[HN Gopher] The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power...
___________________________________________________________________
The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms
and banks
Author : shivbhatt
Score : 591 points
Date : 2021-08-28 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| buf wrote:
| The problem OnlyFans had was they tried to be a legitimately low
| risk business, but they turned into porn
|
| If they started now knowing what they know, how would they get
| passed the banks and payment processors?
|
| How does pornhub or others do it?
| unity1001 wrote:
| Indeed - Payment companies like Visa and Mastercard enforcing
| American cultural and religious conservatism on other countries
| and nations is an illegal situation - per other countries' laws.
|
| These are effectively monopolies. It doesnt matter whether
| there's two of them. If they collectively enforce something onto
| the people of other countries - like Europe - then they are
| violating those countries' laws
|
| They must be investigated and regulated accordingly in Europe.
| American culture and American laws do not apply to Europe.
| ckdarby wrote:
| One of the reasons why this happens is money and specifically
| money from pension funds. The largest pension funds nearly all
| have "morality clauses" with them and won't invest with an
| entity that goes against that.
|
| The other portion of this is the hassle of dealing with the
| adult industry in terms of politics. You can Google to see how
| the news articles came out claiming PornHub was being used for
| pornographic material related to children. Visa & Mastercard
| from public pressure revoked their ability to process any
| payments on that site. Canadian House of Commons Ethics
| Committee did hearings against the company. Nobody wants that
| kind of attention.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The reason the banks, and through the banks OnlyFans, attack sex
| is _because_ they are accountable, and don 't wish to take risks
| unless they are very profitable risks.
|
| The real danger of platforms and banks is how happy they are to
| censor for the government, or simply the loudest, richest mouth,
| in order to keep the profit flowing. If you want to fix it, you
| put in legal protections for people to do business, rather than
| this informal and/or ad hoc regulation through the shifting
| influence and agendas of arbitrary special interest groups.
|
| > The financial and tech industries' prudishness is unfortunately
| increasingly reflected in government policy, typically under the
| guise of protecting children and other vulnerable communities.
|
| This is the Guardian getting causation extremely wrong.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > The real danger of platforms and banks is how happy they are
| to censor for the government
|
| One of the great usecases for crypto
| adolph wrote:
| _If you want to fix it, you put in legal protections for people
| to do business, rather than this informal and /or ad hoc
| regulation through the shifting influence and agendas of
| arbitrary special interest groups._
|
| The answer to regulation gone wild is not more regulation, it
| is to remove regulatory power. You can't dig your way out of a
| hole.
| winternett wrote:
| If people really want to fix this, they'll go back to creating
| independent web sites... Social media lures people in, takes a
| significant part of real money generated from creators, and
| then slowly tightens rules to protect it's own interests and
| profit while forsaking creators and that includes gradual
| suppression of promotional equality for creators.
|
| The whole scheme to make creators pay to run ads is a failed
| ideology if creator content is the very thing that platforms
| depend on to succeed.
|
| This is why I always edit/record to files I can re-use/re-
| distribute rather than using native record options on platform-
| specific apps.
|
| I make music, not adult content though just FTR.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "The reason the banks, and through the banks OnlyFans, attack
| sex is because they are accountable"
|
| I think it is about _charge backs_. Visa and mastercard _hate_
| charge backs. Porn has a very high charge back rate and these
| cost card companies so much they will often just cancel the
| merchant agreement. With a charge back there is human customer
| service involved, customer denials, fraud and complicated
| dispute resolution. This is why the processors that specialize
| in porn (ccbill) charge up to %15 _per transaction_. I don 't
| think the processors wanted to go after onlyfans - they just
| would rather not deal with the drama. However, like onlyfans
| discovered, if you offer to pay a %15 per transaction fee -
| processors will work with you. Processors do not have morals -
| they are just trying to make money. They don't mind handling
| transactions for gun sales, tobacco, strip clubs or pyramid
| schemes.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| I have to ask. Who is going to hold banks responsible for their
| role as just a payment gateway and not the actual people
| involved or the service? This is like saying banks are
| responsible for a drug mafia using a laundromat for "money
| washing" by using sales proceeds of a laundromat depositing
| into the said bank and sending it away.
| nulbyte wrote:
| The government will. This is the basis of Know Your Customer
| laws.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Oh. Like the time deutchbank was fined a billion dollars
| and nothing happened? So they are really imposing their
| idea of "should" be allowed or not. Democracy is passe.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "The reason the banks, and through the banks OnlyFans, attack
| sex is because they are accountable, and don't wish to take
| risks"
|
| Where exactly are the banks at risk or accountable?
|
| Are we talking about fraud, or potential criminal investigation
| because of underaged girls forced to do onlyfans by mafia (I
| can imagine that) and money transfer via their bank?
| snarf21 wrote:
| Agreed, the article goes to the wrong place. The real cause is
| that most organizations (government, financial institutions,
| media conglomerates, etc.) are largely controlled by old rich
| white guys and they don't like people doing things. They are
| the ones pushing their "morality". We need more diverse and
| younger people in these positions to evolve our culture more
| quickly.
| whythre wrote:
| I mean, 'the Patriarchy' is the old chestnut explanation for
| most societal ills. Any evidence that it was corrupt old
| white men? The banks are bowing to external pressure and I am
| not convinced those voices are the ones necessarily
| representative of 'the Patriarchy.'
| pjc50 wrote:
| The external pressure in the US is coming mostly from
| evangelical Christians, who literally worship the divine
| Father figure.
| lucaspm98 wrote:
| The policies around payment processing for the adult
| industry do not stem from puritanical values. It's a
| business decision around the astronomically high
| chargeback rates for credit card purchases of this
| content.
| travoc wrote:
| Does that also explain why banks are increasingly
| resistant to doing business with gun manufacturers and
| conservative activist groups?
| pjc50 wrote:
| They're capable of caving to pressure from different
| groups at the same time?
|
| The nature of culture war is appeasing the squeakiest
| wheel, rather than finely balanced ethical calculus.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| It's funny how quickly people blame things on their personal
| bugbears without evidence.
| treis wrote:
| They're not pearl clutching church goers enforcing their
| morality on everyone. They're concerned about real objective
| harm like revenge porn, videos of sexual assault, leaked
| videos, child porn, and so on.
| alexashka wrote:
| How do you know that?
| vermontdevil wrote:
| Not really. They are more concerned about government
| cracking down on the banks due to these acts.
| danaris wrote:
| No, they're concerned about "real objective harm" _to their
| business_ --like the fundamentalist/evangelical Protestant
| churches in the US collectively deciding to target them (in
| various ways) because said churches think they're the
| arbiters of an absolute morality that decrees that taking
| pleasure in sex is a sin.
|
| The things you mention are 100% policeable separate from
| porn production in general.
| treis wrote:
| >The things you mention are 100% policeable separate from
| porn production in general.
|
| Yes, and that's what banks are asking porn producers to
| do. To implement policies and procedures to ensure that
| those types of videos aren't on their site.
| mylons wrote:
| deutsche bank literally launders money for drug dealers,
| terrorists, and generally a lot of other criminals. what are
| you talking about?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/01/germany-orders-deutsche-bank...
| is just the first result from a google search
| kingkawn wrote:
| If that were true they wouldnt be investing in Facebook.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > If that were true they wouldnt be investing in Facebook.
|
| It's easier to stir up outrage against porn--sexual
| prudishness has a long history--than against Facebook--the
| ability so globally to overshare, and the (inevitably
| delayed) realization of its consequences, is only in the very
| beginning of forming.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Yes, I know that. But the point I was responding to was
| that the banks and cc companies are worried about
| liability, but Fb is a larger hub for child exploitation
| and general social instability than all of the tube sites
| combined.
| bitwize wrote:
| Since the Obama administration's Operation Chokepoint, banks
| are loath to process transactions from certain industries,
| including porn, cannabis, and guns -- lest they incur greater
| regulatory scrutiny. This scrutiny comes whether the
| transactions are legal or not.
| acchow wrote:
| Through this whole OF debacle, seems like the free market
| sorted itself out and consumers got what they wanted.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The issue is that the banks all move in lock step, undermining
| the basic principle of the free market.
|
| If one bank decides it doesn't want to deal with porn, fine.
| But when _all_ the banks decide that, that's very very bad. The
| cumulative effect is a chilling of protected speech in a way
| that congress could never legally get away with.
| tacocataco wrote:
| What else do they move in lock step on? Isn't that collusion?
|
| Just another reason to smash these banks into a million
| pieces.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > If one bank decides it doesn't want to deal with porn,
| fine. But when _all_ the banks decide that, that's very very
| bad.
|
| I think that's not quite what happened here. It's not that,
| literally, _all_ the banks decided this; it 's that the banks
| are so huge that, when one or a few of the mega-banks make
| the decision, it's _effectively_ the same as if they all did.
| Ultra-consolidation is the real problem.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The banks are all regulated "in lockstep" by the same same
| regulator (FDIC), which can and does tell banks which
| industries to not serve.
|
| Anyone discussing this needs to be aware of "Operation
| Chokepoint".
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This. In the conferences I attend, I can see a regular push
| towards very invasive review of every transaction. Last
| time I heard it I think I can paraphrase it as 'we can see
| SKUs, why are we not stopping transaction there and then?'.
| tzs wrote:
| > The issue is that the banks all move in lock step,
| undermining the basic principle of the free market.
|
| The banks all doing the same thing is exactly what you would
| expect in a free market.
|
| They are all in the _same_ market (credit card processing)
| and all have the _same_ information on the risks and costs
| and revenue in that market for handling various types of
| transactions. All of them that make rational decisions
| supported by the data they have should come to the same
| conclusions and take the same actions.
|
| What you'd expect in a free market is for specialized banks
| to appear that would deal with porn and other high risk
| customers that the more general purpose banks all conclude
| that they don't want to deal with.
|
| That's what has happened, as has been mentioned in other
| comments.
| kingkawn wrote:
| I have yet to see any principles at play in this free market.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Agreed, but _why_ do they move in lockstep? Is it a
| conspiracy among elite banks (or whatever other businesses)?
| Or is it a rational response to their political
| vulnerability? Or something else?
| Clewza313 wrote:
| It's a rational response to the extreme social, political,
| financial and potentially criminal risks associated with
| profiting off content that may be identified as child
| pornography or sexual assault.
|
| The Traci Lords case is a good illustration of this. One
| day everything is order, the next somebody realizes she
| used a fake ID and bam, _everybody_ involved is suddenly
| manufacturing /profiting off/in possession of child
| pornography. Add in the massively lowered bar for
| OnlyFans/PornHub, where anybody with a phone can now DIY,
| and it's a legal minefield.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > If one bank decides it doesn't want to deal with porn,
| fine.
|
| Not necessarily. Banks have a government license to create
| money (ok, depends on what kind of bank, but let's put that
| aside), and provide services many individuals and
| organizations rely on. That already means that even if you're
| a staunch capitalist, you should still support some sort of
| set of constraints and norms, regulation, of their
| activities. So it's not clear that a bank should be able to
| refuse service to legally-operating organizations.
|
| Plus, if one bank can do this, then why not any other bank?
| SantalBlush wrote:
| This doesn't undermine the basic principle of the free
| market, people are just now learning about unintended
| consequences of the free market.
| mountainb wrote:
| The banks are not a free market. The banks are expressly
| controlled by multiple federal regulatory agencies and the
| Federal Reserve itself. They're supposed to move in lock step
| by design. If they didn't, it'd be a 'Free Banking' system,
| which it isn't.
| 542458 wrote:
| There are lots of payment processors who will deal with
| explicit content. They tend to be fairly expensive though -
| partially justified since apparently chargebacks are
| outlandishly common. For example, CCBill will process
| essentially anything that isn't illegal, albeit with 6% fees
| for "risky" industries and 10-15% fees for "adult"
| industries.
|
| https://ccbill.com/pricing
|
| (As an aside, one sort of neat thing about CCBill is
| apparently they'll never kill your account without warning,
| unlike PayPal & co)
| vidarh wrote:
| Not that simple. The payment processors have to follow
| edicts by the payment networks. I've been in meetings where
| we had warnings passed on from payment networks about
| consequences if we failed to address a chargeback problem
| where our processor kept apologising because there was
| nothing _they_ could do.
|
| You also need to deal with various combinations of
| acquiring (bank the merchant account linked to the specific
| payment network is with) and issuing banks (bank of the
| individual card owners)
| evgen wrote:
| This is the dirty little secret that everyone clutching
| their pearls over the OnlyFans 'scandal' won't talk about.
| There are plenty of providers who will deal with porn, but
| porn customers are shit customers who no one wants -- the
| fraud and chargeback rate is incredibly high so the cost of
| processing payments is equally high. The advantage that
| crypto brings to porn payments is not the pretend
| anonymity, it is that there are no chargebacks so you do
| not need to deal with fraud prevention.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| How is there any fraud these days with 3d secure, etc?
| ckdarby wrote:
| Sometimes merchants will turn off 3d secure because of
| the approval drop with 3ds. This is one of the main
| reasons why 3dsv2 was introduced to elimate the friction.
|
| Even with 3dsv1 the liability doesn't always shift to the
| issuing bank. For example, I believe it is Mastercard
| NA(Might be Visa NA) that doesn't allow any 3ds liability
| shift for high risk merchants.
|
| Source: Worked at payment processor in high risk
| processing +$1B in volume
| ckdarby wrote:
| This isn't the case across the entire industry. There is
| a large portion of customers who keep their CB ratios
| below the requirements of Visa & MCs. Hell, plenty of the
| customers in the industry could get it even lower but
| that runs the risk of leaving money on the table by
| turning away a potential customer that doesn't do a
| chargeback.
|
| There are some customers in the industry who run silly
| numbers like +10% and do "Mid burning" with different
| banks.
|
| The highest CBs tended to be the "online dating space" or
| "find X nearby hookup" kind of sites.
|
| If you've got any other questions feel free to ask.
|
| Source: Worked at payment processor in high risk
| processing +$1B in volume
| imtringued wrote:
| That just means that chargebacks cannot be offered as
| part of payment processing.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| And what happens when real fraud does occur?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Mandate 2FA which any normal Bank already has
| rattray wrote:
| OnlyFans claimed it was the banks, not the payment
| processors, who were the problem.
|
| Specifically, BNY Mellon, acting in an intermediary role
| between OnlyFans' banks and creators' banks, allegedly
| blocked all payouts to creators.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I believe it. For a smaller company, it will take one
| analyst stumbling over something problematic that may
| trigger an investigation ( think SAR ). If the issue is
| bad enough and customer does not have clout to back it,
| bank might derisk.
|
| The problem is.. it is not exactly standardized as each
| bank does their own thing thanks to BSA rules.
| FranksTV wrote:
| I mean, if it's really a great market that's underserved,
| then you should launch a payment processor that serves the
| market.
|
| People think this is about morality, but it's a lot more
| about the cost of operating in that market. I bet that there
| are _way_ more claims of fraud, money laundering
| investigations, subpoenas and other overhead that the banks
| don 't want to deal with.
|
| Like teenagers stealing credit cards to pay camgirls is
| probably pretty common. And there are likely a lot of
| prostitution investigations.
|
| The real problem is that sex work isn't treated like normal
| work, which just creates freedom for criminals to take
| advantage of vulnerable people.
|
| If it was licensed and regulated, then it would be easier to
| tell the crooks, and victims of human trafficking from the
| people who are legitimate, voluntary workers.
|
| Then the economics might make sense for banks to keep serving
| these customers.
| imtringued wrote:
| You can simply offer a product that operates under the
| necessary constraints. There is no need to offer
| conventional payment processing if the conveniences it
| offers are so unsustainable as you say.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > if it's really a great market that's underserved, then
| you should launch a payment processor that serves the
| market.
|
| A credit card for porn... good luck.
| fragmede wrote:
| Payment _processor_ for porn, not a credit card. That is,
| the part you put your credit card _into_. Some already
| exist, but they charge a high premium due to increased
| risk, but they still only exist because the banks
| continue to allow them to.
| harles wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the majority of consumers don't want to
| be associated with such a thing - almost certainly tied
| to SSN and part of any credit report.
| harles wrote:
| My guess is it's the chargebacks that banks really care
| about, which licensing and regulation won't solve.
| croes wrote:
| A payment processor is useless without the possibility to
| pay with a credit card. And that means you depend on Visa,
| Mastercard and Amex.
| wiseStab wrote:
| I think we should have some sort of internet money that
| can be used to transact without any central authority.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| So far every option has a usability problem that's been
| solved by companies with the same KYC requirements as
| credit card processors. This will remain the case as long
| as people also want to transact in fiat currency, and
| that will be true as long as it's how people pay the
| bills and buy food.
|
| Any crypto-only platform that solves the problem of
| everyone needing a copy of the ledger and gains
| meaningful adoption will face the same legal, PR, and
| regulatory pressures as anything else in the same place.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| FedNow would also make this theoretically possible, no?
| No middle man, just transfer money between accounts.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| A government program has to abide by First Amendment
| protections. Most restrictions payment processors and
| banks put in probably wouldn't survive a civil rights
| lawsuit.
| issa wrote:
| Definitely being worked on: https://interledger.org/
| lpa22 wrote:
| Found this recently I think it fulfills your idea
| https://dogecoin.com/
| fidelramos wrote:
| But without a central authority how would everyone agree
| on what's the truth? How would you avoid double-spends,
| protect against Sybil attacks and basically prevent
| people from creating money out of nothing? If someone
| could solve that it would be truly revolutionary. /s
| ac29 wrote:
| Not necessarily, there are plenty of bills that cant be
| paid with credit cards - the credit cards themselves for
| example.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Bank transfers are still a thing, aren't they? And
| payment processors built around those? I can't recall
| when was the last time I paid on-line using _my card_.
|
| On that note, the whole reliance on cards for on-line
| feels like a stupid hack that got way out of control. A
| card is just a physical access token for the account - it
| shouldn't be reused on-line like this. You should be able
| to generate per-payment tokens on demand instead. The
| whole mental model around online payments is bonkers -
| it's just taking the meatspace model and adding "but with
| computers!" to it, where it's the meatspace practices
| that are a kludge that digital doesn't need.
| portman wrote:
| >> then you should launch a payment processor that serves
| the market
|
| Checkout.com was most recently valued at $15 billion.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| This is not unique to banking _in the least_. It's pretty
| typical for most industries to follow a company that does
| something the others want but don't want to be the first one
| to do.
|
| Price increases are a great example. One company will take an
| increase and most follow.
|
| And how is this chilling of protected speech? The
| constitution guarantees free speech, not payment for speech.
| There is nothing stop these workers from sharing their
| content/speech.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > There is nothing stop these workers from sharing their
| content/speech.
|
| So how do you share things legally on the internet without
| involving a private business who can stop you?
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| This is the Guardian getting causation extremely wrong.
|
| I don't think causation runs one way. The financial industry &
| "Government" aren't clearly delineated. You can see this all
| the time in "compliance." Banks will commonly cite
| "compliance," essentially blaming the regulator for various
| policies. If you ask the regulator itself, they'll generally
| consider a lot of that stuff bank policy.
|
| The way in which banking regulation works in practice creates a
| ton of ambiguities like this. "Compliance" is basically the
| area between regulation and internal policy. One firm will
| adopt a policy, which has all sorts of compliance implications.
| Another will copy them. The regulator grows to expect it, and
| it develops from there.
|
| Market centralisation encourages this a lot.
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't think it's getting causation wrong, it's just confusing
| 'accountable to [in its opinion] the wrong entities' with
| 'unaccountable'.
|
| The banks are accountable to their boards which are accountable
| to their shareholders, which (the ones that matter) are
| increasingly .. I hate to use the word but 'woke' activists -
| nudging companies in the 'right' direction either from a moral
| standpoint or from a perceived moral standpoint of
| customers/public at large.
|
| Progressively (as in a simple progression over time, not the
| political sense) investing in/lending to/providing the current
| account for, defence/tobacco/oil/sex are becoming bad looks, to
| the big voteholders even if not in general.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The bank prudery is a response to the government's
| willingness to hold banks accountable for turning a blind eye
| to money going to illicit purposes.
|
| Yes, both PornHub and OnlyFans haven't been careful enough
| with screening their material but we normally don't hold
| hosts responsible for perfect policing of user content--
| except when sex is involved.
| jdasdf wrote:
| > The reason the banks, and through the banks OnlyFans, attack
| sex is because they are accountable, and don't wish to take
| risks unless they are very profitable risks.
|
| This is exactly the case.
| rattray wrote:
| Does anyone know the specific reason banks find the adult
| industry risky?
| myself248 wrote:
| Two reasons.
|
| One is the higher incidence of chargebacks. You don't have
| to ask if something is naughty -- just look for the
| chargebacks and it'll tell you. What happens is someone
| charges a thing, their partner sees it on the CC statement
| and asks about it, the first person is ashamed to admit it
| so they act shocked and insist it MUST be fraud because
| THEY would never charge something like that, and to keep up
| appearances, they call the bank and have the charge
| reversed. And platforms have to build in large margins to
| cover for it, or screw creators out of their payouts, or
| sometimes both and keep the difference.
|
| (Which is why something irreversible, like cryptocurrency,
| keeps getting talked about. It wouldn't solve the shame
| problem, but it would eliminate chargebacks, and creators
| would just get paid. It just brings a bunch of other
| problems.)
|
| The second is extremely vocal pressure from some fringe
| religious groups, who will pump the bellows of the CSAM-PR-
| disaster furnace for anyone who allows a nipple on their
| platform. You don't know the groups' names, but you've seen
| the hit pieces they put in the press. Look up "Exodus Cry"
| for one.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| There is one more: legal compliance.
|
| While there is no law on the books that says banks can't
| do business with OnlyFans, there are laws ( BSA comes to
| mind ) that in effect create incentives for banks to
| 'derisk' problematic customers. Some get branded high
| risk based on internal and industry standards.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This is the reason. Sex work is a crime so banks can't
| offer banking services and sex work-adjacent businesses
| (like strip clubs) tend to be high-cash businesses so
| they're considered high risk for money laundering. This
| means the entirety of adult entertainment gets bucketed
| as "high risk" even though technology has, in theory,
| significantly changed the _actual_ money laundering risk
| presented by these businesses.
|
| Also, the type of people who are typically sitting in the
| meetings who would have to sign off on changes to these
| long-held banking "truisisms" haven't given it a second's
| thought and they really don't care to re-examine their
| beliefs anyway.
| rattray wrote:
| My impression was that payment processors, not banks,
| were on the hook for chargebacks, but I may misremember?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| If there's a chargeback, someone has to cough up the X
| dollars that the cardholder spent and return it them.
| That typically isn't the bank. But it also requires Y
| dollars of overhead to work on the issue until it's
| resolved.
|
| The cardholder calls their bank (the issuing bank) on the
| phone, and right away the bank has spent money answering
| the call.
|
| After the bank tells the merchant that a chargeback is
| happening, the merchant can dispute the chargeback (make
| their case that it was a legit purchase), which the bank
| has to adjudicate.
|
| Credit card processing is a high-volume, low-margin
| business. The bank's cut is roughly 2-3% of the purchase.
| For a $10 purchase on OnlyFans, the bank is only making
| like 20 to 30 cents off that transaction. If a chargeback
| happens, the required manual work will cost them many
| times that. So, in order for it to be profitable, banks
| need chargebacks to be rare. If they're frequent, it's
| less profitable or even unprofitable.
| vageli wrote:
| > Does anyone know the specific reason banks find the adult
| industry risky?
|
| Likely higher instances of "friendly fraud", and
| chargebacks.
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| How does this narrative fit in with banks who've laundered
| obscene amount of money for murderous cartels?
| artiszt wrote:
| besides fall short to cut ties with betting cartells more
| than likely to be associated with so-called organized crime
| syndicates
| bostik wrote:
| Cartels pay their bills, and have very effective ways to
| collect from people who want to skip paying theirs.
|
| If you had billions to invest and transact with, you'd have
| banks bending over backwards for your business too.
| yashap wrote:
| I'd guess billions of dollars flow through pornhub, they're
| the 10th most visited website in the world. They apparently
| have still had incredible difficulty getting anyone to
| process payments for them.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I expect that you are off by several orders of magnitude.
| yashap wrote:
| Digging a bit more, I don't think so. The company that
| owns PornHub does about half a billion dollars per year
| in revenue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek
|
| That includes revenue from other brands too, but I
| believe PornHub is their top brand, and likely accounts
| for a good portion of that. Also, how much money flows
| through PornHub that doesn't count as revenue? I don't
| know much about their business model, but say if a
| content creator generates $100 in total revenue on PH,
| and $40 goes to PH while $60 goes to the content creator,
| I'd guess that's $100 in payments processed, but only $40
| in MindGeek revenue?
|
| Based on that, I'd estimate the volume of $$ flowing
| through PH at somewhere around
| $100,000,000-$1,000,000,000 annually. Even on the low end
| of that, around a billion should have flowed through them
| so far, over the lifetime of the site. And I think
| multiple billions is quite possible.
| fragmede wrote:
| Pornhub launched in 2007 according to Wikipedia. Mindgeek
| (Pornhub's owner) had a reported $460 mm in revenue in
| 2015. (https://www.luxtimes.lu/en/luxembourg/mindgeek-
| porn-empire-r...) Pornhub is privately owned, so how much
| of that $460 mm is Pornhub vs other properties is
| unknown, but Pornhub having made a billion dollars over
| its 14 years doesn't really seem that far fetched.
| tgv wrote:
| The Guardian probably means "accountable to the general
| public", or whichever faction they favour right now.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Exactly. Banks have no morals, as long as the price is right
| ByteWelder wrote:
| You're describing the average business. Businesses are
| primarily there to make money.
| sangnoir wrote:
| It's amazing how pwople dont see the fundamental tension
| between "western values" like individual freedoms and
| unbridled capitalism "values" (i.e. profit). Those
| motivations are sometimes pulling in opposite directions.
| Which will win? Which _should_ win?
| mgh2 wrote:
| This sounds like anti-bank/centralization propaganda.
| throwjd764glug wrote:
| It affects more than just sex workers. Amren cannot accept Paypal
| or credit cards due to deplatforming (or even draw attention to
| this through Youtube or Facebook, as those also banned them),
| Wikileaks was also financially isolated, and donation websites
| and payment providers deplatformed Rittenhouse's _legal defense_
| fundraising.
|
| Funny the Guardian didn't mention this. Reading their coverage
| gives the impression deplatforming is limited to moralizing
| against sex workers.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Every business that includes network effects must be regulated as
| if it is a public agency or utility once it is above a certain
| size. I don't think it is useful to debate the threshold to try
| and find some kind of optimum. Let's just pick a number, like
| number of users exceeding 25% of national population, and start
| there.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Meh. Everybody was like "private companies can do whatever they
| like" when parler was censored off the internet. Now why is it a
| big deal when the same happens to a porn site? Only fans can
| create their own Visa and Mastercard if they want.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly. There you go and that's the idea. This can happen to
| anyone.
|
| I don't understand why they cheer on with the same _" X is a
| private company and can ban, censor or remove whatever they
| like"_ argument when it happens to someone they don't like with
| but only care when it happens to them or to someone they agree
| with.
|
| Just look at how Google Play removed other apps on the Play
| Store after Parler was banned [0]. This can happen to anyone.
|
| These companies that hold this power are not anyone's friends
| and once again are on the side of profit. When will supporters
| of such acts learn that it can soon happen to them and realise
| that these large companies are the problem?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28173060
| harry8 wrote:
| And Parler can obviously make their own mobile phones with
| comparable market access to Apple and Android combined with
| most apple and Android users more than happy to abandon their
| investment in their asset on principle.
|
| If you didn't immediately ditch your iphone obviously that
| means Apple are beyond criticism of any kind because the
| market.
| _flagged_ wrote:
| Underrated.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| I am going to give a contrarian take on it. Banks are doing the
| right thing if they do not want to provide financial services to
| facilitate amateur pornographic actors.
|
| Camwhoring is degrading for the both the patron and the provider.
| Fundamentally sex is about person to person contact for the
| purpose of procreation and raising children and no I am not
| approaching this from a religious angle but an evolutionary
| biological angle.
|
| Rather than masturbating to camwhores lonely men should be
| directing their energies toward finding a mate or at least doing
| something to useful for society.
|
| Rather than sitting at home doing the the same for the benefit of
| anonymous strangers over the internet poor women should be doing
| something socially useful with themselves.
|
| It seems to me that regulated in person sex work is better for
| society than pornography. At least it involves real people rather
| than frustrating desires through a digital bait and switch.
|
| Interestingly and historically, South Korea has broadly tolerated
| prostitution while banning pornography.
| shadilay wrote:
| The platform and banks also do not allow the following list items
| which are varying degrees of legal. There are categories that
| they crack down upon which are entirely legal and that doesn't
| sit well with me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point ammunition
| sales cable box de-scramblers coin dealers credit card schemes
| credit repair services dating services debt consolidation scams
| drug paraphernalia escort services firearms sales fireworks sales
| get rich products government grants home-based charities lifetime
| guarantees lifetime memberships lottery sales mailing
| lists/personal info money transfer networks online gambling pawn
| shops payday loans pharmaceutical sales Ponzi schemes
| Pornography[5] pyramid-type sales racist materials surveillance
| equipment telemarketing tobacco sales travel clubs
| ckdarby wrote:
| I've got numerous years of software development working in the
| high risk space (adult & gambling). With a lot of experience
| specifically around payment processing for high risk merchants.
|
| If anyone has questions feel free to ask and I'll answer within
| reason/if I have the answer.
|
| Disclaimer: Just solely my own opinions being expressed.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| On the contrary, they are doing it as society will blame them if
| they do not and they will suffer if it turns out they were
| involved in child pornography.
|
| Banks are not moralists on a crusade. They love making money, but
| they fear risk. Dealing in the adult industry is a huge public
| relations and legal risk.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| When this happened to Gab somehow no one cared.
| temp8964 wrote:
| The author has a book "Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech
| Under Surveillance Capitalism"
|
| Copy a comment here:
|
| 1.0 out of 5 stars Another pompous elitist advocating free speech
| for those they agree with
|
| Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2021
|
| Looking for yet another elitist advocating for freedoms, but only
| those they agree with, then this is the book for you. The author
| complains vociferously about silicon valley enterprises
| restricting the speech of people and groups she politically
| agrees with while at the exact same time advocating for the
| removal of content she finds "offensive". The author also makes
| great noise (rightfully) attacking racial and religious bigotry
| while simultaneously coming across as extremely bigoted towards
| Jews and anyone with low melanin counts and politically right of
| Mao. If the author is the voice of freedom of expression and
| speech in the modern age then we are all doomed.
|
| see: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-
| reviews/R2MXNOSHCZ1CW1/re...
| cenkozan wrote:
| Why is still the real narrative for this ban is still not around
| the children on that platform. I can't for the life of mine
| understand why everybody is pulling their own agenda while the
| real reason for that ban is dragged under the rag. Crazy...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I believe central-bank digital currencies will solve this problem
| if they offer transactions that are guaranteed anonymous, unless
| there is some kind of law enforcement warrant to inspect them.
| This will be a much more sane and accountable system than the
| robber baron system of unaccountable gatekeepers.
| xtat wrote:
| Hard no on CBDCs- they're subject to the same fiat abuses we
| already have
| [deleted]
| controlweather wrote:
| Invest in Nafty coin, it's the only fans of crypto
| swiley wrote:
| Don't like crypto currency? Stop making it necessary.
| elif wrote:
| "but there are no practical applications of cryptocurrency"
| m0llusk wrote:
| but this happened because payment processors feared being held to
| account
| _flagged_ wrote:
| The posting of this article on HN is well timed to start a nice
| comfy little flamewar on a Saturday morning.
|
| Have fun frens.
| ofthrowof wrote:
| To all the people here bringing evangelical christians and other
| nonsense into this: Both OF and the CC merchants are owned by
| Jews. If they're any bit intelligent about this they'll try to
| push for a legal change/protection by pretending to fight each
| other.
| throwjd764glug wrote:
| Do you have a source for this claim? It seems you're right
| about OnlyFans, majority-owned by Radvinsky [1], but I don't
| know about the payment processors.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Radvinsky
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's this common meme of blaming anti-sex-work sentiment on
| some bloc of US Evangelicals who secretly rule the Western
| economy and politics. Because surely, it couldn't be _the market_
| speaking out against adult material?
|
| Here's an alternative hypothesis: between those anti-sex
| fundamentalist religious groups (Christian or otherwise) and
| people who absolutely love everything sex-related, there's the
| _vast majority_ of people who find the whole topic uncomfortable
| to a large degree. Whether they themselves like porn or not (or
| like, but feel guilty about it[0]), whether they make use of
| various meatspace sex services or not, they don 't like being
| reminded of it. They don't like sex being mixed with other areas
| of life. They might especially not want _their kids_ to be
| exposed to porn, or to become sex workers.
|
| The market caters to majority case. _Advertisers_ , especially,
| cater to majority. In such hypothetical world (which I posit
| might just be the real one), the market itself will exert
| pressure against overt pornography and sex work, and anything
| that associates itself with it.
|
| So, perhaps, there's no conspiracy in play - maybe it's just the
| majority getting the things to how they want them to be.
|
| (It's supposed to be good, right? When some people here complain
| that technology is increasingly user-hostile and exploitative,
| there's no shortage of arguments saying it's not conspiracy, it's
| just the market catering for majority use case. So which way is
| it?)
|
| --
|
| EDIT: Three more thoughts.
|
| 1) Of course, the degree of discomfort with sex topics is a
| spectrum. But on this spectrum, sex work and hardcore pornography
| are _one of the extremes_ , not the middle point. Thus, the
| majority being uncomfortable shouldn't be a surprising concept.
|
| 2) I suspect the same thing happens with drugs. There's people
| who are strongly anti-drug, often on religious basis. Then
| there's people who are for everyone (responsibly) ingesting
| whatever they want. But in between, there is - in my experience -
| the majority who's afraid. Afraid of health effects, afraid of
| associations with organized crime, afraid of being shunned by
| others. And so, even legally selling mind-altering substances
| (other than alcohol and cigarettes, which have been normalized
| over centuries) faces the same challenges as sex businesses.
|
| 3) One can say it's religion all way down. Perhaps. Atheism as a
| cultural phenomenon is a very new thing in the history of
| humanity. The way people think about sexuality carries thousands
| of years of baggage. It's not going to change overnight, or over
| investment round, or over election cycle. So I don't think you
| can fix the problems faced by sex workers by telling Visa or
| Mastercard to chill out.
|
| --
|
| [0] - There's no shortage of pundits - secular, religious, and
| religious pretending to be scientific - that make careers out of
| convincing people that porn is bad for you.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > people who find the whole topic uncomfortable to a large
| degree ... they don't like being reminded of it. They don't
| like sex being mixed with other areas of life.
|
| So... ban it for everyone else because _they_ don 't like it?
| Sounds fair and reasonable /s
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's more subtle than that. There's a reason I mentioned
| advertisers :).
|
| The group I posit is the majority are the people who:
|
| - Will want to hide their sexual services related habits from
| others, including their spouses (who may also do the same!).
| Those are the people who cause chargeback risks for sex
| businesses, making the latter undesirable for payment
| processors that are optimizing for majority use case. This is
| reflected in payment processing fees.
|
| - Will dislike products and companies who use overtly sexual
| messaging or associate themselves with sex work, but
| themselves are in business other than sex works. Advertising
| industry is exerting pressure against sexual topics in order
| to not lose access to these people('s wallets). This means
| that any non-sex, ad-funded business faces tremendous market
| pressure to stay away from topics pertaining to sex.
|
| - Will be highly responsible to messaging that porn/sex work
| is dangerous to people's minds/souls, or their children, or
| society. They may not agitate and organize against sex
| business, but when presented with pro- and anti- options (and
| enough propaganda), they'll vote against.
|
| There's no need for any conspiracy, or any large-scale
| organizing here. It's just how the political and economical
| incentive gradient looks.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > economical incentive gradient looks
|
| ... you're forgetting the biggest economical incentive
| gradient - people who are actually throwing money at Only
| Fans, and will immediately throw their money at a
| competitor if one should open.
|
| It's almost like you've forgotten that people _already_ pay
| money for porn online everyday.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| No, I didn't. The thing about startup economy: fast-
| growing companies don't give a damn about losing some of
| their existing paying customers by doing something that
| they see can lead to more growth. As apparently was the
| case with OF, if one is to take their initial porn-ban
| announcement at face value.
| version_five wrote:
| Also interesting that it seems perfectly acceptable to repeat
| the conspiracy theory you mention (I've seen it several times
| here, no opinion on it's validity) but if you stay even
| remotely from other official narratives, you're immediately
| branded a "conspiracy theorist" spreading misinformation and
| shut down.
|
| It's relevant here because of how obviously subjective
| censorship is, which is the strongest argument against it
| pennaMan wrote:
| Instead of asking the payment processor monopoly to censor
| things you don't like you can.... you know.... not indulge in
| things you don't like instead of ruining it for everyone who
| does like it?
|
| The market speaks out with wallets not with hypocritical
| outrage nor moral high grounding nor virtue signaling and
| especially not straight up random censorship of legal
| buisnesses. And last time i checked onlyfans was wildly
| profitable and legal.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Outrage and virtue signalling is mostly noise. It only works
| on businesses when it becomes a credible risk of monetary
| losses.
|
| > _Instead of asking the payment processor monopoly to censor
| things you don 't like_
|
| There's no monopoly here. There are many payment processing
| options, but their differ in their level of service and
| transaction fees. Both of which get better _with scale_. So
| while everyone wants to use the major processors, those
| processors have to cater to majority use case, because that
| 's how they maintain their position and profits.
|
| > _last time i checked onlyfans was wildly profitable and
| legal_
|
| And niche. The OF story is weird in many ways. At this point
| I half suspect it was a PR stunt. But still, it's a fast-
| growing company, and like all such companies, they evolve
| towards being appealing to the masses, because it's the only
| way to continue rapid growth.
| pennaMan wrote:
| So if Visa and Mastercard refuse service to your legal
| business because they don't like you, what options do you
| have?
| vlunkr wrote:
| Agreed, the conspiracy idea here doesnt make sense. Through the
| last few decades puritans have attempted to exert control over
| video games, music, and film and failed at every step. I don't
| know why they would suddenly have this power over banks.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The market also leads to food full of fat and sugar. Without
| strong campaigns against cigarettes, the market would make sure
| it's everywhere. The market also has no problem showing deeply
| violent content to children.
|
| At some point, the status quo was slavery, death penalty, child
| work, women domination and against gays.
|
| Just because if you do nothing the current equilibrium tends in
| some direction doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Of course. I'm not saying the market is right in everything
| "it decides". On the contrary, I think it's usually wrong in
| the long run - it shoots past the social optimum as
| businesses continue to figure out new ways to extract money
| from established things.
|
| Anyway, my point is just that this may _just_ be market at
| work, and not some conspiracy or minority exerting undue
| influence over society.
|
| (And my second point is that, for the same reason, I don't
| buy the argument that shitty technology is good because that
| what sells with most people.)
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > There's this common meme of blaming anti-sex-work sentiment
| on some bloc of US Evangelicals who secretly rule the Western
| economy and politics. Because surely, it couldn't be the market
| speaking out against adult material?
|
| Strangely, the same evangelicals that are being allegedly
| discriminated against, and de-platformed [1], and their right-
| wing jewish allies [2] are also the same evangelicals that are
| controlling the big platforms, and through NCOSE, creating a
| pressure campaign [3] to form porn removal? That the Right Wing
| is executing this, and controlling this, for anti-porn? [4]
|
| I don't think this is particularly credible, but I did include
| [3] & [4] for the contrary perspective.
|
| A more realistic answer is that Nicholas Kristof, a well-known
| NYTimes reporter and author, wrote an interesting piece on
| Pornhub that also indicting several others for rebroadcasting
| non-consensual sex videos [5]. This led to pressure on the
| market in general around payment processors handling things of
| less repute because of #MeToo
|
| > The market caters to majority case. Advertisers, especially,
| cater to majority. In such hypothetical world (which I posit
| might just be the real one), the market itself will exert
| pressure against overt pornography and sex work, and anything
| that associates itself with it.
|
| Well said.
|
| If the era of #MeToo has taught us anything, it should be that
| one person's sexual freedom to make a buck is another's sexual
| coercion and exploitation. In the grey between those two truths
| there will be casualties.
|
| [1] https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/02/27/financial-
| blacklis...
|
| [2] https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/visa-finally-
| gets...
|
| [3] https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/08/conservative-
| christ...
|
| [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/opinion/onlyfans-porn-
| sex...
|
| [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-
| ra...
| luckylion wrote:
| It makes sense for platforms like Youtube ("advertisers don't
| want to have their brand associated with $topic because it's
| controversial"), but it makes less sense in terms of payment
| providers. Is the majority who supposedly prefers to keep
| anything surrounding sex in private pressuring Visa to not work
| with OF?
|
| The theory that payments with OF have more charge-backs and
| that's why they are going after them is plausible to me. From
| what I understand, there's a lot of blatantly false
| advertising/severe buyer's remorse on OF.
| uda wrote:
| I actually agree with the term "Unaccountable". Sure, the banks
| have their boards and share holders, so do the tech companies.
|
| The question is not whether they have internal accountability,
| but rather if they have public accountability to their declared
| statements, their stated mission and non-written guarantees given
| by officials to the public.
|
| Many companies like these paint themselves as for-public, while I
| know and so do you, that is not true, but companies should be
| held accountable for the image they try to portray, they should
| be held accountable for public announcements no matter the
| personnel change.
|
| So yes, the platforms and banks have unaccountable power, given
| by us the public, based on false promises and sales pitches. And
| we the public have the power to stops that, by making them
| accountable, but we are the ones who have to do that, by pointing
| the finger at the root decision makers in those monstrous
| structures of organizations.
| instagraham wrote:
| The real OnlyFans scandal is the friends we made along the way
| Causality1 wrote:
| It's incredible to me that a private business can discriminate so
| wantonly while also being fully supported by the FDIC.
| tobylane wrote:
| Is it either a form of discrimination that doesn't line up with
| any protected class, or a bona fide discrimination against
| areas that have a high chargeback rate?
|
| I'm interested in how much the morals we don't like line up
| with the cold stats we would follow.
| willis936 wrote:
| Sex workers are effectively a subset of women. I'm not sure
| if this qualifies as a protected class. My personal sense of
| justice leads me to think that there should be _some_ amount
| of protection for any worker, even if the powers that be
| disagree.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted. I've never heard any
| definition of 'class' that would make sex workers one. It's
| a profession, not a class.
| leeroyjenkins11 wrote:
| They've been doing it with firearms manufacturers and retailers
| for a while.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that discrimination on the part of
| banks was _required_ by the government.
| mc32 wrote:
| Right? It's the old, they're a private enterprise, they can
| kick you off their platform if they want to (AWS, GoDaddy, for
| example, or even YouTube).
| the-dude wrote:
| My comment from another thread : _Dutch banks terminated accounts
| of Corona-critics / anti-vax'ers / conspiracy nuts ( you choose
| how to call them )._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28301199
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| Seems like you conveniently forgot the word "organisations".
| the-dude wrote:
| Why does that matter?
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| Why did you remove it if it doesn't matter?
| the-dude wrote:
| I didn't remove anything. What I wrote is just my attempt
| at translation, while I am not fixated at orgs like you
| seem to be.
|
| Why don't you answer the question instead of insinuating
| I have ulterior motives?
| PeterisP wrote:
| There is a big difference between cutting off financial
| services for organizations and people; in general, in
| business-to-business relations organizations are free to
| serve only whom they wish, but individuals (unlike
| organizations) deserve protection from discrimination, and
| having access to core banking services is considered an
| important right for individuals in EU.
|
| Dutch banks denying accounts to someone because they are a
| conspiracy nut would be big news; even someone who's
| declared bankruptcy and is currently sitting in jail after
| being convicted for fraud would have the right to a basic
| bank account.
| the-dude wrote:
| I never claimed big news, I just posted an analogue case
| where a bank holds power over an org, in a thread about
| banks holding power over orgs.
|
| What is your point?
| PeterisP wrote:
| Because your quote in the post above is literally a lie
| due to omission of that key word - no, dutch banks did
| _not_ terminate the accounts of any Corona-critics /
| anti-vax'ers / conspiracy nuts (the obvious/natural
| reading of that sentence implies they blocked accounts of
| people like that), they just terminated accounts of some
| organizations. As currently written, that quote asserts
| that banks not only hold power over orgs but also hold
| equivalent power over "undesirable" people, which is not
| true and would be very worrying (and relevant to this
| discussion) if true, so I feel that I must contest that
| misleading quote.
| [deleted]
| freemint wrote:
| Because organizations can be refounded, desolved while
| humans can't be. An organization is a vehicle for purpose.
| Humans aren't a vehicles for a purpose.
| the-dude wrote:
| Why is that relevant in the context of OnlyFans, which is
| an org too. I just posted an analogue case.
| freemint wrote:
| You are correct, the difference i would point to is that
| sex work is real work and should not be marginalized
| while spreading mental malware for self enrichment that
| causes harm to society should be marginalized. This is
| simply an result of utilitarian calculus to me. If you
| don't subscribe to that ethical system that is your
| choice and i am not going to convince you otherwise.
|
| Decriminalization of sex leads to less suffering for
| prostitues and better health for the customers (they way
| Germany accomplishes the second thing is not ideal, like
| requiring even blowjobs to be performed with condoms but
| that's a tangent).
|
| Criminalization of anti vaccine speech (similar how
| holocaust denial is illegal in Germany, only high profile
| cases are really prosecuted) would lead to better
| discussion about vaccine risks, better vaccination rates,
| less death and fewer fights within families due to
| intellectual malware.
|
| I am also for a criminalization of climate change denial
| as it also a form of genocide denial which violates the
| human dignity of future generations. Note that in German
| law statements of facts are exempt from that. Only
| statements which are univocally false, so they can't
| contribute positively to societal dialog and deny human
| dignity to a protected group or statements which are to
| made to inspire violance against a protected group are
| subject to these kind of laws. If you say "No jews were
| persecuted under the third reich" you are commiting
| holocaust denial. I would propose that "emissions of man
| made CO2 don't impact the climate", "CO2 emissions will
| be completly absorbed by more green growth so there will
| be no impact on the climate" or "climate change or
| unlimited CO2 emissions will not lead the displacement of
| people in costal regions due to raising sea levels" can
| be prosecuted.
|
| Is that a limit on free speech? Yes and i am fine with
| that as there are positive and negative freedoms. The
| moment where speech violates the human dignity of other
| groups of people it should be limited.
| coding123 wrote:
| Isn't this what we made btc for
| Kiro wrote:
| It is but people on Hacker News refuse to acknowledge this
| because they are angry that they missed out. Techies "who
| should have known" are embarrassed and jealous so they do
| everything in their power to dismiss BTC.
| imtringued wrote:
| >It is but people on Hacker News refuse to acknowledge this
| because they are angry that they missed out.
|
| Maybe you shouldn't create a money system where it is
| possible to miss out? The fact that regular working people do
| not want to subsidize "investors" is a pretty strong
| incentive to avoid Bitcoin altogether.
| ephbit wrote:
| Isn't it a mostly unavoidable characteristic of p2p
| distributed systems (when they're not introduced top down
| by governments) that they grow from "practically zero
| users" to (maybe) mass adoption?
|
| I'd think that it's almost inherent for any currency like
| technology that - over the course of its adoption process -
| the value goes through various phases of increase. At least
| for currencies with deflationary supply.
|
| There might be blockchain based cryptocurrencies out there
| that try to prevent early adopters from becoming
| excessively rich mostly out of luck, but apparently these
| alternatives lack the incentive to even get to wide
| adoption.
|
| Yes, early adopters would become unfairly rich, were
| bitcoin to make it to wide adoption ... but something makes
| me hope that a btc wealth distribution with Gini
| coefficient close to 1 would be a temporary thing. A phase
| that the whole thing would pass through towards a less
| unequal distribution, where the increase in value and thus
| the aspect of speculation would become less relevant and
| the aspect of btc as a payment system or value store would
| become more relevant.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Haven't we been seeing this same scandal over the past couple of
| years? Personally I hate some of the political content that has
| been deplatformed, but every time one gets shut down, something
| about that process just doesn't sit right with me.
| quotemstr wrote:
| This is rich coming from The Guardian, which for years has been
| in favor of private actors censoring their ideological opponents.
| Today, when _their_ face is getting eaten by leopards, they 're
| worried about "unaccountable power", but tomorrow, they'll be
| demanding others be kicked off the internet.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly. They now start crying when it happens to others that
| they support, when the whole entire point is that this can
| happen to anyone; as these private companies are on the side of
| profit.
|
| Sometimes, they only learn who really is in charge as soon as
| it happens to them which is always when it is too late.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| The Guardian has no problem with the unaccountable power of
| platforms and banks.
|
| The Guardian merely has a problem with this particular
| application of it.
| ghomrassen wrote:
| Bingo.
| sarabad2021 wrote:
| Absolutely true. Whoever is downvoting leave a comment to
| explain. Are we okay with banks discriminating against free
| speech but not against porn?
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| What is to explain?
|
| The article is an Opinion and not representative of The
| Guardian. It is written by Jillian C York, the author of
| Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance
| Capitalism.
|
| Trying to conflate this opinion piece with The Guardian
| itself is dumb and shows a failure to understand what an
| Opinion is.
| throwjd764glug wrote:
| So the Guardian also has a comparable number of Opinion
| pieces decrying the financial censorship of sites like
| amren.com? Since, as you claim, what they choose to publish
| under Opinion is completely unrelated to their ideals.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| What's your point? That someone at the Guardian does not
| share your personal opinion?
|
| As for me, I'm not okay with either banks discriminating
| against free speech and banks discriminating against porn.
| For example, I was vigorously against banks blocking
| Wikileaks payments. Therefore, I'm fine with the Guardian
| article.
| gadders wrote:
| What about banning Proud Boy accounts or Gab/Andrew Torba?
| ghomrassen wrote:
| _crickets_
| [deleted]
| theelous3 wrote:
| As far as I was aware, the main reason banks don't want to deal
| with porn is the huge rate of chargebacks that occur.
|
| Post nut clarity is apparently a financial problem.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I suspect post wife-noticed-the-charge clarity is a bigger
| issue.
| xtat wrote:
| Imagine a world where banks actually tried to solve problems
| odiroot wrote:
| It's not only chargebacks, it's also stolen credit cards being
| used on porn sites to "launder" the money.
| theelous3 wrote:
| Sure - I guess I should have said disputes.
| draw_down wrote:
| Post nut clarity will not suddenly come into effect beginning
| October 1 2021.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| They could make the credit card more save, so it wouldn't be so
| much a problem.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I thought it was a side effect of "know your customer". Sex
| work is high risk because it's adjacent to trafficking
| (organized crime) and underage workers result in CP. It's very
| difficult to determine if every amateur sex worker is a
| consenting adult.
| pavedwalden wrote:
| Businesses with high chargeback rates might get rejected by
| some payment processors, but there's usually another one
| willing to take them on in exchange for higher fees.
| draw_down wrote:
| Of course people skipped right over this to make their tired
| political points about Republicans hating women
| peterparkour wrote:
| Silly me, thinking the real scandal is that our daughters are
| forced to sell nudes to survive.
| imtringued wrote:
| Those nudes fuel property values so it is all good.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Many businesses cannot hire enough employees. Everywhere I walk
| I see help wanted signs. Hourly rates are going up.
|
| Are they being forced to sell something, or a conscious choice?
| harry8 wrote:
| How does the wages increase with help wanted signs compare to
| the rent increase in the last decade or two in your
| annecdotes? Food? Health insurance? Student debt repayments?
|
| I don't know i just want to see real data before condemning
| anyone at all.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Here is some real data. Right now, the inflation adjusted
| median weekly earnings for people 16+ is essentially at
| it's highest point ever. Much higher than it was 30 or 40
| years ago.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
| imtringued wrote:
| That's a new problem. The problem he is talking about existed
| for thousands of years.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| This issue happens evey decade or so. Last time it was wikileaks
| and VPNs being delisted by american credit card companies. That
| popularized cryptocurency and saw bitcoin rise as a censorship-
| beating payment system. And last week i signed up for a VPNs
| using my visa without issue. After that they went after
| filesharing platforms like rapidshare. Now "file lockers" are
| called "cloud storage" and are a normal online service. This time
| they are going after porn, an old favorite for US companies to
| hate. It will again come to nothing.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| The centralized financial system is a weak point, and those in
| power are more than happy to utilize it ala Operation Choke
| Point.[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
| ehinson wrote:
| It's odd to me that people, such as the author of the Guardian
| article, so casually find the origin of the censorship in
| 'surveillance capitalism' or corporations, even as they also
| hold that corporations are singularly motivated by money.
|
| The existence of Operation Choke Point makes pretty clear that
| in fact a self-appointed group of questing govt officials are
| the ones motivated to impose censorship. The existence of
| monopoly financial platforms give them the means.
| float4 wrote:
| > for these corporations this is not a matter of free expression,
| as it ought to be, but one of morality
|
| Is it _really_ true that banks block transactions related to sex
| work because they are morally against it? Last time I checked
| banks just want to make money. This is a genuine question by the
| way.
|
| > But just a few weeks in, Twitch shut it down after a change of
| policy that included, among other things, a ban on visible
| nipples for those who "present as women". At a time when societal
| views around gender and sexuality are in many ways opening up,
| restrictions on sexual expression [...] feel positively archaic
| and seem to demonstrate that [...] there remain highly
| unaccountable powers making decisions about how we express
| something so utterly natural and human.
|
| Although I fully support the free the nipple movement, I can
| absolutely understand that a streaming platform wants to ban
| nudity / sexual content. Sure, sex is natural and normal, but
| compared to other human behaviour it is still in a league of its
| own.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| My understanding is that banks don't really care about sex. At
| least the one I worked for didn't seem to care. They will take
| all the money they can get. The more they have, the more they
| can lend out based on the fractional reserve system. They do
| care if people are not investing money in their banks and there
| are investors that don't wish to be associated with adult
| related organizations.
|
| Perhaps there is a way to shield investors from this
| association without cutting off adult content businesses?
| imtringued wrote:
| >The more they have, the more they can lend out based on the
| fractional reserve system.
|
| Although the name fractional reserve might be correct it is
| highly misleading as to how modern banking actually
| functions. Practically speaking banks are limited by the
| availability of solvent debtors.
|
| Colloquial language is describing an ancient process that is
| no longer in use. Debtors are people who promise to work,
| they sign a contract that they will pay in the future. That
| debt contract called a bond is an asset of the bank, it is a
| future income stream just like the share of a company. In
| exchange the debtor obtains a liquid form of his debt
| contract. The bank grants credit equal to the principal owed
| in the contract.
|
| Essentially, bank money is just a share in the bonds that the
| bank owns. It's almost equivalent to buying a bond ETF whose
| share price is fixed to $1. The profits of the bonds are then
| distributed through interest rates. Now, the big question is,
| what happens when the bank is losing money because the bonds
| are worthless (think 2008)? It does not pass on the losses
| because of the free deposit insurance program that the
| government pays for. In fact, the incentive is to write as
| many (possibly bad) loans as the bank can get away with. Add
| onto the fact that US dollars are a shared currency among
| private banks, you get a pee in the pool scenario...
|
| The central bank then engages in QE which is basically the
| act of transferring the bonds to the central bank and now
| private banks have a metaphorical share in the bonds the
| central bank owns. If there are 10 banks and 1 with 50% bad
| loans then after QE there are 10 banks with 5% bad loans. The
| central bank has the pee now and diluted it to the point the
| pee is no longer noticeable.
|
| Of course, the "correct" solution is to just lower the value
| credit. That's usually done via inflation but the problem is
| that this "after the fact" inflation must be done through
| government spending. Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the
| value of credit the same just pass on losses directly? That
| would imply negative interest rates. In practice it doesn't
| work because cash gives a risk free 0% return which forces
| returns on every investment to be above 0% to justify the
| investment and that includes 0% interest rates on bank
| accounts. Essentially, inflation targeting only exists to
| allow representation of negative real interest rates on cash.
| It's a huge hack.
|
| I wanted to limit it to the first paragraph but I felt it
| would be too difficult to understand without further
| explanation.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Are chargeback rates higher for porn businesses?
|
| If so, that alone could be a reason to stop servicing them.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Chargebacks are more common in adult businesses and banks
| often eat some of this cost. This puts more onus on the
| banking customers to implement some protections and ID
| verification that may be seen as cumbersome to small
| businesses, startups, etc... There are banking and credit
| sites that provide tips and techniques to minimize charge-
| backs. Banks can also help businesses learn how to
| implement these measures, but admittedly there is still an
| operating cost to this. Here is a past thread talking about
| some aspects of these issues. [1]
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538460
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Price it into their fees.
| roenxi wrote:
| We know exactly what lengths the bankers are willing to go to
| when securing a profit. The leadership environment literally
| selects for the sort of people who are willing to throw a
| family out of their home because the financial implications
| don't make sense. They aren't fuzzy, friendly "forgive the debt
| because of religious teachings" people.
|
| There is no way there is a moral stand here, the idea is
| absurd. They're locking out sex work because some regulation is
| making it risky for them. Or maybe the charge-back issue. But
| probably regulation.
| danaris wrote:
| Or, perhaps, fear of the political bloc that is Evangelical
| Protestantism in the US?
|
| I am not aware of any existing regulations that would make
| this particularly risky for the banks. I _am_ aware of a very
| vocal minority that wants to limit sex to heterosexual and
| procreative (and ideally not fun at all), and then only when
| the man wants it.
| fossuser wrote:
| This is probably the regulation you're unaware of:
| https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-
| traf...
|
| I suspect the increased liability risk is the main cause of
| what we're seeing.
| pydry wrote:
| They're reacting to regulations designed specifically to make
| it too much of a headache for them to service these customers.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Webcam porn sites seem to be doing quite well. If Twitch
| would suddenly allow nudity, the chance that they get
| sidetracked is high - just compare OF and Patreon. They offer
| basically the same thing, but Patreon is rather strict on
| porn and OF is known for only porn.
| fossuser wrote:
| This is also my understanding - though I think it's mostly a
| side effect of the regulation (which is intended to increase
| the liability around enabling sex trafficking).
|
| The article mentions this, but I agree with pessimizer that
| the article seems to get the causality backwards.
|
| I also agree with float4 re: why platforms may not want
| sexual content. I'm sensing some agenda driven motivated
| reasoning behind this article that's being used to shoehorn
| the events into its frame.
|
| There is something to centralized software companies and
| payment processors being in a position to do this at all
| though (whether required by regulation or not). Both
| blockchain based protocols that create decentralized
| incentive structures like Audius, and (non-blockchain)
| approaches like Urbit (along with just regular crypto) help
| to solve this problem. I'd bet this is what will enable them
| to be more resilient in the long run.
|
| https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit
| pydry wrote:
| >This is also my understanding - though I think it's mostly
| a side effect of the regulation (which is intended to
| increase the liability around enabling sex trafficking).
|
| Sex trafficking is the _flagship_ target of these
| regulations but it 's fairly obvious from their messaging
| that the original lobbyists are trying to shut down sex
| work of all kinds and using sex trafficking as an excuse.
| PixelOfDeath wrote:
| I feel the influence of the "Christian Taliban" in the ranks
| of the US government gets underestimated.
| anon19876 wrote:
| Ah, yes, the "Christian Taliban" that is beheading those
| that disagree with it in broad daylight and broadcasting
| those beheadings to the rest of the world. Here's a tip: if
| you want to be persuasive, try using a little less
| hyperbole. There may be a point to be made here about the
| influence of organized religion on U.S. laws, but you're
| alienating even those who would be willing to listen to
| your point by drawing such an absurd equivalence.
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-
| attack...
|
| "Since 1977 there have been eight murders, 17 attempted
| murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons targeted at abortion
| clinics and providers across the United States."
|
| It's not on the same scale, but the faction clearly
| exists that would do it if they could get away with it.
| Noos wrote:
| ...in 40 years. This is indistinguishable from random
| people being nutcases imo; you use the numbers to try and
| make them scarier than they are.
| Smashure wrote:
| I see someone already put a link up, but extremism is
| extremism and the Christian extremism in the U.S.
| parallels Islamic extremism quite a bit. Including openly
| murdering those you disagree with.
| luckylion wrote:
| This feels like "yeah, gang crime is kind of like the
| Holocaust -- people die".
|
| There's really no similarity, and pretending otherwise is
| just trivializing the Taliban.
| [deleted]
| gregd wrote:
| So do I have to be THAT guy?
|
| Fine.
|
| Crypto solves this issue...
| pentae wrote:
| If your hypothesis was true everyone in the industry would
| already be billing for it
|
| Crypto will have to overcome these hurdles first:
|
| - Slower and more difficult to use (especially compared to
| saved CC auto-complete)
|
| - No rebills (the biggest problem)
|
| - No credit
|
| - No payment protection
| shadilay wrote:
| Crypto moves the problem to the exchanges. It doesn't solve it.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| These people, especially in porn, live by impulsive spending
| (buying the subscription, sending tips). The high delay and
| extremely large sign-up burden [0], combined with the fees,
| would probably ruin a lot of their income. Remember, they
| compete with a free offering.
|
| [0] Most people don't own crypto yet, so they'd need to learn
| about it, create an exchange account, verify it, fill it up and
| then they can pay. Compare that to two minutes of entering cc
| information.
| chii wrote:
| CC also went through a similar transformation that crypto
| would have to.
|
| The problem is that noone wants to take the risk to transform
| crypto into as convenient a service as credit cards, when
| credit cards have such a first-mover advantage.
| PeterisP wrote:
| A key reason for the cost of the CC payment infrastructure
| is that these costs were instrumental in solving the
| chicken/egg problem of adoption by ensuring that there's
| enough money/kickback/etc for all the infrastructure
| partners to market cards and offer various benefits to get
| both the cards in the consumers pockets and also terminals
| rolled out at merchants. Noone wants to take the risk to
| transform crypto into as convenient a service as credit
| cards because crypto is decentralized enough so that no
| organization can feel sure that _they_ (as opposed to
| everyone else) will see enough payout (e.g. lucrative lock-
| in, skimming part of every transaction) to justify the
| quite immense and risky long-term investment required to
| push consumer adoption.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Many companies do want to solve that problem, but they're
| hampered by the conventional financial system which really
| doesn't like interfacing with anything crypto related.
| ajross wrote:
| It really doesn't. Crypto solves anonymity, making it possible
| for operations to take payments in ways that can't be regulated
| based on content.
|
| It doesn't solve trust. In fact existing solutions fall way,
| way, short of what consumers already have. A provider that
| accepts crypto is 100% unaccountable. You can't do a chargeback
| on Bitcoin. You get what you get once you make that payment.
|
| Now, it's true that there is an ever growing stable of
| technologies trying repeatedly to solve the trust problem on
| top of a crypto base. And none have been remotely successful in
| any market. Almost all have significant drawbacks. Some have
| included absolute whoppers of security bugs.
|
| You have to crack that second part before declaring that
| "crypto solves this". Until then, you aren't going to see any
| successful small payment markets on this stuff.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| What does this have to do with trust? Clearly the current
| users trust OnlyFans, and I doubt very many people are
| worried they're going to disappear in the middle of the night
| and turn off the porn.
|
| "Yeah I'll throw $50 into this OnlyFans subscription, but
| only if I can get a chargeback if I'm not happy with the
| performer" said nobody ever.
| ajross wrote:
| It's a stack, though. Sure, no sex work consumer ever said
| that[1], but their bank sure as hell did. Which is why they
| had a handy credit card in their pocket with which they
| were able to easily pay OnlyFans, who were able to easily
| receive the transaction. It's about _TRUST_. Banks and
| consumers and providers work together to come up with a
| framework where fraud is so difficult as to be largely a
| vanishing concern for routine transactions.
|
| And that's what you need in the crypto world. It's not
| enough to have anonymity. It's just not. And that's why
| this hasn't been solved yet. Keep at it.
|
| [1] Actually some did, who was the starlet that produced a
| giant chargeback flood a while back by promising nudity she
| didn't deliver? I'm not the expert but I remember the
| story.
| treebot wrote:
| The lack of charge back is really a small issue. I don't
| think it applies here. Crypto does solve this problem.
| Even if there's the lack of charge back, it still
| overcomes the censorship problem, which traditional
| systems do not. So do you want censorship + charge back?
| Or no censorship and no charge back? In this case, I
| think it's clearly the latter.
| ajross wrote:
| You're missing the point. "Chargeback" happens to be a
| mechanism that exists to promote trust in the market.
| Trust is the requirement, not mechanism. Right now no one
| uses crypto to send folks $20 a month for n00dz. Period.
| No one does this. Why?
|
| Trust. Crypto providers don't trust they won't be hacked.
| Crypto consumers don't trust they aren't being scammed.
| There's no trust.
|
| But their Visa card or OnlyFans account? Those they
| trust. Credit card billing has been around for decades
| and we all know it works.
|
| Crypto needs to be like that. Address the Trust Problem.
| Stop fixating on anonymity.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The traditional banking mechanisms are designed to pull
| money from accounts. That requires a way to correct
| errors and fraud. If the only way to transact is for a
| verified account owner to push the money out, a
| chargeback isn't needed as much.
| amalcon wrote:
| It's probably more like "I'll throw $50 into this OnlyFans
| subscription, but only if I can get a chargeback if it's
| actually just a bunch of cat pictures." There's a lot of
| scams on the internet, adult industry or no.
| rvz wrote:
| > It really doesn't. Crypto solves anonymity.
|
| Depends on the cryptocurrency. If you're talking about Monero
| then yes.
|
| As for the others, they are far less private than you think
| and the majority of cryptocurrencies out there can still be
| traced.
| ajross wrote:
| Heh, and intra-crypto wars like this are one of the reasons
| the Trust Problem hasn't been cracked yet. People are too
| busy trying to fix the part that's already solved!
|
| I mean, look. Yes, there are ways to trace bitcoin et. al.
| given some level of sophistication. But the threat model
| isn't an intelligence agency trying to unmask a single porn
| consumer or cam worker. These technologies are "anonymous
| enough" so that an outfit like OnlyFans can reliably take
| payment from arbitrary consumers without fear of regulatory
| interference. This part really is solved. It's just not
| enough.
| xtat wrote:
| came here to say this
| ziml77 wrote:
| At least with Bitcoin, it's costly to pay privately. I need to
| set up another wallet and then get funding into it in a way
| that isn't linked to my main wallet. That involves either
| giving cash to an exchange or sending the money through a
| tumbler. There's fees to pay the exchange or tumbler, fees paid
| to the miners for the transfer into the wallet, and then fees
| paid to the miners for the transfers out of the wallet (and
| another fee paid the miners for the tumbler since there's 2
| legs to that transfer).
| mhb wrote:
| Don't checks and other payment mechanisms also solve this
| problem? Obviously not as conveniently as Mastercard or Visa,
| but it is disingenuous to assert that credit cards have a
| monopoly on _payments_.
| Smashure wrote:
| Checks are slow and can be faked or scammed.
|
| Sending cash also wouldn't work.
|
| MasterCard and Visa had a strong monopoly on instant
| transactions at a distance. They fought PayPal quite a bit in
| the beginning as it encroached on their monopoly.
|
| Thankfully crypto has solved this monopoly
| mhb wrote:
| Yes. There's a cost to checks just like there's a cost to
| using credit cards. The slowness of checks can be mitigated
| by offering some sort of access until the check clears. I'm
| sure there are plenty of creative types who can figure out
| how to _route around_ the credit card problem. Also checks,
| credit cards and crypto aren 't the only payment options.
| [deleted]
| fnord77 wrote:
| wait until Joe Coomer finds out there's a $17 network fee to
| send $10 worth of btc to a performer.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| The decision was reversed due to public pressure, so how
| unaccountable are they, really?
|
| And even before that, the decision was made because they were
| afraid of public opinion. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to
| refuse to do business that generates revenue. The credit card
| companies' puritanical values are a reflection of what they think
| public opinion, among the public that matters to them, is.
|
| They were wrong, or at least outdated, or maybe online sex
| workers just somehow happen to be better at PR than evangelical
| christians. But (trying to) follow public opinion isn't
| unaccountability, it's the opposite.
| chii wrote:
| The fact that they have the option to make this decision is the
| problem - a payment system _should not_ have the option to cut
| someone off, without a warrant from a court.
|
| This isn't allowed for utilities, why not the same for payment
| systems?
| gruez wrote:
| >a payment system _should not_ have the option to cut someone
| off, without a warrant from a court.
|
| That seems like a high standard considering that AML laws
| require them to proactively block transactions.
|
| >This isn't allowed for utilities, why not the same for
| payment systems?
|
| because utilities usually have some sort of monopoly
| granted/enforced by the state.
| monsecchris wrote:
| It's tremendously easy to be concerned about unaccountable power
| opposing your own narrative.
| imtringued wrote:
| It's just the usual progression of authoritarianism.
|
| First they come for your enemies, then your neighbors, then
| your friends and family and then they come for you.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| I was thinking of this just the other day. Just the past few
| weeks, Apple with CSAM, OnlyFans getting between people and their
| fans/clients. All of these big corporate moves are making me
| think more and more of decentralization of platforms. Is that
| coming?
| chii wrote:
| > Is that coming?
|
| the fact that it's decentralized means you will not be told -
| and it's on yourself to buy in and be part of.
| HKH2 wrote:
| The revolution will not be televised?
| version_five wrote:
| This is an important observation. People (myself included)
| are tired of the power exerted by large corporations with
| centralized platforms, while at the same time, we're just
| waiting around for another large centralized platform to come
| and save us.
|
| I have no idea how to get started, but I agree with you, the
| onus is on people to do something different, not just to
| complain about it.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > All of these big corporate moves are making me think more and
| more of decentralization of platforms. Is that coming?
|
| Absolutely not. Decentralized and self-hosted alternatives to
| doing anything on the internet have been available since the
| beginning, but
|
| 1) people choose convenience, every single time
|
| 2) popular things get popular
|
| 3) corpos have what it takes to make a thing popular
|
| 4) popular things get popular among the audience because all
| the content is there
|
| 5) popular things get popular among the "content creators"
| because all the audience is there
|
| 6) it's hard to make an artificially popular decentralized
| service without centralized investment into it; platforms that
| rely on individual users meshing their internet connections and
| $5 VPSes start small and stay niche
|
| 7) central investing into a platform without moderation and
| censorship is very risky, so it's unlikely to happen and if it
| does happen, it's likely to draw the same fire from banks,
| hosting providers, regulators, etc.
|
| 8) any platform that offers moderation and censorship and gets
| big enough will eventually get between what people want and
| those who provide that
|
| 9) lots of people actually want moderation and censorship, not
| freedom
|
| 10) the "scene" behind decentralized stuff is also divided on
| the issue of moderation
|
| 11) if a decentralized platform with no moderation were indeed
| to get big, it would again draw fire from various parties (see
| how various file sharing protocols and sites died)
|
| There's more to it but point is, a "big" decentralized platform
| cannot happen (or at least cannot last) unless it also has a
| central entity that wields the power to do the same things that
| happen on centralized platforms. And people really just want to
| use one big platform.
|
| And it's not a technical issue, it's a social & political
| issue.
|
| To make a system that won't bend under the powers that be,
| people would also have to accept that they're hosting child
| porn, terrorist materials, drug trafficking, and other fun
| stuff. That's never going to happen.
|
| The alternative is decentralized platforms that are and stay
| niche. They exist already, they've existed since the beginning.
| Are you using them, or are you just using the big few popular
| centralized platforms? I'm guessing you're not using them
| because "Is that coming?" kind of implies you think it's
| something that doesn't exist yet.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| Brilliantly put.
| bob229 wrote:
| The guardian is absolute trash. No serious person ever reads it
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| The banks do this as counter measure to human behavior, eg.
| Spouse , wife, family finds out about porn payment and then the
| people deny they have made the payment. Or sometimes an
| unauthorized family member or friend uses it to pay porn. Another
| scenario is porn pages doing dodgy monthly subscription charges.
|
| All these lead to chargebacks.
|
| It's simply not worth it for the banks, it's bad for everyone
| involved.
|
| It happens more frequently in porn, it has its own risk category,
| so to say. And most bank regulations are globally similar, so no
| surprises there. Most transactions have a trajectory between many
| correspondence banks and none of them wants to deal with
| chargebacks.
|
| Source, worked in chb department.
| pentae wrote:
| 'Friendly' fraud is a problem that was supposed to be solved
| with 3D Secure (Verified by Visa etc) but it still doesn't
| protect merchants for billing code 5967 which is what anything
| involving adult sites is typically billed on.
|
| If Visa/MC wanted to fix this problem they could overnight, but
| they refuse to.
| [deleted]
| rob_c wrote:
| Looks like the same thing as wikileaks to me. A combination of
| bad optics and lawyers getting involved causing a monopolistic
| supplier to pull their services.
|
| Doubt this has much to do with MasterCard attacking the adult
| industry, it looks more like they want to strongly protect their
| existing stranglehold on the payment systems. Anything which
| impacts the way they're seen costs them real actually money I'd
| bet at their scale.
| Guthur wrote:
| Oh please come on, stop with the monopoly rhetoric Only Fans is
| no where near a monopoly. It just comes across as truly naive
| to throw that term around in every conversation.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they mean the payment provider are the
| monopolistic service.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I read monopoly above as credit card processing, not
| OnlyFans.
| rob_c wrote:
| AFAIK only fans doesn't provide services to MasterCard as an
| entity... I think that would be a scandal I'd enjoy reading
| if that's the case.
| colordrops wrote:
| This is still attacking the adult industry. You are just
| suggesting alternative motivations.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Welcome to cancel culture.I can recommend some reading to get
| caught up.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| This article completely misses the causes of the rule changes.
| Banks and payment processes pushed new rules _because_ they were
| being held accountable. The changes were all implemented in
| response to hugely influential NYT opinion piece on PornHub in
| December [1] that specifically called out payment processors, and
| preempted a BBC investigation into OnlyFans that was hinted to do
| the same [2].
|
| The conversation here should about how rulemaking via media
| outrage is a problem given the public has conflicting morals.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-
| ra...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58255865
| hamstergene wrote:
| Accountability by definition requires proper accounting
| practices. There should be level-headed discussions, legal
| actions, and punishment proportional to the wrongdoing.
|
| Taking damage from public outrage is being lynched, coerced,
| blackmailed, retaliated, scapegoated, it is being anything but
| held accountable.
|
| The author is talking about having power to discriminate
| anyone's business via private corporate decision. It seems OK
| in the context of sex trafficking/CP because we know those are
| bad things, but the power is not limited to any of that, and
| that is unaccountability.
| tqi wrote:
| Yeah this piece seems to forget that the Guardian[1] was also
| very critical of Pornhub when the NYT story came out. It seems
| like their position is that neither a completely hands off
| approach or a complete ban is acceptable, and that the only
| moral path is to allow the good and police the bad with perfect
| precision and recall.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/16/pornhu...
| treebot wrote:
| The strange thing is these problems are already solved through
| cryptocurrency and decentralized social media. We just need more
| adoption of decentralized platforms. To me, as I hear about these
| centralization problems more and more, it seems like
| decentralized platforms are the future.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| It's interesting to see the comments from people who supported
| Youtube/Twitter/FB/Patreon/Visa political censorship, but are
| suddenly against the porn censorship by the payment same systems.
|
| "Rules for thee, but not for me."
| spacebear wrote:
| Many sex workers have been warning against political censorship
| for exactly this reason:
| https://thehill.com/policy/technology/532137-sex-workers-war...
| enumjorge wrote:
| > people who supported... political censorship
|
| That's a pretty loaded statement. It's strange to me that
| someone can take a provable fact (e.g. COVID-19 is real),
| politicize it, and now spreading that misinformation is painted
| as political speech that should be protected.
| version_five wrote:
| Right, the "other people should stop politicizing it and just
| do what I say" argument
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| A girl pleasuring herself isn't the same thing as encouraging
| people to storm the White House and overthrow democracy, I'm
| confused why you would interpolate the two. It is just more
| fuel for the argument that America has always been so
| uncomfortable and Puritan with sex and way too comfortable with
| violence.
| [deleted]
| ufmace wrote:
| Are you talking about the time that BLM tried to storm the
| White House?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-
| moved...
| enumjorge wrote:
| Did you read your own article? A few people broke away from
| a peaceful protest and trespassed. In what reality is that
| even close to a huge mob breaking into the Capitol building
| with such force that they killed a cop and injured several
| others?
|
| Its also a bit of a non-sequitur to the thread's
| discussion.
| ufmace wrote:
| I'd say your comment is a non-sequitur. Did you read the
| post that I responded to? He explicitly said the White
| House, not the Capitol. Nobody mentioned the Capitol
| except you.
|
| Speaking of, no cops were killed by the Capitol
| protestors. See https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-
| sicknick-capitol-riot-die..., the medical examiner
| determined that he died of natural causes unrelated to
| his duties. Please don't spread fake news.
| [deleted]
| jsiepkes wrote:
| > A girl pleasuring herself isn't the same thing as
| encouraging people to storm the White House and overthrow
| democracy
|
| That comparison doesn't work because calling to storm the
| Whitehouse is calling on people to perform an illegal act
| which is illegal by itself. I think everyone is in agreement
| that platforms should remove content that is illegal.
| rvz wrote:
| > I think everyone is in agreement that platforms should
| remove content that is illegal.
|
| Yes. Including child pornography that Twitter seems to find
| it difficult to remove off of their platform. [0] [1] [2]
|
| [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/india-twitter-
| kashm...
|
| [1] https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-rules-twitter-can-
| be-su...
|
| [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-20/twit
| ter-f...
| wilde wrote:
| The content that encouraged people to storm Congress didn't
| contain overtly illegal overtures. And yet that's what
| happened, relatively predictably from the scenario.
| FranksTV wrote:
| I mean it does work, because that's exactly the difference
| they were pointing out.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Calling on people to storm the capitol and over throw
| democracy isn't the same as protesting politicians who refuse
| to take allegations of election tampering seriously, and yet
| people with censorship powers keep insisting that the former
| is what January 6th was about.
| FranksTV wrote:
| There is no credible evidence. Its an insane conspiracy
| theory.
|
| There were many, many lawsuits all of which were heard in
| court and ruled on.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| >There were many, many lawsuits all of which were heard
| in court and ruled on.
|
| No. Most of those lawsuits were thrown out without
| rulings. Generally, not enough process was given to
| investigate these allegations, which is why half the
| country supported Trump on Jan 6 until things got violent
| and moderates got cold feet.
| mindslight wrote:
| Have you read any of the legal briefs? I read several of
| the prominent ones, and they all followed the same
| pattern of leading in with a bunch of easy facts but then
| jumping to completely unsupported conclusions (that were
| then used as political sound bites). The cases were
| summarily dismissed because they had no logical merit.
| poisonborz wrote:
| What anyone with this argument doesn't understand is how
| censorship can't be comfortably shoehorned in these "morally
| understandable, accepted by everyone" categories. This false
| belief was a relic of the 80s-2000s. Shoehorning is very
| subjective of the current societal compass, and now that this
| breaks up to thousand pieces in online platforms, it fails us
| all.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| While I am concerned about the coercive power of these
| platforms against speech they find unpopular, whether porn,
| or something else....
|
| > A girl pleasuring herself isn't the same thing as
| encouraging people to storm the White House and overthrow
| democracy
|
| Enough with the hyperbole, the FBI has already stated they
| found little evidence of a grand conspiracy to overthrow the
| govt [1], despite the fact we know that the Oathkeepers'
| leader is actually an FBI operative or informant [2]
|
| [1] https://www.salon.com/2021/08/20/fbi-finds-little-
| evidence-j...
|
| [2] https://www.revolver.news/2021/06/stewart-rhodes-oath-
| keeper...
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Care to peddle your bullshit somewhere else? There may have
| been no 'organized' conspiracy to overthrow the gov't, but
| they sure as hell were trying to illegally pressure
| politicians into not certifying the election.
| xdennis wrote:
| Americans disagreeing over fair elections is nothing new.
| In 2016, Democrats made more objections than Republicans
| in 2020: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-
| democrats-object-mor...
|
| Let's also not forget about Stacy Abrams and Bush.
| There's even the whole Kennedy election controversy.
| sk55 wrote:
| From the article you linked, there was clearly coordinated
| groups trying to overtake:
|
| >The officials did note that far-right groups - like the
| Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters - may have
| collaborated in breaching the Capitol on the day of the
| riot.
|
| These aren't scrubs either. Some of them are ex-military,
| armed civilians coordinating with other groups to breach
| the capitol and take hostages. This is not hyperbole, it's
| fact. Just because they didn't succeed doesn't mean it
| wasn't real.
| qwytw wrote:
| Then you might as well say that any riot or even a
| protest any of the people from these groups participate
| is an attempt to overthrow the government.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| They pushed through security, and accessed private
| offices, and destroy property, with the stated intent to
| stop the vote count. On Camera.
|
| This was not a protest or a riot, they intended to
| disrupt the normal order of governance.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Just like AOC and 150 of her companions did to Pelosi?
| literallyaduck wrote:
| If they didn't bring guns and open carry it wasn't a real
| revolution or they were really stupid either way they
| weren't storming the white house it was congress and the
| FBI was involved heavily with the events so you could say
| it was government sponsored.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > they weren't storming the white house
|
| Why would they storm the white house? Trump was
| there...they wanted to keep him there by intimidating
| politicians at the Capital to not certify the election.
| Stop watching Fox News / OAN / NewsMax (and CNN/etc while
| you're at it.) I am not delusional enough to think that
| Biden (or any politician) are in it for anything other
| than power. The difference between Trump and all the
| "professional" politicians is that when they lose, they
| don't decide to throw a temper tantrum and incite an
| insurrection. Storming the Capital was 100% an
| insurrection.
|
| Definition of insurrection : an act or instance of
| revolting against civil authority or an established
| government
|
| It's time to stop identifying as republican/democrat and
| start being an American. The institution of gov't and
| it's continuity matters more than the party in power.
| Trump tarnished the election process and the institution
| of American gov't. There are plenty of problems with our
| gov't caused by both sides (largely caused by bribery (I
| mean 'lobbying')) but maybe it's time to stop with the
| partisan bullshit and find common ground.
| nailer wrote:
| You absolutely do not genuinely believe the white house
| rioters thought they were overthrowing democracy and this a
| plainly obvious straw man.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I dont think they were talking about January 6 posts. I have
| seen all manner of Facebook friends censored for speaking
| their thoughts on varying subject matters that have been
| politicized over time. Also seen friends banned off Twitter
| for literal shitposting. I miss the internet when it was
| mostly full of nerds. After smartphones it all went downhill.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Summer never ended after 2008, sadly.
| MrLeap wrote:
| It's been eternally September since 1993.
| Kiro wrote:
| "A girl pleasure herself" is a gross simplification of a
| highly complex topic.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Payments are like water and electricity, utilities, and should
| be regulated as such. If you're not breaking the law,
| interfering with legal payments should be a sanctionable
| offense by regulators. Social platforms are not utilities, nor
| is my blog and its comment section.
|
| This speaks to the need for censor proof payments systems that
| can still accommodate KYC and AML requirements (so you're not
| violating financial regs and end up closing up shop).
| Stablecoins perhaps? I leave that to the domain experts.
|
| TLDR Disintermediate legacy payment systems without breaking
| the law.
| imtringued wrote:
| Money is definitively a public good. If money were a private
| good provided by banks then banks wouldn't trust each other's
| money. Each bank would have their own currency.
| lmz wrote:
| There's always interbank transfers / ACH as long as they have
| bank accounts. It's a pain to use though.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| So the Fed is rolling out Instant Payments ("Instant ACH")
| in 2023, but I did not mention that as it's to be seen how
| or if payments are censored passing through that platform.
| vidarh wrote:
| There is a difference between a platform that can be easily
| replaced choosing not to serve certain content, and
| infrastructure providers choosing to deny service.
|
| I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything
| the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for
| competition.
|
| I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being
| allowed to choose, because their position then makes them
| effective arbiter of what kinds of businesses are allowed to
| exist without democratic oversight.
|
| For all the power the social networks have, it's nothing like
| that.
|
| Maybe crypto will change that, but today threatening to
| withdraw payment processing is an existential threat for a lot
| of online businesses which gives payment networks undue power.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| What a nonsensical argument. There's no replacement for
| Youtube or Twitter in the same exact sense that there's no
| replacement for when a banking/CC industry bans you.
|
| Yeah, there are vastly inferior alternatives which almost
| nobody uses (Bitchute, Minds, cryptocurrencies), but that
| cuts you off from the vast audience that they've monopolized.
| An audience that want to read you and wants to pay you,
| evident by the vast number of subscribers and payments.
|
| Network effects matter.
| luckylion wrote:
| In this case, OnlyFans made the choice (and reversed it), not
| the payment provider. Granted, they did it because of the
| payment provider, but Twitter etc don't make their decisions
| in a vacuum either, they react to different kinds of
| pressure.
|
| That said, the same people made the same arguments ("private
| businesses, no rules should apply") with payment providers
| boycotting Gab, but turn around now. Will they learn that
| political pressure via businesses is a bad idea because it
| might affect them next? Doubtful, they haven't learned it the
| first few times.
| vidarh wrote:
| Onlyfans made the "choice" the way someone with a gun to
| their head makes a "choice".
|
| It's meaningless to suggest they had one.
|
| And I'm a concrete example of someone who considers Gab a
| haven of extremism, but who still believes payment
| processors should not be allowed to boycott legal
| businesses.
| luckylion wrote:
| Sure, just as Twitter, Facebook and the cloud providers
| make a "choice" when they ban someone who has become a
| persona non grata in the establishment media. Nobody does
| anything out of ideology at that level, it's all damage
| control.
|
| The WSJ imagines pewdiepie to be Hitler incarnate?
| Advertisers pull their ads and Disney has to cut ties.
| Not because they think pewdiepie is a Nazi, but because
| there's only one "choice".
|
| This is nothing new, it's been done before, but it hurts
| a different group this time, so the people who celebrated
| these same actions are now angry that this kind of thing
| is allowed to happen.
| isthisreality wrote:
| > the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for
| competition
|
| The competition is not apples to apples. Instead, you have
| ideological bubbles like Gab, and you have the incumbent
| network (Twitter) which "normies" use by default.
|
| The problem with the default network applying ideological
| censorship is that it limits the average person's exposure to
| the marketplace of ideas. In the context of a controversial
| topic, this benefits the default narrative tremendously.
|
| If we want to reduce ideological conflict, it's imperative to
| respect alternative viewpoints and engage them as equals.
| Otherwise, we risk alienating people into becoming
| extremists, or worse, we allow the authorities (who work
| closely with censors and fact checkers) to control the
| Overton window and propagandize us away from the truth.
| vidarh wrote:
| Competition is not apples to apples, but it is possible.
| You have no realistic options to take payments from a mass
| audience if payment networks cuts you off - that is a huge
| difference.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| > _Competition is not apples to apples, but it is
| possible._
|
| Ok, demonstrate that by creating a YT competitor with 2
| billion users.
|
| Then tell us how possible it is.
| version_five wrote:
| People are capable of infinite mental gymnastics when it comes
| to justifying why rules or oppression/suppression they like are
| different from ones they don't like.
|
| There is the often repeated "imagine your worst enemy had this
| power" but it doesn't seem to get through to people.
| rvz wrote:
| Also the same ones who repeated the _' private platform
| argument'_ now don't like it when several 'other private
| platforms' ban or don't want to do business with OnlyFans
| because it hurts those who use it for a living, especially
| those who have 'pornographic content'.
|
| Exactly the same thing how YouTube demonetises specific
| individuals who use the platform for a living for content that
| is skewed to a certain political audience.
|
| Do they now realise that this can happen to anyone? As for
| payment solutions, this is the whole point of cryptocurrencies
| that will solve this eventually.
| archildress wrote:
| There are compelling alternatives for many of the platforms you
| mention; what was happening to OF amounted to a complete
| disqualification from infrastructure.
| prestigious wrote:
| Insanely wrong, the opposite in fact. Hard to be this wrong
| on the internet tbh
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| There are no popular alternatives to Youtube and Twitter.
|
| The number of users is important, and they have monopolies on
| the user base.
|
| Learn about network effects.
| polote wrote:
| > It's interesting to see the comments from people who
| supported [..] but are suddenly against it ...
|
| I hate this argument, it is so easy to say: people were against
| before and they are in favor now. Without proving that the
| people who were against are the SAME people that are in favor
| of it.
|
| For example, people wanted mask at the beginning and now they
| don't wear them. People support Facebook censorship but are
| against when it is for porn. People wanted a vaccine but now
| they dont want to take it. People protested against motorbike
| sounds yesterday and they protest in favor of motorbikes today
|
| Sorry but what tell you that they are the same people ? Without
| that this is just wrong
| harry8 wrote:
| This story cannot be discussed in any meaningful way without
| reference to Wikileaks being fully denied access to payment tech
| while having been charged with no crime.
| superkuh wrote:
| The article did explicitly reference Wikileaks being blockaded
| by financial services.
|
| >One salient example occurred in 2014 when WePay - a payment
| service provider that had gained traction with sex workers and
| activists after its CEO described the company as the "anti-
| PayPal" after the latter's denial of service to WikiLeaks...
| harry8 wrote:
| And visa and all others without any due process at all
| because a politician requested it be done to their political
| enemy(!)
|
| I'm not seeing that being meaningfully discussed nor am I
| seeing how WePay stepped in and solved that problem for
| Wikileaks because, iirc, they did no such thing.
|
| Why do you think they left a proper discussion of that out
| given it's clearly the most relevant example of what they're
| claiming to discuss?
| dalbasal wrote:
| I suspect that "accountability" is a problematic frame. Platforms
| _are_ the accountability mechanism, increasingly so.
|
| As for banks... Everything new is old again. Financial
| institutions have long been the unofficial regulators, acting
| more or less in unison with arbitrary decision making power. Tech
| platforms have just joined the game.
| laurent92 wrote:
| But do you think some hidden power would organize banks
| together behind the curtains and ban... porn? of all the
| possible battles to lead, children and the sanity of adults
| would be their battlehorse? If so, I admire it.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> But do you think some hidden power would organize banks
| together behind the curtains and ban... porn?
|
| I think a secret meeting to form a secret cabal is unlikely.
| More like an approximate consensus, that has always existed
| in an industry that has always been highly centralized, in a
| world where sex work has always been marginalised.
|
| My point was that there's nothing new about relatively
| arbitrary power at banks to decide who can do business.
|
| It's pretty uncontroversial, if you think about past decades.
| Was there no profit to be made providing financial services
| to women, before it became normative in the 50s-70s?
| Theoretically, there probably was. In practice, banking norms
| were not to.
| beebeepka wrote:
| What a thread. Right now literally half the posts are greyed out
| for saying things I don't understand in the slightest.
|
| Feels like some kind of cultural war is spilling into the site
| but due to nature of HN, no one is really sharing their actual
| thoughts on the matter so there's a lot of voting based on
| subtleties.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| That's because what you type can and will be used against you
| in the court of public opinion.
| beebeepka wrote:
| What about up/down votes? Are people liable for those?
|
| I understand the audience on this site. At first I thought
| it's just /. But it really isn't.
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