[HN Gopher] Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn
___________________________________________________________________
Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn
Author : notnice
Score : 260 points
Date : 2022-06-28 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I've suspected that the next place cryptocurrencies will see
| usage for actual consumer payments will be porn. It makes so much
| more sense than going through the suffocating mastercard/visa
| networks, and porn has historically been one of the industries
| most willing to try new technology.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think that's probably true. Cryptocurrency has use cases in
| paying for drugs or illegal gambling. It will likely also have
| uses in paying for child pornography and other illegal forms of
| pornography. As usual, this is bad.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is maybe a tangent, but: how long before we're allowed to
| stop calling cryptocurrencies a new technology, and admit that
| actual usage is _not_ being blocked on early development?
| Bitcoin itself is 14 years old; if it were a web framework, it
| would have been "obsoleted" half a dozen times over by now.
| themitigating wrote:
| I think it's both acceptance and time. The internet was more
| than 20 years old in 1999 but still had low usage
| sophacles wrote:
| New is pretty context dependent. Money is literally older
| than history. That sets up a lot of context by itself, and
| further the fact that it's so important means people,
| governments and institutions are pretty conservative (in the
| slow to adopt change sense) about it. Banks have only
| recently reached infrastructure status in that context - and
| only in well developed nations. Credit cards are still new in
| that context (and it shows). The 14 years of bitcoin is
| basically embryonic in terms of "money tech".
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is a reasonable point, but it demands that we ignore
| the parabolic trend in _every other aspect of human
| development_. We 've gone from horse-drawn carriages to
| moon landings and instantaneous global communication in the
| last 125 years; why does Bitcoin get over 10% of that time
| to do what I can already do with the piece of plastic in my
| wallet?
| sophacles wrote:
| Are you sure this tech isn't "parabolic"?
|
| Depending how you define personal credit, its been around
| ~100 years (or more!), with the card format being adopted
| in the 60s. It's only been the last 15 years or so that
| not carrying cash has become a reasonable approach to
| day-to-day life.
|
| So for bitcoin to become as big as it has as a _brand new
| technology_ in only 14 years seems accelerated.
|
| This is analysis complicated a bit by the fact that
| bitcoin is not a top-down tech like credit, there's no
| centralized group deciding who gets to use it. On the
| other side of that though - the tech infrastructure
| build-out that made credit cards ubiquitous also benefits
| and accelerates the potential adoption of bitcoin.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Money is literally older than history.
|
| Standardized weights of specie are older than history; you
| can find different perspectives on how much they count as
| "money".
|
| But history begins at a time when the role of money in
| society is still very much up for debate; Hammurabi's code
| (~1000 years after the beginning of history, give or take)
| includes a provision specifying that, if you run a bar, you
| can't require customers to pay in silver but must also
| accept grain.
|
| Grain as currency continues across the world for a few
| thousand years after that, but grain is a terrible currency
| because it spoils very quickly. (Counting things like "rats
| got into the grain" as a form of spoilage.)
| sophacles wrote:
| Huh, super interesting! Do you know some good resources
| where I can learn more about the (pre) history of money?
| zamalek wrote:
| Now that the Year of the Linux Desktop might happen for real,
| I guess we need a new "Year of the X."
| ryandvm wrote:
| Not to put too fine a point on it, but my guess is there is
| probably little overlap in the Venn diagram of people paying
| for porn subscriptions and people capable of managing a
| crypto wallet.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Alas, it's probably hard to pull the cap off of your
| hardware wallet with only one hand. But isn't that what
| we're told Coinbase is for?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > it were a web framework, it would have been "obsoleted"
| half a dozen times over by now.
|
| So a point for Bitcoin then?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Only if we think "it's better than web development churn"
| is somehow a positive marker, and not a neutral one at
| best.
| gleenn wrote:
| What you're saying clearly makes sense but Bitcoin isn't
| accepted almost anywhere which is what "new" means. Porn
| would be an early adopter for potentially mass consumption.
| It would be new to me certainly as I've never purchased a
| single thing with Bitcoin and that's almost certainly true
| for most people.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't know. I passed a bitcoin ATM machine (don't ask me
| what that actually means, please) on the street yesterday.
| Friends and family members, including (especially?) non-
| technical ones, have asked me about Bitcoin and how to
| invest in it. One of my friends recently bought a car with
| Ethereum.
|
| "New" means "new," it doesn't mean "not widely adopted
| yet." We don't widely adopt things that fail or have
| unacceptable side effects; that doesn't make them new
| again.
| gleenn wrote:
| How about new in the sense that other currencies have
| been around for hundreds of years compared to only 14?
| jcranmer wrote:
| The euro is most certainly not hundreds of years old, and
| isn't that much older than Bitcoin.
| sophacles wrote:
| The euro is not a new type of currency tech. Its just a
| new painting on the same type of currency that has
| existed for hundreds of years (that is it's a new brand
| of banknote).
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't buy that. The Euro was conceived in 1992 and
| constituted a _radical_ shift in international monetary
| policy; it wasn 't fully rolled out until 2002.
|
| That's 10 years compared to Bitcoin's 14, with arguably
| far more in concrete financial activity (and quality of
| life) to show for it.
| gleenn wrote:
| Sure but again let's be a little more nuanced. When the
| Euro came out, trillions in wealth were automatically
| converted to it. Pretty apples to oranges comparison. If
| all USD was converted to BTC, BTC would become useful
| everywhere as fast as people could change the POS
| systems. Not a fair comparison at all.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > When the Euro came out, trillions in wealth were
| automatically converted to it.
|
| This is true, but also misleading: the physical Euro
| switch took place over months, and involved a coordinated
| public campaign to encourage millions of Europeans to
| exchange their physical bills. Digitalization helped with
| banking, but a _significant_ human and policy effort
| occurred in parallel.
|
| And there's another problem: it's really not clear what
| it would mean for "all USD to be converted to BTC." BTC
| has already been issued, and will continue to be
| algorithmically issued. The Euro switch could not be
| economically triaged _per se_ , because it was an in-kind
| transition. No such transition is possible for
| cryptocurrencies, unless we allow a central authority
| into the mix.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I wrote about this subject here, if you're interested:
| https://chadnauseam.com/coding/cryptocurrency/a-hackers-
| case...
|
| The TL;DR is that blockchain scaling is a very difficult
| problem. There are scaling layers like ZKSync that are only
| possible because of cryptographic primitives that literally
| didn't exist in a usable form 14 years ago.
|
| And I somewhat disagree with your premise - cryptocurrencies
| are actually used in the real world today. Most of the usage
| is to get around regulation, like when you want to send
| remittances or buy drugs, or bet on betting markets. But on
| the whole I do agree, it's disappointing that the technology
| is still so immature.
|
| Disclosure: I work in the cryptocurrency industry
| matt321 wrote:
| Are you saying nobody should be regulating it?
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| That's not what I'm saying. I'd just rather it be regulated
| by our democratic institutions rather than by unaccountable
| payment providers.
| zakki wrote:
| Isn't the democracy happening now? The majority of people
| had chosen the institution that create a law that is
| followed by VISA and Mastercard.
| darawk wrote:
| Someone should. That someone should not be Visa and
| Mastercard.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The largest problem may be that doing the actual day-to-day
| _work_ of regulation (vs. posturing, politicing, and
| passing poorly-written laws) is a [cough] pretty
| undesirable job.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| A de-facto outsourcing of regulatory enforcement could be
| less desirable than explicit regulation.
| mrmanner wrote:
| It could be, but it's not necessarily so. It's safer to
| circumvent Mastercard regulation than government, for
| better and worse.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I wonder if the US Supreme Court might revisit that too
| amelius wrote:
| Not sure. People watch pr0n on their Oculus Quest all the time,
| fully aware that Meta is watching them watch ...
| terminalcommand wrote:
| AFAIK, pr0nhub currently only accepts crypto payment.
| thakoppno wrote:
| is the price denominated in dollars, like how does the
| bitcoin price fluctuation get handled?
| dboreham wrote:
| There's a thing called a stablecoin :)
| cowtools wrote:
| There is no such thing as a decentralized stablecoin
| yreg wrote:
| So what? If you want to send someone $10 as crypto a
| centralized stablecoin works perfectly.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Usually the seller takes on short-term price fluctuation
| risk.
|
| Buyer initiates purchase, and the seller gives them a
| window of x minutes to send y btc to an address, where the
| price of the service is denominated in btc as of the
| trading price at that moment.
|
| If at least 1 transaction doesn't show up on the btc
| network in the x minutes, that transaction times out.
|
| If at least 1 does, then the seller waits for w
| confirmations to take place before the payment is
| recognized as valid, where w is set to their tolerance.
| I've seen as low as 3 and as high as 7.
| moneywoes wrote:
| At times that bad with the lightning network?
| TimPC wrote:
| That seems pretty sketchy if the main thing Mastercard and
| VISA are doing is ensuring age verification is being done.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Mastercard and Visa won't do business with adult content
| providers directly. They force them into very high cost low
| quality payment intermediaries.
| hellojesus wrote:
| These are known as high risk payment processors. They do
| this because of the outsized risk of chargebacks that
| occur against payments for porn.
|
| Wife catches a weird pornhub charge on your monthly
| statement? Whoops! Those hackers are at it again. Call it
| fraud and charge it off.
|
| The high cc processing rate accommodates the increased
| risk.
|
| Btc solves this as no chargeback is possible.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| There are plenty of other industries which are just as
| high or higher chargeback risks and aren't forced through
| hoops. Gyms are a prime example. Food delivery has a high
| chargeback risk. Gift cards are a go-to for leveraging
| stolen debit/credit cards. You don't see the industry
| forcing regulations here, or forcing these industries to
| go through specific payment processors.
|
| It also doesn't explain why porn actors routinely find
| their checking accounts closed out on them, or they get
| blacklisted entirely.
|
| It has nothing to do with risk, and everything to do with
| Christian fundamentalists in the banking industry
| exploiting their positions in industries we need, to
| force their morals on others.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| the problem with free market fundementalists is they deny
| that stereotypes, emotion and plain stupid decision
| making are often having greater effect than the hand and
| foot of the market
| [deleted]
| chevill wrote:
| They stopped being able to process credit cards because
| Mastercard and VISA cut them off when there was a public
| outcry about PH doing such a shitty job of moderating
| illegal content that everyone got the impression they were
| supporting it.
|
| PH didn't decide "we are only gonna accept crypto so we can
| circumvent the system" it was a position forced upon them
| as a punishment for their shitty behavior. Now they are
| trying very hard to moderate effectively in order to win
| back the good graces of the payment processors because they
| are probably going to eventually go bankrupt if they don't.
| zakki wrote:
| Why do you think it is a forced position? If they are
| shitty they've got the consequences.
| chevill wrote:
| I might not understand your question. I'm not saying the
| payment processors were wrong to blacklist them. PH was
| being genuinely scummy.
|
| Its a forced position because PH very much wanted to
| continue to accept credit cards, which I suspect was
| where 99% of their income was from. However, the payment
| processors blacklisted them so they can't.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Pornhub had a large blogpost claiming that thye are
| better at filtering illegal content than facebook, and
| that the latter has many times greater problems with
| illegal content.
|
| the post claimed that Pornhub has been targeted because
| of their industry.
|
| i have never verified the veracity of these claims, but
| they seem plausible
| threeseed wrote:
| > Pornhub had a large blogpost claiming that thye are
| better at filtering illegal content than facebook, and
| that the latter has many times greater problems with
| illegal content
|
| Facebook is also orders of magnitude larger and has to
| deal with content that blurs the line between legal and
| illegal. It's a significantly more difficult task.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Is there really enough motivation for paying for porn? There's
| so much of it out there for free.
| staticassertion wrote:
| There's a lot of "mainstream" porn but if you're a furry or
| have niche interests I imagine you're dealing with a much
| more limited content market.
| antasvara wrote:
| The article states that half of PornHub's revenues per year
| were coming from subscriptions. I would take that as some
| evidence that people are paying for porn.
|
| In a lot of ways, crypto makes perfect sense for porn
| payments. The anonymous nature is most likely a value add for
| most porn subscription holders.
| stemlord wrote:
| Sure but crypto is an order of magnitude more complicated
| to get going than using an existing cc. Most people don't
| already have a form of crypto payment at the ready when one
| hand is covered in lube and they just need to hit the
| "confirm subscription" button. I would need to do days of
| research before I could confidently buy porn with a
| cryptocurrency.
| rglullis wrote:
| Do people get credit cards just to pay to watch something
| online? Of course not.
|
| With crypto is the same. Once you setup a crypto wallet
| and learn how to use it, you can pay for anything with
| it.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Just check the most famous adult content websites' revenue...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Surely that's based on ads though?
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Nah, AFAIK ads pay very little for adult content
| websites, most websites now have a subscription based
| model and the possibility to buy additional content once
| subscribed.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| As I understand it Mindgeek (Pornhub) makes about half
| their money from ads, but they are easily the largest
| advertiser in the industry. It seems likely that
| subscriptions/purchases still represent the majority of
| porn income.
| Stevvo wrote:
| A lot of people pay on OnlyFans, so depending on the value
| proposition, yes, people are motivated to pay for porn.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| And if you're motivated to pay for porn, but not to give a
| site your driver's license like OnlyFans requires, crypto
| actually would be better for that.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Yes, but I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar if you
| actually sat these people down with a licensed clinician,
| you'd find a lot of mental illness. From what I've seen a
| lot of these people have some delusion, no matter how
| 'strong' or 'weak' that delusion is, that they've developed
| a 'relationship' with the creator, not realizing that
| almost no woman would _ever_ seriously consider any of
| these men as a long-term... or frankly, even short-term...
| partner.
|
| If there's one thing that evolutionary psychology has
| shown, it's that women's psychology for the mating market
| is not wired that way.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| If you sat any significant amount of people down with a
| licensed clinician you'd find a lot of mental illness.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Unfortunately based on their numbers, it's a lot of men
| regularfry wrote:
| That in no way affects how likely they are to pay, given
| that (in some volume) they already do.
| rodgerd wrote:
| 1. There's an ethical argument for people that they ought to
| pay for work.
|
| 2. The above is stronger for areas that aren't well-served -
| women directed producers for example.
|
| 3. Parasocial relationships have become a huge driver of
| revenue for performers - hence OnlyFans and other Patreon-
| like services.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| There's so much of it out there _for a reason_. Never
| underestimate how horny (some) people are.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > the next place
|
| is there a current place they're commonly used ?
| mrkramer wrote:
| Satoshi about porn:
| https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=671.msg13844#msg1384...
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| I know of at least one sex-related forum that now supposedly
| requires btc to join. (This said, the related statement on the
| homepage mentions an absurdly high amount, probably set years
| ago and promptly forgotten...)
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I've suspected that the next place cryptocurrencies will see
| usage for actual consumer payments will be porn.
|
| It's been done, to various levels of success; it has it's
| humble beginnings with cam girls via BTC (look up Girls gone
| Bitcoin), and then as alts got traction post 2017 things like
| CUM (Cryptographic Ultra Money) [0] try to make headway but
| failed miserably as most alts usually do.
|
| After Onlyfans threatened to take down all the adult content it
| had a real chance of making itself a MVP in this ecosystem,
| unfortunately these projects live and die based on short-term
| price swings and as you can see the value has made it
| essentially unfavorable for anyone but pump and dumpers.
|
| I'd argue that BTC can and has shown more promise for sex
| workers, I've gone into detail about my first hand experience
| when in the early stage of my startup I interacted with the
| 'ladies of backpage' when Visa and MC shutoff access to
| purchasing ads on Backpage on here before. I just think that
| sex workers have enough on their plates that it shouldn't be
| this hard to just to solve something so trivial which many pay
| for, espcially if either Visa or MC want to be puritanical it.
|
| 0: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cumrocket/
| meirelles wrote:
| I think their business model is like a gym - they need people
| making an effort to cancel, not to renew... Crypto works for
| one-time payments, but it sucks for recurring transactions. Too
| much hassle to pay every month, people would just give up.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| That's a good point. I think other business models are
| possible, though, if less lucrative. One example is one-time
| payments to buy videos, or to tip an artist that you for some
| reason feel like tipping.
| Stevvo wrote:
| I can sign 12 transactions with my private key now and
| automate sending them out every month. If I don't want to be
| responsible for sending the transactions, a smart contract
| can do it for me. This can be abstracted away from the user
| and made as intuitive as any other payment flow.
| rglullis wrote:
| > I think their business model is like a gym
|
| With micropayments, the business model becomes (quite
| literally) pay-per-view.
|
| > it sucks for recurring transactions.
|
| The UX is bad at the moment, but with crypto there is this
| idea of "streaming payments", which work very well as a
| substitute for subscriptions. Basically, you make only one
| initial transaction to set up the "subscription" with a
| locked deposit. On every block (or on every X seconds if you
| are doing off-chain), a small transfer is made. You only pay
| gas if you need to "top-up" the balance or when you want to
| close the stream.
| abraae wrote:
| It's a good point but worth noting that the Mullvad VPN
| (which, like porn, has a strong driver for privacy) recently
| got rid of susbscription payments altogther.
|
| Their reasoning was that you can't handle recurring payments
| without holding a lot of personal data.
|
| Perhaps porn sites that want to offer inter-species furry
| porn should bite the bullet and only accept one-off payments,
| just so they can make effective use of crypto.
| Hellbanevil wrote:
| aranchelk wrote:
| I think recurring payments are a pretty good use case for
| smart contracts, you load up a wallet defined in the contract
| with some cash, similar to a prepaid debit card, then
| authorize scheduled payments specifying a recipient, a
| frequency, and an amount.
|
| It's not ideal for that type of derelict subscription
| business model (e.g. the gym), but neither are prepaid debit
| cards or virtual cards with predetermined spending limits,
| and they probably already contend with those.
| racl101 wrote:
| Who even pays for it these days?
| sedev wrote:
| This would be a great time to reread the classic "Better Than
| Free" essay. https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/ By
| my count, the average OnlyFans account absolutely nails 5 out
| of the 8 "generative" qualities that Kelly identifies.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > I've suspected that the next place cryptocurrencies will see
| usage for actual consumer payments will be porn.
|
| If cryptocurrencies were useful for this problem, they'd have
| been adopted already. It's an sector whose businesses and
| workers are very savvy about anything that helps them evade
| repression.
| adammarples wrote:
| Curious why FT articles always seem to only show up on HN about 5
| days after they're published
| codebolt wrote:
| And they should be doing much more. Age verification should
| require a credit card. The idea that hardcore porn should be
| freely accessible to anyone (including children) on an anonymous
| basis needs to be put to rest.
| roflyear wrote:
| Have we lost our minds. If you're worried about your kid seeing
| porn don't let them on the internet.
| hulitu wrote:
| And they shall support more guns. Every child is entitled to
| its own gun, to defend itself.
|
| I don't know about ... but as a child my access to porn was
| rather ... limited ( to not say restricted ).
| nly wrote:
| Requiring a _credit card_ for age verification before getting
| access to otherwise free porn (like on pornhub) will likely
| just leave paper trails for millions of men accessing porn,
| cause embarrassment, lead to privacy issues, blackmail, and
| wreck relationships.
|
| It will also probably lead more men to pay for porn, since the
| companies running these websites will then make it one click.
|
| Systems like Mozilla Persona would solve this on a technical
| basis, and was way ahead of its time, but there's no political
| incentive to standardise on something like this.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| That sounds like a problem for those men. If your partner is
| against you consuming porn perhaps that's something for you
| and your partner to resolve. Exposing children to hardcore
| pornography in order to save dishonest men some inconvenience
| seems a poor trade.
| nly wrote:
| It's not for you or I to dictate how much people should
| share within their personal relationships.
|
| Maybe telling your partner that something isn't any of
| their bloody business is a perfectly valid thing to do, and
| an acceptable answer, even after, say, 50 years of
| marriage? It's a relationship, you are not a single
| conscienceness.
|
| Personally, I'd argue having secrets from your partner
| doesn't necessarily make you dishonest. _Lying to your
| partner_ makes you dishonest.
|
| Anyway, my broader concern is I still wouldn't want my
| _credit card company_ knowing my sexual preferences anymore
| than I 'd want an ad company like Google knowing my medical
| status.
| ziddoap wrote:
| darawk wrote:
| Remember this the next time someone asks what the point of
| politically neutral money could possibly be.
| amelius wrote:
| Apple is too.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| notnice wrote:
| https://archive.ph/zXKuD
| tiffanyh wrote:
| For those confused by the title, here's what's going on ...
|
| Mastercard/Visa are required by law to not knowingly allow the
| purchase of illegal goods/services (they can't facilitate the
| payment of illegal activites).
|
| As such, they require such websites (merchants) to prove that
| individuals in such videos are of legal age (no minors in the
| videos, because if so - that's illegal and horrible).
|
| This seems totally fair, commendable and hard to disagree with -
| if you ask me.
| [deleted]
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Identity and age verification is a very important tool against
| revenge porn and exploitation so I personally welcome it,
| whoever pushes for it.
| hbn wrote:
| How would this stop that? This would only stop the sale of
| known revenge porn. I don't think most of it makes it way on
| the internet through sale. It gets posted anonymously on porn
| sites.
|
| Revenge porn is already illegal. If someone were to sell it,
| the problem with that scenario is not that those people were
| able to exchange currency, and I don't like the idea of
| setting up more barriers on the ability to give someone
| money.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > I don't think most of it makes it way on the internet
| through sale. It gets posted anonymously on porn sites.
|
| Yes, and as far as I know you can't do that on websites
| like OF or PH, due to them requiring you to verify the
| identity of everyone involved in the video.
|
| Thus, it's impossible now to upload content without the
| consent of everyone involved, at least on those 2 (major)
| websites.
| hbn wrote:
| > at least on those 2 (major) websites
|
| So... you didn't stop it. You only stopped it on a couple
| websites by making all content creators to provide
| identity verification
|
| The only way to actually stop it is completely remove
| anonymity from the internet. Which is a nightmare
| scenario for many reasons. But it seems to be the current
| direction we're going.
| jdasdf wrote:
| It's not their business.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Uhm, if a company directly engages in illegal activities it
| should be shut down by the government. The idea that it should
| be simply cut off from payment networks makes no sense. I don't
| see that as fair.
| ehhthing wrote:
| But that's not the point is it? The point is that Mastercard
| and Visa are facilitating the transfer of money for illegal
| transactions. In the same way you can't start a bank to
| facilitate money laundering, Mastercard and Visa cannot
| knowingly facilitate the transfer of money for illegal goods.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yet they do
|
| https://news.bitcoin.com/5-major-banks-exposed-for-moving-
| tr...
| lmm wrote:
| There should be something like a safe harbour / common
| carrier provision. We recognised that this was vital for
| postal and telephone networks, that the benefits of a
| neutral network outweighed the costs of carrying crime
| sometimes. It should be the same for money transmission.
| danenania wrote:
| The problem is they are going beyond what's illegal and
| cutting off usage/content they just don't like for whatever
| reason--see the vampire porn example in another comment,
| wikileaks, etc.
|
| Do we want unaccountable monopolies making decisions about
| who can access the financial system and who can't based on
| their own subjective values?
| dsr_ wrote:
| That's three different entities:
|
| Whoever is supplying content to PornHub has to uphold the
| law. They do that by providing evidence that there are no
| minors in the adult content (easy for a legit business) and
| that they hold copyright (somehow this gets forgotten).
|
| PornHub has to uphold the law. They do this by keeping
| records supplied by the content producers about verification
| of actor's ages; when there's a problem, they need to remove
| the content. If there's a recurring problem, they need to bar
| the source.
|
| MasterCard has to uphold the law. They do that by
| investigating complaints, and if they find illegal content,
| they send PornHub a warning. If PornHub doesn't act, either
| by showing that the content is legal or by removing it, MC
| has to drop PH.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Mastwrcard doesn't find illegal content - they find
| somwthing they Think is illegal, and they could be wrong.
| bitwize wrote:
| The idea is that MC and Visa are themselves at risk of being
| shut down by the government if they knowingly allow payments
| for illegal activity. Companies being what they are, to avoid
| the risk of impropriety they forbid more than what the law
| technically does.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Visa are themselves at risk of being shut down by the
| government if they knowingly allow payments for illegal
| activity.
|
| surely this is a joke. when was the last time government
| has shut down a major financial institution? From 2008
| securities fraud to HSBC being involved in laundering drug
| money, this never happens
| tflinton wrote:
| Governments shutdown financial institutions or threaten
| to pretty regularly.
|
| India suspended mastercard for failing to adhere to their
| new data privacy laws in 2018
| (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mastercard-
| shifts-f...).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > The idea is that MC and Visa are themselves at risk of
| being shut down by the government if they knowingly allow
| payments for illegal activity.
|
| Operative word being knowingly. Demanding every customer
| prove every part of their business is legal activity !=
| "not knowingly allow illegal activity."
|
| Also, the notion that MC or Visa would be shut down over
| this sort of thing is absurd.
| xyst wrote:
| This is fine. But they also use their weight to punish sex
| workers.
|
| There was a case recently that forced PH to delete a shit ton
| of content. Some of it was not even porn (just random gaming
| videos).
|
| No due process. Just visa/mc threatening to no longer process
| their transactions
| adrr wrote:
| Pornhub execs can go to jail if they don't remove stuff that
| is illegal and prevent sex trafficking on their site.
| Facilitating and distribution itself is a crime. PH isn't a
| government prosecutor they have error on the side of caution
| and due process is right you have with the government not a
| private business.
| elmomle wrote:
| It's probably more correct to say that the whole system
| exploits sex workers. No intention to punish is necessary--MC
| & Visa are happy to make as much money as possible while
| ultimately dumping all risk onto the individuals making the
| content.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I'm confused... Where does due process come into play in a
| contractual relationship between two companies? It's
| applicable to governmental entities in criminal law. Contract
| disputes both do not involve the government outside of a
| request by the parties for litigation, and are civil and not
| criminal law.
| skeaker wrote:
| Because the credit companies are acting under the guise of
| the law. "I don't want to end business with you, but the
| law compels me to do this!" If you haven't broken the law,
| there's no way to appeal this decision they've made as they
| do not have a route for that.
|
| That aside, the ability to pay a service is pretty much
| fundamental to its existence. Being able to at-will
| terminate any company you want, even ones that are provably
| innocent, with no way for them to so much as appeal against
| your decision is a worrying amount of power for a company
| to hold. I don't think that even the government can do
| something like that (at least not legally).
| jdmichal wrote:
| The law tells them who they can do business with, and
| they comply. That's not really a _guise_ , unless me
| driving the speed limit is also a guise... If there's any
| challenge here, it's that such law restricts card
| networks' freedom of association. Which the US only has
| as an extension to freedom of speech... So I'm not sure
| that challenge would work, when the entire point is that
| certain forms of speech are what's being limited.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Mastercard and Visa are not a court system. There is no due
| process. There is no appeals process.
| ehhthing wrote:
| What, exactly is the alternative? The system might not be
| perfect or even good, but as far as I can see there is no
| alternative to this kind of issue. Even if there were a
| million different credit card companies (and god help us if
| that ever happens), they would still be bound by the same
| requirements.
| dymk wrote:
| There is no competition in the duopoly that is MasterCard /
| Visa, and so there will be no improvement in service. They
| don't have to build things customers want to not go out of
| business.
|
| The solution is something like Section 230 but for CC
| vendors. If Visa processes an illegal payment and the
| government finds out, Visa is off the hook, and the
| merchant gets a letter from the government. The payment
| processor has a duty to report, and that's it.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > What, exactly is the alternative?
|
| A simple solution is to let the government do the
| blacklisting, and payment providers only need to (1) comply
| with the blacklist, (2) report suspicious activity, same as
| today. It would be a serious offense for companies to keep
| their own moral blacklists.
|
| > Even if there were a million different credit card
| companies [...], they would still be bound by the same
| requirements.
|
| Under monopolistic market conditions, there's way less
| incentive to saturate all corners of the market. Just
| because it didn't pass VISAs risk/reward calculation
| doesn't mean that other companies would come to the same
| conclusion. It's hard to give an exact prediction, but
| generally when monopolies/oligopolies go away the market
| situation improves for all other parties.
| noasaservice wrote:
| One such possibility is for the USPS to open a non-profit
| banking system at every post office in the country. That
| would allow the now-unbanked to get an account.
|
| And the USPS has strict regulations on when they can and
| cant deal with, especially in packages. I could see similar
| on banking regs too.
|
| Naturally, Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Discover really dont like
| this.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| More banks and wire transfer companies like Wells Fargo
| and Western Union, as well as the mega-banks like BoA
| that make their money off poor people getting hit with
| fees...less credit card companies.
| pyrale wrote:
| e.g. Mastercard and Visa could be required to report
| suspected violations to a regulatory body, to which the
| incriminated party could appeal.
|
| That would help separate denial of service derived from
| regulation and denial of service derived from corporate
| policy. It's a big step in terms of transparency of the
| impact public policies have.
| danenania wrote:
| The alternative would be that payment processors don't deny
| anyone unless a government regulator tells them to, and
| then it's the regulator's responsibility to draw the line.
|
| It certainly wouldn't be perfect either, but at least there
| would be some measure of legislative/electoral
| accountability.
| jandrese wrote:
| This of course runs into the problem that the government
| doesn't have a regulator for the Internet. The FCC could
| maybe be pressed into the role, but it's not entirely
| clear what mandate they could have over what is
| effectively a giant privately held network. The
| government doesn't run the root nodes nor any of the
| nodes between you and the porn. They do run large
| networks, but those are merely attached to the internet,
| not integral to it.
|
| There is the other issue that people are rightfully
| concerned about the creation of morality police, as they
| have a long and sordid history of suppressing minority
| communities for reasons that aren't in the public good.
| Everyone agrees that child porn videos should be
| banned/prosecuted, but after that it gets down to where
| to draw the line and that's an endless source of
| conflict. Some people will claim that homosexual content
| is just as damaging as child exploitation while others
| will say that banning homosexual content is damaging to
| the community. They will not find a working compromise.
| TimPC wrote:
| I know the current Supreme Court of the US is grossly
| biased in their decisions on such questions so it's not
| clear what organization in the US would actually be
| capable of enforcing this fairly.
| danenania wrote:
| These are good points. But the problem, as discussed in
| this article and the comments, is we already have defacto
| morality police: the credit card monopolies.
|
| Given we're going to have content police in some form (we
| clearly do need them to an extent), shouldn't they be as
| transparent and accountable as possible?
|
| We should have the equivalent of bodycam footage when a
| decision is made--a paper trail showing who signed off
| and what the rationale was. There should be a process for
| appeals. Decisions shouldn't be political or religiously
| motivated.
|
| Being cut off from the financial system is as much an
| imposition on a person's rights as being fined or
| arrested by the government. Sure, it needs to happen
| sometimes, but there should be protection against being
| targeted in an arbitrary or abusive way.
| regularfry wrote:
| Also: which government? I also don't want US regulators
| controlling UK content because historical accident has
| put payment oligopolies under US jurisdiction.
| pyrale wrote:
| > This of course runs into the problem that the
| government doesn't have a regulator for the Internet.
|
| The thing needed here is a regulator for payment
| services, not one for the internet. That's a much
| narrower scope.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| It's also worth pointing out that it was only after a peice in
| the NYT that Visa/Mastercard really actually paid attention to
| the fact that Pornhub really was only paying lipservice to
| these laws. It's not like Visa have been going around on some
| moral crusade, they were brought to this through bad press
| after close to a decade of not really doing their job.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| > As such, they require such websites (merchants) to prove that
| individuals in such videos are of legal age (no minors in the
| videos, because if so - that's illegal and horrible). > > This
| seems totally fair, commendable and hard to disagree with - if
| you ask me.
|
| Indeed! Though it's important to note that it's more than just
| that (as important as age verification of performers is!).
|
| Mastercard and Visa are also acting as de facto controllers of
| what is acceptable content. In other words, not just who is
| participating, but what is being done.
|
| For example, "... blood is banned, even blood obviously made of
| ketchup. This is a disaster for vampire porn, which is akin to
| a forbidden good on the internet." That's not my thing, but I
| also don't think Mastercard and Visa should be the ones who
| regulate that.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Yes, OP also misses the fact that Visa and MC can gate-keep
| legal activities as well. Selling smoking accessories is
| legal under US law, but good luck getting a payment processor
| that'll let you sell those goods online. You can get a high
| risk processor, but they hold your funds for longer, charge a
| higher rate, and you can lose processing ability at any time.
|
| If you're established, Visa and MC will make exceptions, but
| who decided to make Visa and MC the deciders on what people
| can and cannot sell. That's what US laws are for. In my
| opinion, this is the only use case for crypto that I can see
| playing out, decentralized payments. Sure fees maybe higher,
| but at least a private company can't restrict what you can
| sell online while whitelisting some competitors.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > Sure fees maybe higher, but at least a private company
| can't restrict what you can sell online while whitelisting
| some competitors.
|
| Until exchanges turn around and do the same thing as
| Visa/Mastercard once they have enough market share...and
| they aren't subject to anywhere near as many regulations.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Sure that could happen, but I'd hope there's enough
| competition in crypto payment processing that keeps them
| honest. Visa and MC have too big of a strong hold right
| now.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > OP also misses the fact that Visa and MC can gate-keep
| legal activities as well. Selling smoking accessories is
| legal under US law, but good luck getting a payment
| processor that'll let you sell those goods online
|
| Visa & MC are not processors.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Yes, but Stripe or Paypal adhere to their rules. Visa and
| MC are the reason those processors don't allow high risk
| businesses.
|
| For example, OnlyFans last year nearly banned adult
| content because their processor was going to drop them.
| Visa/MC were blamed for that, but they ended up making an
| exception. If you go out to build an OnlyFans
| alternative, you won't get a processor.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| So are you suggesting Visa/MC shouldn't comply with laws
| & regulation?
|
| Visa/MC aren't the "bad guys" here. They are just trying
| to adhere to the required laws & regulations impose on
| them.
|
| EDIT: I can't reply to your comment below, so I'm going
| to reply here.
|
| > If selling adult services or goods is "illegal," then
| the US law should codify it, not leave it up
| Visa/MC/processors to decide.
|
| This is where I think you're confusing matters. Visa/MC
| aren't "deciding". They are simply asking a merchant to
| prove if unknown activity is NOT illegal.
|
| If the merchant can't prove its not illegal, then correct
| - that merchant can't continue to transact.
|
| But they aren't deciding. And that's the big difference.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| >> So are you suggesting Visa/MC shouldn't comply with
| laws & regulation?
|
| Of course Visa/MC should stop payments for illegal
| activities, but they go after legal activities as well.
| That's the issue. If selling adult services or goods is
| "illegal," then the US law should codify it, not leave it
| up Visa/MC/processors to decide. And it Visa/MC straight
| up banned these sort of payments, it wouldn't be an
| issue, but they play favoritism for some companies and
| ban others out right. Not to mention, many legal
| businesses lose payment processing ability without even a
| reason. They claim that even giving a reason will give
| violators too much information about their internal
| security.
|
| The EU is actually building their own payment system to
| combat this [0] and I really think the US should as well.
|
| 0. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/payment-services-
| psd-2-directi...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Why hasn't crypto made inroads into this world yet? Porn is
| historically an early adopting industry (online payments,
| thumbnail play w/scroll, VR, etc.) and this seems like a
| theoretically optimal use case where someone would desire
| some level of anonymity or at least some obfuscation as to
| their identity
| theturtletalks wrote:
| I was very excited about Solana Pay[0] when it dropped
| last year, but it doesn't seem to have gotten much
| traction.
|
| 0. https://solanapay.com/
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Interesting, will they have a TOS similar to Coinbase
| Commerce (which bans porn as a business category)
| https://commerce.coinbase.com/legal/terms-of-service/
| duskwuff wrote:
| Yep. The problem is that the credit card issuers' regulations
| go _way_ beyond determining that the content being purchased
| is legal, and well into judging the morality of that content.
| Credit card processors go even further; many of them forbid
| sales of adult products and services entirely.
| quest88 wrote:
| I don't believe that. These companies want to make money
| and would love to make more. They also don't want to lose
| money, so they find ways to decrease risk. Their lawyers
| probably tell them what's risky and draw the line there. If
| you don't want them making these judgements then voters
| should tell their regulator exactly what is and isn't ok.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > then voters should tell their regulator exactly what is
| and isn't ok.
|
| like what, a list of allowed porn Ganres? thats not
| making any sence.
| robonerd wrote:
| Vampire fetish stuff seems harmless to me, but I'm not
| surprised Visa and Mastercard don't want to get into the
| weeds of determining the difference between special effects
| and actual self-harm / mutilation. There is a whole lot of
| gray area in between there (piercing fetish, etc), but they
| probably feel compelled to draw a line somewhere. Whether or
| not the video _seems_ to show blood (real or fake) seems like
| a criteria that can be judged with reasonable objectivity,
| and errors on the side of caution.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| that is literally not what's going on given the content of the
| article. As the article points out the self imposed regulations
| do not only concern minors or illegal content, but an entire
| plethora of sexual content. From furries, to 'vampire porn', to
| depiction of aliens, any mention of blood (a livecammer giving
| the example of not even being able to mention the word
| 'period') and so on.
|
| The topic is not mastercard/visa indirectly enforcing the law,
| it's a private institution pushing their own sexual morality on
| others, by virtue of controlling the payments industry.
| jshen wrote:
| this is not fair because they don't do this consistently in
| other industries.
| polote wrote:
| Visa and mastercard can do anything they want as long as they
| want to do it. They just don't want to deal with porn by choice
| quest88 wrote:
| Really? You think a company that likes money says "You know
| what, we don't need to make any more.". Given that they like
| money, they're probably afraid of losing money from lawsuits
| due to breaking regulation.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Plenty of other reasons they might decide not to deal with
| it besides regulation, such as the large chargeback issue
| the industry has or pressure from fundamentalist groups
| that hate pornography on principle.
|
| It also isn't actually that uncommon for companies to make
| decisions for moral reasons, for all that we talk of
| corporations as money-hungry husks they are ultimately made
| up of people and have their own internal culture.
| Traditionally they'd eventually be outcompeted by a company
| who doesn't have an issue with the action, but given the
| stranglehold Visa/MasterCard have on the industry that
| seems unlikely in this case.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| a comoany doesn't have a brain, people do. And people have
| personal agendas.
| mrmanner wrote:
| > A section on furries, an online subculture interested in
| anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities, reads
| "content that depicts furries and humans engaged in sexual acts
| are not permitted across the board. Content that depicts furry
| engaged in sexual acts with another furry is acceptable across
| the board." Lest that leave any room for misinterpretation:
| "Please note, per Visa regulations a furry that contains human-
| like characteristics is not permitted." So, no half-man, half-
| furry.
|
| Oh, what I would give to be a fly on the wall in that meeting
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| This reminds me of alt.sex.stories with disclaimers like "all
| events in this erotic story take place on a planet where 1 year
| in the story = 100 earth years." So the step-dad in the story
| is merely hanging out with a 1,700-year-old babysitter thus
| it's not lewd at all.
| mometsi wrote:
| A fly with human characteristics doubly so
| minimaxir wrote:
| David Cronenberg really predicted the future in 1986.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| And so if you want to control (regulate / protest) pornography
| start with the Mastercard AGM.
|
| It is interesting to note that Mastercard and other "reluctant
| content moderators" are starting the slow process of identifying
| the minimum globally acceptable standards. What is legal in one
| place may be illegal elsewhere but some global common level /
| trade off is being sought.
| post_break wrote:
| They are also the regulators of guns and accessories. Operation
| Choke point for example. Apple is the purity police too.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| This is just as it should be. Let the markets decide!
| ralston3 wrote:
| > Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn
|
| This doesn't have to be the case. There is infrastructure in
| place for these adult content providers to switch to crypto. It
| seems to be rather trivial for them to setup fiat on/off ramps
| for their customers.
| staticassertion wrote:
| So then the exchanges would be the regulators? Also now you
| have a nice public ledger of what porn everyone is buying lol
| goldcd wrote:
| I'm just bemused by the world I find around me.
|
| We seem to have completely lost our grasp on differentiating
| "real things" and "made up things"
| issa wrote:
| Not entirely related, but in my personal cache of "I was almost a
| billionaire" stories, my favorite is when I was approached to
| build a porn platform that would accept payment in Bitcoin. Who
| knows if the site would have made money, but we would have
| purchased a LOT of Bitcoin at under $1.
| cowtools wrote:
| I think the scarcity is a bad feature for a currency used for
| payments. It encourages users to hold instead of spend.
|
| I imagine that's a major reason why we don't see many payment-
| oriented cryptocurrency use-cases. The allure of speculative
| investment is too great for many.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| So just to move this into a recent topic (and please have a civil
| conversation - or I'll just delete this thread), given that this
| will soon be a grey area in many of the U.S. states, would it
| behoove Visa and Mastercard to regulate purchases of the "Morning
| After Pill" or "Plan B" to avoid future litigation or moral
| outrage, if they are also going to take such "moral high ground"
| stances against a rather banal item as pornography?
| fossuser wrote:
| This article doesn't seem to mention it, but this is only a half
| truth.
|
| There was a legal liability change around payment providers and
| accidental support of sex trafficking that changed the calculus
| around risk for supporting these services.
|
| As a result many of the payment providers backed out.
|
| They're not really the "de facto" regulators - they're responding
| directly to incentives placed on them by government regulators.
|
| Write up on this law here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-
| controversial-new-sex-traf...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The issue is not MC or Visa protecting sex trafficking victims
| or kids. It's purely a moral code.
|
| > Out of curiosity, about five years ago Stoya contacted
| CCBill, one of the biggest payment companies specialising in
| porn. Rather than the "acceptable use" policy on its website,
| she asked if she could see their full guidance. The detailed
| list. The one that precisely laid out the limits of what CCBill
| believed Visa and Mastercard would tolerate.
|
| > The four pages of rules shared with her are written in a
| lawyerly tone and are, in parts, totally bizarre. A section on
| furries, an online subculture interested in anthropomorphic
| animal characters with human personalities, reads "content that
| depicts furries and humans engaged in sexual acts are not
| permitted across the board. Content that depicts furry engaged
| in sexual acts with another furry is acceptable across the
| board." Lest that leave any room for misinterpretation: "Please
| note, per Visa regulations a furry that contains human-like
| characteristics is not permitted." So, no half-man, half-furry.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn
|
| TBH i'm sure that the C{E,I,T}Os of Mastercard and Visa can
| recomend us some good sites.
| beckingz wrote:
| cxo works as shorter placeholder.
|
| At least for companies that don't have a Chief eXperience
| Officer.
| paxys wrote:
| Mastercard and Visa aren't regulating porn due to some moral or
| religious reasons. Believe me they would love to take your money,
| no matter what line of business it was from.
|
| Ultimately they have to comply with a whole bunch of federal laws
| regarding sale of illegal goods, money laundering, human
| trafficking, child pornography and more. So if you want to blame
| regulation, point your fingers at the people writing those laws
| (aka your elected representatives).
| staticassertion wrote:
| As far as I know there is nothing illegal about drawn furry
| pornography and no requirement on the part of Visa/Mastercard
| to restrict access to that content. We even saw Mastercard
| reverse their decision on OnlyFans recently due to major
| backlash, so they obviously have the power to do so.
| workingon wrote:
| This is a false article. The largest porn site in the world
| doesn't take visa and mastercard. Sounds to me like they aren't
| being regulated by them at all.
| s1k3s wrote:
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Personally I think they should not be able to decide such things.
| A payment provider should be forced to accept _all_ legitimate
| customers. It is absolutely unwanted for a private business (in
| an unrelated category no less) to be playing the role of
| legislator.
|
| The problem is once a majority of payment providers (especially
| in this category where there's only really 2 major ones) starts
| blocking things, it becomes really difficult for fringe groups
| that are in fact perfectly legal. I understand that porn payments
| are a bit more risky but the providers can simply have a policy
| to deny chargebacks for this category and shift the risk to the
| customer. Similar to the way returns of sex toys are not accepted
| for hygiene reasons.
|
| Recently there was a lot of news in the Netherlands about
| prostitutes not being able to open bank account because all banks
| refused them. Think of prostitution what you will but over there
| it's legal work and they pay their taxes. But not being able to
| get a bank account gets them into very difficult situations and
| pushes them to shady people (which was exactly what the
| legalisation was avoiding).
|
| Also other platforms like fetlife have recently been forced to
| validate their users, leading to potentially serious consequences
| if this data ever becomes compromised. Many people there don't
| even show their face so the result is that they have to give a
| lot more personal info now than they would have wanted to.
| themitigating wrote:
| Businesses shouldn't be forced to serve customers
| standardUser wrote:
| That sounds like a libertarian perspective that may apply to
| a radically different system of economy and government (one
| that does not exist in practice), but the system we actually
| have is not even remotely close to libertarian. In the mixed
| economic system adopted by nearly every nation on the planet,
| business face all manner of regulation and the more
| fundamental they are to everyday life, the more they tend to
| be regulated.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Businesses should be free to pick and choose only when there
| is also a public funded alternative or the product is
| targeted at a minority. Otherwise society starts falling
| apart.
|
| Imagine there's only 3 car dealers in your region and they
| all blacklist customers who have at least once followed Elon
| Musk on twitter.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| At some point when 50% of the world uses your service the
| rules must change.
|
| Facebook and Twitter can sway elections with a press of a
| button.
|
| Once your company can directly affects direct democray and
| lives of billions these kind of statements make no sense
| anymore.
|
| Unless you like to be ruled by corporations.
| li2uR3ce wrote:
| > At some point when 50% of the world uses your service the
| rules must change.
|
| It's worse than that. They've effectively levied a tax on
| everything (without representation). Even if you pay cash,
| you pay (e.g.) Visa if the vendor accepts Visa. Businesses
| are contractually obligated hide the transaction cost from
| the consumer. This means all products and services have
| their prices jacked up to cover the cost of accepting Visa,
| MasterCard, etc. Even if you're paying cash, you're paying
| into it.
|
| "Cash back rewards" are essentially a discount on the tax
| they've imposed.
|
| So they tax you, they decide what you can buy, and you
| don't get a say. Kinda fucked up.
| jcadam wrote:
| Yes, anti-trust laws came about for a reason.
| jayparth wrote:
| Yes, and we don't apply them to some companies for a
| reason.
|
| We call these businesses natural monopolies and regulate
| them. Like forcing them to serve everyone or cap their
| profits.
| themitigating wrote:
| Facebook and Twitter users sway elections.
|
| Every company can affect democracy in some way. Foxnews had
| a massive effect on elections, Gas prices being high
| affects elections. Should these be regulated?
| benatkin wrote:
| > Facebook and Twitter users sway elections.
|
| That's not what gp is saying.
|
| Facebook and Twitter control what users, in bulk, say in
| a way that can sway elections.
|
| Facebook and Twitter moderate and suspend and users
| adjust what they say in order to not get suspended again,
| if they care to not get banned. (Those who don't care if
| they get banned are a red herring.)
|
| There is also the algorithmic feed which gives a lot of
| control over what users say to other users.
| evandale wrote:
| I just quit Reddit and deleted all my accounts despite
| gilding > 10 comments over the past year because I got
| blacklisted from every community subreddit I wanted to
| participate in. I brought up the bias to the admins and
| was told mods can run their subreddit however they want
| despite Rule 1 of the mod guidelines saying to assume
| people are arguing in good faith.
|
| I got banned because I say controversial things like
| Black people are not disproportionately targeted by
| police due to their race, but rather due to them
| disproportionately having guns and knives when the police
| show up.
|
| The general public have a serious problem understanding
| nuance and statistics and I think it's disgusting that
| the media cry racism at every corner because it enrages
| people and gets clicks.
|
| It's even more disgusting that people fall for it without
| realizing what the media is doing to them because they
| can't read past headlines.
|
| I'll link to the actual TPS report that shows this but
| I'm on a slow connection right now and can't do it.
|
| edit: nvm I'm dumb; it's not that but the report is named
| 9082-2018-TPS-Annual-Report.pdf if you can find it on its
| own. You can google "tps force report 2018 -2020 pdf".
| I'd find it myself but I'm downloading a 12mb pdf that's
| taking forever and I'm pretty sure this is the one.
| themitigating wrote:
| Subreddits moderate themselves, it has nothing to do with
| Reddit. If a Reddit Admin bans you then you lose your
| entire account.
| lovich wrote:
| Nah bud, you're just peddling lies and no one wanted to
| hang out with you. Deleting your account after having
| been banned everywhere has some "you can't fire me, I
| quit energy"
| evandale wrote:
| I believe this is the report and if remember right it's
| on page 52 or maybe 54. Decide for yourself.
|
| https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/ohrc-interim-
| report-to...
|
| edit: nvm I'm dumb; it's not that but the report is named
| 9082-2018-TPS-Annual-Report.pdf if you can find it on its
| own. You can google "tps force report 2018 -2020 pdf".
| I'd find it myself but I'm downloading a 12mb pdf that's
| taking forever and I'm pretty sure this is the one.
| themitigating wrote:
| This isn't what this Hackernews post is about. You
| complained about people not understanding nuance but you
| want to dive right into argument about the police and
| minorities?
| evandale wrote:
| I'm responding to the claim that Twitter and Facebook ban
| points of view they don't want people to see and I'm
| pointing out Reddit does the exact same thing.
| lovich wrote:
| So how many times on a weekly basis would you say you
| bring up the numbers 13 and 50?
| themitigating wrote:
| In what way is facebooks moderation on or algorithm
| related to specifically to elections
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| munchenphile wrote:
| Civil Rights Act and the ADA disagree. As does Sherman Anti
| Trust and dozens of others.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Businesses are forced to serve customers everyday - from
| anti-discrimination laws to universal service for phone
| companies. There is also argument that oligopoly should not
| de-facto control payments and work as moral police.
| willcipriano wrote:
| This is how people want it. It's been two years of "Twitter
| is a private platform" over and over again. If you aren't
| going to stand for free speech when someone wants to talk
| about the Wuhan lab, why the hell would you expect anyone
| to defend your right to furry porn?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Because it's not automatically the same thing just
| because both are private (e.g., non-governmental)
| organizations. A newspaper can exercise editorial control
| over what it publishes, but AT&T can't exercise editorial
| control over your phone calls. Hacker News can moderate
| user content, but an ISP can't moderate what you send
| over its network.
|
| The question of whether Twitter and Facebook should be
| treated like a phone company than they are like Hacker
| News isn't a stupid one, and I don't think it's as
| clearcut as people on both sides of this debate would
| like it to be. But the question of whether a _payment
| processor_ should be able to exercise this kind of
| editorial control over transactions using them as an
| intermediary is not really the same question.
|
| Also, keep your paws off my furry porn.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Payment processors similarly prevented right wing sites
| from accepting donations and payments. Gab as one example
| had to create their own server farm and payment system in
| order to operate since they were shut out of every other
| provider.
|
| Did you have a problem then?
| robonerd wrote:
| > _This is how people want it._
|
| Some people sure. Maybe even the "twitter consensus" or
| "HN consensus", but I think you should be very careful
| about taking apparent consensus on these sort of social
| media platforms as indicative of a broader consensus in
| society.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > talk about the Wuhan lab
|
| When this is just coded language meaning "racist
| conspiracy theories", sites don't want to carry those
| posts. Social media sites are catching on to the coded
| language game.
| thebradbain wrote:
| Personally I think they should, with objective, explicit
| exceptions common to all merchants, something like:
| 1) rudeness or disrupting 2) age and health
| 3) intoxication and indecency 4) whatever else
| society can agree on (good luck!)
|
| Both service providers and customers keep ending up in court
| because the "right to refuse service to anyone" too often
| becomes "discriminating against a protected class", and the
| lines get blurrier every day. Much easier to just say "serve
| everyone or don't go into the business of serving people" and
| be done with it.
|
| In fact, the obligation to serve customers by law would serve
| as both a consumer and merchant protection for cases exactly
| like this -- the fact that, until sodomy laws were ruled
| unconstitutional in the US just a couple decades ago, many
| banks refused to lend to otherwise-credit worthy gay couples
| or unwed heterosexual couples for mortgages (afraid of being
| accused of supporting illegal activities), which would be
| more of a moot point in this sense because the onus is no
| longer on the bank to scrutinize how someone lives their
| personal life so long as they meet objective measures of
| credit worthiness.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| Monopolies/oligopolies should. Imagine if your power company
| decided they don't want to serve you.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Break up the oligopolies and I agree completely.
|
| If Mastercard and Visa refuse to do business with you, you
| will soon find yourself out of business.
| c3534l wrote:
| Normally I would disagree with you, but there's only two major
| credit card companies. People aren't given a choice.
| bsder wrote:
| > but the providers can simply have a policy to deny
| chargebacks for this category.
|
| Which then allows the porn providers to do very shady things.
|
| The problem with porn is that the players on both consumer and
| provider side tend to be really shitty. The consumers are
| causing a bunch of chargebacks whenever they get called out for
| porn or trying to get porn for free.
|
| However, the providers aren't innocent either. _LOTS_ of
| OnlyFans girls get called out for not delivering what they
| promised which certainly should be able to be charged back. The
| big aggregators are generally run by people that will
| absolutely push the boundaries of dark patterns fully knowing
| that in person interaction will be embarassing while a
| chargeback isn 't.
| toast0 wrote:
| I agree, you can't end chargebacks on this category. You
| could maybe require a chargeback for 'i didn't buy this' to
| disable that card for that category (maybe that's a feature
| you want anyway?). You could maybe require enhanced
| authentication for this category (3D-secure??). You could
| charge merchants a higher fee and/or hold payments for a much
| longer time to avoid the need to pull the money back from the
| merchant. I think most chargebacks need to be started within
| 120 days of the initial charge, and it's fairly annoying to
| need to wait 4 months to get paid, but it's better than not
| being able to access payment methods.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Do similar laws apply to any businesses besides public
| utilities?
| giantg2 wrote:
| We have non-discrimination laws on a variety of protected
| classes. It seems there could be support for expanding those
| classes, like the recent story about political affiliation
| and that dog shelter.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is a really good point. I think payment providers are
| like utilities these days, as cash becomes more obscure in
| society.
| fsckboy wrote:
| _Think of prostitution what you will but over there it 's legal
| work and they pay their taxes._
|
| I don't know if this has any impact on V & MC payment
| processing, but the trafficking of women is still a problem in
| countries with legal prostitution
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_the_Nethe...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| which should be treated the same as labor trafficking
|
| the overlap with all forms of work are too numerous to point
| that out as if it needs a different solution
|
| labor rights, more avenues for reporting, outreach, help,
| evaluation of the employer
|
| and thats only available in a place with some form of
| legalized framework (which can be greatly improved even in
| those places)
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Personally I think they should not be able to decide such
| things. A payment provider should be forced to accept all
| legitimate customers."
|
| Payment providers are companies. They should be able to decide
| what they'll cover or not. In this case the bigger issue is
| that you essentially have a duopoly that allows 2 companies to
| affect the market with those decisions.
| franga2000 wrote:
| > Payment providers are companies. They should be able to
| decide what they'll cover or not
|
| Companies exist to provide people with goods and services.
| They have no inalienable rights beyond that. If a company
| does so in a way we see as unacceptable (in this case
| discriminatory), we have the right to force it and the only
| rights it has are to comply or cease operation.
|
| > In this case the bigger issue is that you essentially have
| a duopoly that allows 2 companies to affect the market with
| those decisions.
|
| Yes, everyone know that's an issue. The solution, obviously,
| is to limit their ability to manipulate. We can achieve a big
| part pf this this by forcing them to serve everyone equally.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I feel like in today's world they are also kind of utilities.
| This is where the trouble starts. If you want to run a
| business these days (especially online) you _need_ a payment
| provider in many cases, and pretty much always need a bank
| account.
| timcavel wrote:
| monksy wrote:
| Also in this category. Buying weed from a depensary. You can't
| buy it with a debit card or credit card. The processors won't
| allow it.
|
| But you can ATM loophole your way through it.
| MBCook wrote:
| Isn't that different?
|
| Weed is still federally illegal. Porn is not.
| tflinton wrote:
| I think this is more because its illegal on a federal level,
| not because of brand or pressure.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I am coming to the conclusion that we're in the current
| situation by design.
|
| A bunch of powerful people feel some stuff should be punished,
| but they can't make it illegal. So they'll stay in good term
| with de facto gate keepers and nudge them in their direction.
|
| In the article it's some billionaire, but ruling parties are
| probably doing the same extensively: instead of making the
| controversial decisions themselves, go through all the
| paperwork and get all the backlash, they'll have a private
| entity deal with 95% of the problem (the industry "self-
| regulating") and call it a day.
|
| A pettier exemple than money transactions: there's no reason
| smartphones shouldn't be able to record calls out of the box
| (using it within legal boundaries should be on the user) but
| phone makers will self-block that behavior with no specific
| interest on their side.
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| > there's no reason smartphones shouldn't be able to record
| calls out of the box (using it within legal boundaries should
| be on the user) but phone makers will self-block that
| behavior with no specific interest on their side.
|
| Which smartphones block call recording? Every brandname
| Android I have had enables this feature for voice calls.
| (Although the feature is missing for app calls, and I'm now
| at least 5 years behind the newest phones.)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > Which smartphones block call recording? Every brandname
| Android I have had enables this feature for voice calls.
| (Although the feature is missing for app calls, and I'm now
| at least 5 years behind the newest phones.)
|
| This explains a lot because this is a more recent
| development. https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-is-banning-
| call-recording-...
|
| As the article says it was blocked a couple years ago but
| there was still a loophole which is now being closed as
| well. Though it's by blocking apps using it from the play
| store which can still be avoided by sideloading so
| technically there still is a loophole :) But it's
| definitely seeing more and more restrictions.
| goldcd wrote:
| I slightly disagree - I don't think Visa et al should be forced
| to do anything.
|
| I think the problem is external to Visa, where a once
| capitalist money accumulating machine, is having internal
| debates on what Furry depictions are allowed.
|
| I feel the unnoticed casualty of the "Culture Wars", that
| neither side seems to care about, is that harmless stuff should
| just be left alone.
|
| We don't have to have a view on everything.
| cwillu wrote:
| Deciding who controls the definition of "legitimate" is exactly
| the problem.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In this specific case, banks already have definitions and
| obligations regarding who they can refuse to deal with. I'd
| argue credit cards should at least be as permissive as these.
| markus92 wrote:
| Lawful? That's up to the government to decide.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Which government? If you're talking about something like
| paying for an abortion or marijuana, you're likely to get
| very different answers if you ask the US federal government
| versus certain state governments.
| fipar wrote:
| To expand your point, the impact can be international.
|
| Weed is legal in Uruguay (restrictions apply, but you can
| do some paperwork and you'll then be able to buy it) yet
| the Central Bank suggested pharmacies to only sell it in
| cash, out of fear that it would have negative
| consequences for other CC transactions in the country, or
| for the country as a whole I suppose.
|
| I can understand CC companies not wanting to accept
| payment for weed in another country if the card was
| issued in the US, but for local cards, that's basically
| enforcing one country's laws over another. And you could
| have local CC companies, which we do, but then those are
| only accepted here. So if someone local wants to have a
| CC that can be used abroad, they need to accept the fact
| that the CC company will enforce the laws of the US even
| if they do a transaction outside of that country.
| philistine wrote:
| And yet here in Quebec, we pay for weed with credit cards
| all the time. What's up with that dichotomy?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| so which side are you arguing here - credit card
| companies can decide who they want to provide services
| for even if they decide not to service legal companies or
| that they should be forced to service legal companies?
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Most specific law applies then. Not hard.
| krrrh wrote:
| Yeah, subsidiarity or lack thereof can get messy, but
| it's not that unusual to get different answers from
| different levels of government. It's a totally different
| situation when a private duopoly or oligopoly supersedes
| democratic control.
| pilif wrote:
| I see two answers to this:
|
| 1) if something is legal wherever the purchase was made,
| then the credit card companies, as basic utilities,
| should be compelled to process the purchase.
|
| which would be the easiest for me to understand, but
| possibly more complicated to enforce than
|
| 2) if something is legal wherever the credit card company
| is incorporated in, then the credit card companies, as
| basic utilities, should be compelled to process the
| purchase.
|
| If laws or enforcement are unclear about the legality of
| a thing, handle it like it would be handled in case of a
| cash sale or have the credit card company be cautious and
| enforce the strictest rule.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You have to define legal. In the case of pot, it's not
| actually legal - the feds simply choose not to enforce
| the law in states that have legalized it at the state
| level. There is substantial risk there as a payment
| processor. If it were actually up to the states, then it
| could be more like you describe.
| sshine wrote:
| > Think of prostitution what you will but over there it's legal
| work and they pay their taxes.
|
| Prostitution may be a line of work where less tax is paid.
|
| This does not make the act of prostitution less legitimate.
|
| Hair dressers and tattoo artists also, on average, declare less
| of their total income, and we don't consider hair dressers and
| tattoo artists illegitimate businesses. We just expect them to
| pay taxes and tolerate, to some degree, if they don't. Going to
| the hair dresser or getting a tattoo isn't seen as morally
| objectional because of what they pay in taxes.
|
| Less tax is paid because of cash.
|
| This is also true for prostitution. In part because the
| anonymity of cash is preferable among the customers, because
| the sex worker avoids scrutiny by the bank, and because sex
| workers don't necessarily have work permits in the countries in
| which they operate.
|
| Conversely, we can think of morally objectional jobs where
| taxes are paid.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I agree tax and legitimacy are not the same thing. Tax
| avoidance being common in an industry does not make the work
| itself illegitimate.
|
| The reason I mentioned tax is that not having a bank account
| was making it more complex for them to actually pay their
| taxes as a business. Taxation in the Netherlands is no longer
| something you can pay with an envelope of cash. If you want
| to run a legit business you can't do so without one. It was
| one of the things mentioned during the debate about this.
|
| I'm not sure how it turned out because I don't live there
| anymore but there was talk of mandating the banks to offer
| them an account. After all without overdrafts or loans there
| is no real risk to the bank anyway.
| handmodel wrote:
| I wonder if the card companies themselves would be happy with
| those rules. I don't think it's a grand conspiracy. I think
| they are just looking at the business and realizing that the
| amount of money to be made from it (especially with
| chargebacks) is very small compared to the potential
| lawsuits/headlines of facilitating child pornography and as a
| result have been conservative.
|
| If they were forced to allow it then it would give them cover
| and also their competitors would be as well - so there'd be no
| competitive disadvantage.
| bilekas wrote:
| Yes, payment processors should 'process' all legit payments.
| However..
|
| Visa/Mastercard hire people to do risk analysis though, those
| people are rightly assessing that pr0n payments is a higher
| risk than the insurance premium is worth. Which is newsworthy
| itself, goes to how credit card fraud is overtaking the
| insurance market and maybe those 2 companies should invest in
| that area.. But that's gonna take too long.
|
| There are a lot of reasons for that. On a 'credit' card this
| makes sense. They own/lend the outgoing funds, you just pay
| them back with some interest.
|
| The debit cards are not, the debit card is your balance being
| debited. Instantly. With 0 interest. I'm not 100% sure about
| the insurance on that, but from experience the bank itself will
| be the point of contact to dispute a payment that is
| fraudulent. The bank may or may not pursue lost monies from the
| insurance or debtor etc. But VISA as a whole, just processed
| the transaction.
|
| There used to be, in Ireland at least, a debit card issued by
| banks under the name "Laser" so it was your 'laser' card you
| paid with.. Only in recent years, I realised this was
| competition. So V & MC cornered the market, "Use at X amount of
| ATM's worldwide" etc.
|
| I would love to say "there is a way out, once the payment
| processors process without influence from V/MC" but imagine, a
| payment processor not accepting one of those.. That's game
| over.
|
| I do think companies like N26/Revolut and co have standing to
| create their own 'standard' after really generating an
| incredible userbase, would prefer maybe open source but
| financal companies are slow to adopt.
|
| Imagine a payment gateway standard that wasn't restricted, open
| source/readable and had it's own userbase. I'm not a proponent
| of using crypto as currency but you can see why they got
| carried away. The problems to overcome are just... Well,
| bureaucratic.
| kshahkshah wrote:
| I feel like the only thing worst than Visa or Mastercard
| regulating this would be the US government.
| polote wrote:
| They are not the porn regulator. The porn space is much more than
| pornhub and actually most websites have learnt to live with
| border legal financing options for a long time. The ceo had
| probably always wanted to cut out pornhub and this was the
| perfect moment to deliver his agenda.
|
| Porn is everywhere and there is no way to prevent that.
| scarface74 wrote:
| There is something even more disturbing. I have a friend who
| caters to the LGBTQ community. She does parties, party busses,
| promotions with famous artists at clubs, etc. She once told me
| that many of the credit card processors wouldn't do business with
| her. This was a decade ago. I don't know if she still has the
| same issue.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I don't find that _more disturbing_ than cutting off furries, I
| find it _equally disturbing_.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Not remotely limited to porn - they are also arbiters on the
| range of allowed political thought:
|
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/mastercard-activists-...
|
| https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/biggest-blacklist-a...
| adamrezich wrote:
| not sure why this is being downvoted when it's a true statement
| related to--but not touched upon in--the article. plus it's a
| counterpoint to some of the other comments here saying that
| this is all _solely_ due to these companies ' proverbial hands
| being tied by federal regulations.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Because, they will argue, those bans are justified. And
| because they are justified, we should pay no attention to
| them. We should not even know they exist.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| these people would be happy to be tyranically opressed so
| long as the opressor is registered as a private
| corporation.
| Linda703 wrote:
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not just that "Mastercard and visa are the de facto
| regulators of porn". It's that one billionaire called up a
| ~10s-100s millionaire and said "stop this because I read a NY
| Times article that made me really angry", and the response was
| "On it."
|
| More rule-by-oligarchy, as usual.
| bmelton wrote:
| That may be true and I'm not arguing that it isn't, but at
| least where I've come to learn about it more concretely
| happening, it's always been the result of things like Operation
| Choke Point[1] or Redlining[2] which were pressure campaigns by
| the governments who regulate the banks. In the case of the
| former, it was Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB, while the latter
| was the FHA working through the FHLBB.
|
| Banks are so inherently risk averse that even the most stalwart
| of them is likely to submit to even regulatory-coercive
| overtones, which effectively makes them arms of the government,
| but with enough "by proxy" to leap around constitutional
| hurdles.
|
| [1] - Operation Choke Point:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
|
| [2] - Redlining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
| toyg wrote:
| _> Banks are so inherently risk averse _
|
| ... that 2008 never happened.
|
| Banks are risk-averse when it suits them to be so.
| bombcar wrote:
| Risk for a bank is having the government crawl up their
| various orifices, not losing money.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks for this, especially the link about Operation Choke
| Point.
|
| But I think the details around Operation Choke Point give me
| confidence, not wariness. Yes, Operation Choke Point _was_
| government overreach, but when the truth came out:
|
| 1. US Congressional reps proposed laws to stop the practice.
|
| 2. The FDIC Inspector General and the DoJ investigated the
| operation.
|
| 3. The FDIC issued a letter "effectively ending the practice"
| in early 2015.
|
| 4. The government officially ended the practice in 2017.
|
| That is, IMO, government _worked_ here: overzealousness came
| to light relatively quickly, was debated publicly, and was
| terminated.
| [deleted]
| rodgerd wrote:
| If you cared about "cancel culture" and platforms having too much
| leverage, you'd be a lot more concerned about this duopoly than
| whether Twitter lets Nazis speak.
| yew wrote:
| They're not the government. They've no obligation to platform
| anyone at all, whatever sort of extremist they are. Get used to
| it, examine why the world will be a better place, move on.
| cowtools wrote:
| I don't think that the town squares and forums of the
| internet should be controlled and paid for by advertising
| companies. Nazis are not banned on any moral or political
| basis: It's purely a buisness decision. It sounds fine but
| when you begin spouting some unprofitable ideas they're not
| going to hesitate to ban you too.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > They've no obligation to platform anyone at all
|
| That's just objectively false we have a long history of
| forcing companies to take customers from Utilities, Americans
| with Disabilities Act, anti trust laws, forcing companies to
| license technology, and a whole bunch of other ones when
| needed; This is no different.
|
| We are talking about it because we find the current state
| with Visa and MasterCard as unacceptable.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| any internally consistent application of civil liberties means
| caring about both.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Can someone explain to me why there hasn't been a crypto payments
| use case that solves this? Of all the fields that crypto should
| be able to gain adoption in, one where people don't want their
| standard accounts and credit reports to reflect they subscribed
| to any porn, however bland, seems like the ideal (legal) use
| case.
| dogman144 wrote:
| The volatility is the elephant in the room. In my opinion, vol
| slowly smooths out as adoption increases, happens with most
| currencies. But this slowly might be a long time.
|
| You are one of the few comments ITT that bring this up though.
| On one hand, it shows how the tech's real purpose hasn't really
| permeated the general or tech public yet. On the other, it is
| literally the only digitally native payment solution that
| offers cash-but-online and solves the specific risk of payment
| censorship . There might be other innovations down the road
| though, but for now caring about these events means caring
| about cryptocurrency, if you care about solving the problem
| with today's tech vs what's still to come.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| But if transactions settle immediately with crypto shouldn't
| you be able to just convert to fiat or a stablecoin to avoid
| the volatility? Or do you mean volatility for a consumer that
| holds the currencies beforehand? It's just surprising it
| hasn't been adopted somewhere yet as this isn't a new problem
| facing the industry and I wonder if there are bigger barriers
| I'm not seeing. I think Coinbase had a payments function
| similar to a Stripe integration but maybe they also don't
| allow such use cases? https://commerce.coinbase.com/ - I'll
| dig into their TOS out of morbid curiousity
|
| Edit w/update: It is indeed not allowed in their TOS, "Adult
| Content and Services: Pornography (including literature,
| imagery and other media); sites offering any sexually-related
| services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per view, or
| adult live chat features." is under the 'Prohibited' section
| dogman144 wrote:
| Without an easy way to interact economically with the
| currency beyond one time use cases, it's more like a gift
| card that is very volatile with heavy compliance
| requirements.
|
| I could spend all my money via gift cards, but the process
| of buying gift cards constantly is annoying. Using crypto
| for one time uses is like this, but with the added
| requirement of compliance teams evaluating what you've used
| the giftcard for (the crypto to fiat swapping process).
|
| However, where there exists consistent market worth staying
| in crypto, you do see adoption. Unfortunately, this is
| darknet markets so not great for marketing further
| adoption. But good proof of concept.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| The number of people interested in paying for content not
| permitted by Visa/MC and who can actually figure out how to use
| crypto for anything other than trading on an exchange is tiny.
|
| Not surprisingly the only resources online about porn payments
| and cryptocurrency are a variety of high profile CSAM stories.
|
| Yet another of one of the many problems with crypto adoption -
| it's so frequently used/cited/associated with illicit activity
| that (again other than gambling on an exchange) many (most?)
| law abiding people associate it with criminals outside of the
| Disneyworld playpen that is Coinbase.
| louloulou wrote:
| > Can someone explain to me why there hasn't been a crypto
| payments use case that solves this?
|
| There has - most porn sites accept payment in bitcoin.
|
| https://lifehacker.com/how-to-pay-for-porn-with-crypto-and-w...
| oneng wrote:
| This argument reminds me of Taleb's note on Minority rule:
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
|
| "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small
| Minority"
|
| "The black-and-white character of these societal laws can be
| explained with the following. Assume that under a certain regime,
| when you mix white and dark blue in various combinations, you
| don't get variations of light blue, but dark blue. Such a regime
| is vastly more likely to produce dark blue than another rule that
| allows more shades of blue."
|
| One of the bigger bangers from the chapter:
|
| "Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy.
| Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world."
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| dogman144 wrote:
| A digital payment rails that functions like cash, as in my bank
| can't prevent me from handing it over to whoever I want for
| whatever legal reason is a critical aspect of a free society that
| has gone digital.
|
| You might disagree with bitcoin and co being the answer for this,
| but it's the only tech that's posed a viable solution as of now.
| Viable is not perfect. But if this article bothers you, at least
| understand this a (the) major aspect of why people work on
| serious cryptocurrency projects.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Seems like Bitcoin or other crypto would have filled this usecase
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