The co-founder of adult creator subscription platform MintStars announced she’s leaving the platform and donating her ownership shares in the company to its creators and sex workers. 

In an email to creators using the platform in late June, Jessica Van Meir wrote that 20 percent of her shares would be used to create a co-ownership pool for creators, while her remaining three percent of the company will be donated to SWOP Behind Bars, a non-profit that supports incarcerated sex workers and sex trafficking survivors in the U.S. 

“With this step, which completes my personal mission to launch a company for and by adult content creators, I will also be officially moving on from my position as a Director at MintStars,” Van Meir wrote in the email. Van Meir is a Harvard PhD candidate studying the sex workers’ rights movement in Latin America, and also co-founded the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective three years ago. Van Meir and Daniel Sargent co-founded MintStars in 2021; Sargent will remain at the company as CEO.

Setting up a share pool sets a precedent rarely seen on subscription sites, where creators are directly rewarded for the success of the platform, not just their own individual work.

Van Meir said attacks on her academic work outside of MintStars contributed to her decision to step away. “In the past year, my PhD research has faced attacks from anti-sex work organizations that have attempted to use my affiliation with MintStars to undermine the credibility of my research,” Van Meir wrote in the letter to creators. “I would never want my work with the company to prevent my research and activism from benefiting sex worker communities, so it is time for me to pass the baton.” 

The pool of shares for creators will be allocated “in proportion to their contributions to the platform,” Van Meir wrote, adding that the platform plans to launch a points system to earn ownership. If the company is ever sold or pays out dividends to shareholders, creators will be paid in proportion to those points via phantom shares. Phantom shares or stock are a cash incentive tied to company performance that doesn’t dilute the company’s ownership stock or give holders voting rights, but do reward holders — typically executives or employees, but in this case, creators — for their contributions to the company’s success.

According to Van Meir, MintStars creators will be able to earn points in accordance to their earned revenue, how many referrals they’ve made, and number of months they’ve actively used the platform. “This means that you will share in the profits of the company’s success, in a fair proportion to how much you’ve contributed,” she wrote. 

Many social media and user-generated content platforms have grown massive on the strength and support of sex workers who popularized it. Some of the biggest, like X and Instagram, grew thanks to sexual content; others, like OnlyFans, have been criticized for considering banning adult content due to payment processing problems and banking discrimination in the past. 

Demonia, a financial dominatrix who’s used MintStars since 2023, told 404 Media she’s felt frustrated by unstable creator platforms and online censorship in the past, and hopes to put more effort into her MintStars presence following this announcement. “I will be honest, I didn't think I'd live to see such a revolutionary choice in a strictly capitalistic society and environment that promotes individualism to embarrassing levels, and I am elated to have chosen to be part of this project from its early steps,” Demonia told me in an email. “Not only cooperative enterprises are healthier environments to work in on a general level, but there is now a further level of security for the creators who decide to invest in the platform as a source of income, and a great deal of motivation to see it succeed.” 

AVN reported that the program for earning points will launch this month and take retroactive activity into account, and that MintStars will also introduce new governance measures including a Creator Advisory Board.

“This co-ownership means to me that MintStars aims to empower sex workers on a practical level, recognizing their importance and their rights, without limiting our creativity and safety in the name of profit, and it will definitely impact my effort into making sure such an example lives to make the adult industry's history, not only because it's a better choice for myself only, but because it also shows to everyone that there is a better way to enjoy our kinky spaces without being afraid of being deplatformed, of our content being rejected or deleted, of our entire existence being put into discussion,” Demonia said.

“This partnership is another important step forward in creating a complete ecosystem of care that is both for and by adult industry workers,” a spokesperson for SWOP Behind Bars told 404 Media. “We're excited to deepen our ties in the MintStars community and anticipate that Ms. Van Meir's shares donation will enable us to better understand and meet those workers' needs.”

MintStars uses the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC to process payments. Fans and customers can pay as they would on any other website, with a credit card. Creators can receive payouts in fiat as well. Last month, MintStars announced a new partnership with Payy Network. "Creators face financial discrimination every day, bank accounts shut down, payment processors blocking transactions, and earnings delayed for weeks," Sargent said in an announcement of that partnership. "Crypto solved access, but it didn't solve privacy or safety. Nobody's financial activity should be publicly exposed on a blockchain." Settlements on the blockchain also prevent some of the most risky aspects of accepting payments as an adult site, including chargebacks, censorship, and banking discrimination.

“The fact of the matter in the adult industry is that without the working women who make platforms all of their revenue, the latter would never succeed and we can now choose for what we believe in and choose who believes in us, MintStars has given us the opportunity to have our voices heard,” Demonia said. “I do hope more sex workers will put their safety and rights first and focus their energies where they will be undoubtedly rewarded, as it's been proven over and over again since the beginning of this project.

PAU (ANP) - Wielrenner Olav Kooij heeft zijn eerste ritzege geboekt in de Tour de France. De 24-jarige debutant van Decathlon CMA CGM was in het Zuid-Franse Pau in de vijfde etappe de snelste in een rommelige massasprint, de eerste van deze Ronde van Frankrijk. De Duitser Max Kanter reed na goed voorbereidend werk van de Nederlander Mike Teunissen naar de tweede plaats, de Belg Tim Merlier werd derde.

VEGHEL (ANP) - Jumbo ondervindt problemen met de levering van producten aan supermarkten vanuit een distributiecentrum in Veghel. Dit leidt ertoe dat sommige schappen in supermarkten in het zuiden van Nederland leger zijn, bevestigt een woordvoerster van de supermarktketen na een bericht van vakmedium Distrifood.

De vraag naar producten uit het Noord-Brabantse distributiecentrum is volgens de woordvoerster groot, maar de locatie kan de drukte op dit moment niet volledig aan. Een precieze oorzaak is niet direct bekend. Maar het kan bijvoorbeeld het gevolg zijn van een gebrek aan goed ingewerkte medewerkers, geeft de woordvoerster aan.

Jumbo hoopt de leveringsproblemen de komende dagen op te lossen. Het winkelbedrijf zet extra uitzendkrachten in. Ook onderzoekt Jumbo of andere werkwijzen soelaas bieden, bijvoorbeeld door pallets met slechts een product te vullen in plaats van een mix van verschillende producten.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Oud-staatssecretaris Mona Keijzer vindt dat in de coronaperiode "de democratische rechtsstaat gefaald heeft". Dat zei ze uit eigen beweging aan het einde van haar verhoor door de parlementaire enquêtecommissie corona. Commissievoorzitter Daan de Kort wilde haar eigenlijk geen gelegenheid geven voor een slotwoord, maar daar trok zij zich niets van aan.

Eerder in het verhoor had Keijzer al uiteengezet dat volgens haar geen goede afweging plaatsvond tussen verschillende grondrechten. Met name jongeren moesten zich aan ingrijpende maatregelen houden tegen een virus dat voor deze groep nauwelijks een bedreiging vormde. En door het coronatoegangsbewijs, nodig om uit te mogen gaan, werden zij geconfronteerd met "dwang richting vaccinatie". Dat botste met het recht op lichamelijke integriteit, vindt Keijzer.

Het had anders gekund, meent Keijzer. Zij wees Zweden aan als voorbeeld. Dat aanzienlijk dunner bevolkte land had volgens haar veel minder ingrijpende maatregelen nodig om te voorkomen dat de zorg overbelast raakte dan Nederland.

The US president is in combative mood as Nato leaders meet for a two-day summit in Ankara. There are divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, defence spending, and the US-Israel war in Iran with signs of the fragile ceasefire collapsing. 

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is holding talks with leaders as he rallies the European cause against Russia’s war that has reached the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, as Nato allies present an increasingly united front against an unreliable US.

Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker

As the family travails worsen, it’s a wretched time to lose face and maybe millions of pounds to his tabloid tormentor. Epic battle, epic fail

It really hasn’t been a very good week for Harry. The fifth in line to the throne will retire to Montecito, his gated California fastness – not, as seemed at least possible a week ago, having visited his mother country to public sympathy and applause, mending a few broken fences and seeing his old dad again. Now instead it will be a retreat in confusion, not having stayed in a palace, or seeing his busy pater, and worst of all, bested at huge cost by the Daily Mail, the bete noire of all bete noires.

The prince might reflect that he has brought many of his troubles on himself. He will leave with the rightwing press chortling that, for a crusader for personal privacy, he has outed himself much more comprehensively than they ever managed with his rancorous TV interviews about how horrible his family has been to him, his glutinous Netflix series and, most of all, his memoir Spare, with its revelation, among much else, about his frostbitten penis.

Reform keeps Tice on the bench, sending in attack specialist Yusuf in effort to take back control as byelection stunt unravels

You can often tell when Reform is running scared and losing control of the political narrative, because that’s the time Richard Tice is put back in his box. Everyone but Dicky knows that Dicky is a halfwit. A man whose very life force is dependent on Nigel Farage’s continued existence. Without Nige there would be no Dicky. He is the tick with no autonomous nervous system. Just a kneejerk response with too much money. Dicky likes to boast of his small fortune. Mainly because he started with a large one.

At times like these, Reform go for their pet rottweiler: Zia Yusuf. No Nige-like temper tantrums for Zia. That’s because he lives in a constant state of extreme perma-rage. It must be as exhausting for him as it is for us to experience. There is nothing that doesn’t make him angry. Most politicians do a nice line in passive aggression. Zia’s USP is active aggression. He is the aggressive’s aggressive. The self-made millionaire who is always unhappy and feels let down by others. The man with so much money that he can afford to do politics as a hobby. He longs to be a professional politician but will only ever be an amateur.

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