OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky dies of cancer at 43(www.reuters.com)
35 pointsby thm4 hours ago8 comments
  • shrubble3 hours ago
    I’m convinced this platform is used for money laundering, by someone; not accusing Radvinsky, but if you wanted to create an opaque money transmission system, you’d design it close to what OF is.
    • dogma11383 hours ago
      If you want to launder money you don’t usually do it with credit cards.
    • chromacity3 hours ago
      I have zero love for OF, but shouldn't your reasoning also apply to Patreon, Gofundme, and so on? They all let you collect small fees for completely unverifiable services.
  • arduanika4 hours ago
    What a curse, to die with not one but two forms of cancer.
  • kubb4 hours ago
    Somber reminder of our mortality. Rest in peace Leonid.
  • nullable_bool4 hours ago
    I hate the idea of a service like that, but I feel for his family. Its terrible to go out like that.
    • GuB-423 hours ago
      Everything that touches on the adult industry is controversial, sometimes rightfully so, but it also responds to a need, like it or not. Regulation can make it more or less open, but it always here.

      Out of everything in the adult industry, to me, OnlyFans is one of the most sane. That is encouraging independent performers to get payed directly by their fans, taking only a reasonable commission. It doesn't mean there is no exploitation, but at least, it offers a way for those who want to do this kind of work to do it on their own terms.

      • mcphage2 hours ago
        > Out of everything in the adult industry, to me, OnlyFans is one of the most sane. That is encouraging independent performers to get payed directly by their fans, taking only a reasonable commission.

        I kinda agree, but the prevalence of fake chatting soured me on the company as a bastion of sane sex work. Without it, it seems legit: fans pay for content, they get content. But add the layer of fans pay for chatting with the models, and get something else.

      • arduanika3 hours ago
        The flip side is that if you make a thing smooth, profitable, and safe-feeling, you get more of it, as any economist can tell you. Also, as any sociologist can tell you, when you make a fringe thing feel normal among young people, you get a LOT more of it.

        So your defense of OF only real works if you think that an explosion of commercialized sex has no negative effect on our culture, or if you (stupidly) believe that the rate of sex work is an immutable constant, impervious to laws, technology, or social contagion.

        • hackeraccount2 hours ago
          I agree with your description of what goes on here with this and other things as well. It's depressing that it seems like for almost any activity the two choices are illegal and celebrated. It seems like if you venture an opinion that X is wrong not adding and I think it should be a crime marks you as something akin to a hypocrite.

          Nominally we live in a tolerant society but sometimes I wonder if anyone knows what the word means.

    • arduanika3 hours ago
      That's big of you, given that he showed no concern for anybody else's family. What's terrible is to spend your life ripping apart society.
      • afavour3 hours ago
        Personal responsibility has to enter the picture somewhere. If a family is ripped apart because a member is using OnlyFans then that's that family member bears responsibility. OnlyFans didn't invent pornography. And on the model side, it allows cutting out a whole industry of truly skeezy, immoral middlemen distributors.

        I do dislike the effect OnlyFans has had on society but I think it's a symptom, not a cause.

        • kubb3 hours ago
          Disagree. Personal responsibility should never be publicly discussed. It’s personal.
        • arduanika3 hours ago
          The family of the OF user is not the only family affected by this general decay. Indeed, when you normalize sex work, some families never even form. There's such a thing as a social fabric.

          Libertarianism is willful ignorance, and taken this far, it's a brain disease.

          > cutting out a whole industry of truly skeezy, immoral middlemen distributors

          This argument only makes sense if you blindly model the amount of degrading dreck as a constant, unaffected by technology and opportunities. Again, brain disease.

          Oh, and before OF, Radvinsky was facilitating child porn and bestiality. Were the children and animals being empowered, too? Should they have taken responsibility?

          • afavouran hour ago
            > Oh, and before OF, Radvinsky was facilitating child porn and bestiality.

            I have no idea if that's true but it's irrelevant, those are illegal. Porn is not illegal. You may wish to make porn illegal but so far society has not agreed with you on that.

          • schmookeeg2 hours ago
            Is this the "every sperm is sacred" argument?
      • yomismoaqui3 hours ago
        He provided a way for many people to earn a living from the comfort of their homes and saved them from people that can exploit sexual workers (economically and worse).

        If you find sexual work a despicable thing it's your right, but the people that are doing it through Onlyfans have it better than in other ways.

        • mrgoldenbrown3 hours ago
          Does OnlyFans have an extensive anti-trafficking program to prevent one typical method of exploitation? If not, it's just proving a platform for the traffickers to make money from the comfort of a safe jurisdiction.
      • mcphagean hour ago
        How was he ripping families apart?
  • doodlebugging3 hours ago
    Bought a service (2018) and changed the model to one where it was collecting compromising adult-oriented content from random people. That content can be used to try to shame them into avoiding the limelight later in life. I guess with Epstein out of the way (2019) they needed something else for blackmail material.

    Made billions from OnlyFans and then made a large donation to AIPAC. Wouldn't admit it.

    The Reuters story linked is substantially the same as this one but omits the AIPAC link. I wonder why.

    [0] https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/leonid-rad...

  • nashashmi3 hours ago
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  • dttze44 minutes ago
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