Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 176 with Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker, and welcome to an Adult Site Broker talk, where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry. And we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Mike Stabile of the free speech coalition in part two of our conversation. At Adult Site Broker, we’re proud to announce our latest project, TheWarOnPorn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications from around the world. It’s designed to raise awareness of our industry’s plight in the War On Porn and the numerous attacks on our industry and online free speech by hate groups, the religious right and politicians. You’ll find all that and more at TheWarOnPorn.com. You’ve probably noticed our new podcast site at adultsidebroker.com. It has a more modern look with easier navigation and more information on our guests, including their social media links. For more, go to adultsidebrokertalk.com. 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They have a database of over 1 million contacts and 600,000 unique user accounts. This is an outstanding opportunity for anyone to enter the world of only fans management and immediately become one of the top agencies in the world along with its software, processes and know-how which will allow you to bring models up to 3 times their initial gross monthly revenue. Or established agencies can acquire the company and expand their business, only 2.59 million euros. Now time for part 2 of my interview with Mike Stabil of the Free Speech Coalition. And I think anyway that they’re actually doing the opposite by going after us because I think they’re making us stronger and they’re making us pull more together. I think that if you look at, you know, we had the Texas decision earlier this last month, you know, which was a preliminary injection locking Texas from enforcing their law. I think that what I saw after that victory was that people did really rally around us. They’re like, "Oh, actually this can be done." I think that one of the things that I see on the boards and the adult forums and one of the things that encounter a lot online and even in talking to individual creators and sex workers is that they think that nobody’s going to listen to us. I mean, this is one of the things that, "Oh, it’s pointless. We need to do this thing or we need to do that thing. They’re never going to take us seriously." And I think that what FSC has been trying to show and hopefully starting to prove to people is that, "No, actually they will." You have a valid voice. That you are a legal business, right? You are somebody who is not immoral and is not a criminal that you are someone who can stand up for yourself. I think that bullies pick on people who are weak. Bullies pick on people who don’t stand up for themselves. And I think that that’s what a lot of these groups thought. They were like, "Oh, you know what, these people, they’re in the shadows. They’re not going to want their names public. They’re not going to want the attention." And I think we’re looking for people who didn’t want attention. They were actually working at the wrong industry. Yeah, and they don’t know Alison Bowden either. Because when she got there, everything changed. Yeah, I think that Alison has been tremendous for the organization. I think that Alison was also our first ED that came from within the industry. That was somebody who wasn’t an outside hire who was running a nonprofit or had had some experience and management. It was somebody who really, she had been CEO at kink.com. Whatever her first jobs out of college was selling sex toys. So she’s been across the industry. I met Alison probably 15 years ago. She was the student of my aunt at the University of Pittsburgh. My aunt teaches women and gender studies and media studies. And Alison was her student. And I had started working in the industry and I went to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving. She hit it off and had a great time. Years later, when we were both at kink, she sort of said, "Remember who I am?" So I think that she’s got a real passion around this. I think that Alison and I get along really well in this and that this is really integral to our core. I have come from a background of LGBTQ activism and journalism. She’s from both a business standpoint and then from a feminist reproductive rights, sexual rights lens. And so these aren’t incidental issues for us. I’ve been with FSC now for, I want to say, four executive directors. And there was one at one point where one of these sort of proto-age verification legislations was being passed or something like that. And they just sort of dismissed it in this sort of way that was like, "Oh, well, so what?" And to me, it really spoke to the fact that this wasn’t a passion project for them. Or this wasn’t something that they were going to, they’d make it and we’d get up. No, and I was just going to say that. Alison’s lived this, especially at Kink, my goodness. She is passionate about it. She takes this personally like we do. Absolutely, absolutely. There’s no way, and I don’t mind too much that she beat me out for the award at Expis. Not too much anyway, Alison, if you’re listening and I know you are, really not too much. It was the first award I was ever nominated for. I’m not too sad or too mad or anything else. By the way, have you reached out at all or anybody at FSC reached out to Reddit or Twitter? Have you reached out to any of them and said, "Hey, would you like to contribute to the fight because you’re next?" You know, I think that we have backchanneled. So I think that in terms of Alison as a member, for example, of the Trust and Safety of Professionals Association, which is all the moderators, all the people who are handling this for all the adult sight, they’re all dealing with content moderation issues. They all are dealing with much of the same stuff that we are. They have to fight CSAM. They have to do all of this. They have to fight Donald Trump. Yeah. So we have to be having these conversations. I think that what we’ve found generally is that the tech industry oddly is maybe less unified than we are. They have had a couple of internet associations that have been theoretically a sort of a trade group, but they are fiercely competitive. You know, I think that they’re still stigma about working with adults. So a lot of the stuff that those types of conversations happen in the background rather than formal meetings in a boardroom. They are looking at this and thinking like, "I don’t necessarily want to be in that fight because they’re going to turn it mate, right? If you look at Reddit, I’ve had multiple conversations with people knowledgeable about these types of matters, let’s say. Twitter and Reddit may well have over 33% of adult content on their sites. I say that 33% and a third percent because that is the standard used for liability in these laws. If you don’t have that amount of content, you are not liable. So if you have 33% and a third percent hardcore gang bangs, but 76.3% is puppies and roses, then you’re not liable, right? If it’s so long as you fall under that standard." And I think that they’re sort of saying like, "Hey, you know, let’s not make too much choices. We don’t want them to focus on us. They want to look at our numbers." And so I think that that is an uphill battle. But yes, those conversations are being had at some level. And again, sometimes we’re working with people who are in some department at a search engine that are working for a solution. But I think that we’re building those relationships. And at some point, yes, well, we have a big meeting with ACO perhaps. But I think that right now, starting with the trust and safety people, helping them understand what we’re doing is what’s happening. And I think that what happens, at least from what I have heard of these conferences, because Allison has again been sort of the front line of this, is that they know what we’re doing, right? Not just the FSC, but the industry, and they’re tremendously impressed, right? They know the type of moderation that PorinHub is doing, for instance. You know, and it’s often several magnitudes better than what they’re doing. We know the landscape. You know, if you’re Facebook, well, you’re just getting rid of all adult content, right? You don’t have to determine whether somebody is 17 and a half or 18 and a half, right? You don’t have to figure that out. Yeah, but they throw away a lot of things along with it, including companies like mine. That’s what I’m saying. And we are, you know, so they use a sledgehammer. We use a scalpel. We have much more complicated complications around consent. We know the issues. And I think that we are actually sort of a model for what they want to do. Well, look, if Elon wants to contribute a billion dollars to FSC, we won’t tell anybody, right? So those early doubters aside, we’re seeing some real payoff from FSC’s legal strategy. So what’s happening and where do we go from here? Like I said, we got a preliminary injunction at the end of August, blocking the Texas law from going to effect. We are sort of rapid fire approaching a hearing on a Louisiana preliminary injunction, which, you know, we hope we’ll be granted. You never know with what judge and you may have to appeal, certainly Texas appealed the decision on the preliminary injunction. But with the preliminary injunction, it means that we can fight the law on its merits, right? Now we can go to court and really sort of say, okay, here’s why this law is unconstitutional. Here’s why this law is wrong. There was a funny piece of the Texas legislation where the Texas ruling the basis of the Texas, did you even try doing a public awareness campaign about filters? They seem more effective. Did you try anything else before you came up with this grand censorship plan? So I’m looking forward to sort of those battles. In Utah, it was a little bit more difficult because their enforcement option doesn’t come directly from the state. There’s not an attorney general directly enforcing it, they argue. It comes from a parent or somebody sort of seeing that a site doesn’t have this protection or their kid access. And then a guardian or someone ostensibly would be able to sue the site for damages. We haven’t seen those lawsuits in Utah. So we brought our suit in Utah. It was designed in a way to avoid a pre-enforcement challenge, meaning you can challenge that law when somebody actually brings a suit. What we were saying was this law has a chilling effect. It’s having a censorship effect even before people bring suits. We are going to do a pre-enforcement challenge. We’ve now appealed that to the appeals court. And so that we will be battling out. I mean, there are going to be long battles, right? These laws were drafted in a way to make it very difficult for us to bring challenges. But it’s important that we bring these challenges. One of the things that we saw in the aftermath of this legislation as these laws were being passed was people saying we’re going to bring 20 more of them next year. We’re going to have 20 states that are going to have these on their books. It’s one thing to block Utah. It’s another thing to have to block half the US. So I think that that’s, again, where sort of unity is it, right? If your strategy was, well, I’m going to block Louisiana. I’m going to block Utah. There are small states, what’s it matter? I think that the calculus is a lot different when you’re looking at, well, I’m going to have to block Texas and Florida and Georgia and 18 other states. I think that you spoke to this earlier saying like, it made us more unified, right? We start seeing this as our battle. There were a lot of people after the Texas decision who said, you know, I’m upping my membership. I want you guys in this fight. I was about to have to turn off Texas. Texas is a huge state that’s a significant amount of revenue. Like the fact that I can gain that revenue, I want to reinvest some of that into FSC. And this is always my argument with FSC. Is it ever seen an investment in your business? This is not a charity. You know, we are not passing the hat and this isn’t unicef. Yeah, but you know what? That’s kind of how it was looked at before the current administration. I don’t think FSC really was showing as much to the industry what their contribution was bringing them. Okay. You guys have done a great job of it now. Yeah. I was going to say, you see that when there is a fight. So I’ve been with FSC and I’ve worked, you know, I’ve been in the industry for 20 years. I got involved in early 2003 when there were, you know, in the early 2000s, we were starting to see the Bush Justice Department go after people for 2257 violations, right? Another regulation that was endlessly complex and it was just a bunch of trip wires to create liability. And, you know, around the 2257 cases, when brought those cases, that was when the industry sort of came together. We saw it again around Prop 60 in California, around the mandatory condom. Oh, I agree. And Mike, let me just state unequivocally, you’ve always done a great job with communications. The thing is that I don’t think you had the hammer as a director before to bring it all home. Also, you’re right, didn’t have the pressure from these groups that you have now. Yeah. I think that I mean, again, it really takes someone like Allison as well who is passionate about this and it does have the vision and does look at this and, you know, it’s because it’s not just, yes, we are dealing with the age verification laws and that’s something that we were fighting against. It’s something different when you’re looking at banking regulation and banking fairness, right? And we went on the offensive about, right, that this wasn’t a new law that was happening. This was, you know, something that the industry had just looked at as well. This is the way that the world is. You know, we’re going to have to deal with this, you know, move on to a different bank, scramble. And I think that Allison really took the lead on this and said, we can do this. Like we can actually be, you know, we can make a difference. And it’s not something new. It’s not something that’s a crisis in terms of something that is coming out of us from the outside that we now have to deal with. This is something that I think that we can prove be proactive with and really deal with. So FSC seems to be everywhere in the press these days. How important is media to the battle? Yeah, I think that it’s tremendously important because we’re fighting, you know, a battle that originated in the media. So if you look at the fight against Pornhub and the larger battle around censoring adult sites and taking that out of those old sites, what happens is that it gets fought in opinion pages, right? That’s sort of where it starts. You start seeing op-eds, you know, I’ve traced all of this. I’ve gone back and reconstructed sort of like what happened in the lead up to 2020. That’s sort of where it starts, right? That frames the debate. What you start seeing in legislation and regulation is they start quoting those places where they start citing them. It doesn’t matter if they’re opinion pages, people don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between, you know, an opinion column or an op-ed and actually reported peace. Unless they are media people, they don’t know. Yeah, so it’s like me just like shaking my fist at clouds. But you know, when you look at stuff that, you know, there was a point at which the DOJ Senator Senator Senator Senator DOJ asking for an investigation into only fence, you know, what they were citing were sort of news reports. They were citing opinion pieces. It doesn’t matter. And so I think that I look at it, you know, I’m in California and we deal with wildfires, you know, I look at media the way that you look at sort of like undergrowth, right? You need to clear it. You don’t want everything to catch fire. You need to do the work ahead of time. And I think that a lot of these are public opinion campaigns, right? And politicians are sensitive to public opinion. And if public opinion is, if there’s no one standing up for our rights, right? Not just in the courts, not just in the legislature, but in the press. All you’re going to hear is the opposite side. And so that’s why I talk to everybody that I can, you know, Allison is constantly there as well, making that argument because I think that even in an article where, you know, we are in hostile territory. I would give an interview to the Christian post because I want someone reading that not everybody reads everything in just I just said when you read an article, you look at some things, you say, well, that argument makes sense. That argument doesn’t make sense. You can’t say that argument makes sense if that argument isn’t there. And I think that this is the day-to-day work of the FSC is really constantly being there, constantly laying ground so that when something happens, journalists know what the story is, right? They know how to frame it. They’re not just responding to a press release that some religious group put out, that they understand to be critical, where they understand to be suspicious about things. They understand and they know who to call. I can’t tell you the number of people who have said, I just got this press release where someone is pitching me on the story and they’re claiming this, what can you tell me? Like, I know that you guys are the authorities, what can you tell me? And that is what we want. Absolutely. So we saw about two dozen age verification bills and introduced at the state level this year and seven ultimately passed. What do you expect to see next year? Well, it depends on these court decisions. I think that that’s also why these are important. I think that when that Louisiana decision went unchallenged at first, it encouraged a lot of copycat legislation because they thought, "Ah, nobody’s going to defend this, right? Nobody’s going to fight this." I think that as we fight these bills and as these legislatures see that, "Oh, actually, this isn’t some home run, that there’s real challenges here, that there’s a complex issue, this isn’t just about doing it." We’re likely to lose this case and it’s going to cost the state a million dollars to defend this bad piece of legislation. Not that they care. No, that’s that they care. There was this very humorous part of the Louisiana hearings when they were passing the bill where a senator said, "You know what? I came to this body to fight government waste, to fight laws that were unconstitutional and that we’re going to be challenged that we were going to lose. I see this law. This law is unconstitutional. We are going to pass this law. We are going to lose and it’s going to cost us half a million dollars." And then he said, "That said, I like what you’re doing, so I’m going to vote to pass it." So he gave every argument for not voting for it and then he voted for it? Yes, he said, "This is a bad bill." You know what that was? That was, "I’m not for porn, vote for me." Yes. He wouldn’t have been a Republican, would he? No, he was actually a Democrat. I mean, Louisiana, a Democrat. So I think that a lot of Democrats have voted for this, right? A lot of Democrats have voted for this because they don’t want a campaign against them saying you voted to allow kids to access porn. Even though this is coming often from the religious right, it gets framed as bipartisan because people don’t want to vote against it. And that was the case with Foster Sesta. That’s the case with a lot of moral panic legislation. Foster Sesta’s so-your-for-sex trafficking. Yes. Here’s to you, Kamala Harris. Yes. Anyway, let’s talk a bit about your work in Congress. I spoke to Allison after FSC’s initial DC trip, and she was really enthusiastic about the response. You went back in May to talk about financial discrimination, which you’ve since written a paper on. How close are we to getting some actual reforms? You know, I think that we’re closer than we think is my-I’ll hedge that. I think that’s the case with the public. You should have access to banking. It would be more of a quality of financial-something against financial discrimination and a quality of financial access, right? Well, there are a number of bills, both at the state level and in Congress that have put forward by the Republicans, which basically argue for banking fairness. There are some differences between them, but what they basically say is, "Bank should be making judgments based on actual specific credit worthiness," right? Are you a high-risk business or not? Specifically you, not your industry, not your thing, or ultimately that banks shouldn’t be making choices about legal businesses. I think that they’re in part reacting to-there have been a lot of banking account closures on the right over fossil fuels and oil and gas, over gun manufacturers and distributors and political pressure to shut those down. And then also for people who are selling, frankly, like Nazi merchandise, right? Or like, there’s stuff where they banks say, "Well, I don’t want to process this," and I think that there is an element of the right that says, "Okay, well, that’s a legal business. You may not like it, but the bank shouldn’t be the censor." So I think there are lots of different communities there being hit by this, and I think that what happens when we go to Congress is that they say, "Oh, could you help maybe bridge the gap?" So I think that there is possibility there. I think that what we’re trying to figure out is this issue, the financial discrimination has a lot of different parents, right? It’s not just the banks are wary of working with us because of social stigma. There are also regulations around antitrafically that catch a lot of our businesses in it, even that we’re legal business and not doing anything that’s related to trafficking. And so I think we’re trying to figure out those things. I think that the success will be a lot of different things, and it may be regulators saying to the banks, "Hey, listen, you don’t have to worry about only fans. We’re not going to penalize you if you don’t investigate every transaction from only fans as some banks are doing." I think that some of this is just the laws are so vague, the banks don’t know what to follow, and so they oversensor the same way that the platforms do, right? It’s easier to knock people off than to risk getting dinged by the federal government or being by regulators. I think that we’re going to start to see progress. I think that we’ve been really active and also talking to different financial tools. And I think that there are a lot of people who are looking to figure out how to make it work for this community. One of the things that’s a huge benefit to us is that there are millions of us now, there’s no longer 2,000 performers in the valley and 100 or so companies globally, right? There are millions of creators who are working on these platforms who are making money. And I think that they start to see, "Okay, it’s been a little bit more normalized," which again is what the aunties hate. I think something where we could sort of make progress. So I think that we’re going to come at this from a lot of different solutions, but I think that you’re going to see some hay offs quite soon. Yeah, and if you look at all the creators, all the cam, burles and guys, they all have votes. And those people do vote. So it’s really important to note that if you want to appeal to voters, you better make their lives easier. Another thing that comes to mind is that maybe if a bill like this passes processing rates could come down and adult. Yes. Absolutely. I mean, this is one of the things that we talk about with the legislators. It’s one of the things we talk about with our members, right? Again, in terms of that sense of, this is an investment. This is something that can bring down the cost to your business. We’re not asking for a handout. Yeah, like 15% to 5% maybe when we’re talking third party. And I think that companies are starting to see that now. I think that we’re getting a lot more of a response to say, "Okay, like this is a big deal." Good. One of the things FSC did, as I mentioned just before, was bring a report on financial and banking discrimination. And it was one of the first to really detail the scope of its effect on adult. How did that come about? So that came about in early to, as I said, 2023, 2022, through a partnership with Sex Work CEO. I was working at the time I worked with FSC and then I also worked with other adult companies on various strategy. And I was working with Melrose Michaels of Sex Work CEO. I’ve always been a data guy. I’ve worked with different companies. I’ve often run surveys that help them better understand their users, help them understand their fans and how people are reacting. And sometimes it’s so that they can get pressed right because they’ve got insights that other people don’t. And sometimes it’s to help them understand their product and who they’re appealing to. So I’ve been working with Melrose. Melrose is pretty fantastic in that she does just a ton of education for adult creators. This is a huge market. We had done a state of the creator report in 2022 where we run a survey of over 200 adult creators, ask them, "Age, demographics, where do you live? How much money are you making? What platforms are you on?" Because when you go into this space, it’s like you’re Magellan, right? There’s no mapping of it, right? Nobody has any idea. An individual platform might know who’s on their platform. They’re not going to know who was on any of the else’s. They don’t necessarily know what percentage of their income is responsible for that person’s success. We’re all sort of flying blind in this sort of new market. So we had mapped this out and it was tremendously successful. We got a lot of attention from creators who were one just interested to know where they fell, right? Like, where am I on this? Oh, there’s other people like me. Oh, this is how many people are selling BDSM content. All this sort of stuff, oh, this is how many people are doing in-person work, just to get a sense of what this world is because you don’t exist in the modern world without numbers, right? You don’t know the community, the contour of the community aren’t defined. So we had done this. It had been very successful in terms of creators. It had also gotten on NPR, it was featured on Marketplace and had some other good press. And so we said, "Listen, this is maybe something that we should look into. I’d love to sort of work with you on some more projects." And so we talked about building more of a market research firm for adults. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. So this was something we thought, "This is sort of worth this, this is sort of work." At that same time as we were having these conversations, I had been in these meetings in Congress and people that said, "Well, what is the size of this issue? What are the numbers on this? How many people are being described against?" And what we were left saying was, "A lot. Everybody, some way or another, but not having that number." Given that I had been doing this for years on a company basis and I just sort of run this thing with Melrose and we’d sort of built out this framework for doing it again, I said, "Let’s do it for FNC." So we did the company, which is now sort of SWR data, partnered with FSC and just sort of did a survey pro bono and built a survey, ran the survey, analyzed the numbers and put together a report. And that turned out to be tremendously powerful. Yeah, I folded out. Right. Because you want your voice heard and it helps us also see who’s being most affected, right? Because they want us separated. They don’t want us putting the pieces together because then it allows us to figure out who’s actually doing the discrimination and how are they doing it? They want us to be atomized. And so we ran it, it then sort of ended up in the Boston Globe and the New York Times and wired in a number of other places. We had like, I think, the Miami-Herald, Yahoo News, right? They all sort of picked up on it as well. Like, "Oh, this is data." And I’ve seen this in the fight for years with the anti-porn people. Because they will take a piece of data. It doesn’t matter how reliable it is. That’s what they throw out and that’s what goes in the headline. And I was like, "We can do better. We need to start mapping this out." When people start seeing that 51% of the people in the adult industry have lost their paypal account, that’s a huge number, right? It’s no longer just like, "Well, that person must have been doing something wrong." Or they’re just a porn star. Like, "Why do they wear?" When you start looking and you’re like, "Okay, well, this is what percentage is happening to this. These are the other issues they’re experiencing. They’re experiencing housing discrimination. They’re experiencing employment discrimination. It starts making this real." And so there have been a number of times with Allison over the course of the past few years where I’ve invoked Pinocchio and sort of been like, "We’re a real boy now." I’ve got no strengths. Like, we can do this. We’re walking into these meetings. We have the information. We know more about this than anybody else on the planet. I think that data is a huge part of this. Otherwise, you’re just asking people to trust us, right? A journalist, they’ve had time to talk to a few performers about their experience. And when they write a story and they say, "This is happening to some people, but we don’t know how many." It’s not very convincing. But being able to say, "Yes, 60% of people in this industry have lost a banker financial tool, 40% in the past year." People start saying, "Oh, that’s huge. That would be terrible. How do people survive?" I have lost more than one. I don’t even do porn. All I do is broker websites. Yeah. This is exactly it. FSC can’t get bank accounts. We’ve been struggling to get a savings account. Being able to quantify that, being able to identify who is doing it the most and helping to avoid them, trying to identify why they’re doing it or what types of people they’re targeting, that’s all stuff that you can only do if there’s data. I mean, it’s a difference between doing science and learning how to cure a disease and old wives’ tales about eating wheat, fat. It’s just not comparable in terms of the effects. That has been a real initiative both for FSC and then separately for me and Melrose. By the way, has there been any thought about FSC opening up like a credit union or something? That’s certainly something that we talk about. There are risks that come with that in terms of there’s still the bad regulation. I talked to somebody a couple of months back who was starting a credit union for marginalized people and was sort of saying, "Hey, listen, I think that we might be able to help in this, but I have to tell you that we’re going to face some of the same pressures, even understanding that this is your illegal business and that we’re doing this. We’re still going to have to deal with some of the over-regulation. We have to do all of this recording. Banks don’t want too many people of a certain type. There is a high risk type in it because it makes them look suspicious." Yeah, but you know what? Banks really don’t want. They don’t want to know. If you’re an adult, they look the other way. They want your money, but they don’t want to know you’re an adult. That’s why so many companies have very vanilla corporate names. Nobody really or nobody who really thinks about it. I’ll put it that way and it to be nice. Nobody really thinks about it. It says what they do. What do you do? Entertainment or we do internet consulting. There’s so many different things you can call it. I’ve seen many conversations on XBiz where we’ve discussed it. The bottom line is in today’s world, do not tell them what you do. Should you be able to? Absolutely. If you want to look at reality, the way things are today, don’t tell people what you do. Yeah. As long as you don’t lie. You don’t want to get into a bank fraud. The cause is its own issues. But to say, I do affiliate marketing. I do media consulting. Those are all things that are actually true. Nobody’s going to send you a wire that comes from XXXPorn.com. Well, occasionally they do. That’s when your bank account gets closed. I know. I know. I was checked. I think that we’ve had situations where a former industry member, someone who’s been out of the industry for 10 years, suddenly gets a residuals check or a cam company that they worked for. Some random payment that comes out. They’re in a whole new business. They’re a real turn out. They haven’t been in the industry for 10 years. They get the check that bank recognizes the name and shuts it down. I think that even with those big companies, Phoenix International, that’s something that is a flag for a lot of banks. They know this. Time to change the company name. Exactly. Well, that’s a time-tested strategy in our industry as well. Absolutely. So what other data are you looking at collecting? So I think that, you know, for FSC, I think that we need a better sense of where the issues lie in particular with banking, right? Looking at the qualitative experiences as well, right? We’ve done a lot of quantitative being able to get in there and understand what was the actual process like? What letter did you get? What did they say? What did they not say? So we can start putting those pieces together. I think that for an industry beyond that, we need to look at who are the people using our platform? What do they want? Right? We’ve got this situation where there are millions of creators. And every platform is looking to attract them. They want them on. And I work with a lot of these platforms. So I know these sort of issues that come up. A lot of people are just grading products without understanding how they’re actually going to play out in terms of, is this a valuable tool that’s going to bring over a creator, right? We know that a lot of people are unhappy with only fans, but that’s where their market is, right? So they’re not going to leave that. When we look at, you know, whether it’s, I think, on the broader sense, we want to know where are people being discriminated against? Where are your content restrictions happening? What does your experience been on Twitter? What does your experience been on Instagram? Being able to, again, quantify the types of discrimination that our industry faces and that creators face and the businesses face is really crucial to being able to solve it, to identify where it’s coming from, to be able to articulate it in a way where the press and the public and regulators take it seriously. And I think that exploitation happens in the dark and so does censorship. And I think that whether you’re talking about someone who’s been kicked off of an adult platform for doing some sort of fetish content or whether you’re talking about someone who was shadow banned on Twitter, it’s valuable to know what’s happening. If you don’t know what’s happening, if you don’t know how many other people this is happening to or why you can’t effectively fight back. And I think both as in a political industry and as a, just a financial, a regular sort of business part of the industry, we need more data. It’s always shocking to me how many decisions are made on the flimsiest amount of somebody told me this was a good place to put money. Yeah, but one thing you have to remember is that so many people in the adult industry don’t think they’re in business. They think they’re in porn. And they act that way. Ask any adult industry attorney and they’ll tell you all kinds of stories about that. And if you go to any legal seminars, which I’m sure you’re at most of them at these shows, if you ask Corey, if you ask Larry, if you ask Michael, if you ask Gnick, if you ask any of the attorneys, they’re going to tell you that same thing that you got to treat this like a business. Yeah. What people have gotten used to in the past 15 years is that you didn’t have to treat it like a business. That you would buy a bunch of traffic from someone that didn’t pan out. You’d just get some other traffic from somewhere else, right? Money was coming in. It was almost like walking around with a dowser and trying to find out where the well was. That you could sort of stumble upon it. We’re in a different environment now. One because it’s a hostile environment. It’s not as easy to run a business. And then two because you’re looking for creators. The creators are the ones that drive the fans, right? So if you’re a platform, you need to know how to track creators. And as an industry, we need to know how to protect creators. And we need to understand what creators are experiencing. So both from a platform perspective of, I want to bring these people on. And both from an industry perspective of, I need to understand what’s happening with them. We need that data. And so that’s the idea that we don’t. That’s sexist, Mike. I’m just using the Pinocchio. I know. I know. I know. I’m just giving it that time. That idea that like, yeah, it’s time to grow up. It’s time to come adults. And plenty of people are going to continue to not be in business. They’re going to be important. And then they’re going to be out of business. I think that like this is the people who succeed in the long term, the people who really succeed, are paying attention. Whether we’re talking about legislative fights or whether we’re talking about business fights. The person who has the data, the real data is the one that’s going to win. Yeah, absolutely. No two ways about it. So for those who are not currently involved in this fight, what’s the best way for them to get involved? How can individual companies or creators help? The first thing that I tell people that they should join FSC. But really what I want to know from them is what’s happening with them. I want to know sort of what their problems are and what their experiences are. When I talk to people who are not members especially, I look at it as if I were talking to myself in their position, right? What are your problems? Is this something that we can help with? What are you facing? What are you dealing with in terms of processing fees? What are you dealing with with banking instability? How are you dealing with age verification? What does your corporate counsel say? FSC obviously the better fund we are, the more we can take these on. Alison and I are already splitting up states that we’re going to go to next year to testify at the legislators to stop these laws. We need people to contribute to FSC and join FSC because that helps fund that. The reason that we didn’t file in Louisiana is because we’re overstretched, right? We just didn’t have the resources. If we had been a real organization, if we had been a real industry, we would have been at those hearings in June of last year. We would have been laying out these arguments. We would have been there and stopping that bill. But because we are chronically been underfunded, that means that we have to choose what battles we can fight. I think that the best defense is a good offense, not to overuse an intro, but let’s get out there and fight. Yes, join FSC. More than that from a personal, because I’m not the membership director and I remarkably bad at asking for money, is that be in contact with us. Let’s have that conversation. I would much rather we do something for you and prove our worth and have you join, then have you join and be like, what have you done from it? But you have. You guys have proven your worth, okay? You’ve proven your worth. But that’s my approach. I want to hear from people. I also want you to be educated. So when people don’t know, I don’t know about this issue. What is pornography addiction? What is the story with age refraction? I am constantly educating people because the more people that we know that know about this, the more voices we have. We want to amplify things. We want to fuel a movement, not to have something to be. If we’re trying to do it top down or we’re trying to do everything ourselves, we’re never going to have the resources, no matter how much money our members we have. But if we have a million people who know about this, that’s really an army. Yeah. That’s why we call it FSC Army. That’s the Twitter handle. I’m really good at asking for money and asking for people to come and look at things. Come to freespeechcoelection.com, get on the mailing list and get all of Mike’s wonderful communications and newsletters, which talk about what FSC is doing today. It’s very interesting. I promise you, you’re not going to be bored, you’re going to be fascinated. And FSC is doing a lot. And I hope everyone at least becomes a member if not a sponsor. And by the way, Elon, if you’re listening, subject we just talked about. Even if it isn’t a billion dollars, feel free to send it. We won’t tell anybody. Mike, I’d like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk once again. And I know we’ll have a chance to do this again, probably shortly as we talk about more victories. Yeah, I would love to come up and do an update. I’ll keep it a little bit tighter next time. But yeah, I think that we always want to let people know what we’re doing and again how they can help. Thank you very much. The broker tip today is part one on how to buy a site. The first question to ask yourself is what kind of site would you like to buy? Would you like a tube site, a cam site, a dating site, a membership site, a social media site, or something else? If you want to buy a membership site, what type of site do you want and what niche? There are literally hundreds of niches and many sub niches. For instance, let’s say you want to buy a gay site. Under gay, there’s bears were mature, bear back, Asian, Latino, amateur, buy, black, euro, and fetish, along with many fetishes under that classification. Plus there’s hardcore, jocks, porn stars, solo, trans, twinks, and uniforms. Street has even more sub niches. I can’t tell you how many people contact me and just say, I want to buy a site or I want to buy a pay site. I need more information in than that. How you make this decision should be based on these factors. What interests you? What you enjoy should definitely play a part in what you buy. If you like men and want to make money on a straight site, that’s probably a really bad idea. Same thing if you’re straight and want to buy a gay site. So what you’d like plays a part. What’s your budget? This is something you need to establish at the very beginning. Not only do you need to know what it is you’re working with, but some classifications of sites are more expensive than others. For instance, if you want a campsite with any traffic or revenue at all, you’re going to need a lot of money. In fact, to buy any established and successful site will be somewhat expensive. If you buy a site that’s pretty much just a platform without traffic or sales, you’re going to need a huge investment to build it up. In that case, it might actually be as good or better just to start your own site. That way you get exactly what it is you’re looking for. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with Bill Schwab of Monogamish. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest, Mike Stabile. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]