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• Okay, I have to take issue with blaming wepay, who has been very open about the topic.

  The issue was never that she works in the porn. The issue is that adult goods and services were offered in exchange for the donation. That turns them into an adult services payment processing company which opens up a whole can of worms, including:

  A) It now becomes their legal responsibility to make sure everyone paying them is over the age of 18.

  B) It now becomes their legal responsibility to make sure the content being distributed is not considered obscenity, e.g. it would pass the very poorly defined Miller test.

  C) If they don't do the above, the banks that process their payments could stop doing so, leaving them without a business.

  The bottom line is that whenever offering an adult service or product in exchange for money, you need to make damn sure the company processing the payment is okay with that, and follow any guidelines they have regarding the adult product you are offering.

  As soon as she re-tweeted the offer for pictures in exchange for donation, it became a transfer of adult product for money and they are not set up for that kind of payment processing.

  It really suck that that's the way it is, but id wepay didn't cut her off they would be risking their own legal trouble as well as potentially being cut off by their payment processor.

  I feel for her, but I believe that's why it had to happen, and I can't blame wepay for this. I hope she is able to raise the funds she needs.

  • Right. And we all know that corporations are actually people too.

    They've got their reasons and within limits I'll listen to them for about half a minute.

    The fact is that a minor mistake was made that, had it not involved sex or someone related to the porn business, would have been overlooked or merited a minor reprimand and a warning.

    Instead a person who is destitute and suffering in a way that's difficult for anyone who hasn't been there to imagine (Google the conditions for which she's being treated - you'll be duly horrified) is cut off from people trying to help her for slipping up. As if the company itself and its employees don't make mistakes every day on the job that expose information about their users that should remain private.

    Paypal doesn't handle adult business accounts unless you happen to be buying your porn on ebay, which sells tons of it and owns Paypal.

    This is just hypocritical bullshit meant to ward off criticism and the person who suffers for it is guilty of nothing worse than a moment of shaky judgment.

    • Oh there's definitely a double standard. The obsenity laws are in my opinion a violation of free speech. If I write an erotica that covers certain things, no harm is coming to anyone and only those who want to read it will, so for it to be illegal is absurd.

      But even though many of our laws have a history in puritanical bullshit, they are the laws and if wepay knows adult goods are being exchanged for donations through their system, they are at legal risk.

      From what I read, they are willing to work with her with a new account. I'm not sure what more we can ask of them.

  • Ahhhh...no. That is NOT the issue at all.

    The point is that a woman raising funds for a medical condition requiring life-saving treatment was essentially persecuted and denied those funds solely because some private bureaucrats didn't like her chosen profession.

    The excuse that she retweeted independent actors offering adult services as an inducement to donate is simply a convenient ruse to justify the act of persecution. The fact remains that nowhere did Eden Alexander ever violate WePay's Terms of Service herself, and WePay's action in terminating her account amounts to simple fundamental cold-hearted thievery...not to mention, if such acts had led to her taking the ultimate response of suicide out of induced shame or overwhelming stress, potential accessory to homicide.

    As Ernest said, if she had been anything but a camgirl or a porn performer (or, even a big-name popular porn performer like, say, Jenna Jameson or Lisa Ann or Bonnie Rotten), she would have gotten off with just a reprimand and a slap on the wrist. This was a deliberate act of slut shaming and antisexual humiliation against a woman for her profession; solely to satisfy their personal social mores.

    It's only because of the furious social media backlash and the massive organization of porn performers and sex workers on her behalf that WePay has been induced to even make an attempt to justify their decision. Well, that and the fact that their competitor Crowdtilt stepped in to fill in the breach and show them what true empathy can do.

    If WePay truly is remorse about their decision, they would modify their procedures and their ToS to allow more flexibility and respect for basic human decency. And, they would challenge their payment processors to adjust their policies to meet theh 21st Century, not reimpose 1950's sexual morality through their financial rules.

    • It's not because they didn't like her profession, it's because she retweeted an offer for adult content in exchange for donations, thus making them a payment processing service for adult content.

      I feel for her, I do, but that's what happened.