If so, I think that's a good thing. This should bring attention to payment processors' ability to effectively kill any type of business they don't agree with.
I'm not sure what the solution is. Should banks be forced to behave as a common carrier? Or do we want private companies to be able to ban the public from purchasing things like pornography and firearms by stopping adults from completing legal transactions?
Let's turn the question around instead: why shouldn't banks be forced to behave as common carriers, at least when it comes to things like processing payments, providing checking accounts, and other such basic services? What good does it do to start a business, only to be told by the banking industry that you can't open a bank account for your perfectly legal business?
I'm not sure if I'd include lending in "basic services." That seems a bit more debatable to me.
I'd include lending in basic services. However it would tie it to pure risk, along with don't let a customer get into too much debt. Pure risk means you only get to look at risk from an actuarial/numbers perspective, nothing more. Too much debt I'm not quite sure how to word into proper legalise but that needs to be done before we can actually do this - maybe just better bankruptcy laws so that risk goes up too high before the customer has too much debt?
The sticking point in my mind for lending is that risk undoubtedly varies by industry. It's not really very sensible to force banks to lend money to businesses without considering what industry they're in. At that point, how do you differentiate a sensible underwriting decision from unfair discrimination?
Pretend that a batch of YC startups are all getting loans rather than ownership purchases. What effective interest rate are they paying? What is the default rate where the startup dies before acquisition/profitability/IPO?
Write a heuristic to determine a fair interest rate given the current prevailing rates, financial history of the company in question, financial history of similar companies, and similar objective and quantifiable subjective factors. Document it. When someone complains, demonstrate to your regulator that your procedure was fair, reasonable, and applied evenhandedly, and to the extent possible is consistent with actual outcomes.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Any new batch of startups is so risky, I can't imagine a bank lending them a cent at any non-usurious interest rate until they've been in business for a few years.
Sure, but not without a personal guarantee from one or more of said executives, I would imagine. At that point, it's effectively the bank lending the money to the exec though, and not lending to the company.
That is the point. They should have numbers to show which industries get rates, and targets that a company meet (how is an open question - it might not be possible) to move to a different rate - either up or down.
That leaves only illegal black markets where those involved avoid banks anyway because banks report activity to the local government. (illegal money laundering schemes do use banks, but there are numbers for banks to use even if they don't know about the illegal side of the business)
Once in a while there is a brand new industry, but they tend to start small enough that banks can figure out numbers before the risk is too big to worry about.
Lending and banking should be considered separate, if related business IMO. And bankers should absolutely be considered common carriers. Lenders should not.
Payment processors are heavily regulated by govts in the jurisdictions they operate in. They're not operating in isolation, rather they act as choke points for policy enforcement.
American companies can only understand lawsuit. Microsoft, Google, Apple as examples in the pasts have been sued to behave. Banks are predominantly protected from lawsuits. Allows class action lawsuits and send ceos to death sentences like what commonly happen in China, problems will auto resolve. Bankers in America rarely get jail sentences. Even Madoff managed to get off several times while a black guy peddling something legit will get shot first and as question later.
I doubt it. I'd imagine one of their top priorities is relationship with models on their site. It's not like they have some crazy proprietary platform that couldn't be copied. If it came out this was a head fake it would damage that trust with models.
The CEO actually blamed banks, not payment processors. He specifically said MasterCard was not to blame, but name-dropped banks that he did blame.
I don't think payment processors would care at all because they're an oligopoly. I doubt most banks would care much either, but maybe they are afraid of losing business from large-volume merchants.
Most likely some alternative banks stepped up and told OnlyFans they'd love to work with them.
Absolutely. They may indeed have had pressure from the banks, but this is a solvable problem. They're servicing pornhub. If this is just about KYC, they can roll out or use one of the myriad identity verification services.
Given that people predictably started leaving the platform, I doubt it. There isn't a social network or content discoverability aspect to the service, so hopping to somewhere else is easy. And people will remain wary of OnlyFans since they could try to restrict content again since they've already shown from the original announcement that they don't really care about supporting NSFW content creators
One effect of the proposed ban would presumably to motivate content creators to look for alternative platforms. If it was a publicity stunt it seems like it would have had a pretty big downside.
I think it's more likely that the banks and Mastercard that were pulling service to them freaked out about being trending topics for three days and agreed to reinstate everything.
I have to think there must also be some requirement that OnlyFans work harder to prevent underage porn as well. Half the news I heard about this mentioned how much of it was on there.
While there may be some, it is worthwhile looking into where that news was coming from. Much of that push was coming from NCOSE, which is pretty much a literal puritanical force. They had success recently with Pornhub, and then moved to OnlyFans.
NCOSE is more or less using the "for the children" approach to try and stomp out all pronogrpahy generally. Their president "has helped draft ordinances to end or curb the impact of sexually oriented businesses such as pornography shops, strip clubs, and related establishments" according to their own website. Members of their board have founded and led pushes to ban and discourage all pornohprahy entirely.
No doubt that some positive changes came in the Pornhub case, hence the significant lack of public pushback there. But I think their true goals are being exposed as they try to push further. Pushing on a platform that has become a key income source for many during a global pandemic was probably not the best idea for them in hindsight. It also got them a lot of public attention they probably didn't want, in good part due to a large voice and push over many recent months by sex workers, many of whom got a voice in articles in the media recently instead of only sources similar to NCOSE.
NCOSE is the renamed successor to the puritanical group "Morality in Media," which was literally founded by some Catholic priests to oppose everything from pornography to blasphemy in Monty Python films.
They don't give a shit about children or sex trafficking– it's all about eliminating availability of things that the Religious Right deemed verboten in the 1960s.
I suppose? But then again it's hard to know what was going on behind the scenes. Did the CEO just save the company from their vendors bankrupting them in a daring display of finger pointing brinkmanship?
If this was actually the strategy behind the move I really admire management’s tenacity. I’m having a hard time connecting the dots as to how or why a bank/payment processor would suddenly reverse course on their decision because of the bad PR suffered by another company.
Maybe? The timeline suggests that they got some sort of assurance from banks they work with, they will not not be bothered. Founder just blamed banks for the whole thing the other day.
I struggle to imagine any bank suddenly deciding they're OK with adult content after all. Apart from the moral outrage risks (like the ones OnlyFans itself has been facing wrt the literal kids on their platform), they don't want to accidentally run afoul of sex trafficking laws either. There's just too many risks in adult content. It's really surprising OnlyFans got as far as it did with adult content.
Plus, something like a small company blaming banks is everyday business for those banks. It won't hurt their PR much in the long term, especially since the older, more conservative sections of the public won't care or be more supportive of the banks here. It sucks but that's how the world is.
I am not sure I agree with 'suddently' characterization. They are not suddenly OK with it. Founder complained to their peer at the financial institution. Onlyfans was probably trying to take care of it internally for a good while ( CYA applies at most financial institutions so it was taking longer than most businesses are used to ). It was only after media outburst that an executive decision was made.
I am relatively certain that behind the scenes, the case of Onlyfans was argued by compliance, legal, PR, sales and their personal rep.
"It's really surprising OnlyFans got as far as it did with adult content."
I am not. You are not allowed to touch lgbtq+ community now. They are way too vocal and companies too scared to agitate them. And a fair amount of complaints came from them.
A lot of th epromise of crypto to a lot of enthusiasts is freedom - freedom from traditional oversight. This can be both good, like being able to send money to people in countries with awful currencies, or bad, like when you don't have regulations to protect people. So it is kind of disappointing to see Coinbase basically reinvent traditional banking but on the blockchain, because then, what's the point?
You don't need Coinbase to move crypto. Sex workers were some of the first to use Bitcoin as an alternative payment. Meaning, a direct wallet to wallet payment.
However, some have indicated that it's not great. Many of their customers supposedly are drunk men. They greatly struggle to make the payment this way, and you can imagine that in this context it can't take too long, or the "mood" is gone.
They are trying to get normalized with mainstream America, not get normalized with the usual crypto fanatics. That means they need to have access to fiat financial systems which in turn means they need to not be associated with anything the old guard generally doesn't like. That includes adult content.
Sex work isn't controversial, it's just a magnet for fraud. The first thing someone does with a stolen payment method is usually go and spend it on porn - or if you're advanced, sets up a money laundering scheme to spend it on "porn" and circulate it back to themselves. It's just the nature of the business.
Really? The first thing someone does with a stolen credit card is to go pay for porn? I would guess so few people pay for porn willingly that that would be a great way to trip all sorts of fraud alarms.
Anecdotally, I had a credit card number get compromised a few years ago. They used it at a Babys-R-Us on the opposite coast. I'm pretty sure they weren't buying porn.
A stolen credit card number doesn't generally go and "spend big" - they go buy luxury items they want. There's no end of "my credit card got done and they went and spent $50 on gas and beer" stories.
At the other side of that there is equally no end of "went and signed up for premium porn content" or PPV cable or whatever - and that's what payment processors tend to get unhappy about.
That makes sense. I've tripped fraud detection alarms on one or another of my cards a few times, and, almost every time I can remember, it was at a gas pump.
I think this is thinking about it backwards. The payment industry are discriminating here on the proportion of payments to porn sites which are fraudulent or disputed, not the proportion of fraudulent or disputed charges which are to porn sites. It can be simultaneously true that the vast majority of fraudulent/disputed payments are not to porn sites and that a very large portion of payments to porn sites are fraudulent or disputed.
It's extraordinary that payment processors don't have any regulations that force them to serve businesses in a neutral fashion. It's weird that they're allowed to play morality police with the Internet even though they have no formal governmental role as such.
You'd think that once the government decides what is and isn't acceptable, the processors would follow that lead. But instead they go a different, more restrictive way.
I guess they want to be everyone's prudish uncle, instead of payment processors.
Exactly, I don't believe that payment processors want to play the role of gatekeepers (after all, they lose revenue for every customer they turn down). They probably just want to show that they can self-regulate to give Congress less of a reason to pass something like this[1].
I think people underestimate how much moral regulation in the US actually comes top-down under the guise of anti-trafficking law (remember SESTA/FOSTA and how it killed Craigslist personals?)
I don't see how common carrier type regulation in the financial services industry could work. You're essentially forcing people to lend out or risk their money with anyone who asks regardless of their financial status or the risk profile of their business. Surely choosing what business risks you are willing to take must be some sort of right?
The only way out of that would be blanket government insurance for payment processors, but that would essentially be a massive subsidy and open to rampant abuses.
You do see that this is specifically an issue with the credit services threatening to refuse the processing of payments and not simply withholding credit. These are two different banking services, and you can support neutral payment processing without supporting neutral (forced in your vocabulary) lending. The reasons that the banks are as regulated as they are everywhere is because of the huge amounts of power that they have by controlling the flow of money. If you deregulated banks you would end up with one bank that controlled the world.
Although not an onlyfans fan, these new Puritan times are dangerous for everything the West supposedly stands for.
The bankers who allegedly have laundered drug money and goodness knows who elses dirty money, now seem to have an issue with those who use the platform safely and responsibly (and all the rest of the OF users) on that platform.
if they are smart they'll move to crypto and hopefully start a movement away from these centralized payment processors. Stuff like this might finally be what causes mainstream adoption
I can't be the only one who's not hot on crypto. Do we really want a world where even the simplest transaction is permanently recorded publicly and cryptographically sealed? The governments will just mandate custodial wallets and we'll be back in the same place with respect to things like forfeitability.
I still don't understand this argument, maybe because I just don't understand enough about crypto currency itself.
What coin is stable enough to use as currency? Unless OnlyFans could pay its employees and services with that said coin (who could then use it elsewhere directly), the company would still have to convert to fiat currency right? And wouldn't that itself affect the coin price?
I am very much a cryptocurrency skeptic, but you could imagine a token which is only used as a medium of exchange. I.e. you convert your USD into the token immediately before making the payment, and the recipient converts it back to USD milliseconds later.
More likely "we managed to get a deal in place with our payment processor". The only reason why they were going to do this was their payment processor saying they would stop processing their payments.
Well Mastercard did update their rules. They did not specifically go and say anything to onlyfans but onlyfans investors/banks looked at the new rules and interpreted them as "well this is now super risky of being shut down at any time" and stopped pumping in more money / loans. Only way to continue from there is to get an actual promise/contract from the processor that no we will not shutdown your stuff on a whim. (or the nuclear option of getting rid of this risky content)
Basically starting October 15th every new piece of content uploaded to OnlyFans needs to be reviewed and have age verification done for all the people involved.
But if I'm an investor, I would be worried that Visa/Mastercard could get pressed by one of the anti-porn groups at any moment, and then poof, there goes my investment. It's better from a risk perspective to go ahead and get OF into compliance by banning adult material before buying into the platform.
Lol, you're right, but some folks don't think that far ahead. And if the owners of OF want to eat at the financial trough, their only option might be to try to see what they can get away with.
oh, ok. i was actually looking now for the source, I remember I read that mastercard delined forcing them,but there was nothing mentioned on that article about who actually requested this.
thanks for the information
edit: converting the url posted below this into archive link, to skip paywall: https://archive.is/Aqx8x
I hope the assurances secured means that OF will verify consent per MC reqs. [edit - seems they have: “We’re already fully compliant with the new Mastercard rules, so that had no bearing on the decision” ^^]
Also I suspect their biggest money makers were leaving, here's the first screen from a competitor's ^ 'join as a creator' page tailor-made from this:
>Earn 100% payouts from every new user from now until Oct 1, 2021!
>Sign up
>Leaving another platform? Not to worry! Our team is on hand to help you transfer your content to FanCentro!
With all the PR a major bank that deals with high risk would have stepped in. There is too much volume and processing to turn a blind eye from this deal.
It should be noted that the cams see a lot lower chargebacks than subscriptions because of the shady tactics a lot of subscription adult sites use. Example would be not noticing a "$1 trial" addon being offered that recurs at like $44.95/month.
The rest of the chargebacks can be offset with 3DS/3DS 2 to shift the liability off the merchant (In this case OnlyFans) and onto the issuing bank.
I can answer any questions within reason if someone wanted to know anything more.
Source: Worked/wrote code for a high risk payment processor with volume +$1B/Yr.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and only my own.
Indeed, but it's odd that creditcard companies are so hard on merchants. Surely they could just offer some program where they hold payments in escrow until the transaction is final and just subtract chargebacks from the escrow account as necessary.
They already do this. Credit card transactions don't "finalize" for 180 days. Until they do, Visa can reach into the merchant's bank account and claw back the funds plus a fee.
Some people who buy porn will lie to other people in their life and open chargebacks if they’re found out, and dealing with those people is a nightmare because they’re lying and they get loud and angry and litigious to try to sell the lie so they don’t lose social standing and/or in-person sex.
Something like Apple Pay, that is rooted in a biometric/pin-verified payment (low fraud) rather than “enter your card number manually” (high fraud) would be a godsend for the industry, since it would detect the lie in the fraudulent chargebacks as described above.
Human beings in many world cultures are such a huge pain when it comes admitting and openly talking about paying for sex and sex-tangential things, that I can understand and grudgingly concede that higher processing fees are necessary. I do not know if they need to be 25%, but they do definitely need to be higher than for other industries.
The risk in this kind of model was much lower when I worked at the payment processor. Direct content like this was always lower chargebacks than subscriptions/trials.
OnlyFans should be aggressively poaching people from the other companies in this space but pay them SF salaries. The expertise they'll get hiring existing employees in the space will help them.
If you've already worked in this industry you'll know to do 3ds/3dsv2 to shift some liability to issuing banks. The card networks have different rules based off their region like MC NA and MC Europe. There are some loopholes to shifting your acquiring process into other regions to get more liability shift as a merchant. Bin routing to maximize your approval ratio, the higher your non-chargeback volume the easier it is to deal with the chargeback volume.
Introduce micro transactions to pad volume. Users less likely to chargeback you want to have each micro transaction as a standalone charge because it increases your volume at the cost of additional card fees. Users unknown or likely to chargeback you want to "batch" or roll these charges into a single charge because then it is only a single chargeback that can happen instead of multiple smaller ones.
Yes and no. It's not feasible for me, and I don't know you but I'm gonna go ahead and day it's not feasible for you either. The barriers to entry are extremely high, regulators need to be convinced you know what you're doing, as do banks, and you need to be accepted by enough places for it to be worthwhile people paying for things through you and merchants paying your fee to accept you. You can choose to do only parts of the payments processing picture and that's easier, but it's not easy. Bottom end startup costs would likely be in the hundreds of thousands, ignoring actually developing your payments platform (so just to get everyone onside and regulatory approvals etc), more realistically a budget of say low tens of millions might get one off the ground.
Does anyone remember Tumblr? No? We’ve already experienced what it’s like for a brand to lose any relevance by abandoning the very community that made it successful.
Yes? I check my Tumblr timeline pretty much every day - there's a lot of content there (and I only follow a handful of people.) Anyone suggesting Tumblr is dead is mistaken.
(And yeah, the daily posts are way down but that's after 8 years of neglect and mishandling. Any social network would suffer the same!)
Yahoo are not known for their savvy approach to acquisitions - they frequently paid well over the odds for the cachet of ownership until Verizon snapped them up.
> to ~3M right
But we don't know how much they were valued at when Verizon bought the Yahoo group in 2017. If they considered Tumblr only worth $3M then before they banned porn, then the porn ban has done nothing to the valuation. Anything else is just conjecture.
The extremely quick turnaround does suggest this as one of the more plausible explanations, but it's an incredibly stupid, counterproductive publicity stunt if so.
Just a better argument to force crypto, get a few exclusivity models and even if you have one or a few porn sex worker influences as a loss leader, you gain leverage - then it's worth it.
I wish this were true, but it's not that simple. For businesses, there is a lot of 'unknowns' with Crypto. It's regulated differently across jurisdictions, and Crypto in the USA is subject to things like anti-money-laundering and different taxable events when it's exchanged.
Many of the adult sites that have tried using crypto for payments have reported that less than two percent of their users are willing to pay with crypto. Until it becomes as easy as using a credit card or PayPal, crypto isn't going to be the savior of adult content.
I'm sure these puritanical payment gateways and processors have no problem taking fees for sales of guns, cigarettes, and all varieties of snake oil. But porn? No that's simply too much!
Many vendors do block sales of firearms (or anything resembling 2A) due to similar risk factors. It's extremely difficult to find a gateway and processor that's 2A friendly. The small number of vendors that are 2A friendly usually require an FFL to further mitigate risk.
If you can find a gateway and processor that has an underwriting team that will not require an FFL, that would be a sight to behold.
I feel like you could just sell an access code that allows you to download content rather than the content itself and be perfectly within paypals acceptable use policies.
Paypals policy bans using it for payment of any digital adult content [0].
Many artists still use it for nsfw commissions, but every payment is a risk of getting your entire account banned simply due to a bad comment in the note field.
Surely both LAMP and MEAN stacks are already perfectly capable of hosting pornography? It's not as if the bits are different from other types of image.
Tumblr is getting a subscription feature, and as I heard their porn-content came back to old strength after they weed out some years ago. Maybe there is a platform for this over there.
Not been to a porn site recently, or any media hosting site really? They all look exactly the same and offer the same features, so presumably they're already using some commodity off-the-shelf hosting platform for video, images, and live streams with sign-up and payment.
The actual barrier is very few performers are popular enough on their own to be able to afford hiring people who can run servers with this software for them, but the few who are often do have "club{NAME}.com" sites for their own exclusive content.
I guess you can expect companies to start using the defence of many politicians, just create as much noise and kick up as much dirt as possible distracting from whatever the main issue is (in this case child porn on your platform [1]).
They were never going to ban adult content were they. Cynical in the extreme.
EDIT: I’ve updated this comment with a BBC investigation that suggests they had quite lax child porn policies. Do any of the down-voters really believe OnlyFans were genuine about removing all adult content?
Not at all, I was just wondering if OnlyFans banning adult content was a distraction tactic (from the BBC investigation or something else), it seems extremely likely as it doesn’t make any sense for a porn site to ban pornography!
What makes you think that OF is any different than any other platform? Do you think they all struggle with this problem or do you think it's unique to OF?
I find that news report to be pretty uncompelling. They are using lots of weasel wording to make it sound like they have evidence of widespread jailbait, bestiality, and incest (a non-issue between two consenting adults), when really they have nothing. They have "leaked documents" suggesting that accounts posting illegal material are warned instead of shut down immediately, and then they give third hand testimony of examples of illegal content moderators have seen. Notice that there is no attempt to quantify the amount of illegal content. But here we are, trembling in our boots about it.
> Christof - not his real name - says on some days, he has viewed up to 2,000 photos and videos looking for content prohibited by the site. He uses lists of keywords to search within bios, posts and private messages between creators and their subscribers.
> He says he has found illegal and extreme content in videos - including bestiality involving dogs and the use of spy cams, guns, knives and drugs. Some material is not actively searched for by moderators as frequently as he believes it should be, says Christof, despite being banned under the platform's terms of service.
Oh! Well if Cristof thinks they aren't doing enough I guess they must be shut down!
Possibly. Haven't read through all 5k comments on the previous posts.
Also, it was actually meant as a genuine question, not a snarky drive-by comment. I have only superficial knowledge of both platforms, so it would be nice to know whether there are some fundamental differences beyond "NSFW / Not NSFW".
I guess they offer similar subscription services but it seems to me (at least) that they serve completely different niches. For example, if a content creator says "check out my OnlyFans for subscriber-only content" versus "check out my Patreon for subscriber-only content", I would expect that they are selling completely different things.
Another parallel could be comparing HomeDepot and HobbyLobby. Both stores sell you things for DIY stuff, but they target different kinds of DIYers (even if they could sell some of the same items).
> For example, if a content creator says "check out my OnlyFans for subscriber-only content" versus "check out my Patreon for subscriber-only content", I would expect that they are selling completely different things.
I think there are more users of Patreon that uses it as a subscription donation service than there are on OnlyFans, with the primary content being available for free to anyone. Game reviews, mods and web comics comes to mind. I have no idea how large portion of the primary customer base those are for patreon.
Kind of? There are some tech differences on what the creators can do. Especially around video/live streaming that are all handled on site instead of externally like Patreon.
OnlyFans does have features that patreon doesn't that really improve the functionality for any type of creators; finer grained control over visibility of posts (you can sell things for additional money on top of the subscription cost), built in live streaming and video.
Patreon is really barebones, for example to host video just for Patrons you have to go through other sites which lets users leak out the info to access it since it's not usually directly tied to their Patreon account. There's no built in support for livestreaming on Patreon at all. All in all Patreon is a super basic private text blog.
That's good they really need to provide more to their users than they do now. I get why because serving video is extremely expensive but not being able to do a properly private video on platform is a big gap.
The vast majority of patreon content is exposed like this where you can sign up, grab the content links, and then continue viewing the content after you unsubscribe before paying anything.
My biggest shock was how much "PR" was generated on Reddit, and how many sexworkers really do use the platform.
I knew it was a thing, I knew of the memes, but to see both sides in arms over a company vs branding, creating their own website and content - and vanity domain as well.
People really do just want a one click solution for creating adult content, and consuming adult content.
And the memes, I think they're pretty toxic, 4chan, incel, reddit, twitter memes - I never knew there was that much angst.
COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard. There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine. Across the whole world, too*. Many can easily make more than min wage, and in certain niches you probably don't even have to be 'conventionally beautiful' (sorry to use this term, but it's important I think) to make a living or solid portion of a living on there.
For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
And if you price model right, you don't need thousands of fans, just a couple really dedicated superfans/whales.
* Consider the value of dollars/euros/pounds in poorer countries!
Bhad Bhabie (cash me outside meme girl) made over $1M in 6 hours and said she could retire right now from the amount of money she has made off OF. And she's not doing "porn" or even posting fully nude photos.
There's a big movement to gain a lot of followers on social media like TikTok and then redirect those followers to their $5/month OnlyFans. There are a lot of people making a living or at least significantly boosting their income from this model, and they don't have to leave the house to do it.
I have an acquaintance who I know made ~$1500 in 2 weeks, just after work occasionally. She had been on the site already, the only reason I know the amount made during that time is she did it as a fundraiser and donated it all to a non-profit. I'm sure it's a distribution with a long tail, but I think it's probably easier to have a side gig on OF provide you with a little supplemental income rather than Etsy.
Though I can say with considerable certainty that a lot of wannabe Twitch streamers think that being a streamer just means having people watch you play a game, which may be true for story-driven games that don't get a lot of viewers, since it creates a more movie-like experience, and may be true for highly-competitive games where you can watch someone make amazing plays. But for the rest, you need to have the charisma and creativity to create entertaining commentary and audience interaction.
Nobody wants to watch an average Joe play World of Warcraft.
I was proud of my JTV channel. I actually used to vlog and chat to people. They regularly featured me too. I wonder how much I could have made in today’s market..
Every “social” or user generated platform is like that. Handful of people make serious money, then a small middle class and 90% are just trying to chase their dream while making <$100 a month
OF is significantly different from other social media in that the adult market has a lot of really weird market factors that make even new market participants able to access significant revenue. Most OF people aren't making 10 million, but it's better to compare OF to patreon where most small users are still pulling in a few hundred dollars a month at least - and that's a pretty significant amount if you've graduated from school into a pandemic market.
I also wonder if OF customers prefer paying girls who have less fans. This allows the person paying to have more personal interaction and to have more influence/control over the girl for less money. So market forces therefore would drive a long tail
The top earners on OnlyFans make a lot of money indeed. There was recently a great interview with Amouranth [1] where she talked about her work.
Making $1.4 million per month and growing, has 4 employees, outsources every chore she can, posts content on all the social media platforms, and grinds 12 hour days on Twitch. [2] Doesn't spend most of the money, is learning about and trying out investments.
Interestingly she doesn't think that this type of top-heavy earnings situation will be sustainable, that the revenue will be more evenly distributed in the future. Even so, she considers her biggest competition to not be up-and-coming people, but instead existing influencers who might bring their audience to OnlyFans.
Definitely not a common success story, but it's pretty interesting how it is possible to have insane success when applying well-reasoned growth strategies and keeping up the grind.
Women are also overrepresented on the side of loosing job.
Mostly artly because women work in segments that were hit harder - services and the like. And partly because childcare is more on them, mothers were even more likely to loose jobs.
>For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
Because after shit pay being the desk girl at Walmart Tire Center for 2yr you can easily convert that into a service writer job <fast forward 40yr> and then retire from your job as regional support manager for <company that makes industrial doodad>
Compare with thotting around on the internet where you can make a ton of money up front but you're basically racing the clock because your body won't be nearly as lucrative of an income at 30 and you'll be starting from square one-ish. Can you potentially take the cash and pivot into a career that will carry you to retirement? Sure, but it takes a work ethic and level of discipline that is uncommon.
It's like the female equivalent of being a marine rifleman for several enlistments. You get out at ~30 with few marketable skills, hopefully a good work ethic and a high liklihood of f-ed up knees.
The economy won't support that many Walmart Tire Centers either. That was just an example. My point was that there are paths from these "crap jobs" to "real career" and traveling said paths require about the same level of "how do I tee up my next move for more money" long term thinking as being a successful camgirl.
You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool, but apparently the economy doesn't obey the same rules of common sense.
There is no reason one cannot thot and do something else. Many of them seem to be enrolled in advanced education. Likewise, a good thot income can fund a future, either going to school at 30, when you have a much better idea of who you are, or funding a more traditional business, or snapping up a few properties.
Likewise, they might be cagey enough to learn the backend of their backend business, and come out of it with video editing skills and whatnot, possibly segueing into an advanced education in media.
Advanced education is a rough form for most sex workers as most companies will not hire people who have their porn all over. Certainly not in America and definitely not in the rest of the world. Sometimes we think of Europe as being more 'liberal' for example, but they are really more communitarian. Open minded but still culturally very traditional.
For some professions and companies it won't matter but for others it'll matter a lot.
Because we have just started with all of this, and we also don't know the future, it's hard to 'price in' what the future cost of doing this kind of work with respect to future options.
That said, Sylvester Stallone did porn films, but that's also a specific industry, pre-internet.
Well, it should not be that big of a challenge to leave it out from one's resume. Especially if you are studying at the same time so there would be no gap in the CV.
Yes, because it's impossible to ever change careers or apply your work ethic to gaining new skills. The idea that you don't have marketable skills having been in the military is also the biggest piece of bunk I've ever heard and you really have no idea what you are talking about.
When you leave the military with an infantry MOS and without leadership experience (which is the situation most people who quit after 4yr are in) all you have is a proven ability to work hard and put up with bullshit. You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been a warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period of time and on lower ground than someone who at least has industry adjacent experience. Being able to show up and work hard confers a much stronger advantage than it used to when applying for entry level jobs but it's not particularly unique. Yes you can apply a your work ethic to learning skills but that requires a kind of self-starting that we both know not everyone in the military develops.
If you do a 4 year stint in the infantry and don't come away with some sort of leadership experience, the problem isn't your lack of experience, it's you didn't take advantage of the opportunities presented to you.
> When you leave the military with an infantry MOS and without leadership experience all you have is a proven ability to work hard and put up with bullshit.
But, from the contact I’ve had with the military (been close to several people who have either enlisted or commossioned experience, did the ROTC basic camp but chose not to contract) that's not particularly likely unless you are either actively avoiding or completely unsuited for leadership.
And even then you’ll probably have some leadership experience.
> You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been a warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period of time and on lower ground than someone who at least has industry adjacent experience.
Even if you somehow manage to be in that place skill-wise (and I think, leadership skills aside, that's unlikely), you are still better off career-wise, because essentially all public and many, especially large, private employers apply systematic positive preference for veterans in hiring.
You've learned a variety of skills, probably had to face some challenging missions, been exposed to other cultures, learned to work within an organization, probably have highly conscientious posture.
Anyone in 10 years and never had a leadership position at all you'd have to question a bit (they should for sure be sergeant) but ideally would be prepared to be a regional manager for retail or Wallmart Center Manager. The more easy going and communicative would work in sales. Almost anything operationally oriented.
Contrast that with a sex worker who will unfortunately have a narrow set of options because a lot of companies just won't hire for that reason.
Leadership, accountability, management, planning large scale operations, cross-team coordination, team building, dealing with bureaucracy and large organizations, dealing with rapidly shifting priorities, etc. There are so many marketable skills that you will gain from being in the military and the infantry has one of the fastest paths to leadership positions.
The worst managers I have worked with were ex-military. They had no clue how to deal with highly skilled knowledge workers. They were probably fine leading grunts but the skills doesn’t transfer.
absolute best managers i have worked with were ex-military. in general, academy grads are all very good. also well connected across society.
a lot of difference between a 10 year Staff Sgt and a flag officer.
when the take is so bad you need to go look and see if it matches other takes the person has posted. 'high liklihood of f-ed up knees' dear god who raised you and why. 'easily convert that into a service writer job' this is bias confirming insanity. There is no easy conversion from tire center desk girl to anything but tire center desk girl II for 3% more pay.
Reality check is that desk girl don't have as much upward mobility as you suggest. Most of low level employees in these jobs don't have the opportunity to go much up.
Practically nobody in any job has upward mobility without jumping ship. You have to job hop to move up in pretty much every industry. That's how it is these days. Selling a ton of brakes for Firestone or Jiffy Lube or whatever certainly puts your resume among the ones that get seriously considered for a service writer job.
Many factors can lead to this, but that's not surprising, the law of distributions when it comes to things like this is that there are incredible earners and then a massive drop off and long tail.
> for equivalent of a full time job.
You added this, I don't doubt that some people put in a lot more effort than the monetary amount they get back- but the inverse is also true and no source claims that "you get $180 for a full time workload", because that's impossible to measure at scale.
FWIW that's an average not median income with a ton of caveats ^ from the source. I'm confident though that only the first two screens of OF content creators make the bulk of the income though.
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In Germany, all Craftsmen are just laughing. Tiler, Carpenter, electrician, etc.. all of them have enough to do, can choose their clients and their wages. I understand that HN always will tend to talk about CS, but Craftsmen are doing their 40k/year, easily. The Salary potential is just increasing.
So sick of seeing these wildly inflated numbers, they increase after every post I'm sure. Most of us here who are software devs are not earning close to 150k, stop using a few SF salaries as the baseline for the rest of us. It is really annoying.
Ok, so let's not use inflated Numbers for the trades either. According to the BLS, the median Software Developer makes $110k. The median carpenter makes $34k. There are also nearly 5x the number of Developer jobs then carpenters.
It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc, the story is similar to developers, high median salary with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.
I know that your talking about the US, but I assure you no Danish carpenters work for $34K, unless they are still in training. You can easily triple that $34K which places you nicely in the same area as a developer with 10 to 15 years of experience.
The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely high even compared to one of the most expensive countries in the world.
Sorry, but without some sort of source, I am skeptical, but also acknowledge that different markets and economies will reward labor in different ways. So when it comes to the US this is a common talking point on the English speaking internet, "the trades pay well", "my buddy makes $150k a year as a carpenter, so you should think about becoming a carpenter too", etc. The fundamental problem is that while yes, there are people who make good money in the trades, on average, it simply isn't true, as opposed to being a software engineer, where the average employee is compensated quite well.
My sister has a trade and has talked about the salary distribution enough that I think it’s going to be very hard for anyone to ever agree on numbers.
She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller) group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there’s nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes home after work and their overtime is limited to nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two groups that if they’re analyzed together, the statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the typical tradesperson.
I actually wouldn't be surprised to find that most labor markets are bi-modal (but certainly not all). Which is why I used median wage and not average wage, because the median is very likely to grab the common tradespersons compensation experience whereas the average is likely to be skewed high by the upper distribution group.
Sfba is one of the most expensive areas. The 250k tc number is completely reasonable for sr level (~10yoe) engineers here especially if they changed jobs in the pst few years. If that’s your family’s single source of income you can barely afford a mortgage here.
The big upside of the trades is that after working for journeyman wages for a while, learning the job, and establishing a reputation, it becomes possible to own your own business, either by founding or buying out a retiring boomer, of which there are many. At that point your earning potential skyrockets into the millions.
The problem with this is the same as assuming that every developer is earning a GAFAM salary. It just isn't applicable to the average employee in the given profession. I'm also extremely skeptical that yearly profit potential is in the millions for trade businesses except in extremely rare cases.
It’s pretty easy to search business broker websites for $1 million and up EBITDA businesses. I can’t answer your question about prevalence from that since I don’t know on average what percentage are for sale.
I do know though that it’s pretty common for the seller to write the note financing the deal, especially when the buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is often within reach.
Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn’t be my first pick.
If you start selling millions in contracts, then are really doing trades any more? You are a business manager and you need business management skills. Many people go into trades specifically to avoid that kind of life, they could have gotten a business degree instead if that is what they wanted.
> It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr minimum, and that is after the employers cut.
A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over 100/hr.
An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.
Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of that.
The trades people I know are booked out months. The general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and he comes in at an affordable $60/hr!
Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater, have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they designed themselves.
It really puts in context how software development isn't a particularly good career, depressingly.
The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that have established themselves have very flexible work schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.
Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation" (aka don't dare take vacation ever).
Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.
> But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.
I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's something you learn to live with but I appreciate that the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.
Keep in mind that most trade work isn’t mentally stimulating. That may sound fine to you, but as someone who bounces back and forth between a job that is and isn’t - it can be rough in it’s own way.
It’s boring and you can practically feel your brain turn to slush.
I've never worked 60 hours. I've managed 40h or under for 20+ years. I've worked two full time jobs and have done 60h for periods. I would not recommend it.
I feel like you may be suffering from the grass is greener on the other side.
First, work schedule. Keep in mind that, as another commenter pointed out, tradespeople often go through booms and busts, just like any other profession. The difference is that with tradespeople its a lot more obvious, since they still on a job for a few weeks, rather than a few years. On the boom, the tradespeople get a better deal out of it, because they get more work, whereas office workers of course only have the one job. In the busts, the office workers come out better, as the tradespeople have less work, whereas the office workers remain the same as they were in the boom.
Next, hours and vacation. I may be an outliner here, but my hours are the standard 9-5 and I get a fixed 30 days vacation a year, and flexible working (including working from home). As for unlimited vacation = no vacation, and 60+ hours is required, that seems more like a bad office culture/employer, no different than a tradesman would get a bad client. Again, its only more noticeable in office jobs because your there for a long time, whereas a bad client will only be a problem for a number of weeks (though potentially more if they hold off on paying). While we're at it, the same could be said of "their experience is respected". That's based on your employer, not your job.
Finally, standups, agile and office politics (assuming thats what you meant by BS). Its true, tradespeople don't need to suffer with that, but they do need to suffer through a hell of a lot of health and safety precautions and government red tape. Of course you can get some cowboys who don't bother with that, but that seems no different than the programming teams that don't do standups, agile or office politics (apart from the fact that one team is less likely to kill people). I would also mention the physical health issues that it can cause, but programmers get a similar thing through sitting for so long and you graciously didn't mention that.
I don't think being a tradey is a bad job, not at all. Its just not perfect, and like any job has its pros and cons. I too have fantasised about going into that line of work, but I imagine if I did, I'd end up fantasizing sitting in a comfy chair all day building software. As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.
Sure but now you're talking about an above median plumber in an above median col area. A similarly above average software dev in Seattle is probably pulling in 250k/year all in.
The two major employers in Seattle (Amazon and Microsoft) aren't paying 250K to new grads. Their packages are closer to 175K starting.
Speaking of "250K" as a number, every single offer over 250K+ for someone with no experience, on levels.fyi, in seattle, was either for someone hired at L4 at Google or Facebook (usually this means a PhD hire), or a Facebook "rockstar" signing bonus, which I think levels.fyi mis-estimates (the "recurring" comp is lower than 250K, you get something like 120 base, 40 stock/yr, 100K signing (+ your normal annual bonus of ~15K). That's 200K/year over four years, not 250).
And last time I checked those packages had serious compensation cliffs after the first few years!
Software developer compensation is seriously bi-modal, most developers even in big cities are working at a fraction of FAANG pay, doing routine maintenance work.
Ok but the person you are replying to literally just went with average to avoid rare geographic salaries.
Finally in seattle a top electrician makes 100/hr or ~200k/year. A top developer with similar years of experience makes $500k and never has to crawl around in your nasty attic and gets amazing healthcare and free food.
They are not inflated numbers they are what you can get working for a set of top companies with deep pockets competing over the same talent. It varies but 150k is entry level comp pretty much anywhere they hire in the United States [0].
It’s not “fair” but it’s worth your time to look into getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the most market value their.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted because this is accurate. If you are a low level dev at a big company in a major city you will get a salary of at least $100k, a bonus, and stock options. They easily combine to get you to $150k, and I’m talking entry level roles, it goes up considerably from there.
Well I'm obviously in the wrong market then! Down here in Oklahoma, I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and I'm only at $110k, plus around $10k in bonuses a year. There's very few opportunities for salary increases unless I start looking for remote work outside of the state or I opt to move into a management role.
Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.
If you're in the US, don't be annoyed with these numbers; learn from them. If you get on LinkedIn and expect > $200k, you may be surprised by what you can achieve.
You should line up several interviews all in the same week and play the offers against one another. At least one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs, and you may be shocked at the amount of compensation you can get.
Yeah, honestly if you're in SFBA/Seattle/NYC, this is not an unreasonable salary expectation for someone with a decade of experience. Especially if you're carefully selecting job opportunities that line up well with skill growth.
I only have 1 YOE and I'll say the numbers sound right. A friend with 2 YOE got 2 290K offers. Another friend/former co-worker with 8 YOE got a 400K+ offer.
These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.
You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar is very high at these places.
People do that with every job it seems. Always somebody talking about random tradesmen making $100k+ but in the vast majority of cases they make nowhere near that.
Please stop implying that $150k+ salaries are reserved for FAANG tier companies and SF only. It might have been true 5-10 years ago (and even then, i am a bit skeptical of that lower boundary of 5 years), but it is far from the truth in 2021.
Literally interviewed with a small startup (around 20 people total headcount) less than a week ago. The offer was for a base salary of $180k+grand promises of equity given out that should grow 15x and make one rich, but whatever, because equity at this point is just imaginary monopoly money worth pretty much nothing right now, so lets omit that part completely. But even with that in mind, $180k of pure cash just from base salary is more than doable. And I am not even a senior level or anything like that. Technically the company is in NYC, but the position is fully remote, which makes it even more lucrative for people who want to live in cheap COL states (no salary adjustment, which works out great for this scenario).
This is very true, but you hear the same thing from craftsmen. Another commenter further up said that a HVAC repairmen told him that making $200k/year in that job was pretty average, and a reply to that pointed out the median was $50k/year.
Not saying I disagree, but yeh, its not unique to software dev it seems
Ok, but I'm not from NY/SF but I'm assuming based on the small amount of time that I spent there, that every thing is more expensive there, including housing and medical care... In Germany (Europe?) I would say that a Software Developer salary floats between 30k/y - 100k/y.
Yeah, it’s more expensive in the big cities, but if you by a house you tend to profit from that increase. It’s hard to see that when in the early stages of your career, but I’m glad I stuck it out and didn’t move to a low cost area.
Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and my house has appreciated a ton.
If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city, stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock options that are worth something, but a house when you can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss called it the “get rich slowly plan”. As a person that grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I can assure you it pays off.
I don’t know if the price increases will keep happening at the same historical rates. Although it isn’t out of the realm of possibility, I have a hard time believing that the houses in my neighborhood in 5-10 years will go from $2-3m to $4-6m.
Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn’t buy it for the sake of expecting it to go up in value. I’d buy it because you need housing.
It's not hard to believe. First, the big caveat, what I'm about to say ignores the possibility of huge catastrophe (environmental collapse, world war, meteor hits the earth) because if such a catastrophe happens, most of this won't matter a whole lot.
Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in a big city, the populations are growing faster than new housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space to build many new single family homes so those will go up even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.
I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble. Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it, and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower than rents for a comparable place.
Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and our population has historically (there are signs this might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does, things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.
Edit: also, I’m not suggesting that your home value will double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.
It's actually a more complex topic that it appears at first. Some things are much more expensive, but some are identical to everywhere else - eg:
- vacations
- cars
- all online purchases
- most hobbies
- etc...
When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car. Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.
Google has an office in Frankfurt, and SWEs there get paid far more than 30k - 100k/yr. The comp delta between google SF SWE and google Frankfurt SWE is less than 30% (at same level obv).
I totally agree that the non-FAANG companies have terrible dev pay. But most of the FAANG companies have offices well beyond just SF/NYC, so the opportunities are definitely available.
Craftsmen who are willing to do a small job for me are so hard to find right now, they're busy enough NONE of them in my area need the business. Every quote I get is either overblown "to make it worth my time", or I simply get declined. Ontario, Canada.
That’s interesting- this is the third time I’ve heard this about Ontario in less than a week. Do you have any idea what’s driving this? Another person in the same boat believes that a lot of people are fixing up homes to sell while the market is hot. Another person believes that it’s a supply problem - trades people left Ontario for Alberta, lost their jobs there and can’t afford to move back.
Ontario and BC have extremely hot housing markets and the demand is off the charts - a lot of tilers and plumbers in BC get sucked into reno contracting companies and simply have enough work to keep them busy for years. I don't think there was an exodus to Alberta - tradesfolk bring in serious cash in Canada so they can definitely afford to live in hot areas... I'd be more curious if it was actually early retirement that was driving things with tradesfolk building up enough of a nest egg that they can afford to retire early.
In my experience, having been a homeowner in Alberta first, then Ontario second - it's similar to software development...
Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away. (So... technical debt...)
As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for tradespeople.
Not if you need to buy a car, relocate, or find some child care, for example. There are important upfront costs when your situation changes, and if you’re unemployed (i.e. with not necessarily that much money available) they can be a significant hurdle.
similar thing happens in Austin, TX area. It took me several months to find a general contractor to just give me an estimate for the repairs (and he charged quite a lot for just that)
Many trades are boom/bust cycle industries and it is in boom mode right now on top of inflated material prices. This is just the wrong time to need/want one.
Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5 years head start when saving for your first house loan. After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours, weekend and night shifts.
After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The craftsmen either they worked their way into a more supervising role or are not able or willing to do the lucrative labor hours.
The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are simply not enough to replace the
What I wanted to point was that talking about "employability", people don't have to go to a university to get a degree and then try to find a job. There are other great ways to make enough money to don't have to end on OnlyFans.
A lot of places around the world have been in lockdowns that have made manual labour difficult, while doing sex work from home has been made much easier.
Well, some of those destroy your body in 25 years (Roofer/back, Tiler/knees), as a Carpenter you have to work with toxic laquer without getting compensated for it like Painters do. If you don't have your own shop at 40 you are pretty much screwed.
In Germany there must be an undersupply of these laborers. Come to California and you will find electricians with years of experience, all sorts of craftsman, woodworkers, tilers, roofers, hvac specialists, approaching you with your three cans of paint and asking you for work in the home depot parking lot. Maybe that's just what happens though when you get your working experience in another country like Mexico or El Salvador and these trades in the U.S. are protected by a licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience.
I live where the median home is 900k and there is still no shortage of handymen and general contractor labor here if you are willing to pay for work under the table. It's an interesting dynamic.
It’s not an issue of how expensive houses is, it’s an issue of how many houses are being built. California has the slowest housing starts of any major state in the country. That same carpenter would have his pick of job sites in Florida.
The licensing process helps make sure that the electrician that has 10 years of experience in El Salvador understands American wiring codes and practices before he does something that'll burn your house down.
For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.
licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience
The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.
What is ironic about your examples is that you had all these problems with unlicensed work in a place where licensing is still required. So whats the point of the license even if so much work is done that isn't licensed? People who will cheap out will cheap out no matter what the laws say, and people who pay for good work will continue to pay for good work.
In my jurisdiction, minor electrical work can be done by the homeowner (as long as it's a single family home). I think technically even major electrical word can be done by the homeowner as long as it's inspected and signed off, though it's possible that the inspector will require electrician signoff first.
But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"
I had to have my HVAC system repaired and I got to talking to the guy who was working on it and during the course of our conversation we started talking about pay... 100k-200k USD/yr he said wasn't unusual once you were done with school and got a little experience. I was floored, I called a family friend who does HVAC and he said that was about right. If I didn't love CS I'd be working in HVAC right now.
Median HVAC tech salary is $50k. Is it possible to make $200k or higher? Sure. But the HVAC people pulling down that comp are generally at that level primarily because of their business skills not their HVAC skills.
It’d be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or cook, because of a small business owner who opened a restaurant.
In Australia craftsmen (called "tradies") are booking 18 months out, will only work on the things they want to (i.e. new builds, because they're easy/clean), and are easily making $100k - $150k a year.
You have to wonder though, is this because of a genuine gap in the market where people are yet to realize there is money to be made, or is there something else that these stories are leaving out. Is everyone in the industry making this much money? If you joined the industry today, how long would it take to start making good money?
You have to do a 4 year apprenticeship, during which time you won't make great money.
Then you work for someone else and probably make $80k or $90k, then you start your own business.
In terms of supply/demand Australians are extremely house proud and spend an insane amount of money on renovations, upgrades, etc, so all the trades are always slammed. Have been for 20 years.
Right so it seems somewhat similar to the profits you can make programming. Doesn't seem like a crazy get rich quick scheme, just years of hard work paying off.
Pretty much. There's probably also an "in crowd" aspect to it as well. Everyone I know makes $100k+ as a dev here at least after a few years, but I've had Uber rides with older Indian dev drivers complaining that they can't find a job. I imagine anyone lumped into the whole "dodgy lebo/bogan/asian tradies" stereotype might struggle in a similar way.
> COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard.
Gen-Z is less sexually active than previous generations. Significantly so. They've been exposed to porn at an earlier age (owing to earlier access to the internet and the ubiquity of pornography online). Porn use was already common among them. The lockdown made things worse, but the status quo was already in place.
> There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine.
This false anthropology must die. Pornography is incredibly harmful to those that consume it. It enslaves a person to his passions. It feeds his lusts and deranges his desires. It makes him or her incapable of relating to the opposite sex in a healthy way, whether in the strictly sexual sphere or not. Lust blunts the mind and renders one incapable of thinking clearly. The consumption of pornography only feeds the sexual passions, further entrenching lust and often generating paraphilias and fetishes as the titillating novelty wears off. Emotions become disordered. Someone who has a porn habit becomes locked in him or herself. The stereotype of a lonely and smarmy 40 year old locked in his parents' basement masturbating to porn is a pithy illustration in many ways. It is the image of an emasculated, impotent wretch deranged by his vices and disorders. This has nothing to do with his lack of a sexual relationship and everything to do with how he views sexuality. He is not master of himself.
Frankly, we'd be better off permitting (regulated) prostitution. There seem to be plenty of women willing to provide these services and plenty of men who are slaves to their lusts (men tend to be more vulnerable to porn addiction and lust than women, but yes, it is true that it is not a problem exclusive to men). At least with prostitution, you're having sex with a human being instead of abusing yourself alone in your room. But ultimately, our view of sexuality must be restored to a healthy one and not the depraved one proposed by liberalism. I suspect the "asexual movement" is a subconscious reaction against the obsession with sex in our society. Excess in one direction tends to produce excess in the other. But maybe it will at least legitimize celibacy again. You don't need sex to have a happy life, contrary to the propaganda of the last few decades or so.
I will add that porn use is an industry fueled both by a corrupt society and people in power who recognize that those who are slaves to their passions (and lust is but one of them) are easy to control. Oligarchies are prone to let such vices flourish because it keeps the populace impotent and consumed with themselves instead of threatening the usurpers who have managed to gain tyrannical control. Porn appeals to prurient interest which is why it is so useful in psychological warfare (a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?). Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
Wow, I've never seen such a prudish comment so amply stated.
> Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
This is entirely based on nothing. Even worse, it ignores the much more direct and relevant innovations in the area of controlling populations - propaganda and advertising.
> a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?
No, they were trying to shock and humiliate Muslim sensibilities, similar to stashing pork on busses. Sexuality is not some secret sauce of controlling people - there are much more direct ways of doing so, especially with the power of a state like Israel.
Or rather: Paradoxically, what's truly prudish -- and I mean this literally, "overly prudent" -- is to short-circuit your sex drive with porn, because you fear the consequences of real sex.
Lust is good. It helps you overcome social risk aversion, and bond with another person.
But that's the point: You have to have those relationships.
You'll be happiest if you have lots of sex, as part of how you form and participate in a committed relationship. And your "base" urges, far from being bad, can help drive that.
by the tone ("It enslaves a person to his passions. It feeds his lusts and deranges his desires.") I'd say 17th century puritans. The author is missing the word "sin", but it's sort of implied.
Surely this is a joke? The amount of tin foil thinking going on is jaw dropping. I am imagining a crazy homeless guy screaming to people walking by while reading this.
The success of OF is more a question of demand than offer honestly. During the lockdowns they were a lot of guys with money to spend but could not spend it on social activities, so a lot of it went on internet websites.
But there is also a more long term trend of people having less and less sex and more and more porno consumption. But that can't go forever, at one point if all girls in the world are on sex workers then they will be much more offer than demand.
A girl on OF, to make a living, let's say 3k per month, needs to have 300 guys paying for her. But a guy is not paying for 300 girls, maybe 10 max, so the platform needs to have 30 times more guys than girls. Which is unsustainable in a world with 50% girls/50% guys.
Which is a good news imho. The day that having sex for girls is a normal thing (No this is not normal thing today). Then a lot of things will be much simpler for everyone
I would love to see their metrics. I would imagine, like most things, they have a ton of whales so that even if a minority of guys subscribe to 50 girls there probably are plenty of people with addictions shelling out $500 or $1000 a month on this stuff. And this people could represent the majority of all payments on the site.
It also seems (from actual published data) that the distribution is super weighted towards the top performers. That being said, even an extra 1k a month is pretty sick for posting topless photos if your regular income is less than 40k or you are in school.
Thanks for sharing that link! Interesting that the study notes that the drop in sexual activity was mostly in low-income/underemployed men, and students. So probably not the demand side of OF.
There are plenty of bi and gay people, or people whose porn interests diverge from their attractions. It's only a problem if you assume everyone is 100% heterosexual.
Females just have different/complex drives/needs for sexual attraction than males, who are mostly just drived by libido/horniness. You can observe this in nature too. Seems the males are the "abnormal" ones here, addicted to chemical reactions in the brain. (Didn't expect to see this line of thinking on HN...).
Even if they do have different needs that men (I feel so too, but have not scientifically studied the subject) you can't ignore the pressure of the society all their life on the topic
I don't think just any old person can make money off OF though, like presumably you need a reasonable camera and maybe lights or something, you need to be able to edit photos, the time and energy and motivation to learn how to use those things etc. It's not like some random struggling single mother can take a few pics of her feet on her 5 year old iphone and be expecting to make decent money.
I think OF has also become a one-click outlet for nontraditional sex workers, e.g., those who wouldn't otherwise have done this type of stuff. From what I've read OF has even more "amateurs" than platforms like MyFreeCams.
Part of the reason they've gotten so much heat is because of cases of underage girls selling photos on that site for some time before they're caught. I don't know if they've found a solution to that problem or just come to some agreement with their payment processors
a good friend of mine is a sex worker, a cam girl to be precise, and uses OF as it is safer than other platforms. it should be noted that she is a brilliant individual and do this job due to severe psychiatric problems that prevent her doing more "normal" jobs. she feeds one child with this money, as a lot of sex workers that are also loving moms.
it is important that such platforms do exist (if they implement proper safeguards) and that these content creators are not stigmatized.
> it should be noted that she is a brilliant individual
it should NOT be noted. Too many good people died in the wars of past centuries to get us to the freedom and liberty we enjoy today to let any fundamentalists dictate what a normal job is and who works it.
Sex work is work and if you dislike it you'd might enjoy Afghanistan these days.
i know, unfortunately sex work is still highly stigmatized, including in western present cultures.
you don't need to go as far as afghanistan, i'm back from eastern europe where my friends from the LGBTQ community are literally being beaten by neo nazi funded by putin.
It is stigmatized because it plays a part in facilitating people's addictions and mental problems. Just like gambling, drug-dealing, snake-oil salesmen, etc.
It's not all roses, that's for sure..
We should try to read each others' comments in the most charitable light possible.
In this case, I think the friendly way to interpret that comment is as an attempt to anticipate and pre-empt a very common and harmful misconception about sex workers.
It comes off as strange to me because it doesn’t make a difference if a “sex worker” is intelligent or not. And this goes for any job that doesn’t require brilliance. Am I supposed to feel better for, more accepting of, more sympathetic to, etc. a person because of their intellect? And if I have a problem with sex work, it has nothing to do with how I perceive the intellect of the workers, so the pre-empting seems unnecessary.
Maybe comments should read each others’ future, unwritten comments in the most charitable light possible. Otherwise it starts looking like we’re writing up preemptive strawmen.
Also, it is quite clear that comment was written to elicit sympathy. I can see why someone gets angry when intellect is used as a justification for sympathy.
doesn't require brilliance? appart from her deep interest in science, she became one the top twenty most paid porn actress worldwide. i don't think this comes out of pure luck.
it is true that the intelligence argument was arbitrary (it is my assessment of her) and perhaps clumsy. but again, go have a look on your favorite social media how these people are considered.
And for every one of the top twenty most paid porn actresses worldwide, there are probably ~2 million[1] who aren't that. I'm not saying your friend isn't intelligent when I say that sex work does not require brilliance, nor am I saying that intelligent sex workers don't exist. I am saying that sex work itself doesn't have employers screening candidates for their level of intelligence. This should be a fairly uncontroversial remark IMO. It's not strictly about your friend, and I'll take your word for it that she's quite smart.
Pointing out that someone is intelligent is useful, in this case, as a general "well, this can happen to anyone" kind of comment, and to break stereotypes about how sex workers all fit some narrow stereotype.
That is important to point out, as sometimes people generalize or attack people, unfairly, based on these things.
Though, you should also be careful about phrases like, "this can happen to anyone." It plays into another common and harmful misconception about sex workers, that they don't have much agency, they're victims, this is something that happens to them rather than just another one of many possible career choices that a person can make.
I read it as saying that it shouldn't need to be stated, ideally, that she is brilliant because of stigma around sex work and workers. That we have then freedom to do this as we please in the USA, it's legit work, and many people of all intelligence levels and circumstances may choose to do it.
It's a strongly worded opinion and with Afghanistan thrown in, but we all know the Taliban's history of repression soo.. I think it's worth everyone seeing.
The amount of anger and negativity in this comment is shocking.
The work she does is often stereotyped as being "dumb" or non-intellectual. To fight that idea, OP found it valuable to mention how smart she is and how these platorms provide a safe and profitable way to provide for her child.
Ask yourself - and I mean really ask yourself - what about that statement has you so angry?
You're so close to having empathy for all people! Just keep going: What if nobody had to justify their existence?
Edit: Downvoters, try a little harder. Engage your emotional core. Really work those empathy centers. Think about it: If nobody had to justify their existence, and people just allowed each other to exist, then we wouldn't have to weigh whether sex workers are more deserving of rights than computer scientists. We could allow both; we could allow everybody.
Since nobody had the temerity, I'll answer. If nobody had to justify their existence, then our society would not need systems which destroy people. It's that simple, and the folks using downvotes instead of words should confront their biases.
1) that she is doing sex work, because she has no choice to feed her son, given her medical condition.
2) on an unrelated note: she is a brilliant and very intelligent individual.
3) point 2) was emphasized because for a significant part of the population, these two are incompatible, which is obviously wrong.
4) these platforms, while far from perfect provides some safety to sex workers. this important and fundamental: the sex industry, be it pornography or other, is dangerous to actress, actors and prostitutes alike. many get raped and/or abused, for instance.
5) on yet an unrelated note that she is a loving mom. moreover, an ex gf of mine, a past sex worker as well, is also a loving mom. i added this information because both in english and french slang, if you're mom is a sex worker, you and her are not good person. i don't think these children can openly talk about their moms' jobs openly at school without provoking major backlash, if not legal actions. and we live in a quite liberal country.
If she is restoring to sex work to feed her son, what is she spending the father's child support money on? That seems like the entire reason child support is required by law.
"Required by law" as not as powerful as it sounds.
Law is not powerful enough to protect someone from a violent partner. Restraining orders don't stop violence from taking place. They only promise punishment afterwards.
So you do not pursue a violent partner for child support, even with the law on your side. It is too dangerous.
Online sex work is the safer option.
Oh, also, you seem to have the idea that child support money is enough by itself for the costs of raising a child decently. It often isn't, you need another income source to cover it. In the example we are talking about, the person could not do a typical job, so they had to find an alternative and OF provided it.
> If she is resorting to sex work to feed her son, what is she spending the father's child support money on?
That implies:
(a) there is father's child support (a sweeping assumption that is often wrong), and
(b) the father's child support is sufficient by itself to feed her son without needing to resort to sex work.
It's also suggesting that the mother is misusing funds somehow.
The distinction between "feeding" and "raising" you might have picked on would be, in my view, a quibble over a technicality. Child support is to contribute to the costs of raising a child, it's not earmarked to specifically cover food, and if you need extra income to raise a child, it's acceptable common language to phrase that as earning money to feed a child.
Stop. The problem is you need to feed your kid today. Not when the judge or law gets around to deciding you’re right. Just stop arbitrating other people’s lives. It’s not hard.
You shouldn't need to, but on Hacker News I can't say I can fault this caveat getting ahead of some potentially nasty comments, even if in principle I agree it shouldn't need to be said.
There is a good chance that any given reddit post in the widely viewed subreddits is posted in order to get people to look at the user’s profile or other posts and follow it back to their only fans page.
That's pretty right. In particular, there is a (huge) subreddit devoted to selfies where a high number of users that post in there have a OF link present in their biography.
Of course there was a big outcry. It's like if Etsy announced they were gonna ban candles, or Kickstarter said they were gonna ban dice and cards. You think all those people would want to go create their own sites? You think it would make any sense for them to do that? Come on
It could be better for some of them in the long run, who knows. The fact is that there's no absolute security in either choice, but with a personal website at least you are in control, you have your “domain”.
It's the opposite for me. The value for amateur porn is that they don't look or act like traditional porn stars. I don't find much value in abstract notions like "genuine interest".
That's simply not true, because /r/gonewild are extremely strict about not allowing OF creators. They can post under a seperate account but any mention of they're main account or OF results in a swift permanent ban.
/r/gonewild is actually one of the few subreddits that prohibits posts from sellers. But every subreddit that doesn't outright prohibit sellers is flooded with them. The OF girls all got kicked off of Facebook, Instagram, Snapshot, etc... Reddit is comparatively more friendly to sex workers as far as site wide policy goes.
> People really do just want a one click solution for creating adult content
They want a solution for distributing adult content and getting paid for it.
By far, the single biggest hurdle here is payment processing - as evidenced by this whole OnlyFans fiasco. It's Visa and Mastercard who are pressuring OF - they've been doing this to sex workers for decades, but finally picked a fight big enough that it's getting real media backlash.
> People really do just want a one click solution for creating adult content, and consuming adult content.
Once they know it's possible, people want a one click solution for anything. The subject being taboo has nothing to do with it.
This is one reason why Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix did such a good job combatting piracy for music, video games, and movies, while ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so they're still widely pirated.
I can see it now. Most ROMs would be available, but Nintendo would be notably absent from any of the platforms and only allow their ROMs to be streamed from their own service.
Oh, I know, but in the theoretical world where there's a Netflix like subscription, I would assume that means a lot of different IP was also gathered there, like Sega, Atari, older Playstation and Xbox titles, etc.
There's not a lot of incentive for some of those groups to come together, but I imagine even if most could be assembled, Nintendo would be particularly resistant.
I doubt that's going to happen any time soon. Nintendo would rather publish its old games on its own store. Ditto for Microsoft and Sony. The older consoles now usually have a collection of ports for old games sold on the newer platforms, though those don't always behave true to the original platforms without special hardware.
The only thing that prevents this from existing is the licensing nightmare of trying to track down who still owns the rights to those old ROMs. So many defunct companies and cases where even the people who worked on it have no idea who currently owns the rights.
Had we kept the 28 year copyright duration from 1831 almost all ROM images would be in the Public Domain now.
And some of the licensing conflicts are because of an alliance that existed and made sense in say 1995 and today seems like inexplicable nonsense.
For example indie creator studio makes video game for the PS1. It's a huge hit, they go on to make other popular games, and one day Microsoft buys them, morphs them into an in-house team. And then one day you realise you're arguing that, Microsoft (now the owner of the license) should release this Sony Playstation game. No. Not going to happen.
When this stuff happens for individual humans, often even if the money doesn't mean anything to one person who is an obstacle, it does mean something to their co-creators and they'll do it for that. For example it would be possible for Alan Moore to have blocked a lot of stuff that uses his work, from the V for Vendetta movie (which lots of people liked but I felt missed the whole point) to the re-issues of Miracleman, but while Alan doesn't care about money, the artists on that work do, and him blocking it would hurt them. So e.g. that's why modern copies of Moore's seminal run on Miracleman say they're by "The Original Author" in big text but never mention Moore by name, that's his condition, he doesn't want the Mouse's money, but his artists do.
Corporations don't care though. If they can inconvenience a modern competitor by snuffing out an important cultural artefact that is exactly what they'll do.
I'd actually advocate outright abolition of copyright. The associated moral rights have some place, but copyright is almost entirely a means for corporations to try to control culture for their own profit and we don't need it. But 28 years is a more acceptable middle ground I guess.
It's difficult in some cases but demand is absolutely the main driver.
Much like Netflix, the reality is that people aren't actually very interested in old shows apart from a handful of super famous perennials which are already available anyway.
They say they are in surveys, but consumer behaviour does not back that up. They just use newer content in practice.
There is always interest in old shows, but not enough to deal with the licensing issues. You could have much wider libraries if the licensing was less of a nightmare.
There should be a rule that if an IP was broadly commercialized at any point (eg. offered at a retail store) the owner can’t resist any abandonware offering unless he’s still offering the IP at RAND terms
That still protects the individual artists and perhaps the Banskys but doesn’t unnecessarily lock up these old games
The issue is that the VG industry is pretty far behind in this respect, not that there's a lack of demand. Just look at how the NES/SNES classic consoles sold out in the blink of an eye and there were mass shortages.
The demand is there, it's just a question of having a convenient enough package
I think Nintendo in particular revels in the scarcity. They value their IP above all else, and they know that's what their customers value, and they want to squeeze it for every last drop of fan loyalty they can. See the artificially limited-time (digital!) release of "Mario 3D All-Stars": https://www.nintendo.com/products/detail/super-mario-3d-all-...
Probably not. Most cartridge games outside of first party titles are mired in a confusing mess of IP ownership. Consider what happens when the developer doesn't exist anymore, the publisher was acquired, the brand for the franchise is owned by one company, and the code for the original game is owned by a different company, which has no interest in making games.
GameTap had a Decent collection of Sega consoles and arcade titles back in the day, though it unfortunately never got off the ground. Nintendo has been particularly aggressive regarding ligating against ROMs historically and sold them as individual units, though with the Switch's online service's free NES/SNES games it seems like they're dipping their toes into the model. I think the risk to them is if someone winds up playing say the GB version of Link's Awakening for free instead of the $60 remake.
I worked on GameTap! Old ROM websites at the time had these click-through agreements that would say things like "you may only download these ROMs if you have explicit, written permission from the publisher" and I may be on of the only living people who've clicked one of those "I agree" links in good faith.
Technically, GameTap had some really neat little features. For example, it would track your high score for most emulated games, and for really old games where the score would rollover to zero, it noticed that and would let you see your effective grand total score. So there would be a global Galaga leaderboard that could happily go into the millions.
Regarding the success of the service, Gametap was live for a few years. It totally had its shot. GameTap was regularly advertised on TV. It had a pretty big library covering a dozen or so platforms: Several Ataris, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Sega, PC games, and more. They did a few high profile things like buying some failed MMOs and keeping the servers running for all GameTap subscribers.
At the end, I think it turned out that the folks who get really excited about playing ColecoVision games are the same folks who are very comfortable downloading ROMs.
Reading back I definitely come off a bit too harsh on gametap - It was a good service from the start. but I remember it seeming like there was trouble figuring out a pricing/content model that worked, as you said a lot of people who were excited for those sorts of games are often able to download roms as well.
I think it may just have been ahead of it's time in terms of model in the era of battlepasses, paid online and gamepass, as well as monthly paid streaming services in general.
It's true. It was a plausible idea that certainly MIGHT have worked, but whatever form of the idea GameTap went with clearly didn't catch fire.
Here's a fun technical secret about GameTap. Several of the companies that we bought licenses from barely knew they owned the games and definitely didn't have any original binaries or source, and for the obscure consoles/titles, we sometimes could only find cracked versions online. Those would usually have crack intros (it was the birth of the demoscene!), though, and we clearly didn't want to use them. Ultimately we cheated. We just launched the game by loading a save state just past the crack intro.
haha, the genesis library is about 90% just different hacked versions of Sonic 1, with different sprites replacing Sonic.
And one I found particularly cute, "Sonic's Unexciting Quest", which starts in a level called "Straight Line Zone".
There was a little upkick at the start of the pandemic according to Sandvine, but Sandvine's methodology is not watertight and lots of people staying at home with not much to do seems a more likely culprit than service fragmentation.
anecdotally, I freeload on a Netflix account paid for by a friend, and last year I was tempted to get my own subscription. Then I noticed Netflix had fewer and fewer movies I was interested in, and just went back to sailing the high seas.
People like you always say you will pay but never do, not because of BS like selection but because you are cheap and will never pay for something you can steal. I dont even know why you'd pretend to be interested in paying.
Yeah. The attraction of Netflix was the ease of access to a lot of desirable content even faster than finding it online somewhere else*
But, nowadays it feels like Netflix’s catalog is full of its self made titles(Some of them are great), but less and less “popular” ones that we heard of somewhere and just want to watch.
If I am expected to shuffle around multiple streaming subscriptions, and pay for them individually, it is not that different from the cable TV model that these guys took on against.
It is one of the biggest reasons to use torrents. You see, this is the only non-fragmented service that has all media content!
Now, of only there was a way to have a moderated search for all content on all trackers.... Maybe there is one already, and its just that i don't know it?
PirateBay became a haven for false torrents infested by malware. I'm ta lking about rutracker.org
It has mostly russian-dubbed content, but it usually has original soundtracks, too.
Also, now it is probably better than ever (didn't watch anything for quite a while, so it's a guess), because films are currently released on VOD concurrently with premieres in theatres, and that means that good quality content appears immediately, and not after theatrical window
Netflix seems like a split brained company. Most of its original movies are terrible, and are in sharp contrast to many of the Netflix original series which are very good. I personally wouldn’t (and don’t) look for movies on Netflix.
I found this site from the torrentfreak link below and thought it was pretty cool.
https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021
If you flip thru the years at least the top movies in 2018 have more downloads than the top movies in 2021. I think that can somewhat safely answer your questions.
EDIT: WRONG because as a comment points out below older movies also might just have been downloaded more over time.
From this site, it doesn't look like their was much of an uptick in top downloaded movies from 2019 to 2020. And in general torrenting has been growing less popular.
However, the numbers on this site in general don't sanity check very well for me. For example, the End Game Avengers movie, which was incredibly popular, was only downloaded: 2,890 times in 2019? That doesn't seem high enough to me.
It does make some sense that movies which have been available for three years could have more downloads than movies which have been available for one year.
Yeah but if most people have services - I have three - then the most popular movies for that year will be on all the services almost. Endgame has been on all my services at some point over the last couple years. I've seen it probably 20+ times. Probably also the people who are most likely to want to watch Endgame have services.
A friend who torrents these things just checked for me and saw well over a 100,000 'snatches' for that Avengers flick on just one private torrent tracker.
> A friend who torrents these things just checked for me and saw well over a 100,000 'snatches' for that Avengers flick on just one private torrent tracker.
This makes far more sense, I wonder why their numbers are so bad.
Additionally, I guess there are also many people, myself included, who download stuff again, but I don't use torrents, as I have indeed been burned in the past by that. I now use forums that link to encrypted Mega accounts or similar.
The stats can be collected only from public torrents where DHT is being used (AFAIK). There are many private trackers that are closed to the outside world and have tens of thousands of members, each of whom may not only download from the peers within that private tracker, but also share the downloaded content with others.
I had completely stopped downloading movies in 2018, and even for that year, I downloaded very few. I had been tapering off since 2015. These are real numbers from my NAS. I got a seedbox 2 months ago. This was my last straw: trying to rent some movie on Amazon and was told I had to subscribe to some service to watch it--there was no price to watch it once.
The other things I did recently:
1) paused Google YTTV because NBA season was over
2) canceled Netflix because I never watch it
I've been watching content (some of it very old, like The Larry Sanders Show) on HBO Max, but the app on Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch it on PLeX.
The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
> The Amazon app/UI is HORRIBLE, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
Not only that but I've even seen the seasons presented in no order whatsoever: i.e Season 2 followed by Season 8. It is nonsensical.
Ironically, the biggest russian torrent site is just a phpbb forum and it is wonderfully organized and very well moderated. Easy to find the content you want.
Fun fact: previously it tried to cooperate with the content owners and removed content by request, so the UX was considerably worse. But then, someone successfully litigated to block them 'forever' in Russia, so... They restored all prevoiusly removed content and now it has almost everything I ever wanted. Great win!
I subscribed to watch season 8 of alone. Each show had about eight thirty second commercials that you couldn't skip. Last time I'll try that way to watch something.
The Beavis and Butthead music video thing is a decades old problem, unfortunately. The DVDs were like that too. Something about failing to obtain the music video rights for the show outside of its original airing.
Happens sometimes with some video games as well. In the past when remasters came out they couldn't secure or couldn't afford the music licensing costs so they had a cut or replaced score.
That became worse in recent years when titles on digital distribution platforms e.g. Steam had music removed due to expiring licenses. This meant a game you had already downloaded and installed would be downgraded unless you were quick enough to stop the automatic updates for it.
I genuinely do not understand how Amazon can have dropped the ball on their UI for this long, this bad. Given their drive to get customers to consume shipped product, their track record with digital products is abysmal. Video games is a product problem and that's a different discussion, but "television" and movies are a different matter. The product and consumer appetite are there, but the roadblock is the UI. Does no one who is in upper management use the product? I know they treat their testers like crap, but surely someone in the marketing or graphics department has at least done some usability polling. Right? Right?
I don't understand it either. It might be hard to quantify the affect of their Prime streaming business on their sales and thus they don't prioritize it ? That's my only guess, it feels to me like their most public product and its received the least attention.
The UI and general use of these apps are so bad - that I literally find myself torrenting things from Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ rather than use those apps, purely to be able to consume it on Plex.
The VPN jumping lunacy bothers me. I moved countries - great so I can't use Disney+? I get it, but that now means I have to download (your new) content because you won't actually let me buy your content, directly from you. For the first couple of months I continued to pay for the service. Eventually I decided that if you don't want me as a customer, I don't feel bad about downloading it. Sad really.
Why would I? Most of the content on my PLeX is paid for elsewhere. And, anything I pirate which I like I buy. I watched _Pig_ and immediately went to Amazon and paid $14.99 for it. If I pirate something that is terrible, there's no point.
Specifically for the example of Australians watching pirate rips of television programs, the percentage of us doing it dropped like a brick after Netflix launched here back in 2015 and has climbed back slightly since the fragmentation occurred.
It's nothing like the old days where we had to wait several weeks to watch Game of Thrones legally, though.
I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but from memory it was something that around 40% of us were doing back in 2013, had dropped to around 15-20% by 2018-2019, and is now at just above 20%.
My parents asked me to help them get into streaming a few months ago after they got a new iPad. So I bought them a Chromecast, taught them how to switch the input source between the Chromecast and Cable on their TV, which they were cool with.
Then I tried to set them up on the iPad.
There was about 5-10 specific shows they wanted to watch, what I found was that they were literally spread across more than 5 services, with one show each. Not a single one of them had 2 of the shows they wanted to watch.
They were already set up with Foxtel and had been using it for a couple of years, they watched shows on it regularly and knew how to do everything up to hitting the 'cast' button.
So I set them up with the other services, bummed an Amazon account off a sibling, signed them up to the 3 or 4 free services we have in Australia, think I subbed to one other one or something too. I can't even remember what they all were there was so many. I put the icons all in the same place on their home screen so they knew those apps were all the streaming ones etc etc.
I logged into a few of the accounts a week or so ago and they haven't watched a single thing. Not even on the Foxtel, which they were already using, and now they've stopped using it.
It seems to me like they've just hit a wall of complexity and thrown their hands up and said fuck the whole thing.
And you know what? I'm right there with them. Half way through the set up, trying to do the right thing, I was an inch away from throwing my hands up and saying fuck the whole thing as well. It would be far easier for everyone involved if I just brought a hard drive with new shows around for them every few months.
There was another thread here yesterday where some bloke was going on about how he couldn't understand why people wouldn't just spin up a linux box or something instead of using Discord.
Well, this is it. It took my parents months to get used to using one app, and adding something as simple as another couple of apps to the mix has turned them off the technology entirely.
When you introduce anything other than the absolute most simple UX, you risk losing part of your market entirely. You're not building stuff for other software engineers or other TV network execs or whatever your job title is. Everyone trying to carve out their own piece of the pie is just smashing the pie to bits for everyone else.
When it was just Netflix, piracy was almost dead. Now, it's going to come back, unless content distributors can find some way to work together. That goes for music, TV and games. All 3 ecosystems are running into the exact same problem.
I'm right there with you. I'm increasingly frustrated by the experience of using my various streaming apps. I don't even mind having to bounce between different apps for different content. But just _finding_ the content I want is such a fucking chore sometimes.
One of the most annoying scenarios I seem to find myself in all too frequently is trying to get to the episode list for a series. The assumption that most of my services make is that when I click on the series card in the list of shows, the thing I want is to automatically be taken to where I left off. This is fine when it works (although it's a big damn assumption that the app correctly preserved where I left off, and even when it does that often dumps me into the credits for the episode I finished last night). But when I want to see the episode list, I feel like I just have to flail about and curse at the TV until I stumble upon the right sequence of buttons to get to what I want.
That's not even to mention the incredibly disheartening recent changes to the home screen of my (Shield) Android TV, where half the home screen is now taken up with ads for programs I will never watch on services I don't even use.
It does make one rather miss the days of a folder full of AVIs and VLC. I also had a nice Plex setup at one point. Maybe one of these days I'll get off my ass and heed the call of the open seas.
> It would be far easier for everyone involved if I just brought a hard drive with new shows around for them every few months.
I do this for my family. 3TB external HDDs, each time I see them they give me the old one and I give them a another one freshly topped up (things added/removed based on suggestions/requests).
It's been a smashing hit and they all love it.
We all loved Netflix when it came out and paused doing this for a while, but it wasn't long until the fragmentation and geoblocking led to more requests for certain shows popping up again, and now we all pretty much got rid of all our streaming services and are back to the HDDs.
When it was just Netflix, piracy was almost dead. Now, it's going to come back, unless content distributors can find some way to work together.
Right. They need to swallow their pride and realise there needs to be a way to have one interface that shows you all the content you can access from the subset of services you subscribe to, in a searchable way. My Netflix shows, Prime shows and Foxtel shows should show up side-by-side in the interface. They can put a ribbon on it and/or an opening title to tell me who the distributor is.
Purchasable/rentable content can appear in a separate section, and when I can buy content from two or more services I have an account with, present them all and let me choose which one to use.
After my sister died, my brother in law was in a deep hole. I wanted to cheer him up somehow, and so I ended up giving him a 2TB hard disk connected to an old laptop. Then plugged a gen 1 Chromecast into his TV, and installed Plex onto an old tablet. He said it was a life saver. It helped get him through a really bad winter. I can't even think of a way I could have given him that content "legally". Some of it was great but obscure stuff ripped off DVDs that I bought over years. It's not just the complexity of multiple apps and devices - some content just isn't there. Like a shitload of really decent TV series and movies from the 60s onward.
My anecdata is definitely this. I used to pay for almost all my media, but switching regions, logging in and out of shit, buying iTunes cards on ebay, checking through 4 different streaming apps, and then extra work when you do find what you want and try to watch it only to be told your subscription doesn't actually cover it but you can pay extra (looking at you, Amazon Prime), it's just so much fucking work when tracker -> torrents dir -> plex is so much easier and user-friendly.
It seems like there isn't a widely available service to just bundle everything and serve what you want (?) Anyone kmow is that a cost restriction or do the companies disallow it?
It strikes me the best cure is to restrict copyright to force federation - if you sell to one company who retails to consumers in a geo locality then you're required to make available to any company at that price.
Streaming services would be forced to compete in everything except content. Creators would still be paid.
Copyright isn't a natural right, it should be continually adapted to serve the public.
If copyright law said that the price a piece of content is available for is the highest amount any provider in a region is willing to pay then you're setting up for a monopoly, as Netflix or Amazon Prime with their near infinite content budgets set the price of everything they like higher than any new competitor can afford to pay.
Sorry, I don't think I expressed that well, I intended to say it was akin to a "most favoured nation" situation; if Netflix get a lower price per person, then you have to offer that price to others.
I can't see how Amazon and Netflix could push prices up without unlawful collusion? But if they did push prices up for all media how would they sell their service?
It's not unheard of for major players to have contracts that say 'if you're offering this to another company for less per unit than you are to us then you agree to reduce our price accordingly', the idea is just to make that lowest price universal so that.
I sell license for prints of my painting to Acme for £5 then ABC can print the same painting and pay me £5. As creator I can choose not to sell the work for £5, but that's no different to now; what I wouldn't be able to do is restrict who - in the wholesale market - could buy the work for that price.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that creators must be able to choose any distribution way they want (similar to "right to burn"). E.g creators may choose to sell unrestricted copyrights to the most evil companies they want, it's their ultimate right.
Consumers have a right to consume or not consume, but they may not limit creator's freedom, nor by "restricting copyright to force delegation".
Creators may choose who to sell to, with you there. But then we (the demos) may choose to not give copyright protection. We're not limiting creators freedom, we're limiting who we choose to protect from the open market.
I mean this particular part I have a problem with: "may choose to not give copyright protection" -- we, consumers, don't have a say in creator's copyrights, because we don't have these copyrights, creators do. Creators may as well be with us and sell their content to a company that abides by these laws of restricted copyrights (e.g. GPL license is particular example). Or not.
It's our job, though, to make that available and easy for creators (e.g. kudos to RMS for making and popularising the GPL).
But no one should be able force anything on _all_ creators.
PS: Well, the outcome would be that creators would stop create at all, and in some cases that might be fair and just, but that's another topic completely. E.g. some societies regard as fair and just limits on drawings of humans and animals, so there's no such drawings. And they see it as fair and just.
> I mean this particular part I have a problem with: "may choose to not give copyright protection" -- we, consumers, don't have a say in creator's copyrights, because we don't have these copyrights, creators do.
But demos doesn't mean "we, consumers" -- it means "we, the people". As in, the body politic, from whom all laws and therefore copyright ultimately emanates. Creators only have those copyrights because we've granted them. This is a law of man, neither God-given nor a law of nature -- we can, if we want, un-grant them.
The fundamental trust of copyright is literally to make things worse for consumers to the benefit of producers. If you see consumers being inconvenienced in an expensive way as a problem then you haven't engaged with the problem copyright is here to solve.
[I fear you were being sarcastic, but in any case ...]
Copyright is to enrich the public domain. It's foundation in the West is Queen Anne's statute which followed on from printmakers making their own regulations. It shifted power from the printmakers to the creators, buy it served the public domain by having a limited period of protection and by preserving copies of works which could be referenced.
It made things better for the public because after 7 years (IIRC, I think it was later extendable to 14 years) the work was free to get printed anywhere vastly aiding the spread of culturally important works. The fundamental bargain also aided the demos (as opposed to the consumer, per se); that bargain being that a creator could exclusively - with the backing of the law - control reproduction during those 7 years and so profit sufficiently to continue creating further works without having to seek a patron.
Copyright is supposed to be, and was, about liberation of creators from control; and democratisation (making available to the people) of works.
The change I propose aids creators getting paid, and aids works benefiting the public. Moreover, it wrests some control from the "printmakers" in keeping with early copyright laws.
I'm the US copyright is to allow creators control over their creation, for a time, presumably so the can monetize it. This incentives creators to create. Yes, in the long run, public domain wins. But so do the creators.
Forcing them to sell to everyone takes a lot of control away from the copyright holders.
There already are compulsory licensing schemes that work like this. For example, in the United States, there are “mechanical licenses” [1] available by statute for streaming and downloaded music recordings. In practice, most big platforms negotiate with a rights organization or with the artist directly[2], but the statutory rate operates as a price ceiling.
One big problem with compulsory licensing is that rights organizations that manage the payment of royalties often become very powerful themselves and are sometimes seen as copyright bullies. For example, ASCAP, which represents composers and licenses musical compositions rights, pursued the Girl Scouts for unlicensed singing of campfire songs. [3]
This presumes piracy is bad. Which I'd say is mostly true, but I'd go so far as to suggest that, e.g. Spotify is worse.
Essentially, they both mean that creators don't meaningfully get paid, only that Spotify appears legitimate due to the breadcrumbs and "exposure" they do give out.
E.g. Bandcamp is better than piracy, but I'd argue piracy is better than Spotify.
always find this argument so weird - The amount of people who can create music and find an audience now vs a decade ago is exponentially higher; subsequently, the market price of a song has fallen and Spotify pays accordingly.
Except now, as an independent artist I can get easier exposure on Spotify and build up more income from live shows, merch and whatever else as a result. My closest fans will still often buy from band camp, or buy a vinyl or whatever. Except now I have a ton more fans than I could have reasonably achieved in the iTunes era
And the distribution of wealth has stayed relatively similar - huge artists (The Taylor swift’s of the world) continue to be minted, small unknown artists continue to make a comparatively tiny living - except now many, many more people can make that living and stream music
These files are so simple to distribute - there’s no engineering challenge and it’s very hard to justify building a moat. That’s one thing the notables you list did, beyond merely gatekeeping content.
> But I agree with you, I'm surprised Steam doesn't have a way to get old ROMs.
Not quite old ROMs, but gog.com sells old computer games prepackaged for Dosbox, which because of that work on Windows, Mac and Linux. That's basically the old PC computer equivalent of what I believe Nintendo does by shipping the emulator with the ROM when you buy it through the Virtual Console so it runs as a whole.
GOG has been earning a lot of my praise recently for not only hosting binaries - but actually putting labour into making sure their games run on modern systems. This is particularly important for games from the era of weird sound cards that can't render audio quite right without a vintage soundblaster - but also goes for games that were simply designed with DOS expectations in place.
Back in the day I was a big fan of an SSI game called Imperialism - this game pretty much refuses to run on modern software - it needs DOSBox to run smoothly and even then it does custom cursor stuff that tends to screw up very obviously on modern systems - the GOG version of the game runs smooth like butter.
Why would I ever pirate a copy of Imperialism and spend a day actually getting it set up to run sorta decently on my machine - when I can grab it off GOG for 1.89 CAD? A day of my time, even an hour of my time (even my leisure time), runs well above 2$ at this point - the convenience is there so pirating becomes a bad value proposition.
The Sega Genesis games they sell are basically just ROMs. You can go into the folders where they are installed and grab them to use in a different emulator.
Those games are an interesting case: it’s very likely Activision or Warner owns the rights for them, but since ownership could be in the hands of at least one other party and the games themselves aren’t popular nowadays, it isn’t financially worth it for them to do the work to verify it, even though people have tried to work with them in the past.
IANAL, but yes. If you don't copy something, copyright is not invoked.
In many jurisdictions (AU, UK), it would be legal to copy them to another device you own, such as a hacked PSP, under the "format shifting" exemptions.
"ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so they're still widely pirated."
The only example I can think of is Nintendo Online. You can play select NES and SNES games on the Switch with a N.O. subscription.
I collect ROMs, I've got damned near 4Tb worth. I collect for two reasons:
1. Archiving
2. Most of the "good" vintage games carry ridiculous prices. Games that had over 10 million copies pressed going for $100+. Even if we assume 1 million were destroyed, that's still 9 million copies floating about. Not exactly rare or worth $100.
I swapped my NES cart of Dragion Warrior IV with a friend for his copy of Dragon Warrior III in high school; it was supposed to be temporary but we both went off to college and never saw each other again. I looked into buying a copy of DW IV online and choked on the prices ($150 cart only). Apparently that game was a limited run though.
Yep, I recently bought Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3. I’ll buy 4 soon, but wow - it is not cheap. I play them on a Retron 5 which can play NES, SNES, GBA, Sega, and even Famicon cartridges. It also lets you set hot keys and toggle turbo mode. It’s pretty great.
> If it makes you feel any better it cost $100 in 2021 dollars new ($50 in 1990)...
That does actually make me feel better knowing that DW4 would cost $100 if it were "new" now.
These days a sealed copy of DW4 graded at 7.0 will run you $1549. I'd be nervous paying anything less than $170 for a working cartridge alone right now.
As a consumer of these things, I've thought many times how easy it would be for someone to just print off "original boxes and content" for these old games, and sell them as if they were mint. As someone who wants this kind of thing... please don't be afraid to charge premium prices for replicas! As long as you tell us it's a replica, and it's high quality - everyone wins. Once enough time passes, replicas and forgeries all just become history.
Game prices are part rarity, part demand. Pokémon games aren't rare, but they're always in demand so they always command decent prices. Plus even if millions of copies were sold the majority might not be English versions which are often most popular. Chrono Trigger for example sold millions in Japan and can easily be picked up for less than $20 in Japanese. US copies sold more like 500,000 and collectors outside the US are interested as well since English is much more of a common 1st or 2nd language than Japanese.
Almost all old games in Japan are dirt cheap; on the order of US$1-$2 for a typical loose SFC/N64/Game Boy cart if you don't go to the tourist traps in Akihabara.
$20 is exceptionally expensive for a Japanese game.
It's ridiculous that games like super smash bros are the same price whether you buy them new on a switch or used for a 25 year old n64. No clue why nintendo bothers ending production runs on games when they know people still buy sell and play 30 year old titles. They could just license the reruns to someone else to produce the cartriges and disks and make money hand over fist. It always seems like nintendo has blinders on and self sabotages with stuff like this all the time (nintendo online being a huge fail compared to something like xbox live which has been around for almost 20 years now). In my opinion they could easily overtake xbox and playstation marketshare just by being smarter with their IP and taking back this market that is currently totally owned by people on ebay and craigslist because of nintendo's short sightedness with their production runs.
I don't think they can undertake Xbox/Playstation. Nintendo is a niche while Xbox/Playstation another. I guess they just want people to buy newer consoles and games, which make sense for them.
They did this for a number of years on Wii/Wii U. You could buy Smash 64 from them for $10. It wasn't nearly as popular as their current games. Paper Mario 64 for $10 was sick, though. Loved it after having played TTYD.
For that matter - why not sell N64-compatible consoles? You could make them incredibly cheaply now, and they're definitely still in demand. Are they scared of cannibalizing their "high end"?
Why do you think they would be cheap? Many of the relevant chips have been out of production for decades. Sure you can emulate a lot on a logic device like an FPGA, but those are still expensive compared to a microprocessor, and your engineering costs will go up. Then you’re facing stiff competition- a vintage gamers ideal is exact hardware. Any sort of emulation will have slight quirks- timing changes, mildly perceptible audio frequency shifts, etc. if your product isn’t an exact match for the hardware, it’s competing with the hundreds of ARM based emulation oriented systems that popped up after the RetroPi concept took off. And for what, a few thousands units of sales? Most people fall into “fine with emulation + ROM”. A select few stick with vintage hardware, which is not expensive. The market for “very close to original hardware but not quite” is a hard sell.
You're Nintendo, you have all the original specs, you can literally make an exact clone on an FPGA (or whatever's cheapest).
I don't disagree that the market is small, though. But Nintendo does have a chronic problem of under-manufacturing desirable hardware. Like, if you want a SNES Classic (good emulator, fantastic controllers), you'll have to pay 2-3x the original price. Nintendo could do another run of them every year for basically no effort, and they just...don't.
For the SNES classic, the limit on their production runs is probably the licensing of third-party content. They put blinders and only license titles up to a certain amount.
If you mean the Nintendo solution I think the [system] Mini trend has finally died out for good outside of a handfull of pathetic outliers like Amiga 500 mini. At any rate Nintendo seems to prefer to release these things on their existing consoles, as emulated roms, as it's cheaper anyway.
If you mean third party solutions I think there is at least one project that aims to be compatible with various original cartridges but its name eludes me at the moment.
[edit]
It's Polymega though it doesn't support N64 it does support SNES/Megadrive/NES/TG16 and a number of CD-ROM based consoles.
Yeah. The storage medium changed so much, but the functional shipped object was still "a chunk of read-only memory containing the (probably) sole version of a game that got shipped to a market".
I too tend to think of ROMs as strictly images of non-volatile chips, alone, but it's interesting that when we're in computer emulation territory, it's really only the size that's different; a CD iso feeds into a PS emulator pretty much the same way a rom file feels into a SNES emulator - it's just a document.
I just saw this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A ) on why vintage video games cost so much money now. It's almost an hour long piece of effectively investigative journalism by someone in the speed running (and thus vintage gaming) community.
The evidence presented does seem like a bubble, with scam/fraud properties.
For a very long time in the Netherlands you could download movies and music from unauthorized sources, as you were indirectly paying content creators because of “copy taxes” on data drives, burnable discs etc. It was sort of a loophole but it was completely legal. Those were the days.
Then suddenly the highest court disallowed it. Guess what, we still pay the copy tax.
Clarification: The copy tax was meant to compensate copyright owners for consumers making copies (for private use) of purchased media. It was widely interpreted as to allow downloading from the internet as well (even from pirated sources).
Ah sorry yes - my comment was made from an American/Canadian perspective - I know that other parts of the world have been significantly more progressive in the past.
If that's the motivation, it's pretty misguided, since it is a completely different motivation to buy. I buy (or pirate if I can't) the old games for nostalgia fun, not so much for the gameplay or graphics. I then also buy the new game for the modern experience & gameplay.
They want to have the option to resell you the exact same game emulated on the new systems too, see Wii Virtual Console I think it was called, and NES classic system, all of those.
Yes actually. You can still buy brand new copies of titles like Kingdom Hearts, FFXII and others for PS2 directly from Amazon.com and not a third party seller. For a while Square Enix was selling PS1 versions of FF games too although they have seemed to have stopped in the last few years.
Because copyright holders like the idea of reselling the same games to you hundreds of times. Nintendo resells the exact same games to people every time they launch a console. Companies create low effort compilations all the time.
You'd think they'd make their money and move on to new creations. You make something, it's successful, you make your money for 5 years or so and then it's public domain. You'd have to make new stuff to make more money. No. Copyright holders feel entitled to extract value out of their "property" essentially forever. It's the ultimate in rent seeking.
The copyright issue is what sucks most. For the US the first implementation of copyright allowed max 28 years.
Since then the cycle to make/market/distribute/profit off a product has gotten much faster.
If anything, copyright should be shorter than 28 years. Not longer.
I love the original The Matrix(1999) movie. But it has had it's day in the sun, earned money and become "old news" at least 10 years ago.
In a "free market" sense, 12 years is a long time to have a monopoly on IP. If you have failed to make whatever money you are going to make of this IP by 12 years, then you are sucking at your marketing/use-of-IP and there should be "competition in the market" with your IP, to best make use of it.
It's funny how the wheel goes round and round. I loved it when Netflix had a lot more content, but now that each studio/production/company offers its own, it's ending up like nothing more than streaming a la carte and people are returning to piracy rather than spend hundreds across various streaming services (like cable/dish...).
The other thing is that a lot of games from 20 years ago can't even be bought anymore from the original source. But from ten years ago is even worse --- you just CAN'T get any piece of WiiWare without pirating it. You can't buy it used.
YouTube was an absolute cesspit of copyright violation until (well after acquisition) it wasn’t. Move fast, break things, but I guess it matters which things.
Seems like more of a benefit than a problem. Current games that need a server side will die off this decade with no chance of being played ever again. Zero long term marketing/awareness for the brand, developer, console maker.
I don’t see how ROMs for a 20 year old console would be a problem. The console and games are no longer sold. The producers have made all of the profit that they would make, on the original sale. They don’t see any profit on sales of used consoles and games.
I don't think it is just the One Click Solution they want (though I don't deny that is probably very attractive). I'm pretty sure we would see more vanity URLs and one-off sites if payment processors weren't so strict when it comes to selling adult content/services. Spinning up a CMS website of your own, even with commerce/membership functionality, isn't difficult. But the payment processors are the unspoken guardians of internet commerce, and without VC level backing good luck getting them to touch something like adult content.
I think this is a missing piece of OFs popularity and usefulness to creators. Not only is it a centralized and (by now) well known site for this kind of content. OF deals with the payment processors, the charge backs, and the disputes. It is relatively seamless for the content creators in that regard.
> But the payment processors are the unspoken guardians of internet commerce, and without VC level backing good luck getting them to touch something like adult content.
You're completely correct here. The only other real option in this space is CCBill - and they:
a) only do payments - not hosting and everything that OF does
b) still take a ~18-20% cut, in addition to annual flat fees
This is exactly the sort of problem cryptocurrencies were created to solve. Nobody should need some payment processor's permission for anything. People should be able to get paid in cryptocurrencies as if it was cash.
There's a lot going on in the porn world, especially now that it's, er, democratized. Sex workers is very broad. Porn stars is a little fuzzy. Some porn stars are big names, and/or can actually act pretty well. Or excel at creating fantasies. A surprising number of cam girls just sit at their desk fully clothed, chin in hand, and the only action is their eyes darting around their monitor while bad background music gets mangled through their microphone.
"Sex workers" is synonymous with prostitution. Pornography is a form of art. "Sex artists" would make more sense. "Sex worker" sounds very pedestrian, we don't call actors or singers "theater workers". As for the girls just sitting in their desks that doesnt sound like sex-related work at all, they might as well be called cam-artists. This is a not a tiny niche anymore, there is space for more than one terms.
Pornography is as much art as streaming video games or uploading card opening videos to YouTube are a form of art.
Pornography is entertainment, and not all entertainments are art. In spite of all the more or less recent porn videos labeled "Art Porn," which, in fact, rather depicts passionate sexual intercourse, pornography cannot reasonably be considered art in the traditional sense. Pornography does not elevate your spirit, it does not make you feel a broad range of emotions, and there is no real creativity, or it is utterly limited to a mediocre plot and a few different environments.
What definition of art do you have in mind that makes you think that pornography is art?
that's a very narrow definition that excludes a lot of mediocre works which are typically classified as art. I m not interested in that discussion as much in why porn and prostitution are lumped together.
No, it's not, it's an umbrella term covering multiple kinds of sexually-explicit work people do, including prostitution, fetish modelling, camming, stripping, phone sex.
That's right, there's more than one term. When you want to say something about porn actors, you can use that term. When you want to say something about sex workers, you can use that term. When you want to say something about artists, you can use that term. They are different but overlapping terms and which one you use depends on what you're saying.
Interesting, i ve heard it more used to refer to prostitution -- do ,e.g. strippers count as sex workers? Also, even that article is confusing, for example it says that sex work is prohibited in most of the world, but camming is legal almost everywhere.
Well, I think the intention behind it is that it's an umbrella term; I'm sure there's lots of gray area around the edges--I doubt anyone thinks there's a bright line where it's "sex work" on this side and "not sex work" on the other. Maybe that's part of the point, it's somewhat loose. But the intention is to include workers other than prostitutes.
Not generally; its typically used either more broadly (though not strictly more broadly, as nonconsensual acts wouldn't generally be included) than “prostitution”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work#Types
Or strictly more narrowly than prostitution, as in:
"Porn artist" might be taken to mean the people who make pornographic drawings/animations. Actors aren't colloquially referred to as "artists" most of the time; they're called actors.
This is a term from their own advocacy, as an alternative to much more derogatory ones. It focuses on work issues: pay and safety. The OF issue is about pay.
"Artist" might imply dilettante. "Worker" captures that they are doing it in order to get paid.
The RES addon has been a godsend for reddit for YEARS.
I love to browse by /r/all -- but I have spent a long while +Filtering out so many subreddit - and running it with Res and adblock etc... I have a super sleek and fun experience on Reddit with my 15-year-old account...
Some memes are cool - most are lame.
I have never been interested in 4chan nor twitter (I think twitter is the new "National Inquirer type" -- I think of tweets as those horrific multi colored snippet boxes on the front of tabloids.
I'm curious how much this may have impacted their users regardless. I imagine that a lot of people learned that relying on a single platform is dangerous and how important it is to diversify your online profile. I don't think people will trust Onlyfans anymore.
And youtube. Creators constantly want to move away from youtube with it's content-id with incredibly slow appeals process that makes most types of fair use nearly impossible, it's demonetization that intransparently makes your videos unprofitable because you said the wrong word or made the wrong sound, the blatant favoritism when it comes to the "trending" page, etc.
But the viewers are on youtube, and network effects keep the viewers from switching. So there's just a graveyard of failed youtube alternatives.
That's true, until the viewer profile change or disappear, which happens very, very slowly, but it happens anyway. It happened several times in history. Nothing lasts forever.
I think streaming video is a different beast, because the market is littered with loss leaders. It's hard for content creators to switch to another platform when the only profitable ones are subscription based (and not competitive).
Even Youtube, for all its users and being part of an existing advertising company, struggles to break even (reportedly).
Video is so mind blowingly huge compared to everything else. A single youtube video can be multiple gb if you view the 4k60fps version. While making an alternative reddit or twitter is relatively trivial server cost wise.
The part that you are missing is that all of alternatives to YouTube pay creators little or no ad money and have far worse search engine/discoverability. If a creator is getting demonetized on youtube, moving to a platform with no monetization would not solve their problem.
And sooner or later, any platform that becomes popular would have to implement a content ID system and and have to deal with ban/demonetization waves every time Twitter/journalists discover a new type of offensive content on the platform.
There have been plenty of (mostly short-lived) competitors that paid out more per view than YouTube. But that's obviously meaningless if there are barely any viewers on the platform.
I agree that content ID is a necessary system in principle. Not legally necessary, but it's a system that solves real problems YouTube had before its existence. The problems with it are largely around YouTube heavily favoring recent content, while simultaneously having a support that takes weeks to even look at your case if you can't raise a twitter storm. They are trying to completely automate a problem that's full of subtlety and rife with abuse, and then don't give you any way to resolve it when it goes wrong. Other platforms don't have to choose the same path
As a viewer, I would prefer watching content on other platforms. Problem is: there's none. Someone will mention PeerTube, but no... It doesn't work as well, not easy to navigate. The whole federation thing makes it harder to find content on a platform that already doesn't have most of the well known creators.
By network effects it's meant that all the buyers will go to OnlyFans because all the sellers are there, and all the sellers will stay there because that's where all the buyers are.
I don't see how trust is directly related to that, it's a competing concern.
One of the advice that a popular youtube said is to start a newsletter, which is how you own your audience, as opposed to being at the mercy of the youtube algorithm.
I thought this was a good advice to take for a long while before a youtuber mentioned it, but I wasn't a content creator.
I think it's a good idea to have your own website as well.
This advice is older than YouTube. It was repeated endlessly back when bloggers were chasing views trading blows with response posts. The original QRT dunk.
Exactly. This is the method for being able to say you predicted 100% of the stock moves over the last year - while getting endorsements from people who followed your recommendations.
Send out A/B newsletters. Group A gets a version which says a stock will go down. The B group's newsletter says the same stock will go up. Rinse and repeat. You are guaranteed to have a path to victory...
In other words, don't believe everything you read or watch, even if it is from a newsletter or youtube account with 100% success.
That’s definitely good advice for an established content creator who has an audience but it doesn’t solve the problem of reach. If I start a newsletter today I have no subscribers. How do I find them? If it’s an innocuous topic I’d probably start by sending my newsletter to friends and family and by posting links on social media. For the typical OF creator that isn’t really an option. Most links to pornographic content hosted on an unknown site are assumed to be spam or a scam.
There's a thousand niches on AD (After Dark) Twitter. A lot of accounts have short videos, then link to an OnlyFans page for longer videos. I don't know how effective it is.
I believe a lot of the sex workers expected this to happen at some point. Tumblr burned them when they got bought. So they might have some diversification, but their main focus has been OnlyFans. That was the platform that gave the best ROI.
There's a lot of upstart clones that are using their own cryptocurrencies. Not sure how much they'll fare though now with OF retracting their decision.
That's decreasingly a risk you can avoid, whether you are an only fans user/model/entertainer (what's the OF equivalent of a youtuber?) or OnlyFans itself.
It's risky to be dependant on an App store, cloud computing platform, social media platform, payment processor, etc. They might change their rules, ban you over a rumour, or just quietly change their recommendation or advertising algorithms to exclude you. There aren't a lot of substitutes, and even if there were, switching can mean leaving behind users.
OTOH, you have no choice. All the opportunities are on these platforms, not just risks.
To be a youtuber, you need to be on youtube. Diversifying to other platforms is doing stuff other than being a youtuber is hard. You can't just take your users, revenue model and such with you. You could try also doing IG or OF, but in the same sense that you can also practice law on the side. Sure, it gives you security, but not in a portfolio kind of a sense.
They just released an app on the app stores days prior to the "ban" announcement. Nice PR stunt for some downloads. But obvious manipulation if the walled-gardens cared about that sort of thing.
I doubt this nets out as "free". The campaign was "this ship is sinking" (for people doing adult content), and subscribers and content creators have been acting accordingly.
As a Gen-Z also recently graduated (less than 5 years), I can assure you, the fact these platforms are so big is because being graduated isn't worth anything these days. You are lucky or you are not.
It helps, but for many it was/is not enough. Trust me, the job search was brutal even as a computer science graduate from MIT. I had an offer and it was revoked (and companies that I had offers from pre-pandemic would not engage anymore). I'm almost certain that I have classmates who had OF at one point during the last year and I know for certain from Twitter there's Ivy League, Cal, and Stanford students on there.
Especially at the beginning of the pandemic when nobody knew how long it might last and the stock market was free diving to what was seemingly oblivion.
I guess my point is that in mid 2020, it felt like there were no degrees that had plentiful jobs short of being:
1. A close-to-graduating worker in health or medicine.
2. A finance-compatible major from a Top 15 school with exceptional math, statistics, and inference ability. Likely, previous internships. And there really weren't that many of these.
Jobs at software companies that were typically not competitive were getting flooded by top grads and early career applicants w/ 1-3 years of experience who had offers revoked or got laid off. I fought tooth and nail for the offers I got, and the company I joined ended up being terrible -- so go figure.
Now consider that there are like, 500k students *not from top schools* graduating in STEM that same year. Suddenly the 'study something useful' mantra fell apart in the matter of months (weeks?).
What is unemployment among software devs? It's real real low.
As someone who hires devs, I could easily hire 2-3 devs right now. However I live in a tier3 city, and don't want to do the remote dev thing right now. If I post a remote job I get 5,000 candidates, if I post a local job I get 0-3.
As a new grad, I bet winning a remote job would be hard. But pick a city, any city. Always looking for devs. If still not landing jobs, its a matter of interview skills and non-school resume experience.
1) Bottom 5% tier grad who has less than zero social skills, thus would also be a low earner on OF
2) Extremely picky about jobs. Instead chose OF for lifestyle/earning reasons.
3) Serious health, legal, psychological, or family problems that would prevent them from any job and probably also would have made attaining their degree very difficult. This is MIT OnlyFans person I feel the saddest for.
4) Some other 1/1000 possibility
The idea MIT grads are on OF in mass just to make enough to eat and put a roof over their heads is some serious sympathy farming.
While I find this post witty and well-written ("some serious sympathy farming"!), I don't follow where the parent post was suggesting anything about MIT CS grads on OnlyFans. Do I misunderstand? (Zero trolling.)
Yeah, all I was saying is that statistically, it's likely that I overlapped with an undergrad(s) at MIT who has/have an OF. And that I know for certain from Twitter that there are undergrads from similar schools who have OF.
I never prequalified it specifically with 'CS' -- by the way, a lot of the discussion in the thread has tunnel-visioned on CS, but I'm pretty sure that's not the only STEM degree HN would consider 'useful' (if we loop back to the comment I replied to).
There's physics, math, engineering, and much, much more -- and all of those had an even worse job market than CS with the exclusion of those jumping into quantitative finance. The point of the original comment is to highlight how you can do everything 'right' according to the poster and, by necessity or tragedy resulting from a global pandemic, may still end up relying on sex work to make ends meet for a period of time.
The circumstances of the pandemic are only further exacerbated for the hundreds of thousands of STEM graduates not coming from top schools or internships. Finally, I'd like to note that my original comment (way up in the chain) was neither about STEM nor top schools, so I hold that my observation there still holds weight.
TL;DR: the concept that Gen-Z job hunters can simply go to 'the good school' and get 'the good degree' for 'the good job' is entirely subverted in a pandemic, leading to an especially dire job situation for those who are less privileged in education or training. This, coupled with social distancing, was the perfect social context for OnlyFan's recent hypergrowth.
This point: "may still end up relying on sex work to make ends meet for a period of time". I grew up in a family and culture that shamed sex workers, but when I became an adult, I learned that that the truth is much more nuanced! I hope OnlyFans can continue to provide a safe space for sex workers when and how they wish to work.
Your tl;dr: I agree and experienced it myself, first hand. The year that you graduate is a roll of the dice in real life. If the economy is strong, you'll mostly do fine; if the economy is in a nosedive, most people are screwed, even hotties on OnlyFans with an MIT CS degree!
>I learned that that the truth is much more nuanced!
Yes! Absolutely, I tried a couple times to re-write that bit without getting too verbose and kinda gave up. I agree with you -- there are people who absolutely just vibe with sex work and they should be empowered to do it.
No. Tech employment in the US remains hot as well. Unemployment for people in the tech industry with a degree is about 1-2%. For a software developer with a degree, it's sub 1%.
When I graduated with my CS degree in 2002 the job search was brutal. I hang out in cscareerquestions on Reddit and a common theme seems to be getting that first junior dev job is really hard. Is this just an unfair reality all junior devs face?
Getting that first job is almost always the hardest. I went through nearly 100 interviews (I have no degree) before I got hired. I wouldn't call it unfair though. I've been on the other side of the interview table since then and I can tell you that the vast majority of applicants to a junior role are so far from employable that its barely worth it to hire a junior. No one wants to wait years for an employee to become productive. The fact is that most schools are not preparing graduates to work in the industry. I know several CS graduates who were almost totally unfamiliar with SQL databases. Considering that the vast majority of SE work these days is on the web, it is shocking that there isn't more focus on fundamental web technology.
It definitely seems so. Whenever I post an internship or junior position on Indeed or LinkedIn I get hundreds of resumes.
Whenever I need someone more experienced, it’s either hired by recommendation, or we need a headhunter. Salary is never the issue, it’s just that senior devs complain about getting swamped with offers, so they don’t even have to look anymore.
It’s almost like a game theory problem: people have to apply to hundreds of companies to have a shot because everyone is also doing the same.
That, and some companies seem to be shifting towards preferring having a low number of experienced developers rather than a larger number of entry-level: I know of a few companies that paused junior and mid-level hirings after getting big investments.
Joel Spolsky has written about this problem extensively. The best devs are not available and are not looking. I have seen many, many LinkedIn profiles for people who are insanely technical (much more than me) who literally write: "Headhunters: Go away!" LOL.
I think there's just a lot of competition. I never was able to land a junior dev position and gave up (was self taught, though.) I just decided to go freelance and work on personal projects until I had a portfolio and was able to get hired as a mid-level engineer.
I think this is a sign of companies not knowing how to get useful work out of junior developers with only a few years of experience, much less fresh college graduates. This is an extremely challenging problem at small scales, and one that most companies simply aren't up to. In my experience, listening to engineering management discuss these matters, the few people who entertain the idea of hiring junior developers do so for fairly abstract reasons:
a sense of moral obligation, a sense of contributing to the health of the industry, a desire to challenge the software engineering team to mature in its practices, etc. I'm sure there are companies out there that know how to employ a junior developer at the going rate and actually get their money's worth, but it isn't common knowledge, and I haven't seen anybody succeed at it firsthand. If my experience is typical, we're just overall shitty as an industry at using young talent.
That creates a problem of incentives, where purely self-serving organizations will let other companies bear the expense of employing junior developers and helping them learn the ropes, and then hire them when they're worth it.
As an aside, professional soccer solves this by granting a team certain rights to the players it develops, so if a player is trained in Team A's youth academy, and Team B wants to sign them at age 18, Team B pays a fee to Team A. Team A may agree to reduce the fee in exchange for a share of any subsequent sale, so if the player develops into a top professional and is sold to Team C at age 22, both Team A and Team B benefit financially.
> That creates a problem of incentives, where purely self-serving organizations will let other companies bear the expense of employing junior developers and helping them learn the ropes, and then hire them when they're worth it.
With juniors being able to be easily enticed away with a bump in salary at a well known company it becomes the situation that the only companies that can afford to hire juniors are those that pay enough to make it so that they aren't enticed away as easily.
This then leads to other companies not interested in hiring juniors - not because they don't want them or that they aren't willing to train them, but rather that they can't compete with the big tech company compensation.
The result of that is then that you see only job postings for mid and seniors... not so much because they will hit the ground with less training, but that they're likely more mature and less likely to be poached (they're stereotypically interested in settling down and raising a family).
Ultimately, if everyone and every organization is similarly self interested, there is no reason to hire a junior dev unless you can pay them top dollar to avoid the possibility of them getting poached by another org before they've been able to produce a positive return on investment... or that the overall income of the org is large enough that the loss in the ROI isn't substantial.
It sounds like you’re talking about the very beginning of the pandemic when everyone was just trying to figure out what the hell was happening. That seems entirely separate from the topic of the value of a degree these days. I had a similar situation finishing school as the last recession hit, but that wasn’t so sudden. Someone else is talking about it being brutal graduating in 2002. The common theme here seems to be graduating right after crashes or right after pandemics hit sucks.
I wanted to add to your list of degrees of plentiful jobs.. but electrical engineering grads have no shortage of people competing to hire them.
If you include associate degrees, you can add all the skilled trades to that list. To be clear, I'm talking about all the associate applied science w/[electricial|plumbing|pipefitting|welding] programs out there.
As an MIT alum - if you had an offer rescinded please let the careers office know. Companies are not allowed to do that if engaging with MIT students in a meaningful way (career fairs, etc.) and MIT can and does penalize them for this (banning from fairs, etc.)
I am not MIT, but rather shabby mid-tier state uni, and my experience was nearly identical when job hunting in 2002/3 after graduation. With some distance, the hardest part emotionally, is that one or two years when you are only 22 years old is a LONG time to find a job!
A bachelors in math or physics from a decent school should indicate that you have the capacity to learn difficult concepts, work with data, and you should have some experience with programming.
Sorry, but that doesn't translate into employability in 2021.
I have mentored math and physics students for six years now and even the good ones are having an increasingly hard time finding employment, and not for lack of trying. It's not uncommon to hear of seniors sending, say, 100 applications only to get ghosted on 99 of them.
I would agree with this. A large portion of tech people I work with are not CS grads. I myself have a math degree. You do need to show that you can program and know your stuff, but you can still do that with personal/side projects/etc. Once you get your first job, then you're good to go and most won't care about your degree. I think now it's more a challenge of getting junior level jobs across the board.
Off the top of my head CS is steadily looking like one of the only degrees worth anything and I’d still argue the value of that given the prevalence of self taught developers. Decent starting salaries for the most part, and very good starting salaries if you’re particularly good at certain things and an otherwise unheard of ceiling. Though I’m generalizing at the moment, I feel the industry is more complex than that.
Nursing seems ok. Salaries appear good at first, but the nurses I know also work ungodly hours.
Some traditional engineering fields seem ok in terms of employability, but wages don’t seem that great and many of the roles I’ve seen in those fields want a MS/MEng.
Nursing, yes. Pre-COVID it looked like it might have gotten saturated but since then demand has spiked.
Physical therapy seems to be doing well too.
The other one in my head was pharmacy, but I guess one needs a Pharm. D to continue on. Being a pharmacy tech also sucks, objectively.
CS, maybe. Engineering degrees from anything less than a large state school or tier one are probably better off trying to get into one for their masters. That's why I said "median" BS degree above.
Law is entirely saturated and dead.
Ironically, I see a lot of humanities students doing well post-graduation because they went in with low expectations. But society continues to dunk on them for basically no reason.
> The other one in my head was pharmacy, but I guess one needs a Pharm. D to continue on. Being a pharmacy tech also sucks, objectively.
A Pharm D is currently one of the worst investments. Their wages have been declining since at least 2015, and stagnant since 2010.
They have no ability to generate revenue other than hawking bullshit vitamins and supplements, because they have no negotiating power against the people that pay them (managed care organizations and governments). And a few big employers compose of most of the market that buys Pharm D labor (CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, Walmart).
Not to mention that you have to work evenings, weekends, nights, and deal with the general public. Checkout the pharmacy forums on sdnforum or Reddit, they are super depressing.
Doesn’t help when you don’t have the foot in the door because your family is not traditionally professional.
I had to ask one of my old graduate project partners for a referral to my current (and first, at 27) tech job and I still feel dirty and guilty that I got it so easily and managed to escape the trap of being extremely qualified while making min wage in a dusty shithole of a warehouse.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” was a phrase of derision growing up, but it’s how the world works now.
Right now my coworkers like me, my manager gave me a glowing review, the company is willing to buy me certs and I have been assigned to the subteam responsible for our core functionality.
8 months ago I was self-harming and ready to off myself because of endlessly firing applications into the void and reaching the end of my finances.
I can clearly perform under the stress of work, school, achievement, things breaking but the way the labour market is structured almost broke me which has to tell you something.
As parent was telling you, that's always been America.
Except historically, most jobs have been less safe.
You get crap jobs in your teens to have work history. You go to college to get a degree. You make friends at college, network, and maybe get an internship. You leverage all of the previous to get your first job. You leverage your first job and network to get your second job.
It's not easy. But it is how the world works. Why do you think so many people in white collar jobs have imposter syndrome?
> 8 months ago I was self-harming and ready to off myself because of endlessly firing applications into the void and reaching the end of my finances
I am sorry you experienced this. Many of us have experienced similar things in our careers. When I did, I had my brother's couch I could crash on while I figured things out, and to be honest, parents who could help me with rent when my post dotcom-bust job paid peanuts.
To the extent that your difficulties were exacerbated by an insufficient social safety net is perhaps the greatest indictment of our society. Incentive structures matter, and structures that put people at the brink between achievement and self harm do a lot of damage to our human capital.
Not everyone will be pushed to the point of self-harm, but the proximity between destitution and achievement is too close, especially for those without family and community safety nets.
Pretty much the same here. Many of those connections were from school, going all the way back to elementary. So as a parent now, I feel like part of my job, for better or worse, is to nurture their friendships and maintain them with playdates once they aren’t in the same school.
I can’t say I blame you, but it really leads to a society stratified on uncontrollable factors and puts a bullet in the idea of meritocracy. You can’t control who your parents are or the culture you grew up in, but these have no impact on your job performance unless you live in a highly nepotistic society.
Maybe an “affirmative action” type program for the socially disadvantaged is necessary, but I can’t see that gaining much support when addressing the more glaring disparities (racial, gender) is controversial enough.
I have the same issues as you as well and no, you can't control who your parents are and the culture you grow up in.
But you can control who your friends are. And you can choose to surround yourself with motivated people.
>puts a bullet in the idea of meritocracy.
I don't feel the same way, as this sits at the boundary of the workplace. My understanding of meritocracy is that, reward is based on performance inside the company. But until you have hired and had someone working for some time, you have no way of evaluating them.
We try to mitigate hiring bad employees with things like resumes, interviews and skill tests but those are not perfect. I, for example, suck at writing a resume. How many people have you seen on this site rage about "leet code tests"?
So, another "tool" companies use are personal connections. John, a great worker whom I trust, refers Frank. I still have to interview him but it give me another data point.
As a society, we have drifted away from the local community organizations (i.e. churches) that allowed people to build up good connections. We have tried to replace them, things like Linkedin but I am not sure how good of a job they do. Anything done on the internet gives me more of an ethereal feeling as opposed to the more permanent feeling of face to face personal connections.
I'm not entirely sure that is necessary. While I think connections will take you further, nurturing relationships in the community, as an adult, is also very useful. This is something anyone can do provided they can get wherever things are happening. Which in a lot of cases is online.
Do you also make an effort to include children from lower socio-economic backgrounds? That is a good way to contribute to a flatter society, that depends less upon "the privileged people I know to help me get a job".
You’re right — I’ll do my best to give them opportunities to find friends all over. Then my kids may become those privileged people, and it will be their responsibility in turn to continue that flattening until it’s not needed.
I got my first part-time tech support job during college via a connection. My aunt was a white collar professional, she ran the fundraising for a non-profit with an annual budget in the millions of dollars. Some software they used for managing donations was developed by a small local company, and she recommended I apply for work there because she was always in touch with their support and thought I could do the job. So I wrote a cover letter and name dropped my aunt's name, who they knew as a client. They interviewed me and hired me. I don't know how much my aunt helped but I can grant that this connection was a privilege many don't have.
After that, the rest of my jobs were without any connection. In the winter of my senior year at college I started applying to big companies through their websites. A big insurance company responded and flew me in for an interview. I was thrilled by this chance, I had never been treated so well. The recruiter told me to save receipts for food and taxis etc, I was so unused to this that I don't think u ever submitted them, I couldn't believe they'd pay for all that. Anyway they hired me.
After that my LinkedIn profile did most of the work. I responded to recruiter spam and got interviews.
One job-hop was driven by a semi-connection: I was moving cities and wanted to find a new job, so I went to a bunch of tech meetups. One was a python meetup, which has nothing to do with my tech stack and I know very little python. At the end, I approached one of the lecturers and told him that while I didn't understand anything he talked about, I got his joke and I thought they were funny. He said that he and some friends were going for drinks, would I like to join? "Sure." So we sat and talked, at the end he asked if I'm looking for a job, I said yes, he told me to send him my CV which I did. Then nothing... then a week later he responds telling me he posted on a forum for veterans of a particular military unit he was in, where he wrote that he thought I was a good candidate. Then suddenly my phone started ringing...I had interviewsin the new city and ultimately offers.
Bottom line: there are multiple ways to success. Good fortune is a common thread though, you do need luck and serendipity, and professional family connections certainly don't hurt.
> “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” was a phrase of derision growing up, but it’s how the world works now.
It was always a phrase of derision for the naivete of those who think it has ever been different, because it has always been how the world works.
You just didn't understand it until it bit you, and then you mistook it for some recent change, even though you apparently grew up with people telling you how it is.
True, I always interpreted it as “incompetent people will sometimes be picked over you by virtue of their connections” but the reality is much, much worse IMO: “from a young age, optimize your social network for the career you want, else play the application lottery”
See the thing is, there is no such thing as meritocracy. What I don't understand is why people choose the fantasy of "working their way up" instead of putting some of those efforts into political activism and engagement. That's what's needed to actually tackle the systematic problems at hand.
We need more political education, especially among younger people just entering the job market. Period.
YMMV. I've gotten all my jobs by mass applying, going to career fairs (to be fair this was through my university), having an updated LinkedIn, etc. None were by referral.
Absolutely, and that has always been the case, even in vocations. There was a time where being a tv or vacuum repairman was a pretty good, middle class-ish job. Then the times came where that's not really the case. Picking a career path does have a little bit of luck in it, but that's like thinking it's lucky to not hit a door when going through a doorway. If you stop, think and open the door, you're less likely to get hit by a door, even though that doesn't guarantee it.
And yes, this is coming from a guy who has been smacked in the face by someone else opening the door on me. Same with picking a poor career choice pre housing crash in 2008. Adapt and overcome.
The problem with college is the cost, not the degrees people choose to pursue. And blaming students for studying things that aren’t in demand is a straw man.
A lot can change in the four years between enrollment and graduation. For example, I went to college in 2006 when the finance sector was booming. I graduated in 2010 when it very much wasn’t. By the time the jobs had evaporated it was much too late to change my course of study. And I certainly couldn’t go back and renegotiate the tuition or interest rate on my loans.
I’m sure the same could be said about people who went to school for anything relating to tourism or hospitality who have graduated into the pandemic. If you’re a new chef, pilot, hair dresser, massage therapist, looking to work in hotel management, etc. the job market that existed when you began your studies is entirely different from the job market you’ve just graduated into.
I finished a network admin degree just as all the entry-level jobs were being sucked up by SaaS and a few IT firms that weren't hiring. At least the state scholarship paid for most of it, so I had no debt.
And the same can happen in tech! When I started college in the late 90s in software engineering, the market was booming. A year before I graduated the dot-com crash took place and the jobs evaporated. That was the catalyst for pursuing an entrepreneurial path (I had no choice) but in spite of things working out, I always try to be thankful for my good fortune and remember that it can change in an instant.
hairdressers and chefs can't have well rounded educations? going to vocational school is a completely different experience. you're not being asked to read literature at a trade school. you're not asked to take history classes, or even basic sciences. sure, these are positives to people that don't care, but i'm not sure that's a full education? you're definitely trained in your field, but is that a full education? i would recommend at least 2 years at community college on top of (before?) vocational school. i'm not knocking vocational schools, but i'm suggesting not knocking someone attending a college taking one of these types of careers
I'm not knocking them, but if what you say is the case it would appear orthogonal to their career choice and so complaining that your college was expensive and you can't get a job is incoherent.
Last I had been hearing, the people complaining about costs were referring to universities (4 years +) and not the community college (2 years) type of school that I suggested.
Which field "has jobs" anymore? Putting aside the humanities, STEM degrees these days aren't even a guarantee of a job. Biology/chemistry jobs generally require graduate school or medical school, engineering jobs aren't as lucrative or stable as they once were, and math either implies becoming an actuary (i.e. more certification), a quant (insanely competitive) or a programmer. I'm not saying these routes are impossible, but it's harder than you'd think to pick a field that "has jobs". More than a few of my friends who did STEM degrees have ended up in tech for that reason.
That's not exactly true. It's not that an undergraduate degree is worthless, but it's become pretty standard. You may not stand above the rest with just a degree, but you certainly fall below the rest without one.
I don't mean this from an intelligence or skill perspective, some of the smartest people I know don't have college degrees. But when the big companies are recruiting from college career fairs or listing it as a job requirement, you can and will be passed over for jobs because you don't have one.
I have a friend who worked for 5 years at a big consultancy company and he got stonewalled for getting promoted to a team lead role because he didn't have a masters degree. Like, he was getting top marks every year at performance review, clearly knew how to do the job, but some internal policy somewhere said that you can't be a lead without a masters degree, sorry.
He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was. Still, I'd say it was an absolute waste of time and he ended up switching companies a year later anyway.
That might me the case at larger consultancies. Also, some jobs even require a PhD, because it is super specialized. But overall, the ROI of degrees have plummeted. A friend of mine finished a Mechanical Engineering degree and couldn't find decent paying work for 2 years. He then moved onto website design.
Your friend may have struggled but overall Mechanical Engineering is one of the top 10 highest salary college majors. Most graduates are doing pretty well.
Almost didn't catch the fact that the data he pointed out only really counts people who actually got jobs. What kids need nowadays is to know which majors generate the largest percentage of graduates who get work in their respective fields. That would be a better indicator of your chances of being hired after college.
It does most of these kids no good to know that a given type of engineer can make 150k right out of college, if less than 2% of them are actually able to secure work in the field right out of college. In fact, I'd wager that prior to going into a field, most kids would rather know about the "less than 2% are able to secure work" part rather than the "150K starting salary" part.
Unpopular idea, but that is why I use the word "engineer" sparingly. Engineers doing real engineering is becoming a smaller part of making tech products, especially software.
Software developers can be at least as highly skilled and intelligent as can be engineers, but, most of the time, they are engaged in a highly skilled craft rather than engineering. Making software is sometimes more creative and more integrative than engineering.
Also software can change radically in ways physical engineering doesn't - we may continue to make refinements to steel alloys, but you won't come in to work tomorrow and discover that everyone is now building bridges out of glass.
But a software engineer isn't a member of a state-sanctioned professional association. They cannot be struck off for bad behaviors, nor are they licensed to do anything beyond the norms of any other citizen. They are not members of a true profession like doctors/lawyers/engineers.
I'm not sure what "state-sanction professional association" means but there are many professional associations like IEEE (covering tech as a whole) or ACM (that covers computing specifically).
There's also ABET - Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology - which establishes formal requirements and standards for the teaching of Software Engineering as a discipline: https://www.abet.org/accreditation/
So I think those pieces are there, they're just not the norm yet.
State sanctioned means there is law mandating that only one group is in charge of the profession and they, outside government, regulate that profession. Lawyers only have one bar association in each state. Doctors have only one medical board.
The State of Oregon already tried to sue someone who was a software engineer for not being a "certified 'Engineer'" and the state's own supreme court ruled in favor of the defendant.
I'm personally in favor of such an organization but it really goes against the meritocratic spirit of tech. Lots of us have used tech to bootstrap a better life through sheer mastery and not a "professional" track
A Master's degree is what you make of it. A student who only wants the credential for short-term career purposes can skate through without much work or learning. But if you have it the opportunity to attend then why not put in some effort and learn interesting, challenging topics? I find that usually opens up unexpected opportunities later.
It's a bit silly for employers to focus on arbitrary educational credentials instead of actual ability. But on the other hand for large organizations managing thousands of employees it's challenging to treat everyone as a unique individual. Some level of forced standardization is the only way to make it work efficiently at scale.
At a consultancy, credentials you can market when "selling" your consultants is part of the job. Depending on the field, a certain level of accredited knowledge (i.e., from a degree, or certification perhaps) is part of how the bill-rate is justified for employees at given levels.
We don't have an education lock on certain roles/levels at the company I work for, but we do have roles at certain levels that require a given certification no matter how proficient one is in the specified tech. This isn't a small-brain move that misses the forest of knowledge for the trees of credentials, but a recognition that it will be more challenging to staff that employee at a given level without it.
> This isn't a small-brain move that misses the forest of knowledge for the trees of credentials
It is a second-order small-brain move: the clients are the ones missing the forest for the trees, while your company is just going with the flow. I get it, my company did the same thing, but in the end it's one of those "how business is done" things that add together to create a culture we all freely admit makes no sense.
I think viewed uncharitably, it makes no sense. But I think it is plenty logical on its own. The reality is my org. - and many like it - have choices. We're not choosing between an incompetent person with a relevant credential and a competent person without one, we're choosing among many competent individuals (as far as we've assessed), and verifiable (marketable) indicators of competence beyond us "vouching" for them is an extremely valuable resource. It may not be ideal for a given person's career, but I don't think it has that much effect on our clients' outcomes.
I'm sure there have been exceptions to this, and firms that aren't as confident in the capabilities of their people may suffer more.
> I have a friend who worked for 5 years at a big consultancy company and he got stonewalled for getting promoted to a team lead role because he didn't have a masters degree. Like, he was getting top marks every year at performance review, clearly knew how to do the job, but some internal policy somewhere said that you can't be a lead without a masters degree, sorry.
Well, that's part of the job - are you able to figure out what needs to be done to reach the objective, and then do that? No? Well, no promotion for you.
> He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was.
Seems like your friend did figure out what hurdles to jump.
Part of the reason that employers require advanced degrees is so that they are assured that the individual in question can figure out what steps need to be taken to fulfill an objective, and then take those steps.
> This is the common refrain, but I think it's equally likely that it boils down to "I did this, so you should have to do this, too."
The reason is probably irrelevant: the organisation tells you what steps to take to get a promotion. If you fail to take those steps they consider you unsuitable for the promotion, not because they consider those steps to prove your capability, but because you have demonstrated an unwillingness to meet the minimum requirements.
Why the minimum requirements are what they are is irrelevant.
>Part of the reason that employers require advanced degrees is so that they are assured that the individual in question can figure out what steps need to be taken to fulfill an objective, and then take those steps.
it seems like if some individual has been working with you for years, you should probably have access to better metrics for this than degree/no degree, such as personal acquaintance and familiarity
> it seems like if some individual has been working with you for years, you should probably have access to better metrics for this than degree/no degree, such as personal acquaintance and familiarity
But it isn't about the employee's competence, so how would metrics help? It's about the employee's compliance.
Look at it from the point of view of the organisation, not the point of view of an individual within the organisation: an individual literally gets told what steps are needed to reach some objective, and then they fail to take those steps!
That does not bode well for that individual in terms of making business decisions, hence they shouldn't be in a position of more power and/or influence anyway, because they are unable to achieve an objective even when it is spelled out to them.
Or, they achieved the objective, but they found their own solution instead of being forced to have it spelled out for them. I commonly encounter people who have these degrees but are unable to figure out how to accomplish an objective unless every step is presented as a bullet-point list in the task description.
Having a degree is not the objective, being able to do the work is. Confusing the two is an example of a cargo cult. I don't want people working under me who are incapable of understanding which objectives are important.
> Or, they achieved the objective, but they found their own solution instead of being forced to have it spelled out for them.
The objective here is getting the promotion.
> I commonly encounter people who have these degrees but are unable to figure out how to accomplish an objective unless every step is presented as a bullet-point list in the task description.
Irrelevant - the company isn't using the degree as an indicator of competence, they are using it as an indicator of compliance.
> Having a degree is not the objective,
You're correct. Getting the promotion is the objective.
> being able to do the work is.
Being able to do the work is irrelevant if the candidate does not meet the minimum requirements set by the organisation.
I disagree. By that logic any CS degree is worthless. I have two years of college under my belt but work as a lead engineer at a well funded startup. I didn't need college to get good but that doesn't mean it doesn't help 90% of people to do so. I imagine that same is true of a masters degree, certain people will definitely benefit from it.
This is certainly a common thing at large companies, but it also is one that goes back ten to twenty years, possibly more. Millenials hit this frequently, it's not just a Gen Z change.
> He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was.
Well, at least he scored a degree out of it.
I'm torn on this. I'm not sure I see it all that different than if they wanted to make sure someone they were moving into a managerial role had knowledge to back it up, and wanted them to take managerial courses. It's good that the company paid for the courses, a bit less good that it was in personal time (but it's also theoretically beneficial for the person and isn't tied to the company, so I don't fault that much).
If they outright offer this path in in this situation and it doesn't have to be brought up by the employee, I think that's a pretty acceptable solution to requiring that degree for the position, if the company thinks it's really important to have for some reason.
Worthless? Probably depends on the degree. Miseducation is worse than the absence of education. STEM at least has some market value, but man does not live by bread alone and market value alone does not elevate the university above the level of trade school. Trade schools are a good thing. Turning universities into glorified trade schools (which they are) is not.
People need more of the intangible but true. A consumerist society is condemned to wallow in mediocrity and misery. It does not rise to the level of human dignity and maintains a level of existence better suited to worms than men.
American universities do not really seem to be playing the role of exploring deep questions or search for meaning or knowledge for knowledge sake, either.
It's mostly about expanding the gravy train of administrative staff and shiny new dormitories and eating facilities and gyms, alongside a narrow ideological political indoctrination with little enthusiasm for debate or considering unpopular opinions.
Without the trade school aspect it's difficult to see what value they still provide.
You may get as philosophical as you want on the topic of whether degrees are necessary. As someone who did college recruiting for my company I can say first hand that degrees don't mean anything about someone's skillset. I've talked to hundreds of students with a 4.0 and a degree that couldn't tell me the Big-O of a hash vs searching a list. But if you are working in a field where the job requirements list a bachelor's degree and you don't have one, you are automatically at the bottom of the list. If I have 3 positions open and 25 similar candidates, things like fulfilling the job requirements (like having a degree) start coming into play.
Very obviously if you are working in a field that does not list that as a requirement, then of course you don't need one. But it's still not worthless. As someone pointed out in another thread, if you're trying to move up in a company, a degree can be the differentiator.
A degree at least means a candidate can probably read and write. I meet too many 20-somethings who think they are hot stuff because they can make a website dance, but are totally incapable of creating a document explaining how they did it.
My favorite legal recruiter question: give them a topic to research online, one where you know the wikipedia entry is wrong. Not many without post-secondary research experiance would pass that one.
Edit yes, but whether your edit survives whatever person is king of that particular corner of wikipedia is another matter. Try making an edit from a brand new account. Correcting errors on a website isnt worth such fights.
This is also my experience with Wiki. After having a few edits reversed that were obviously wrong (with sources!), I gave up. Ignoring the problem of edits, I still love reading Wiki.
> If I have 3 positions open and 25 similar candidates, things like fulfilling the job requirements (like having a degree) start coming into play.
The problem is when jobs don't truly need the knowledge granted from a degree, and is just used to thin the heard, because hiding managers don't know what else to look for.
The value is thus generated by convenience to the hiring manager rather than possession of relevant job knowledge.
Add to that the fact that not all degrees are equal... there are plenty of "degree factories" that pump out useless people who don't know anything marketable.
Having a degree is, as you've said, a requirement (I have a 2 year... I'm out on some jobs because of it)...
Not having a degree is bad. Having a useless degree is worse as you now (generally) have the debt of a paper that means nothing.
Personally, I'd say "weird subjects" - or, if not weird, not marketable. The proverbial "basket weaving" degree or stuff like that. I think the more common "liberal arts" line as well.
> But when the big companies are recruiting from college career fairs or listing it as a job requirement, you can and will be passed over for jobs because you don't have one.
I’ve started to get the impression that even in software development there are certain domains or industries you would be hard pressed to get into without a degree, simply because majority of entry levels are done through campus recruitment.
Well, not just elites. This is the policy everyone voted for: less taxes (causing young folks to go heavily into debt for worthless degree credentials), less social safety nets, a generational wealth transfer from the young to the old.
The results are exactly what you’d expect, and older generations should absolutely be worried when their cohort has shrunk through death to a minority voting bloc.
I don’t think taxes on regular people have dropped, we simply pretend social Security, Medicare, State and local, + fees don’t count as taxes. Which means we can “lower” federal taxes by providing less federal support to state projects.
> Deep state cuts in funding for higher education over the last decade have contributed to rapid, significant tuition increases and pushed more of the costs of college to students, making it harder for them to enroll and graduate. These cuts also have worsened racial and class inequality, since rising tuition can deter low-income students and students of color from college.
> Overall state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in the school year ending in 2018 was more than $6.6 billion below what it was in 2008 just before the Great Recession fully took hold, after adjusting for inflation.[1] In the most difficult years after the recession, colleges responded to significant funding cuts by increasing tuition, reducing faculty, limiting course offerings, and in some cases closing campuses. Funding has rebounded somewhat, but costs remain high and services in some places have not returned.
> Then, during the Reagan Era and the Tax Revolt of the 1980s, states passed tax and expenditure limitations, restrictions that state governments create to limit the amount they can tax or spend.
> “And that meant that state budgets came under threat,” explains Deming. “And so states that used to basically highly subsidize a college education for many people started to cut back in various ways, either by raising tuition or by spending less.”
> Reagan cut higher education funding and student aid, and college costs boomed as a result.
> The College Board estimates that during the 1980-1981 school year, on average, it cost students the modern equivalent of $17,410 to attend a private college and $7,900 to attend a public college — including tuition, fees, room and board. By 1990, those costs increased to $26,050 and $9,800, respectively.
a lot of it can be attributed to spending in non-academics - like administration, sports, etc. these need to be reduced.
Similar to ROTC programs for Army in conjunction with local colleges, why not special sports programs administered seperately but just co-located with regular colleges that go along with the scheduling, etc?
Administrative expenses need to be chopped from the outside, there is no way the current folks are going to reduce that.
Sports alone are generally close to self funding at many universities with plenty showing net profits. It’s not just top schools that benefit, giving alums a reason to visit and specifically care about the school has knock on effects to general donations as well as funding athletic scholarships that pay the full tuition amount.
Some athletic fees are excessive, but encouraging students to use the pool, gym etc has real benefits to student health and can be scaled to actual usage levels.
For major sports it’s mostly donations, game tickets, TV broadcast rights, concession stands, merchandise, etc.
As an example Virginia Tech football tickets are start at ~500$/season breaks down as 8$/game fee + 400 base price + variable required donation and can go up well over 2k a season for the better seats. It’s a 35,000 seat stadium that’s largely full so your talking a minimum of 20+ million in annual ticket sales just for Football.
By comparison VT has 39,000 students and the athletic fee is 163$ + a recreational Sports Fee of 163$, together it’s 5% of tuition. Which collectively adds up to a similar scale as just one sports ticket sales, but covers general facilities used by any student. Looking across all sports and revenue streams the recreational sports fee clearly isn’t the major funding source and as football etc contribute indirectly to the schools general fund their clearly close to break even if not a significant money maker.
Less taxes does not mean dropped taxes. More succinctly, the proportion of government expenditures going towards younger people’s education has decreased than expenditures going towards older people or other populations.
>> less taxes (causing young folks to go heavily into debt for worthless degree credentials)
So let me understand this thought process? It is better for Taxpayers to pay for "worthless degree credentials"
The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are concerned is credential-ism itself. A standard public education should be good enough for a person to obtain a good middle class job, a K-12 education should be good enough for 50-60% of all jobs in the market
That fact that it is not, is a huge indictment of both the private sector demanding too much, and the public school system no providing proper standard of education.
K-12 SHOULD NOT be "college prep" like it is being treated today, and a person SHOULD NOT need a 4 year degree to do the most basic jobs in society, up to and including computer programming or other general IT work.
I think you have it in your mind that the government can solve all of these problems with higher taxes and more spending, when in reality government is almost exclusively to blame for the majority of the problems
I disagree with you about government as the solution. First, the government should cover, at no cost, two years of community college. Second, employers should be unable to mandate higher education that requires candidates to go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt if employers can't show that credential isn't materially required to perform a role's functions.
>>First, the government should cover, at no cost, two years of community college
I am honestly not opposed to that... But I still believe we should have a better Public Education system less focused on "college prep" and more focused on actual education, preparing people for Life, Jobs, etc as an adult.
The 2 years of Community College should be Vocational Training for the chosen field after your General Education is done in the K-12.
But many people go to Community College to complete their General Education College requirements for their 4 year degree..
> Second, employers should be unable to mandate higher education that requires candidates to go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt if employers can't show that credential isn't materially required to perform a role's functions.
Will be difficult to enforce. Employers can always look at the degree and secretly use it as a criterion, while being prepared to claim there was something else about the candidate that led them to hire her.
> The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are concerned is credential-ism itself. A standard public education should be good enough for a person to obtain a good middle class job, a K-12 education should be good enough for 50-60% of all jobs in the market
Why? What if the markets’ supply and demand curves indicate need for people with more than high school education, and an oversupply of people with just high school education?
Note that I think US public school education standards are basically non existent, and there should be a massive retooling to ensure higher standards (including standardized testing) and more focus on actual skills in high school so that at 18 the kid comes out with something usable.
But I do not see how or why our society can guarantee someone a certain class of living with an arbitrary amount of education.
>>What if the markets’ supply and demand curves indicate need for people with more than high school education
Then that indicates the high school education is not stringent enough for the market, and should be adjusted accordingly
> and an oversupply of people with just high school education?
The market is showing currently an extreme lack of qualified people. if the market is saying there is an " oversupply of people with just high school education" but there are millions of jobs open, that means the market is telling us that a High School Diploma is meaningless to the market, which as you point out that is what many employers are saying. They are hire people with a High School Diploma and it is a crap shoot where they have basic levels of education or not because in many schools its a participation award not a skills award
This has driven employers to respond with demanding higher levels of "education" in an effort so screen people..
> The market is showing currently an extreme lack of qualified people.
And/or a lack of commensurate wages to incentivize qualified people.
We agree on the situation as it currently is of high school being worthless since you pass just for showing up at least half the days of the school year.
But supposed there is a future where K-12 education is rigorous and we improve to the point that calculus and basic physics/chem/bio are as normal as reading and writing, then I can envision a situation where K-12 might not be enough.
But there are far more jobs demanding a college degree where it's not required to be successful at that job, than jobs requiring college degree skills and knowledge but accepting under qualified high school graduates.
Our subsidizing and marketing college for everyone is the root problem, and it’s calling all sorts of knock-on effects. This not only leaves people in debt and causes young people to put off productive life, but have created a surplus of people with useless degrees that are going in and remaking various aspects of life and politics into an academic mold according to academic theories that have little real-world value.
If we’re not willing to end massive subsidies for higher education (and we’re not) we should use the government’s massive leverage (by virtue of that flow of dollars) to impose tight enrollment caps on various degrees, and shut down universities that aren’t creating economic value. We should also create alternative credentialing systems that cut universities out of the picture, because degrees are often just used as a proxy for intelligence and work ethic.
That’s troubling. I don’t know where you live but at least in my locale many employers seem hesitant to hire newly-grads, even if they need to increase staff. Many companies seem to expect some other company to take care of the training.
A degree is nice but until someone has gained experience that person first needs a company to take a chance on them.
When I graduated (5-10 years ago) internships were the best way to grain experience and stand out a bit above the rest in the full time hiring portion.
1. The company that hired the interns received a fantastic deal on labor. I think the company that hired me did it because they had an extra fully equipped desk that was going to waste without someone coding on it.
2. Not every student earned an internship, so gaining one was real feather in the hat.
3. Not every intern would have accomplished the same amount. Just like school and life, the more you put into an internship the more you get out.
4. It jump started my professional network of people actually in industry.
The hard part is finding one that's paid, or pays enough. Most people can't afford to do un(der)paid labor for the prospect of maybe, possibly, but maybe not getting a job. Being able to do unpaid labor selects for people with other things working in their favor.
Almost all tech internships are paid (for people with CS or engineering majors). Only really shady companies would try to get away with not paying a technical intern. In most cases these folks are doing real work, not just fetching coffee.
Most tech internships are paid. Someone in a CS program at a recognizable school with a strong program should definitely not be signing up for unpaid internships (at least not at for-profit corps).
I just finished supervising the summer interns embedded with my team at work, and we definitely paid everyone, allowed remote work, and brought everyone into the HQ for a week towards the end (flights, hotel, transpo, meals all comped) to give presentations, network in person with the team, do field trips / team building stuff, etc. I like to think we do a better-than-average job, but it's pretty close to what you need to be doing if you want to attract good talent to your internship program.
I'm Gen X too and I don't think that's really accurate.
I feel like the job market has changed pretty markedly since I was a grad in the late 90's, and that it's just way more all or nothing.
You either can get a job with benefits and a career track and 4 years later you're better off, or you're literally going nowhere, every year of your job is the same as the year prior and you have nothing to show.
There's no more thing where you get a real, genuine, full time, but low-skill entry level job and try to prove yourself. You can't prove yourself in low-skill jobs any more, nobody is watching and nobody cares. In short "you can't get there from here."
I'm speaking entirely anecdotally for sure, but with that said it really does seem fundamentally not the same at all as what I faced as a new grad.
Yea, and once you get on a track, you're pretty much there for good. There's a narrow range of "promotions" within that track, but no jumping tracks anymore. If you're flipping burgers at McDonalds, you can't just "hard-work" your way to owning that store. If you're 3rd junior engineer from the left at your tech company, you can hard-work your way up to senior, maybe even principal engineer, but you will statistically never be able to hard-work your way to CEO. If you're a nurse, you're never going to hard-work your way to being a doctor. And so on. The higher-status jobs are all gate-kept by social class pedigree and credentialism.
I partially agree with your sentiment. But isn't this one of the most commercially relevant skills to demonstrate to a potential employer?
In finance, it is "tradition" for people _without_ certifications to dump on those with certifications, such as CFA & CPA, but most of these haters miss the point. It is really hard to motivate yourself to finish. Once you have the cert, it is a good indicator that the person can get things done! Interestingly, when I interview fresh grads, if they have anything that demonstrates tenacity, like sports or playing musical instruments ... or something that takes time and skill to accomplish, I am always curious to hear about their experiences of personal growth.
Not to be that guy, but a very small percentage of people might get lucky to get an opportunity at something, not to keep it. Time and time again I've found that what people refer to as luck (aside from inheritance or lottery) is sheer hard work and discipline.
Some important steps in my career were basically down to sheer dumb luck. I will happily claim responsibility for putting myself in a position where lightning could strike, and was prepared to take advantage of the lightning strike, but it actually striking was, again, sheer dumb luck.
Again, dumb luck might have given you the opportunity, but dumb luck didn’t keep that thing going, you either consciously cheat or you’re working hard to keep the thing that dumb luck gave you the opportunity for.
The point is we all get dumb luck opportunities, not all keep them though
As someone who has life experience, I can assure you that your lamentations are not special. "It's not what you know, but who you know" isn't a saying that originated in the 2010s.
Can you please share what have you studied in your undergraduate? Or roughly what area? My experience is very different, to me it looks like the market is very hot now even after covid (talking about: Busness analysis and Engineering)
I mean luck is always a factor, but let's be real, the major/career path someone chooses to study in college is a much bigger determinant of your prospects after graduation.
I still can't understand how people can willingly choose any number of majors/careers that are very well known to have a weak job market and salary range, and then act surprised when it's tough after graduating.
The last half you wrote is so real and devastating to many. And few get the advice they need at 17 or 18 years old to make a more commercially relevant decision! If you are from an upper-middle class (and above) family, no worries -- anything will do. For all others, choose wisely.
Come on, there was never an era when "graduation" was worth anything. I graduated a small university in Normandy, France and work in an investment bank in Hong Kong.
You think they care I graduated at all? :D Be intelligent, know things, be creative and always end a job interview with the guys telling you you interviewed them.
Graduating is worth nothing. Whatever you learned while at university is worth a lot to get a free internship. Whatever you learned during the internship is worth a bit. Always been so, always will be.
I would also like to know on whether it's possible for someone to start their own payment processors? There are tutorials on how to start an ISP, so should be possible for payment processors too no?
Payment processing isn’t something a bank gets to decide on their own either. It’s decided by a group. In the US it’s NACHA:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACHA
Sounds like a cartel gatekeeping the role of processor, and then the processors can put pressure on any business to do what they want or face “the consequences” which means no income (aside from crypto which most people don’t know how to use).
How will the banks know the crypto came from porn, though? Receive payments either to your own wallet or straight to Coinbase, convert to USD, transfer to your bank, and we're done, right? What am I missing?
That doesn't seem like it would be a problem for individual creators though, unless all exchanges coordinate to ban sex workers or something (not to mention decentralized exchanges like bisq, or in-person exchanges like localbitcoins).
I think the traditional Visa/MasterCard/American Express/Discover payment processor has established a significant enough moat to make joining them unattractive.
There are several challengers like Paypal, Venmo, Zelle, Coinbase, etc that attack from a slightly different angle. I think the thing that is most common is that have super low cost bank transfer options, and they encourage users to maintain a balance. Processing payments locally is 100x-1000x preferable then processing payments externally for these players.
PayPal is even worse for sex workers, they're banning people left and right if they even suspect you might be involved into anything relating to it.
Their official stance always has been that this is due to the credit card companies, the reality rather is that Paypal doesn't want to deal with the rampant fraud (aka post-nut clarity) in porn.
Starting your own payment processor is done reasonably frequently, it has a certain barrier of entry (a few million and a year or two for all the approvals, so feasible with investor backing if you have a valid business reason to make a payment processor) but it's being done regularly and also you can buy and rebrand an existing one, which is a common way to get a quicker market entry at the cost of a bit more money.
However, that new processor will be a member of some existing payment systems e.g. Visa network and bound by all the same constraints as the other processors there. Creating your own alternative to a payment system (e.g. a major, widely and internationally supported card network like Visa or MC) is not really plausible. Perhaps you can look at the whole setup of cryptocurrencies+all the crypto exchange companies as something like such an alternative system, so there's one alternative made in this millenium.
It is. The problem is connecting to the rest of the financial system. Imagine starting an "ISP" that had not upstream connectivity. It wouldn't be an ISP then. Same problem here.
There's a few players here:
payment gateways, this is a service that provides the checkout service on a website and handles protected credit card information. Payment gateways also provide anti-fraud services.
payment processors, these execute the actual transaction. They are members of card associations like Visa and connect the card issuing bank and the merchant bank of the payee.
merchant banks, these are the banks that hold the company's bank account that the funds from the payment processor come into.
card associations, Visa/Mastercard these provide the connectivity and set the high level rules.
card issuers, these entities extend credit and may be retail banks or other parties.
there is a difference between Amex/Discover and Visa/Mastercard in that the former are also the issuer. That's why you also see Visa debit cards in Europe, they're using the payment processing network but not extending credit.
It should be clear that starting a new payment gateway is trivial. It takes money to properly comply but ultimately this is a software business. Starting a new payment processor is much harder but it doesn't matter because all payment processors must comply with the card association rules to get access to that network.
Starting your own card network would require attracting issuers who would then issue cards that people could use to pay for OnlyFans... probably not realistic!
It was the threat by Visa and MC to cut them off that was the killer here, plenty of payment processors would be happy to take their money but not if the card networks ban the company.
I suspect that OnlyFans realized they have the choice of either having a business that makes it incredibly hard to process payments, or to have no meaningful business at all. It's too late to pivot the brand to SFW with a couple of users going slightly over the line (similar to Patreon).
There are US laws that I can’t remember the names of which make financial institutions legally responsible (probably bad English) for crimes that happen on platforms they sell their services to.
So VISA could be fined for any trafficking that happen on OnlyFans. This is also why Pronhub had to remove almost all their videos if they wanted to keep credit card services.
As an European I’m a fan of laws that make platforms and big tech responsible for the content they house, but there is no denying that vetting that every OnlyFan sexworker is a task they can’t likely perform easily.
Of course moderation is only one of the solutions, paying money and accepting the financial damage that may come from lack of moderation is another. Of course the big banks know this, which is why they charge an insane margin for their credit card services to platforms like onlyfans, it’s likely they simply upped the price behind the closed doors.
Coinbase (and other financial services) do a pretty good job of requiring photo id on signup; I don't know what OF procedure is, but there's definitly precedent.
I'd be interested in the Coinbase verification requirements, do you have a link? Like a lot of Companies these day they don't give that information away before you sign up and agree to their ToS.
It's government provided ID + SSN + photo of yourself + address / personal details. If your gov ID doesn't have your current address you have to show a utility or other bill.
That all wouldn't be good enough for sex crimes though, because even if you have a passport + gov ID + a notary signed statement saying you are 18 and your own mother vouching for you, the counterparty can still be convicted of rape if it turns out you're lying about your age.
Of course this is really all just to keep the law abiding law abiding. Criminals on the dark web will just buy a forged electronic id package and KYC is bypassed.
Sex crimes are often strict liability. You violate the law whether you know or even meant to perform the act or not. For instance, Cody Wilson was sentenced for statutory rape after a sexual encounter with an individual who had a fake ID that stated they were 18, looked 18, and stated they were 18.
I'm just trying to think of an apt comparison - for instance, posession of heroin is a federal crime where the intent doesn't matter, at least the way the law is written. If you are found with a bag of heroin, that's a crime, regardless of what your intentions were.
However, I have a really hard time believing that if you went to a normal grocery store, bought a bag of flour that clearly says "flour" on it, had a receipt for flour, brought it home with the intention of making some bread, and then the police bust down your door and find that actually, it's pure heroin - I doubt you would be convicted. That's why the case above surprises me so much - the guy went above and beyond, by even checking the ID, if anything it's the other person who should be convicted of crime and put behind bars here.
Cody wilson met her through a sugardaddy site. The site requires ID verification but she used a fake ID. Every girl on the site was supposed to be 18. (Turns out she was 16 I believe).
Of course the girl voluntarily went to the site, signed up, and accepted a cash payment. She never even reported anything to the police. She was talking to a school councilor ("Mandatory Reporter") and mentioned she was earning money by sleeping with men. The school councilor was then required to refer it to police for prosecution, even though none of the parties wanted it.
The DA was happy to take it on because Cody Wilson of course is the guy responsible for making 3d printed guns popular, and he had a number of political enemies.
Does that solve the issue though? If you’re trafficking human beings you could probably use their old ID to sign them up and then still commit the crime afterwards.
> There are US laws that I can’t remember the names of which make financial institutions legally responsible (probably bad English) for crimes that happen on platforms they sell their services to.
No idea, I just know about it because I work in the public sector of Denmark where we build our national digital identity system in corporation with banks, and we had a notice of changing terms some time back. I didn’t get too into it because it wouldn’t affect us, but I remember briefing over it because it had some sort of eye catching headline.
> There are US laws that I can’t remember the names of which make financial institutions legally responsible (probably bad English) for crimes that happen on platforms they sell their services to.
If it's what I'm thinking of, these laws are collectively known as "know your customer" or "KYC" [0]. It's primarily intended to prevent racketeering, money laundering, and other organized criminal activity, but the laws are written very broadly in part because they're looking for surreptitious activity.
In the case of sex work, it's difficult to verify that all performers are of legal age, that all activity is consensual, and so on. Since there are many, many ways that sex work can be illegal, it's very complicated.
Facebook reports over one million(!!!) images of child sexual abuse on their platform per year, and that's only the stuff that they identify and find. Clearly it's a platform where a huge amount of illegal materials are being exchanged, yet Visa and MasterCard happily keep Facebook as a client.
>>but there is no denying that vetting that every OnlyFan sexworker is a task they can’t likely perform easily.
Just make every performer submit a valid ID to have an account, if my mobile provider can ask for that, why not OF?
Unless you’re paying for the images on Facebook the transfer isn’t being used to pay for illegal sex. This is the difference between the two in terms of liability.
Nothing, but it should shield them from liability. They can always say a valid ID that shows the user is over 18 was submitted, if there is any legal issue then it can and should be handled by the law enforcement.
>>Unless you’re paying for the images on Facebook the transfer isn’t being used to pay for illegal sex.
Payment processors dropped pornhub because there was some illegal material on the website - it not being paid was irrelevant.
> They can always say a valid ID that shows the user is over 18 was submitted, if there is any legal issue then it can and should be handled by the law enforcement.
That wouldn’t make them less liable for any illegal content they fail to identify though.
It’s not like Facebook where they can hide behind being a platform because American politicians had no issue making platforms very responsible for the hosted content as soon as it was bundled into anti-trafficking legalisation.
I expecte that the EU will strike at “regular” SoMe in much the same manner when the legislation on anti-fake-news passes through the bureaucracy.
It's not practical to use bitcoin for individual transactions due to the high cost. If there was an easy way for non-tech people to cash in and out of crypto currency easily I bet that would be a good alternative.
So pay with LTC or XMR instead? There are plenty of high liquidity coins with low transaction fees, these are just a couple examples. If the alternative is to not cam at all it seems pretty obvious, even if you are unbanked and get hit with 7% fees from an ATM or crypto-fiat in person moneychanger.
It's also trivial to exchange BTC to LTC (or other low fee coin), you don't even need KYC or in some cases to even use an exchange (atomic swap BTC-LTC). So the cam girls could take fees in LTC and then swap them to BTC once they have enough value to be worth the transactional costs.
Anyone who has feet that are able to walk to an ATM or person on someplace like localmonero? In places like Mexico and Switzerland there is no KYC, you just put the cash into the ATM or send to the address and take it out, there's no need to have an identity or bank account.
> “The proposed Oct. 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators,” [an OnlyFans spokesperson] said.
The Variety article theorizes that the backlash may have actually been exactly the outcome OnlyFans wanted, because they were able to focus public outrage toward the banks and payment processors putting them in that position.
I don't have great answers to that, although I think by "banking partners" they actually mean "credit card companies" and most specifically mean MasterCard, which (assuming reporting on this I've read is correct) was or may still be in the process of further tightening their policies around adult content.
Well, a not-great but plausible answer, maybe -- companies make changes, both good and ill, because they're panicked over PR fiascos all the time. From all appearances, MasterCard announced those policy changes because of PR pressure that was put on them by "Exodus Cry," a fundamentalist Christian anti-porn activist group. OnlyFans may have calculated that their best bet was to knock Exodus Cry off their hashtag-save-the-children pedestal.
Realistically it would take decades, or great strides in usability, for cryptocurrency to really reach the main stream to the point it could be considered a serious alternative for credit cards.
Let’s say OF was forced to switch to crypto payments. They could make the switch tomorrow. Link to a few popular crypto exchanges so that customers know where to buy crypto and Bob’s your uncle.
How long until their customer service system gets flooded with questions about how to use cryptocurrency, and complaints from users who's funds got stolen from XYZ shady exchange.
99% of normal people find cryptocurrency strange and inscrutable, and if you think otherwise you're in a bubble.
1. Customers in e.g. the EU may push their reps to "do something" about two US companies controlling all e-commerce.
2. Customers frustrated that Mastercard have gone on the record as refusing to block payments to terrorist-supporting orgs while refusing to process payments to look at titties may pressure regulators to start having a much closer look at Mastercard's money flows.
I think a factor that they may be concerned about is that there is a large userbase that is spending a lot of money on OF and that they may very well all just move to BTC or some other cryptocurrency based solution to exchanging money. And once that happens, you have a younger generation that is more comfortable dabbling in making financial transactions without the banks being involved.
This just sounds like wishful thinking from cryptocurrency enthusiasts. There is no precedent of this happening, so I doubt they were so terrified about a completely hypothetical scenario.
There also hasn't been a precedent for a platform that has a large userbase spending hundreds of millions of dollars on sex workers being abruptly cut off by payment providers with no other recourse to processing payments from their userbase.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pretty much the only threat to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly is public awareness that leads to antitrust enforcement. They're usually immune to any kind of backlash but this seemed to strike a cord with many people who are frustrated with America's puritanism (myself included).
I don't have a dog in this fight but it certainly reminded me how much power V+MC have to become an existential threat along the likes of Google and Spectrum. Next time I write to my Congressman about antitrust, I'll be sure to put them top of the list now (for all that's going to do...)
I've seen so many different grand theories proposed in this thread, but to me this seems like it was the most obvious one from the start. My guess: yes, it was intended to achieve an effect; no, it wasn't built on false pretenses / a viral marketing stunt / a way to avoid negative press from the BBC. It was probably a way for them to respond to escalating pressure from financial intermediaries with some pressure of their own.
I don't understand the platform at all. I understand it's huge in the adult space, but it seems impossible to actually find anything on the platform. There's no discoverability (as far as I can tell). Is the discoverability problem solved by other platforms?
Yes, the discoverability is solved by other platforms, most people have a personal or desired personal connection to the creators, and find their only fans through the creator, or communities the creator set up. People don't pay for anonymous porn. People that only consume anonymous porn are not in this market at all.
They know their platform. I presume that prior to the announcement they had tried everything they could to continue BAU.
The fact that they're able to now reverse the announcement makes me wonder what changed. Did they find a new banking or payout partner? Existing ones had a change of heart? Feels like there would be more to it than these possibilities.
But OF didn't announce a move to crypto payments. They announced that they were wiping out a massive amount of their current business in order to stick with traditional payments.
That would make sense from a perspective of the transactions being higher risk, so higher transaction fees could cover the additional risk. Why would they not have explored that option in the first place, though?
Probably just a ploy to make the payment processors think they would actually go through with banning porn on their platform. No one actually cares about the porn except a very small percentage of mostly religious nut jobs. They just wanted more money.
Certain categories (porn, gambling, etc) of payments reportedly have a lot more fraud associated with them. If that's true, it makes sense for this to just be settled through a rate-card.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 376 ms ] threadThe amount of coverage this got in the financial press (particularly the FT) would seem to support this theory.
Additionally, it's interesting that the reversal happened after he named the banks in his FT interview yesterday.
I'm not sure what the solution is. Should banks be forced to behave as a common carrier? Or do we want private companies to be able to ban the public from purchasing things like pornography and firearms by stopping adults from completing legal transactions?
I'm not sure if I'd include lending in "basic services." That seems a bit more debatable to me.
Pretend that a batch of YC startups are all getting loans rather than ownership purchases. What effective interest rate are they paying? What is the default rate where the startup dies before acquisition/profitability/IPO?
Write a heuristic to determine a fair interest rate given the current prevailing rates, financial history of the company in question, financial history of similar companies, and similar objective and quantifiable subjective factors. Document it. When someone complains, demonstrate to your regulator that your procedure was fair, reasonable, and applied evenhandedly, and to the extent possible is consistent with actual outcomes.
Once in a while there is a brand new industry, but they tend to start small enough that banks can figure out numbers before the risk is too big to worry about.
I wonder if climate change critics are next.
When I submitted it, I tried to find English sources, but couldn't.
I don't think payment processors would care at all because they're an oligopoly. I doubt most banks would care much either, but maybe they are afraid of losing business from large-volume merchants.
Most likely some alternative banks stepped up and told OnlyFans they'd love to work with them.
There is no way they didn't know this would kill the company.
Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard.
We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.
OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.
This seems to match your theory.
[1]: https://twitter.com/OnlyFans/status/1430499277302816773
aka they're waiting for all of this to blow over.
NCOSE taking credit themselves for pressuring the payment processors: https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/exploitation-webs...
NCOSE is more or less using the "for the children" approach to try and stomp out all pronogrpahy generally. Their president "has helped draft ordinances to end or curb the impact of sexually oriented businesses such as pornography shops, strip clubs, and related establishments" according to their own website. Members of their board have founded and led pushes to ban and discourage all pornohprahy entirely.
https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/staff/
https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/board/
A critique on the Pornhub article / case, describing its reliance on evangelical groups: https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war...
No doubt that some positive changes came in the Pornhub case, hence the significant lack of public pushback there. But I think their true goals are being exposed as they try to push further. Pushing on a platform that has become a key income source for many during a global pandemic was probably not the best idea for them in hindsight. It also got them a lot of public attention they probably didn't want, in good part due to a large voice and push over many recent months by sex workers, many of whom got a voice in articles in the media recently instead of only sources similar to NCOSE.
They don't give a shit about children or sex trafficking– it's all about eliminating availability of things that the Religious Right deemed verboten in the 1960s.
https://people.com/human-interest/onlyfans-founder-says-bank...
Plus, something like a small company blaming banks is everyday business for those banks. It won't hurt their PR much in the long term, especially since the older, more conservative sections of the public won't care or be more supportive of the banks here. It sucks but that's how the world is.
I am not sure I agree with 'suddently' characterization. They are not suddenly OK with it. Founder complained to their peer at the financial institution. Onlyfans was probably trying to take care of it internally for a good while ( CYA applies at most financial institutions so it was taking longer than most businesses are used to ). It was only after media outburst that an executive decision was made.
I am relatively certain that behind the scenes, the case of Onlyfans was argued by compliance, legal, PR, sales and their personal rep.
"It's really surprising OnlyFans got as far as it did with adult content."
I am not. You are not allowed to touch lgbtq+ community now. They are way too vocal and companies too scared to agitate them. And a fair amount of complaints came from them.
Onlyfans banning adult content is like Nike banning tennis shoes.
We're a loafer company now!
Or they got some guarantees from banks that they won't get banned.
Their options are to die like tumbler or fight a bit. Moving away from traditional payment processors might cause problems for them as well.
https://www.coinbase.com/legal/prohibited
> Adult Content and Services: Pornography and other obscene materials (including literature, imagery and other media); ...
However, some have indicated that it's not great. Many of their customers supposedly are drunk men. They greatly struggle to make the payment this way, and you can imagine that in this context it can't take too long, or the "mood" is gone.
Anecdotally, I had a credit card number get compromised a few years ago. They used it at a Babys-R-Us on the opposite coast. I'm pretty sure they weren't buying porn.
At the other side of that there is equally no end of "went and signed up for premium porn content" or PPV cable or whatever - and that's what payment processors tend to get unhappy about.
EDIT: Or more accurately, the relative ratio.
On the other hand, if the cops were actually interested in prosecuting such things, they left their license plates on the security camera...
You'd think that once the government decides what is and isn't acceptable, the processors would follow that lead. But instead they go a different, more restrictive way.
I guess they want to be everyone's prudish uncle, instead of payment processors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry
I think people underestimate how much moral regulation in the US actually comes top-down under the guise of anti-trafficking law (remember SESTA/FOSTA and how it killed Craigslist personals?)
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/808/...
The only way out of that would be blanket government insurance for payment processors, but that would essentially be a massive subsidy and open to rampant abuses.
What coin is stable enough to use as currency? Unless OnlyFans could pay its employees and services with that said coin (who could then use it elsewhere directly), the company would still have to convert to fiat currency right? And wouldn't that itself affect the coin price?
Here are the updated rules https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/protecting...
Basically starting October 15th every new piece of content uploaded to OnlyFans needs to be reviewed and have age verification done for all the people involved.
Except, there would be nothing left to buy.
thanks for the information
edit: converting the url posted below this into archive link, to skip paywall: https://archive.is/Aqx8x
https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca04...
Also I suspect their biggest money makers were leaving, here's the first screen from a competitor's ^ 'join as a creator' page tailor-made from this:
>Earn 100% payouts from every new user from now until Oct 1, 2021!
>Sign up
>Leaving another platform? Not to worry! Our team is on hand to help you transfer your content to FanCentro!
^ https://fancentro.com/sell
^^ https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca04...
It should be noted that the cams see a lot lower chargebacks than subscriptions because of the shady tactics a lot of subscription adult sites use. Example would be not noticing a "$1 trial" addon being offered that recurs at like $44.95/month.
The rest of the chargebacks can be offset with 3DS/3DS 2 to shift the liability off the merchant (In this case OnlyFans) and onto the issuing bank.
I can answer any questions within reason if someone wanted to know anything more.
Source: Worked/wrote code for a high risk payment processor with volume +$1B/Yr.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and only my own.
Something like Apple Pay, that is rooted in a biometric/pin-verified payment (low fraud) rather than “enter your card number manually” (high fraud) would be a godsend for the industry, since it would detect the lie in the fraudulent chargebacks as described above.
Human beings in many world cultures are such a huge pain when it comes admitting and openly talking about paying for sex and sex-tangential things, that I can understand and grudgingly concede that higher processing fees are necessary. I do not know if they need to be 25%, but they do definitely need to be higher than for other industries.
OnlyFans should be aggressively poaching people from the other companies in this space but pay them SF salaries. The expertise they'll get hiring existing employees in the space will help them.
If you've already worked in this industry you'll know to do 3ds/3dsv2 to shift some liability to issuing banks. The card networks have different rules based off their region like MC NA and MC Europe. There are some loopholes to shifting your acquiring process into other regions to get more liability shift as a merchant. Bin routing to maximize your approval ratio, the higher your non-chargeback volume the easier it is to deal with the chargeback volume.
Introduce micro transactions to pad volume. Users less likely to chargeback you want to have each micro transaction as a standalone charge because it increases your volume at the cost of additional card fees. Users unknown or likely to chargeback you want to "batch" or roll these charges into a single charge because then it is only a single chargeback that can happen instead of multiple smaller ones.
Plenty of other stuff...
Also, major media outlets* are now doing bait and switch subscriptions. Does that make them high risk too?
*Bloomberg $2/mo->$35/mo after 3m
NYT $4/mo->$17/mo after 1yr
WAPO $4/mo->$10/mo after 1yr
Economist $25/qtr->$55/qtr after 1 qtr
Off the top of my head: gambling, medication, gift cards...stuff that's legal but more-likely-than-average to chargeback or default.
Does anyone remember Tumblr? No? We’ve already experienced what it’s like for a brand to lose any relevance by abandoning the very community that made it successful.
Yes? I check my Tumblr timeline pretty much every day - there's a lot of content there (and I only follow a handful of people.) Anyone suggesting Tumblr is dead is mistaken.
(And yeah, the daily posts are way down but that's after 8 years of neglect and mishandling. Any social network would suffer the same!)
For contrast, everything2.com is at 526113.
Yahoo are not known for their savvy approach to acquisitions - they frequently paid well over the odds for the cachet of ownership until Verizon snapped them up.
> to ~3M right
But we don't know how much they were valued at when Verizon bought the Yahoo group in 2017. If they considered Tumblr only worth $3M then before they banned porn, then the porn ban has done nothing to the valuation. Anything else is just conjecture.
The idea that a) Tumblr was 90% porn before the ban, or b) Tumblr is now dead are both quite false.
Even better an opensource LAMP or MEAN stack to host your own adult entertainment site?
If you can find a gateway and processor that has an underwriting team that will not require an FFL, that would be a sight to behold.
I am not sure why the banks are so puritanical.
https://www.paypal.com/en/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full
[0] https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E...
The actual barrier is very few performers are popular enough on their own to be able to afford hiring people who can run servers with this software for them, but the few who are often do have "club{NAME}.com" sites for their own exclusive content.
That's...what OnlyFans is?
They were never going to ban adult content were they. Cynical in the extreme.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58255865
EDIT: I’ve updated this comment with a BBC investigation that suggests they had quite lax child porn policies. Do any of the down-voters really believe OnlyFans were genuine about removing all adult content?
> Christof - not his real name - says on some days, he has viewed up to 2,000 photos and videos looking for content prohibited by the site. He uses lists of keywords to search within bios, posts and private messages between creators and their subscribers.
> He says he has found illegal and extreme content in videos - including bestiality involving dogs and the use of spy cams, guns, knives and drugs. Some material is not actively searched for by moderators as frequently as he believes it should be, says Christof, despite being banned under the platform's terms of service.
Oh! Well if Cristof thinks they aren't doing enough I guess they must be shut down!
Also, it was actually meant as a genuine question, not a snarky drive-by comment. I have only superficial knowledge of both platforms, so it would be nice to know whether there are some fundamental differences beyond "NSFW / Not NSFW".
Another parallel could be comparing HomeDepot and HobbyLobby. Both stores sell you things for DIY stuff, but they target different kinds of DIYers (even if they could sell some of the same items).
So, OF without p0rn is basically Patreon
Patreon is really barebones, for example to host video just for Patrons you have to go through other sites which lets users leak out the info to access it since it's not usually directly tied to their Patreon account. There's no built in support for livestreaming on Patreon at all. All in all Patreon is a super basic private text blog.
I knew it was a thing, I knew of the memes, but to see both sides in arms over a company vs branding, creating their own website and content - and vanity domain as well.
People really do just want a one click solution for creating adult content, and consuming adult content.
And the memes, I think they're pretty toxic, 4chan, incel, reddit, twitter memes - I never knew there was that much angst.
COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard. There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine. Across the whole world, too*. Many can easily make more than min wage, and in certain niches you probably don't even have to be 'conventionally beautiful' (sorry to use this term, but it's important I think) to make a living or solid portion of a living on there.
For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
And if you price model right, you don't need thousands of fans, just a couple really dedicated superfans/whales.
* Consider the value of dollars/euros/pounds in poorer countries!
There's a big movement to gain a lot of followers on social media like TikTok and then redirect those followers to their $5/month OnlyFans. There are a lot of people making a living or at least significantly boosting their income from this model, and they don't have to leave the house to do it.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9550662/b...
The median viewer count is likely single digits.
Though I can say with considerable certainty that a lot of wannabe Twitch streamers think that being a streamer just means having people watch you play a game, which may be true for story-driven games that don't get a lot of viewers, since it creates a more movie-like experience, and may be true for highly-competitive games where you can watch someone make amazing plays. But for the rest, you need to have the charisma and creativity to create entertaining commentary and audience interaction.
Nobody wants to watch an average Joe play World of Warcraft.
It's super toxic for society since it's literally "winner takes all".
Making $1.4 million per month and growing, has 4 employees, outsources every chore she can, posts content on all the social media platforms, and grinds 12 hour days on Twitch. [2] Doesn't spend most of the money, is learning about and trying out investments.
Interestingly she doesn't think that this type of top-heavy earnings situation will be sustainable, that the revenue will be more evenly distributed in the future. Even so, she considers her biggest competition to not be up-and-coming people, but instead existing influencers who might bring their audience to OnlyFans.
Definitely not a common success story, but it's pretty interesting how it is possible to have insane success when applying well-reasoned growth strategies and keeping up the grind.
--
[1] https://investmenttalk.substack.com/p/confessions-of-an-only...
[2] In the linked interview she still says 8 hours for Twitch, but she has stepped it up since June.
Aren’t women over-represented on the supply side while men on the demand side though? I don’t think gen-z as a wholesale cohort makes sense.
Mostly artly because women work in segments that were hit harder - services and the like. And partly because childcare is more on them, mothers were even more likely to loose jobs.
Because after shit pay being the desk girl at Walmart Tire Center for 2yr you can easily convert that into a service writer job <fast forward 40yr> and then retire from your job as regional support manager for <company that makes industrial doodad>
Compare with thotting around on the internet where you can make a ton of money up front but you're basically racing the clock because your body won't be nearly as lucrative of an income at 30 and you'll be starting from square one-ish. Can you potentially take the cash and pivot into a career that will carry you to retirement? Sure, but it takes a work ethic and level of discipline that is uncommon.
It's like the female equivalent of being a marine rifleman for several enlistments. You get out at ~30 with few marketable skills, hopefully a good work ethic and a high liklihood of f-ed up knees.
You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool, but apparently the economy doesn't obey the same rules of common sense.
Well, I hope you're right.
Ah, the old everything that goes up must come down strategy.
> You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool
You float the idea that global information communications are going to shrink and you'd be called a fool.
Likewise, they might be cagey enough to learn the backend of their backend business, and come out of it with video editing skills and whatnot, possibly segueing into an advanced education in media.
For some professions and companies it won't matter but for others it'll matter a lot.
Because we have just started with all of this, and we also don't know the future, it's hard to 'price in' what the future cost of doing this kind of work with respect to future options.
That said, Sylvester Stallone did porn films, but that's also a specific industry, pre-internet.
-former infantryman
But, from the contact I’ve had with the military (been close to several people who have either enlisted or commossioned experience, did the ROTC basic camp but chose not to contract) that's not particularly likely unless you are either actively avoiding or completely unsuited for leadership.
And even then you’ll probably have some leadership experience.
> You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been a warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period of time and on lower ground than someone who at least has industry adjacent experience.
Even if you somehow manage to be in that place skill-wise (and I think, leadership skills aside, that's unlikely), you are still better off career-wise, because essentially all public and many, especially large, private employers apply systematic positive preference for veterans in hiring.
You've learned a variety of skills, probably had to face some challenging missions, been exposed to other cultures, learned to work within an organization, probably have highly conscientious posture.
Anyone in 10 years and never had a leadership position at all you'd have to question a bit (they should for sure be sergeant) but ideally would be prepared to be a regional manager for retail or Wallmart Center Manager. The more easy going and communicative would work in sales. Almost anything operationally oriented.
Contrast that with a sex worker who will unfortunately have a narrow set of options because a lot of companies just won't hire for that reason.
I can think of a few obvious ones just thinking about ‘military’, but wonder if there’s anything specific to being an infantryman?
Median OF revenue per creator is $180/mo for equivalent of a full time job.
https://sea.mashable.com/culture/17130/top-onlyfans-creators....
Many factors can lead to this, but that's not surprising, the law of distributions when it comes to things like this is that there are incredible earners and then a massive drop off and long tail.
> for equivalent of a full time job.
You added this, I don't doubt that some people put in a lot more effort than the monetary amount they get back- but the inverse is also true and no source claims that "you get $180 for a full time workload", because that's impossible to measure at scale.
^ https://mrq.com/blog/only-fans
> https://ranking-fans.com/ - Seedlist and Fans Sorted by total fans; accounts where fans are not available have been excluded. Many accounts listed as having the most fans are free accounts used by OnlyFans models who also possess paid accounts. However, as fan numbers were only available for the free accounts, these have been disregarded for the purposes of this story. Likewise, "free" accounts where subscription is free but photos provided required payment have been disregarded. Accordingly, the only data shown is for paid accounts with high subscriber numbers. In some cases, models possessed multiple paid accounts. In these cases, only the one with the highest subscriber numbers has been tracked. Monthly earnings are based exclusively on the individual account assuming no media requires additional payment and disregarding tips and similar voluntary costs. Similarly, free trials and discounts have been excluded. Accordingly, all monthly earnings are estimates reflecting the monthly payments of subscribers over the long term.
Trades are solid career choices but it's hard work and you expire at about the same rate as a software dev.
The numbers aren’t inflated, they’re just not equally distributed.
It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc, the story is similar to developers, high median salary with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.
The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely high even compared to one of the most expensive countries in the world.
She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller) group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there’s nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes home after work and their overtime is limited to nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two groups that if they’re analyzed together, the statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the typical tradesperson.
https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/carpenter/denmark
I do know though that it’s pretty common for the seller to write the note financing the deal, especially when the buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is often within reach.
Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn’t be my first pick.
A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr minimum, and that is after the employers cut.
A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over 100/hr.
An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.
Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of that.
The trades people I know are booked out months. The general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and he comes in at an affordable $60/hr!
Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater, have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they designed themselves.
The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that have established themselves have very flexible work schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.
Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation" (aka don't dare take vacation ever).
Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.
This is just not true. There are loads of FAANG developers making well into 6 figures with 40 hour weeks.
I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's something you learn to live with but I appreciate that the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.
It’s boring and you can practically feel your brain turn to slush.
Getting challenges on the job is a requirement for a good job.
First, work schedule. Keep in mind that, as another commenter pointed out, tradespeople often go through booms and busts, just like any other profession. The difference is that with tradespeople its a lot more obvious, since they still on a job for a few weeks, rather than a few years. On the boom, the tradespeople get a better deal out of it, because they get more work, whereas office workers of course only have the one job. In the busts, the office workers come out better, as the tradespeople have less work, whereas the office workers remain the same as they were in the boom.
Next, hours and vacation. I may be an outliner here, but my hours are the standard 9-5 and I get a fixed 30 days vacation a year, and flexible working (including working from home). As for unlimited vacation = no vacation, and 60+ hours is required, that seems more like a bad office culture/employer, no different than a tradesman would get a bad client. Again, its only more noticeable in office jobs because your there for a long time, whereas a bad client will only be a problem for a number of weeks (though potentially more if they hold off on paying). While we're at it, the same could be said of "their experience is respected". That's based on your employer, not your job.
Finally, standups, agile and office politics (assuming thats what you meant by BS). Its true, tradespeople don't need to suffer with that, but they do need to suffer through a hell of a lot of health and safety precautions and government red tape. Of course you can get some cowboys who don't bother with that, but that seems no different than the programming teams that don't do standups, agile or office politics (apart from the fact that one team is less likely to kill people). I would also mention the physical health issues that it can cause, but programmers get a similar thing through sitting for so long and you graciously didn't mention that.
I don't think being a tradey is a bad job, not at all. Its just not perfect, and like any job has its pros and cons. I too have fantasised about going into that line of work, but I imagine if I did, I'd end up fantasizing sitting in a comfy chair all day building software. As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.
Speaking of "250K" as a number, every single offer over 250K+ for someone with no experience, on levels.fyi, in seattle, was either for someone hired at L4 at Google or Facebook (usually this means a PhD hire), or a Facebook "rockstar" signing bonus, which I think levels.fyi mis-estimates (the "recurring" comp is lower than 250K, you get something like 120 base, 40 stock/yr, 100K signing (+ your normal annual bonus of ~15K). That's 200K/year over four years, not 250).
And last time I checked those packages had serious compensation cliffs after the first few years!
Software developer compensation is seriously bi-modal, most developers even in big cities are working at a fraction of FAANG pay, doing routine maintenance work.
https://www.indeed.com/career/journeyman-plumber/salaries/Se...
Finally in seattle a top electrician makes 100/hr or ~200k/year. A top developer with similar years of experience makes $500k and never has to crawl around in your nasty attic and gets amazing healthcare and free food.
It’s not “fair” but it’s worth your time to look into getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the most market value their.
0 - http://levels.fyi
Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.
You should line up several interviews all in the same week and play the offers against one another. At least one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs, and you may be shocked at the amount of compensation you can get.
You can actually do it.
Side note - fan of your username.
These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.
You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar is very high at these places.
Literally interviewed with a small startup (around 20 people total headcount) less than a week ago. The offer was for a base salary of $180k+grand promises of equity given out that should grow 15x and make one rich, but whatever, because equity at this point is just imaginary monopoly money worth pretty much nothing right now, so lets omit that part completely. But even with that in mind, $180k of pure cash just from base salary is more than doable. And I am not even a senior level or anything like that. Technically the company is in NYC, but the position is fully remote, which makes it even more lucrative for people who want to live in cheap COL states (no salary adjustment, which works out great for this scenario).
Not saying I disagree, but yeh, its not unique to software dev it seems
Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and my house has appreciated a ton.
If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city, stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock options that are worth something, but a house when you can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss called it the “get rich slowly plan”. As a person that grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I can assure you it pays off.
Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn’t buy it for the sake of expecting it to go up in value. I’d buy it because you need housing.
Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in a big city, the populations are growing faster than new housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space to build many new single family homes so those will go up even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.
I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble. Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it, and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower than rents for a comparable place.
Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and our population has historically (there are signs this might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does, things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.
Edit: also, I’m not suggesting that your home value will double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.
Although you're not wrong, and crashes absolutely happen, I feel like I have been hearing that for at least 30 years now.
Just when it seems like things can't continue, the market always seems to find a way to support the higher prices.
For example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/what-is-the-40-year...
It's probably only a matter of time until the 40 is the new 30 year loan for everyone...
- vacations
- cars
- all online purchases
- most hobbies
- etc...
When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car. Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.
I totally agree that the non-FAANG companies have terrible dev pay. But most of the FAANG companies have offices well beyond just SF/NYC, so the opportunities are definitely available.
Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away. (So... technical debt...)
As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for tradespeople.
This isn’t 1800. Moving back for a job is trivial when the alternative is being unemployed.
Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5 years head start when saving for your first house loan. After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours, weekend and night shifts.
After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The craftsmen either they worked their way into a more supervising role or are not able or willing to do the lucrative labor hours.
The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are simply not enough to replace the
+ the aging work force.
The two class of jobs are so different. Scalability, physicality, career path, longevity etc all comes into picture.
The discussion has been going around in cycles for many years.
Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding. It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.
For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.
licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience
The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.
But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"
He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair, house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and general dentistry (if you ask).
It’d be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or cook, because of a small business owner who opened a restaurant.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-HV...
Most of them still prefer to surf than work !
Then you work for someone else and probably make $80k or $90k, then you start your own business.
In terms of supply/demand Australians are extremely house proud and spend an insane amount of money on renovations, upgrades, etc, so all the trades are always slammed. Have been for 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164047/umfrag...
https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/gehaelter-so-hoch-i...
Men I assume given the amounts of money they’ll spend on OF and the m/f ratios on dating apps?
Gen-Z is less sexually active than previous generations. Significantly so. They've been exposed to porn at an earlier age (owing to earlier access to the internet and the ubiquity of pornography online). Porn use was already common among them. The lockdown made things worse, but the status quo was already in place.
> There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine.
This false anthropology must die. Pornography is incredibly harmful to those that consume it. It enslaves a person to his passions. It feeds his lusts and deranges his desires. It makes him or her incapable of relating to the opposite sex in a healthy way, whether in the strictly sexual sphere or not. Lust blunts the mind and renders one incapable of thinking clearly. The consumption of pornography only feeds the sexual passions, further entrenching lust and often generating paraphilias and fetishes as the titillating novelty wears off. Emotions become disordered. Someone who has a porn habit becomes locked in him or herself. The stereotype of a lonely and smarmy 40 year old locked in his parents' basement masturbating to porn is a pithy illustration in many ways. It is the image of an emasculated, impotent wretch deranged by his vices and disorders. This has nothing to do with his lack of a sexual relationship and everything to do with how he views sexuality. He is not master of himself.
Frankly, we'd be better off permitting (regulated) prostitution. There seem to be plenty of women willing to provide these services and plenty of men who are slaves to their lusts (men tend to be more vulnerable to porn addiction and lust than women, but yes, it is true that it is not a problem exclusive to men). At least with prostitution, you're having sex with a human being instead of abusing yourself alone in your room. But ultimately, our view of sexuality must be restored to a healthy one and not the depraved one proposed by liberalism. I suspect the "asexual movement" is a subconscious reaction against the obsession with sex in our society. Excess in one direction tends to produce excess in the other. But maybe it will at least legitimize celibacy again. You don't need sex to have a happy life, contrary to the propaganda of the last few decades or so.
I will add that porn use is an industry fueled both by a corrupt society and people in power who recognize that those who are slaves to their passions (and lust is but one of them) are easy to control. Oligarchies are prone to let such vices flourish because it keeps the populace impotent and consumed with themselves instead of threatening the usurpers who have managed to gain tyrannical control. Porn appeals to prurient interest which is why it is so useful in psychological warfare (a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?). Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
> Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
This is entirely based on nothing. Even worse, it ignores the much more direct and relevant innovations in the area of controlling populations - propaganda and advertising.
> a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?
No, they were trying to shock and humiliate Muslim sensibilities, similar to stashing pork on busses. Sexuality is not some secret sauce of controlling people - there are much more direct ways of doing so, especially with the power of a state like Israel.
Or rather: Paradoxically, what's truly prudish -- and I mean this literally, "overly prudent" -- is to short-circuit your sex drive with porn, because you fear the consequences of real sex.
Lust is good. It helps you overcome social risk aversion, and bond with another person.
But that's the point: You have to have those relationships.
You'll be happiest if you have lots of sex, as part of how you form and participate in a committed relationship. And your "base" urges, far from being bad, can help drive that.
Ridiculous.
But there is also a more long term trend of people having less and less sex and more and more porno consumption. But that can't go forever, at one point if all girls in the world are on sex workers then they will be much more offer than demand.
A girl on OF, to make a living, let's say 3k per month, needs to have 300 guys paying for her. But a guy is not paying for 300 girls, maybe 10 max, so the platform needs to have 30 times more guys than girls. Which is unsustainable in a world with 50% girls/50% guys.
Which is a good news imho. The day that having sex for girls is a normal thing (No this is not normal thing today). Then a lot of things will be much simpler for everyone
It also seems (from actual published data) that the distribution is super weighted towards the top performers. That being said, even an extra 1k a month is pretty sick for posting topless photos if your regular income is less than 40k or you are in school.
I only question that line because I can't even deal with the rest of your post.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...
That would shift the numbers a little, yeah, but not enough to account for the OP's estimate of a 30:1 male/female ratio.
it is important that such platforms do exist (if they implement proper safeguards) and that these content creators are not stigmatized.
it should NOT be noted. Too many good people died in the wars of past centuries to get us to the freedom and liberty we enjoy today to let any fundamentalists dictate what a normal job is and who works it.
Sex work is work and if you dislike it you'd might enjoy Afghanistan these days.
you don't need to go as far as afghanistan, i'm back from eastern europe where my friends from the LGBTQ community are literally being beaten by neo nazi funded by putin.
In this case, I think the friendly way to interpret that comment is as an attempt to anticipate and pre-empt a very common and harmful misconception about sex workers.
Maybe comments should read each others’ future, unwritten comments in the most charitable light possible. Otherwise it starts looking like we’re writing up preemptive strawmen.
Also, it is quite clear that comment was written to elicit sympathy. I can see why someone gets angry when intellect is used as a justification for sympathy.
Tell me you don't understand sex work without telling me you don't understand sex work.
it is true that the intelligence argument was arbitrary (it is my assessment of her) and perhaps clumsy. but again, go have a look on your favorite social media how these people are considered.
1: https://prostitution.procon.org/questions/how-many-prostitut...
scientific circles are quite a bit the same, in term screening and funding.
and yes we shouldn't forget the other ones (why not developing a better, safer and fairer platform btw).
That is important to point out, as sometimes people generalize or attack people, unfairly, based on these things.
Also, don't be so mad. It comes off as bad faith.
I read it as saying that it shouldn't need to be stated, ideally, that she is brilliant because of stigma around sex work and workers. That we have then freedom to do this as we please in the USA, it's legit work, and many people of all intelligence levels and circumstances may choose to do it.
It's a strongly worded opinion and with Afghanistan thrown in, but we all know the Taliban's history of repression soo.. I think it's worth everyone seeing.
The work she does is often stereotyped as being "dumb" or non-intellectual. To fight that idea, OP found it valuable to mention how smart she is and how these platorms provide a safe and profitable way to provide for her child.
Ask yourself - and I mean really ask yourself - what about that statement has you so angry?
Edit: Downvoters, try a little harder. Engage your emotional core. Really work those empathy centers. Think about it: If nobody had to justify their existence, and people just allowed each other to exist, then we wouldn't have to weigh whether sex workers are more deserving of rights than computer scientists. We could allow both; we could allow everybody.
i agree and i am a computer scientist.
1) that she is doing sex work, because she has no choice to feed her son, given her medical condition.
2) on an unrelated note: she is a brilliant and very intelligent individual.
3) point 2) was emphasized because for a significant part of the population, these two are incompatible, which is obviously wrong.
4) these platforms, while far from perfect provides some safety to sex workers. this important and fundamental: the sex industry, be it pornography or other, is dangerous to actress, actors and prostitutes alike. many get raped and/or abused, for instance.
5) on yet an unrelated note that she is a loving mom. moreover, an ex gf of mine, a past sex worker as well, is also a loving mom. i added this information because both in english and french slang, if you're mom is a sex worker, you and her are not good person. i don't think these children can openly talk about their moms' jobs openly at school without provoking major backlash, if not legal actions. and we live in a quite liberal country.
sorry not making all of the above clear enough.
Law is not powerful enough to protect someone from a violent partner. Restraining orders don't stop violence from taking place. They only promise punishment afterwards.
So you do not pursue a violent partner for child support, even with the law on your side. It is too dangerous.
Online sex work is the safer option.
Oh, also, you seem to have the idea that child support money is enough by itself for the costs of raising a child decently. It often isn't, you need another income source to cover it. In the example we are talking about, the person could not do a typical job, so they had to find an alternative and OF provided it.
i forgot to mention her mom is an hardcore and highly manipulative evangelist, as if life was not hard enough.
> If she is resorting to sex work to feed her son, what is she spending the father's child support money on?
That implies:
(a) there is father's child support (a sweeping assumption that is often wrong), and
(b) the father's child support is sufficient by itself to feed her son without needing to resort to sex work.
It's also suggesting that the mother is misusing funds somehow.
The distinction between "feeding" and "raising" you might have picked on would be, in my view, a quibble over a technicality. Child support is to contribute to the costs of raising a child, it's not earmarked to specifically cover food, and if you need extra income to raise a child, it's acceptable common language to phrase that as earning money to feed a child.
alternative is social services.
To prevent illegal behavior, we should outlaw it!
They want a solution for distributing adult content and getting paid for it.
By far, the single biggest hurdle here is payment processing - as evidenced by this whole OnlyFans fiasco. It's Visa and Mastercard who are pressuring OF - they've been doing this to sex workers for decades, but finally picked a fight big enough that it's getting real media backlash.
Once they know it's possible, people want a one click solution for anything. The subject being taboo has nothing to do with it.
This is one reason why Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix did such a good job combatting piracy for music, video games, and movies, while ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so they're still widely pirated.
They already do this, you need a Switch online subscription to access the NES/SNES ROMs they have available
There's not a lot of incentive for some of those groups to come together, but I imagine even if most could be assembled, Nintendo would be particularly resistant.
Had we kept the 28 year copyright duration from 1831 almost all ROM images would be in the Public Domain now.
For example indie creator studio makes video game for the PS1. It's a huge hit, they go on to make other popular games, and one day Microsoft buys them, morphs them into an in-house team. And then one day you realise you're arguing that, Microsoft (now the owner of the license) should release this Sony Playstation game. No. Not going to happen.
When this stuff happens for individual humans, often even if the money doesn't mean anything to one person who is an obstacle, it does mean something to their co-creators and they'll do it for that. For example it would be possible for Alan Moore to have blocked a lot of stuff that uses his work, from the V for Vendetta movie (which lots of people liked but I felt missed the whole point) to the re-issues of Miracleman, but while Alan doesn't care about money, the artists on that work do, and him blocking it would hurt them. So e.g. that's why modern copies of Moore's seminal run on Miracleman say they're by "The Original Author" in big text but never mention Moore by name, that's his condition, he doesn't want the Mouse's money, but his artists do.
Corporations don't care though. If they can inconvenience a modern competitor by snuffing out an important cultural artefact that is exactly what they'll do.
I'd actually advocate outright abolition of copyright. The associated moral rights have some place, but copyright is almost entirely a means for corporations to try to control culture for their own profit and we don't need it. But 28 years is a more acceptable middle ground I guess.
Much like Netflix, the reality is that people aren't actually very interested in old shows apart from a handful of super famous perennials which are already available anyway.
They say they are in surveys, but consumer behaviour does not back that up. They just use newer content in practice.
That still protects the individual artists and perhaps the Banskys but doesn’t unnecessarily lock up these old games
The demand is there, it's just a question of having a convenient enough package
Technically, GameTap had some really neat little features. For example, it would track your high score for most emulated games, and for really old games where the score would rollover to zero, it noticed that and would let you see your effective grand total score. So there would be a global Galaga leaderboard that could happily go into the millions.
Regarding the success of the service, Gametap was live for a few years. It totally had its shot. GameTap was regularly advertised on TV. It had a pretty big library covering a dozen or so platforms: Several Ataris, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Sega, PC games, and more. They did a few high profile things like buying some failed MMOs and keeping the servers running for all GameTap subscribers.
At the end, I think it turned out that the folks who get really excited about playing ColecoVision games are the same folks who are very comfortable downloading ROMs.
I think it may just have been ahead of it's time in terms of model in the era of battlepasses, paid online and gamepass, as well as monthly paid streaming services in general.
Here's a fun technical secret about GameTap. Several of the companies that we bought licenses from barely knew they owned the games and definitely didn't have any original binaries or source, and for the obscure consoles/titles, we sometimes could only find cracked versions online. Those would usually have crack intros (it was the birth of the demoscene!), though, and we clearly didn't want to use them. Ultimately we cheated. We just launched the game by loading a save state just past the crack intro.
e.g. https://archive.org/details/internetarcade
https://archive.org/details/sega_genesis_library
https://archive.org/details/atari_8bit_library_games
I didn't know how to filter out the romhacks, if you scroll down the majority of the collection is original games.
There was a little upkick at the start of the pandemic according to Sandvine, but Sandvine's methodology is not watertight and lots of people staying at home with not much to do seems a more likely culprit than service fragmentation.
You can throw money at directors, and actors, but there are just so many great movies, and most were made by hollywood years ago.
The owners of those great films, started their own streaming service.
But, nowadays it feels like Netflix’s catalog is full of its self made titles(Some of them are great), but less and less “popular” ones that we heard of somewhere and just want to watch.
If I am expected to shuffle around multiple streaming subscriptions, and pay for them individually, it is not that different from the cable TV model that these guys took on against.
Sailing the high seas indeed!
Now, of only there was a way to have a moderated search for all content on all trackers.... Maybe there is one already, and its just that i don't know it?
It has mostly russian-dubbed content, but it usually has original soundtracks, too.
Also, now it is probably better than ever (didn't watch anything for quite a while, so it's a guess), because films are currently released on VOD concurrently with premieres in theatres, and that means that good quality content appears immediately, and not after theatrical window
https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 If you flip thru the years at least the top movies in 2018 have more downloads than the top movies in 2021. I think that can somewhat safely answer your questions.
EDIT: WRONG because as a comment points out below older movies also might just have been downloaded more over time.
From this site, it doesn't look like their was much of an uptick in top downloaded movies from 2019 to 2020. And in general torrenting has been growing less popular.
However, the numbers on this site in general don't sanity check very well for me. For example, the End Game Avengers movie, which was incredibly popular, was only downloaded: 2,890 times in 2019? That doesn't seem high enough to me.
So yeah, not 2,890. Think millions.
This makes far more sense, I wonder why their numbers are so bad.
The other things I did recently: 1) paused Google YTTV because NBA season was over 2) canceled Netflix because I never watch it
I've been watching content (some of it very old, like The Larry Sanders Show) on HBO Max, but the app on Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch it on PLeX.
The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
Not only that but I've even seen the seasons presented in no order whatsoever: i.e Season 2 followed by Season 8. It is nonsensical.
Fun fact: previously it tried to cooperate with the content owners and removed content by request, so the UX was considerably worse. But then, someone successfully litigated to block them 'forever' in Russia, so... They restored all prevoiusly removed content and now it has almost everything I ever wanted. Great win!
Zero control over playback speed is the deal killer for me.
The only reasonable option is to pirate.
That became worse in recent years when titles on digital distribution platforms e.g. Steam had music removed due to expiring licenses. This meant a game you had already downloaded and installed would be downgraded unless you were quick enough to stop the automatic updates for it.
The VPN jumping lunacy bothers me. I moved countries - great so I can't use Disney+? I get it, but that now means I have to download (your new) content because you won't actually let me buy your content, directly from you. For the first couple of months I continued to pay for the service. Eventually I decided that if you don't want me as a customer, I don't feel bad about downloading it. Sad really.
And, no qualms of conscience there at all?
It's nothing like the old days where we had to wait several weeks to watch Game of Thrones legally, though.
I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but from memory it was something that around 40% of us were doing back in 2013, had dropped to around 15-20% by 2018-2019, and is now at just above 20%.
Then I tried to set them up on the iPad.
There was about 5-10 specific shows they wanted to watch, what I found was that they were literally spread across more than 5 services, with one show each. Not a single one of them had 2 of the shows they wanted to watch.
They were already set up with Foxtel and had been using it for a couple of years, they watched shows on it regularly and knew how to do everything up to hitting the 'cast' button.
So I set them up with the other services, bummed an Amazon account off a sibling, signed them up to the 3 or 4 free services we have in Australia, think I subbed to one other one or something too. I can't even remember what they all were there was so many. I put the icons all in the same place on their home screen so they knew those apps were all the streaming ones etc etc.
I logged into a few of the accounts a week or so ago and they haven't watched a single thing. Not even on the Foxtel, which they were already using, and now they've stopped using it.
It seems to me like they've just hit a wall of complexity and thrown their hands up and said fuck the whole thing.
And you know what? I'm right there with them. Half way through the set up, trying to do the right thing, I was an inch away from throwing my hands up and saying fuck the whole thing as well. It would be far easier for everyone involved if I just brought a hard drive with new shows around for them every few months.
There was another thread here yesterday where some bloke was going on about how he couldn't understand why people wouldn't just spin up a linux box or something instead of using Discord.
Well, this is it. It took my parents months to get used to using one app, and adding something as simple as another couple of apps to the mix has turned them off the technology entirely.
When you introduce anything other than the absolute most simple UX, you risk losing part of your market entirely. You're not building stuff for other software engineers or other TV network execs or whatever your job title is. Everyone trying to carve out their own piece of the pie is just smashing the pie to bits for everyone else.
When it was just Netflix, piracy was almost dead. Now, it's going to come back, unless content distributors can find some way to work together. That goes for music, TV and games. All 3 ecosystems are running into the exact same problem.
One of the most annoying scenarios I seem to find myself in all too frequently is trying to get to the episode list for a series. The assumption that most of my services make is that when I click on the series card in the list of shows, the thing I want is to automatically be taken to where I left off. This is fine when it works (although it's a big damn assumption that the app correctly preserved where I left off, and even when it does that often dumps me into the credits for the episode I finished last night). But when I want to see the episode list, I feel like I just have to flail about and curse at the TV until I stumble upon the right sequence of buttons to get to what I want.
That's not even to mention the incredibly disheartening recent changes to the home screen of my (Shield) Android TV, where half the home screen is now taken up with ads for programs I will never watch on services I don't even use.
It does make one rather miss the days of a folder full of AVIs and VLC. I also had a nice Plex setup at one point. Maybe one of these days I'll get off my ass and heed the call of the open seas.
I do this for my family. 3TB external HDDs, each time I see them they give me the old one and I give them a another one freshly topped up (things added/removed based on suggestions/requests).
It's been a smashing hit and they all love it.
We all loved Netflix when it came out and paused doing this for a while, but it wasn't long until the fragmentation and geoblocking led to more requests for certain shows popping up again, and now we all pretty much got rid of all our streaming services and are back to the HDDs.
Right. They need to swallow their pride and realise there needs to be a way to have one interface that shows you all the content you can access from the subset of services you subscribe to, in a searchable way. My Netflix shows, Prime shows and Foxtel shows should show up side-by-side in the interface. They can put a ribbon on it and/or an opening title to tell me who the distributor is.
Purchasable/rentable content can appear in a separate section, and when I can buy content from two or more services I have an account with, present them all and let me choose which one to use.
And I pay for Plex.
Streaming services would be forced to compete in everything except content. Creators would still be paid.
Copyright isn't a natural right, it should be continually adapted to serve the public.
What are the problems with this?
My personal views, of course.
I can't see how Amazon and Netflix could push prices up without unlawful collusion? But if they did push prices up for all media how would they sell their service?
It's not unheard of for major players to have contracts that say 'if you're offering this to another company for less per unit than you are to us then you agree to reduce our price accordingly', the idea is just to make that lowest price universal so that.
I sell license for prints of my painting to Acme for £5 then ABC can print the same painting and pay me £5. As creator I can choose not to sell the work for £5, but that's no different to now; what I wouldn't be able to do is restrict who - in the wholesale market - could buy the work for that price.
Consumers have a right to consume or not consume, but they may not limit creator's freedom, nor by "restricting copyright to force delegation".
Creators may choose who to sell to, with you there. But then we (the demos) may choose to not give copyright protection. We're not limiting creators freedom, we're limiting who we choose to protect from the open market.
It's our job, though, to make that available and easy for creators (e.g. kudos to RMS for making and popularising the GPL).
But no one should be able force anything on _all_ creators.
PS: Well, the outcome would be that creators would stop create at all, and in some cases that might be fair and just, but that's another topic completely. E.g. some societies regard as fair and just limits on drawings of humans and animals, so there's no such drawings. And they see it as fair and just.
But demos doesn't mean "we, consumers" -- it means "we, the people". As in, the body politic, from whom all laws and therefore copyright ultimately emanates. Creators only have those copyrights because we've granted them. This is a law of man, neither God-given nor a law of nature -- we can, if we want, un-grant them.
The fundamental trust of copyright is literally to make things worse for consumers to the benefit of producers. If you see consumers being inconvenienced in an expensive way as a problem then you haven't engaged with the problem copyright is here to solve.
Copyright is to enrich the public domain. It's foundation in the West is Queen Anne's statute which followed on from printmakers making their own regulations. It shifted power from the printmakers to the creators, buy it served the public domain by having a limited period of protection and by preserving copies of works which could be referenced.
It made things better for the public because after 7 years (IIRC, I think it was later extendable to 14 years) the work was free to get printed anywhere vastly aiding the spread of culturally important works. The fundamental bargain also aided the demos (as opposed to the consumer, per se); that bargain being that a creator could exclusively - with the backing of the law - control reproduction during those 7 years and so profit sufficiently to continue creating further works without having to seek a patron.
Copyright is supposed to be, and was, about liberation of creators from control; and democratisation (making available to the people) of works.
The change I propose aids creators getting paid, and aids works benefiting the public. Moreover, it wrests some control from the "printmakers" in keeping with early copyright laws.
One big problem with compulsory licensing is that rights organizations that manage the payment of royalties often become very powerful themselves and are sometimes seen as copyright bullies. For example, ASCAP, which represents composers and licenses musical compositions rights, pursued the Girl Scouts for unlicensed singing of campfire songs. [3]
[1]: https://www.copyright.gov/licensing/m200a.pdf
[2] example: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/24/taylor-swif...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/17/nyregion/ascap-asks-royal...
Essentially, they both mean that creators don't meaningfully get paid, only that Spotify appears legitimate due to the breadcrumbs and "exposure" they do give out.
E.g. Bandcamp is better than piracy, but I'd argue piracy is better than Spotify.
Except now, as an independent artist I can get easier exposure on Spotify and build up more income from live shows, merch and whatever else as a result. My closest fans will still often buy from band camp, or buy a vinyl or whatever. Except now I have a ton more fans than I could have reasonably achieved in the iTunes era
And the distribution of wealth has stayed relatively similar - huge artists (The Taylor swift’s of the world) continue to be minted, small unknown artists continue to make a comparatively tiny living - except now many, many more people can make that living and stream music
But I agree with you, I'm surprised Steam doesn't have a way to get old ROMs.
Not quite old ROMs, but gog.com sells old computer games prepackaged for Dosbox, which because of that work on Windows, Mac and Linux. That's basically the old PC computer equivalent of what I believe Nintendo does by shipping the emulator with the ROM when you buy it through the Virtual Console so it runs as a whole.
Back in the day I was a big fan of an SSI game called Imperialism - this game pretty much refuses to run on modern software - it needs DOSBox to run smoothly and even then it does custom cursor stuff that tends to screw up very obviously on modern systems - the GOG version of the game runs smooth like butter.
Why would I ever pirate a copy of Imperialism and spend a day actually getting it set up to run sorta decently on my machine - when I can grab it off GOG for 1.89 CAD? A day of my time, even an hour of my time (even my leisure time), runs well above 2$ at this point - the convenience is there so pirating becomes a bad value proposition.
Licensing hell.
https://kotaku.com/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-...
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/no-one-will-sell-no-one-liv...
Great games. Recently - well a year ago - played through them with a friend coop.
They sell old games, e.g. Sonic the Hedgehog: https://store.steampowered.com/app/71113/Sonic_The_Hedgehog/
That's a Windows program that runs a Sega Genesis emulator that loads the game's ROM.
In many jurisdictions (AU, UK), it would be legal to copy them to another device you own, such as a hacked PSP, under the "format shifting" exemptions.
The only example I can think of is Nintendo Online. You can play select NES and SNES games on the Switch with a N.O. subscription.
I collect ROMs, I've got damned near 4Tb worth. I collect for two reasons:
1. Archiving 2. Most of the "good" vintage games carry ridiculous prices. Games that had over 10 million copies pressed going for $100+. Even if we assume 1 million were destroyed, that's still 9 million copies floating about. Not exactly rare or worth $100.
That does actually make me feel better knowing that DW4 would cost $100 if it were "new" now.
These days a sealed copy of DW4 graded at 7.0 will run you $1549. I'd be nervous paying anything less than $170 for a working cartridge alone right now.
As a consumer of these things, I've thought many times how easy it would be for someone to just print off "original boxes and content" for these old games, and sell them as if they were mint. As someone who wants this kind of thing... please don't be afraid to charge premium prices for replicas! As long as you tell us it's a replica, and it's high quality - everyone wins. Once enough time passes, replicas and forgeries all just become history.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001027903131.html
$20 is exceptionally expensive for a Japanese game.
I don't disagree that the market is small, though. But Nintendo does have a chronic problem of under-manufacturing desirable hardware. Like, if you want a SNES Classic (good emulator, fantastic controllers), you'll have to pay 2-3x the original price. Nintendo could do another run of them every year for basically no effort, and they just...don't.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2134113860/warrior-64-c...
But yeah, Nintendo could have done this years ago had they wanted to.
If you mean third party solutions I think there is at least one project that aims to be compatible with various original cartridges but its name eludes me at the moment. [edit] It's Polymega though it doesn't support N64 it does support SNES/Megadrive/NES/TG16 and a number of CD-ROM based consoles.
I too tend to think of ROMs as strictly images of non-volatile chips, alone, but it's interesting that when we're in computer emulation territory, it's really only the size that's different; a CD iso feeds into a PS emulator pretty much the same way a rom file feels into a SNES emulator - it's just a document.
The evidence presented does seem like a bubble, with scam/fraud properties.
Then suddenly the highest court disallowed it. Guess what, we still pay the copy tax.
Clarification: The copy tax was meant to compensate copyright owners for consumers making copies (for private use) of purchased media. It was widely interpreted as to allow downloading from the internet as well (even from pirated sources).
You'd think they'd make their money and move on to new creations. You make something, it's successful, you make your money for 5 years or so and then it's public domain. You'd have to make new stuff to make more money. No. Copyright holders feel entitled to extract value out of their "property" essentially forever. It's the ultimate in rent seeking.
Since then the cycle to make/market/distribute/profit off a product has gotten much faster.
If anything, copyright should be shorter than 28 years. Not longer.
I love the original The Matrix(1999) movie. But it has had it's day in the sun, earned money and become "old news" at least 10 years ago.
In a "free market" sense, 12 years is a long time to have a monopoly on IP. If you have failed to make whatever money you are going to make of this IP by 12 years, then you are sucking at your marketing/use-of-IP and there should be "competition in the market" with your IP, to best make use of it.
Once the market becomes completely fragmented, a new service offering to bundle it back up will inevitably come along.
Agree, I think a more general term for 1 click solution is ease of use.
Its the same reason why people compromise for privacy and use main stream products like google maps.
A good thing overall, tbf.
I think this is a missing piece of OFs popularity and usefulness to creators. Not only is it a centralized and (by now) well known site for this kind of content. OF deals with the payment processors, the charge backs, and the disputes. It is relatively seamless for the content creators in that regard.
You're completely correct here. The only other real option in this space is CCBill - and they:
a) only do payments - not hosting and everything that OF does
b) still take a ~18-20% cut, in addition to annual flat fees
c) are really fucking unbelievably terrible
Monero is ideal for this sort of thing.
It clearly doesn't meet the needs of these customers, regardless of whether or not it's "supposed to"
Pornography is as much art as streaming video games or uploading card opening videos to YouTube are a form of art.
Pornography is entertainment, and not all entertainments are art. In spite of all the more or less recent porn videos labeled "Art Porn," which, in fact, rather depicts passionate sexual intercourse, pornography cannot reasonably be considered art in the traditional sense. Pornography does not elevate your spirit, it does not make you feel a broad range of emotions, and there is no real creativity, or it is utterly limited to a mediocre plot and a few different environments.
What definition of art do you have in mind that makes you think that pornography is art?
No, it's not, it's an umbrella term covering multiple kinds of sexually-explicit work people do, including prostitution, fetish modelling, camming, stripping, phone sex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work
> there is space for more than one terms.
That's right, there's more than one term. When you want to say something about porn actors, you can use that term. When you want to say something about sex workers, you can use that term. When you want to say something about artists, you can use that term. They are different but overlapping terms and which one you use depends on what you're saying.
Not generally; its typically used either more broadly (though not strictly more broadly, as nonconsensual acts wouldn't generally be included) than “prostitution”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work#Types
Or strictly more narrowly than prostitution, as in:
https://theconversation.com/who-are-we-talking-about-when-we...
"Artist" might imply dilettante. "Worker" captures that they are doing it in order to get paid.
And the winner ist: viggity
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237827
I love to browse by /r/all -- but I have spent a long while +Filtering out so many subreddit - and running it with Res and adblock etc... I have a super sleek and fun experience on Reddit with my 15-year-old account...
Some memes are cool - most are lame.
I have never been interested in 4chan nor twitter (I think twitter is the new "National Inquirer type" -- I think of tweets as those horrific multi colored snippet boxes on the front of tabloids.
Here is Twitter event by Tech Insider.[0,1]
[0] https://twitter.com/TechInsider/status/1430654887327682565
[1] https://twitter.com/TechInsider/events/1430648239171198984
I was the under the impression that Pornhub offers this? I have no idea how self-service it is though.
But the viewers are on youtube, and network effects keep the viewers from switching. So there's just a graveyard of failed youtube alternatives.
Even Youtube, for all its users and being part of an existing advertising company, struggles to break even (reportedly).
And sooner or later, any platform that becomes popular would have to implement a content ID system and and have to deal with ban/demonetization waves every time Twitter/journalists discover a new type of offensive content on the platform.
I agree that content ID is a necessary system in principle. Not legally necessary, but it's a system that solves real problems YouTube had before its existence. The problems with it are largely around YouTube heavily favoring recent content, while simultaneously having a support that takes weeks to even look at your case if you can't raise a twitter storm. They are trying to completely automate a problem that's full of subtlety and rife with abuse, and then don't give you any way to resolve it when it goes wrong. Other platforms don't have to choose the same path
I don't see how trust is directly related to that, it's a competing concern.
I wonder if there could be a meta-platform which aggregates feedback, cross posts automatically, etc.
It differs from Facebook because the kind of interaction assymetry.
I thought this was a good advice to take for a long while before a youtuber mentioned it, but I wasn't a content creator.
I think it's a good idea to have your own website as well.
Send out A/B newsletters. Group A gets a version which says a stock will go down. The B group's newsletter says the same stock will go up. Rinse and repeat. You are guaranteed to have a path to victory...
In other words, don't believe everything you read or watch, even if it is from a newsletter or youtube account with 100% success.
But all actors are at the mercy of a few payment providers and their regulators.
It's risky to be dependant on an App store, cloud computing platform, social media platform, payment processor, etc. They might change their rules, ban you over a rumour, or just quietly change their recommendation or advertising algorithms to exclude you. There aren't a lot of substitutes, and even if there were, switching can mean leaving behind users.
OTOH, you have no choice. All the opportunities are on these platforms, not just risks.
To be a youtuber, you need to be on youtube. Diversifying to other platforms is doing stuff other than being a youtuber is hard. You can't just take your users, revenue model and such with you. You could try also doing IG or OF, but in the same sense that you can also practice law on the side. Sure, it gives you security, but not in a portfolio kind of a sense.
Especially at the beginning of the pandemic when nobody knew how long it might last and the stock market was free diving to what was seemingly oblivion.
I guess my point is that in mid 2020, it felt like there were no degrees that had plentiful jobs short of being:
1. A close-to-graduating worker in health or medicine.
2. A finance-compatible major from a Top 15 school with exceptional math, statistics, and inference ability. Likely, previous internships. And there really weren't that many of these.
Jobs at software companies that were typically not competitive were getting flooded by top grads and early career applicants w/ 1-3 years of experience who had offers revoked or got laid off. I fought tooth and nail for the offers I got, and the company I joined ended up being terrible -- so go figure.
Now consider that there are like, 500k students *not from top schools* graduating in STEM that same year. Suddenly the 'study something useful' mantra fell apart in the matter of months (weeks?).
As someone who hires devs, I could easily hire 2-3 devs right now. However I live in a tier3 city, and don't want to do the remote dev thing right now. If I post a remote job I get 5,000 candidates, if I post a local job I get 0-3.
As a new grad, I bet winning a remote job would be hard. But pick a city, any city. Always looking for devs. If still not landing jobs, its a matter of interview skills and non-school resume experience.
1) Bottom 5% tier grad who has less than zero social skills, thus would also be a low earner on OF
2) Extremely picky about jobs. Instead chose OF for lifestyle/earning reasons.
3) Serious health, legal, psychological, or family problems that would prevent them from any job and probably also would have made attaining their degree very difficult. This is MIT OnlyFans person I feel the saddest for.
4) Some other 1/1000 possibility
The idea MIT grads are on OF in mass just to make enough to eat and put a roof over their heads is some serious sympathy farming.
While I find this post witty and well-written ("some serious sympathy farming"!), I don't follow where the parent post was suggesting anything about MIT CS grads on OnlyFans. Do I misunderstand? (Zero trolling.)
I never prequalified it specifically with 'CS' -- by the way, a lot of the discussion in the thread has tunnel-visioned on CS, but I'm pretty sure that's not the only STEM degree HN would consider 'useful' (if we loop back to the comment I replied to).
There's physics, math, engineering, and much, much more -- and all of those had an even worse job market than CS with the exclusion of those jumping into quantitative finance. The point of the original comment is to highlight how you can do everything 'right' according to the poster and, by necessity or tragedy resulting from a global pandemic, may still end up relying on sex work to make ends meet for a period of time.
The circumstances of the pandemic are only further exacerbated for the hundreds of thousands of STEM graduates not coming from top schools or internships. Finally, I'd like to note that my original comment (way up in the chain) was neither about STEM nor top schools, so I hold that my observation there still holds weight.
TL;DR: the concept that Gen-Z job hunters can simply go to 'the good school' and get 'the good degree' for 'the good job' is entirely subverted in a pandemic, leading to an especially dire job situation for those who are less privileged in education or training. This, coupled with social distancing, was the perfect social context for OnlyFan's recent hypergrowth.
This point: "may still end up relying on sex work to make ends meet for a period of time". I grew up in a family and culture that shamed sex workers, but when I became an adult, I learned that that the truth is much more nuanced! I hope OnlyFans can continue to provide a safe space for sex workers when and how they wish to work.
Your tl;dr: I agree and experienced it myself, first hand. The year that you graduate is a roll of the dice in real life. If the economy is strong, you'll mostly do fine; if the economy is in a nosedive, most people are screwed, even hotties on OnlyFans with an MIT CS degree!
Yes! Absolutely, I tried a couple times to re-write that bit without getting too verbose and kinda gave up. I agree with you -- there are people who absolutely just vibe with sex work and they should be empowered to do it.
Whenever I need someone more experienced, it’s either hired by recommendation, or we need a headhunter. Salary is never the issue, it’s just that senior devs complain about getting swamped with offers, so they don’t even have to look anymore.
It’s almost like a game theory problem: people have to apply to hundreds of companies to have a shot because everyone is also doing the same.
That, and some companies seem to be shifting towards preferring having a low number of experienced developers rather than a larger number of entry-level: I know of a few companies that paused junior and mid-level hirings after getting big investments.
What is OF?
“What’s your OF?” “I setup an OF at blahblahblah”
That creates a problem of incentives, where purely self-serving organizations will let other companies bear the expense of employing junior developers and helping them learn the ropes, and then hire them when they're worth it.
As an aside, professional soccer solves this by granting a team certain rights to the players it develops, so if a player is trained in Team A's youth academy, and Team B wants to sign them at age 18, Team B pays a fee to Team A. Team A may agree to reduce the fee in exchange for a share of any subsequent sale, so if the player develops into a top professional and is sold to Team C at age 22, both Team A and Team B benefit financially.
With juniors being able to be easily enticed away with a bump in salary at a well known company it becomes the situation that the only companies that can afford to hire juniors are those that pay enough to make it so that they aren't enticed away as easily.
This then leads to other companies not interested in hiring juniors - not because they don't want them or that they aren't willing to train them, but rather that they can't compete with the big tech company compensation.
The result of that is then that you see only job postings for mid and seniors... not so much because they will hit the ground with less training, but that they're likely more mature and less likely to be poached (they're stereotypically interested in settling down and raising a family).
Ultimately, if everyone and every organization is similarly self interested, there is no reason to hire a junior dev unless you can pay them top dollar to avoid the possibility of them getting poached by another org before they've been able to produce a positive return on investment... or that the overall income of the org is large enough that the loss in the ROI isn't substantial.
If you include associate degrees, you can add all the skilled trades to that list. To be clear, I'm talking about all the associate applied science w/[electricial|plumbing|pipefitting|welding] programs out there.
The median bachelor's degree in math or physics obtained in 2021 is basically worthless.
I have mentored math and physics students for six years now and even the good ones are having an increasingly hard time finding employment, and not for lack of trying. It's not uncommon to hear of seniors sending, say, 100 applications only to get ghosted on 99 of them.
Off the top of my head CS is steadily looking like one of the only degrees worth anything and I’d still argue the value of that given the prevalence of self taught developers. Decent starting salaries for the most part, and very good starting salaries if you’re particularly good at certain things and an otherwise unheard of ceiling. Though I’m generalizing at the moment, I feel the industry is more complex than that.
Nursing seems ok. Salaries appear good at first, but the nurses I know also work ungodly hours.
Some traditional engineering fields seem ok in terms of employability, but wages don’t seem that great and many of the roles I’ve seen in those fields want a MS/MEng.
Physical therapy seems to be doing well too.
The other one in my head was pharmacy, but I guess one needs a Pharm. D to continue on. Being a pharmacy tech also sucks, objectively.
CS, maybe. Engineering degrees from anything less than a large state school or tier one are probably better off trying to get into one for their masters. That's why I said "median" BS degree above.
Law is entirely saturated and dead.
Ironically, I see a lot of humanities students doing well post-graduation because they went in with low expectations. But society continues to dunk on them for basically no reason.
A Pharm D is currently one of the worst investments. Their wages have been declining since at least 2015, and stagnant since 2010.
They have no ability to generate revenue other than hawking bullshit vitamins and supplements, because they have no negotiating power against the people that pay them (managed care organizations and governments). And a few big employers compose of most of the market that buys Pharm D labor (CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, Walmart).
Not to mention that you have to work evenings, weekends, nights, and deal with the general public. Checkout the pharmacy forums on sdnforum or Reddit, they are super depressing.
I had to ask one of my old graduate project partners for a referral to my current (and first, at 27) tech job and I still feel dirty and guilty that I got it so easily and managed to escape the trap of being extremely qualified while making min wage in a dusty shithole of a warehouse.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” was a phrase of derision growing up, but it’s how the world works now.
Right now my coworkers like me, my manager gave me a glowing review, the company is willing to buy me certs and I have been assigned to the subteam responsible for our core functionality.
8 months ago I was self-harming and ready to off myself because of endlessly firing applications into the void and reaching the end of my finances.
I can clearly perform under the stress of work, school, achievement, things breaking but the way the labour market is structured almost broke me which has to tell you something.
Except historically, most jobs have been less safe.
You get crap jobs in your teens to have work history. You go to college to get a degree. You make friends at college, network, and maybe get an internship. You leverage all of the previous to get your first job. You leverage your first job and network to get your second job.
It's not easy. But it is how the world works. Why do you think so many people in white collar jobs have imposter syndrome?
I am sorry you experienced this. Many of us have experienced similar things in our careers. When I did, I had my brother's couch I could crash on while I figured things out, and to be honest, parents who could help me with rent when my post dotcom-bust job paid peanuts.
To the extent that your difficulties were exacerbated by an insufficient social safety net is perhaps the greatest indictment of our society. Incentive structures matter, and structures that put people at the brink between achievement and self harm do a lot of damage to our human capital.
Not everyone will be pushed to the point of self-harm, but the proximity between destitution and achievement is too close, especially for those without family and community safety nets.
I got started with an unpaid internship in high school (every school should require that) and life grew out of that.
[edit] And my family was anything but "traditionally professional." I had no connections whatsoever through my family.
Maybe an “affirmative action” type program for the socially disadvantaged is necessary, but I can’t see that gaining much support when addressing the more glaring disparities (racial, gender) is controversial enough.
But you can control who your friends are. And you can choose to surround yourself with motivated people.
>puts a bullet in the idea of meritocracy. I don't feel the same way, as this sits at the boundary of the workplace. My understanding of meritocracy is that, reward is based on performance inside the company. But until you have hired and had someone working for some time, you have no way of evaluating them.
We try to mitigate hiring bad employees with things like resumes, interviews and skill tests but those are not perfect. I, for example, suck at writing a resume. How many people have you seen on this site rage about "leet code tests"?
So, another "tool" companies use are personal connections. John, a great worker whom I trust, refers Frank. I still have to interview him but it give me another data point.
As a society, we have drifted away from the local community organizations (i.e. churches) that allowed people to build up good connections. We have tried to replace them, things like Linkedin but I am not sure how good of a job they do. Anything done on the internet gives me more of an ethereal feeling as opposed to the more permanent feeling of face to face personal connections.
I got my first part-time tech support job during college via a connection. My aunt was a white collar professional, she ran the fundraising for a non-profit with an annual budget in the millions of dollars. Some software they used for managing donations was developed by a small local company, and she recommended I apply for work there because she was always in touch with their support and thought I could do the job. So I wrote a cover letter and name dropped my aunt's name, who they knew as a client. They interviewed me and hired me. I don't know how much my aunt helped but I can grant that this connection was a privilege many don't have.
After that, the rest of my jobs were without any connection. In the winter of my senior year at college I started applying to big companies through their websites. A big insurance company responded and flew me in for an interview. I was thrilled by this chance, I had never been treated so well. The recruiter told me to save receipts for food and taxis etc, I was so unused to this that I don't think u ever submitted them, I couldn't believe they'd pay for all that. Anyway they hired me.
After that my LinkedIn profile did most of the work. I responded to recruiter spam and got interviews.
One job-hop was driven by a semi-connection: I was moving cities and wanted to find a new job, so I went to a bunch of tech meetups. One was a python meetup, which has nothing to do with my tech stack and I know very little python. At the end, I approached one of the lecturers and told him that while I didn't understand anything he talked about, I got his joke and I thought they were funny. He said that he and some friends were going for drinks, would I like to join? "Sure." So we sat and talked, at the end he asked if I'm looking for a job, I said yes, he told me to send him my CV which I did. Then nothing... then a week later he responds telling me he posted on a forum for veterans of a particular military unit he was in, where he wrote that he thought I was a good candidate. Then suddenly my phone started ringing...I had interviewsin the new city and ultimately offers.
Bottom line: there are multiple ways to success. Good fortune is a common thread though, you do need luck and serendipity, and professional family connections certainly don't hurt.
It was always a phrase of derision for the naivete of those who think it has ever been different, because it has always been how the world works.
You just didn't understand it until it bit you, and then you mistook it for some recent change, even though you apparently grew up with people telling you how it is.
We need more political education, especially among younger people just entering the job market. Period.
Close. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.
And yes, this is coming from a guy who has been smacked in the face by someone else opening the door on me. Same with picking a poor career choice pre housing crash in 2008. Adapt and overcome.
A lot can change in the four years between enrollment and graduation. For example, I went to college in 2006 when the finance sector was booming. I graduated in 2010 when it very much wasn’t. By the time the jobs had evaporated it was much too late to change my course of study. And I certainly couldn’t go back and renegotiate the tuition or interest rate on my loans.
I’m sure the same could be said about people who went to school for anything relating to tourism or hospitality who have graduated into the pandemic. If you’re a new chef, pilot, hair dresser, massage therapist, looking to work in hotel management, etc. the job market that existed when you began your studies is entirely different from the job market you’ve just graduated into.
The fact is that some jobs will always be in demand. Some jobs will almost always be in higher demand.
And the rest of jobs... won't.
Get a degree linked with the former, you'll have more opportunities. Get a degree linked with the latter, and you won't.
I don't mean this from an intelligence or skill perspective, some of the smartest people I know don't have college degrees. But when the big companies are recruiting from college career fairs or listing it as a job requirement, you can and will be passed over for jobs because you don't have one.
He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was. Still, I'd say it was an absolute waste of time and he ended up switching companies a year later anyway.
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/
It does most of these kids no good to know that a given type of engineer can make 150k right out of college, if less than 2% of them are actually able to secure work in the field right out of college. In fact, I'd wager that prior to going into a field, most kids would rather know about the "less than 2% are able to secure work" part rather than the "150K starting salary" part.
Source: I know plenty of engineers without any formal degrees working for big money at real companies.
But it’s important to keep in mind that in many countries “engineer” is a protected term with qualification requirements and not simply a job title.
Software developers can be at least as highly skilled and intelligent as can be engineers, but, most of the time, they are engaged in a highly skilled craft rather than engineering. Making software is sometimes more creative and more integrative than engineering.
There's also ABET - Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology - which establishes formal requirements and standards for the teaching of Software Engineering as a discipline: https://www.abet.org/accreditation/
So I think those pieces are there, they're just not the norm yet.
It's a bit silly for employers to focus on arbitrary educational credentials instead of actual ability. But on the other hand for large organizations managing thousands of employees it's challenging to treat everyone as a unique individual. Some level of forced standardization is the only way to make it work efficiently at scale.
We don't have an education lock on certain roles/levels at the company I work for, but we do have roles at certain levels that require a given certification no matter how proficient one is in the specified tech. This isn't a small-brain move that misses the forest of knowledge for the trees of credentials, but a recognition that it will be more challenging to staff that employee at a given level without it.
It is a second-order small-brain move: the clients are the ones missing the forest for the trees, while your company is just going with the flow. I get it, my company did the same thing, but in the end it's one of those "how business is done" things that add together to create a culture we all freely admit makes no sense.
I'm sure there have been exceptions to this, and firms that aren't as confident in the capabilities of their people may suffer more.
“This guy is absolute garbage, but he has a masters degree, so we charge more for him.”
Well, that's part of the job - are you able to figure out what needs to be done to reach the objective, and then do that? No? Well, no promotion for you.
> He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was.
Seems like your friend did figure out what hurdles to jump.
Part of the reason that employers require advanced degrees is so that they are assured that the individual in question can figure out what steps need to be taken to fulfill an objective, and then take those steps.
The reason is probably irrelevant: the organisation tells you what steps to take to get a promotion. If you fail to take those steps they consider you unsuitable for the promotion, not because they consider those steps to prove your capability, but because you have demonstrated an unwillingness to meet the minimum requirements.
Why the minimum requirements are what they are is irrelevant.
it seems like if some individual has been working with you for years, you should probably have access to better metrics for this than degree/no degree, such as personal acquaintance and familiarity
But it isn't about the employee's competence, so how would metrics help? It's about the employee's compliance.
Look at it from the point of view of the organisation, not the point of view of an individual within the organisation: an individual literally gets told what steps are needed to reach some objective, and then they fail to take those steps!
That does not bode well for that individual in terms of making business decisions, hence they shouldn't be in a position of more power and/or influence anyway, because they are unable to achieve an objective even when it is spelled out to them.
Having a degree is not the objective, being able to do the work is. Confusing the two is an example of a cargo cult. I don't want people working under me who are incapable of understanding which objectives are important.
The objective here is getting the promotion.
> I commonly encounter people who have these degrees but are unable to figure out how to accomplish an objective unless every step is presented as a bullet-point list in the task description.
Irrelevant - the company isn't using the degree as an indicator of competence, they are using it as an indicator of compliance.
> Having a degree is not the objective,
You're correct. Getting the promotion is the objective.
> being able to do the work is.
Being able to do the work is irrelevant if the candidate does not meet the minimum requirements set by the organisation.
Well, at least he scored a degree out of it.
I'm torn on this. I'm not sure I see it all that different than if they wanted to make sure someone they were moving into a managerial role had knowledge to back it up, and wanted them to take managerial courses. It's good that the company paid for the courses, a bit less good that it was in personal time (but it's also theoretically beneficial for the person and isn't tied to the company, so I don't fault that much).
If they outright offer this path in in this situation and it doesn't have to be brought up by the employee, I think that's a pretty acceptable solution to requiring that degree for the position, if the company thinks it's really important to have for some reason.
People need more of the intangible but true. A consumerist society is condemned to wallow in mediocrity and misery. It does not rise to the level of human dignity and maintains a level of existence better suited to worms than men.
It's mostly about expanding the gravy train of administrative staff and shiny new dormitories and eating facilities and gyms, alongside a narrow ideological political indoctrination with little enthusiasm for debate or considering unpopular opinions.
Without the trade school aspect it's difficult to see what value they still provide.
Very obviously if you are working in a field that does not list that as a requirement, then of course you don't need one. But it's still not worthless. As someone pointed out in another thread, if you're trying to move up in a company, a degree can be the differentiator.
My favorite legal recruiter question: give them a topic to research online, one where you know the wikipedia entry is wrong. Not many without post-secondary research experiance would pass that one.
The problem is when jobs don't truly need the knowledge granted from a degree, and is just used to thin the heard, because hiding managers don't know what else to look for.
The value is thus generated by convenience to the hiring manager rather than possession of relevant job knowledge.
Having a degree is, as you've said, a requirement (I have a 2 year... I'm out on some jobs because of it)...
Not having a degree is bad. Having a useless degree is worse as you now (generally) have the debt of a paper that means nothing.
Do you mean a degree in weird subjects, or from non-famous colleges?
https://blog.prepscholar.com/worst-college-majors
https://www.salary.com/passages/8-college-degrees-with-the-w...
https://www.ownyourownfuture.com/most-useless-degrees/
What I find interesting in these articles (and others) is CompSci is listed as a bad investment... oversaturation and what not.
I’ve started to get the impression that even in software development there are certain domains or industries you would be hard pressed to get into without a degree, simply because majority of entry levels are done through campus recruitment.
- high school. - associate degree. - bachelor degree. - professional certificate. - postgraduate degree.
Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...
You won't be able to do biotech or practice law or medicine without credentials.
The results are exactly what you’d expect, and older generations should absolutely be worried when their cohort has shrunk through death to a minority voting bloc.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
> Deep state cuts in funding for higher education over the last decade have contributed to rapid, significant tuition increases and pushed more of the costs of college to students, making it harder for them to enroll and graduate. These cuts also have worsened racial and class inequality, since rising tuition can deter low-income students and students of color from college.
> Overall state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in the school year ending in 2018 was more than $6.6 billion below what it was in 2008 just before the Great Recession fully took hold, after adjusting for inflation.[1] In the most difficult years after the recession, colleges responded to significant funding cuts by increasing tuition, reducing faculty, limiting course offerings, and in some cases closing campuses. Funding has rebounded somewhat, but costs remain high and services in some places have not returned.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/how-student-debt-became-a-1p... (How student debt became a $1.6 trillion crisis)
> Then, during the Reagan Era and the Tax Revolt of the 1980s, states passed tax and expenditure limitations, restrictions that state governments create to limit the amount they can tax or spend.
> “And that meant that state budgets came under threat,” explains Deming. “And so states that used to basically highly subsidize a college education for many people started to cut back in various ways, either by raising tuition or by spending less.”
> Reagan cut higher education funding and student aid, and college costs boomed as a result.
> The College Board estimates that during the 1980-1981 school year, on average, it cost students the modern equivalent of $17,410 to attend a private college and $7,900 to attend a public college — including tuition, fees, room and board. By 1990, those costs increased to $26,050 and $9,800, respectively.
Similar to ROTC programs for Army in conjunction with local colleges, why not special sports programs administered seperately but just co-located with regular colleges that go along with the scheduling, etc?
Administrative expenses need to be chopped from the outside, there is no way the current folks are going to reduce that.
Some athletic fees are excessive, but encouraging students to use the pool, gym etc has real benefits to student health and can be scaled to actual usage levels.
do the funds come from students fees?
As an example Virginia Tech football tickets are start at ~500$/season breaks down as 8$/game fee + 400 base price + variable required donation and can go up well over 2k a season for the better seats. It’s a 35,000 seat stadium that’s largely full so your talking a minimum of 20+ million in annual ticket sales just for Football.
By comparison VT has 39,000 students and the athletic fee is 163$ + a recreational Sports Fee of 163$, together it’s 5% of tuition. Which collectively adds up to a similar scale as just one sports ticket sales, but covers general facilities used by any student. Looking across all sports and revenue streams the recreational sports fee clearly isn’t the major funding source and as football etc contribute indirectly to the schools general fund their clearly close to break even if not a significant money maker.
https://www.bursar.vt.edu/content/dam/bursar_vt_edu/tuition/...
https://hokiesports.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEvent...
So let me understand this thought process? It is better for Taxpayers to pay for "worthless degree credentials"
The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are concerned is credential-ism itself. A standard public education should be good enough for a person to obtain a good middle class job, a K-12 education should be good enough for 50-60% of all jobs in the market
That fact that it is not, is a huge indictment of both the private sector demanding too much, and the public school system no providing proper standard of education.
K-12 SHOULD NOT be "college prep" like it is being treated today, and a person SHOULD NOT need a 4 year degree to do the most basic jobs in society, up to and including computer programming or other general IT work.
I think you have it in your mind that the government can solve all of these problems with higher taxes and more spending, when in reality government is almost exclusively to blame for the majority of the problems
More government will not solve it.
I am honestly not opposed to that... But I still believe we should have a better Public Education system less focused on "college prep" and more focused on actual education, preparing people for Life, Jobs, etc as an adult.
The 2 years of Community College should be Vocational Training for the chosen field after your General Education is done in the K-12.
But many people go to Community College to complete their General Education College requirements for their 4 year degree..
Will be difficult to enforce. Employers can always look at the degree and secretly use it as a criterion, while being prepared to claim there was something else about the candidate that led them to hire her.
Why? What if the markets’ supply and demand curves indicate need for people with more than high school education, and an oversupply of people with just high school education?
Note that I think US public school education standards are basically non existent, and there should be a massive retooling to ensure higher standards (including standardized testing) and more focus on actual skills in high school so that at 18 the kid comes out with something usable.
But I do not see how or why our society can guarantee someone a certain class of living with an arbitrary amount of education.
Then that indicates the high school education is not stringent enough for the market, and should be adjusted accordingly
> and an oversupply of people with just high school education?
The market is showing currently an extreme lack of qualified people. if the market is saying there is an " oversupply of people with just high school education" but there are millions of jobs open, that means the market is telling us that a High School Diploma is meaningless to the market, which as you point out that is what many employers are saying. They are hire people with a High School Diploma and it is a crap shoot where they have basic levels of education or not because in many schools its a participation award not a skills award
This has driven employers to respond with demanding higher levels of "education" in an effort so screen people..
And/or a lack of commensurate wages to incentivize qualified people.
We agree on the situation as it currently is of high school being worthless since you pass just for showing up at least half the days of the school year.
But supposed there is a future where K-12 education is rigorous and we improve to the point that calculus and basic physics/chem/bio are as normal as reading and writing, then I can envision a situation where K-12 might not be enough.
But many of those jobs are in sectors like food service, where a high school degree is more than sufficient.
But there are far more jobs demanding a college degree where it's not required to be successful at that job, than jobs requiring college degree skills and knowledge but accepting under qualified high school graduates.
It still happened though.
If we’re not willing to end massive subsidies for higher education (and we’re not) we should use the government’s massive leverage (by virtue of that flow of dollars) to impose tight enrollment caps on various degrees, and shut down universities that aren’t creating economic value. We should also create alternative credentialing systems that cut universities out of the picture, because degrees are often just used as a proxy for intelligence and work ethic.
A degree is nice but until someone has gained experience that person first needs a company to take a chance on them.
1. The company that hired the interns received a fantastic deal on labor. I think the company that hired me did it because they had an extra fully equipped desk that was going to waste without someone coding on it.
2. Not every student earned an internship, so gaining one was real feather in the hat.
3. Not every intern would have accomplished the same amount. Just like school and life, the more you put into an internship the more you get out.
4. It jump started my professional network of people actually in industry.
I just finished supervising the summer interns embedded with my team at work, and we definitely paid everyone, allowed remote work, and brought everyone into the HQ for a week towards the end (flights, hotel, transpo, meals all comped) to give presentations, network in person with the team, do field trips / team building stuff, etc. I like to think we do a better-than-average job, but it's pretty close to what you need to be doing if you want to attract good talent to your internship program.
I'm gen-X and it's been like this for as long as i've been around too.
Degree says "this one is reliable / knows how to finish stuff". That's it.
I feel like the job market has changed pretty markedly since I was a grad in the late 90's, and that it's just way more all or nothing.
You either can get a job with benefits and a career track and 4 years later you're better off, or you're literally going nowhere, every year of your job is the same as the year prior and you have nothing to show.
There's no more thing where you get a real, genuine, full time, but low-skill entry level job and try to prove yourself. You can't prove yourself in low-skill jobs any more, nobody is watching and nobody cares. In short "you can't get there from here."
I'm speaking entirely anecdotally for sure, but with that said it really does seem fundamentally not the same at all as what I faced as a new grad.
In finance, it is "tradition" for people _without_ certifications to dump on those with certifications, such as CFA & CPA, but most of these haters miss the point. It is really hard to motivate yourself to finish. Once you have the cert, it is a good indicator that the person can get things done! Interestingly, when I interview fresh grads, if they have anything that demonstrates tenacity, like sports or playing musical instruments ... or something that takes time and skill to accomplish, I am always curious to hear about their experiences of personal growth.
The point is we all get dumb luck opportunities, not all keep them though
I still can't understand how people can willingly choose any number of majors/careers that are very well known to have a weak job market and salary range, and then act surprised when it's tough after graduating.
You think they care I graduated at all? :D Be intelligent, know things, be creative and always end a job interview with the guys telling you you interviewed them.
Graduating is worth nothing. Whatever you learned while at university is worth a lot to get a free internship. Whatever you learned during the internship is worth a bit. Always been so, always will be.
Was this resolved?
Many countries have their own local payment processors, but it's still only a country-wide thing.
There are several challengers like Paypal, Venmo, Zelle, Coinbase, etc that attack from a slightly different angle. I think the thing that is most common is that have super low cost bank transfer options, and they encourage users to maintain a balance. Processing payments locally is 100x-1000x preferable then processing payments externally for these players.
Their official stance always has been that this is due to the credit card companies, the reality rather is that Paypal doesn't want to deal with the rampant fraud (aka post-nut clarity) in porn.
However, that new processor will be a member of some existing payment systems e.g. Visa network and bound by all the same constraints as the other processors there. Creating your own alternative to a payment system (e.g. a major, widely and internationally supported card network like Visa or MC) is not really plausible. Perhaps you can look at the whole setup of cryptocurrencies+all the crypto exchange companies as something like such an alternative system, so there's one alternative made in this millenium.
There's a few players here:
payment gateways, this is a service that provides the checkout service on a website and handles protected credit card information. Payment gateways also provide anti-fraud services.
payment processors, these execute the actual transaction. They are members of card associations like Visa and connect the card issuing bank and the merchant bank of the payee.
merchant banks, these are the banks that hold the company's bank account that the funds from the payment processor come into.
card associations, Visa/Mastercard these provide the connectivity and set the high level rules.
card issuers, these entities extend credit and may be retail banks or other parties.
there is a difference between Amex/Discover and Visa/Mastercard in that the former are also the issuer. That's why you also see Visa debit cards in Europe, they're using the payment processing network but not extending credit.
It should be clear that starting a new payment gateway is trivial. It takes money to properly comply but ultimately this is a software business. Starting a new payment processor is much harder but it doesn't matter because all payment processors must comply with the card association rules to get access to that network.
Starting your own card network would require attracting issuers who would then issue cards that people could use to pay for OnlyFans... probably not realistic!
It was the threat by Visa and MC to cut them off that was the killer here, plenty of payment processors would be happy to take their money but not if the card networks ban the company.
So VISA could be fined for any trafficking that happen on OnlyFans. This is also why Pronhub had to remove almost all their videos if they wanted to keep credit card services.
As an European I’m a fan of laws that make platforms and big tech responsible for the content they house, but there is no denying that vetting that every OnlyFan sexworker is a task they can’t likely perform easily.
Of course moderation is only one of the solutions, paying money and accepting the financial damage that may come from lack of moderation is another. Of course the big banks know this, which is why they charge an insane margin for their credit card services to platforms like onlyfans, it’s likely they simply upped the price behind the closed doors.
That all wouldn't be good enough for sex crimes though, because even if you have a passport + gov ID + a notary signed statement saying you are 18 and your own mother vouching for you, the counterparty can still be convicted of rape if it turns out you're lying about your age.
Of course this is really all just to keep the law abiding law abiding. Criminals on the dark web will just buy a forged electronic id package and KYC is bypassed.
However, I have a really hard time believing that if you went to a normal grocery store, bought a bag of flour that clearly says "flour" on it, had a receipt for flour, brought it home with the intention of making some bread, and then the police bust down your door and find that actually, it's pure heroin - I doubt you would be convicted. That's why the case above surprises me so much - the guy went above and beyond, by even checking the ID, if anything it's the other person who should be convicted of crime and put behind bars here.
Of course the girl voluntarily went to the site, signed up, and accepted a cash payment. She never even reported anything to the police. She was talking to a school councilor ("Mandatory Reporter") and mentioned she was earning money by sleeping with men. The school councilor was then required to refer it to police for prosecution, even though none of the parties wanted it.
The DA was happy to take it on because Cody Wilson of course is the guy responsible for making 3d printed guns popular, and he had a number of political enemies.
How is it enforced? Any high-profile cases?
I think you mean collaboration.
If it's what I'm thinking of, these laws are collectively known as "know your customer" or "KYC" [0]. It's primarily intended to prevent racketeering, money laundering, and other organized criminal activity, but the laws are written very broadly in part because they're looking for surreptitious activity.
In the case of sex work, it's difficult to verify that all performers are of legal age, that all activity is consensual, and so on. Since there are many, many ways that sex work can be illegal, it's very complicated.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer
>>but there is no denying that vetting that every OnlyFan sexworker is a task they can’t likely perform easily.
Just make every performer submit a valid ID to have an account, if my mobile provider can ask for that, why not OF?
Unless you’re paying for the images on Facebook the transfer isn’t being used to pay for illegal sex. This is the difference between the two in terms of liability.
Nothing, but it should shield them from liability. They can always say a valid ID that shows the user is over 18 was submitted, if there is any legal issue then it can and should be handled by the law enforcement.
>>Unless you’re paying for the images on Facebook the transfer isn’t being used to pay for illegal sex.
Payment processors dropped pornhub because there was some illegal material on the website - it not being paid was irrelevant.
That wouldn’t make them less liable for any illegal content they fail to identify though.
It’s not like Facebook where they can hide behind being a platform because American politicians had no issue making platforms very responsible for the hosted content as soon as it was bundled into anti-trafficking legalisation.
I expecte that the EU will strike at “regular” SoMe in much the same manner when the legislation on anti-fake-news passes through the bureaucracy.
The most popular options, BTC & ETH, are incredibly expensive for $20 subscription payments.
It's also trivial to exchange BTC to LTC (or other low fee coin), you don't even need KYC or in some cases to even use an exchange (atomic swap BTC-LTC). So the cam girls could take fees in LTC and then swap them to BTC once they have enough value to be worth the transactional costs.
> “The proposed Oct. 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators,” [an OnlyFans spokesperson] said.
https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/onlyfans-drops-porn-ba...
The Variety article theorizes that the backlash may have actually been exactly the outcome OnlyFans wanted, because they were able to focus public outrage toward the banks and payment processors putting them in that position.
Nobody wants to change banks even when it affects them directly. How many people are going to change banks out of principle?
I guess some Gen Zers might be motivated not to pick Chase as their first bank?
Well, a not-great but plausible answer, maybe -- companies make changes, both good and ill, because they're panicked over PR fiascos all the time. From all appearances, MasterCard announced those policy changes because of PR pressure that was put on them by "Exodus Cry," a fundamentalist Christian anti-porn activist group. OnlyFans may have calculated that their best bet was to knock Exodus Cry off their hashtag-save-the-children pedestal.
99% of normal people find cryptocurrency strange and inscrutable, and if you think otherwise you're in a bubble.
1. Customers in e.g. the EU may push their reps to "do something" about two US companies controlling all e-commerce.
2. Customers frustrated that Mastercard have gone on the record as refusing to block payments to terrorist-supporting orgs while refusing to process payments to look at titties may pressure regulators to start having a much closer look at Mastercard's money flows.
Both of those seem like meaningful concerns.
Regulators are much more on the side of MasterCard than they are on the side of disgruntled pornography customers.
I don't have a dog in this fight but it certainly reminded me how much power V+MC have to become an existential threat along the likes of Google and Spectrum. Next time I write to my Congressman about antitrust, I'll be sure to put them top of the list now (for all that's going to do...)
Reddit, snapchat, and instagram mainly
The fact that they're able to now reverse the announcement makes me wonder what changed. Did they find a new banking or payout partner? Existing ones had a change of heart? Feels like there would be more to it than these possibilities.