That implies targeting. People are more at risk on facebook than on pornhub but they target pornhub because that is who they can fight. That also means though that laws, treaties and policies are not the driving force behind these measures.
Once again, my answer here is the 2 Billions fine against Facebook for 2023, and the 13 Billions one they face for this year. Not only the EU can perfectly fight against Facebook, but they also succeed at doing it.
If Pornhub seem to be the main target while Facebook seem to be leaved in peace, it's because the news talk about the not cooperative MindGeek way more than the cooperative Meta. By example,
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.
But Pornhub, it's shaddy owned, it's porn, it had been caught more than once with CP and content shared against the "models" will, and it have a long history being anything but cooperative. Just that year they
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, with the intent to prevent the publication of an investigation report; Investigation launched after a woman started a lawsuit against PornHub because videos of her were available on PornHub without her consent (
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).
Be noted that, face to all the lawsuits and investigations against it, MindGeek changed... Its sole investor (now
Ethical Capital Partners, created the year prior to their acquisition of MindGeek, and that
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), then it's name,
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, and moved its headquarter from Canada
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. But not its practice since the lawsuit to block the report happened after they tried to reset their image.
To stay in your comparison, Meta too have a long history of borderline, when not purely abusive, practices. But every time they were caught they responded with contrition while, for PornHub, they almost systematically denied all accusations, when not fighting back.
Perhaps that Meta had it easy with the consequences of their actions. But isn't it logical to focus on the one that never assumed its responsibilities, and tried to evade them by changing everything in hope it will create loopholes helping them to end at least some of the lawsuits they are facing ?
To this must be added one thing, MindGeek aggressive commercial attitude. There's surely hundreds of investigation about this, some more serious than others, some just copying others, and all. I don't feel like searching the most accurate ones right now, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find it if you want. To summarize, since their creation, either they bought their competitors, or they broke them.
This lead to a situation where around 75% of the porn market is owned by them. They own most studios and most online distributors, they are pornography more surely that Microsoft is computers.
In the case of Microsoft, they lead, but face strong and serious competitors. Apple, Adobe, Sun, the Open Source community, to only name few, while having a small part of the cake, they are all really big entities in their own way. But for Aylo, it's different. What is left of the porn market is small sites that get near to no traffic or get their videos from a partnership with Aylo owner platforms, and small studios that rarely works on a bigger size than their own country. Put together they represent around a quarter of the production, but what ? 5% of the consumers ? Perhaps 10%, but I doubt that it's most.
So, yes, it looks like lawmakers are strongly targeting sex workers, but it's because there's this giant actor that deserve the fight and that looks like it represent them all.
An actor that isn't aggressively shitty only in its commercial practice. I don't remember where it come from, it was a reliable source, but where I got it, mystery... Well, MindGeek main practice, whatever the owned studio is the following:
- Find a girl;
- Make her do a casting video;
- If the video do not reach a threshold number of view, forget her forever;
- Else, book a week end session;
- Give her an advance on salary;
- Film three/four regular straight movies, progressively increasing the roughness;
- Spice her drinks with analgesic, and use analgesic gel as lubricant;
- Film two rough anal movies;
- Film a DP anal movie;
- During all the process, treat her like shit, she'll not quit, she surely spent the advance already;
- Forget about her forever;
- Profit.
The girl will don't feel much during the filming, but once the analgesic will wore off, it will be something else. She'll goes back home totally broken, both by the whole days past filming, and her cunt and ass hurting as hell. She'll never ever will want to do that again, what is the goal because you can now put a big "exclusive" in top of all her content, and then raise the price because of this.
The actual number of films surely vary from a girl to another and from a studio to another, but globally it's the same schema whatever the studio, as long as it's owned by Aylo; break the girl so you can earn more by selling her content.
I'll not link it because it's boring (a total over 10 hours of talk), but in 2022 the French Senate had a series of audition regarding sex workers. And the most significant information one can get from this, it's how amazed politicians were each time they were put face to the reality. They, let's say out of naivety, believed that Aylo's owned studios practices apply to the whole profession.
One of the speaker was a former porn actress, and all politicians were whole "wow!" when she explained that Rocco Siffredi (who now own a small studio) called her agent to apologize because she slightly sprained her ankle while doing one of his movies, asking for an address to send flowers. Then "wow!" again, when she said that her agent asked her how was the said ankle when she called (again "wow!" there's girl who aren't actress) her for another movie, not wanting for her to perform if she was still hurt; because of her health, not because it would looks bad on the movie.
In their mind, they were really convinced that the pornography industry is just a bunch of males abusing women in all possible way and not caring about them more than one would care about an object. This solely because it's how the giant that dominate the industry is working. And therefore it's the feedback that is heard the more often; who care to report about porn actress being treated well, outside of sex workers themselves ?.
So, in short, no, lawmakers aren't currently targeting sex workers, they are targeting a kind of practice that apply to the biggest part of the sector, but come from only one entity. Remove Aylo from the equation, and they would be in position to have a different view on the profession, making then more accurate, and less repressive, laws. But can Aylo be removed from the equation, I don't know.
Still, must be noted that this apply to lawmakers. The motive is different for moral lobbying entities and for payment processors.
Not sure why the EU, facebook is US based [...]
Because they must comply to the Law that apply to their users.
Meta can do whatever they want with the personal data of their US based users, but they can't do much with the personal data of their EU based users. Reason why they needed five months before they were able to open Threads to the latter.
So, it's the EU because the US care way less about individuals.
So why is pornhub, onlyfans, patreon all having harsh terms dictated to them all in the name of evil porn and protecting society and the sites with the most danger being told to govern themselves?
Once again, I put pornhub aside, because it really not have it's place here.
None site is told to govern themselves, and all are facing the same queries, all coming from the same regulations. The difference isn't on what is asked, but on how they answer.
Patreon and OnlyFans got queries coming from the EU, they read them, then they though about them. And at the end of their reflection, they came to the conclusion that it's logical, rational, and good ideas. Therefore, not only they applied the change to their EU based users, but they also applied them to all their users, because to their eyes it's an improvement.
This while other entities, like Meta by example, conclude that it interfere with their business model; Threads was forbidden in EU because its initial Terms of Service (that surely continue to apply outside of EU) explicitly say that all personal data and everything you publish can, and will, be sold. Therefore, they comply with the EU regulations, but only for the EU based users, because they still need to earn money, and it's by not following those regulation that they earn a big part of that money.
The same can be said for Apple. EU regulations forced them to accept third party stores. This is a big cut in their profits, but they have no choice than to comply. But like they don't want to earn less, they though about it for a long period, and found a way to compensate that loss. And now, Patreon had to warn its users that Apple raised its share for all subscriptions made through the app.
It's not that some sites are left in peace, it's that some care way less than others.
One thing that EU citizens can do, is to try to access to highly US Republican (the further to the right they are, the higher are the chances) websites. EU regulation force any sites to offer a way to not have none purely site mandatory cookies. And, instead of complying, there's many highly US Republican website that just direct you to a page saying that due to that regulation you can not access their website.
Imagine that an US citizen travel in Europe, access their site, and discover that you can refuse third party (mostly ads) cookies? They could come back home and ask for the site to continue to respect their privacy! It's out of question...
I don't remember the sites names, but among the one so liked by the trumpist here, and so often shared (at least in the past), there's a handful of them that act that way, at least one of them being a nation wide newspaper.
Shouldn't amazon and facebook also have age verification
I already answered for Amazon.
I don't have the same content than you, everything that is explicit not being shown to me. Therefore, they comply to the regulation. You aren't exposed to real and explicit content, and it's assumed that to pay you need to be old enough to have a bank account.
The same can probably be said for Facebook, hence my "where can I find this" joke.
Once again, the issue isn't the regulation, but the way sites respond to it. Some apply it only when it's mandatory to do so, while others care more about their users, or are more concerned by basic moral issues, and apply them for everyone.
The important part of that is not for adult content or porn. The are a lot of stories about revenge porn and people being caught trying to meet up with minor through facebook and yet the only thing I can find about mastercard and visa and facebook is them turning facebook down when it tried to make it's own currency.
It's funny because you seem to not understand that everything you say demonstrate that it's whatever you can think about but absolutely not a morality crusade.
Patreon received threats from payment processors, for a really good reason: Payment processors are legally accomplice if they process transaction they know as coming from illegal activities.
Patreon were having users using the service for prostitution. This is illegal activities, and payment processors were aware of it. Legally, they now became accomplice, and as anyone a bit sane, they wanted to protect their ass.
Application of the law: "Hey, we see that, through your intermediary,
our services are used to fund prostitution, this have to stop immediately!"
Side node: The same surely apply for OnlyFans, but I have nothing to back it up, so I only talked about Patreon.
Facebook and other sites, host illegal content. But they just host it. They aren't payed to host the content. At no time payment processors are involved in the process. Then, why should they say something ?
Morality crusade: "Hey, we see you host porn content. It's bad, you have to stop immediately!"
Now, if you can prove to payment processors that there's prostitution through Facebook market, or that pages/groups used for prostitution advertise on Facebook, it will be something else. In both cases, there's money transaction happening directly on Facebook, and payment processors would now be in the same position they were with Patreon, accomplice of known illegal activities.
But as long as there's no money exchanged directly through Facebook, there's nothing illegal at payment processors level, and them asking Facebook to change would be them trying to enforce certain views regarding morality.
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And at no time is it said that money was involved, therefore it do not regard payment processors, and it would be them crusading for a certain morality if they were asking Facebook to forbid this.
We are talking mostly western countries with a few exceptions like Japan that has also been affected by the policies of financial services like mastercard and visa.
Here it fallback to the fraud risk and payback cost. If, as cam model, you contact payment processors, and provide them the number of a frozen account with one or two millions, they can use to cover the payback cost, so in short if you do what Patreon had to do (with more millions) in order to keep its deal with payment processors, I'm sure that you can come to an agreement and keep your account.
So, once again this can mostly be solved by providing a full legal status to sex workers. The frozen account would still be asked by payment processors, but doing a job with an official and legal status, sex workers would be able to legally regroup. There would be something like the "Sex Worker Agency" or a name like that, globally working in the same way that music right managing agencies. You would have to pay a reasonable subscription fee, and in exchange you would be able to use the frozen account owned by the association/company/whatever as guaranty for payment processors.
Payment processors aren't against sex workers because they are sex workers, but because they generate around 10 more cases of fraud, or alleged frauds, and in the end cost more in payback than they brings in through the transaction's fees.
It's why some sex workers never had issue with payment processors for years, even when not really hiding what they are doing, this while others, some almost unknown, are hit in less than one year. Payment processors do not pay people to pass their days browsing the web in search of sex workers, then tracing them back to a back account. They have a threshold on the payback number, and if you pass it, it trigger an investigation. So, if you are a sex worker who do not generate much case of payback, you'll stay below their radar, and if you aren't, you'll be kicked out; because you're a sex worker, but due to the number of payback, not due to morality views.
So, as I said above, give them a legal status, offer them the possibility to use the service of an entity managing their rights and having a significant enough frozen account, and payment processors will stop what looks like a morality crusade but isn't one.
Yet none of that matter when we are taking about
chasing sunsets, mastercard and visa want to follow the law and ban incest etc. from patreon but I can buy it from amazon with no age check or problems, that makes no sense at all.
I just past through 7 pages of result (it's amazing the number of books and song named "chassing sunset"), and at no time did Amazon proposed me the game. What only prove everything I said previously:
- Patreon ban regarding drawn/rendered character is mostly due to a bad timing;
- Payment processors aren't engaged in a morality crusade;
- There's companies that only apply regulation where they are mandatory to apply, and don't care about the rest of their customers.
How can amazon sell incest manga etc. but patreon has to ban it or loose mastercard and visa?
I already answer that. When asked to remove all prostitution, incest and CP from your site, request intended as "implying real persons" but not explicitly stating it, you can hardly answer "yes but".
But that would not have been an issue, if the UK did go after anyone it might have been the dev of the game / dev's of the games. They would not have opened lawsuits against visa or mastercard.
It's the law, payment processor have no choice than to comply.
It's illegal for them and banks to proceed transaction they know as coming from illegal activities, period. Do you really believe that they would goes, "oh, we will do as if we didn't know" ?
They did it in the past. For decades banks and payment processors made sweet money from human trafficking, drugs, and all, knowing perfectly from where that money came, but deciding to not care.
Then one day, in the late 80's if I remember correctly, but could have been the early 90's, a country decided to put a stop on this and sued them. Not as part of a lawsuit against a human trafficker, drugs lord or whatever, but as a totally independent lawsuit; you benefit from criminal activities, you've to be sentenced for this. And other countries started to follow.
Is it hard to understand that they don't want the same to happen again, and therefore that now they don't anymore do as if they didn't knew ?
[...] yet no legal action was mentioned or taken against mastercard or visa.
I may have missed the part of Westy case where it have been said that payment processors where aware that his money was coming from illegal activities.
Once again, it's illegal for payment processors to proceed transaction
they know as coming from illegal activities.
There's surely dealers in my town. And they are the bottom of the pyramid, so they don't earn much and put this on their bank account, later using their credit card to buy groceries.
The carpenter who works next door surely did some works paid under the table. It's not possible to discriminate the part of his income that is legal, and the part that is illegal.
That guy who bought a counterfeit pair of Nike Sneakers, him too did something illegal.
The "know as coming from" part is important for all those reasons. At world size, every day there's millions of illegal transaction processed by payment processors and banks. They can't be held responsible for what they don't know, but obviously are for what they know.
To add to that, if one little UK politician can find all that info then conservatives with more backing and financial support could find much more than him and push the issue more.
He didn't found anything, and especially not "all that info".
I don't know how he found about it, but being a politician, it's surely through Liria Roux that it happened. He heard talking about her, or even seen her in the arm of whatever rich local CEO. And being the stuck up he is, he jumped on the occasion to gain some political points in hope to raise in its party. Then he needed a full week to discover that Patreon also had games, and that those games had incest, at a time where more than half adult games were incest ones... He was so deep in his delirium, that he had to also act about this.
In short, he's just an UK equivalent to McCarty, except that he's even more a failure than him, because no one even know that it's him who did this; well, I know, but I don't remember his name, so... Both started with a precise case that was actually what they claimed it was. Both did it out of anger more than for any other reasons. Both tried their best to find other cases, but only uncovered obvious facts that they totally distorted. And in both case, like the initial claim was true, they were heard and it led to an oversized answer.
But that's not the case, camming is legal in the UK too.
It's not about camming.
At this time Liria Roux was not known for her photos and videos, she was know for being one of the most elitist escort girl. Cover the travel cost for her and her team, pay the hotel (only palace) for her and her team, one week minimum, and you can have the girlfriend experience for one day; a day for which you'll still have to pay, and during which you'll cover all the expense.
A long journey
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; yet, US$ 1,100 for two hours, was already some top prices.
Remember we are not talking about netflix though,
All big website works the same way, even Patreon, I just talk about Netflix because I knew were to find references.
BUT when mastercard / visa (i.e. the US) pull there service all people around the world who use those cards loose access to Pixiv. So essentially yes they can.
No, MasterCard/VISA can, what is different from your "the US can".
Then being US based do not give the power to the US. If the US change its banking regulation, they'll just have to apply those change to US based transaction, not to the rest of the world. If the US say that pornography is banned, they'll just stop to handle pornography transaction involving US citizens.
The only case that would impact them is if the US starts to have a law strictly forbidding to any US based company to engage in a way or another with pornography. But like both MasterCard and VISA are a banks partnership, all their none US based partners (so the majority) would either force for a relocation, or stop being partners. It would need few months, but in the end once again only the US would be impacted by the decision.
No because it's doesn't matter if they are headquartered in the EU, mastercard and visa would still insist on them banning incest, beasty, non con etc.
SubscribeStar exist, and don't have a partnership with VISA and MasterCard. It's annoying of course, it cost more for the customer, but it's totally possible.
VISA and MasterCard being the biggest and most known payment processors do not mean that there isn't alternative. So, to continue the previous point, it the US forbid all US based companies to deal with pornography in a way or another, and VISA/MasterCard's partners do not oppose to this, you just have to move outside of the USA and use none US based payment processors,
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.
That should be the case but it's not, if it were then mastercard and visa would say that the ban on content would be region based.
And they don't, proof that it's not at all a question of morality, but a question of legality... And that, as I said, the incest and all ban collided with the prostitution issue.
The adult industry is being targeted and there is a clear double standard at work
So far, I only see clear biases in your thinking process, and so far no double standard. I summarize:
- PornHub is the main platform for a company world wide know to not care about law, abuse its models, and that own the biggest part of nowadays porn industry. Targeting them do not necessarily mean that you target sex workers, you can just target abusers.
- There's companies that care more about their users/customers than others, and therefore enforce regulations they feel rational to anyone, even when there's don't have the obligation to do so. It's not because some of them are related with sex works that sex workers are targeted, it can perfectly just be that the other companies like to fuck you deep in the ass anytime they can, and are precisely doing it.
- Payment processors have the legal obligation to not process transaction they kown as coming from illegal activities. Them asking sites for which they process transaction to stop illegal activities, while leaving alone sites for which they do not process transaction, do not mean that they target sex workers. It just mean that they do not enforce their moral views.
- Patreon wasn't targeted for hosting sex workers, but for hosting prostitutes; that are a specific kind of sex workers.
- Payment processors letting companies like Amazon sell incest/bestiality stories, just prove that it's not was triggered payment processors when it came to Patreon. Context made them believe that there were real incest/bestiality content, what would have been illegal for them to knowingly process. And context made it that Patreon wasn't in position to limits the field of application of the ban.
I think I summarized all the points, and when you put them all after the others, not only there's no double standard, but there's also no crusade against sex workers. At least not coming from the payment processors, nor from the regulations.
and the context of this thread is that our porn games are being targeted and those responsible are claiming they are not to blame.
And what if they aren't to blame because precisely they aren't targeting our porn games ?
Everything you said so far goes in their way. To quote OP, "they can make judgements on the legality of transactions but not the content", and it's precisely what they are doing.
Broadcasting porn without the consent of the person involved, prostitution, and CP are all illegal. As it is illegal for banks and payment processors to benefits from transaction
known as coming from illegal activities.
Reason why they ask companies for which they process payment to ensure that this kind of content will not appear anymore, while they say nothing to companies that have that content, but for which they do not process payments. They judge the legality of the transaction, not the content...
BUT No one is allowed to subscribe to games like chasing sunsets or man of the house.
Their Patreon page is fully functioning right now