16
votes
PayPal would no longer support payments to Pornhub performers
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- Title
- PayPal abruptly cuts off Pornhub's payroll, leaving performers with few payment options
- Published
- Nov 14 2019
- Word count
- 490 words
What I don't understand here is: why exclude a certain category of people if said people don't use the money transfer to fascilitate illegal trade? Is it the bad optics of "supporting sexual deviancy" (something many parts of modern society don't have the guts to say but still tell between the lines)?
And even if that's somehow a valid excuse (of course it's not), why not give the models time to readjust their payments? Pornhub is clearly struggling to deal with this because they haven't anticipated ties cut on the spot.
Most of these models use the cash to pay the bills and feed the mouths, like everybody else. They're doing nobody any harm. What's the problem?
I don't see how we can talk about sexual health when this is something that's happening.
I suspect it's that disputes (chargebacks, politics, whatever) cost money and some kinds of businesses result in more disputes.
That may well be true, and that may well be a factor in the corporate decision. It still doesn't explain the abruptness. Surely the business professionals working for PayPal understand that Pornhub provides living for a lot of models via PayPal. Did the banking company consider the impact their actions would have on those models?
Frankly, neither of the binary options I see is good. Either they didn't care enough to look into the human side of things, or they did acknowledge the possible damage and went along with the plan as-is anyway.
Stories like these usually have another layer to them. I may well be wrong about this.
The article indicates it's more of a matter of the purpose of the "business payments", not any disputes or other administrative issues.
I'm guessing they make these decisions based on how much hassle it is for them to handle that category of business, though things like chargebacks and dispute resolution and risk of political controversy if something terrible happens. Some industries attract bad people and this makes them more expensive to deal with in general (more security and verification needed), even if most people didn't do anything wrong.
I'm reminded of Airbnb deciding they don't want to do party houses anymore.
It could even be some employees not wanting to deal with it, like the controversy at Google over military contracts. You don't see that happening at a defense contractor, because if you go to work for them, you know what you signed up for.
It means some specialized business that's willing to deal with it ends up handling it, which is probably why Pornhub is a business in the first place.
This seems like a hidden side of businesses that have the ambition of providing a service to everyone. Turns out that they don't want to be so universal after all? They just want the average, easy stuff, not everyone.
[Oops, posted twice.]
On the one hand everyone should have a backup plan, both the performers and PornHub.
On the other, the amount of individuals that are slinging shit at PornHub for the problem is shocking (well, not shocking as people are generally reactionary idiots, but I can't think of a better word at the moment as I'm sleep deprived) instead of PayPal.
On the third hand I grew thanks to the genetically modification open source project: You really shouldn't be using PayPal in the first place.
What are the alternatives? And what are their alternatives?
Patreon now tells adult-game developers to seek crowdfunding elsewhere. I can't imagine camgirls getting a softer treatment.
Looks like they have plenty of other viable options already in place (as I would expect of a company their size), but some of the users were still choosing to rely on PayPal for whatever reason.
Because PayPal maintains privacy in a way that cheques (addresses), and direct deposits (bank account info and real names) don't. Paxum is UK-based (with processing fees based around that) that's also much smaller and more unknown, it's not really something most people even know exists. As for cryptocurrency... well, that's always going to have a low tolerance for adoption and use compared to regular currency.
I thought that PayPal still revealed real name and address to the sender? A cursory search suggests that seems to be the case for most transactions, although admittedly the info I'm seeing is a few years old.
[Edit] Although I suppose it's probably easier to set up a dummy PayPal account than a dummy bank account, assuming the user is willing to take the risk of supplying fake data to a financial company.
IIRC they can be disguised, or aliases can be used since PayPal doesn't really verify anything except a linked bank account, which they don't provide to the seller.
I know what exactly half of those are, and it's not the digital-cash ones.
I used PayPal when I was doing freelance work to reduce fees, as well as put a certain barrier between the payer and myself.
I wouldn't want to disclose my bank data to random people – and even if they're my friends, it's best to keep everything aligned and in one place. (The article we're talking this under shows the bad side of keeping everything in one place.)
Haven't tested the assumption, but I'm willing to bet card-to-card between continents tolls handsomely. I mean, if I have to pay 1.5% just to take money off the card through a different bank's ATM...
The less hassle I have when it comes to receive the cash I worked for, the better. Many of the models on Pornhub are outside of the US.
Thinking about it, I imagine banking/regulatory environment is probably influencing both of our views on this.
I think of bank transfers being free, fast, and trustworthy whereas PayPal charges a fee and, since they aren't regulated as a bank, has far less consumer protection or recourse. It's easy to forget that doesn't stack up the same way everywhere.
PornHub and controversial sites like it should really consider adopting cryptocurrency as a payout option to avoid situations like this.
Cryptocurrency / Fiat on-ramps are usually impartial towards their clients who use their services and there's many to choose from. You can even be completely anonymous if you're exchanging small amounts for a larger fee.