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.
Podcast: Why AI Porn Sucks (with Noelle Perdue)
Noelle and Sam discuss everything from sexbots and AI porn to censorship, age verification legislation, and their favorite parody porn flicks.
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.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Een breed scala aan instanties die zich bezighouden met de veiligheid van kinderen en gezinnen gaan meer met elkaar samenwerken. Op die manier moeten kinderen in een onveilige (thuis)situatie beter geholpen kunnen worden. Over de intensievere samenwerking zijn afspraken gemaakt door onder andere jeugdzorginstellingen, Veilig Thuis, gemeenten en de rijksoverheid.
Gezinnen krijgen bijvoorbeeld één contactpersoon, in plaats van afzonderlijke organisaties die de situatie puur vanuit hun eigen taak of expertise bekijken. De betrokken instanties hebben de afgelopen jaren geëxperimenteerd met de nauwere samenwerking en daar kwamen positieve ervaringen uit.
De betrokken bewindspersonen, staatssecretaris Claudia van Bruggen (Justitie, D66) en minister Mirjam Sterk (Jeugd, CDA) spreken van een 'fundamentele omslag' in de aanpak voor veilige gezinssituaties. De komende jaren moet de nieuwe werkwijze steeds meer in de praktijk worden gebracht.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) ziet dat de snelle ontwikkeling van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) de risico's op phishing en cyberaanvallen vergroot. De privacywaakhond van de overheid adviseert organisaties om "nu in actie te komen" om hun digitale veiligheid op orde te brengen. Alleen dan kunnen organisaties volgens de toezichthouder gegevens beschermen tegen steeds geavanceerdere vormen van cybercriminaliteit.
De AP telde vorig jaar een sterke stijging van het aantal zogeheten 'account takeovers' van 607 in 2024 naar 1742 vorig jaar. Hierbij zijn phishingaanvallen niet langer alleen het gevolg van een datalek, maar ook steeds vaker de oorzaak. Phishing is een vorm van cybercriminaliteit waarbij criminelen echt lijkende mailberichten sturen naar potentiële slachtoffers. Neplinks in phishingmails kunnen leiden tot de overname van een werknemersaccount binnen een organisatie, waarna criminelen een grotere cyberaanval starten.
Criminelen maken de inhoud van deze nepberichten met behulp van AI steeds echter. Door gegevens uit eerdere datalekken te gebruiken, stellen criminelen gepersonaliseerde phishingmails op met bijvoorbeeld de naam en contactgegevens van het potentiële slachtoffer.
Onrust en problemen
Ondanks de mogelijkheden van AI om kwetsbaarheden in cyberveiligheid tegen te gaan, kunnen criminelen dezelfde methode inzetten om deze kwetsbaarheden te signaleren en te misbruiken. Door deze wisselwerking is het volgens de AP "essentieel dat organisaties hun digitale bescherming op peil brengen". De privacywaakhond roept op tot algemeen beleid voor cyberveiligheid en adviseert gegevens niet centraal op te slaan.
De privacywaakhond ontving vorig jaar in totaal 39.407 meldingen van datalekken. Het aantal meldingen stijgt opnieuw, maar minder hard dan in 2024. De AP ontving toen 37.839 meldingen van datalekken, bijna de helft meer dan in 2023. Dat komt doordat de AP sinds 2024 organisaties toestaat meerdere datalekken tegelijk te melden, zoals verkeerd verstuurde brieven. Sindsdien melden organisaties volgens de AP meer datalekken.
Datalekken veroorzaken volgens de AP onrust en problemen in de maatschappij. Zo stelt het AP dat een lek bij het bevolkingsonderzoek naar baarmoederhalskanker er vorig jaar voor zorgde dat mensen twijfelden of zij opnieuw wilden deelnemen. De AP voegt toe dat door een lek bij het OM rechtszaken vertraagden en ambtenaren enige tijd niet konden mailen. "Door dit soort datalekken verliest men het vertrouwen in digitale dienstverlening van bedrijven en overheden", aldus de AP.
ANKARA (ANP/AFP) - Israël gaat zich waarschijnlijk terugtrekken uit bezet gebied in het zuiden van Libanon, zei de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump in een persconferentie die volgde op de NAVO-top in Ankara. Trump zei dit met de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu te hebben besproken.
"Ik denk dat ze dat gaan doen, ik denk dat ze dat willen", antwoordde Trump op de vraag of Israël zich zal terugtrekken. Trump zei dat dit niet aan hem ligt, maar aan in hoeverre Israël dit zelf wil. Volgens hem is dat wel het geval.
Als onderdeel van een overeenkomst die Israël en Libanon eerder sloten, moet Israël zich in ieder geval terugtrekken uit twee gebieden als "proef". Daar moet het Libanese leger de controle overnemen.
Eerder werd door Israël en Italië aangekondigd dat de onderhandelingen volgende week verder zouden gaan in Rome, maar dat werd woensdag van Libanese zijde betwist. Volgens een diplomaat zullen de Libanezen alleen naar Rome afreizen als Israël zich terugtrekt uit de twee gebieden.
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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Theatre503, London
Mixing naturalism and fantasy, Katie Đỗ’s debut is conceptually inventive but flawed by over-short scenes and scant emotive appeal
This debut by Vietnamese-American playwright Katie Đỗ travels across realms. It begins in the afterlife, with a whimsical scene of heaven as a place that is built out of a character’s happiest moments on earth.
The play spans several decades in the life of one family, and mixes naturalism with dreams, fantasy and interior life. That makes it formally inventive but the switches render the drama diffuse, leaching its emotive power rather than adding layers.
Continue reading...Russia banned since full-scale invasion of Ukraine
Many national associations opposed to reintegration
Uefa is prepared to block the return of Russian teams to international football after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provisionally lifted the country’s suspension from global competition.
Fifa has indicated it will review its position after imposing a ban on Russian teams in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. It said on Tuesday that it would “analyse the decision before deciding on next steps”, and Uefa’s stance sets up another potential clash with the world governing body.
Continue reading...
David Epstein, author of the recent Inside the Box (a book about the value of constraints), did a fascinating video on “anticipatory skill” and “chunking” and how players like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo (who can accurately head the ball even in the dark) use them to slow down a fast, complex game.
And this is the skill that Messi, Ronaldo, and Pujols all share. They’re chunking positions of people and angles of legs and spins of balls in order to understand immediately what’s going on and what might happen next. The more patterns you absorb in any domain, the less effort it takes to read what’s happening and to predict what’s coming next.
So when Messi walks, he’s not resting. He’s chunking the entire field. Every position, every shift, every gap in the backline is feeding a pattern library that he’s been building since he was 5 years old. By the time he decides to move, the map is already drawn. And when Ronaldo heads a ball into the net in total darkness, it’s because he’s seen that angle of another player’s leg and that ball’s trajectory a hundred times over and knows the pattern it follows.
I love this kind of thing and even though I am not a world-class boxer or football player, I can see it in action as I’ve gotten better over the years downhill mountain biking (where I’m able to go faster on the bike while still being able to react to terrain in what feels like the same amount of time), playing Fortnite (which I’m still not great at, but the game seems to move at a much slower pace, allowing me to keep up), or doing the crossword puzzle (you get an instinctive feel for answers just by how questions are posed). I’m sure this shows up in my work too — I read so damn much online that sometimes it takes me only 2-3 seconds to figure out if something is worth my while — but it’s easier to observe in sports or gaming.
BTW, Epstein just started his YouTube channel a few months ago, but it’s already filled with great stuff like Why The Fastest Way To Improve Is To Subtract, Why The Smartest People I Know Set Constraints, Not Goals, and Why The Best Kids Are Rarely The Best Adults. I’ve got some catching up to do.
Tags: David Epstein · soccer · sports · video
De politie heeft woensdag op het industrieterrein in Moerdijk een 39-jarige inwoner uit Dordrecht aangehouden. De verdachte zou het invoeren van cocaïne hebben gefaciliteerd. De woning van de Dordtenaar is doorzocht: hier zijn 53 duizend euro, een auto en een motorboot in beslag genomen.
In de afgelopen zestig jaar gebeurde het maar twee keer, maar het is weer zover in Diergaarde Blijdorp: de reuzenpenisplant staat in bloei. De plant, die bekendstaat om zijn vorm en penetrante geur, stond voor het laatst in bloei in 1963 en 2023. Wie hem wil zien, moet snel zijn: het bloeimoment duurt maar twee à drie dagen.
If you misbehave in the back of a taxi, your driver might report you to authorities. And if there's no driver, you should also expect no quarter. Two San Mateo 15-year-olds this week had a run-in with the law after their Waymo robotaxi called the cops on them. According to the San Mateo Police Department’s account of the matter, the teens treated a hired Waymo as their own personal battle taxi, firing Orbeez out of the car windows while sipping what police called "afternoon libations" - in plain terms, drinking alcohol and shooting water pellets. Waymo’s cars are equipped with interior cameras that watch for incapacitated passengers, anyone smoking, unbuckled seatbelts, lost items, and cabin cleanliness. But they can also catch other rule breaking, including tipsy teens on a toy-gun joyride. Waymo’s system halted the car and alerted the cops, sharing its GPS location. Responding officers' videos show at least four of them with weapons drawn on the vehicle, plus a German Shepherd. “While there was some ingenuity to this scheme, toy guns, water guns, and BB guns all pose real dangers, especially to an untrained eye,” said the San Mateo PD. “The simple handling of them can cause fear in passersby or to those who don’t get a good look. “Shooting projectiles at speed can cause real damage. And let's not forget the underage drinking. All bad ideas today for these two… Well, the Waymo might have been the smartest idea yet, because driving impaired would’ve made this so much worse.” How the teens got a Waymo ride in the first place is unclear. Recent reports show the company tightening its ban on unaccompanied under-18s riders, with the exception in Phoenix for 14-17 year-olds. Customers are now being IDed mid-ride, according to users who report receiving age-verification calls en route to their destination. The Reg asked Waymo for comment, but it did not immediately respond. ®
De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump trekt het fundament van het NAVO-bondgenootschap – artikel 5, een aanval op één lidstaat geldt als een aanval op allen – regelmatig in twijfel. In de slotverklaring van de top in Ankara staat dat de Europese-bondgenoten en Canada een grotere verantwoordelijkheid zullen dragen voor de collectieve verdediging.
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