General Chat

[Ingram85]

Just now, fightoffyour said:

Everyone failing to mention that the hash brown is the best bit.

McDonalds breakfast in Poland is pretty funny, instead of a McMuffin you get two inverted burger buns with the insides (now outside) toasted with bacon and cheese (or whatever) on called a McToast. It's actually pretty good though, and for less than a quid with a coffee, I'm not complaining. The extra hash brown is still the best bit, though it's almost as expensive again to get one of them added on.

Best thing you can do for a BK is stop at a services with a KFC in as well and put a chicken fillet on the **** too.

Don’t know what they are like in Poland, may be different may be the same, but in the UK, Maccies Hash Browns are 99.9% grease and oil. I love a good hash brown but these are just horrible.

[fightoffyour]

5 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

Don’t know what they are like in Poland, may be different may be the same, but in the UK, Maccies Hash Browns are 99.9% grease and oil. I love a good hash brown but these are just horrible.

I've just had one in the UK a few weeks ago and it was great to me! Don't you go there for the grease and oil?

[chrisp65]

I had a Costa Coffee flat white today.

Well, I had a couple of sips of a Costa Coffee hot milk.

Then binned it at the next services, wher I bought a Starbucks flat white.

Still not great, but at least it had coffee in it.

[Xela]

Reading the last two pages, I now want a BK bacon double cheeseburger and a McDonalds double sausage and egg mcmuffin with a side of chicken selects! 

 

[foreveryoung]

2 notes.

All the £4 or whatever Costa, Starbucks cappuccinos I've had are 50% foam.

Download the BK, KFC app and get food, some nearly 50% off with other special deals.

[HanoiVillan]

On 22/08/2021 at 16:20, HanoiVillan said:

The 'finance partners' in question are MasterCard, who do not have any meaningful financial interest in whether OnlyFans succeeds or fails. The backstory here is that Nick Kristof, who is a very influential NY Times columnist, wrote a story that scared a lot of payment processors, about there being videos on PornHub etc of girls who are the victims of sex trafficking. And the backstory to that is that the organised Christian right in America has taken to opposing porn through fronting the question of sex trafficking, rather than arguing porn should be illegal or harder to get directly.

The upshot is that payment processors forced MindGeek, the publishers of PornHub and many other sites, to only allow content from verified users, and this is part of the same push. The consequences are that lots of people doing sex work are being forced offline and (back) onto the street, which is a very big negative, but of course they don't count in the opinions of people who do, so.

Update on this for @Stevo985 and anyone else interested - the company have released a statement which publicly at least points the finger elsewhere:

OnlyFans CEO on why it banned adult content: ‘the short answer is banks’

'OnlyFans founder and CEO Tim Stokely says banks were behind the online fundraising platform’s recent ban on sexually explicit content. “The change in policy, we had no choice — the short answer is banks,” Stokely told the Financial Times in an interview published today.

Stokely named three major banks that refused service because of “reputational risk” associated with the UK-based OnlyFans’ sexual material: Bank of New York Mellon, Metro Bank, an JPMorgan Chase. He said BNY Mellon specifically had “flagged and rejected” every wire transaction involving OnlyFans, threatening its ability to pay creators.

Last week, Bloomberg reported more generally that “banking partners and payment providers” had pressured OnlyFans — a platform previously known as a haven for sex workers — into banning the promotion of sexually explicit material starting October 1st. The ban will affect anything that “shows, promotes, advertises, or refers to” real or simulated sex, masturbation, and sex-related bodily fluids. It will still allow nudity, but an email to OnlyFans creators suggested that things like zooming too close to body parts could violate the rules.

Payment processors like MasterCard and Visa are well-known bottlenecks in the digital economy. They’ve recently clamped down on the use of their cards to pay for sexual content, ostensibly to cut off platforms that allow child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual pornography — although the crackdown follows pressure from organizations that broadly oppose sex work and pornography.

Stokely’s comments, however, single out banks as the primary drivers behind the ban. He claims that JPMorgan Chase, for instance, is “particularly aggressive in closing accounts of sex workers” or any business that supports them. Similarly, he said that Metro Bank had closed OnlyFans’ account on short notice in 2019. Stokely told the Financial Times that he was not disclosing the company’s current banking partners.

OnlyFans is the latest of several web companies to purge or limit sexual content in recent years — following platforms like Tumblr, Patreon, and eBay. In addition to payment-related pressures, companies serving sex workers face heightened legal risk after the 2018 passage of FOSTA-SESTA, and Apple and Google’s app stores restrict sexually explicit material. The day of OnlyFans’ sex crackdown, Axios also reported that OnlyFans has struggled to raise money from investors, citing its “porn problem” as a major cause. But sex workers were instrumental in the service’s growth — and despite its use by some film and music celebrities, its future without them is uncertain.'

from: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-tim-stokely-sexually-explicit-content-ban-banks

[Eidolon]

Will be interesting to see what happens to OF from here honestly. I can see WHY they made that change after all the changes from FOSTA and SESTA but you imagine it puts a bit of a nail in the place like what happened to tumblr when they took down all the porn.

FWIW one of my closest friends is a SW who had an OnlyFans for about 3 months and apart from a slight surge in interest all that happened was that her content got stolen and put up on free tube sites so its not like it was that great a platform anyway unless you have a giant pre built following.

EDIT: Also McDonalds is terrible and the only thing remotely edible on the menu is the Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Eidolon

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, Eidolon said:

Will be interesting to see what happens to OF from here honestly. I can see WHY they made that change after all the changes from FOSTA and SESTA but you imagine it puts a bit of a nail in the place like what happened to tumblr when they took down all the porn.

FWIW one of my closest friends is a SW who had an OnlyFans for about 3 months and apart from a slight surge in interest all that happened was that her content got stolen and put up on free tube sites so its not like it was that great a platform anyway unless you have a giant pre built following.

EDIT: Also McDonalds is terrible and the only thing remotely edible on the menu is the Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

I guess at least Tumblr had a large portion of its site that wasn't explicit content, whereas I'd assume OnlyFans has only a very very small portion of its content that qualifies (if any!)

Like you said, sounds like a nail in the coffin. It's not a million miles away from banning porn from pornhub.

[Eidolon]

3 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I guess at least Tumblr had a large portion of its site that wasn't explicit content, whereas I'd assume OnlyFans has only a very very small portion of its content that qualifies (if any!)

Like you said, sounds like a nail in the coffin. It's not a million miles away from banning porn from pornhub.

I imagine the plan is to transition to a platform for people to put up music and other SFW creative stuff but I can't really see them cracking into any of the market share already dominated by other platforms for people to do that, I bet after a few lean months you start to see the higher profile influencers get away with more and more risque content pushing the line on all of this.

[Stevo985]

11 minutes ago, Eidolon said:

I imagine the plan is to transition to a platform for people to put up music and other SFW creative stuff but I can't really see them cracking into any of the market share already dominated by other platforms for people to do that, I bet after a few lean months you start to see the higher profile influencers get away with more and more risque content pushing the line on all of this.

They've already claimed that people will still be able to upload nudes (i think) but that it just can't be "explicit". Quite what counts as explicit I'm not sure.

Either way I can't see it working, especially when there are other competing platforms that won't have the same restrictions so you'd assume the big accounts will just transition to those

[Genie]

I’m surprised given the amount of money that OF generates they need a bank to back them? They should be making millions each week.

I know they need payments to be processed but I’d assume there’s plenty of companies out there that would happily take their cut and not care about what it was for.

They should use the people who process payments for p0rnhub.

[Stevo985]

7 minutes ago, Genie said:

I’m surprised given the amount of money that OF generates they need a bank to back them? They should be making millions each week.

I know they need payments to be processed but I’d assume there’s plenty of companies out there that would happily take their cut and not care about what it was for.

They should use the people who process payments for p0rnhub.

I think similar happened to P0rnhub though.

They obviously didn't ban explicit material, but they did purge all "unverified" content. Which is almost certainly a good thing as it prevents stuff like revenge p0rn, but I think they did it for similar reasons (although happy to be corrected)

[Big Salad]

28 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I think similar happened to P0rnhub though.

They obviously didn't ban explicit material, but they did purge all "unverified" content. Which is almost certainly a good thing as it prevents stuff like revenge p0rn, but I think they did it for similar reasons (although happy to be corrected)

I think you got it pretty much right in regards to PH. You have to be 'verified' by them now which I guess means you are who say you are/have the right to upload certain videos. I think they were dealing with a lot of copyright complaints/issues from owners of videos whose material was being uploaded without their permission also.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Big Salad

[HanoiVillan]

PornHub are based in Canada, which does not have to meet FOSTA-SESTA compliance, which seems to be a big barrier here. By contrast, OnlyFans is based in the US, though the owners are from the UK, so there is this higher compliance burden.

One thing OF could have done would be to relocate the business to another country, pay more for payment providers located outside the US, and then geoblock American users. But the owners aren't committed to it, and are happy to use this as a way out IMO.*

*There's a name for this phenomenon ('Old Rectory Syndrome') where British tech companies never grow to any size because the owners are happy enough to be the richest guy in a village in Oxfordshire.

[Xela]

Nice bit of publicity for them in the last few days at least

Quote

OnlyFans has announced that it will delay making changes to policy on content creation, following a widespread backlash by its users.

The content subscription service announced plans last week to block sexually explicit photos and videos from October.

On Wednesday, it tweeted that it has "suspended the planned 1 October policy change".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58331722

[limpid]

11 hours ago, Genie said:

I’m surprised given the amount of money that OF generates they need a bank to back them? They should be making millions each week.

They still need banks to process payments (like VillaTalk uses Paypal and Stripe).

[Genie]

10 hours ago, limpid said:

They still need banks to process payments (like VillaTalk uses Paypal and Stripe).

I get that.

It just seems odd that they’ve got an adult website going from strength to strength and bringing in a fortune but because the people processing the payments don’t like being associated with such a site they effectively shut down and hand the business to competitors (rather than find other payment providers).

Sounds a bit like a PR stunt to me but we’ll see.

[Stevo985]

On 20/08/2021 at 23:19, Stevo985 said:

This has to be a publicity stunt.

 

[Xela]

The 'Arab Spring' thread title. 

Every time I see it, I think it would be a great name for a Middle Eastern mineral water company. 

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, Xela said:

The 'Arab Spring' thread title. 

Every time I see it, I think it would be a great name for a Middle Eastern mineral water company. 

Bottom of the bill on the radio 1 stage at Reading.