13 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 34.9 ms ] thread
[dead]
I'd bet a lot of your users are OnlyFans girls or similar, unlike your competitors.

That would be a problem out of Stripe's control and public pressure won't solve that.

Just go straight for a payment provider which is set up to work with that kind of stuff.

> I'd bet a lot of your users are OnlyFans girls or similar, unlike your competitors.

Pretty sure that would not be unlike the listed competitors, particularly Throne.

Maybe, but Throne at least does a better job of obscuring it.

A quick look at Throne shows no link to sex workers (their entire Twitter following is Twitch streamers), while OP's service follows exclusively "brats", "dominatrixes", "findoms", etc.

Not attacking OP's service though.

> A quick look at Throne shows no link to sex workers (their entire Twitter following is Twitch streamers)

It doesn't take much clicking through of the linktree/beacons/etc. links in their profiles to find that many of them are sex workers; “Twitch streamers” and “sex workers” are not exactly disjoint sets.

But, yes, it looks like wishlistpage directly links on Twitter to accounts that are more in-your-face about being s/w accounts.

And lazy targeting of services used largely by sex workers might be a viable explanation of the treatment seen.

>after taking a look at the account ID's supplied we'd be unable to share more information or amend the actions taken.

That sounds like they're concerned about money laundering/fraud/crime rather than the issue being crowdfunding itself. The basic statement of not being able to talk about it nor amend it is pretty much the banker code phrase for being dropped due to AML. This happens to people - including victims of crime - where Suspicious Activity Reports are sent to the Treasury by financial institutions and along with that being banned without the financial institution lawfully able to discuss the matter further with the owner of the banned account.

It gets tiring to see time after time again that the best way to reach out to Stripe seems to be through HN. In the tech bubble, it often seems like Stripe is the only option, but Stripe has shown that it's willing to shut people out of their business and with vague explanations, short timelines and no way to reach out so someone who has decision power. Is there no competitor that we can flock to that is more trustworthy? I understand PayPal is essentially the same if not much worse.

I hope you get things straightened out with them, but it really shows that for taking payments, you absolutely should bet on many horses.

The “Stripe support failures” that end up on HN always seem to be sketchy or even fraudulent businesses trying to rally public opinion to force stripe to support them even though they’re against the ToS and could get Stripe banned from Visa/Mastercard/etc.

So it goes with this one, which seems associated with sex workers and unfortunately the payment networks are prudes from the 1700s about that sort of thing.

Always wondered why anyone use this instead of link to paypal or donation service like streamers do.
I mean to send money through some random shady website, where owner can grab as much money as he wants and say to creator nobody sent you money.

This can be easily scam.

With your kind of income, you hire a big lawyer with a big fucking stick.

Income loss, reputation hit, possible implied contract, punative damages, interest, attorney fees, etc.

Let's see their (lack of) customer service sleep that off.

You don’t allow refunds… your “service” exists to prey on the lonely and you charge huge fees. Shocked they would deplatform such a noble service.
HN isn't your personal whinging service.