SEX WORKERS. Thread: Yes, Twitter is likely going to allow payments for adult content soon They’ve been working on this for some time, but Musk seems like he’s going to push it through Ppl seem shocked but if you have been following me you likely

Thread

SEX WORKERS. Thread:

Yes, Twitter is likely going to allow payments for adult content soon

They’ve been working on this for some time, but Musk seems like he’s going to push it through

Ppl seem shocked but if you have been following me you likely aren’t

I’ve been pushing writers to cover this, but for the most part they’ve ignored the possibility

Now many people are acting like this is a random move, or even terrible and will reduce quality of the site

However adult payments are a great idea, sex workers should be compensated

Twitter has been working on adult payments for at least a couple years I have known of.

The landscape is incredibly fraught for platforms trying to do this, so they’ve already struggled with those plans according to reporting

Here’s a thread that went over the last time we saw mock-ups for adult payments back in summer 2021

So it’s very much a pre-Musk idea.. because frankly it is the only way the site can get income needed to survive

Adult content is THE thing people pay for online

If they pull this off, it’s huge and not just for twitter. It will change the entire landscape for the internet and show “the OnlyFans model” is a way forward instead of banning sexuality

Musk is in a position to push this through due to his immense personal wealth

It will of course come with some downsides as they attempt to comply with existing policies forced onto adult sites or even deal with issues like being removed from the App Store

We’ll see what special situations Musk ends up managing to dorxs through

We know they’ve been eying the insane income on OnlyFans because they literally copied it when mocking up designs previously

OF has more employees (almost all focused on moderation) now but this thread goes into the OnlyFans model & why twitter is eager to compete

Due to their existing market domination with sex workers and OnlyFans getting most of their traffic from other sites, they CAN compete

A lot of dumb takes today about how this makes twitter more of a hell site, but paying porn creators instead of just consuming it for free is good actually

And it means income without selling the users as product, perhaps less reliance on surveillance and selling user data

Adult payments, especially if Musk can negotiate a smaller cut than sex workers are forced into by banks, is actually a human rights issue

Sex workers NEED options and most companies shut them out. This may be a way for musk to profit and win points www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/paypal-and-venmo-are-shutting-out-sex-workers-putting-lives-and-liveli...

Sex workers are not the only ones who need that income badly - Twitter does. They’ve hardly been profitable, I think their net income from all time is still -200m. Musk just saddled it with much more debt, they have no choice but to drastically raise revenue somehow.

Which brings us to today’s news, which notes this will bring Twitter into completion with other adult sites.

We should note though, Twitter is ALREADY one of the most popular porn sites! It’s just not monetized

Sex workers will be excited to know these latest mock-ups ads for clip sales

There isn’t info here about subscriptions bur twitter already has subscriptions and it was just unclear if adult creators can use it. I assume they will be able to in the future (subs are the OF model!)

VERY notable here, the mock-ups include Stripe which is not a payment processor that normally allows sex work

As I’ve noted before, Musk may be in the unique position to ram through a deal due to his prior ownership of PayPal, and all his direct fintech connections

This is huge, because payments and payment percentages in particular are a big issue in sex work

Right now OF offers one of the best cuts in the business at 20% - and MOST adult sites take 40-60%!

Those sites themselves often pay 15% of the overall take so 20% is good

If Musk can force through a deal with a smaller percent - say the 2-3% on normal transactions - he could charge sex workers even 10% and still make a massive profit while pulling in business in instant harsh competition with every sex work site online.

Banks are able to charge insanely high rates on sex work just due to an absolutely grift that takes advantage of stigma and previous government pressure

If Musk somehow breaks this stranglehold it could be good for sex workers on every site, so let’s hope it’s true

Twitter is a huge home for adult content, with most major sex worker creators already using it

I think their estimates here are low and in reality even more content is NSFW related since not every post sex workers make is actually a nude.

It’s the only real growing user base

Advertisers are some of the biggest opponents here but as I have mentioned many times - fuck them. They don’t actually have healthy communities in mind, just their stupid profit off manipulating people through ads

I got deep into that in this long thread

Finally, the elephant in the room: CSAM, revenge porn and whatnot

A real problem on some sites and claims about it are the biggest avenue for attack on porn sites

I’ll link my long thread on that verge article again here

Twitter will absolutely need to moderate better to keep this and there is a high chance bad stuff will slip through since they will likely roll out this feature before proper safety guide rails are in place. It’s going to be a bumpy ride

I would love to see more commentators being less whorephobic and anti sex. Sexual activity and hate and harassment are not remotely the same, having sex around does NOT make this a “hell site.”

Banning sex actually makes things worse by all the metrics we have

I’m very tired of people going “twitter is full of hate, spam and pornography” as if pornography is bad by default - while literally everyone consumes it and obsesses over it. Here’s a thread on my feelings about that bullshit.

Pornography is already here and everywhere

What sucks is everyone consumes the work of sex workers while trying to wash their hands of it and deplatforming the people they stole porn from instead of thanking them with a payment. That’s bullshit.

There are many myths about sex work and sex work online, one of the biggest being that “sites get big with sex work and kick us when they no longer need us.”

That has never been true - like tumblr died without us, twitter needs sex work as much as we need platforms to exist on

They are up against incredible challenges here - ones the current owner of tumblr laid out pretty clearly

You have tons of pressure on you from govs, banks, and other “stack” providers like the Apple App Store. All of it near impossible to deal with.

We’ve seen this tension between needing to make money and trying to appease everyone play out very dramatically, like currently with OnlyFans

Tumblr has even complained about twitter still getting to keep porn - these standards aren’t enforced fairly either, it’s just as slap dash as who the cops decide to arrest or not.. well, Twitter is home to a lot of influential people and just has been luckier to this point

Really we are fighting our asses off against this “stack moderation” or “stack discrimination” and need to keep having that fight because antis are very close to having stuff deplatformed at a service level, almost like the power company just turning your lights off

lol no the antis won’t leave, their entire grift is fighting against porn so they will just make more money by crusading against an enemy they know they can never fully kill

The antis really have weaseled their way into insane power over these platforms so it’s REALLY good to see at least one mainstream platform putting their foot down

I’ve always said it’s likely Elon would be less anti-porn than previous leadership just more likely to sink ship

The risks of him personally making this a worse target for the antis are huge, there WILL be highly publicized CSAM cases since that is always how attacks on sites like tumblr or patreon or backpage or OnlyFans work

He may be able to weather it simply by insane power via wealth

Those attacks ARE in bad faith, as we showed earlier in the thread facebook has most CSAM and isn’t attacked since it already bans porn. Twitter was ALREADY the top target since this is the site we can use to talk back to these extremists and fact check them.

I would expect to see absolute lies like these about OnlyFans from the BBC pick up.

A ton of “liberal” and “leftist” commenters are going to try and use allowing porn payments against Elon, since they simply hate him (mostly reasonably) and it’s a money making click topic and that’s going to be VERY frustrating

This move should be applauded!

This is a step in the direction of human rights, believe it or not. You can still demand Musk moderate hate off platform without using sex work as a stigmatized wedge to further stigmatize him and the platform. Sex workers deserve better than being used as ammo for hot takes.

They’re “right” on two counts but also likely wrong

- Apple doesn’t like payments that don’t give them a cut, see not being able to get Audible books in the app directly
- Apple deplatformed Tumblr

But musk is the richest man in the world. This is an unprecedented situation

It’s also unclear what appetite Apple has for this fight. We thought they would do Reddit and twitter instantly after tumblr - but they never took them out of the App Store despite clear porn domination on the platforms

And they’ve lost some court cases about their payments

So I’m optimistic on the Apple front. Musk doesn’t just have twitter, he has a ton of companies and all the biggest normal players in tech venture capital backing this

They need an insane amount of new revenue to deal with the debt. Apple may use this to ask for some sort of cut, but with these particular venture folks up top I almost feel they were just waiting for the right time on the porn gold rush and this was the plan all along

As I’ve noted a lot in the past, we are at an inflection point with sexuality online, either everyone is about to cave and nudity is gone everywhere

or the bad faith attacks get called out and the big companies stop being bullied by religious extremists and just profit lol

OnlyFans has shown you can make insane amounts of money - more than twitter ever has, with like 500 mil paid out to the founder in profit while twitter is still negative 200 mil net over history - without selling user data, with no algorithm, no advertising, and no App Store!

Companies are absolutely insane to be leaving that money on the table, which is only a small percent of what is possible if there is less financial and stack discriminating and sex workers can advertise and post easier

OF relies on twitter for traffic, Twitter already has it

Alright that’s a really long thread! If folks have questions I’ll try to take ‘em through the day

Combined with the news about tumblr getting the tiniest bit better, and OnlyFans starting to really fight back and get good press, this is actually an optimistic time for sex work online

All the challenges are still there but the will to fight them is in the zeitgeist

apologies for all the typos, had to do the whole thread from my phone

Ad and Banking troubles? yes, and due to unique circumstances of the richest man in the world needing to come up with a billion in year in interest payments, no

to an extent this has always been about the will and power to fight the bad faith stuff

They literally need to come up with ONE BILLION DOLLARS a year for new debt payments. And this is on a site that has NEGATIVE 200 million net revenue since it has been founded.

They literally have no choice here. They NEED NSFW payments.

www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twitter-debt.html

Some people have literally told me "maybe they can make more by being onlyfans for non-adult." Folks, that is Patreon and they are NOT making more.

The idea you can make more by banning sex work, or make more in ads than you can by porn payments, is a total ahistorical myth.

People just say many things about sex work that are not true and this is one of them. It's absolutely way more profitable and better for user engagement to have sex work on your site than kick it

advertisers and other conservative pressures are simply trying to enforce a fantasy

Even with insane revenue (a projected 12.5 BILLION gross merchandise value in 2022) OnlyFans struggled to find investors and keep banking

but Twitter ALREADY has all the top investors in tech, they JUST got them along with Musk. www.axios.com/2021/08/19/onlyfans-investors-struggle

now these new investors and advisors, from Saudi princes to Andreessen, have traditionally been very consvervative

but they are ALREADY in on twitter, many for other reasons (controlling their image directly, etc). And now they need a payout.

www.reuters.com/technology/investors-who-stuck-it-out-musks-twitter-deal-set-reap-rewards-2022-10-28/...

So now we are already in a situation where these incredibly powerful people are simply on for the ride

There were whole court cases, they can't pull out of the deal, they own the damn thing. So the entire focus now is on how they can not lose tens of billions of dollars.

Literally, they need to make this site that is worth negative money, literally has made negative money in over a decade, suddenly incredibly profitable

and the ONLY way to do that is with adult payments, I'm in no way kidding or exaggerating

They may not have known that when they got in on it, which was a quick and stupid process, but now that they are there they will be seeing the truth just as easily as anyone else.

What people PAY FOR online in micro transactions is adult content. hardly ANYTHING else.

They pay a tiny bit for twitch, they watch youtube videos with ads, but NONE of these sites online has the revenue/profit that OnlyFans has. OnlyFans is making BONKERS money without many of the annoying things sites have to do like find advertisers or fine tune an algorithm.

We are post-Tumblr. They KNOW that if they ban porn, they will destroy all value.

And be out 50 billion dollars, plus never getting all those tasty interest/debt payments that would mean they make much more than their initial investment. These are math minded people.

Elon Musk may have a need to seem cool or be racist and transphobic, but most of these people are here purely for money in the most evil but also predictable way possible.

for all the hot takes about elon destroying the site, this path was always there.

Within a year, simply by not playing by all the dumb invented rules about keeping porn off a site, Musk can turn this into an incredibly profitable site and all these idiot takes will suddenly think he's a genius. He's not, twitter has been trying already but his wealth will help

And the advertisers are threatening to pull out, but they don't have teeth. They'll stay if users stay. They will not miss chances to advertise to people, that's dumb as hell. They just have gotten their way so far because sites were dumb about not direct monetizing.

advertisers are likely terrified their pull will matter less as the internet becomes more about direct payments, but that's the damn future whether people like it or not. we like subscribing to streaming video, we like paying creators and seeing them smile. we HATE ads!!

no one fucking likes ads. ads can make a site a lot worse and annoying to use than direct payments and tips ever have!!

so this really is NOT a dumb move if it pays off. They will have to fight, in court, in front of congress, fight some banks etc. but they have resources now.

Musk simply OWNS twitter. He doesn't have to use the current twitter budget for legal fights - he can use any and all wealth he has to fight it. He's got more lobbying power with the gov and negotiating power with banks than ANY platform has EVER had, simply by personal wealth

Zuckerberg never had any interest in allowing adult, for his own fucking weird reasons. Patreon was tiny when it was targeted. It took a decade to take pornhub payments down cause they had some money - but nothing like twitter now has, never anything like that funds-wise.

tumblr already had like no money when it was removed from the app store, had changed ownership already, simply couldn't actually fight

so we are at a completely unique point in history where the people wanting to do porn payments ACTUALLY HAVE MORE POWER than would be censors

sure, it's debatable that mastercard vs musk has more power, we're about to find out! twitter is NOT and WILL NOT be quickly in compliance with the new MasterCard terms.

But they also have a ton of big banks investing, so again, they can fight

Many things in adult content are not enforced fairly. Twitter might get away with its own rules that no other site can replicate.

I'd rather see them bump along until they approve and then kind of usher in, along with onlyfans, an era of porn payments being normal

If stripe does stay in, if Apple does keep twitter in, Tumblr has a very good case for saying 'why not us?' and perhaps getting back porn and adding direct payments

This COULD lead to a more diverse market and better competition, and more stability for sex workers. It's possible

it is also possible that there is too much CSAM and Musk goes to jail as a sex trafficker, that would happen to many site owners in this exact situation

thing is.. he is literally the richest man in the world. he's got his own rules of physics. this will get very weird.

I think they'll roll out a variety of features. They're VERY focused on min/maxing income right now. So if video and super follows works, I imagine other ways of paying (especially streaming video for tips, tips in messaging) are on the horizon.

taking payments at all is the big challenge, once they get over that I expect they will try to bring in any feature they see working on a competitor. They've directly copied OnlyFans before in mockups (like the how much will you earn slider) so I expect similar stuff there

We'll see if he's got that will! He's literally called rescue workers pedos, and already gone through his own scandals, so I can see him spitefully fighting back to profit at any cost. it may not be out of good of his heart, but pure selfishness

it's certainly going to be something to watch! keep in mind that the antis are completely bad faith and most of their arguments are total bullshit - they rely on targeting the most marginalized and stigmatized, and people getting scared

If musk is simply stubborn, and he certainly seems to be, and has little morals - well this could be a moment where he is absolutely tearing into them too. he literally just calls random people pedos also, so they're just going to be doing that back and forth I imagine.

the antis win over and over because we don't have legal resources to fight them and because all our would be allies aren't helping. but our would be allies are like.. human rights orgs and dems.

Musk already has all the big banks and his own wealth on the line here

he's also a known quality and adored on the right, which certainly wasn't true of the backpage founders who were targeted for their history of left wing fact checking in their indie newspapers, nor the tumblr heads, or even onlyfans owner etc.

there are SO MANY powerful people and then the entire right now invested in twitter.. and we can probably use that to our benefit to weaken the attacks of the antis.

hate to say it but they have really relied on the dems to carry out much of the anti-sex policy they propose

yes, luckily for us the pure profit motive is on our side. Like with MasterCard for example, we couldn't figure out why they were hurting porn sites and hteir own income - it was because they wanted to become an age check partner and make much more money

yup, he's a total asswhole who can't take any critique. he's pulled lawsuits on people before.

So I won't be surprised to see him suing the antis back and talking shit instead of rolling over to their attacks.

I for one am ready to make popcorn and watch the antis fight with the world's richest man instead of the world's most marginalized sex workers for once. they're both evil lol and both motivated to profit off us, but at least Musk's plans let us profit too

we gotta remember this is the 'founder' of paypal and the investing banks here already have control over these payment processors at a higher level than we're used to thinking about

twitter can make its own terms now

right, and this is like 50 billion dollars. the anti-sex NGO industry may spend hundreds of millions against sex online every year.. but that's still a lot less than the 1 billion in debt payments onlyfans needs to pull together.

it's a nuts situation!

we're absolutely going to see more crypto on here, though taking mainstream credit card payments is the real win and the real demand for our organizing

But yes, if stripe or something boots him, nothing stopping him from just starting a new own processor

that's the level we are talking about here, if Musk simply wants to work directly with the banks on a higher level and do his own processing, or even start an adult friendly processor that offers lower rates than ccbill, he can. He can do that kind of thing. Likely won't need to.

and, to be honest, this is an actual real honest to god 'free speech' issue. this is THE biggest free speech issue IMHO since sex is policed more than any conservative or liberal speech. He can win some points with his base here, AND some on the left (like us) will acknowledge it

he doesn't have to capitulate. ALL of Visa's wealth combined is like 400b. Musk PERSONALLY is like 200b. just about only person on planet who can force these companies to rewrite rules. way richer than Bill Ackman who has forced them to be sex negative.

Also we're not just talking about Musk but all his investors. They are way way way richer than Visa when combined. And Visa/MasterCard are REPUTATION liability adverse.

So, like Bill Ackman can pressure them... But he's like a tiny whining baby

Musk is LITERALLY 67 times richer than the richest active anti-porn billionaire. He's simply never done anything to stand up for porn before, and now he has an extremely powerful motivation to do so

Ackman never even had a direct investment in any of this! It's just PR for him.

yeah it's absolutely a worry - but he's got no choice, and we now know he already started this battle. They are looking to SHIP this feature within /weeks./ The battle is on and he's picked a side.

yeah, we REALLY lucked out here that he's already set himself up to be on the opposite side. The antis won't like that. They'll think that making him out to be an uber-pimp is an easy target - they won't be entirely wrong but he won't roll over.

he simply CAN'T roll over now, he's made his bed. I honestly bet part of why he TRIED to pull out was realizing twitter could only be popular with porn and not wanting to be porn king

But he was forced to buy at the insane price and now needs to get that money somehow

right the guy is literally already a sexual harasser, he's not a great person, and his pure wealth and power has let him sidestep all the normal rules people play by. For better or worse, he's going to brute force this too

Let's put this in context since Tumblr is also in the news today. Tumblr's current owner's CEO is worth 400 million. That's a lot! But it's like NOTHING in this game.

Musk is literally 558 TIMES RICHER than Mullenweg

andsimple.co/cases/matt-mullenweg-net-worth/

That's personal wealth. And its really true - he's easily 500 times as powerful as the current tumblr CEO.

Now consider all the investors - these investors and musk oversee way more than that. A glimpse into a few:
Pentwater: 10b
Millennium: 60b
Adage: 43.5b
Greenlight: 7b

Plus Jack from twitter is now invested again and his net worth is 15 billion

We've got an INSANE amount of power behind the people currently backing twitter, more than ANY site of this size/focus, by FAR

Now this money is tied up but it's not like it's actually abt spending it

It's about the cultural power they have simply by being involved and invested in so many companies and by holding so much capital.

When almost a trillion dollars sits across from the table and says "this is legal content, you should process the payment" the equation changes

also in a unique spot for other reasons - platforms now understand the challenges better, our organizing has gotten us into the mainstream a little more in terms of understanding sex worker problems, OnlyFans is already showing what's possible. we're due for a pendulum swing

well, if he pulls this off his net worth goes up! so we'll see. he may even enjoy being porn king and lean in. we really have no idea how it goes on a narrative level - but we do know by the numbers they have no choice

right lol I actually admit I'm excited about this. the antis, govs, they literally all lie. it will be VERY easy for him to blow holes in their attacks if he actually cares. god I hate to root for him for anything but they deserve it

this is, frankly, the anti NIGHTMARE. They have so far managed to make insane careers for themselves by targeting sex workers and platforms made by sex workers who can't fight back, who already have little wealth and much stability

NEVER been up against anyone who can fight

Absolutely ALL the anti efforts to ram through surveillance, the new MasterCard policies, "online safety" etc were DIRECTLY aimed at preventing twitter from doing EXACTLY this. they were banking on Elon being right wing in the way they want too.

In fact, check it out - they are already trying to do their best to get twitter to block pornhub like instagram and I bet it won't work. They're just lying like usual, and still on their pornhub kick since they've made millions of $$ off "traffickinghub"

NCOSE, whose actual goal is of course to deplatform all LGBTQ people is trying its best to get his attention

but these Antis offer him NOTHING. There is no new profit to be made - advertisers already advertise on twitter and he's not going to get magically tons more money by dumping all the most active accounts on here tumblr style. All they can offer is threats.

He simply won't respond well to personal smears because he has never responded well to real criticism based on his actual terrible actions. And these antis ALSO rely on twitter for their campaigns like traffickinghub. I bet they're freaking out crazy lol

These folks still have the intention of trying to get twitter to ban porn, but we have to be real - they NEVER had the numbers. See this tiny engagement on their acct?

Sites and banks have rolled over purely under threat from these bad faith campaigners and govs, w/o fighting

You can see the antis are targeting twitter across all their material, even using images of twitter as shorthand for topics that have nothing to do with the platform

If adult payments on here goes forward, that is a MAJOR win for freedom of expression after losing a LOT for a long time. OnlyFans leadership was also just featured in the time 100 positively.

we ARE due for that pendulum swing. I have a lot of optimism all of a sudden here.

right? So one of the big questions is if porn payments will hurt other sex workers - every porn payment platform like OnlyFans doesn't allow in person sex workers due to SESTA. We could see a devastating impact on that community... but worldwide.. well

the thing is escorting in the US is legally defended (via print ad court cases) for a long time. SESTA is making things a lot harder, but it's also legal around the world. It's very unclear if twitter will take a "Gay sex is illegal but we're human rights forward" approach here

But having the sex work community overall able to take payments is great news for everyone - that community having more wealth and stability is essential for our fight for sex worker decriminalization since we badly need resources and for community to not be in crisis to fight

yeah, the big risk is that, but in my experience the profit motive is what actually drives most of this, usually BANKS wanting to profit in other ways or protect reputation, this time he has huge capital firms already invested.

They can't pull out - there was just a court case forcing elon to this too! and they need profit. no bank actually cares about anything other than exploiting as much as possible. They can't pull out, they need profit.

so at this point cultural attacks are meeting the laws of cpaitalist physics basically. Yes, the site could totally collapse under attacks, could be used as an example, made an example of by governments.. but the wealth here invested in twitter now is just obscene.

every site made an example of in the past was already having trouble or was already on the fringe of things. BackPage simply never had good connections to the financial industry, no tech investors, no well known figureheads. PornHub tried to go the secretive quiet route

We simply have no historical precedent for something like this! So I can only make predictions based on the financial goals of the most powerful people here

We haven't actually heard any opposition yet! though I bet they're hearing it at twitter

"do gooder" liberals can actually stop stigmaizing porn for their hot takes, thanks. Porn isn't ugly, sexual expression is natural and I bet you, @jimkenefick, masturbate too.

it's time to let us actually be compensated to for the porn you masturbate to.

@JimKenefick amazing to me people haven't seen this coming! they've been leaking mockups for like two years now!

and they have a chance here to actually compete with OF because OF actually gets all its traffic from twitter primarily

@JimKenefick very exciting to see what will happen! I imagine a lot of ignoring it among many or even saying it goes with their free speech. conservatives consume a LOT of porn. many 'right wing' forums are also associated with porn, for better or worse

In fact, red states are more likely to search for trans porn than 'liberal' states!

Many commenters on this have it ass backwards, sex workers know leftist interlopers are more likely to actively work against porn on twitter

Convervatives watch a LOT LOT of porn.

This gets said a lot about platforms, but I doubt he will "own" the content posted, instead of having a distrobution/processing right as any other porn platform. not a real concern for creators imho.

Sex workers have been begging for more payment options, actually, and already create the content most engaged with on this platform.

again, twitter has been working on this for at least two years and mostly been bumping up against issues, but it's not actually a surprise to anyone paying attention

most people just like to pretend porn only exists when they're horny though

of course the attacks already coming - and again notable that Elon has been associated with these folks forever and it's never phased him when the attacks are TRUE. I doubt this will halt the adult plans.

We gotta note that Twitter ALREADY has more porn on it than tumblr did and neither twitter or reddit are banned from the app store. We can only conclude Apple was mostly reacting to smears about one site, doesn't really have an appetite for policing this

they certainly like their porn!

yeah, and there are a few people using super follows for adult. But there also have been people kicked off it, so we'd been advising caution. I'd say this indicates they are going to keep adult content in super follows though

I'd say letting sex workers get compensated for porn instead of people simply stealing or reposting it on catfish accounts is in fact improving an experience for many users! Millions and millions of ppl follow sex work on here

being able to take payments for your work IS a free speech issue! See the ACLU release on it here: www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/paypal-and-venmo-are-shutting-out-sex-workers-putting-lives-and-liveli...

no, not directly. chances are to release these features they will also be much more strict with moderation, especially once the income is in for those moderators. they've been trimming down but they'll have to hire more, only way to stay online

again, some of the most popular and common takes on this are that it's 'creepy' or 'gross' or 'hellish' or somehow exploitative

Sex workers exist. letting us get paid instead of just used for others profit is ethical. listen to sex workers.

sex workers are not a 'cesspool' we are people who supply services and content creation nearly everyone consumes. if you include written smutt popular with women, literally almost everyone consumes sexual media. stop being hypocrites

the edit feature is literally already here, i'm not sure what these folks are attempting to get at. this is a nonsesnical gotcha take.

it is NOT simpler to retain advertisers than take direct payments. You need to court advertisers, pay people tons of money to get them on the site, then they have all kinds of demands. payments are way simpler and more direct, and work great on OnlyFans

twitter is ALREADY in the HARDCORE porn market, they simply aren't profiting off it the way they should be

though they are profiting off it, via putting ads next to it, they could profit more and sex workers should profit too since it's so popular

yup, the humor is not lost on me that the richest man in the world needs money fast and is turning to sex work, just like I and thousands of others at the very opposite end of in the income spectrum do

right, the porn is ALREADY here. This MIGHT end up with nudity ONLY being allowed behind paywall which is MORE censorship. many of these takes are really nonsensical - this is about monetizing existing porn. Porn is already on twitter.

lol show the numbers. twitter has made -200 million since its birth relying mostly on ads, OnlyFans is bringing in billions in revenue and profit with NO ads.

lol some honesty. yes, we're really looking at how much people will pay, because anyone telling folks they don't want porn is literally lying

so many people pretending they don't watch porn, it would be hilarious to watch if that stigma didn't hurt SWrs

actually, people love to pay for porn directly when you make it easy. it's a huge business and fans say they like tipping or ppv direct too.

these dunk takes are ignoring a lot of easy math

i bet this is the time to apply at twitter if you want to get into this stuff, they ARE hiring as well as firing. i wouldn't want to work for musk lol but there it is

I get asked to consult on a lot of stuff and periodically do, you can email ashleylake@fastmail.com

A LOT of people have been trying to be the 'next onlyfans' though and I generally say it's not worth trying to start anything new.

I've done a lot of threads on the challenges of starting new platforms, we gotta remember twitter is in an incredibly unique position here with existing market dominance for sex workers and the profit motive, and the insane power behind it now

usually we say "there is no technical solution to a political problem"

By that we mean that the tech is fine - you can take payments easy on platforms that don't allow sex work, posting content is easy, streaming video is easy. solved problems.

What we need is political will and the resources behind it to fight censorship and for human rights based moderation. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of musk on actual human rights, but he has the resources here to fight to profit off porn. It's going to be a PR fight.

right this WILL also come with increased surveillance - OnlyFans is useless as a platform for criminalized sex worker organizing

but more sex workers with money also means more resources for our fight, so I have some hope here.

Right, it's true Elon has no idea how things work around anything.. but he also has enough money and power to simply... change how things work or ignore the normal rules we all play by socially.

and things already sucked on twitter to an extent so

also right, many of the people yelling at Musk to do MORE MODERATION without any details are specifically just.. probably endorsing the existing moderation that hits sex workers worse than nazis. We need better moderation, not just 'more' moderation

as we've noted before, many of these 'better' sites people are pointing to have a way worse human rights track record for sex workers, and we have lost SO MANY sites.

Twitter is one of the last places we have, so we're fighting hard for it.

here's more on sex workers and nazis, and how we are usually their target, but people moderate us even harsher than hate speech.

by inferring that anyone who dares do business with us is a 'pimp', you're endorsing a system of criminalization and marginalization that keeps sex workers in deadly precarity, whether you intend it or not

There is nothing wrong with sex work payments

"pimp" is a very common term to here when discussing the economics of sex work. and it's always a racist term, and always used in a way that removes agency from sex workers in their ability to choose who to work with

sex work IS regulated by folks without our best interests in mind - banks, governments, cops. usually to our detriment. The fact that anyone who dares to actually let us profit off our labor is called a pimp is very very bad.

yes, it will absolutely bring in more money than advertising. The difference in income on OnlyFans vs. Twiter is INSANE. They would be absolutely nuts to leave that on the table, which is why this is inevitable.

so for this question, you can look to what sex workers already do! Many have a free onlyfans and a paid one, and all of them post free content on platforms like twitter to get subscribers. Check out @vannialll for example who gets most OF subs from twitter

@Vannialll yes, titter. twatter. and all that

@Vannialll and only porn can save him now!

@Vannialll Enough of this! Letting people pay sex workers directly for their porn instead of just stealing it is ETHICAL. It is WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR. it ENABLES US INDEPDENDENCE.

OnlyFans is great for us and this would be to. It's NOT pimping.

@Vannialll yes, exactly, twitter is a primary driver of traffic to OF. If I was OF, I'd be scared they disable outgoing links and just keep it here! I hope they don't do that - but OF doesn't let you link competitors either so :P

@Vannialll yes, those are the concerns, if you check up this thread we go into detail on it

The big question mark IS age verification - specifically for the people who are NOT commercial creators and may want to post amatuer/arty sexual content or just consume porn

twitter is already full of porn, this is just letting people pay for it directly to creators

he's always had porn in his likes! so I've always predicted he would be more likely to fall on this side. He's always been more pro-porn that past twitter leadership was.

- this idea pre-dates Elon by their mockups and internal docs
- this is actually a good idea, since it lets sex workers ethically monetize the porn already on here via direct payments

someone says direct payments to indie creators and these folks go 'child sex trafficking!' instantly

no, this will probably reduce CSAM abuse on the site by raising verification standards, it will NOT cause trafficking to let people get paid for work

you may not like porn, and that's fine for you, but it's already on here and letting sex workers get paid directly is way more ethical than just profiting off stolen porn. just set your preference to not see it.

this is a nonsensical comment, Elon is transphobic but letting sex workers take payments on here will probably go down as the best thing he's ever done for the trans community since so many of us rely on sex work to survive.

in fact (via acceptancematters.org) being able to take payments for sex work is the NUMBER ONE most essential freedom of speech / overall safety issue for the trans community

EVERY sex worker needs less financial discrimination

how worse? letting sex workers get paid for porn instead of everyone stealing it is ethical, it's smart, and it's what we've been demanding alongside allies like the ACLU for decades.

Please listen to us, don't stigmatize sex work just to dunk on elon

Right, thank you. Letting sex workers survive is the polar opposite of encouraging hate speech or oppressive regimes - which generally ban sex work and police the queer people who do it.

folks, Jack LITERALLY just re-invested in Twitter via Musk. BlueSky will be alongside twitter and likely integrated, not exactly a competitor.

No, there's not a signficant difference in userbase, most OF users are also younger - they're actually the same users because OnlyFans has no on-site promotion. They are entirely reliant on sex workers advertising on twitter (& other sites)

ads make less

the edit button is a paid feature, so kind of off my thread's main topic, but an example of monetization already going on. so posts saying 'where's the edit button' are a little out of the loop. you can pay for it right now.

yes, government pressure will be huge! they have a different motive than profit in the same way, though they do profit off policing sex work

but read up in this thread, elon is uniquely positioned to fight it with pure money power, what lobbying is about

that's a myth actually, I used to believe it around when we organized against patreon (see openlettertopatreon.com) but it turns out sites only kick us under great pressure and it always hurts them (see tumblr). it's never helped their bottom line.

I've got a thread about common myths about sex work and sex work platforms and organizing here. IT's helpful to know these to inform our political work and make sure we're targeting the right places

they're not left with nothing, the rest of the site functions just as it functioned before. letting porn take payments will not stop anyone else from posting, not directly. I'm not sure how that would be argued.

yuup!

But we should note banks have NEVER really cared.

they have ALWAYS turned around and taken adult payments through more expensive intermediaries, charging a higher percent. It's about profiting as much as possible, that's all they care about.

yeah, this is quite possible and very sad. More granular moderation is good on some level, but since most countries out there are pretty shitty to gay people in their laws, NOT something I'm excited about in all cases.

yes, I imagine all of that is on its way. They will directly copy any feature they can from OnlyFans, Chaturbate, so on. Some will be harder to integrate than others, but with the profit motive I expect they will be working hard on it.

Absolutely! We've been begging for this! And literally every platform I've consulted with is asking about this, how to do it.

Individually, users also like tipping someone they love more than seeing targeted ads. It's the future, flat out!

letting sex workers get paid for the porn already on twitter has NOTHING to do with pedos and would be a really good thing. the moderation needed to keep payments would also mean less CSAM on the platform, OnlyFans has almost none for example.

despite propaganda otherwise, OnlyFans and other adult sites have almost NO CSAM on them. The moderation needed to keep payments (and being able to pay more mods cause of the income) makes the sites have WAY less abuse.

Actually sex workers have been asking to be allowed to get paid instead of simply have their content stolen for a very very long time!

This doesn't mean MORE porn, all the new PPV posts will be paywalled.

it's already on here. If you don't like it, you can simply block it or turn off the toggle in your profile to not see any 'sensitive content'

this would be paywalled, you'd have to actively try to see it

it is very funny that these particular investors are now, uh, invested in a porn site. but it was a porn site when they bought it!

I think we'll see making money trumps just about anything else

again, the porn is ALREADY on twitter. This simply would allow sex workers to profit off it, instead of just the site profiting off stolen content.

I TOTALLY think this will actually happen. It wasn't even his idea, he'd just have to be stupid to stop it happening.

Twitter has been planning on adult payments for 2 years! So this isn't a sudden change, it's really the only option they've got to make those debt payments!

please don't lump sex work in with hate.

we've been asking to be able to get paid for our work for a very long time. Twitter is already full of porn, and it won't make more hate to let sex workers survive off their incredibly popular labor

a lot of people have been talking about vine, etc, but tiktok is already dominating that space. it's true they are profitable - and that's a better reason to expect it be harder for Elon to rely on advertising. people are watching ads on tiktok not here.

they actually aren't mutually exclusive. letting sex workers verify and take payments will REDUCE the amount of cat fishes and other issues when sex work is in a gray area.

they SHOULD be compensated instead of porn bots posting content next to ads

twitter was already one of two social media sites left for sex work, along with reddit. it's actually probably the most popular one for porn overall!

So it makes sense to monetize this and make it official and more stable. the userbase already wants it

fortunately for sex workers, the math is finally on our side. They need a billion dollars in debt payments every year, it's nuts.

Twitter is about the only platform that could make this work, I go into detail up this thread

yes, luckily Elon and the new investors are already deep in fintech and can actually force this through. the fact there is only really OF for competition is amazing for twitter

yes, but thanks to our organizing and focus on banks, they were able to get banking BACK and get bigger - basically the only win we've had in a decade. Twitter is emboldened and if we give them good press for this, sex workers can finally win one here!

kind of a dehumanizing way to refer to the millions of sex workers who produce incredibly popular mainstream content likely consumed by yourself, @jeremynewberger

We were already on this platform, it's actually ethical to let us get paid!

what?

letting sex workers get paid directly - who are MOSTLY women by a huge degree - instead of having their work stolen will NOT increase abuse against women. It will allow more agency for sex working women

stop scapegoating sex work for harrassment

PPVed porn and letting sex workers be verified instead of banned will not increase harassment! It is in fact reducing harassment directly, by stopping moderation harassment from happening as much!

this thread has details

ANTIPORN and ANTISEX sentiment is in fact associated with abuse of women, violence against women, and studies show people who ARE CLIENTS or PURCHASE sex work actually have MORE EGALITARIAN and feminist attitudes than others.

It's simply a complete myth that sex work drives abuse of women

acceptance of sex work is in fact key to respecting women, since most sex workers are women!

this is actually an argument for why he should do it? since it's so obvious?

letting sex workers be paid for their work is the opposite of emboldening the far right, please don't lump us together.

but twitter would be insane to leave this money on the table - and it seems they agree

fans actually DO prefer directly tipping creators they love to seeing ads they don't really care about, the success of OnlyFans shows that.

lol that's an idea

not one i endorse lol but it's an idea

absolutely! Look at OnlyFans! They are taking their sex work money and directly investing it in other art, like comedy, etc. This irks sex workers sometimes, but that's what's happening, sex work is helping all creators by supporting these platforms

exactly, advertising is EXTREMELY limited in a LOT of ways. It really sucks for most creators, and it's just not reliable to be at the whims of advertisers

Patreon wishes it was OnlyFans, they were forced out of becoming it at the worst time for them

Money is power and when we are talking about people with something like 1 trillion dollars combined that have their toes dipped into OnlyFans now, that Money is going to be the entire point. They need to pay 1 billion dollars a year in NEW debt payments.

when you are the richest man in the world I think you're a lot less interested in the dem/republican game than people think he is. they simply are pretty much the same to him. he doesn't give a shit, this is gonna be about getting that 1b in payments out of the company.

I actually don't think so. They like to make a big fuss, but advertisers didn't pull out of twitter so far and this is literally making more porn paywalled. it's /already/ full of porn.

ppl have been saying this but they're obviously pushing on

the thing is all the normal anti porn bank folks are already IN and they are literally signing on to this feature being pushed forward because they want their money and this is the only way. and OF has shown you can make more with payments than ads. it's a new world.

like OF was looking for andreessen horowitz... and they are already in on the new twitter deal. Stripe has already apparently signed off on this, from our sources. it's actually happening!

just like the "when they no longer need us" myth.. advertising is showing their weakness

advertisers will likely make a big fuss but the reality is that's all they can do. they do NOT like the idea of losing their power over sites, but they already are losing it due to the rise of direct payments. They hate that shit but they can't win, not really. users like tips.

they are up against direct payments as a way to support sites, overall, and direct payments are purely winning out. it's just no contest OF vs Twitter ads right now, as I showed with the numbers way far up

lol no trump is basically a fake billionaire and musk is the richest man in the world by far - and just brought in a ton of the other richest folks via the investments

it's just a different ball game

now billionaires will back billionaires, I expect trump will be back on here. but adult payments is a totally different issue.

sure, but have to remember OnlyFans is actually reliant on twitter. There is no on-site advertising, most of their traffic comes from twitter, reddit. @Vannialll for example has a few thousand followers on OF.. & 200k on twitter. just one trans acct!

@Vannialll If twitter went down OF's income would DIE! I'm not kidding. It's their biggest weakeness, that to appease the anti-porn folks they have walled EVERYTHING and you can't simply browse. There is NO way to find people ON the site

Twitter is the only site online that could compete

that's part of it, but they've been working on this for 2 years (I'm a sex worker organizer on platform issues and have worked on them for 10 years.)

It's not a new plan, he's just forcing it through. The OF model is obvious, it's not that complex.

sex workers ARE stressed out and tired but literally 99% would tell you working for ourselves is WAY better than working for studios. We get LONG TAIL income now! Full ownership of rights! We don't even get residuals from studios.

Direct payments and distribution is WAY WAY better for sex workers. Anyone saying otherwise can't be taken seriously, OF has paid out billions.

Everything tiring about the creator economy is true for every creator - OF is paying better than twitch!

PPV content will always be premium content, everyone in the creator economy puts out free content to get clients and that likely will not change, alongside leaving the site open for user uploaded non commercial content (with ads)

yes, this is the major danger, that they are moving so quickly now that they will likely mess up, A LOT. CSAM WILL be monetized, at least once - it happens. So they are going to have big issues. And pay out some big lawsuits.

I think they simply feel at this point that 'move quick, break things' is again the motto they want to live by, and in this EXTREMELY UNIQUE situation, they have the money to get away with it. They'll just pay millions out to the people they fuck up to, to make billions.

If this was any other person owning any other site in another way, I'd be "scared" Elon was on his way to a hellish pre-trail prison sentence. But it's not, it's the richest man in the world so it's not gonna BackPage.

can we stop pretending humans being sexual 'ruins' anything? this is childish

sexual media is normal, it's neutral by default, and generally good for people overall.

sex workers are asking for respect and compensation for their work

They'll likely pay creators well over 50%. I get into the math above, but the sweetheart deal with stripe he somehow forced through means he has a great margin and may be able to undercut every porn site online. OF keeps 20% right now w/o that deal

yup, you got it!

yes, exactly! Twitter is cutting out the middleman here. they are becoming their own OnlyFans. it's very very very smart, especially with this amazing banking deal he seems to be forcing through. it's going to change the whole market.

PLEASE stop stigmatizing sex work to dunk on Elon, sex workers are NOT abuse, we are TARGETS of abuse, and letting us take direct payments independently is something we have been begging for. Let's try and make it safe and good, not do hot takes.

i agree, it's certainly cynical, at the same time it makes sense and we should take advantage of it and do everything we can to make sure it sticks in a way that benefits sex workers.

if this changes twitters stance on sex work.. that would be VERY good

yeah, my guess is musk is just bringing the clicks right now, so despite this being an OLD OLD idea for twitter, it's getting people a lot more clicks and retweets to pretend that musk randomly came up with this last night

twitter has always needed adult

we gotta remember, it is NOT true that it's small scale to pay for porn. porn is HUGE business and OF showed it can get way way bigger

Twitter know EXACTLY how much traffic they send to OnlyFans to check out for payments. it's a LOT. they want that money

PRIVACY concerns are VERY real! But lot of this is already problem. Govs and NGOs force insane surveillance on EVERY sex work site, so chances are if you are a customer you are already surveilled and in databases about it

hard to say this will help/hurt

lol ok this actually got me ahaha

linkedin could never

just silly useless dunks from a lot of these accounts.

porn is a punchline to a lot of folks - as if they don't like sexy times themselves.

it won't happen, they will stay as long as there are eyeballs here, but fucking hell.. it would be great!

Who actually LIKES ads? are we seriously pretending we LIKE ads?

I've gone into detail already above about why the usual advertisers have less control here (advertisers simply have way way way less money than twitters new owners!!)

But banks.. they may ACTUALLY be popping courts. THEY WANT MONEY

Banks being given away to profit off porn after being harassed away from it for a decade? People are being VERY silly if they think banks care about anything but profit. Elon is going to bring them porn bucks and they will take those porn bucks.

none of this is about if he's a good person, the richest man in the world is objectively evil.

but allowing sex workers to make money doesn't make him a pimp, that's just a meme used to stigmatize and criminalize sex work.

for what it's worth, he's the only guy who could pull this off

he's objectively evil as the richest man in the world, but no one else could simply say 'nah' to the banks. he actually pulled them IN on it. just a whole new world for porn payments.

OF is pretty good overall, they donate to Woodhull to fight SESTA, they're adamantly pro-sex work, they're just in a hard spot. But yes, all capitalists are evil, it's just a matter of how you get exploited. We gotta work, so at least let us get paid!

more about onlyfans and their struggle here, I think reading this will help people understand what twitter is up against and trying to do

yeah, it's really just a matter of him saying 'fuck it, ship it' to something they've wanted to do a long time. the short time frame is worrying, and all the various issues, but if he is determined to push it through it's a positive over all.

lol yeah as LITERALLY Mr.PayPal he IS THE payments guy. People forget that. PayPal kicked sex work a long time ago, but he has a chance here to profit again

It's not the same as a small platform (like OF WAS) losing their first banks while growing

how so? being able to take payments next week will immediately benefit thousands of sex workers in the most material way possible.

you can call the onlyfans owners the same thing and onlyfans is objectively a good thing for sex workers

gotta remember none of this is an endorsement of any business PERSON, it's a note that if twitter decides to fight this, that is EXACTLY what we have been begging platforms to do for a decade - fight this and let us take payments.

i think most content will still be 'free', you need a lot of free content to advertise your premium content. it's just more organic advertising, like the rest of the creator economy

Yeah it’s so worth noting the creator economy is rough

Now twitter could probably charge high cuts if they want to but I think they want to undercut onlyfans so I’m predicting they either match it or seriously undercut it

I don't love being called buddy, btw

I don't think the man is on my side, but I think the profit motive is aligning with our organizing for one of the first times in a decade and we should definitely take advantage of it!

we'll see. making billions of dollars while people tut tut based on past evidence that doesn't really apply here seems to be exactly what he wishes he did all the time. he's accidentally got potential for huge profit here.

sure, luckily tech side of this is a lot easier than political side, and political side seems to be ruled by who spends the most money lobbying. up until now that's been anti-NGOs, but they have way less money than the target does for the first time ever

you can do whatever you'd like personally of course. most sex workers have already left tumblr for twitter, years ago.

but, let's talk dark side for a little bit! This IS worth thinking of, I linked a thread of downsides already above

So the most obvious is surveillance - we will see more. And banning FSSWs due to SESTA, more of that. BUT he could also... block OnlyFans

Right now OnlyFans doesn't let you link direct competitors. It's one of the most evil things THEY do since sex workers need a patchwork to be stable.

If Twitter Disables outgoing OnlyFans links and only lets you pay for content here that would SUCK for a lot of people.

They could also make it so all nudity needs to be behind a paywall. Sucks for human rights, probably makes advertising harder for sex workers of all sort. I think this is quite likely.. they are already hiding 'sensitive' content from most views.

So it's not ALL upsides

I think it's reasonable to have some hope right now though. We have been VERY worried about twitter and this is a sign they feel they need us and understand they need us. We're in a better place today than yesterday, I really think so.

Sex workers should ABSOLUTELY be thinking about how they might take advantage of monetizing their twitter right now. It's probably even safe to play around with Super Follows and whatnot for the minute.

This could absolutely all happen and then crash and burn, that has happened before, but it's also possible in that time sex workers could make a LOT of money. So don't sleep on it, if you have a following you can monetize ANYWHERE you should do it!

thanks!

it's NUTS to me that I've read like 100 articles in the last week about how "Elon will change his tone to get advertisers" and 0 about how Twitter already had a plan in place to avoid that, and be like Only Fans, which has no ads! precedent!

Q from DM "Question : how big of an impact do you think it has on OF ? Or will they complement each other"

I think this is TERRIBLE news for OnlyFans haha. They really get away w having saved payment information & making it quick to pay. OF can lose 2 or 3 clicks in the process

It's hard to say if that means it's bad for creators ON OnlyFans though. More competition might mean lower fees or other things sites do to get us to stay. Monetizing twitter directly might be massively more profitable. We don't really know yet.

usually porn creators have a few primary platforms - one feed platform, one cam platform, one clip store. Often multiple clip stores and tube sites but rarely multiple feed platforms.

But for a while the features will be different enough to support both I think.

and super fans will follow your free onlyfans, your paid one, all your social medias, etc, as long as they post slightly different content. So creators can probably work to use both.

But this will absolutely shake things up, and hard to say how just yet!

thing is the most elite support I can possibly think about is already in on this deal and backed it, which is how they even have stripe in the first place.

it's just a VERY unique situation where the banks are already in, and now need a payout...

and my internal sources about all of this in fintech etc indicate it's just a new ball game. it's like fintech showed up and said we're gonna do porn now, every other site we have ever dealt with has begged fintech for help.

As for CSAM, we are specifically seeing elon say 'whatever' to that problem and push it forward anyway, which honestly is the right move because FB is doing fine even though they have way more CSAM so the attacks weren't in the best faith.

I worry most for FSSWs who are now at increased risk of deplatforming to try and get payments going

yup, they seem to agree. we don't know about percent yet (they could probably compete even with a higher percent but I want to say they brought stripe in to try and undercut others)

Right, it's so funny to see all the normal takes about this just be TOTALLY innacurate because they believe content moderation is actually about all the things people SAY it is, when in reality no one cares about anything but MONEY and power

I bet people in the gov are pissed about this, but I also be they are getting ready to use it to put insane surveillance on this platform under the guise of making those same adult payments 'safe'.

we still have a lot we will need to fight, even if some more rents get paid

I would be very excited to see an end to walled gardens, I worry that this move by twitter may be a move to try and keep people here MORE, since they've been throwing up more walls (force people to log in when they land etc)

i think the antis are going to find this does not work against the world's richest man, a raging megalomaniac whose response to reasonable criticism about tech designs is to call people pedos himself

they're absolutely just going to force this through and try to figure all that out as they go! it's totally nuts.. but the unique position twitter is in here having insane amounts of power/money means it might just work

Also they can learn from OF now

They can likely get the exact same 3rd party ID checking partners OnlyFans uses, unless they have a sweetheart deal for a better rate somewhere else.

Based on previous sites, I'd expect that provider and process to change like 4 times at least, but they'll force it through IMHO

oh yeah the privacy thing is a nightmare. but sex workers already deal with that nightmare everywhere. I just hope they ONLY require ID verification for monetizing your page - it's terrible for human rights if everyone is required to ID

yeah we do have little to go on yet, i think it's likely we'll see a smaller cut than OF to try and get creators off there

it's possible they block outgoing links to OF, then charge a high cut. We don't know yet, of course THEIR only motivation is greed

haha I'm fine with relentlessly attacking Elon, he's a big rich boy and can take it. It's never worked in the past to change his behavior, we're just lucky the winds of fate are on our side right now.

Certainly people are treating this oddly, there is literally NO downside to letting creators get paid. But there's porn stigma and just this 'dump on elon to get clicks/RTs' thing going on right now

This isn't really Elon's idea, like I've linked old threads about it.

this has nothing to do with enabling porn ads, in fact it's only direct payments and pay per view, so you would see LESS porn in your feed (it's paywalled) and likely adult ads through 'ads' will still be blocked for some time.

I do think twitter could make even more money by letting people choose to advertise next to adult stuff - like porn companies! sex toys! beer!

and just letting other companies only advertise to people who have 'sensitive content' turned off. It's really a win win there.

a) not true, porn was on a lot of sites before we lost em
b) they are no longer a public company. literally owned by just musk, whose personal wealth is indistinguishable when it comes the muscles he'll flex
c) going public wasn't the OF issue, was banks

sex workers have to take clients off site to convert right now, having less clicks and being able to convert here means more money quicker. there's no reason for twitter to not get in on it, they know how much traffic they send to OnlyFans.

Porn is already the quickest growing userbase on twitter. you're just off on the idea people would leave, it's the only thing drawing people TO the site right now

www.insider.com/nsfw-not-safe-for-work-explicit-content-twitter-growing-internal-2022-10

more reporting up now. a /little/ annoyed at the gawking tone press always treats our industry with, like literally millions of workers in this industry. you can just talk about it like any other industry instead of tittering, ok?

gizmodo.com/twitter-paywalled-video-porn-elon-musk-onlyfans-verify-1849731076

"flood with porn" again!

FOLKS twitter is ALREADY full of porn, this literally would allow creators to put some of that BEHIND A PAYWALL which means you would see... less porn?
Sure maybe the population of porn friendly accts will grow but... come on

www.indy100.com/viral/elon-musk-twitter-solution-porn-flood

about CSAM, twitter has been trying to police it pretty hard, not doing so well always, but they absolutely are trying to clean it up while rolling out payments

they're absolutely linked, but conversely - safe sex work requires less abuse on the platform

www.sentinelassam.com/national-news/twitter-bans-over-54k-accounts-in-india-for-promoting-sexual-cont...

yeah, it's a serious issue. I would be lying to say it's a new worry though, they're being pushed in that direction by law already, see Online Safety in the UK, CA's new bill, etc.

for all the hate on the right, it's dems and 'liberals' pushing this policy through over here. they want ID/biometrics for all users on all platforms already

payments might speed this up, to get them in compliance, but it's on the horizon already :(

we really don't know the plan yet. if we are lucky, they may absolutely still allow amatuer/art posting without ID. I certainly hope so, I do photography myself as one of my hustles and do NOT upload ID info on the ppl who hire me (work for hire), it's just not needed, less safe

I also wouldn't be IDing here, I'm not really a content creator. I REALLY hope that is not the case - we NEED these platforms to be open for our organizing.

No way around needing ID to take payments these days though, that's just gonna happen

Also on this note, though, clients may not have noticed or fans, but sex workers have had to upload ID for like a decade now. the days of being able to post without ID are very limited. sex work sites like OF are still popular despite IDing, ppl want porn

here's a thread about the process sex workers already deal with. used to be you could put up a backpage post without your face in it and get the emergency money for rent. now days everything is insane.

the "age check" / "online safety" industry is a HUGE lobby of mostly new biometrics firms, etc. It's insane they have so much sway - nothing has actually changed about the internet that requires this surveillance now

I've made a lot of threads about how ID checks overall are VERY BAD and not at all a common sense solution to making sex work safe OR stopping kids from seeing content parents don't want them to see.

Here's one of those threads.

yes, I certainly hope the bill is thrown out, and if precedent holds up based on other states it will

But antis are trying in every locality and racking up some wins, it's a real risk.

yes, so mostly true, but I should note that 2257 law only requires PRODUCERS to hold it and not distributors, so it actually was a LITTLE more secure.

Every porn site is asking them now to shore up perceived liability, but not required to by law

yeah, I've been following it closely in Australia and it's a mess. Antis are trying very hard, but now some very powereful people who want their twitter payday on their investment have motivation to lobby against this stuff. could be a massive swing

We gotta remember how much of this ends up being personal. Bill Ackman simply texted MasterCard leaders to have em pull out of PornHub.

Everyone in finance and tech KNOWS Elon, they simply won't let him get smeared like the PornHub bosses, they'll snap back purely socially

This isn't an endorsement, just that when they circle wagons, Elon will be IN the circle, not outside it

Sex tech has always been kept at arms length. That allowed people to discriminate without seeing social downsides. Elon is the one throwing the party

yeah I think it's a serious concern. Many of these age check providers are new start ups that are simply getting gov contracts through some damn nepotism. They aren't safe and known providers - but we're supposed to give them our ID? It's crap

So I think @WoodhullFreedom and @FSCArmy made some progress against the inspection requirements of 2257s, namely that we're supposed to hold them available for inspection at ANY TIME at any hour without warning. Kind of unconstitutional.

@WoodhullFreedom @FSCArmy I'm not up to date on what's happened since like 2018, though I do work with Woodhull on some survey design stuff and should probably check in.

it's become less important tho, as the ID requirements have moved online, become more incessant but not law

www.ynot.com/appeals-sought-in-fosta-2257-cases/

right now platforms are mostly struggling to deal with ID stuff and 'consent' verification due to MasterCard policies. They've got outsized impact because I think over 50% of all adult transactions use MasterCard.

If platforms don't make MasterCard happy, by 'validating' everything the way they want now (since October 15th 2021), they lose processing just like PornHub did (even though PH actually did all that, it was just a billionaire makeing a phone call - Ackman)

It's VERY unclear if MasterCard will ACTUALLY be able to pull this on Elon. They are headed to a fight, that's for damn sure. But keep in mind it's totally up to MasterCard to enforce those terms. Antis pushed them while meeting with MC but MC may simply decide not to enforce

It's OFTEN the case porn sites have to jump through all sorts of compliance hoops while "not porn" site that still post porn get away with stuff, but again this is gonna come down to bargaining power and the man with the money has most of it. MC is big but not THAT big

It's hard to really just compare numbers and see who is more powerful, like MasterCard has a 318b market cap give or take, with a net worth probably a little under that? So like Musk as a PERSON is close to the holdings of the entirety of MasterCard as a banking entity

and Musk and his investors, as I've noted, blow that value out of the water when all combined.

so they can actually negotiate with MasterCard instead of having terms dictated. MasterCard does NOT want to get dumped by Musk's OTHER companies, which is has NO power over.

I know a lot of weird nerds assume power Musk has that he doesn't, he can't work miracles, but this is specifically just getting some banks to back off on arbitrary policy they already enforce arbitrarily

(like you can use American Express to buy game of thrones DVDs dude)

hahahah oh man if Elon Musk can watch all the porn posted to Twitter, awesome. he would need some kind of 500 screen contraption flickering videos and to watch all day every day. This is a fun thought game actually, let me think on this one for a sec lol

There's no good numbers on the informal and independent porn industries, so we can't really answer this but I imagine it would take many more lifetimes than anyone gets to watch all the porn that's online on any given day, let alone produced daily.

gizmodo.com/how-much-porn-does-the-internet-hold-5899327

Like on Chaturbate right now, just by glancing, ONLY under "female" there are 6,552 people LIVE. This is porn happening right now. Much is recorded, then shared on onlyfans, etc. Hard to esimtate feed sites.

just SO much porn. No one could watch all of it

(twitter wouldn't let me make that tweet with the link lol)

yes, it's going to lead to all of that. I've said many times myself. these videos people have to make now for studios, holding their ID, saying their name, etc. It's perfect for identity theft. And everyone is making porn - blackmail material! it's bad.

yes, absolutely. Facebook bans sex workers and is by any metric the worst site online! way worse than twitter or reddit, people just seem to ignore it often for some reason.. well, usually because it already bans porn.

yup, you cannot organize leftists at the street level without sexworkers. we do a lot of the fucking work to keep it going. sex workers having more stability here will give more energy and power to every left social movement. they should thank us

i'm in no way for surveillance, but if we worry about this we should be talking about how every sex worker's content is scraped into all sorts of orgs and law enforcement to look for 'trafficking' and pad their budgets. the pervs.

yeah probably because this isn't a public company anymore. absolutely no shareholders to be beholden to. these aren't public hedge funds either mostly, AFAIK.

There's gonna be some push and pull but we're only hearing this because the call has been made

there is a LOT of good data on this with other sites. if Elon actually wants to appease some of these folks about moderation, letting sex workers stay while dumping nazis would be the way to go! I don't have faith he will do the second though lol

OH btw this is NOT getting connected very well but Twitter is working on a LOT of features for premium accounts - and these are absolutely linked to adult efforts. Creators will be quick to get into the paid DMs - like OF messaging or niteflirt!

I also assume that accts charging will be verified - it's funny because they will likely have to pay to be part of the program that can charge, I won't be surprised. But even 20/mo and a low percentage means sex workers get a bigger cut than they are now!

so a LOT of these new "verified" perks make a LOT more sense in that context. It's not too uncommon to have to pay a fee to get processing, and 8/mo is a low fee compared to some store costs. Verified means more promo too

right now it's hard to get seen

I also imagine we see OTHER differences - like possibly the return of the chronological timeline as default which Musk has said he likes - and makes a LOT more sense for premium content where you REALLY WANT to see what you pay for, not have it randomly hidden.

I imagine verified/commercial posters on twitter will be boosted to the top of the feed, so twitter can make money too.

This would be HUGE for adult creators. No more being hidden in tags or search. No more having to make 100 posts for your fans to see one of them.

The ability to directly message tens of thousands or even a million fans at once? that is monetization power sex workers have NEVER had before - in fact creators on NO social media platform have ever had before. Being able to DM all followers for a couple bucks? Insane value.

it's clear that VERY few of the people in tech press truly understand creator economy by how they are laughing about these features and costs - a hell of a lot of creators would pay TODAY for more dependable interaction with their fan base. I'd even consider it for organizing!

if I could pay to DM everyone who follows me when there is new bad legislation coming and I need to mobilize them, and twitter said this was the intended usage, I'd use the HELL out of it. DMing people is incredibly effective.

the first few days of this will be a gold rush. "Oh! Mia Khalifa messaged me to tell me she has a new video up, the first hardcore video she's posted in years!"

Ppl with tons of followers on here could instantly change their entire lives with direct DMs and PPV in DMs

Oh yeah, a side topic but there is absolutely NO case for
"porn industry" being where abuse happens for a simple reason - there are no kids there, not in part time jobs not anything

The 3 places kids are abused, by the stats, are school, church, home.

haha you'd think a lot, right? But you may be surprised. Fans I've talked to really like direct DMs on platforms like OF, even if it's often PPV. They WANT content from the people they sub to. I imagine you can only DM people who subscribe to you.

we'll see a shift in how people subscribe, certainly, but I actually miss the old days where you subscribed to something when you wanted to see it, not when you wanted to see it once a month randomly near some targeted ads!

Fans will likely silence messages from some people and leave it on from others, just like I like to get @LimitedRunGames games emails but mark every democratic candidate one I get as SPAAM SPAM SPAM

It's an option I think has been under explored, for no good reason. OF does it!

@LimitedRunGames Question in DM, "did they change their mind?"

Well companies like twitter are a lot of people - some have been working hard on making this happen, others against it. Now it's all run by Musk. He probably saw a stack of projects in progress and greenlit this one.

@LimitedRunGames right? haha and I know I'm maybe being a little too hopeful, but really we're hearing about this reaching the final decision, the call is to implement now. So it's what I've been hoping for 2 years now !

they may still fumble, but this is good stuff

@LimitedRunGames haha it's just the rare case of someone not being hypocritical, they're all masturbators lol

On this note, remember this platform is trying to squeeze 83m dollars a month out of this site (that has made -200 million total over time), basically TODAY. So they are greenlighting everything by a simple +/- diagnosis. it's crazy over there right now

lol sometimes I think sex workers are the only people on the planet who see platform issues clearly because they're the only people on the planet who have had to learn and re-learn 500 different platforms as they keep going down or changing

considering those are the only options we get, really, yes, I'm with you on this one.

seems I'd rather have Musk on sex work than Bill Ackman, for better or worse. fuck Bill Ackman!

re: paid DMs/DMing your followers

they only seem to be doing it for DMing your subs, and they actually are mocking up a separate tab for 'verified' which I assume would include those DMs.

messages on OF are pretty spammy a lot of the time, but it doesn't seem to be hurting the platform or sex workers on it. I think they'll have to give more options for controlling your messages sure, but it's not a bad thing by default!

Patreon lets you!

Mentions

See All

Mike Isaac @MikeIsaac · Nov 3, 2022

Post
From Twitter

informative and helpful thread

Thread by Ashley Lake

Thread

Mentions