Court case Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Falwell?which found that the First Amendment protected even offensive speech as long as ?that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts??protect this sort of joke?

?Look, there is a lot of humor that?s protected speech,? Schwaber replied. ?But there are also lines that get crossed.? For instance, he says, Washingtonian could not write an article that accused Schwaber of molesting children and be protected by labeling it satire.

Um. That’s just dumb, Jeff. That’s not how any of this works. This did not cross the line and it was clearly satire. Schwaber kept on going and said even more stupid stuff to the Washington Post:

?Of course we support the First Amendment and the right of the Takoma Torch or anyone else to use satire as a medium,? wrote Stein Sperling?s Jeffrey M. Schwaber in an email.

No you don’t, Jeff. You sent him a fucking cease-and-desist that threatens litigation for his satire. So you do not support the 1st Amendment.

?Our concern is that our client has worked very hard to create an opportunity to bring a community oriented, children and family friendly baseball team to Olney, and now is faced with the challenges posed by having their new brand deliberately confused with an exploitative site filled with graphic and explicit content.?

No one is confusing anything, dude. Except you. Everyone got the humor. Except you. Either way, the Streisand Effect has claimed another victim.

Update: And… not surprisingly, it appears that the lawyers and the Olney baseball team realized that at some point you stop digging, and have agreed not to pursue legal action here:

  1. I am happy to confirm that the OlneyFans drama has been resolved entirely in the Torch?s favor! Thanks to everyone for your support, but a few extra special thanks are in order…

— The Takoma Torch?? (@TakomaTorch) September 15, 2021

Filed Under: andrew schwartz, barbra streisand, eric saul, free speech, jeff schwaber, satire, streisand effect, threats
Companies: olney community baseball, onlyfans, takoma torch

eBay's FOSTA-Inspired Ban On 'Adult Content' Is Erasing LGBTQ History

from the it's-not-just-onlyfans dept

There was plenty of attention paid OnlyFans decision recently to ban “sexually explicit” content — a policy the company suspended following an outcry. However, more and more people are noticing that the same kind of thing is happening across the internet due to FOSTA.

The New Yorker has a very interesting article describing how eBay recently banned almost all adult content on its website, and one of the consequences is that important historical LGBTQ content is disappearing. Yet again, this appears to be one of the very much intended consequences of FOSTA. You may recall that one of the major backers of FOSTA were pretty explicit that they saw it as part of their plan to stop all pornography from existing.

And, it’s working:

Recently, eBay has shifted company policy in ways that will make further acquisitions of erotica difficult. In May, the platform banned the sale of ?sexually oriented materials??including magazines, movies, and video games?and closed its ?Adults Only? category to new listings in the United States. There are a few explicit exemptions, including Playboy; Penthouse; the gay art zine Butt; the satirical, women-run erotica magazine On Our Backs; and something called Fantastic Men, which appears to be a misspelling of the PG-rated men?s style magazine Fantastic Man. ?Nude art listings that do not contain sexually suggestive poses or sexual acts are allowed,? the policy states. Materials falling afoul of such distinctions?which could presumably include anything from reproductions of Michelangelo?s horned-up ?The Expulsion from Paradise? to back copies of Black Inches?are, apparently, now beyond the pale.

The ban appears to be related to the House?s Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Senate?s Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, known together as FOSTA–SESTA, an effort by victim?s-rights advocates and right-wing activists to crack down on sex work. One feature of the legislative package was to make Web sites liable for hosted content that might ?promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person.? After Donald Trump signed FOSTA–SESTA into law, in 2018, Craigslist shut down its personals listings, Tumblr banned sexual content, Facebook prohibited the formation of groups organized around sexual encounters, and Instagram ramped up its policing of user content, especially that which includes any hint of human nudity. Also of possible relevance: eBay recently began using the Dutch fintech company Adyen for electronic payment services. Like many payment-processing companies, Adyen refuses to participate in the sale of adult materials. Similar concerns by payout providers were reportedly at the center of the recent decision by OnlyFans, the content subscription platform, to ban sexual content?a move they reversed after considerable outcry led by the sex workers who, in large part, helped the company build a valuation of some one billion dollars. In a written statement to me about the change in policy at eBay, a spokesperson said, ?eBay is committed to maintaining a safe, trusted and inclusive marketplace for our community of buyers and sellers and we are continually reevaluating product categories allowed on the platform.?

Congrats to Amy Schumer, Tony Shalhoub, Seth Meyers and Josh Charles for the success in your “advocacy” for FOSTA.

As the New Yorker notes, the impact here is pretty significant. Researchers, archivists, historians, and museums are now all missing out.

Drew Sawyer, a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, said that he has ?often turned to eBay for printed matter, magazines, zines, and photographical reproductions? when preparing exhibitions. ?Even if?if?they?re archived in libraries, they?re often easier to buy on eBay from logistical and registrarial perspectives. And also cost.? For an upcoming retrospective, Sawyer won a copy of the photographer Jimmy DeSana?s self-published 1979 monograph, ?Submission: Selected Photographs.? It?s one of only a hundred or so copies ever made, and a crucial document of a moment when queer sexuality and conceptual art intermingled. ?DeSana is an artist whose work would fall under this new policy,? Sawyer said.

And it’s especially important regarding important LGBTQ historical materials, since institutions, like libraries, didn’t much care about that content in the past, meaning they don’t have much of it.

In researching his book ?Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art,? Andy Campbell, an associate professor of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design, used both eBay and the Johnson/Carter Library, in addition to other archives around the country. ?Bound Together? argues that queer archives are particularly precarious, as they often lack institutional support structures and their content is at odds with community guidelines. Yet, by making queer culture accessible, they also increase the likelihood of that more positive erasure: assimilation. The same kind of harness that once strained across a hairy chest in Tony DeBlase?s DungeonMaster magazine ends up, some four decades later, on Taylor Swift in a paparazzi shot or Timoth?e Chalamet on the red carpet. Campbell can still trace those historical lines of sex, style, and commerce without eBay, but it?s more difficult. ?When looking at an issue of the leather magazine Drummer, I think about all the coordinated efforts of so many writers, artists, readers, and editors to represent, month after month, their experiences in this community,? he told me, over e-mail. ?With DungeonMaster, which was a near-solo labor of love for DeBlase, I think about the radical abilities of one extremely-driven person to educate and titillate his community. That either exists is a miracle.? When it comes to finding them, ?It?s a bummer that eBay won?t be that platform any longer.?

There’s a lot more in that New Yorker piece, but the summary is that this important bit of history is being stamped out thanks to a bunch of prudes and “well meaning” supporters of FOSTA who were sold a bill of goods that Section 230 was evil.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, archives, culture, fosta, free speech, history, lgbtq, section 230, sex
Companies: ebay, onlyfans

Academic: Problems Created By Undermining Section 230 Can Be Solved… By Undermining Section 230?

from the say-that-again? dept

I remain confused at why so many people endorse Macarthur Genius award winner, Prof. Danielle Citron’s views on Section 230. Over and over again people say that her ideas for reforming Section 230 are sensible. Except that they are not. She has falsely insisted that companies have no incentives to moderate and that their incentives are to push the most extreme content. This has been debunked over and over again. If it were true, then every website would turn into 8kun. But that doesn’t happen, because most websites realize that when your website is full of garbage people, it drives away other users (including those more likely to support you or your advertisers) and it drives away advertisers.

Citron’s big idea is to put in place a duty of care or “reasonableness” standard, but we’ve explained at length why that’s the kind of idea only an academic with no experience running a website could love. It would lead to a ton of costly litigation in which companies would have to repeatedly defend their moderation practices in court. At best this would lead to companies all adopting nearly identical moderation practices to whichever company survived the litigation gauntlet first — effectively crushing any ability to experiment and innovate in the moderation market, and likely locking in Facebook as one of the few companies that can afford to handle moderation’s liability risks.

All that said, I’m even more flabbergasted by Citron’s initial response to the (now walked back) news that OnlyFans was planning to phase out sexually explicit content. Many, many people have made the connection between OnlyFans’ decision and FOSTA, the last time Section 230 was amended to add more liability to platforms. Of course, as we’ve now seen, FOSTA has had a massive human cost, is leading to some wacky vexatious civil lawsuits, and according to the GAO’s own study, has failed to live up to any of its promises.

In an article at CNN about the OnlyFans decision, Citron makes an absolutely bizarre claim, that the answer to OnlyFans deplatforming sex workers… is to put more liability on OnlyFans so that those sex workers can sue. I only wish I were kidding.

Just like social media companies, payment processors are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, Citron said. That’s the signature law that grants broad legal immunity to Facebook and Twitter for many of the content-moderation decisions they make ? and the law that SESTA-FOSTA amended to create an exception for sex ads.

Citron wants to see changes made to Section 230 that could expose platforms to more liability under certain circumstances. Perhaps, she said, those changes might even allow sex workers who feel their businesses have been harmed by payment processors to sue them for tortious interference.

“We’re talking about OnlyFans, where we’re seeing sex workers doing safe work. It’s from their own homes, they’re making content on their own terms,” Citron said.

So… the answer to sex workers being kicked off platforms that fear that they might face liability under FOSTA hole in Section 230, is to open up another hole in Section 230 so that those sex workers can then sue OnlyFans for tortious interference?!? Um, what?

Even just bringing up tortious interference as a cause of action is bizarre. That’s the same sort of argument that people like Laura Loomer have used to say people reporting her to Twitter engaged in “tortious interference” when Twitter kicked her off the platform. Tortious interference in the context discussed here seems like a plan for vexatious nuisance litigation and SLAPP suits, not any kind of legitimate cause of action.

But, even more to the point, how is it a solution to the consequences of adding more liability to say “let’s just pile on more liability to deal with those consequences”? It’s liability all the way down. But it’s completely disconnected from how all of this works in the real world.

Filed Under: danielle citron, duty of care, intermediary liability, liability, reasonableness, section 230
Companies: onlyfans

OnlyFans: Oops, Just Kidding; Keep Posting Sexually Explicit Material

from the backsies dept

So, last week the news broke that OnlyFans, the wildly popular platform for “subscribing” to private video and photographic content — and whose most popular usecase appears to be for adult content — announced that it was banning “sexually explicit material” in response to difficulty finding investors and payment processors/banks threatening to cut them off (and possibly rejecting too many payments). The whole thing was somewhat confusing because the company did say that nude imagery would still be allowed, just not “sexually explicit,” and I’m sure the guidelines for the company’s content moderation team on that distinction would have been quite something.

Either way, this move lead to an outcry of complaints — led by sex workers who were already quite reasonably pissed off at previous attacks on them via things like FOSTA. And now, OnlyFans has announced that it has dropped the plans to ban such content, and said that it had worked out some sort of agreement with the financial companies who had been causing trouble before:

Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard.

We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.

OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.

— OnlyFans (@OnlyFans) August 25, 2021

I’ve seen some people concerned about potential “backlash” to this from moral panicky and grandstanding “morality” police, but if we did everything to make those people happy, we’d shut down a ton of important innovation and creativity.

Still, this does keep some key questions in play about just how powerful a few small financial firms are, and how they can effectively control how other businesses operate. I imagine that conversation is not going away any time soon.

Filed Under: adult content, banks, content moderation, payment processors, sexually explicit
Companies: onlyfans

OnlyPrudes: OnlyFans, The Platform For Sexually Explicit Content, Says No More Sexually Explicit Content (Except For Nudes)

from the none-of-this-makes-sense dept

To some extent, it was only a matter of time until this issue came up. OnlyFans has grown massively over the last year (demonstrating, yet again, that the idea that the internet ecosystem is “settled” and that Facebook/Google control all is not necessarily true). However, as most people know, OnlyFans’ success is built on basically creating a paywall for adult content from fans willing to subscribe to certain individuals in order to gain access to paid-only pictures and videos. It has had a tremendous impact especially for sex workers who had their careers shattered by FOSTA a few years ago, which forced a bunch of platforms sex workers relied on to shut down.

But, because it involves sex and adult content, sooner or later people were going to complain. And, complain they did. On Thursday OnlyFans announced that it was banning “sexually explicit” content, though it said it’s still allowing nudity.

Effective October 1, 2021, OnlyFans will prohibit the posting of any content containing sexually explicit conduct. In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform, and to continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines. Creators will continue to be allowed to post content containing nudity as long as it is consistent with our Acceptable Use Policy.

What does that even mean? It’s extremely unclear. The “Acceptable Use Policy” doesn’t seem to define any difference between sexually explicit and nude content. Instead, it focuses on having the rights to the content you’re posting and not posting illegal content. I can’t wait for the content moderation case study exploring how OnlyFans distinguishes merely “nude” with “sexually explicit.” That’ll be a fun one.

Of course, there’s a lot likely happening behind the scenes here. Just two days earlier OnlyFans announced a separate app of non-adult content, while simultaneously noting that it was having difficulty finding investors, despite its overwhelming success.

It wouldn’t be a surprise for it to eventually come out that part of the issue is… FOSTA. The same law that created such a mess for sex workers since it was passed was likely always a potential risk for OnlyFans. The company is saying that many of its partners — especially in the financial world — were getting cold feet. According to Bloomberg, who broke the news:

The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers, according to the company.

And, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Remember, payment and banking partners have long been a target for government officials when they want to crack down on things they don’t like — especially sex related things.

Sex workers are already speaking out about this. Cathy Reisenwitz, from Sex and the State put out a statement:

??OnlyFans was the most empowering way for adult creators to connect with our audience. I?ve benefited tremendously from OF personally. But at the end of the day I?ll be fine. I can?t say that about sex workers who depended on OF. Many of them are going to have to turn to in-person sex work, made all the more dangerous by SESTA/FOSTA, to make ends meet. I?m angry our deeply sex-negative, whorephobic society allows lying evangelicals and SWERFs to dictate the limits of our freedom of speech and put sex workers? lives and livelihoods in jeopardy for no benefit to anyone. Every problem, from CSAM to trafficking, that banning porn is supposed to solve is actually exacerbated by stigmatizing and criminalizing online porn.

There are many reasons why some of us think we should be moving to a world where the internet has fewer chokepoints where policymakers and moral panic purveyors can put pressure on just a small handful of companies to choke off speech. Yes, obviously, OnlyFans has every right to decide how it wants to manage its own platform, but the key point here is that this doesn’t seem to be OnlyFans doing this because it thinks it’s best for the site, or for its users (either creators or fans). Rather, it’s because of the intermediaries stepping in to tell them what is and what is not allowed.

Filed Under: adult content, financial services, sex workers, sexually explicit content, subscription services
Companies: onlyfans

Mastercard Lays Down New Rules For Streaming Sites That Require Them To Review Content Before Publication

from the war-on-porn-continues dept

Mastercard is in the process of killing off another way for sex workers to make money. Its updated policy on “illegal adult content” takes aim at a bunch of adult content that isn’t actually illegal. What the new policy does is make it impossible for streaming platforms to comply with the new rules. Since they’re not able to prescreen streamed content, they’re just going to start blocking anything that seems like it might lead to Mastercard pulling the plug.

This will hit sites like OnlyFans and MyFreeCams the hardest, as sex worker/advocate Mary Moody points out. But it will also cause collateral damage at streaming sites that aren’t able to comply with Mastercard’s new demands and may start banning accounts and blocking streams if they suspect (without verifying) “adult content” might be offered.

Here’s what Mastercard is requiring from sites hosting content:

Some of these are steps that platforms should be taking already. But the second bullet point poses significant challenges. This “for the children” effort will harm adults who produce adult content — many who have never produced any content considered “illegal” under the First Amendment. Mastercard cites its partnership with several law enforcement agencies (as well as child porn clearinghouses like NCMEC) but doesn’t say why it feels all adult content should be subject to rules meant to prevent the streaming of illegal content.

In the absence of any meaningful efforts on Mastercard’s part (this puts the onus on everyone else but the credit card company), a statement like this is meaningless:

We’re committed to doing everything in our power to ensure only lawful activity takes place on our network.

But Mastercard isn’t actually doing anything. It’s handing out more requirements for platforms that accept Mastercard payments, but that’s not actually doing something. That’s making a bunch of other people jump through impossible hoops under the threat of defunding. And it will cause damage to plenty of lawful activity.

Mastercard is free to choose who it does business with. But if it just wants to dump cam sites used by sex workers, it could at least come out and say that, rather than hide behind “for the children” platitudes as it makes it impossible for sites like this to host actually legal content. This is just more anti-porn crusading that willfully lumps child porn and revenge porn in with legal content created by adults. Then Mastercard makes it impossible for platforms to comply without cutting off a majority of their user base.

Filed Under: infrastructure, payments, sex work, streaming sites
Companies: mastercard, onlyfans