[HN Gopher] Sex worker-led payment platform shuts down after bei...
___________________________________________________________________
Sex worker-led payment platform shuts down after being cut off by
processor
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 246 points
Date : 2023-03-23 08:51 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| hgsgm wrote:
| Misleading title. "Crypto" is as much a factor as "sex work", and
| "sex work" (like "crypto") is not clearly described -- there are
| both legal and illegal forms.
|
| Also no comment on the fraud/chargeback rate in Spank's
| transaction flow.
| shagymoe wrote:
| Imagine what they'll do with a CBDC.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Instant wire transfers such as the ones availible in Europe and
| the ones coming to the US with FedWNow will finally solve the
| chargeback problem.
|
| That is you cannot chargeback the wire once it's sent so better
| make it a worthwile wank.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| May as well get ahead of this, every time someone is yoinked from
| a platform:
|
| "If you don't like it, build your own <piece of underlying
| infrastructure>". [repeat recursively].
|
| More productive comment: protocols > platforms.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| If you don't like it, go build your own universe.
| ameesdotme wrote:
| This is true in many situations, but setting up full self-
| maintained payment processing isn't really a feasible option
| for small or even larger development teams. Payment processing
| is heavily regulated with many legal requirements, not to
| mention the countless security threats.
| gadders wrote:
| This didn't seem to bother anyone when people were told to EG
| create their own facebook or Twitter.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| ...and then the people who were pissed at Facebook and
| Twitter went off and made their own Facebook and Twitter
| because making a website has very little in the way of
| barriers to entry.
|
| Financial services is a very different arena.
| Geezus-42 wrote:
| Those are not regulated. I think you missed the point.
| gadders wrote:
| I don't think regulations would be the main thing
| stopping someone creating their own Facebook.
| [deleted]
| wsc981 wrote:
| Would be feasible with crypto though.
| tdrgabi wrote:
| "Crypto payment processor SpankPay announced on Monday that
| it would shut down because of financial discrimination"
|
| They were using crypto. Didn't help.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| I think the problem was in the gateway to USD. If they
| only accepted crypto, and paid it out to the sex workers,
| then it would work. But in the real world your average
| John has a credit card, not crypto, and your average sex
| workers can't pay their rent or buy groceries using
| crypto. The problem was, and always is, the gateways to
| fiat. And I don't see a solution to that.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| So then how do the sex workers use their wages?
| nailer wrote:
| The comment you're replying to has the same concern.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| You're right, I jumped to a conclusion although I still
| don't think the comment is very constructive
| hinkley wrote:
| Shell corporations?
| koolba wrote:
| The first half of paying for the services maybe. But you've
| just pushed the problem of converting from crypto to
| $DOLLAR to the service provider.
|
| I don't think Coinbase for example would _knowingly_ allow
| a prostitute, whose inbound source of tokens is coming from
| a digital pimping service, to convert them to USD and then
| ACH the cash to her local bank.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| No it wouldn't, because that's just kicking the can down
| the road to the exchange provider.
| eviks wrote:
| government > protocols
| [deleted]
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Journalists: "Learn to code."
|
| The commons: "Alright, you're fired. Learn to code."
|
| Journalists:
| "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE---"
| rvz wrote:
| Programmers & Journalists: "Don't like it? Learn to code and
| build your own..."
|
| AI: "I know how to code and write articles. You are both
| fired. Learn to adapt."
|
| Programmers & Journalists: "But but but..... REEEEEE---"
|
| To Downvoters: Tough. Learn to adapt then. AI doesn't care
| and the genie is out of the bottle with all developers
| affected.
|
| Stop whining.
| ajvs wrote:
| "Learn to code" is looking like a lot less popular advice
| nowadays thanks to AI...
| usrbinbash wrote:
| Because GPT3/4 manage to write the kind of code I already
| used automation as much as possible towrite for me, because
| it's boring and repetitive?
|
| I don't think so.
|
| When ChatGPT can write code to the query: _" Hey, the
| production server acted weird last weekend, could be about
| that issue we talked about on slack yesterday, could you
| have a look at that?"_, then I' going to start worrying
| about my job security.
| dboreham wrote:
| Well, it says it wants access to your slack and the root
| password to the server...oh and it said send any error
| messages you have first.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| Well that's all the info I got thrown in the hallway,
| so...that's what it has to work with. If I have to do
| extra legwork for it to function, then it's not a
| replacement for me, just another tool that helps me up my
| productivity with.
| brazzy wrote:
| Only if you know nothing about coding nor AI.
| pdpi wrote:
| Everybody keeps saying this, I just don't get it.
|
| There's whole domains where AI doing it is just infeasible.
| For all the other domains, who tells the AI what to do? Who
| knows how to be specific enough and precise enough to get
| the right output?
|
| Until you have full-on AGI that can talk to stakeholders,
| gather requirements, build an incremental mental model of
| what the requirements are, and all that jazz, programmers
| will have the same job as they do today: tell the computer
| what to do. It's just that we'll be using a different
| language to do it in.
| flask_manager wrote:
| I suspect tools like this will become excellent at all
| the slight variations and duplicate work that goes on in
| a whole bunch of development work. To the point where
| especially for the low complexity work you get enough
| productivity increase that you actually begin to reduce
| the demand for programmers in general.
|
| I wonder what the proportions work out to be, if you
| break the work into "the hard bit" vs the "automatable
| bit", Ive defiantly worked on projects where there is one
| novel bit that had to be done just right, but 80% of the
| time was still spent setting up standard databases,
| payment processors, customer interfaces.
| matwood wrote:
| I disagree on the reduce demand part. Companies have no
| shortage of ideas and products they want to implement.
| Execution is the limiting factor right now. I fully
| expect programmer demand to remain constant at first and
| then increase as new classes of products are made
| possible because of AI.
|
| BTW, this is what's happened with every other programmer
| productivity increase. No company has responded with
| 'cool, our product is done' and instead has expanded what
| the product can do. Customers then expect more, and the
| cycle continues.
| matwood wrote:
| "AI" has quickly become the new "Cloud". Will it change
| things? Absolutely, but it isn't going to solve every
| single problem. I fully expect to see articles in the not
| distant future of the likes of 'we moved away from AI and
| it saved money/improved our product/etc...'
| chongli wrote:
| It's entirely consistent for AI-based development tools
| to only be useful to trained programmers _and_ for those
| same AI tools to render the programming field as a whole
| much less tenable of a career.
|
| In fact, the same sentence may be true if you replace AI
| tools with any technology that improves programmers'
| productivity: advanced frameworks for example. The issue
| is that if programmer productivity shoots through the
| roof -- if you need only one programmer to do the job of
| ten, or a hundred, or a thousand -- then it can result in
| massive layoffs of programmers. It need not be the case
| that new technologies be accessible to non-programmers
| for this to happen.
|
| The same thing is happening in other areas. My friend
| works in robotic welding. He programs robots to perform
| specific welds and then supervises them operating during
| the assembly of each truck chassis. As a single person,
| he's doing the work of half a dozen journeyman welders.
| This amplification of his productivity by technology
| means his factory needs far fewer welders to get the same
| work done. It should come as no surprise, then, that
| older journeymen welders have been very vocal in
| expressing their hostility towards him throughout his
| career. "Learn to code" indeed.
| fwungy wrote:
| The cars are going to be driving themselves any day now
| too.
|
| The easy part of anything can be replaced by AI. It's the
| hard part that's the problem.
| samus wrote:
| The barrier of entry is high in the payments market. You have
| to follow a lot of regulations, get other payment providers to
| accept you, and most importantly have enough liquidity. If you
| are missing even a single one of these factors, then you're
| only playing around with Monopoly money.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Crypto payment processor SpankPay announced on Monday that it
| would shut down because of financial discrimination_
|
| Interesting phrase, "financial discrimination" (and "banking
| discrimination" later in the article), curious to see it here
| considering Vice's (and similar media outlets) lack of interest
| or ra ra attitude to deplatforming when seeing it applied to
| services and people they disapprove of in the past.
|
| Seems a valid phrase to use though if a platform is powerful and
| ubiquitous enough to cause existential issues to legal entities
| it doesn't like or have bad PR.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| If you paint yourself as the "good" guy it's ok for you to be
| biased, prejudice, use double standards, discriminate.
|
| "The end justifies the means!" as Machiavelli put it.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's ok to take actions based on the fact that a bad thing is
| bad. That's not prejudice it's _judgement_.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| It is the lowest rung on the ladder of moral systems, "If I do
| it it is ok, if you do it it is wrong". You can stand on that,
| but it's very low.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I don't think it is fundamentally wrong to say that sex work
| is okay but agitating for a fascist society is not.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I didn't either, it's a view point you can have it's just a
| very low moral argument.
|
| "Sex work is ok because I agree with it, and agitating for
| a fascist society is not, because I disagree with it" -
| when someone could as easily say "Sex work is bad, because
| I disagree with it, and agitating for a fascist society is
| good, because I agree with it". It's a moral standpoint
| based on your beliefs (My beliefs are right).
|
| You can climb the moral ladder if you base the same
| argument ("sex" vs. "fascism") on some common ground, E.g.
| the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
|
| (I would wish that people would not throw "fascist" aka.
| everyone who disagrees with me, around as easily and read
| some fascism theory - E.g. Sternhell - before and
| distingiush it from Dictatorships, Nationalsocialism,
| Authoritarianism etc.)
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "Sex work is fine and fascism is not" remains an
| incredibly sound moral position sorry. I think you're
| enjoying these convolutions though so that will be my
| only contribution to this project!
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| It's not sound though. In no objective sense is it sound.
| On the fascism part I think we can all agree, but every
| society that's ever existed across the globe has
| criminalized or at least made sex work taboo for good
| reason. Do you think your moral authority is greater than
| the sum total of humans that have existed across all
| cultures?
|
| Hint: it's not. So the burden of proof is on you.
|
| Why exactly do you think sex work is ok and tolerable in
| society?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "I think you're enjoying these convolutions"
|
| If nothing works, try ad hominem arguments. It is still
| an argument, but a very weak (the weakest?) one.
|
| "You are wrong because it's you" has the same problems as
| "The things I think are ok, are ok, and the things I
| think are bad, are bad", it doesn't try to be universal
| and revolves around oneself. Also these kind of arguments
| have the tendency to lead to an echo chamber with no
| progress on understanding.
|
| PS: You might be right, I've studied Philosophical
| Computer Science, but it doesn't strengthen your
| argument. It's like saying "You're wrong because you wear
| a blue hat, when I wear a blue hat".
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "high school debate club"
|
| I'm not from the US, we don't have high schools here and
| we don't have debate clubs. And I personally don't care
| the least about US moral judgements. No one outside the
| US (96% of the world population) cares about US moral
| judgements. I still have a trauma because as a kid I was
| forced to watch sitcoms with only black people and
| sitcoms with only white people, as if there were two
| planets (Golden Girls was neat though, Cosby didn't age
| that well - it was ok to rape women but not ok to kiss
| someone white on TV - how fu is that). But thanks for
| assuming. The world doesn't revolve around you, the US is
| not the center of the world. I know, shocking. Get over
| it. I'm just happy that the days of US culture
| imperialism and gun-point morale exports ends and no one
| is forced to care about your views in the future ("But we
| have atomic bombs!" Yes, heard that before recently).
| Iraq and Afghanistan showed the emporer wears no clothes.
| Sad thing is I probably need to learn Chinese, when the
| other bully enters the stage (there is always a bully)
| but at least it's a change + "Wandering Earth" wasn't
| that bad _... Humming 51st state_
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Did I walk into a high school debate club without
| realizing it? Ad hominem? Let me be completely clear I
| don't respect you or your position here.
|
| I'm not engaging in an abstract philosophical exercise
| with the goal of furthering humanity's understanding of
| morality or whatever it is you think we're doing.
|
| I'm pointing out that spending time and energy trying to
| formulate perfectly nuanced universalizable mozaics of
| morality and slotting your positions into them is
| foolish.
|
| An alternative is just having good judgement, and acting
| on it. Is that perfect? Can it be generalized to all
| cases? No! And it doesn't matter because sex workers
| should be able to get paid without dying and fascism is
| bad. You don't need that shit today take it to your
| debate club maybe they'll like it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What the everloving fuck is Philosophical Computer
| Science
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| It's fundamentally wrong to not believe force is only
| justified in response to force.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| While you're right on the fascist society point, I'm not
| sure how that is at all relevant in this situation. Do you
| think any moral bounds on society are fascistic? Do you
| know what fascism is at all?
| [deleted]
| hnbad wrote:
| "It's good when bad things happen to bad people and bad when
| bad things happen to good people" seems to be a fairly
| universal sentiment regardless of one's personal stance on
| who/what good and bad are.
| poszlem wrote:
| ".. and we can easily tell who is good and who is bad" - is
| the unsaid part of that sentiment, and the reason why it
| doesn't really work.
|
| "Sex work" used to be called prostitution and considered
| morally bad by most people until about 5 minutes ago.
| That's why principles matter, otherwise you are at the
| mercy of the mob of people who will decide for you what to
| think.
| 8note wrote:
| A stripper is not a prostitute but is a sex worker. Same
| thing with the porn
|
| Prostitution is a subset of sex work.
| gvedem wrote:
| It's not at all universal. It's just much harder for media
| to be consistent about than individuals, because unless a
| media outlet has very strict editorial policies, it is
| comprised of many people with many beliefs and will end up
| being inconsistent by default. Especially an outlet like
| Vice, which is entertainment-focused and doesn't make much
| of an effort to distinguish opinion pieces from reporting.
| If a "news" site doesn't have a separate tab that says
| "opinion", you're gonna get opinion all over everything.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/08/the-slate-star-
| codex-p...
| noirscape wrote:
| For what it counts, Vice does have a fairly strict
| editorial policy, which more or less is "we want David
| vs. Goliath stories". It becomes very obvious after a
| while that this is how Vice wants the world to be seen.
|
| Everyone is either "The Man" and therefore evil, or is
| sticking it to "The Man" and is therefore heroic. I've
| been friends with people that have been interviewed by
| Vice - this is the single most annoying thing about them.
| Most of them are hobbyists (Nintendo-console related,
| both modding and emulation) who do what they do "because
| it's cool and fun to do".
|
| Then Vice barges in, interviews them and/or their team
| members and suddenly the angle under which the coverage
| is presented becomes how these awesome, super cool
| hackers are doing it because they want to stick it to the
| Big Evil Nintendo which is just... not at all the motive.
| None of those people are/were out to be a David taking up
| the sword against the Goliath that is Nintendo. They just
| wanted to tinker with a console because of curiosity.
|
| Vice is (alongside to a lesser degree Kotaku) responsible
| for basically ruining any conversation about homebrew,
| console modding and emulation by putting the "it's good
| to pirate actually" motivation front and center for
| hacking and modifying consoles. Like... _fucking talk to
| these people_. Almost every single one hates having their
| work associated with piracy since it can cause serious
| reputational harm (and is often inaccurate to boot), yet
| Vice doesn 't give a single flying shit about that since
| Nintendo is "The Man" and that means that any action that
| can be construed as being against them is morally
| justified.
|
| Probably one of the worst outlets to ever link (and for
| what it counts, what they cover usually has better
| coverage elsewhere so... yeah, avoid them if you can).
| Strongly also recommend to avoid ever talking to them if
| you can help it, they _will_ slant the conversation to
| further that editorial policy if they can.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| The funniest thing is that they're a _horrible_ employer.
| I've known a bunch of people who work there: They demand
| unpaid OT, pay shit, have rampant sexual harassment, and
| generally act like a 60's marketing company.
|
| They are Goliath, and the random conservative twitter
| people they write hit pieces on are David.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "they will slant the conversation"
|
| I was interviewed by some large magazines and some TV
| stations years back (Germany, topic was Geocaching and
| Confluencing - we had some firsts, yes! ;-). All of them
| came with a finished story and were only looking for
| sound bites.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| > unless a media outlet has very strict editorial
| policies, it is comprised of many people with many
| beliefs
|
| You mean there are people with conservative beliefs
| writing for VICE?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Ironically Vice is directly responsible for creation of
| the Proud Boys.
| hnbad wrote:
| More specifically Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud
| Boys, is co-founder of Vice but left Vice in 2008.
|
| According to Wikipedia he has described himself as "a
| fiscal conservative and libertarian" whereas Wikipedia
| describes the Proud Boys as "far-right neo-fascist".
|
| Vice doesn't seem to have any political allegiance in
| terms of US partisan politics but I think it's fair to
| describe them as socially progressive but otherwise
| (right) libertarian. They seem to be more "anti-
| establishment" than left or right.
| asgerhb wrote:
| I believe it's considered deplatforming when it happens in
| response to political opinions, and with the expectation that
| it is in relation to communication media. Banking and other
| critical services would be extreme cases of deplatforming.
|
| While on the other hand discrimination implies characteristics
| that a person can't (reasonably be expected to) change, in this
| case a profession.
| gadders wrote:
| There are plenty of examples of people getting deplatformed
| by banks (or EG paypal) due to their political beliefs.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| But this is about the language used to describe the action,
| not the action itself. I don't think "being unable to open
| a bank account" is what most people mean when they say "so-
| and-so shouldn't be given a platform by the NYT".
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| It's the end result, and they certainly don't _oppose_ it
|
| That's how Hatreon etc came to be
| tstrimple wrote:
| I wish we would be more explicit here. What political
| beliefs are they being de-platformed for? Is it the lower
| taxes? Deregulation? Immigration policy? Which specific
| political belief is getting them kicked off of platforms?
| gadders wrote:
| Does it matter? Do you have some political beliefs for
| which you think de-banking is acceptable? What are those?
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Political belief is human opinion, and not a protected
| class.
|
| Is your position that there is no human opinion for which
| de-banking is acceptable?
| gadders wrote:
| Given that even murderers, rapists and paedophiles get to
| have bank accounts, I don't think that there is any human
| opinion for which people should have their banks accounts
| removed for what they believe.
|
| If the views people espouse are illegal, then punish them
| via the law.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| So you're okay with your bank assisting ISIL in their
| weapons transactions?
|
| What about illegal activities outside of the law's
| jurisdiction?
| gadders wrote:
| See my previous answer:
|
| >>If the views people espouse are illegal, then punish
| them via the law.
|
| This also goes for their activities.
|
| There is a clear difference between someone saying "I
| think Terrorist Group X is great" on twitter and someone
| using their bank account so that Terrorist Group X can
| buy stuff to make bombs. And even in that latter case,
| once the person concerned has finished their prison
| sentence they should still get a bank account so they can
| live.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Because the "political beliefs" they hide behind that
| they get banned for aren't actual political beliefs. It's
| bigotry plain and simple.
|
| Roseanne Barr's "political belief" that she got banned
| for was calling a black woman an ape.
|
| Gina Carano's "political belief" is that conservatives
| are being treated like the Nazis treated the Jewish
| population.
|
| Milo Yiannopoulos's "political belief" is that targeted
| harassment of people online is a Good Thing. Also fond of
| calling black women apes.
|
| Kanye West's "political belief" is that antisemitism is
| cool actually.
|
| Kiwi Farm's "political belief" is that doxxing people and
| driving them to suicide is a fun thing to do.
|
| The list goes on and on and on. These people are using
| "political belief" as a blanket justification for being
| bigots and then getting upset when they lose access to
| the platform. Then people like you come in and give them
| cover by agreeing that they shouldn't be de-platformed
| for their political beliefs. So we either need to
| explicitly state that conservative political beliefs
| specifically include bigotry, or we need to acknowledge
| that these aren't actually political beliefs they are
| being censured for.
| gadders wrote:
| Leaving aside the deliberate misrepresentation in your
| examples, this unbanking only goes one way. I didn't see
| Joy Reid losing her current account for all her
| homophobic blog posts, for instance.
| zirgs wrote:
| Would it be OK to cut off access to water, electricity
| and heating for beliefs that some people consider
| bigoted? Said something wrong on the internet - no more
| water for you - go dig your own well.
|
| What's the difference between an electricity provider and
| a banking platform?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| You can always stuff your cash in your mattress if you
| manage to be enough of a bigot that every financial
| institution decides you're radioactive. Harder to do that
| with utilities like water and electricity.
|
| It's worth noting that most US jurisdictions have laws
| that limit how and when utilities, whether managed
| publicly or privately, can terminate service. A common
| example is not being able to cut off gas service in the
| middle of winter, even if the customer is severely behind
| on payments.
|
| We don't have to worry so much about the slippery slope
| you describe because we have already established
| regulatory backstops that consider utilities different
| from other businesses.
| zirgs wrote:
| Gay marriage is illegal in my country. What if
| conservatives get in power and decide to deplatform those
| who argue for marriage equality? Remember that "your
| side" won't be in power forever and deplatforming for
| political reasons creates ugly precedents.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| The point of the post you replied to originally is that
| bigotry is often clothed in the language of politics, and
| generally that's done by the bigots. It's only politics
| because the bigots create that relationship as a mask for
| the bigotry.
|
| It's not deplatforming for political reasons. It's
| deplatforming bigots.
| gadders wrote:
| Who is or isn't a bigot isn't an objective test. It's
| easy to accuse someone you disagree with politically of
| being a bigot.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If you cause me harm for something _I am_ , you are a
| bigot. If you cause me harm because of something _I do_ ,
| you might not be a bigot.
| PeterisP wrote:
| On the other hand, I'd consider "deplatforming" as an
| appropriate term if and only if the action literally removes
| the platform used for expressing opinion and communication.
|
| E.g. If someone gets kicked off and kept out of some social
| media platform or gets denied the opportunity to speak at
| some public event, or interviewers boycott them even when
| their role normally would get interviewed, gets kicked out of
| a job which gives them public outreach (e.g. journalism or
| university) or some venue refuses to rent them facilities for
| a talk - to me, all of that is deplatforming no matter if
| it's because of political opinion or innate characteristics
| like the color of their skin or religion or whatever. If all
| the media agree to not show or discuss red-haired people,
| that's obviously deplatforming red-haired people.
|
| And on the opposite side, if someone gets hurt in other ways
| that don't change "the platform" - their landlord kicks them
| out, they get fired by an employer that "only" provides money
| but not a platform for outreach, their customers drop them -
| all of that isn't deplatforming but ordinary discrimination,
| again no matter if it's because of political opinion or
| innate characteristics like the color of their skin or
| religion or whatever (that would only affect whether that's
| _prohibited_ discrimination).
| yread wrote:
| Did they announce that they shutdown because of pink elephants?
| No they announced they are shutting down with "...SpankPay
| being discriminated against due to the nature of our
| business...". It makes sense to report it as such when that's
| what they said
| cyberbolt23 wrote:
| A good and entertaining piece on who Rules the online Porn
| industy is the podcast " Hot Money: porn, power and profit" [1]
| from The Financial Times
|
| In the end it is the credit card industry who dictacte what is
| and is not allowed to be paid using their system. If they shut
| you off you are basically fucked..
|
| [1]:
| https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| > "Crypto payment processor SpankPay announced on Monday that it
| would shut down because of financial discrimination"
|
| That's hard to convert from real money -> random crypto -> real
| money. There are lots of legal and trust issues.
|
| I wonder why they didn't use a more established crypto like
| bitcoin or ethereum and invented their own instead.
| harry8 wrote:
| Remember when this happened to Wikileaks?
| ThorsBane wrote:
| Take care of people via universal basic income to guarantee that
| sex-work is a legitimate choice and not someone's last ploy. And
| vet in public the people who talk a lot about sex-work being
| work. These people are suspicious to me and I don't trust them,
| insofar as I've seen in person the types of people (which is
| limited data indeed) who really care about this type of thing
| much.
|
| I want be sure that it's actually a choice born of free will, not
| a lifestyle someone is forced into because of not being able to
| provide for themself or because of being roped into it by an
| Andrew Tate or other megalomaniac who cannot otherwise obtain
| love or sex.
| FreeHugs wrote:
| Wyre Payments, the company's upstream payment processor,
| terminated SpankPay's account because Wyre's new payment
| processor, Checkout.com doesn't allow processing for
| payments related to sexual businesses
|
| SpankPay, Wyre, Checkoutcom ... How does this all work? What does
| the person who wants to pay a sex worker via SpankPay do? Do they
| use their usual Visa credit card or is the process different?
| adrr wrote:
| you change the laws in banking so the risk is much lower to
| financial companies. Sex work intertwined with trafficking and
| no company wants to take financial risk. Chase is in the
| headlines for getting sued for facilitating trafficking.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I don't understand this, if pornhub and a million other porn
| sites can operate, why can't this one?
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I read a cartoon once of two people talking (technically, one
| person and one teddy bear, but that's not relevant here).
|
| Panel 1: A: So let's go over this again. If I take a woman out
| for drinks and dinner, hoping this will influence her decision
| to have sex with me, this is legal? B: Correct.
|
| Panel 2: A: But if instead of taking her out, I offer her the
| same amount of money in cash form to have sex with me, that's
| illegal? B: Correct.
|
| Panel 3: A: But if I pay a woman to have sex with me, hire a
| camera crew to film it, and sell the results for profit, that's
| legal again? B: Correct.
|
| Panel 4: A: Sorry, can we go through that one more time?
| zirgs wrote:
| In other countries all of those are legal.
|
| Also there's a very obvious difference between the 1st one
| and the 2nd one.
|
| Try telling a random woman, that you matched on Tinder or
| whatever, that you'll pay for sex. You'd get called a
| disgusting pervert and blocked. Can you figure out why?
| miohtama wrote:
| PornHub is currently operating with crypto payments on only.
| They were cut off from banking and cards some years ago.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Pornhub is definitely operating with normal banking.
|
| https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/4419872101139-Ear...
| coldtea wrote:
| Wyre Payments, the company's upstream payment processor,
| terminated SpankPay's account because Wyre's new payment
| processor, Checkout.com doesn't allow processing for
| payments related to sexual businesses
|
| Pornhub and co wasn't using Wyre Payments, nor had their
| upstream payment processors company change recently to one that
| doesn't handle sexual businesses.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Well follow the leader then. Porn has always been the biggest
| industry online, Onlyfans does it, pornhub does it, just
| follow the leaders and do it right.
| zokier wrote:
| > Porn has always been the biggest industry online
|
| Umm. Do you think Pornhub is bigger than Google or Amazon,
| or even Netflix?
| coldtea wrote:
| By users probably...
|
| By revenue not...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| PornHub being in troubles times and times again (sure, some
| of it is 100% their fault, but not all of it) and Onlyfans
| trying so hard to have a foot on safer business doesn't
| feel inspiring.
|
| I'm really not sure there is any business doing porn money
| processing in a way that is safe from getting the rug
| pulled below them at any moment.
| hnbad wrote:
| Also PornHub is operated by MindGeek ($460mn revenue in
| 2021). It's not some niche startup. "Why can't you do it
| if PornHub can do it" seems disingenious at best given
| their parent company's market share.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Porn is, for all intents, legal in the US.
|
| Prostitution is, for the majority of places illegal.
|
| Is a stripper a sex worker (I guess so), but they don't have to
| avail themselves of this sort of service in most places because
| their work is legal.
|
| Let's say you live in a place where gambling is illegal. Lets
| say that you open a blackjack and slots room in your garage. If
| your local bank manager finds out that the piles of cash you
| bring in are from an illegal source, they are likely to show
| you the door because they want nothing to do with you.
|
| Google around and you will find articles from the early days of
| medical weed, and how hard banking was for those providers!
| Hell this got resolved but the fact that it happened should
| make your eyes pop: https://ij.org/press-release/federal-
| government-will-return-...
| lmm wrote:
| > if pornhub and a million other porn sites can operate
|
| All owned by one company, and when the government (or worse,
| some random quango) says jump, they say how high. Content on
| the no-no list disappears overnight (e.g. ever wondered why you
| never see breathplay in online porn?).
| cornholio wrote:
| While the feature of these stories are always "independent sex
| workers" and students struggling to pay their college, the main
| users of adult payment services are very exploitative businesses
| that are _not_ owned by the performers, operate in a dirty and
| unregulated market and are directly responsible for a large part
| of human trafficking in recent years.
|
| I know it doesn't invalidate the point made and I support the
| freedom of adult individuals to do whatever they want with
| consenting parties, but it's an important piece of information to
| consider for understanding the whole issue. We cannot simply turn
| a blind eye at the massive damage the porn and prostitution
| industries are doing to society.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| _the main users of adult payment services are very exploitative
| businesses that are not owned by the performers, operate in a
| dirty and unregulated market and are directly responsible for a
| large part of human trafficking in recent years_
|
| And you know that how? Because it's the mantra some interested
| parties repeat?
|
| Those very exploitative business have a ton of money and can
| always find ways to launder money. The only ones hurted by
| these bans are the actual independent sex workers, who cannot
| afford to find alternatives because <gasp> they are
| _independent_ so they don 't have the resources.
|
| Stop trying to save the world. All your good will will only
| hurt the small ones.
| cornholio wrote:
| That's exactly the point, denying them access to a payment
| system the consumers can easily access, hence, limiting the
| profit motive and the resulting massive human damage.
|
| By your very limited logic, denying drug traffickers access
| to the banking system hurts poor coca farmers in Bolivia.
| Well yes, it does, any policy choice involves compromises.
| superkuh wrote:
| >a large part of human trafficking in recent years.
|
| Citation needed. The idea that human trafficking is a thing and
| that it has been increasing "in recent years" is a delusion. It
| is not backed up by the criminal processing data. And in fact
| the special "human trafficking" courts set up in the USA in the
| 20-teens were shut down a couple years later due to a lack of
| any cases to process.
|
| Human trafficking being a thing to worry about is entirely a
| news media infotainment story.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I wouldn't say entirely, but I would agree that the public
| policy approach is completely misguided.
|
| A general labor rights approach would allow more independents
| to exist and controlled persons have more reporting options
| and people to confide in. Node based, like the concept of
| herd immunity.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| When you are in a field where no legitimate actor wants to do
| business with you, of course there will be crime and
| exploitation.
|
| If I refuse to serve black customers because they are more
| likely to be criminals, I am going to get a well deserved anti-
| discrimination lawsuit. That's because we understand that
| discriminating against black people will only make the problem
| worse. But discriminating against sex workers is fine, and
| indeed, it makes the problem worse.
|
| For other jobs, the government protects its workers. For
| example, by making sure workshops comply with safety
| regulations. For sex workers, the law essentially says "you
| can't open a workshop", which is all but helpful as it just put
| these "workshops" in the hands of criminals, and leave sex
| workers with no protection.
| justusw wrote:
| Looking at the recent Andrew Tate drama, one definitely gets
| the impression that a huge part of that industry is extremely
| shady.
|
| I worry though that forcing participants to use obscure payment
| methods will obscure evidence of human trafficking and rights
| abuse even more.
| di4na wrote:
| Note that Andrew Tate specific operation was quite small.
|
| That does not reduce the harm inflicted. But also it is worth
| keeping in mind that having an independent stream of income
| allows SW in the porn industry to better negotiate good
| working conditions.
|
| And re going for obscure stuff generating problems. It is
| already the case and we have good case studies following
| SESTA/FOSTA..
| Proven wrote:
| [dead]
| ETH_start wrote:
| What does "human trafficking" even mean in this context?
| Because I've seen it used to describe facilitating the movement
| of consenting adults seeking to work in the sex industry.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Making prostitution illegal is what drives a huge part of that
| human trafficking. With no legal oversight, the pimps have free
| reign, and when their work is illegal, the prostitutes have no
| recourse. The dynamics are _very_ similar to drugs, and for
| both legalization is the best way to reduce harm.
| nashashmi wrote:
| There is a big difference between actions being done in the
| dark versus actions being done in the open and with full
| endorsement and legal support.
|
| The purpose of law is to tame commercial activities for
| protection of its commerce and prosperity. By legalizing
| something that is a net social harm, giving it guiderails so
| that it can lead to more stability and profit, you have
| incentivized that harm to reproduce maliciously. It is like
| offering subsidies to fossil fuels. No, it is like putting
| regulations on fossil fuels and giving them legitimacy.
|
| Some industries should stay in the dark unprotected always
| looking over their shoulder for when they might get caught.
| nulbyte wrote:
| > No, it is like putting regulations on fossil fuels and
| giving them legitimacy.
|
| We put regulation on fossil fuels as a practical matter of
| recognizing the reality in which we operate, and the harms
| that will come to real people if we outlawed it without a
| viable solution to the rest of the problems that would
| create.
|
| > Some industries should stay in the dark unprotected
| always looking over their shoulder for when they might get
| caught.
|
| This sounds nice, but the practical implications are that
| already disadvantaged people are further abused and taken
| advantage of. No one should want that type of system.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Harms come from having a porn industry too. BUT No harm
| is done by banning that industry.
|
| Disadvantaged people should be not in the porn industry
| for some wealthy person's self fulfillment. We call that
| abuse. And the wealthy should be penalized.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| Thank you for a sane answer.
| cornholio wrote:
| > Making prostitution illegal is what drives a huge part of
| that human trafficking.
|
| There is absolutely no empirical evidence for this - as it
| happens, a live social experiment is taking place in Europe.
| The trafficking networks in the East kicked into overdrive to
| supply the needs of the German and Belgian legal or gray
| brothels.
|
| There is only one policy that works, demand minimization by
| outlawing payment for sex. This is what Sweden has done and,
| far from empowering pimps, it has largely solved the issue of
| trafficking, while the "Legalize it" group of countries saw
| it explode. The data speaks for itself.
| PeterisP wrote:
| AFAIK the group that allegedly gets protected by the
| Swedish system - the Swedish sex-workers - are
| overwhelmingly against that system.
| vinik wrote:
| Many of the strongest advocates for this system are
| former sex workers, who have recognised the abuse they
| were subjected to during that time and seek to protect
| others from the same.
| cornholio wrote:
| No doubt, the sex workers that are not trafficked and
| exploited see it as bad for business because they are
| forced to compete harder for a smaller market.
| vinik wrote:
| [flagged]
| philwelch wrote:
| Protecting the business interests of prostitutes is a
| lower priority than minimizing abusive sex trafficking.
| hgsgm wrote:
| "Demand minimizaton" ia a fancy term for "restricting human
| rights"
|
| That "solution" may help with trafficking, but hasn't
| solved the issues of:
|
| * right to pursue a living wage wity honest work
|
| * right to pursue sexual health
|
| Farming and manufacturing also have trafficking problems.
| Should it be illegal to pay for cars and food?
| cornholio wrote:
| The idea that there exists a human right to purchase sex,
| i.e, to take advantage of your economic position in order
| to make use of other people's bodies for personal
| gratification, and that that's something promoting
| health, is a probably a soft form of sociopathy.
| antonyt wrote:
| "Human right" may be a bit extreme, but what about the
| myriad other ways we "take advantage of [our] economic
| position to make use of other people's bodies"? Am I a
| sociopath if I get a massage? A manicure? Hire movers to
| take my couch down the stairs?
|
| If not, what makes selling sex different?
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| I think you read the comment the wrong way.
|
| No one should have the right to purchase any arbitrary
| person for sexual gratification. It should be my right to
| bodily autonomy, and I should be able to accept money for
| work that involves my body.
|
| As a carpenter, I can accept money and in exchange, do
| work that is tough on my body and will have long-term
| physical effects. I should be able to also accept money
| in exchange for using my own body for to sexually gratify
| someone (I'm certainly allowed to do it free).
|
| The right we should have is the right to decide how our
| body is used, not how we can use the body of someone
| else.
| ETH_start wrote:
| If someone wants to have sex with you, for any reason
| other than you defrauding them or threatening to violate
| their rights, and someone else uses the threat of
| violence to prevent them from having sex with you, that
| violates both of your human rights, according to any
| definition of human rights grounded in bodily autonomy
| and free association.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Sweden has all the wrong solutions to society's problems
| which they export world wide as the "Swedish Model".
| fallingknife wrote:
| They got COVID right
| belorn wrote:
| > "This is what Sweden has done and, far from empowering
| pimps, it has largely solved the issue of trafficking"
|
| The (local government) departments that work with helping
| sex workers should be very glad to hear this since they
| have been quite overworked since covid. If the issue is
| largely solved they can move workers away from that and
| focus on other forms of trafficking.
|
| But I do not believe the claim that Sweden has largely
| solved the issue of trafficking. Looking at the most recent
| published information from BRA (the government department
| for research and development within the judicial system),
| the amount of prostitution has increased significant and
| reached the highest ever peak last year (https://bra.se/dow
| nload/18.146acb6517fd55784012735/165580083... page 30). The
| problem seem to have significant grown and is continuing
| growing.
|
| Feel free to overlay statistics from Germany or Belgium if
| you want to provide evidence that their model is somehow
| worse. The complains I hear from Belgium is mostly about
| how the housing situation around the red street districts
| has become too expensive, and that people who lives there
| are tired of the tourism.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Sweden's "Nordic Model" is absolutely not backed my
| empirical evidence either. One crucial flaw discovered was
| that it has simply cut off one primary reporting mechanism
| for discovering trafficking: _the customers_!
|
| Now, customers can't admit to having been there at all, and
| so won't report their perception or what they were
| explicitly told by the sex worker.
|
| This is ironic as your belief is based on the issue of
| trafficking being solved because you don't hear the reports
| or the stats dropped.
|
| > The data speaks for itself.
|
| Hysterical. It should be criminal that even sex work
| advocates in the US are attempting to recreate Sweden's
| model based on this flawed view. The unsaid reality is that
| people just aren't comfortable with how normal the
| consumers of sex work are, and don't want to find out that
| it isn't an antisocial "other".
|
| Sex work is a labor rights issue. Sex trafficking is a
| labor rights issue just like labor trafficking is a labor
| rights issue. One that has nothing to do with punitive or
| criminal measures of the laborers or consumers, only the
| traffickers. Normalizing both the supply and the demand
| side in conjunction with increased avenues for labor
| assistance is the most holistic solution.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I think we'll need to define what "human trafficking" means
| in order to have a productive conversation about it. It
| doesn't need to be defined the same way for every context,
| just for the one we're talking about in each case.
|
| So in this particular case, what do you mean by "human
| trafficking?"
| zirgs wrote:
| In some other countries prostitution is legal, but brothels
| and pimping are not.
|
| Legalisation of pimping isn't necessary.
| pell wrote:
| Even in countries where sex-work is legal you can find
| similar dynamics. Unfortunately it's not that easy.
| techdragon wrote:
| To elaborate for people unfamiliar with these situations...
|
| In many countries the work itself is legal, but you find
| such fun twists as:
|
| "You have to operate using cash because banks won't work
| with you because its legal in Your City/State but not at a
| State/Federal/National level above that",
|
| "You're not allowed to register as a business and subject
| to substantial tax penalties",
|
| "Individuals are allowed to do it, but its illegal for a
| multiple people to organise and work together as a
| business",
|
| "Your allowed to do it, but only inside your own property,
| as its illegal for rented commercial or residential
| property to knowingly provide you such a premises"
|
| ... Generally speaking its more common that you find its a
| case of "It's legal for you the human individual to get
| paid to have sex, but... not legal to X, Y, or Z" which is
| how for every step forward, people in this line of work
| continue to face persecution. Its also sadly one of the
| ways this the progress gets made, by wheeling and dealing
| in politics, so they get the legalising change done, but
| had to trade away any measures that protect worker rights,
| or changes to decriminalise working as a business together,
| or to operate a dedicated premises... there's usually one
| or more catches left over by all the compromise needed to
| get _any_ movement on the core issue... and so people look
| at it and go "what's the problem, its legal isn't it?"...
| to which the response is "well yes... but..." ... And most
| people have already tuned out before they finish the word
| "but".
| XorNot wrote:
| This isn't the real problem for payment processors. The problem
| for payment processors is fraud and chargebacks. The porn
| industry is an absolute magnet for attempts at using fake or
| stolen credit cards, either for just plain theft, or from
| caught spouse's filing fraud claims when the bill is found, or
| any other of dozens of similar sorts of issues.
|
| It's a great way to launder money for example: the goods are
| transient, frequently cross national borders, but are only
| video streams and pictures, and easily explainable at huge
| purchase rates.
|
| The problem is that for payment processors, the business simply
| attracts problems through a myriad of historical social factors
| which are well beyond their control.
| wesleywt wrote:
| If sex workers where allowed to control their own destiny then
| the exploitation would decrease. Here you have their payment
| system shut down, now a woman has to get her money via cash
| which requires protection. You also have websites that allowed
| sex workers to vet customers shut down because of fake child
| porn concerns by conservatives (ironically a big user base of
| sex work).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| COnfused. It was a bitcoin platform? Isn't the whole point of
| that stuff, to allow anonymous payments? How can this issue even
| be a thing?
|
| I'm guessing, because bitcoin never worked. Never provided the
| anonymity it promised. Became just another currency, regulated by
| whatever random public exchange you signed up for.
| varjag wrote:
| The moment you try to cash out your tokens into money with
| established bank is the moment you run into KYC requirements.
| max51 wrote:
| The company receiving the payment needs to convert the BTC to
| fiat if they want to pay their employees, infrastructure costs,
| etc.
|
| At a small scale, there are a lot of options to go around it
| and also avoid KYC, but it's not really a viable solution for a
| company. They have to work with a bank or another payment
| processor to convert the crypto and/or manage whatever
| traditional currency the crypto is converted to. A few years
| ago, there was a wave of large company accepting crypto (eg.
| tesla), but most of them have backed down from it.
|
| It's like accepting gold coins as a payment for your company.
| You can't pay your taxes or wages with those even if they have
| a stable value.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Does anyone know what's the difference between them and whatever
| provider OnlyFans uses?
| fatneckbeard wrote:
| how is it "sex worker led". Is Ameen Soleimani a sex worker?
|
| Oh Ameen is also working on Tornado Cash,
| https://twitter.com/ameensol is that part of his sex work?
| kid64 wrote:
| The article and comments are missing important context. There
| might be some kind of moral discrimination at play here, but the
| article doesn't actually show this. Risk discrimination, on the
| other hand, is central to the existence of the upstream
| processors, and risk can be determined somewhat objectively based
| on current and historical data. The priority for the processors
| is money, they're not going to turn money down unless the risk is
| unsustainable.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| If they can cut payment services for this they can cut it for
| you.
|
| Imagine if banks cut off access to MAGA, or the GOP, or
| scientology, or Greenpeace?
|
| More regulation needed
| zirgs wrote:
| Many people would consider cutting off access for those a very
| good thing. Political polarisation sucks.
| locallost wrote:
| Not a very helpful comment from my side in terms of proposing a
| solution for this, but: I bet people complaining against cancel
| culture will not complain about this.
| [deleted]
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Well, yeah, "Cancel culture" is a pejorative - i.e. When people
| I don't like do it, it's nasty cancel culture. When I do it,
| it's noble boycotting.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| Cancel culture is just excommunication for heresy with better
| PR.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| we libertarians actually exist, you know. aren't just a legend.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Do you though? What's your opinion on abortion? Because every
| libertarian I've met is pro state-enforced pregnancies.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Really? US libertarians are a bit weird.
|
| Here in Europe we don't even have a dispute - it's legal up
| to a point, and we don't see much benefit to fight over
| when exactly this point happens. It's usually ok for
| practical purposes.
| gadders wrote:
| The converse is also true, of course. Those cheering on
| previous cancellations will complain now that it has happened
| to someone they approve of.
| locallost wrote:
| I don't disagree. But my conclusion is that cancel culture is
| nothing new. The novelty is that those that used to get
| cancelled are now cancelling others.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > But my conclusion is that cancel culture is nothing new.
|
| Probably as old as time.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Definitely not a new thing, it always amazed me that people
| genuinely believe so, but I bet there are more witch-hunts
| thanks to the internet than ever and that is what makes it
| feel like it's a new phenomena. There's more, spreads way
| faster, always someone new to "cancel" or "protect".
|
| Big parts of the internet are like constant reality tv
| dramas.
| gadders wrote:
| I think it's become a case of "Don't hate the player, hate
| the game."
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| It used to be called excommunication for heresy, but the
| behavior is identical.
| nailer wrote:
| > Wyre Payments, the company's upstream payment processor,
| terminated SpankPay's account because Wyre's new payment
| processor, Checkout.com, doesn't allow processing for payments
| related to sexual businesses, SpankPay said.
|
| I wonder if they could go direct to Wyre's old payment processor?
| thathndude wrote:
| This is going to increasingly be a problem. We don't need a
| National digital currency for there to be control in our
| finances. As long as everything flows through 3-4 "private"
| entities, and those entities owe their existence to gov't
| bailouts, they'll be quasi-govt organizations.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > As long as everything flows through 3-4 "private" entities,
| and those entities owe their existence to gov't bailouts,
| they'll be quasi-govt organizations.
|
| You are so fixated on Government, you miss the forest for the
| trees.
|
| If these 3 organisations are run by similar people with similar
| agendas, you can have universal censorship.
|
| No need for government. Tyrany has been privatized
| hgsgm wrote:
| Traditionally, legally, when a private businesses monopolizes
| and aspect of life, they take on some obligations of
| government, like "town squares" inside shopping malls.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Go find a shopping mall that can't kick you out at will.
| I'll wait.
| permo-w wrote:
| private companies are tyrannical by default
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > We don't need a National digital currency for there to be
| control in our finances.
|
| > everything flows through 3-4 "private" entities
|
| Brilliant separation of concerns isn't it. -- The government
| says we can have all the porn we want (1st amendment) -- The cc
| processors say "we won't let you pay for it" (google: bill
| ackman )
|
| Now find me a pollution who wants to pass some sort of pro porn
| bill to make the CC processors allow for these payments.
| Pako wrote:
| European here, sorry if I misunderstood, but I always thought
| the "free speech" protected by the first amendment only
| protects your right to e.g. voice your political opinion
| without being punished for your particular views, not your
| preferences in porn (or the distribution and even existence
| of it)? As an extreme counterexample the government banned
| CSAM and one couldn't weasel their way out of such a case by
| pleading first amendment, right?
| lazide wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that porn was banned in the US, and
| 'obscene' material still technically is. It's generally
| allowed under a 1st amendment exception.
|
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_objections_to_pornog
| ra...]
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| It is actually freedom of expression, which covers speech,
| art, religion, etc. Porn/sex work can be any and all of
| those.
| mcv wrote:
| From what I understand, it even covers campaign
| contributions.
| pas wrote:
| That's a so complicated case, that it's an increasingly bad
| example.
|
| CSAM is basically evidence of a crime, so it's treated as
| such, private entities are pressured to monitor for it,
| detect it, quarantine it, etc.
|
| Which in some abstract sense is okay. (We have data on
| rising child abuse, including sexual, also data on rising
| CSAM on the internet and so on, so some very effective
| interest groups are trying to "do something".) Now, of
| course, it might not come as a complete surprise to you
| here on HN that the pragmatic concerns about the approach,
| proposals, implementation, lawcraft and whatnot involved
| are far outweigh even the wildest claims of benefits, the
| whole enterprise is very counter-productive, at best
| security-theater, but in reality it's just a fucking public
| interest disaster (FOSTA/SESTA, basically War on Sex Work,
| yet another highly acclaimed installment of the War On
| series!), an in a convenient secondary effect it's a "free
| moat" for the incumbents.
|
| The obvious legal issue is that it's "impossible" to say
| what it CSAM and what is something that looks like that.
| For example, what if, there's a machine that generates
| pictures that look like CSAM? You might advertise it, but
| likely in no time the DoJ and a bunch of other federal and
| state entities would sue (and of course arrest, raid,
| detain) you arguing that somewhere there's actual CSAM in
| the process, it's distribution, etc.
|
| And even if simple plain "aliens in a vacuum" reading of
| the law indicates that eventually the government would lose
| these cases, it's very realistic that the courts themselves
| would just make new law that in effect criminalizes this
| even more victimless version too.
|
| But, all in all, with enough advocacy it's possible, just
| there are very few people who want to spend their life on
| this.
| mayregretit wrote:
| If AI generated CSAM is poisoned by actual CSAM in the
| process, wouldn't that extend to AI generated art being
| poisoned by copyrighted work in the process?
| stametseater wrote:
| Logically, but not necessarily legally.
| pas wrote:
| It's poisoned by the fact that it requires access to
| CSAM, which makes the operation illegal, even if the
| output might not be illegal.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| CSAM is not in violation of the first amendment because the
| supreme court decided that obscenity isn't protected
| speech. It isn't specifically that the first amendment only
| protects political speech, like with abortion, obscenity
| limitations - particularly related to children - are just
| something the court made up which no one really openly
| disagrees with (for obvious reasons).
|
| In a way it shows that the first amendment isn't really all
| that absolute. Say something that enough powerful people
| find gross and they'll just make it out to be an unstated
| exception.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Worse than government organizations. Government organizations
| have to follow all sorts of pesky rules about what they can do
| e.g. the first amendment. Corps can do whatever, so the
| government loves to use them as puppets to do what they want
| when the rules don't allow them to it themselves e.g. banning
| porn and banning people talking about the COVID lab leak.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| Only issue is that "I want to oppose the Federal Regulators'
| stated goal of increasing the safety and soundness of your
| bank"[1] doesn't go over well even in the best of times, and
| these are not the best of times. It's the new "high-risk".
|
| [1]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/07/2023-02
| ...
| lmm wrote:
| It's worse than that; actual government regulation has
| oversight, constitutional protections, appeals processes and
| the like. But by doing it indirectly through the payment system
| they can sidestep all of that.
| pulse7 wrote:
| It will happen: with national digital currencies the control
| will happen and as soon there is some real threat, people WILL
| be cut from the possibilities to make payments!
| newsclues wrote:
| Anonymous payments are required for things to work, and will
| be taxed.
| tokinonagare wrote:
| > and as soon there is some real threat
|
| No, the threat won't need to be anywhere close to real. It
| will be abused politically against whoever is disagreeing
| with the government, like it was against the truckers demoing
| in Canada.
|
| The banking system is actually already weaponized case when
| stakes are high. In my own nominally democratic country,
| access to loans for the presidential campaign is already
| refused by national banks to the party that ranked second the
| last two times. The leader then had to ask for Russian
| funding...
| jeromegv wrote:
| Those "protesters" started having their banking denied once
| they started advocating for overthrowing the government.
| They were not just protesting, they were planning and
| requesting the government to be overthrown and guns were
| found. So at this point, it is possible that yes, the
| government will take exceptionally high measures to counter
| an attack against the state.
|
| Tons of people have been protesting about the Canadian
| government and COVID measures outside of that blockade (up
| to this day), and their bank account is still fine.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think that national digital currencies have _less_ risk
| than the current private providers. While in both cases some
| people will be (I mean, already are) cut from the possibility
| to make payments, these aren 't the same people and the
| impact is different.
|
| Government-run payment systems have to have explicit legal
| grounds to make decisions, and their ability to make
| discriminatory decisions is curtailed by constitutional
| requirements for fair and equal treatments. A government-run
| payment system can and will block payments which are for a
| purpose which the general society through their elected
| representatives has decided to be criminal, and if the
| society changes their mind (as it has on many things) they
| can legalize that stuff, and it will also become legal in the
| payment system.
|
| On the other hand, the current privately-run system can (and
| already does!) block payments which are for a purpose which a
| few unelected rich dudes have unilaterally decided do be
| undesirable; and if the society decides to legalize that
| stuff, they can ignore it as that's their arbitrary private
| choice and they can't be held accountable.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > the current privately-run system can (and already does!)
| block payments which are for a purpose which a few
| unelected rich dudes have unilaterally decided do be
| undesirable; and if the society decides to legalize that
| stuff, they can ignore it as that's their arbitrary private
| choice and they can't be held accountable
|
| People are obsessed eith the idea that censorship can only
| come from government, they are completely blind to the idea
| of that rich individuals have agendas and power to advance
| them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What's more is that if government run and managed money
| comes around with this supreme court, you can rest easy
| knowing you can pay for pretty much anything other than an
| abortion with it.
| [deleted]
| surprisetalk wrote:
| I met Ameen (CEO) and the SpankChain team back in 2018. Our teams
| spent a whole day together talking about life, payment
| strategies, and the future.
|
| Ameen is definitely 1 standard deviation smarter than me. The
| clock speed of his brain made me feel like an outdated CPU.
|
| They were kind people. They really cared about vulnerable people
| getting reliable income.
|
| I hope all of them the best.
|
| If you're in a position to hire anybody from their team, strongly
| consider reaching out to them.
| [deleted]
| yucky wrote:
| [flagged]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Don't like 90% of men use porn? And your issue with it seems
| to be a failed attempt to get the sex workers paid for it?
| yucky wrote:
| There is no way that 90% of men pay for porn. I would
| imagine the number is closer to 1-2% max.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I didn't say pay for and that wasn't a mistake. And the
| difference is significant and highly relevant to points
| we're both making so I suggest reconsidering in light of
| that clarification.
| tecleandor wrote:
| But anyway, I'd say the percentage is way higher than 1
| or 2%. Thing is, some men pay with money, some pay being
| exposed to ads or sharing data.
|
| Also, I don't know why that user finds that paying for
| porn is bad and "simpish" (hah). If you're OK with porn
| and enjoy it, how's bad paying for the effort of the
| performer? It's not like your like you're skipping paying
| some dollars to a giant like Disney...
| yucky wrote:
| Then you responded to the wrong post.
| cifiod wrote:
| [flagged]
| surprisetalk wrote:
| Not sure if it matters to you, but I believe SpankPay was
| created for _digital_ sex-work payments.
|
| I know this a touchy subject, but I think their hearts were
| in the right place back in 2018 when we met.
|
| Please let me know if there have been any allegations since
| then and I'll amend my previous comment.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| Financial providers shouldn't be issuing moral judgements. It
| seems to be more common too.
|
| The other day I got a notification that was "FYI we sold your
| shares in company X (NASDAQ listed)". They've decided they're no
| longer keen on weed companies and have taken it upon themselves
| to fix my portfolio to remove such evilness. Left me slightly
| speechless...I'm paying you to hold shares not be moral police
| ffs.
|
| edit: this was a self-managed portfolio hence my surprise at
| getting notified about successful trade
| flangola7 wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/wrm9icqvgzja1.jpg
|
| A large segment of the population unfortunately have extremely
| distorted moral compasses, and a disproportionate number of
| them likely work in conservative industries such as finance.
|
| Americans on average consider pornographic actors to be more
| immoral than lobbyists, spies, and lawyers, and second only to
| politicians. I'm not surprised at this chart but it really
| depresses my spirits.
| superzamp wrote:
| I think these kind of shenanigans are byproducts of how
| regulation in financial services is delivered from the
| regulating bodies to builders in the space. As opposed to e.g.
| health where clear guidelines are often the norm, fintech is
| basically a shit show where regulators expect you to have
| internal processes to combat fraud, know your customers, do not
| finance terrorism, money laundering et al. -- all without
| laying out actual precise guidelines of what they really expect
| want to see from an implementation standpoint, keeping you on
| your toes all the time. This leads to self-inflicted wounds
| from financial services providers, anticipating that regulators
| might not like e.g. stoner stocks and preemptive actions to
| minimize risk of being shut down.
| zamnos wrote:
| > Visa could be liable in suit over child sexual abuse
| material on Pornhub, other sites
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/01/visa-
| mind...
|
| You're totally right, in this case it's child porn. The
| lawsuit proves Visa's paranoia isn't entirely unjustified,
| either. That's the thing that pierces the corporate veil and
| puts executives in jail. Hence the cut off. I'm not sure how
| we improve the situation though
| baidifnaoxi wrote:
| This is why I oppose ESG. It's being pushed by the financial
| institutions under the guise of sustainability. But now you
| have many things unrelated to climate that have been show-
| horned in.
|
| It's fine to create regulation that's voted upon, it's not okay
| to use financial firms to push moral or societal change in
| collusion with governments.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Never forget that RJ Reynolds has a near-perfect ESG score:
| https://investors.reynoldsconsumerproducts.com/static-
| files/...
| Rexxar wrote:
| Can you give some context why do you thing that a company
| that sell aluminium foil and storage bags is fundamentally
| bad ?
| [deleted]
| leguminous wrote:
| RJ Reynolds is a tobacco company.
|
| EDIT: Never mind. I see that the previous poster had
| confused the two and linked to the consumer products
| company, not the tobacco company.
| schiffern wrote:
| The link was wrong, but the fact is right. The tobacco
| company parent also has a high ESG rating.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35274139
| chpatrick wrote:
| Nestle is also at the top of most ESG indices.
| schiffern wrote:
| That's the foil company, not the tobacco company.
|
| This is probably the link you meant to post:
|
| "Reynolds American parent BAT named third-highest rated ESG
| performer in global ranking"
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reynolds-
| american-p...
| baidifnaoxi wrote:
| Wow. Yeah. It's not just moral or societal, I guess. It's
| also is influenced by $$$$
| notlukesky wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted if the fact is true? There are
| so many other high ESG scores like SVB and FTX and even
| countries like Sri Lanka (went bankrupt as well) that it
| has become an indicator like Jim Cramer. Every rating
| system will be gamed if there are incentives for it and be
| turned into a farce. Just like bombing countries to the
| stone ages for "human rights", "liberation" and
| "democracy". All code words for genocide and massacres.
|
| The British Empire, a "democracy", used to invade countries
| for slave trading. Then when slavery was made illegal it
| then invaded countries under the guise of stopping slavery!
| Rexxar wrote:
| Because he can't make the difference between a consumer
| product company and a tobacco company ?
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Because it isn't true - Reynolds Consumer Products is not
| the same company as RJ Reynolds. (They were apparently
| founded by relatives though!)
| schiffern wrote:
| The tobacco company parent also has a high ESG rating.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35274139
| [deleted]
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| ESG as a concept is fucked. Creating a scale for each of E, S
| or G is challenging. Adding a mixing methodology on top is
| insane. How many tonnes of carbon is a separate
| CEO/chairmanship worth? Is child labor four or five times
| worse than super-voting stock?
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Why shouldn't they?
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Many consider speech and unfiltered internet access basic
| rights. But we rarely hear people talk about the right to
| financial services. Having no way to make transactions and
| receive payments can bankrupt someone. And they don't just
| unbank people for moral reasons, there is a long list of
| individuals, activist groups and companies that have been shut
| out for political reasons too.
|
| In the current system banks as private businesses can refuse
| service to whoever they want. We don't own even _our_ dollars
| in the bank, we 're a creditors. If the bank fails anything
| that's uninsured may be lost, because the vast majority is not
| held in legal tender, it's book money which no other party will
| accept as payment.
|
| Your story seems extreme, that would not be legal in my country
| because stocks are your own property, the bank can't touch
| them. Either way, none of this should be allowed in the first
| place. The financial system is completely messed up and the
| only reason people think it's normal is because they don't know
| any other way. Money itself should be neutral, it should not be
| controlled by any single group and people should have free
| access to basic transactions.
|
| If only there were something like a public bank ledger that
| belongs to everyone...
| KronisLV wrote:
| > If only there were something like a public bank ledger that
| belongs to everyone...
|
| Feels like proper legislation might also be a solution to the
| human problem, rather than just throwing technology at
| things. Maybe both?
|
| Of course, neither may actually be feasible in some places.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Legislation hasn't even been able to fix people dying due
| to daylight savings.
| aobdev wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I'm assuming things go wrong when
| people don't get enough sleep but I'm otherwise unaware
| of the dangers of changing the clocks.
| mcronce wrote:
| NHTSA stats show increased traffic fatalities following
| the time change every year
| aobdev wrote:
| I'm sure this is true and can be attributed to DST, but
| do we know if this would be worse than traffic fatalities
| caused by commuting in the dark during winter months
| without DST?
| baremetal wrote:
| Daylight savings time can affect the heart, according to
| the American Heart Association[1].
|
| [1]https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/10/26/can-daylight-
| saving...
| RunSet wrote:
| > Feels like proper legislation might also be a solution to
| the human problem, rather than just throwing technology at
| things. Maybe both?
|
| Possible compromise:
|
| We _try_ the decentralized public ledger. Then, should that
| fail, we can still attempt to legislate morality for the...
| well, darn- I 've lost count of the failed attempts but
| maybe it will work next time.
| cawest11 wrote:
| Motherfucker, the entire crypto industry is in the middle
| of a collapse. It lasted less than a decade at scale and
| that's just the 10% that weren't an out and out scam (I
| lean toward that number being closer to 0%, but I'll
| throw you a bone since you sound like you're caught up in
| it).
| dgacmu wrote:
| There's a difference in many US brokerages between having
| your stocks held in your name versus having them held in
| "street name" (i.e., in the brokerage's name).
|
| GP could probably purchase the shares and be issued stock
| certificates that they could physically own, in which case
| there would be no chance of a brokerage being able to sell
| them.
|
| (I'm not disagreeing that the brokerage's action was sucky,
| mind you)
| justin66 wrote:
| > There's a difference in many US brokerages between having
| your stocks held in your name versus having them held in
| "street name" (i.e., in the brokerage's name).
|
| This is irrelevant - a US brokerage cannot arbitrarily
| trade your shares, whether or not your shares are held in
| street name.
|
| > GP could probably purchase the shares and be issued stock
| certificates that they could physically own, in which case
| there would be no chance of a brokerage being able to sell
| them.
|
| This is equivalent to suggesting someone put their cash in
| a mattress rather than using a bank. The real solution is
| to find a better bank.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| If you research how companies are actually incorporated,
| shares are created, and then listed them it's basically
| just two tiny companies that exist solely to hold shares.
| They actually own basically all the publicly traded shares
| in the US, plus a bunch of non publicly traded ones.
|
| You legally can hold shares of any company, but you'd have
| to spend insane amounts of money. Even when companies are
| acquired the shares aren't actually transferred to the
| acquirer. One of the custodial companies just merges the
| shares into the acquirer.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Almost all shares are held in street name, but as a
| shareholder you have the option of either having the
| shares registered directly in your name through the
| company or their transfer agent or to be issued physical
| stock certificates (usually for a fee).
|
| As an example, I used to own a couple of shares of both
| Apple and IBM. My shares were held directly in my name by
| computershare, which is the transfer agent for both
| companies.
|
| When I sold them, someone _probably_ bought them through
| a brokerage, which means that computer share updated the
| registration to name Cede & co as the registered owner of
| the stock, and cede updated an entry indicating that the
| buyers brokerage owned the shares, and the buyers
| brokerage updated an entry that said that the buyer owned
| the shares.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| Pretty much all the payment processors cut off Wikileaks
| without even the government asking them to. And all they did is
| publish evidence of war crimes.
| newsclues wrote:
| It's not just a moral judgement.
|
| The illegal sex industry is a big one, and if you have a
| scalable and available online platform that illegal
| transactions can be hidden from the authorities that is a
| problem.
|
| It is a problem if your payment processor is taking payments
| for nonconsensual sex, rape and payments to have sex with
| children. Not just a moral panic issue.
|
| Edit: seems like I have some views that are unpopular with the
| cowards who downvote comments without engaging in discussion.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Edit: seems like I have some views that are unpopular with
| the cowards who downvote comments without engaging in
| discussion.
|
| Downvotes are to be expected on that topic as soon as one
| says something mildly against the prostitution "business"...
|
| "Sex consumers" don't want to take responsibility for the
| damages they cause or the crimes they participate in, for
| them it's a "simple commercial transaction" between
| "consenting adults", forgetting all the coercive tactics
| pimps have been using for ages, the grooming, the drug
| addiction...
|
| Of course it's a legal risk for any payment processor
| involved in that kind of "business".
|
| Don't worry about the downvotes, your arguments are
| completely reasonable and nobody can silence you no matter
| how hard they try.
| newsclues wrote:
| I'm not worried about downvotes, I just want the cowards to
| understands there is a difference between supporting the
| industry of people that agree to work in it, and people
| (sometimes children) who are manipulated, and forced with
| violence and drug addiction to do things they don't want
| to.
|
| There are sex slaves in America, and anyone that covers for
| that is worse than a coward.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Some of us just reflexively downvote when we see off-
| topic complaints about downvotes.
| goldfeld wrote:
| Societies should not gain leverage over lower classes and then
| buy their morally broken bodies when they have little else.
|
| Of course society should indeed profess the meagerest moral
| rights and humanity for all and protect that.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Financial providers shouldn't be issuing moral judgements.
|
| This isn't a moral judgement so much as it is an attempt to
| avoid association with high fraud risk transactions, which lead
| to more chargebacks, potential implication of the bank in
| criminal activity (e.g., money laundering), and greater
| government scrutiny under initiatives like Obama's Operation
| Choke Point.
| philwelch wrote:
| What makes you assume it's a moral judgment and not a
| liability/risk-driven business decision? I've almost never
| observed large businesses, including banks, passing up a chance
| to make money because of their moral scruples.
|
| > The other day I got a notification that was "FYI we sold your
| shares in company X (NASDAQ listed)". They've decided they're
| no longer keen on weed companies and have taken it upon
| themselves to fix my portfolio to remove such evilness.
|
| You are aware that cannabis is still federally illegal, right?
| stametseater wrote:
| > _What makes you assume it's a moral judgment and not a
| liability /risk-driven business decision? I've almost never
| observed large businesses, including banks, passing up a
| chance to make money because of their moral scruples._
|
| Amazon's firearm accessory rules seem to contain plausible
| examples of such. _Permitted_ accessories include:
|
| Vise blocks designed to hold firearms, _except_ for those
| intended for "assault weapons."
|
| Magazine loaders, _except_ for those which can accommodate
| the following common rifle calibers: .223 /5.56; 7.62x51;
| 308; 7.62x39; 5.45x39
|
| Armorer's wrenches, _except_ those specifically for assault
| weapons, particularly AR pattern rifles.
|
| Hand gun grips, but not "assault weapon grips".
|
| Implicitly permitted are jig kits except those for ARs
| _specifically_ (no mention of other assault rifles /weapons.
| It bans "AR _-specific_ jig kits ")
|
| Source with many more examples, many of them sensible
| restrictions likely motivated by state laws, but many of them
| perplexingly specific: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/
| hub/reference/external... Is there any state in this union in
| which restricts sale or possession of vise blocks designed to
| hold ARs? Not as far as I'm aware.
|
| They also restrict "Offensive and Controversial Materials",
| saying:
|
| > _We maintain these policies to ensure a welcoming
| environment for our global customers and sellers to do
| business while offering the widest selection of items on
| earth. We promote trust and respect, as well as adherence to
| the law._
|
| > _We exercise judgment in allowing or prohibiting listings
| and we keep our global community of customers and cultural
| differences and sensitivities in mind when reviewing and
| making a decision on products._
|
| One of the examples of products they ban is _" Products that
| promote intolerance based on race, religion, and sexual
| orientation."_, which interpreted in an impartial manner
| would obviously ban the Bible and many other religious texts,
| but in fact Amazon doesn't actually ban those. They're
| exercising a lot of judgement in the application of these
| rules and many apparent contradictions can be found. For
| instance they claim they won't sell products which promote or
| glorify terrorism, yet they sell the Unibomber's Manifesto
| and t-shirts of Che.
|
| https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external.
| ..
| SilasX wrote:
| I thought it was the law[1] that put them on the hook for any
| sex trafficking that's facilitated by said payment processing,
| not moral judgments?
|
| [1] FOSTA/SESTA
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FOSTA-SESTA&usesk...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I remember when visa rejected my attempt to give money to
| wikileak, which is legal in my country.
|
| So I donated BTC, and this is when I realized why we need
| crypto despite all the scams.
| xienze wrote:
| > Financial providers shouldn't be issuing moral judgements.
|
| Have you considered that this may have been a decision based on
| "we might get sued for being party to human trafficking"
| reasons?
| silverpepsi wrote:
| That's a circular argument though, the label is also a moral
| judgement
|
| The public was becoming too liberal, didn't have a strong
| enough reaction to "prostitution" anymore. Hence they started
| relabeling most voluntary prostitution disingenuously and
| even changing laws to make clearly "nothing special" also be
| "sex trafficking" ... like a man traveling for a weekend
| getaway to another city with two half-sugar baby half-
| prostitites.
| xienze wrote:
| > That's a circular argument though
|
| No it's not. Whatever moral judgement the government
| assigns to a crime is irrelevant to a company who is
| staring down the barrel of a lawsuit for being party to
| said crime.
|
| In the end, all it would take is one case of a pimp
| accepting payment for his underaged prostitutes via this
| company for the payment processor to be sued into oblivion,
| so they made the rational decision to not open themselves
| to this risk any longer.
| Retric wrote:
| Hardly a realistic risk there.
|
| Payment processors are really hard to sue unless they are
| directly involved in fraud. Which is why person to person
| payment processors like Venmo can operate.
| xienze wrote:
| > Hardly a realistic risk there.
|
| What? No it's not. Here's an example of a payment
| processor that got sued for being the payment processor
| used by a debt settlement firm that merely "overcharged
| consumers, took untimely fees, misrepresented the value
| of its services, and failed to make critical disclosures
| about consumer harms."[0]
|
| > Payment processors are really hard to sue unless they
| are directly involved in fraud.
|
| All of that is merely a question of the scale of the
| activity and how badly the government wants to stop it.
| Same reason cryptocurrency escaped taxing/reporting
| requirements for many years -- the scale and the ire of
| the government just wasn't there yet.
|
| Relevant to this discussion, the payment processor in
| question is associated with a company that makes no bones
| about providing services for people engaged in work that
| is illegal in many jurisdictions! If you don't think that
| would eventually land both companies in the government's
| crosshairs, I don't know what to tell you. Take "fair"
| out of the equation, if you're a business owner it's not
| about "fair", it's about saving your ass. It's not a
| moral judgement for a company to voluntarily disassociate
| themselves from another company engaged in illegal
| behavior.
|
| > Which is why person to person payment processors like
| Venmo can operate.
|
| Venmo's TOS has named restrictions on what customers can
| do (and "at our discretion" clauses), and they absolutely
| will ban users for violating them if it either Venmo can
| prove it or if they government starts threatening them
| over it.
|
| 0: https://www.mass.gov/news/ags-office-reaches-
| settlement-with...
| Retric wrote:
| That payment processor was sued for transferring money
| without account holders consent. That's exactly the kind
| of fraud I was referring to.
|
| Also, by your reasoning Venmo's TOS is a thin shield vs a
| single case of under age prostitution.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Who did you get that notification from?
| cvalka wrote:
| What broker was that?
| sebstefan wrote:
| IIRC, last time something like this was discussed, the problem
| of fraudulent chargebacks was brought up as the main reason why
| these banking institutions keep targetting porn and sex work
| pydry wrote:
| IIRC it was triggered by Christian moralizers lobbying for
| rules and laws which were officially meant to protect against
| trafficking, but which were actually intended to pressure
| payment processors into cutting all sex workers out of their
| systems.
|
| It was a pretty clever and creative bit of lobbying, if I
| remember. Right up there with the plot to make the F-35
| program impossible to cancel by redistributing jobs to key
| congressional districts.
| gumby wrote:
| The B-1 was the original "put a piece in each congressional
| district" back in the Reagan era.
|
| The issue for gambling and sex payment processors is that
| they are easy targets for politicians looking for votes:
| someone who hates them will vote for such a candidate and
| few will bother to come out in support. Those politicians
| become the regulators, so in exchange for chilling on some
| issue or another the payment processors agree to "crack
| down"
| stametseater wrote:
| I can't find a source for this (or the B-1 claim) right
| now so I might be wrong, but I believe the Space Shuttle
| was done in a similar matter, with subcontractors in each
| of the 50 states to make it politically bullet proof.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I believe there's some disagreement if the Space Shuttle
| was intentionally built that way (though the eventual
| reality came close, but it may have been as much
| pragmatism and the usual procedures of government bid
| contracts), but it is definitely a common criticism of
| how Nasa's current Space Launch System (SLS) was planned
| and is being built. (It's a criticism also heavily
| negatively used when comparing, for instance, SpaceX
| projects over the same timeframes, especially by the
| sorts of people that think today's Nasa should be more in
| the business of buying and "leasing" commercialized
| rockets and capsules rather than building its own.)
| gumby wrote:
| It was widely reported at the time (and Rockwell was
| proud of their approach) because it was a novel and
| cynical idea. Even though Reagan had been elected people
| back then were still shocked by a cynical approach like
| that.
|
| _I_ was surprised by it. Literally every congressional
| district, not just every state.
|
| I thought the plane was cool, but even as a teen I could
| see that it was pointless.
| echoer_lyrist wrote:
| Or is it actually due to something like Operation Choke
| Point.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Alternate take: Companies should have every right to not do
| business with people they find morally repugnant, but only in
| industries where there is a "service of last resort". I
| wouldn't care about visa kicking out perfectly legitimate sex
| work if they could sign up on, say, the post office's website
| for a bank account and some basic payment system.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Financial providers shouldn't be issuing moral judgements. It
| seems to be more common too.
|
| Nothing to do with "morals", everything to do with the risks
| associated with prostitution. Same thing with Cannabis
| businesses, which payment processors tend to not do business
| with.
|
| These companies have very little morals, but their executives
| don't want to be thrown in jail for being digital pimps.
| sowbug wrote:
| It's a circular argument. Businesses don't do business with
| Business X, so it's too risky for us to do business with
| Business X.
|
| Yet we have figured out how to let 16-year old kids drive
| 5,000-pound blocks of metal in public.
|
| The distinguishing element of the two cases is morality.
| (Substitute porn for prostitution to sidestep the question of
| legality; the result is the same.)
|
| I don't want the government to legislate morality. Everyone
| in a free society should have the choice to be moral or
| immoral; otherwise there is no morality. But if the U.S.
| government wants to effectively eliminate cash through
| post-9/11 KYC/AML laws, structuring laws, increasingly strict
| service-industry cash-transaction reporting requirements, and
| so on, then either the government needs to establish a
| genuinely amoral and private electronic-payment system that
| allows disgusting, vile, reprehensible, but legal
| transactions. Or the government must actively affirm the
| obligation of private payment processors like Visa and
| Mastercard to support transactions that conflict with their
| moral preferences.
|
| Our freedoms of speech and association are being swept aside
| as the government shunts nearly all financial activity
| through private enterprises. What good is the Bill of Rights
| if you can't do anything without a debit card?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > It's a circular argument. Businesses don't do business
| with Business X, so it's too risky for us to do business
| with Business X.
|
| It isn't a circular argument, running a business is all
| about risks management, choosing not to do business with
| people that could be link to sex trafficking mafia is very
| much effective risk management, that platform can go take
| their business elsewhere.
|
| This isn't even a partisan issue, prostitution is frowned
| upon by most payement processors for very objective
| reasons. It's a non story.
| throw101010 wrote:
| I know it is not a popular topic here, but this kind of lack of
| control over (allegedly) your assets is one of the premises for
| the existence of Bitcoin.
|
| Self-sovereignty and self-custody prevent third-parties from
| making decisions for you like this, and the removal of
| intermediaries (like payment processors) also prevent anyone
| from restricting you ability to transact with your desired
| counterparties.
|
| The kind of freedom this enables also has disadvantages of
| course, but I strongly believe the few real "bad" transactions
| that gets blocked by the current system are a drop in the ocean
| compared to the billions of people deprived of access to the
| system and the millions of others who are included but
| seriously limited in what they are "allowed" to do on it.
| umeshunni wrote:
| You realize this article is about crypto payment processor
| SpankPay, right?
| throw101010 wrote:
| Which is not a third-party *required* to do this kind of
| transactions.
|
| It is just a convenient way to convert the crypto to fiat
| that these processor handle for their customers. There are
| ways to handle this step without a third party (P2P
| exchanges are one).
|
| Less convenient for sure, but ultimately if you care about
| your economical freedom you will adopt them... or you will
| live in a walled garden, at least as long as your activity
| fits the current agenda/policies of these intermediaries
| (and your government). As soon as you don't, you get kicked
| out/cut from the system, even if your activity is not
| illegal.
| soerxpso wrote:
| He's making a point about actual cryptocurrency and smart
| contracts, and you're trying to refute it by pointing out
| that the good qualities of crypto do not apply to a random
| private firm that happened to slap the word "crypto" on its
| elevator pitch. Many such cases! Someone explains that it's
| healthy to eat vegetables sometimes, and you respond,
| "Actually, yesterday I ate a pound of deep-fried broccoli
| covered in pure corn syrup, and I got diarrhea afterward."
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| Totally agree, and than you for posting this. You'll probably
| get a lot of negative comments from haters, but this is the
| kind of payment censorship that crypto can solve. The worst
| thing to happen to cryptocurrency in my opinion was fiat
| exchanges. It created the ability for the legacy banking
| world and government to have too much of a voice in something
| that was designed to be the people's exchange of value. We
| started losing when actual traditional money was exchanged en
| masse in a way that was tracked. How is that different than
| any other trackable digital transaction?
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There's no difference between someone like visa shutting
| down processing for porn sites and your bitcoin exchange of
| choice refusing to pay out cash to porn stars. Porn models
| gotta eat, and last time I checked Costco doesn't accept
| bitcoin. Bitcoin can never be "truly free" from US control
| until it has it's own parallel economy, and that turned out
| to be a non-starter. And no, "local-bitcoins" is not a
| solution to that, because the last thing an online
| personality wants to do is meet up with a stranger who
| could plausibly discover who they are.
| soerxpso wrote:
| The difference is the step at which that shutdown takes
| place. When visa shuts down processing for your business,
| they're taking away your ability to conduct transactions
| _at all_. When a bitcoin exchange refuses to do business
| with you, they 're only taking away your ability to
| convert your BTC to USD (at that particular exchange).
| You can still conduct transactions directly in BTC (or
| ETH or what have you). The "cash out to USD" step is much
| less frequent, and usually less ingrained into the way
| you conduct business.
|
| A closer comparison would be to a bank that doesn't let a
| you deposit the cash your business earned at the end of
| the week. It would be an annoyance, but it doesn't
| actually prevent you from conducting your business.
| bsder wrote:
| > The kind of freedom this enables also has disadvantages of
| course, but I strongly believe the few real "bad"
| transactions that gets blocked by the current system are a
| drop in the ocean compared to the billions of people deprived
| of access to the system and the millions of others who are
| included but seriously limited in what they are "allowed" to
| do on it.
|
| Except that, as we have seen, Bitcoin rarely is used for "we
| need financial freedom" activities and mostly for "buy into
| my Ponzi scheme" activities.
|
| Someone could have constructed the crypto equivalent of
| PayPal. Someone _still_ could and maybe right now is even
| better since the Ponzibros are getting hammered.
|
| Unfortunately, nobody seems to be doing it. That speaks
| volumes.
| piokoch wrote:
| This ship has sailed when Gab creator was cut-off from all
| payment systems.
|
| People widely applauded Visa et. al move, as this Gab guy is a
| horrible person that ends each message with dreaded "Jesus is
| King" quotation. So "the people" was happy.
|
| Now people learn the hard lesson, one day your opinion,
| business, etc. might irritate the powers that be and you'll be
| crashed, as those who you helped to crash before.
|
| Let's this be the lesson for everyone.
| b1c1jones wrote:
| Disingenuous much?
|
| There's much more to the "Gab guy" than how he ends each
| message.
| sowbug wrote:
| If you're not willing to defend the speech rights of those
| you personally find reprehensible, then you oppose free
| speech.
| ikiris wrote:
| If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.
|
| Sure Anakin, sound argument that one.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I think a more generous interpretation of his comment
| would be that "speech protections are only relevant for
| unpopular speech". Nobody needs freedom of expression to
| discuss how it's kind of rainy today but hopefully sunny
| this weekend
| tetha wrote:
| Alternative flippy way: I fight for your right to say
| your opinion, and for my right to call it stupid.
| vuln wrote:
| _silence is violence_
| ashwagary wrote:
| >If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.
|
| Not quite.
|
| Where free speech is concerned, if we don't fight for
| each other, we are our own enemy.
| ikiris wrote:
| Sorry, I support the Captain America approach to nazis.
| You punch them, not defend their right to call for others
| loss of rights / abuse.
|
| If one of the golden age characters can be patriotic
| about limits of free speech, I think you can figure out
| that middle ground too.
| soerxpso wrote:
| As long as you're fine with people and corporations
| treating you that same way if your beliefs ever become
| socially unacceptable.
| ikiris wrote:
| Wait, do you think people / corporations should be free,
| or do you think corporations should be forced to carry
| messages they don't support?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| If you don't understand that free speech is like _every
| other right_ in that it is not absolute, and does not
| apply to private platforms - then you should have paid
| more attention in your middle school civics class.
|
| Gab is a cesspool of hate speech up to and including
| people using it to advocate things like treating Jewish
| people like livestock, holocaust denialism, and being
| used to coordinate conspiracy theories and harassment of
| innocent people and individuals
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)
| vuln wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| sattoshi wrote:
| Trying to point out where it was going was impossible.
|
| "What if your opinions become deemed unacceptable?" "What do
| you mean? My opinions are acceptable." "But what if one day
| they aren't?" "They are though. Why do you keep saying they
| aren't?"
| kelipso wrote:
| It's like some clamp comes down on the mind and stops
| critical thinking, where usually they are pretty thoughtful
| people otherwise. Self preservation instinct I guess.
| prepend wrote:
| Is it a moral judgement? Or is it an extremely high number of
| chargebacks making it unprofitable?
|
| I don't think payment processors care, but they have margins
| they want to maintain. Dipping their margins for particular
| companies or industries would be making a moral decision.
|
| For your mutual fund, I expect similar in that weed stocks
| aren't performing as well as they once were and aren't
| projected to perform as well so they no longer fit the targets
| of your fund. I'd read the prospectus before assuming some
| moral aversion to weed.
| rabite wrote:
| I have a 0% chargeback rate. I am banned from every US and EU
| retail bank, brokerage (both crypto and equities), and SEPA,
| on the basis of my 1st amendment protected behavior. The
| sites that got me this status are donations-only -- nobody
| has any incentive to chargeback, we aren't offering
| merchandise or subscriptions. People who give us money just
| generally want to give us money. Similar anti-immigration,
| anti-government, and pro-gun businesses (3d printed firearm
| toolchain companies have had a hell of a time staying banked)
| also have very low chargeback rates, lower than the industry
| average.
|
| Financial institutions should not be allowed to discriminate
| against law abiding citizens. If a transaction is legal it
| should be their job to move the money from party A to party
| B.
| LBJsPNS wrote:
| Just for the record, your "first amendment protected
| behavior" means the government can't prosecute you for said
| behavior. It doesn't mean anyone else has to tolerate you
| or your nonsense, including major financial organizations.
| Or are you saying you want that ebil gummint to impose
| _your_ will on others?
| zen_1 wrote:
| To quote GP:
|
| > Financial providers shouldn't be issuing moral
| judgements. It seems to be more common too.
| belorn wrote:
| Money is inherently interconnected with government. It is
| the government that issues money. It is government that
| demand that taxes is paid using their money. It is
| government that issue regulations for finance, and it is
| government that enforce laws that protect money and the
| processes around money. It is governments that generally
| insures banks.
|
| I am perfectly fine with banks being exempted from first
| amendment rules if the bank has no relation with
| governments and when the government do not _depend on
| banks_ to operate the financial system within the nation.
| Otherwise the bank is just an extension of the
| government, indistinguishable from a government
| department.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| This is the basic tactic of fascism - government power
| circumvents the freedom guaranteed by the open market,
| corporate power circumvents the freedom guaranteed by the
| constitution.
|
| It may be necessary to revisit the fascist question - we
| certainly seem to be revisiting the socialist one so
| horseshoe theory pretty much guarantees we will - but I
| will not entertain any fascist positions unless the
| person arguing for it acknowledging that that's what
| they're doing.
| bioemerl wrote:
| It is absolutely reasonable to expect that freedom of
| speech involves the preservation of being able to make
| basic purchases.
|
| This "freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequences"
| line is exactly the sort of attitude people take in the
| countries in which the government does suppress free
| speech, and they think it's just perfectly fine. You have
| freedom of speech and every country then, the
| consequences just going to jail.
|
| There's a limit to this. There should be consequences for
| you saying things that are wrong, lying to people,
| spreading hatred, and so on. However, protecting basic
| human decency in the ability to continue to participate
| in society is incredibly important to preserving free
| expression across our nations.
|
| Being able to purchase things, being able to post to the
| internet, are both aspects of this. It's fine to have
| this attitude when they're is a strong diversity of
| companies that allow you to participate and is likely
| that not all of them can collude with each other.
|
| We have two payment processing companies. Four social
| media companies, and those four all literally live in the
| same city.
|
| The patj you tread is a path leading to suppression of
| speech, and the point of free speech is to ensure that
| people are able to speak without fear of undue
| consequence.
| [deleted]
| zajio1am wrote:
| > This "freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequences"
| line is exactly the sort of attitude people take in the
| countries in which the government does suppress free
| speech, and they think it's just perfectly fine. You have
| freedom of speech and every country then, the
| consequences just going to jail.
|
| There is even old communist-era joke about that:
|
| Is here in USSR the same freedom of speech like in
| western countries?
|
| Yes, there is freedom of speech, but in western countries
| there is also freedom after speech.
| User23 wrote:
| The first amendment recognizes a natural right, it
| doesn't create it. Granted, its protection of that right
| is limited, but the right still exists even when it is
| not legally protected.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| There is no such thing as a natural right, other than the
| fact that the strong are able to enforce their will on
| the weak. Everything else is just things we, as a
| society, believe are important for everyone to have. And
| we generally band together to enforce that people _do_
| have those rights; effectively increasing our strength to
| enforce our will anyone that disagrees. That's a good
| thing, and it's kind of _why_ society exists. But the
| fact that our society values a right doesn't make it
| "innate to the universe" in any way. Rights are
| "discovered", they are "defined and desired".
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| That's not how Lockean ethics sees it, and if results are
| what we care about they're a pretty effective worldview
| to hold - assuming we want a free and prosperous society.
| tristor wrote:
| Every. Single. Time.
|
| Every time someone mentions that what they are doing is
| protected free speech, there is someone on HN that feels
| necessary to make "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom
| of consequences" as an argument.
|
| Sure, at it's most simplistic this is true. However, if
| exercising a right results in you being homeless when
| your behavior was legal, and protected as a matter of
| course by the law, then there is something wrong.
|
| What you are missing, and what everyone who makes this
| argument is missing, is that Freedom of Speech isn't
| /just/ a law, it's also a social more, and that social
| more has shifted, which means speech is now a universally
| dangerous behavior, regardless of whether or not you will
| be prosecuted. This isn't just a collective decision of
| society, it's a consequence of our more interconnected
| world, the concentration of wealth and power, and how
| that wealth and power unequally is applied to people
| based on whether or not they're liked by the wealthy and
| powerful.
|
| Multi-national corporations, that literally hold charters
| to sit on the boards of central banks, that are deeply
| interconnected with the US government, while actively
| extra-governmentally, do not get to go "muh consequences"
| when they penalize citizens in life-altering ways for
| doing legal activities. Banking isn't exactly a right,
| but you should not be stripped of your ability to bank
| for doing completely legal things. Being forced to be
| unbanked, being unable to take payment for your work,
| and/or being fired from your job are not "muh
| consequences", they are an attempt by the wealthy and the
| powerful to utterly suppress speech they don't like, and
| to oppress the people, the individuals, who dare to
| utter, write, or share things they disapprove of. In many
| ways, these are more material than government action.
|
| Anytime someone tells me they care about marginalized
| communities while also trotting out "muh consequences"
| has told me that they don't care about marginalized
| communities. When making this argument you always
| envision somebody on Twitter you enjoyed being part of
| the mob to pillory, but those aren't the people who
| suffer "muh consequences" the most, it's always people at
| the margins. It's the lady who is forcibly unbanked
| because she became an online sex worker to pay for her
| insulin. It's the guy who turned his life around in the
| legal weed industry, but has to deal with cash accounting
| and risk of robbery, and is unable to access retirement
| services, because he's forcibly unbanked. It's the person
| who runs the local community center but had felonies, and
| has unsavory prison tattoos they keep covered up, that's
| forcibly unbanked. Your "muh consequences" destroy
| people's lives, people who are just trying to survive,
| and doing so by participating in legal activities in
| their own communities, and by saying, writing, and
| sharing things which are legally protected.
|
| You can always justify "muh consequences" when you create
| a boogeyman to target it at, but the reality is that free
| speech that is not free from life-altering consequences
| meted out by global institutions with near unlimited
| power /isn't free/. Freedom of association for businesses
| stops when the business is nearly more powerful (or maybe
| actually is more powerful) than the government. It's
| still oppression and it's still immoral, even if it's not
| the government doing it.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Anytime someone tells me they care about marginalized
| communities while also trotting out "muh consequences"
| has told me that they don't care about marginalized
| communities.
|
| It is also true that there exists behaviors that are
| unacceptable, socially.. but that should not be illegal.
| I can lie all I want in most cases, legally, but there
| are social repercussions for that. I can treat people
| disrespectfully, but it might cause them to no longer
| interact with me.
|
| There absolutely MUST be cases where actions have social
| repercussions, but are not actually illegal.
|
| That being said, I totally agree that freedom of speech
| is a social construct that goes beyond just the law. And
| the impacts on someone for their speech has grown more
| and more out of hand over time.
| tristor wrote:
| > There absolutely MUST be cases where actions have
| social repercussions, but are not actually illegal.
|
| Absolutely. Social repercussions are not the only
| consequences however, and the "muh consequences" crowd
| conflates social repercussions (I didn't get invited to
| the party) with material life repercussions (I had my
| bank account closed). These are not the same.
|
| Individuals have a right of free association. Small
| businesses arguably have a right of free association as
| well. Massive multi-national corporations do not and
| should not, they are allowed by society their size and
| breadth so that they serve the needs of society, which
| includes providing services to every member of the
| public. You should not be deprived of necessary services
| for a normal life because of behaving in a legal manner
| and exercising a legal right.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Small businesses arguably have a right of free
| association as well. Massive multi-national corporations
| do not and should not
|
| So, Joe's corner pharmacy should be allowed to kick
| someone out of their store who's protesting, acting
| unpleasant, wearing a KKK outfit, or other First
| Amendment protected activities, but Walgreens shouldn't
| be able to? Where do you draw the line?
| tristor wrote:
| Arguably, there are likely some services in which you
| should be obligated to provide to the public regardless
| as a public service. Pharmacies seem like they'd fall
| into this bucket. That said, let's entertain your
| scenario... yes. Joe's Corner Pharmacy is not the only
| pharmacy wherever it happens to be (mostly because
| there's very few independent pharmacies left in the US),
| but Walgreens and CVS may be the ONLY pharmacies in an
| entire major metro that aren't inside of a hospital.
|
| Walgreen's and CVS as a consequence of their
| duopoly/monopoly position do not have the right to kick
| you out of their pharmacy and prevent you from getting
| the medication you need to sustain your life (possibly
| quite literally) because they don't like the racist
| slogan on your t-shirt.
|
| If you don't agree with this, you don't agree with
| freedom of speech, and any further conversation is
| basically pointless. You don't get to kill people by
| proxy or make people homeless by proxy because your don't
| like what they say as long as you can proxy it out so
| it's not the government literally directly doing it. It's
| just as unethical as the government warrantlessly
| wiretapping all Americans by buying data from data
| brokers hoovered up by FaceGoog, rather than building
| said system itself directly to skirt the laws.
|
| The Constitution was conceived at a time when the
| government was the most powerful entity. Modern multi-
| national megacorps are arguably more powerful, and should
| be reigned in with similar restrictions.
|
| Since I've entertained your scenario, in your reply to
| me, I'd expect an acknowledgement that preventing someone
| access to medication required to sustain their life, due
| to their speech, is effectively equivalent to killing
| that person due to their speech. You cannot have "freedom
| of speech" in a society where you can legally kill people
| because of their speech.
|
| There's a huge gap between "social consequences" and
| material life consequences, and this is why "muh
| consequences" is a disingenuous argument made by people
| who actually are opposed to freedom of speech, but don't
| have the balls to say it (ironically, because they have
| the right to do so, but are afraid of the consequences).
| ryandrake wrote:
| I purposely picked a pharmacy because it's a more
| difficult discussion than, say, a sports equipment store.
| There's no easy answer. Ideally, for things that are
| life-and-death there would exist a government provider
| that anyone could go to. We should not be relying on the
| grace and invitation of corporations for life-and-death
| needs.
|
| Blanket rules and arbitrary size limits won't work. If
| you have a blanket rule that companies can kick people
| out for any[1] reason, then you have your "only one
| pharmacy in town" problem. If you have a blanket rule
| that companies must serve everyone regardless of their
| speech/behavior, then you can't kick a disruptive
| customer out of your business. If you say life-or-death
| companies must serve everyone, then you get into the
| endless debate about what counts as a life-or-death
| company. We have to eat. Do grocery stores count?
| Restaurants? We spent 2020 agonizing over what counts as
| an Essential Business. If you say companies over a
| certain size (or monopolies) must serve everyone, then
| you have to set an arbitrary size and debate over whether
| company X is a monopoly. I don't know what the answer is.
|
| 1: Any reason besides discriminating against "protected
| classes" https://subscriptlaw.com/protected-classes/
| tristor wrote:
| Business size is arguably an arbitrary metric, but we
| already use this for this purpose today:
| https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/1-do-
| federal-e...
|
| Speech discrimination is just another form of
| discrimination, and whether you can compel an individual
| acting as a sole proprietor or a family business to do
| something is a different question than whether you can
| compel a multi-national megacorp to do something. I don't
| know that "20 employees" is the line to draw, but it
| should be obvious on its face that a small business and
| an MNC are not the same, and they operate in society
| under different reasonable standards.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > the "muh consequences" crowd conflates social
| repercussions (I didn't get invited to the party) with
| material life repercussions (I had my bank account
| closed). These are not the same.
|
| They are the same, they merely vary in degree. If my
| neighbor walks up to me and asks for a loan of $1000 and
| I say no because my neighbor regularly calls my wife a
| whore, there are certainly material repercussions to not
| having access to that $1000 (maybe he really needs it)
| but it is clearly a social repercussion of his actions. I
| don't think I should be legally required to give him
| $1000. Likewise if someone walks into a restaurant and
| starts shouting "this food is the worst I've ever ate" it
| should be perfectly legal for the restaurant to refuse to
| serve food to this person, even though being denied food
| is perhaps one of the most severe material repercussions
| one could experience depending on what other options were
| available. Other people do not know nor are obliged to
| know your circumstances and what you need. It is your
| personal responsibility to make sure your needs are met,
| which includes making sure at least some portion of
| society tolerates you. If you piss off one bank, bank
| with someone else; if you piss off every bank, you
| screwed up.
| Khaine wrote:
| For some reason all the banks or tech companies seem to
| have the same morals, and as soon as one acts so do the
| others. so you can't just go from one bank to another.
|
| Once twitter banned trump, suddenly so did all the other
| tech giants. Once visa banned Wikileaks so did
| Mastercard. These giant corporations typically act in a
| block.
| tristor wrote:
| > If you piss off one bank, bank with someone else; if
| you piss off every bank, you screwed up.
|
| Everything is a matter of degree, that's not a counter-
| argument. The issue here is that "social consequences"
| are a matter of individual relationships, material life
| consequences are generally a matter of policy. If you
| find yourself afoul of a banking policy that banks as a
| group have chosen to take to discriminate against you for
| lawful speech, you find yourself having material life-
| altering consequences for your speech.
|
| You are imaging a scenario in which someone is unbanked
| because one bank rejected them, when in fact the lived
| reality of the unbanked in the US is that they are
| unbanked because /all banks/ reject them, or at least all
| banks they have access to in their community. And it's
| not as if they've taken specific and directed actions
| against those banks, in many cases it can be as simple as
| having priors, which makes it both harder to get and
| maintain employment, as well as harder to impossible to
| get banking services. Nearly 10% of the American adult
| population has prior felony convictions, but once you
| serve your time it is morally reprehensible to mark you
| with a scarlet letter that prevents you from getting
| basic services required to exist in society, like
| banking.
|
| So sure, someone screws up? Do we damn them forever for
| screwing up? Is MERE SPEECH enough to damn someone
| forever? Because that's what we're talking about here.
| That's the "muh consequences" argument you're making by
| implication, even if not explicitly.
|
| The way you imagine "consequences" working, is not how it
| actually works. Your delusion is not reality, and reality
| is a harsh mistress. We are accountable for the arguments
| we make and the policy positions we espouse to their
| actual reality, not to our imagined outcomes.
|
| Be brave enough to just say that you don't believe in
| freedom of speech, and that you're okay if 10-20% of the
| population ekes out an abject miserable existence or dies
| due to their belief system or utterances, because that's
| the reality of "muh consequences".
| jjk166 wrote:
| Again, there is no line between individual relationships
| and life altering consequences. You piss off the love of
| your life, you lose your spouse. You piss off the dean of
| your college, you lose a chance at an education. You piss
| off your boss, you get blacklisted from a company.
| Actions have consequences and part of your freedom is
| that you have the option to screw up your life.
|
| Freedom of speech means you're not going to go to jail
| for what you believe in, you're not going to be fined, no
| one can legally beat you or invade your home or do
| anything else to you that they are not allowed to do to
| everybody.
|
| But the idea that a bank has an obligation to you just
| because you really need a bank is absurd. If I believe
| you to be damned forever because you looked at me funny,
| the government has no right to force me to believe
| otherwise, because that's what freedom of belief really
| means. I'm sorry that you live in a real world where
| being ostracized from society is extremely undesirable,
| but maybe consider doing things that don't get you
| ostracized from society. Alternatively, go live alone in
| the woods. Those are the options we all have.
|
| If you think people should be compelled to endorse the
| speech of others, then just admit you don't believe in
| freedom of speech.
| tristor wrote:
| > If you think people should be compelled to endorse the
| speech of others, then just admit you don't believe in
| freedom of speech.
|
| Offering a public service does not constitute endorsement
| of the speech of others. Effectively banning people from
| a public service as a matter of policy is not about
| individual relationships and is materially different than
| the situations you describe.
|
| The only reason the line of reasoning you're putting
| forth is under discussions is that right-wing christo-
| fascists almost got Pornhub and OnlyFans knocked off the
| Internet by putting pressure on Visa and their banking
| partners.
|
| If you are unable to understand the difference between an
| individual choosing not to associate with you due to
| disagreeing with your speech vs being banned from a
| public service necessary for existence in our society due
| to some people disagreeing with your speech and
| manipulating policy, I don't know how to help you.
|
| You continue to conflate two things that are not the
| same. Yes, public services should be compelled to not
| discriminate against people because they exercise their
| legal rights. This is a pretty straightforward argument
| and you doing a lot of mental contortions to not address
| my actual argument. Thanks, though, for confirming you're
| okay for up to 20% of the population to die because they
| said something you disagreed with.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Social repercussions are not the only consequences
| however, and the "muh consequences" crowd conflates
| social repercussions (I didn't get invited to the party)
| with material life repercussions (I had my bank account
| closed). These are not the same.
|
| That's fair.
| LBJsPNS wrote:
| So you're in favor of government force as long as it's
| government force you approve of. You're in favor of the
| big ebil gummint deciding who banks must have as
| customers. It would seem that the free market you free
| speech absolutists seem so enamored of would correct for
| that and cause a bank/credit card processor to be formed
| to service your needs. That it hasn't happened would seem
| to speak volumes about not merely the social
| acceptability of your actions but also the market's
| acceptance thereof.
|
| And you still can't shout fire in a crowded theater.
| tristor wrote:
| I'm in favor of combating oppression, in all of its
| forms, especially oppression enacted by elites against
| marginalized communities. The government is not the only
| entity that can oppress, and a government by the people
| and for the people /absolutely/ should act to protect the
| rights of the citizens, including their right to free
| speech.
|
| You responded like I'm making a Libertarian argument
| here, but it sounds like you're embracing the dystopian
| cyberpunk future where Megacorps control the world and
| can arbitrarily destroy people's lives for things they
| say, so I'm not really sure you have a grasp on my
| politics. I don't know what your politics are, but I know
| that you hate people who say things you disagree with,
| because you are completely fine with their oppression, up
| to and including loss of materially necessary services
| for living their life. Killing people by proxy for
| uttering something is not supporting freedom of speech,
| so maybe rather than being snarky and making disingenuous
| statements you can just come out and admit you directly
| oppose freedom of speech so we can have a real
| conversation?
| [deleted]
| porate wrote:
| [flagged]
| hcurtiss wrote:
| That's super alarming. Where do I read more about your
| story and how you became exiled from the financial system?
| porate wrote:
| This may be illuminating.
| https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-
| files/indi...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Technically you could just charge higher transaction fees and
| require additional validation, like a phone call to the card
| holder to confirm the purchase to reduce charge backs and
| maintain the margin. As providers continue to drop out, your
| transaction fee could increase to create a higher margin.
| prepend wrote:
| Technically they have different product lines for
| everything. I think it's a situation where it's possible
| but not profitable so they don't do it.
|
| What you're describing is a lot of work, when there are
| higher margins elsewhere. Why would a payment processor
| build a special system just for porn? If it's profitable
| someone will eventually create a product.
|
| My assumption is that they looked into this and decided it
| wasn't worth it.
|
| I remember years ago the issue of chargebacks is due to
| shame and people in relationships denying that they ever
| did it to appease partners. So it's pretty hard to be in a
| business that has to fix shame and relationship problems to
| succeed. If they could do that, they need to release it as
| a psychology tool.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Why would a payment processor build a special system
| just for porn?"
|
| But you don't. You just have to extend the current system
| for calls about hitting a limit, fraud, etc.
|
| "So it's pretty hard to be in a business that has to fix
| shame and relationship problems to succeed."
|
| You don't have to fix shame. You just need to pre-approve
| the transaction so they can't later charge back without a
| compelling argument for why the person on the phone
| wasn't really you.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| The reason they do this is the same reason why visa and
| MasterCard cut off all ties with these types of companies.
| The reason is that if they continue to be "complicit" they
| run the risk of having the federal government attack them
| legally because of their ongoing involvement and controlled
| substances.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| >mutual fund
|
| >aren't projected to perform as well
|
| To be clear in my case this was not a managed portfolio. They
| literally dumped individual shares I had specifically
| selected and purchased
| prepend wrote:
| That's interesting. I've never encountered a brokerage that
| restricted what shares I could buy. Usually it's if the
| share is traded on an exchange it's fair game.
|
| What kind of account did this?
| justin66 wrote:
| What country are you in? What brokerage are you using? I'm
| wondering how this is even possible.
| Retric wrote:
| [citation needed] on the chargebacks.
|
| Sex workers get a lot of repeat business and aren't used for
| the kind of stolen credit card validation that hits many
| online businesses.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| I have a buddy that used to own a brothel in Arizona. He
| said he got a lot of chargebacks, but he would dispute them
| with the physical signatures and generally won.
| stametseater wrote:
| Do you mean Nevada? When was prostitution last legal in
| Arizona? 1918 as far as I can tell.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| I mean Arizona. He was aware his business was not legal.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I think the chargeback scenario here isn't cards which are
| actually stolen. It's that someone makes a purchase, their
| spouse notices it on the credit card statement, and they
| deny it.
|
| Then in order to sell the lie to their spouse, they call
| the credit card company and say, "Of course I didn't make
| those purchases! I would never do such a thing! I'm not
| some kind of pervert! Remove these charges immediately or
| I'll close my account!"
|
| And then the credit card company's thought process is like,
| "Well, you probably did! But we can pretend you didn't, if
| that's what it takes to keep you as a customer so we can
| keep making money off you."
| themitigating wrote:
| [Citation needed] on moral concerns?
| Retric wrote:
| Nah, they asserted an "extremely high number of
| chargebacks" which while the article says it's "related
| to sexual businesses."
| yanderekko wrote:
| It's the same thing. Payment processors often ban sex-
| related businesses not out of prudishness or brand risk
| but simple financial risk controls.
|
| The evidence on this is readily available via Google.
| Just search for high risk industries for payment
| processors, it will always include sex industry stuff.
| mosburger wrote:
| Wouldn't chargebacks only really impact the merchant, and not
| the acquirer/payment processor?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Financial providers shouldn 't be issuing moral judgements_
|
| That ship has long sailed, my friend. We spent the past 7-10
| years _intentionally_ drawing corporate America into politics.
| I mean, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. Apparently people
| want it this way, so here we are. This time it 's a left-
| leaning cause that gets screwed.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| If you're willing to share, what broker was that? I'll avoid.
| Havoc wrote:
| Wasn't broker, but their upstream provider Euroclear
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Interesting. I looked it up and found some more
| information.
|
| https://thedalesreport.com/cannabis/euroclear-to-stop-
| suppor...
| closeparen wrote:
| You'll have a hard time establishing a right to financial
| plumbing for illegal activity. Denial of financial services is
| a pretty good crime-fighting tool, in that it both scales
| better and avoids the violence of policing/incarceration.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I don't like this trend of financial providers issuing moral
| judgement, de-banking people, and more either.
|
| I'm pro-BLM but learning Silicon Valley Bank gave BLM millions
| of dollars before it collapsed rubs me the wrong way.
|
| I need my banks and financial institutions to do their primary
| job first and foremost. I'm getting to the point where DIE
| marketing is become a signal of poor upper management trying to
| hide failures.
| yokem55 wrote:
| There is an interesting investigation into that claim written
| up on Talking Points Memo -
| https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-quick-look-at-the-
| lyi...
|
| Basically the Claremont Institute tallied up announcements of
| corporate charity that went to anything related to racial
| minorities, and called that "giving to BLM and supporting
| riots."
| stuckinhell wrote:
| The core point still stands, why are they giving ANY money
| to charity at all ?
| yokem55 wrote:
| Why does anyone give money to charity? Usually because
| they want to support the cause.
| zhte415 wrote:
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-silicon-valley-bank-
| did...
| hawk_ wrote:
| If they are custodians and not managing your portfolio, that
| might even be illegal.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| But will OP sue, tho?
| Havoc wrote:
| I won't. A) not worth the hassle and B) I'm sure there will
| be some bullshit buried in the T&Cs on page 24 in font size
| 2 allowing this.
|
| I just thought it is very much left field for an own-
| managed share account
| Havoc wrote:
| Wasn't managed. Hence my surprise.
|
| My first thought was I had gotten hacked (yay lastpast) &
| someone is trading on my account
| xyst wrote:
| Why would a sex worker want to get paid in crypto currency and
| then pay a shit ton of fees to convert it to local fiat currency
| to pay for basic living expenses (rent, health, food, credit card
| bills).
|
| I thought cash is king in the sex worker world.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Because this is for digital transactions for digital product.
| They want you to be able to click a button and then watch a
| video.
| zamnos wrote:
| To be crass, you can't beat the person unconscious and then
| steal their crypto. You _can_ do that if they 're holding large
| amounts of cash.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| The easiest way to steal crypto involves complicated computer
| shenanigans. The easiest way to steal cash involves a gun.
| binx_ wrote:
| [dead]
| dtech wrote:
| Relevant context here: It's cryptocurrency not a "normal" payment
| platform
| springogeek wrote:
| Not that relevant, this happens to a lot of sex-work oriented
| platforms. Payment processors often discriminate or demand
| heavy censorship/arbitrary rules from these platforms.
| tvink wrote:
| Different industries have different fraud rates and different
| legal difficulties around the globe. It might not be a good
| enough reason from your perspective to blanket ban them, but
| exclusion based on different legal overhead or risk profile
| is not the same as arbitrary rules or censorship.
| johngladtj wrote:
| This has little to do with fraud, and everything to do with
| political pressure
| jwestbury wrote:
| Whilst I suspect you're right, I'm not sure this goes
| without saying. I'd love to see some data to back up this
| claim.
| asmor wrote:
| Just look at Patreon and their continued stuggle with
| NSFW artists. I briefly worked on a similar smaller site
| that allows for artists drawing explicit things, and our
| payment processor would threaten us weekly to cut us off
| for arbitrary reasons. The chargeback/fraud rate did not
| differ based on the user drawing explicit content or not.
| springogeek wrote:
| I can't point at data, but there's plenty of articles and
| reports, including this from the EFF:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-
| mastercard-ar...
| joosters wrote:
| The political pressure (on crypto and banking) is _also_
| because of fraud. If you are transferring money via a
| blockchain with no KYC, it 's going to be hard to get a
| legitimate banking partner to be happy with that.
|
| Now when you say 'but it's only going to be used by the
| sex industry', you're adding _another_ area of high fraud
| on top. It 's hardly surprising that financial companies
| want nothing to do with two high-risk sectors sandwiched
| on top of each other.
| justusw wrote:
| I wonder if there is anything to the trope, that when the
| adult video payment eventually shows up on a married
| couple's credit card bill, the spouse who signed up for a
| heftily expensive subscription will claim that their credit
| card must have been stolen.
|
| Thus they will demand the charge to be reverted and thus,
| many charges being disputed simply because of people's
| prudishness. And then porn site operators have high fraud
| rates. I wonder if they are also more liable to become
| victims of card testing.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I don't know if we can say they are more or less likely
| to be victims of card stealing, but that there are a
| higher number of reversed charges unquestionably true.
| Had huge problems with that before ccbill. Even after,
| there were still a higher than normal number of issues.
|
| I think honest people would concede that there are many,
| many legit issues around chargebacks. But if it's about
| money, then just say it's about money and everyone can
| sit down and go to work on finding methods of reducing
| chargebacks that actually work.
| seydor wrote:
| they apply the same rules to e.g. nudism
| defrost wrote:
| Allie Eve Knox, a sex worker and advisor to SpankPay.
| Knox has been banned from every mainstream payment app
| available today, including PayPal, Square, Circle, Cashapp, and
| Venmo, and uses crypto as a way to continue to live and pay the
| bills. Sex workers face near-constant
| deplatforming, loss of income, and instability in their work as
| a result of discriminatory financial institutions and laws.
| In December, Knox and Ameen Soleimani, co-founder of
| Spankchain, joined adult industry advocacy group The Free
| Speech Coalition on Congressional visits to discuss financial
| discrimination against sex workers with legislators.
|
| It's across all payment platforms, it's targeted against sex
| workers, and they're seeking federal intervention in the US to
| attain fair access.
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Allie Eve Knox has been banned from every mainstream
| payment app available today, including PayPal, Square,
| Circle, Cashapp, and Venmo, and uses crypto as a way to
| continue to live and pay the bills.
|
| This seeems to cross over from 'we dont want your business'
| into purposefully targetting and harrasing activists.
|
| Maybe their should be investigation to make sure these
| provideds aren't conspiring?
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| Activist? She's a prostitute.
| yreg wrote:
| > Wyre Payments, the company's upstream payment processor,
| terminated SpankPay's account because Wyre's new payment
| processor, Checkout.com, doesn't allow processing for payments
| related to sexual businesses, SpankPay said.
|
| Sounds like it would end the same if they were a "normal" sex
| work payment platform.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Democracy in action. Companies are against any support for this
| kind of industry. And so get pushback from any and all kinds of
| services. I'm just waiting for some schmuck to argue a human
| rights argument and force vendors to service them.
| nashashmi wrote:
| I said "Democracy in action" and liberals here are downvoting.
| Hypocrisy.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| That seems like a leap. How do you know who is downvoting or
| why?
|
| I did not downvote, but my opinion of your comment is at best
| it doesn't add to the discussion. At worst, it's flame-bait.
| I mention this only because these are potential reasons for
| downvote as well.
|
| It's all speculation though, because I too have no knowledge
| of who is downvoting you and why.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Good counter. I have observed posts with denunciation of
| porn industry and its relevant activities get downvoted
| often. Whereas posts that celebrate its freedom and
| openness, get upvoted, and they all have a left leaning or
| libertarian bias.
|
| That is where the speculation comes in. My hypothesis: HN
| crowd is more centered towards innovation and new ideas,
| and frown upon anything that mimics old regulations. I
| guess the porn industry is a ground of innovation and new
| ideas right now.
| badrabbit wrote:
| "Sex worker" is a little weird phrasing it like that and
| unspecific too. Onlyfans and truckstop discount prostitute is not
| the same field of work.
|
| It's like calling a software architect and help desk guy both
| "Tech worker". Or a janitor "property management".
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Its very strange, when more prude cultures like the us project
| this prudishness upon other parts of the world.
|
| When its viewed through the eyes of abroad the cultural
| perversion of it all pops out like a hologram.
|
| Its totally a human right/free speech to have the tools necessary
| to end a human life. Its totally evil/harassment worthy to
| document/publish the creation process of a human life.
|
| What is the origin for this puritan fervor by those engaging in
| virtual interest wankery all day? "If I have no life, none shall
| have it? NaneShallActBare."
| tb84 wrote:
| I'm not really sure this view of things is accurate. If
| anything, prostitution is _far less_ accepted elsewhere around
| the world, unless maybe you 're talking about Canada or Europe.
| East Asia, India, SEA, Middle East, Africa? Don't think so.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| "Why do you care about the aggregate mental health of the
| society you live in? How does that affect you?".
|
| Of course we all have a stake in what drug are illegal, what
| gambling can be done, what prostitution is acceptable - because
| I don't want to live in a society of drug addicted, gambling
| addicted, hooker addicted people. Do you think we're just
| atomized individuals who shouldn't care if your neighbor is
| caught in self-destructive behaviors they can hardly escape due
| to addiction? Do you think that doesn't affect you? Do you not
| care about your community and how healthy your community is?
|
| This libertarian idea that "it doesn't matter if others are
| engaged in the most unhealthy behaviors because its not you!"
| needs to die, because the end result is a shittier society
| we're ALL forced to live it.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Corporations, especially banks, have been co-opted by the
| government and used for enforcing their whims. This is one
| example of that.
|
| Would the upstream processor really care what their customers'
| business is - probably not. But are they afraid of political and
| legal issues that would outweigh the benefit of working with sex
| (or marijuana, etc) businesses? Yes, certainly.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| > _Corporations, especially banks, have been co-opted by the
| government and used for enforcing their whims. This is one
| example of that._
|
| I think it's the opposite way around really. Banks aren't
| allowed to fail thanks to their pet government since 2008 at
| least.
| majikaja wrote:
| [flagged]
| onetrickwolf wrote:
| We completely privatized payments without realizing it. Credit
| cards are no longer some extra benefit on top of your bank
| account, it's how basically almost all commerce is required now.
| Private companies collect basically a tax on almost all
| transactions in our economy.
|
| I don't know how we let them get away with this. Facilitating
| commerce should 100% be a government operation and be free. To
| accept cash I pay paying the US government a fraction of a
| percent I'm taxes compared to credit card fees.
|
| The fact that, on top of all this, they are essentially policing
| what can and cannot be sold and bought should be outrageous to
| people. It's a complete conflict of interest that companies can
| shut down payments to and from competitors to their investments.
|
| People can say "oh just don't use or accept visa etc" but good
| luck staying in business or buying anything online.
|
| We absolutely need some kind of government backed digital payment
| system in my opinion. Credit card rewards should also be illegal
| they are nothing but hidden fees passed to you by charging the
| business more.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Well Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover combined
| have almost a $1.5T market cap - so if you think the government
| is going to put them out of business - you must have a
| different perception of what the government does than I do...
| wiseowise wrote:
| > is going to put them out of business
|
| Going to put them out? Probably not. Can they? Absolutely.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| A dystopian digital currency as CBDC will come after FedNow.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > Private companies collect basically a tax on almost all
| transactions in our economy.
|
| Forget transactions, they collect a tax on almost all _money_
| in the economy. Something like 97% of money in circulation is
| simply bank loans (like mortgages) that haven 't been paid back
| yet.
|
| I encourage anyone to walk around a financial district
| somewhere and really think about what it's all for. On the
| inside of some of those buildings there might be people, but
| they aren't doing much. On the inside of many there aren't even
| any people.
|
| Finance definitely has value, but is it really that much? It's
| a fraction of what they take.
|
| How they get away with it is the interesting part. There's just
| something about money. There will always be a very large part
| of the population who just don't get it. Then there are some
| who excel with it. It brings out the worst in many and it
| downright scares the rest. All that's clear is we need to get a
| grip on it. Bitcoin was the latest attempt.
|
| I can't recommend enough the book _Other People 's Money_ by
| John Kay.
| makotech221 wrote:
| [dead]
| thethimble wrote:
| I have a feeling that a government run payment system would
| also forbid illegal activity (eg laundering, etc). I agree that
| a private payments network is not ideal but the question at
| hand is how should transactions facilitating illegal activity
| be handled?
|
| To be clear I'm not passing a moral judgement on sex work -
| just pointing out the fact that it's presently illegal in many
| forms and jurisdictions and that fact is relevant.
| jacknews wrote:
| I think payment services really come under 'utilities' or
| 'essential services', if not quite 'human rights'.
|
| And thus processors should be required by law to provide service
| to everyone unless they are clearly doing something illegal, and
| even then, it's a matter for the police and courts, not private
| corporations or individuals.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Selling ass is illegal in the USA though (even though it
| shouldn't be)
| jacknews wrote:
| Not in some parts, as I understand.
|
| And I think this is also targeted at pornography? I'm not
| sure where USA is in the pornography rankings, but I'm fairly
| sure it's nowhere near the bottom (sorry).
|
| But the point is, even if it were all illegal, that's
| probably a matter for the police, not for private interests
| to deny an essential service 'just in case', or because 'we
| don't want to do business with _those_ people ' , etc.
| Kinrany wrote:
| UN lists [1] the right to work as a human right. Payment
| services are irreplaceable for all kinds of businesses, so a
| blanket denial of payment services is arguably already a
| violation of human rights.
|
| [1]: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| Miner49er wrote:
| This is already probably happening because of a law. FOSTA-
| SESTA.
| jacknews wrote:
| It's really a bad law.
|
| There's a clear difference between 'aiding and abetting', and
| the much vaguer 'facilitating', 'supporting', which could be
| true of phone, or electricity companies for example.
|
| But I believe those companies are required to provide
| service, as they are 'utilities'.
| [deleted]
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