[HN Gopher] Visa, Mastercard suspend payments for ad purchases o...
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Visa, Mastercard suspend payments for ad purchases on PornHub,
MindGeek
Author : latchkey
Score : 143 points
Date : 2022-08-04 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| simoneau wrote:
| I recommend this podcast-miniseries "Hot Money: porn, power and
| profit" by the Financial Times:
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...
|
| It spends quite a bit of time explaining how the credit card
| companies became the de-facto regulators of porn on the Internet.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| "Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child
| sexual abuse"
|
| What a brave stance. It's nice to see a card network that cares
| about the children.
| joffems wrote:
| Do they care about the children or their reputation?
|
| The Financial Times released an 8 episode podcast titled Hot
| Money on who controls the industry. The podcast isn't
| appropriate for everyone, but is a great listen.
| carrotcarrot wrote:
| Pretty sure he was being sarcastic. Nobody uses the phrase
| "the children" unironically in current year.
| Clubber wrote:
| "For the children," is often an excuse by organizations to do
| nefarious things, like the still ongoing and massively
| destructive drug war.
| athammer wrote:
| I think they were being sarcastic. At least I'd hope so. Not
| sure any company that large actually cares
| smartbit wrote:
| https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3.
| ..
| cricalix wrote:
| A timely podcast about some of this is Hot Money: Who Rules Porn.
| Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times. Dives into some of
| the history of the industry, payment processors, and so on.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Another win for the extremist anti-porn group Exodus Cry. They
| are just using a small handful of cases slipping through the
| cracks to make it look like PH is doing nothing to moderate this
| content. Their end goal was never to protect children, their goal
| is to eliminate all pornography from the internet.
| VictorPath wrote:
| In 1910, Emma Goldman wrote "The Traffic in Women" about how
| the supposed efforts against sex traffic in the day had nothing
| to do with helping women, and were all done for other purposes.
|
| 112 years later nothing has changed from what she described -
| fundamentalist churches in supposed campaigns against sex
| trafficking, yellow journalists printing sensationalist stories
| - 112 years and nothing has changed whatsoever.
| BasilPH wrote:
| Totally agree. SESTA-FOSTA is just the current instalment of
| this pattern.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I think this time it was a win for activist investment given
| Bill Ackman's investment and tweet thread
| https://twitter.com/billackman/status/1553510104200351746?s=...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> goal is to eliminate all pornography from the internet.
|
| Funny story: Pre-9/11 the Bush administration was talking about
| cracking down on internet pornography. The Christian right was
| saying the same things they had about magazines in decades
| past. So some industry people got together and founded websites
| dedicated to the most horrible pornography possible, in full
| expectation that they would be attacked. They were going to be
| champions of the first amendment in the same was that Hustler
| magazine had been a generation previously. But then 9/11. The
| expected crackdown didn't materialize. Those websites are still
| around, having evolved into some of the biggest names in the
| biz.
| albany2 wrote:
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Right now a lot of socialist parties in Europe want to shut
| down porn and sex work under the name of feminism as well. As
| an example Spain where they are also in power. Thinking only
| about American Christians is short sighted, there's a lot of
| pressure from people who want nothing to do with Christianity
| but see the industry as exploitive and anti woman.
| error54 wrote:
| source?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| https://www.wired.com/2001/01/bush-to-porn-run-for-cover/
|
| 06-Jan, 2001.
|
| "The conservative queen of syndicated outrage, who happens
| to be George W. Bush's pick to head the Department of
| Labor, has repeatedly warned of what she describes as the
| perils of sexually explicit material online and urged
| government action against it. If the Senate gives her the
| nod, Chavez will not have any day-to-day responsibilities
| dealing with online speech. But her nomination signals the
| approach that a Bush presidency is likely to take toward
| sexually explicit material online."
|
| For the rest of the story, you will have to dig into the
| history of certain websites that I shall not link to here
| on HN.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > Their end goal was never to protect children, their goal is
| to eliminate all pornography from the internet.
|
| That's never going to happen. All it would do is drive regular
| porn to the same corners of the internet where snuff films and
| child porn live, and nobody wants that as that drives more
| people to those areas.
| atlanta4 wrote:
| sashenka wrote:
| I'm glad to see it
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I understand you may not like porn but why not let other
| people enjoy it?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| In this context the argument against Visa is that (through
| MindGeek) they are profiting from child pornography,
| revenge porn, and actual rape pornography. I'm sympathetic
| to the idea that consenting adults not hurting others
| should be allowed to do what they want - but that's not the
| issue here. Real people are really being hurt so saying
| "Why not let others enjoy it" is beside the point.
|
| If you found out Disneyland employees raped one out of
| every thousand guests then saying "I understand you might
| not like Disneyland but why not let other people enjoy it?"
| Wouldn't be a great argument. I don't think companies
| should profit off of child, revenge, and rape pornography
| and if they can't figure out how to run their platform such
| that they aren't doing that, then they should be penalized
| or shut down.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _they are profiting from child pornography, revenge
| porn, and actual rape pornography._
|
| This statement buries the lede; MindGeek profits off
| porn, but it isn't clear to me that "child pornography,
| revenge porn, and actual rape pornography" are the actual
| money makers for the company. Is it the case that they
| are actively distributed and profiting off of said
| content, or are they just deficient in moderating the
| platform.
|
| The distinction is important, if all it is is that they
| are not moderating the platform, the Facebook, Instagram
| and TikTok have far more cause to be deplatformed by Visa
| than MindGeek.
|
| MindGeek's platforms gets billions of impressions per
| day, and I find it hard to believe that most of the world
| is consuming child porn.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I bet the % of sex acts that are non-consensual from
| Tinder or Bumble is at least as high as the % on porn web
| sites considering there are more controls around porn and
| documented evidence of the crime.
|
| There is also decent evidence that proliferation of porn
| tends to reduce the number of rapes.
| peyton wrote:
| Are you comparing Visa to Disneyland? One's a theme park,
| while the other controls over half of all credit purchase
| volume. It's more like the power company shutting off
| access to Disneyland; the likely outcome is the rapists
| will just move elsewhere--there wasn't anything
| Disneyland-specific making them rapists.
| TingPing wrote:
| There is no evidence this is a widespread problem though.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I know, but the topic in the reaction above was that the
| real motive behind this was purportedly the banning of
| all porn by conservative groups and the OP thought this
| to be a good thing. This is what I responded to.
|
| Of course Child Abuse should be banned but it already is
| and there are already copious laws against it, which
| could be brought to bear against pornhub if they really
| facilitate it. However payment providers are starting to
| regulate even normal consensual adult porn now, which I
| definitely object to.
| donkarma wrote:
| I understand you may not like cigarettes but why not let
| other people enjoy it?
| oarsinsync wrote:
| I'd like it more if people were welcome to enjoy
| cigarettes in the same way that they're welcome to enjoy
| pornography: not in public places.
|
| Alas, smoking in public places is still permitted,
| despite the fact that it has negative impact on others in
| those public places.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Other people already are allowed to enjoy cigarettes?
| NHQ wrote:
| im having trouble viewing this comment
| donkarma wrote:
| Agreed, awful for the mind
| AlexandrB wrote:
| So is religion, but I wouldn't advocate for banning it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Perhaps it's time to start regulating it though...
| jmprspret wrote:
| I see this retort far too often without any actual
| knowledge whether the person is religious. To be against
| porn one does not have to be religious.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Maybe Visa should also suspend card payments for the theaters
| and streaming platforms that enable major Hollywood studios
| to sweep the jailable crimes of their producers under the
| rug.
|
| _But muh Marvel movies! /s_
| malfist wrote:
| You know if porn bothers you....you could just not browse it.
| Leave it for the rest of us. It doesn't impact you.
| throwfh80h82 wrote:
| That's really not true. We live in a society and interact
| with each other, we're not isolated, atomized robots
| (despite Silicon Valley's best efforts).
| knaik94 wrote:
| You can put up a internet porn filter for yourself.
| nerdjon wrote:
| How does legal consenting porn, sex work, or similar
| impact you if you are not consuming it yourself?
|
| It has no more of an impact on you than if someone else
| spends their nights playing video games.
|
| If you have a problem with it existing that is your fault
| and not the fault of other people. But that is an
| internalized problem for you.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| You live in a society with other people. Unless you're full
| libertarian it's common sense that we make laws to protect
| the society from harm like public vaccination programs
| against diseases etc.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I am very worried about where this is going.
|
| We already have enough issues with puritanical people pushing
| their views on everyone else, but I always felt at least some
| mild level of safety that I could still mostly do what I want
| if I was in certain states/cities.
|
| I do realize that Visa was in a really hard place at this point
| and they likely had to make this decision, so I don't exactly
| blame Visa here. But it worries me that it could even get to
| this point that Visa is somehow responsible and I see they are
| not trying to go over Discover.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Leaving porn aside....Bitcoin FTW
|
| This is what Satoshi was talking about; "Commerce on the Internet
| has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions
| serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments.
| While the system works well enough for most transactions, it
| still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based
| model[0]."
|
| So I need to trust and rely on Visa, MasterCard and other credit
| card companies not to cut me off their network? And they can do
| it anytime because they might not like my business, my business
| model or my business practices. If business is legal and up and
| running just let it be.
|
| [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
| pueblito wrote:
| > As porn star Cherie DeVille explains, the story is, and has
| been, a lot weirder than that. Because Visa and Mastercard hold
| effective duopoly status all over the world -- controlling 98% of
| credit transactions in the U.K., 80% in the E.U., and over 70% in
| the U.S. -- no porn performer can afford to cross the rules for
| acceptable content the two companies have laid down. And those
| rules are beyond strange.
|
| "Women are allowed to squirt, but we're not allowed to urinate,"
| DeVille says. "We can't insert our panties into our vaginas
| anymore, because that's an object. I tried to use a carrot-shaped
| dildo. That's a problem because that's an object, too, but a
| phallic-shaped dildo is apparently okay." She shakes her head in
| amazement. "The rules are completely nonsensical."
|
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-cherie-devil...
| nicbou wrote:
| That meeting must have looked like a Monty Python sketch
| nsajko wrote:
| Relevant sub-thread from a previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24297406
|
| "Fantastical" quote from above:
|
| > > Our banking partners recently notified us that they are no
| longer willing to support the sales of realistic sex toys. I
| understand that your products were designed to depict the body
| parts of mythological and fantastical creatures, and we have
| indicated this to our banking partners in an effort to advocate
| for continuing to support your business here on Stripe. As a
| result of these discussions, our banking partners have agreed
| that they are willing to continue supporting your business as
| long as you are not selling products that are colored such that
| they might be mistaken for human flesh.
| pixxel wrote:
| Forgive me, but I'm sat here wondering what "squirt" is in
| reference too. I don't wish to google it. Diarrhoea related? So
| women can defacate but not urinate?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_ejaculation
| nsajko wrote:
| Look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_ejaculation
|
| Note that both male and female ejaculation may be faked in a
| porn movie.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Female ejaculation. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on
| if it is it's own fluid or just spontaneous urination.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| My understanding is that the majority of the time it
| happens in porn, it's actually urination (but legally they
| might not be able to say that either)
| mise_en_place wrote:
| But I thought we don't need VISA anymore? We can just use the
| latest crypto /s
| auggierose wrote:
| Well, cases like that make me think we actually DO need crypto.
| We do need an equivalent of digital cash, because what some
| CEOs or board members think and do shouldn't influence whether
| you can pay your rent or not. It's really as simple as that. If
| you can learn to drive a car and not kill a massive amount of
| people in the process, you can probably also learn how to
| operate a crypto wallet safely.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| These companies need to be regulated like any other utility. But
| no one will because they're hoping to use private companies to at
| morality police in a way governments are not allowed to.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| seriously, if you were Visa what would you do ?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62372964
| wollsmoth wrote:
| What a mess.
|
| They started requiring age verification for the people in
| uploaded videos but maybe they should take it a step further
| and only accept content from approved accounts, like reputable
| studios that keep records.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| They already are: Google for 2257 records keeping
| requirements.
| knaik94 wrote:
| One of the reasons why pornhub is popular is that it lets
| individual users create a professional looking channel for
| themselves and has subscriptions which it takes a cut of. The
| approved accounts thing already exists and pornhub has
| already purged old/unverified content in the name of safety
| once, in December 2020. It removed removed around 10 million
| videos. Visa and Mastercard already went through this process
| with pornhub and other mindgeek-owned websites.
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/14/22173858/pornhub-
| videos-...
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah, I remember reading about that. Maybe visa needs
| better assurances that they aren't going to get nailed
| again by being their payment processor.
| markdown wrote:
| These card companies have too much power. Companies engaged in
| the kava trade (vendors, kava bars, etc) have a very hard time
| with payments processors and banks due to the strict rules of
| Visa and Mastercard despite kava being a legal dietary supplement
| in the US.
| antonymy wrote:
| I don't personally care one whit about the fortunes of Pornhub
| but this sets a very bad precedent for the internet. The payment
| processing duopoly is a huge problem, they are able to dictate
| way too much of what is allowed to exist on the internet. Today
| it's illegal pornography that everybody agrees is terrible, but
| that's how it always starts. The safe targets, the stuff nobody
| objects to, to establish precedent. Once they have this power to
| censor it is extremely hard to walk it back.
| seydor wrote:
| Awaiting for when they will suspend payments to facebook , where
| a lot more child porn is uploaded. I hope visa is forced to
| expand this on all adult websites and even further. Maybe some of
| the cryptocurrencies will finally do what they were designed to
| do
| Ekaros wrote:
| Central Bank currencies are starting to look better and better.
| At least then it is the government deciding. And that might be
| controlled by voters. Or violent revolutions.
| labrador wrote:
| I believe that recent crackdowns are worse for people in the long
| run. Lets assume that most sexually active people look at porn
| now and then, which I think is a safe assumption, and that teens
| learn about sex from watching porn.
|
| These changes and age verification requirements have eliminated
| all the normal amateur sex scenes between regular consenting
| adults (On RedTube for example) and left the age-verified
| professional porn, which depicts unrealistic sex between adults
| who don't give a sh*t about each other, but have perfect bodies
| and big parts. Instead of showing wholesome normal sex, now all
| we get is porn shop slut/stud sex
| owow123 wrote:
| The market gets what the market wants.
|
| Unless you believe there's some sinister cabal out there
| conspiring to hurt 18-25 years with porn, you'll just have to
| accept what's out there is what people pay to see.
|
| The big hardcore porn scenes aren't cheap they are deliberate
| and calculated.
|
| > depicts unrealistic sex between adults
|
| Doesn't depict the kind of sex you like to watch or partake in
| but "Middle America" isn't the only view point (no offence if
| your not American).
|
| There's plenty of bars / clubs / spaces / apps for "kinksters"
| and the more adventurous. "kink" came before porn and will
| exist long after it.
|
| Its unfortunate hardcore porn rises to the homepage of these
| porn sites but its simple economics "ew that's gross, lemme
| just click it real quick" and there's the advertising space
| sold - its just "the algorithm" at it again.
|
| Maybe you should make an account and let "the algorithm" do its
| thing.
| ratchetbob wrote:
| well the problem is censorship from Visa is distorting the
| market. i.e., many people like amateur porn but this makes
| amateur porn have a higher barrier.
| labrador wrote:
| I have never paid for porn because there is so much free
| stuff, so I can only speak to the free stuff. I'm talking
| about widely available free porn that is supported with
| advertising. I hear it's softer than the paid stuff.
| jwond wrote:
| > Unless you believe there's some sinister cabal out there
| conspiring to hurt 18-25 years with porn, you'll just have to
| accept what's out there is what people pay to see.
|
| I don't think porn companies are necessarily trying to harm
| people in the same way I don't think social media companies,
| casinos, drug dealers, etc. are necessarily trying to harm
| people. They are trying to make money, and they don't care
| too much if they cause harm in doing so.
| sidlls wrote:
| The difference being mainly that these clubs, bars and
| magazines are all analog and, prior to the wide availability
| of porn on the internet, were not something the vast majority
| of people were exposed to. Kinks have existed since sex
| started. But that doesn't mean they were (or are) "normal".
| "Normal" isn't meant to be derogatory as I use it: it's just
| shorthand for what the 1-sigma group in the distribution
| considers "typical"
| piva00 wrote:
| How are you defining kink here? The vast majority of my
| sexual partners had some kind of kink, even if just in a
| toned down level. I cannot remember many I had intimacy
| enough with that weren't into some behaviour or act
| considered "kinky".
|
| I really don't know how you'd even define the "normal" sex
| behaviour, there is just so much variation.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is an eternal contradiction in US attitudes towards porn.
| Porn was condemned by mainstream consensus in the 80s/90s for
| creating unrealistic and strange (plastic) bodily standards,
| but the companies that were closest to the mainstream and in
| every hotel PPV were Vivid and Wicked, who were the pinnacle of
| that slick plastic style. The farther you got away from them,
| the more natural people looked and behaved.
|
| edit: even now, the places where extreme bodily exaggerations,
| distortions, and surgical interventions dominate are very
| vanilla and mainstream, like instagram and twitter, or even
| softcore/non-nude.
| seydor wrote:
| It's not even about porn. Nudist websites now also require real
| ID verification for their members. I can see this extended to
| fitness websites soon.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Studio shot material is definitely a bit more exaggerated and
| more selective with their performers. However, I don't really
| have the impression that amateur shot stuff is "showing
| wholesome normal sex". Some studios do produce more realistic
| video but in my experience the amateur stuff is just worse lit
| and self shot. Still usually made by someone just trying to get
| a few quick bucks.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think the OPs point was that teenagers could start
| considering this the 'normal'. Personally I give them a
| little more credit. But it is a good point.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah. It's hard to control what teens see and what their
| interpretation is. I don't know if there are really great
| examples of what healthy sex lives should be like.
| Everything is just extremely graphic and widely available.
| sidlls wrote:
| I don't agree, based on at least my personal experience. My
| wife and I (40s) don't engage in even a fraction of the
| acts I see commonly in porn. My bf (mid-20s) and I, on the
| other hand regularly do. He sees these acts as normal and
| expected. She definitely does not, and neither do I.
| Anecdotes aren't data, to be sure, but my bf's friend group
| has a similarly completely different view of what is
| "normal" with respect to sexual activity, and the same is
| true for others of similar age I've been involved with. I'm
| convinced porn definitely shapes the view of normal.
| dTal wrote:
| Not saying you're necessarily wrong, but your
| observations are fully explainable by porn following
| trends; no causal direction can be established from them.
| sidlls wrote:
| You have a point, but I don't think I agree. The mid-20s
| group get the majority of their education about what to
| do for sex from porn as much as if not more than from
| their sex partners. They didn't set the trends for porn
| that is watched today, unless they started influencing
| the market when they were pre-pubescent.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Interesting, but it doesn't sound like a 'problem' per
| se. As long as people don't do these things against their
| wishes. It's not a bad thing if people broaden their
| sexual horizons IMO (though some of the sexual acts in
| porn are a bit gratuitous). But I strongly believe what
| consenting adults do in the bedroom is their business and
| nobody else's.
|
| And it does sound like it's definitely a subset of the
| more mainstream porn that he's practicing, after all the
| more extreme things often require more people.
|
| Like the other poster I also wonder whether this is a
| result of influencing from porn or that porn is
| influenced by changing behaviour. After all, porn
| wouldn't be made if people didn't like it.
| labrador wrote:
| All I'm saying is that amateurs are going to have amateur sex
| so it's closer to the norm than pro sex and probably better
| for teens to watch and it's too bad that a lot of it will be
| gone, leaving mostly pro stuff.
|
| I understand the motivation: let's reduce the trafficking of
| women and revenge porn, but I'm not sure we're going about it
| in a good way.
| listless wrote:
| I think the main problem with studio work is that it sets
| highly unrealistic expectations for what a woman's body
| looks like. It's professionally groomed and unnatural and
| girls cannot possibly meet the same standard on any given
| Tuesday. Neither can guys but I feel like the expectations
| for guys are generally much lower anyway.
| dieselgate wrote:
| It's hilarious to me that ads for porn are just more porn
| wollsmoth wrote:
| A fierce competition for the people who might actually pay.
| seydor wrote:
| Google does not allow anything that shows tits even if covered.
| And google gatekeeps advertising. But i remember decades ago,
| late night shows on TV which were almost soft porn had lots of
| ads, especially alcohol/cigarettes. We live in neovictorian
| times.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Section 230 rocks! I love watching an endless stream of porn with
| clearly unwitting female subjects. Visa needs to stay in their
| lane!
| giarc wrote:
| Bill Ackman has been vocal on this issue and check out his
| Twitter for more commentary on this. He feels Visa's board is in
| big trouble here.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> He feels Visa's board is in big trouble here.
|
| Visa is too big to ever be in big trouble. They constantly have
| some class of customers that are "dangerous" to do business
| with. Once upon a time it was porn websites. Then it was VPNs.
| Then it was "filesharing" services. Eventually as these thing
| become normal and better-understood by the general public Visa
| relents. The only thing Visa really fears is some upstart
| payment system eating into their territory (paypal).
| giarc wrote:
| IANAL but I believe the board can be held criminally liable
| in this situation, meaning they could serve jail time. I've,
| admittedly, only skimmed some articles, but I believe the
| issue is that PornHub (mindgeek) knowingly hosted child porn
| and even after Visa was made aware, continued to do business
| with them. I could be wrong though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The danger too is a bit of the Streisand effect was
| ongoing. Footage that was taken down became more popular
| when re-uploaded. From the outside, it looked like Mindgeek
| was not implementing industry-standard protocols to prevent
| repeated uploads. And they were pulling "windfall" profits
| from those re-uploads. The situation looked too similar to
| the "Girls Gone Wild" and later fiascos involving non-
| professional pornographic content.
| stlewis6 wrote:
| m00dy wrote:
| Another reason that we need a decentralised blockchain and a
| decentralised stable coin.
| jeromegv wrote:
| By definition, you can't have a coin be stable while at the
| same time not having a centralized instance that keep it
| "stable". Those are oxymorons. It's one, or the other.
|
| We can't just repeat any buzzword without thinking about what
| exactly does it actually mean in practice.
| MitPitt wrote:
| Mind sharing where you got that definition from?
| smitop wrote:
| Decentralised stablecoins, such as Dai, do exist, and the
| price of Dai does manage to maintain its peg pretty well. Not
| all decentralised stablecoins have done as well (most notably
| TerraUSD) though, it's definitely hard to design an
| algorithmic stablecoin that maintains its peg.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think that commenter means it's logically impossible. In
| what sense is DAI "decentralized" if its value is set by
| the same centralized group that sets the value of a dollar?
| joyfylbanana wrote:
| Though bitcoin volatility has been going down along the
| years, it might be quite stable after 10 years or so.
| BasilPH wrote:
| The relevant law here is called SESTA-FOSTA. It forces companies
| to ensure they don't host content that facilitates sexual
| exploitation. This has impacted full-service workers (i.e.,
| prostitutes). Before SESTA-FOSTA, they could put up ads on
| specialized websites, chat with the clients and then have them
| come to a room they had rented. This arrangement gave them basic
| security.
|
| After SESTA-FOSTA, the pages hosting those ads folded, as they
| couldn't comply with the new rules. Many full-service workers are
| now walking the streets again and have to have sex in their
| clients' cars. It's obvious that this makes them much more
| vulnurable.
|
| It even goes further: Banks will close your account if they think
| your business has something to do with "sex", even if what you do
| is legal. If they feel you might be a risk, they freeze your
| account.
|
| This law has hurt many sex workers, often people already at the
| very bottom of society. On the other hand, it's unclear how many
| lives it saved from sexual exploitation.
|
| Sex workers are vulnerable, and many women are being abused. But
| the way this law was enacted, I can't help but think that pushing
| sex work further into illegality was a desired side-effect.
|
| Source: I know a couple of sex workers in NYC.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| You're right about SESTA-FOSTA being terrible, but I don't
| think it's the relevant law here.
|
| The relevant code here is 1591(a)(2).
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1591
|
| The opinion of the court is that the defendents benefit
| monetarily from a commercial sex act involving someone below 18
| years of age.
| jcranmer wrote:
| If you want to understand why this happened, read this recent
| court decision:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.82...
|
| Basically, a court recently ruled that, since Visa is processing
| payments for ad purchases on Pornhub, Visa is a co-conspirator on
| all sex trafficking and child porn that Pornhub is involved with.
| Apparently Pornhub merely being alleged to have engaged in those
| activities is sufficient knowledge to constitute a "meeting of
| the minds" for Visa to become a participant in those activities.
|
| (As you might imagine, I vehemently disagree with that ruling.
| But as it's the ruling that stands, it's the situation that Visa
| finds itself in, and were I in Visa's shoes, I'd do exactly the
| same thing they're doing now. They _really_ don 't want to be a
| part of this--and they really _shouldn 't_ be a part of this, and
| dumping Pornhub's ad purchases is the fastest route they can take
| to not be a part of this, as problematic as it is.)
| savant_penguin wrote:
| That's an interesting take.
|
| Would other companies that support pornhub/across in any way
| also be considered participants? Water supply/electricity/
| internet providers/whoever sells them dildos/food
| happyopossum wrote:
| Payments are a pretty specific aspect of trafficking, and
| while it's feasible some of those other areas you mention
| could be problematic, Visa has to be much more worried than
| the caterer.
| imperio59 wrote:
| These utilities likely have laws that shield them from
| liability for these things, otherwise every illegal grow-op
| would cause the power company to be criminally liable for
| having supplied power to the grower's house and that makes no
| sense.
|
| In this case Visa knows full well what they are enabling, by
| allowing payments to be processed on PH, especially given the
| volume of transactions, there's no way they don't know what
| they are supporting.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The argument specifically relies on the financial processing
| role:
|
| > MindGeek is being sued for knowingly monetizing child porn.
| Visa's act of continuing to recognize MindGeek as a merchant
| is directly linked to MindGeek's criminal act, as Visa's act
| served to keep open the means through which MindGeek
| completed its criminal act knowing that that criminal act was
| being committed. At this early stage of the proceedings,
| before Plaintiff has had any discovery from which to derive
| Visa's state of mind, the Court can comfortably infer that
| Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn from the
| very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means
| to do so and knew MindGeek was indeed doing so. Put yet
| another way, Visa is not alleged to have simply created an
| incentive to commit a crime, it is alleged to have knowingly
| provided the tool used to complete a crime.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Wouldn't a crime and court ruling need to occur before Visa
| is of "knowing" status?
| TheDong wrote:
| I think a more interesting analogy than water/electricity
| would be storage.
|
| Selling child porn has a special place in the law in a way
| that "feeding suspected CP criminals" does not.
|
| But storing is also special. Storing child porn is very
| illegal, so how far does that extend? Does AWS renting an EC2
| instance to pornhub, knowing pornhub may store CP on it, mean
| AWS is complicit in storing child porn?
|
| Does Western Digital selling an SSD to pornhub for their
| datacenter make WD complicit in storing child porn?
|
| Does the data-center that leases them a server become
| complicit in storing and distributing CP?
| knaik94 wrote:
| That analogy breaks down when the idea of encryption is
| considered. AWS has end to end encryption for customer data
| in motion, and optionally at rest. Pornhub is the only
| party that has absolute control and access of the data. The
| data centers are not at fault any more than the government
| is, for owning a road, when someone driving a tesla car in
| autopilot causes a crash.
|
| In this analogy, Visa is in the same position as a power
| plant that provides electricity for Tesla cars.
|
| I believe Visa should not be held legally accountable for
| the lack of action on Mindgeek/Pornhub in taking down and
| blocking reuploads of reported CSAM. However the issue is
| that Visa themselves have chosen to be a moderator of what
| content is allowed by its customers, regardless of the
| actual legality of the content. They do it indirectly by
| accepting and rejecting customers based on these guidelines
| that are not in line with what is or isn't allowed by law.
|
| Based on a shallow reading of the court documents, Visa
| made essentially the same argument, that it stands an
| independent of the decisions of Mindgeek and those who
| uploaded the CSAM. The counter is the idea that Visa is at
| fault for giving Mindgeek/Pornhub/Uploaders of CSAM a
| platform to make money in the first place. That was a
| decision made by Visa. The fact that Visa already stopped
| being a payment processor for Pornhub/Mindgeek once in 2020
| due to a NYT article about CSM shows that Visa was aware of
| and had control over how strictly Mindgeek/Pornhub polices
| the uploads for CSAM.
|
| The case isn't about the existence of CSAM on Pornhub
| either, it's specifically calling out how Visa and Mindgeek
| has already profited from traffic generated by CSAM hosted
| on Pornhub.
|
| In my analogy, it would be a power plant knowing the
| electricity they provide will be used in Tesla cars used by
| criminals to rob places. Tesla, in this example, knowingly
| selling cars that they know will be used for robberies and
| not doing anything about it. Tesla cars can't run without
| electricity, and the power plant makes money from selling
| the electricity to a group they know will use it up faster
| than the general driver.
|
| Electricity and transportation is a regulated utility. I
| wonder if this case would not have a legal standing if net
| neutrality existed and a counter was made by Visa that it
| treats Mindgeek like any other media content provider and
| won't reject customers it provides services to, because it
| doesn't differentiate based on the specifics of the data.
| The website owners would still be responsible for host CSAM
| in that situation. Visa could potentially argue no joint
| understanding if net neutrality existed. Right now it's in
| contention because Visa has already shown it rejects and
| accepts customers based on their own rules about what kind
| of data is being served by its customers.
|
| Visa's previous action to stop and then restart providing a
| platform to Mindgeek/Pornhub, after they removed unverified
| content, shows a clear understanding of what kind of media
| is served. By re-accepting them as a merchant, Visa opened
| itself up to being a beneficiary and conspirator in Pornhub
| making money from CSAM, by being the company that provides
| a way for Mindgeek to make money. Not from pornhub directly
| but by being a payment processor for the advertising arm of
| Mindgeek.
|
| The specific issue is making money from CSAM, not the
| existence of CSAM.
| krn wrote:
| I have two completely different takes on this.
|
| On one hand, if a business generating almost $500M in revenue
| per year[1] is doing something illegal, it shouldn't be allowed
| to operate. Simple as that. If it is allowed to operate, then
| it should have access to the same payment methods as any other
| business.
|
| On another hand, if I belonged to a group of people who believe
| that such companies shouldn't exist[2] and had no way of
| getting them banned completely, that's exactly what I would try
| to do: force their biggest business partners to cut ties with
| them.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek
|
| [2] https://exoduscry.com/
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > a business generating almost $500M in revenue per year[1]
| is doing something illegal
|
| But this is like going after McDonald's because some drug
| dealers use their parking lots to conduct business.
| fpoling wrote:
| If, say, 20% of parking lots has used for drug activities,
| McDonald's would get a problem.
| knaik94 wrote:
| No, this is different because in your example you can't
| show McDonald's has an increase in revenue due to those
| drug dealers selling in their parking lots.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Well, it has, because since you drove all the way to
| McDonald's to buy your drugs you might eat there as well.
| knaik94 wrote:
| There's no clear way to show McDonald's encourages the
| use of its parking lot for drug dealings in order to
| generate foot traffic to their restaurants. What you're
| saying is conjecture. It may be true, but not relevant
| legally as McDonald's essentially has plausible
| deniability until they address it with any written,
| internal or external, policy.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, that's what anybody would try. And it's up to the
| government to cut that crap up and punish the people that are
| harassing innocent third parties due to a personal crusade.
|
| Absent punishment, everybody will just drag all bystanders
| (from around any scene, there is somebody that disagrees with
| anything) into a court.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I think a payment processor has some - but not much -
| responsibility for the transactions they enable.
|
| But you're right in that if a thing is illegal, it should be
| targeted directly and not by making private companies
| responsible for defining and enforcing "law".
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > On one hand, if a business generating almost $500M in
| revenue per year[1] is doing something illegal, it shouldn't
| be allowed to operate. Simple as that. If it is allowed to
| operate, then it should have access to the same payment
| methods as any other business
|
| I suspect if all businesses were held to this standard
| perfectly, there would be no businesses operating that
| generated $500M in revenue per year. Every business at that
| scale is doing something illegal somewhere. Not saying I
| agree with the state of things, but it seems businesses have
| decided occasional penalties for getting caught things
| illegal in jurisdictions that are capable of compelling them
| to pay the fine, are part of doing business.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| > I suspect if all businesses were held to this standard
| perfectly, there would be no businesses operating that
| generated $500M in revenue per year.
|
| If this standard were held perfectly and everyone knew it
| would be applied to them, businesses wanting to generate
| more revenue would adapt accordingly. Obviously violators
| of this standard exist today _because_ this standard is not
| enforced (i.e. laws without any "teeth" are not
| sufficiently motivating).
| labster wrote:
| If this standard was applied perfectly, every company
| under the threshold would be trying to shut its large
| competitors down with moles to sabotage them with a
| single documented illegal act.
| arwhatever wrote:
| " If you give me six lines written by the hand of the
| most honest of men, I will find something in them which
| will hang him."
| imperio59 wrote:
| This is a great decision to fight human sex trafficking and
| child pornography. Pornography is a giant societal scourge
| which funds a ton of human misery and social problems and
| anything we can do to make it harder for these businesses to
| operate is great news IMO.
| knaik94 wrote:
| The complexity in this situation comes from the fact that Visa
| rejected Pornhub as a merchant in 2020 due to the same issue,
| and after Pornhub removed millions of unverified videos, Visa
| resumed working with the advertising arm of them. Although
| never officially said, it is clear what the reasoning was for
| removing the content.
| yorwba wrote:
| Visa has not been found guilty of anything in this case yet.
| The court merely didn't fully grant their motion to dismiss.
|
| That only establishes that Visa is actually being accused of
| something illegal, i.e. Pornhub allegedly knowingly profiting
| from child porn and Visa allegedly providing payment services
| to Pornhub while allegedly knowing that Pornhub was using those
| payment services to profit from child porn (allegedly) would
| make Visa a participant in the alleged crime, _if those
| allegiations turn out to be true_. Hence Visa is a defendant in
| the court case where the truth of the allegiations will then be
| debated.
|
| That's why the document you linked uses the word "allegedly" so
| often.
| jjav wrote:
| These are the scenarios to keep in mind whenever people promote
| cashless societies. Every transaction that needs to go through
| a gatekeeper means there is a gate that might be closed on you.
|
| Only cash is able to protect the ability to do private
| transactions withouth any possibility of external dependencies
| or interference.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Do we really want private companies to be in the business of law
| enforcement?
| coldtea wrote:
| No, but if they could have state power they could.
|
| Private companies after a certain size (which Visa certainly
| qualifies) have to be forced to be open and neutral - they'd
| expand their power to anything they can given the chance.
|
| (Same goes for the government, but at least that you get to
| vote for).
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| > but at least that you get to vote for).
|
| Unbridled optimism.
| treis wrote:
| No, but we probably don't want them profiting off of child
| pornography either.
| quest88 wrote:
| They're trying to prevent the law from being used against them.
| From the article:
|
| A federal judge in California on Friday denied Visa's motion to
| dismiss a lawsuit by a woman who accuses the payment processor
| of knowingly facilitating the distribution of child pornography
| on Pornhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek.
| nickff wrote:
| The real costs here are not from the expected outcome of the
| lawsuit (which is unlikely to succeed), but from the
| discovery and other legal costs. When large companies are
| defendants/respondents in lawsuits like this, the costs of
| going to trial are astronomical.
|
| I think Visa doesn't mind the law as much as the legal
| system.
| richbell wrote:
| Credit card companies have an incredible amount of influence:
| they're effectively gate-keepers for monetization on the web.
|
| There's a long history of them blacklisting people and even
| using their influence to pressure companies from removing them.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| No, but we also do not want private companies being in the
| business of facilitating illegal activity. We wouldn't expect
| UPS to deliver cocaine once they become aware that a particular
| customer is using UPS to ship drugs. Visa isn't obligated to
| investigate all of its customers, but once informed of
| wrongdoing it should take reasonable steps to distance itself.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't want companies actively facilitating illegal activity
| but at the same time I don't want it to be on private
| entities to determine when someone is too criminal to do
| generic business with. If Mindgeeks ads are so criminal they
| shouldn't be allowed then the justice department needs to
| declare that directly, it shouldn't fall on payment
| processors to solve.
| duped wrote:
| > We wouldn't expect UPS to deliver cocaine once they become
| aware that a particular customer is using UPS to ship drugs.
|
| That's why you ship your drugs with the USPS. But this is
| more like mailing a check for drugs.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Note that they're going after Visa over this. Not Mindgeek.
| That's because it never was about kiddie porn, it's about
| trying to block payment for porn in general. The case is
| highly deceptive, what actually happened:
|
| Pornhub used to permit anonymous uploading by amateurs. Yes,
| plenty of amateur stuff was posted, but with such a system of
| course some stuff slipped through that shouldn't--copyright,
| revenge and kiddie porn. When the problem came to light
| Pornhub deleted all the stuff that didn't have a proven
| identity. (And the US standards for proof on porn are too
| high. They're fine for a big studio but impossible for
| amateurs and they preclude any attempt to keep identities
| secret.)
|
| Only a sliver of the 80% of their database that got deleted
| was kiddie porn and note that not all kiddie porn is sexual
| abuse anyway--some of it is just teens being stupid.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> all kiddie porn is sexual abuse anyway
|
| Child, Pornography and Abuse ... each definition requires a
| multi-hour lecture at any law school. One can debate the
| definition of "child" for days without coming to any firm
| conclusion. But many states have very exacting laws, backed
| up by draconian punishments. It it perfectly reasonable for
| large corporations to take an equally harsh approach. The
| punishments for being "in possession" of such material are
| so dangerous that instantly deleting entire
| accounts/databases will be seen as reasonable business
| judgement. But I guess that is the point of such
| punishments. They are designed scare everyone into acting
| without hesitation.
| stickfigure wrote:
| UPS is used to deliver illegal drugs. Visa is aware of this
| fact. Should they ban UPS?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yes. If a delivery company continues to do business with
| known drug dealers, refuses to stop once faced with
| reasonable evidence, then it is perfectly reasonable for
| Visa and everyone else to walk away.
| stickfigure wrote:
| UPS is used, rarely and without their consent, to
| illegally transmit drugs.
|
| Pornhub is used, rarely and without their consent, to
| illegally transmit child pornography.
|
| What sort of business are you in? I'm pretty sure that I
| can find a way that it facilitates some sort of illegal
| activity. Your HN profile says "Defense". Let's see
| now...
| [deleted]
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| "Reasonable evidence" according to whom?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There is no one definition. Each customer is free to use
| their own definition. If Visa doesn't like what a website
| is doing, Visa can walk away. If I don't agree with
| Visa's decision, I am free to walk away from Visa. I am
| also free to publicly criticize Visa. Each market actor
| is free to make their own decisions purely on their own
| interpretation of reasonableness.
| nawgz wrote:
| > If Visa doesn't like what a website is doing, Visa can
| walk away
|
| Right, which does massive damage to that website as Visa
| is part of a duopoly with a complete stranglehold on the
| market
|
| > If I don't agree with Visa's decision, I am free to
| walk away from Visa
|
| Ok, and if Mastercard follows suit, where do you go?
|
| The problem with essential services - monetary
| transmission, in this case - being monopolized by private
| companies is that your trite claim that "each party can
| walk away" is actually quite clearly untrue for the
| consumer in each such situation. Market actors should be
| free to make their own decisions, but monopoly and cartel
| situations need regulation to prevent consumer harm, and
| it's clear what this is.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Cash? Paypal? Bitcoin? There may be no other equally-
| convenient form of card payment, but Visa doesn't have a
| stranglehold on financial transactions.
| nawgz wrote:
| > Cash?
|
| This has to be intentionally obtuse, we're talking about
| online payment processors...
|
| > Bitcoin?
|
| So easy to use, so stable
|
| > PayPal
|
| Yes, you're right, in the US it's more of a tri-opoly
| than a duopoly - you'll note globally it's more of a
| duopoly. But that's pretty far from supporting claims
| like "Visa doesn't have a stranglehold on financial
| transactions". Visa and MasterCard usually move in some
| form of legal tandem from what I've seen, which returns
| us to the original point: arguing about idealistic
| "market" conditions in a captured, distinctly not-free
| market is foolish at best and intentionally misleading in
| this case.
| richbell wrote:
| At the end of the day PayPal, Stripe, Square, etc. are
| beholden to Visa and MasterCard and not really
| competitors.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Visa does indeed have a near-stranglehold on financial
| transactions, and the reason is that US governments make
| it nearly impossible to set up a competing financial
| transaction processing system. It's generally regarded on
| HN that it would be legally impossible to create Paypal
| today, and I believe this is accurate.
|
| There is a famous series of HN posts from some startup
| trying to get into this space (sorry, can't remember the
| details - maybe someone else can fill in). The horrorshow
| of getting "money transmitter licenses" and working
| through compliance issues in 50 different states (plus
| federal) made it impossible.
|
| There is not a free market for transaction processing in
| this country. A small handful of companies are
| grandfathered into what is effectively a government
| enforced monopoly. So they need to be treated like the
| quasi-public utilities they are.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > refuses to stop once faced with reasonable evidence
|
| That's implying that PH is doing nothing to stop it.
| There's a difference between there being a few handful of
| examples of cases slipping through the cracks, vs PH
| intentionally allowing it to happen.
|
| It's like Youtube, there will always be false positives
| and false negatives in their automatic and manual
| moderation. Online moderation is a hard problem, not a
| single platform has got a bulletproof solution.
| m00dy wrote:
| why cocaine is illegal ? Seriously, f*ck this world.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Ethanol is already legal, why not go the whole way and
| legalize and regulate absolutely everything. Anything else
| is pure hypocrisy...
| jonathan-adly wrote:
| Ok - I run a charity that makes is easier for illegal
| migrants to find housing and avoid deportation. This is
| illegal - should VISA cut me off?
| trombone5000 wrote:
| > ... makes is easier for illegal migrants to find housing
| and avoid deportation. This is illegal
|
| Is that in fact illegal?
| [deleted]
| forgingahead wrote:
| Yes, plus you should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting.
| You make a mockery of the legal immigrants who have to
| painfully deal with the official system.
| zo1 wrote:
| People answered you yes on all counts, and I agree. It's
| the law and if we want it to be different then we need to
| change it. Why complicate it anymore than that. Instead,
| this is us using extra legal and potentially illegal means
| to enact what we argue is change but is just propagating
| more chaos and unfairness all around.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I have absolutely zero doubt that there are many people in
| the USA who would agree that VISA should cut you off.
| carrotcarrot wrote:
| VISA can do what it wants but this is morally
| reprehensible. Not really a good example when you're doing
| something that's way worse than porn.
| jessaustin wrote:
| If a joke is so dumb you feel like you should set up a
| new greenbean account to post it, why not improve HN by
| not making the joke at all?
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> charity that makes is easier for illegal migrants to
| find housing
|
| How is that illegal? Illegal immigrants may be in the
| country illegally, but that doesn't mean that everything
| they do while in the country is also illegal. We don't have
| outlawry anymore. Such concepts don't work in the modern
| world.
| carrotcarrot wrote:
| You're aiding them in breaking the law.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| So should they be allowed to buy food? Should hospitals
| treat them? If a police officer stops them from being
| attacked, is that police officer helping them too? Is it
| a crime to invite an illegal immigrant over for dinner?
| As I said, we have abandoned outlawry. The crime is the
| illegal crossing of the boarder and/or the failure to
| leave when obligated. Everything else, one's day-to-day
| existence, are not separate crimes. Those days ended
| centuries ago.
| vkou wrote:
| Only if you're actively smuggling them into the country.
|
| It's the difference between selling a bag of rice to a
| killer for hire, and selling a gun to a killer for hire.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Yes...?
| jonathan-adly wrote:
| Ok - how about facilitating abortions in Texas? Selling
| imported insulin to diabetics?
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Yes and yes
| Ekaros wrote:
| Is that imported insulin un-patented and FDA approved?
| donkarma wrote:
| nobody gives a shit about the ethics it's about the law
| cush wrote:
| It's similar to DMCA takedowns. They aren't responsible for
| investigations.
| powerhour wrote:
| We want private companies to be in the business of rule
| enforcement, IMO.
|
| Some want to prevent monopolies from having too much influence
| over commerce but it's far from the majority (based on all
| available evidence).
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Dropping a customer is not law enforcement. There are other
| credit card payment processors. This really only affects
| companies who purchase ads on PornHub. Those companies are
| usually very shady, run by people like Andrew Tate
| dahdum wrote:
| > There are other credit card payment processors.
|
| No other processors are allowed to take their payments
| either, it's on the Visa/MC network level.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think the answer is that we love private companies in the
| business of law enforcement, because private companies are
| allowed to do things we pretty consistently tell the government
| not to do. The government will even blackmail or extort private
| companies into doing law enforcement, if they can find the
| leverage.
| root_axis wrote:
| Visa only cares about money, just like every other megacorp. They
| will take as much money as they can for whatever they can, the
| only reason they're suspending payments is because they are
| facing legal liabilities. What other choice do they have?
| colpabar wrote:
| why don't they just build their own payment processor :^)
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I just don't know what that would look like. If they try to
| take VISA's place, banks might block transfers to them making
| it impossible for people to pay their tab. They could try
| switching to crypto but the value of those aren't really stable
| and somewhat risky in that sense. Onramps like Coinbase have to
| turn in or block users who are caught using the service to buy
| drugs or whatever and I don't see why they wouldn't block
| accounts known to be buying porn or monero too.
| ravenstine wrote:
| If the only choice becomes to either make money or not,
| crypto may be the answer.
|
| Yeah, many creators and pr0n companies will tone down their
| content. But we all know that consumption of pr0n doesn't
| lead to more vanilla tastes. The more "deviant" acts will
| find ways to make revenue outside the mainstream and then all
| it will take is a critical mass for some digital currency to
| mean something.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Sure, but what I'm saying is that for most people, they'll
| need to buy the crypto with USD. Any time you're
| interacting with the regular banking system, it's possible
| to ban accounts who are buying illegal, or even just
| unseemly content. The only way really around it is if
| people start buying crypto with cash irl. This is a lot of
| friction for people. It may simply be easier to buy
| professional content from studios that only work with legal
| performers.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| We need a federal law that indemnifies them from lawsuits as
| long as they drop a client after they have been convicted of
| a crime. That puts the onus on the plaintiff to prove that a
| customer has done wrong, and gives the bank/payment processor
| enough notice to remove that customer, rather than suing the
| bank/payment processor because someone _might_ have done
| something wrong.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Well, that's tricky because then you have any number of
| corporations that could sell illegal content, and Visa
| would simply wait for a conviction which can take quite
| some time given how slow the legal system is.
|
| Making it Visa's responsibility forces them to be
| proactive. We're dealing with a case of illegal porn
| involving underage victims so I think that makes sense.
| Mindgeek has taken steps to fix the problem but maybe Visa
| isn't convinced that they've done enough.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| But that's the whole problem! We go "underage victims!"
| and then stop thinking. We are focusing on the _potential
| harm_ , without considering the _actual harm_. Our
| irrational fear of abuse is causing us to create abuse.
|
| By allowing policies that crack down on the _entire
| sexwork industry_ , more women, children, trans people,
| etc are hurt, than are hurt by the actual criminals
| making child porn or sex trafficking. When everything
| goes underground and there is no well-regulated
| marketplace, people get exploited and abused. There's
| hundreds of interviews with sexworkers who all talk about
| how their work is more dangerous now.
|
| Pressuring Visa makes _all porn_ go underground, which
| includes child porn and trafficking. That leads to more
| harm, because there 's no visibility and no protection.
|
| If we _didn 't_ pressure Visa, and instead had a
| flourishing _open market_ that was monitored, regulated
| and policed, it would be easier to notice the illegal
| activity and move to stop it. A Department of Sexwork
| could work directly with Visa and content creators to
| develop sophisticated methods to identify and stop
| illegal activity.
|
| But since it's harder to see abuse when _everything_ is
| underground, politicians prefer it that way. If you don
| 't notice the abuse happening, must not be happening;
| problem solved. No US politician will get voted out of
| office for banning sexwork, and Visa's bottom line won't
| get hurt either, even if it does result in more actual
| harm to people.
| salawat wrote:
| By definition, if you don't do what VISA is doing, the
| regulatory state will declare you an illegal payment processor.
|
| Like it or not, part of the baggage of doing that service is
| being an extension of the long arm of the law.
|
| So "rolling your own" minus the regulatory baggage you don't
| like, isn't per se "making your own payment processor", but
| something else.
|
| Bit of a Catch-22, but how it works. Everyone just tends to
| leave the quiet part unsaid.
| joyfylbanana wrote:
| Pornhub is committing the crime here. Visa was just
| processing payments here - and isn't any more, since they
| stopped it. Why isn't everyone talking about pornhub and
| demanding them to ban that?
|
| Pornhub essentially is already their own payment processor,
| as it looks like they are processing cryptocurrency payments
| from the customers.
| HeyItsMatt wrote:
| The state is saying Visa is committing the crime. The
| states media cheerleaders are squawking it to all that will
| listen.
|
| If Visa loses, payment processors have little choice but to
| remove processing from sites that allow user generated
| content, including Reddit. They are legally responsible for
| all under-18 content, and as "Big Evil Corporations" they
| have no support from anyone in the community that matters.
|
| The EU and UK is even worse in this regard, so no anonymous
| commercial social networks will ever be created again.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Ironically, this move on the part of the payment processors
| will likely lead to adoption of alternative methods of payment
| for these sites... which will make it even harder to track down
| the truly illegal stuff.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| That's how we got bitcoin. Wikileaks was dropped by Visa and
| other payment providers. Everyone then looked for an
| unblockable payment system, which moved bitcoin from a niche
| tool to the "cool" form of payment.
| carrotcarrot wrote:
| And it terrified the federal government.
| DIARRHEA_xd wrote:
| toast0 wrote:
| I would call Visa a card network here. Sure, the card network
| processes payments, but there's other entities called payment
| processors.
|
| The whole stack includes the merchant, the payment processor
| (think CyberCash, Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, Verifone, NCR,
| etc), the merchant bank, the card network, the issuing bank,
| and the customer.
|
| If the card network won't deal with you, you've got to build
| your own card network and issue cards or convince customer
| banks to issue cards, and convince processors to process them
| and merchants to accept them etc. I don't know how many
| adverisers PH has, it might be easier to just ask them to write
| checks.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I think legal porn (e. g. featuring consenting adults) is
| generally a-okay and shouldn't be illegal or banned... but I also
| don't need much convincing to believe MindGeek and Pornhub are
| bad actors. It simply isn't in their financial interest to
| protect people who need and deserve protecting, and so they
| didn't/don't. Anti-porn groups couldn't ask for more ideal
| enemies.
|
| Yes, I know that the vast majority of the content they post is
| perfectly fine and legal. But enough of it isn't, and they are
| lax enough in checking, that they kinda deserve punishment at
| this point.
|
| But I also don't think porn is going away. I hope whoever
| replaces them (looking at you, OnlyFans) is less scummy, so it is
| easier to defend them.
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