[HN Gopher] Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn ___________________________________________________________________ Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn Author : notnice Score : 260 points Date : 2022-06-28 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ft.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com) | ChadNauseam wrote: | I've suspected that the next place cryptocurrencies will see | usage for actual consumer payments will be porn. It makes so much | more sense than going through the suffocating mastercard/visa | networks, and porn has historically been one of the industries | most willing to try new technology. | ALittleLight wrote: | I think that's probably true. Cryptocurrency has use cases in | paying for drugs or illegal gambling. It will likely also have | uses in paying for child pornography and other illegal forms of | pornography. As usual, this is bad. | woodruffw wrote: | This is maybe a tangent, but: how long before we're allowed to | stop calling cryptocurrencies a new technology, and admit that | actual usage is _not_ being blocked on early development? | Bitcoin itself is 14 years old; if it were a web framework, it | would have been "obsoleted" half a dozen times over by now. | themitigating wrote: | I think it's both acceptance and time. The internet was more | than 20 years old in 1999 but still had low usage | sophacles wrote: | New is pretty context dependent. Money is literally older | than history. That sets up a lot of context by itself, and | further the fact that it's so important means people, | governments and institutions are pretty conservative (in the | slow to adopt change sense) about it. Banks have only | recently reached infrastructure status in that context - and | only in well developed nations. Credit cards are still new in | that context (and it shows). The 14 years of bitcoin is | basically embryonic in terms of "money tech". | woodruffw wrote: | This is a reasonable point, but it demands that we ignore | the parabolic trend in _every other aspect of human | development_. We 've gone from horse-drawn carriages to | moon landings and instantaneous global communication in the | last 125 years; why does Bitcoin get over 10% of that time | to do what I can already do with the piece of plastic in my | wallet? | sophacles wrote: | Are you sure this tech isn't "parabolic"? | | Depending how you define personal credit, its been around | ~100 years (or more!), with the card format being adopted | in the 60s. It's only been the last 15 years or so that | not carrying cash has become a reasonable approach to | day-to-day life. | | So for bitcoin to become as big as it has as a _brand new | technology_ in only 14 years seems accelerated. | | This is analysis complicated a bit by the fact that | bitcoin is not a top-down tech like credit, there's no | centralized group deciding who gets to use it. On the | other side of that though - the tech infrastructure | build-out that made credit cards ubiquitous also benefits | and accelerates the potential adoption of bitcoin. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Money is literally older than history. | | Standardized weights of specie are older than history; you | can find different perspectives on how much they count as | "money". | | But history begins at a time when the role of money in | society is still very much up for debate; Hammurabi's code | (~1000 years after the beginning of history, give or take) | includes a provision specifying that, if you run a bar, you | can't require customers to pay in silver but must also | accept grain. | | Grain as currency continues across the world for a few | thousand years after that, but grain is a terrible currency | because it spoils very quickly. (Counting things like "rats | got into the grain" as a form of spoilage.) | sophacles wrote: | Huh, super interesting! Do you know some good resources | where I can learn more about the (pre) history of money? | zamalek wrote: | Now that the Year of the Linux Desktop might happen for real, | I guess we need a new "Year of the X." | ryandvm wrote: | Not to put too fine a point on it, but my guess is there is | probably little overlap in the Venn diagram of people paying | for porn subscriptions and people capable of managing a | crypto wallet. | woodruffw wrote: | Alas, it's probably hard to pull the cap off of your | hardware wallet with only one hand. But isn't that what | we're told Coinbase is for? | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > it were a web framework, it would have been "obsoleted" | half a dozen times over by now. | | So a point for Bitcoin then? | woodruffw wrote: | Only if we think "it's better than web development churn" | is somehow a positive marker, and not a neutral one at | best. | gleenn wrote: | What you're saying clearly makes sense but Bitcoin isn't | accepted almost anywhere which is what "new" means. Porn | would be an early adopter for potentially mass consumption. | It would be new to me certainly as I've never purchased a | single thing with Bitcoin and that's almost certainly true | for most people. | woodruffw wrote: | I don't know. I passed a bitcoin ATM machine (don't ask me | what that actually means, please) on the street yesterday. | Friends and family members, including (especially?) non- | technical ones, have asked me about Bitcoin and how to | invest in it. One of my friends recently bought a car with | Ethereum. | | "New" means "new," it doesn't mean "not widely adopted | yet." We don't widely adopt things that fail or have | unacceptable side effects; that doesn't make them new | again. | gleenn wrote: | How about new in the sense that other currencies have | been around for hundreds of years compared to only 14? | jcranmer wrote: | The euro is most certainly not hundreds of years old, and | isn't that much older than Bitcoin. | sophacles wrote: | The euro is not a new type of currency tech. Its just a | new painting on the same type of currency that has | existed for hundreds of years (that is it's a new brand | of banknote). | woodruffw wrote: | I don't buy that. The Euro was conceived in 1992 and | constituted a _radical_ shift in international monetary | policy; it wasn 't fully rolled out until 2002. | | That's 10 years compared to Bitcoin's 14, with arguably | far more in concrete financial activity (and quality of | life) to show for it. | gleenn wrote: | Sure but again let's be a little more nuanced. When the | Euro came out, trillions in wealth were automatically | converted to it. Pretty apples to oranges comparison. If | all USD was converted to BTC, BTC would become useful | everywhere as fast as people could change the POS | systems. Not a fair comparison at all. | woodruffw wrote: | > When the Euro came out, trillions in wealth were | automatically converted to it. | | This is true, but also misleading: the physical Euro | switch took place over months, and involved a coordinated | public campaign to encourage millions of Europeans to | exchange their physical bills. Digitalization helped with | banking, but a _significant_ human and policy effort | occurred in parallel. | | And there's another problem: it's really not clear what | it would mean for "all USD to be converted to BTC." BTC | has already been issued, and will continue to be | algorithmically issued. The Euro switch could not be | economically triaged _per se_ , because it was an in-kind | transition. No such transition is possible for | cryptocurrencies, unless we allow a central authority | into the mix. | ChadNauseam wrote: | I wrote about this subject here, if you're interested: | https://chadnauseam.com/coding/cryptocurrency/a-hackers- | case... | | The TL;DR is that blockchain scaling is a very difficult | problem. There are scaling layers like ZKSync that are only | possible because of cryptographic primitives that literally | didn't exist in a usable form 14 years ago. | | And I somewhat disagree with your premise - cryptocurrencies | are actually used in the real world today. Most of the usage | is to get around regulation, like when you want to send | remittances or buy drugs, or bet on betting markets. But on | the whole I do agree, it's disappointing that the technology | is still so immature. | | Disclosure: I work in the cryptocurrency industry | matt321 wrote: | Are you saying nobody should be regulating it? | ChadNauseam wrote: | That's not what I'm saying. I'd just rather it be regulated | by our democratic institutions rather than by unaccountable | payment providers. | zakki wrote: | Isn't the democracy happening now? The majority of people | had chosen the institution that create a law that is | followed by VISA and Mastercard. | darawk wrote: | Someone should. That someone should not be Visa and | Mastercard. | bell-cot wrote: | The largest problem may be that doing the actual day-to-day | _work_ of regulation (vs. posturing, politicing, and | passing poorly-written laws) is a [cough] pretty | undesirable job. | ohCh6zos wrote: | A de-facto outsourcing of regulatory enforcement could be | less desirable than explicit regulation. | mrmanner wrote: | It could be, but it's not necessarily so. It's safer to | circumvent Mastercard regulation than government, for | better and worse. | Scoundreller wrote: | I wonder if the US Supreme Court might revisit that too | amelius wrote: | Not sure. People watch pr0n on their Oculus Quest all the time, | fully aware that Meta is watching them watch ... | terminalcommand wrote: | AFAIK, pr0nhub currently only accepts crypto payment. | thakoppno wrote: | is the price denominated in dollars, like how does the | bitcoin price fluctuation get handled? | dboreham wrote: | There's a thing called a stablecoin :) | cowtools wrote: | There is no such thing as a decentralized stablecoin | yreg wrote: | So what? If you want to send someone $10 as crypto a | centralized stablecoin works perfectly. | hellojesus wrote: | Usually the seller takes on short-term price fluctuation | risk. | | Buyer initiates purchase, and the seller gives them a | window of x minutes to send y btc to an address, where the | price of the service is denominated in btc as of the | trading price at that moment. | | If at least 1 transaction doesn't show up on the btc | network in the x minutes, that transaction times out. | | If at least 1 does, then the seller waits for w | confirmations to take place before the payment is | recognized as valid, where w is set to their tolerance. | I've seen as low as 3 and as high as 7. | moneywoes wrote: | At times that bad with the lightning network? | TimPC wrote: | That seems pretty sketchy if the main thing Mastercard and | VISA are doing is ensuring age verification is being done. | vorpalhex wrote: | Mastercard and Visa won't do business with adult content | providers directly. They force them into very high cost low | quality payment intermediaries. | hellojesus wrote: | These are known as high risk payment processors. They do | this because of the outsized risk of chargebacks that | occur against payments for porn. | | Wife catches a weird pornhub charge on your monthly | statement? Whoops! Those hackers are at it again. Call it | fraud and charge it off. | | The high cc processing rate accommodates the increased | risk. | | Btc solves this as no chargeback is possible. | KennyBlanken wrote: | There are plenty of other industries which are just as | high or higher chargeback risks and aren't forced through | hoops. Gyms are a prime example. Food delivery has a high | chargeback risk. Gift cards are a go-to for leveraging | stolen debit/credit cards. You don't see the industry | forcing regulations here, or forcing these industries to | go through specific payment processors. | | It also doesn't explain why porn actors routinely find | their checking accounts closed out on them, or they get | blacklisted entirely. | | It has nothing to do with risk, and everything to do with | Christian fundamentalists in the banking industry | exploiting their positions in industries we need, to | force their morals on others. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | the problem with free market fundementalists is they deny | that stereotypes, emotion and plain stupid decision | making are often having greater effect than the hand and | foot of the market | [deleted] | chevill wrote: | They stopped being able to process credit cards because | Mastercard and VISA cut them off when there was a public | outcry about PH doing such a shitty job of moderating | illegal content that everyone got the impression they were | supporting it. | | PH didn't decide "we are only gonna accept crypto so we can | circumvent the system" it was a position forced upon them | as a punishment for their shitty behavior. Now they are | trying very hard to moderate effectively in order to win | back the good graces of the payment processors because they | are probably going to eventually go bankrupt if they don't. | zakki wrote: | Why do you think it is a forced position? If they are | shitty they've got the consequences. | chevill wrote: | I might not understand your question. I'm not saying the | payment processors were wrong to blacklist them. PH was | being genuinely scummy. | | Its a forced position because PH very much wanted to | continue to accept credit cards, which I suspect was | where 99% of their income was from. However, the payment | processors blacklisted them so they can't. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Pornhub had a large blogpost claiming that thye are | better at filtering illegal content than facebook, and | that the latter has many times greater problems with | illegal content. | | the post claimed that Pornhub has been targeted because | of their industry. | | i have never verified the veracity of these claims, but | they seem plausible | threeseed wrote: | > Pornhub had a large blogpost claiming that thye are | better at filtering illegal content than facebook, and | that the latter has many times greater problems with | illegal content | | Facebook is also orders of magnitude larger and has to | deal with content that blurs the line between legal and | illegal. It's a significantly more difficult task. | Nextgrid wrote: | Is there really enough motivation for paying for porn? There's | so much of it out there for free. | staticassertion wrote: | There's a lot of "mainstream" porn but if you're a furry or | have niche interests I imagine you're dealing with a much | more limited content market. | antasvara wrote: | The article states that half of PornHub's revenues per year | were coming from subscriptions. I would take that as some | evidence that people are paying for porn. | | In a lot of ways, crypto makes perfect sense for porn | payments. The anonymous nature is most likely a value add for | most porn subscription holders. | stemlord wrote: | Sure but crypto is an order of magnitude more complicated | to get going than using an existing cc. Most people don't | already have a form of crypto payment at the ready when one | hand is covered in lube and they just need to hit the | "confirm subscription" button. I would need to do days of | research before I could confidently buy porn with a | cryptocurrency. | rglullis wrote: | Do people get credit cards just to pay to watch something | online? Of course not. | | With crypto is the same. Once you setup a crypto wallet | and learn how to use it, you can pay for anything with | it. | pastacacioepepe wrote: | Just check the most famous adult content websites' revenue... | Nextgrid wrote: | Surely that's based on ads though? | pastacacioepepe wrote: | Nah, AFAIK ads pay very little for adult content | websites, most websites now have a subscription based | model and the possibility to buy additional content once | subscribed. | NineStarPoint wrote: | As I understand it Mindgeek (Pornhub) makes about half | their money from ads, but they are easily the largest | advertiser in the industry. It seems likely that | subscriptions/purchases still represent the majority of | porn income. | Stevvo wrote: | A lot of people pay on OnlyFans, so depending on the value | proposition, yes, people are motivated to pay for porn. | Noumenon72 wrote: | And if you're motivated to pay for porn, but not to give a | site your driver's license like OnlyFans requires, crypto | actually would be better for that. | cbozeman wrote: | Yes, but I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar if you | actually sat these people down with a licensed clinician, | you'd find a lot of mental illness. From what I've seen a | lot of these people have some delusion, no matter how | 'strong' or 'weak' that delusion is, that they've developed | a 'relationship' with the creator, not realizing that | almost no woman would _ever_ seriously consider any of | these men as a long-term... or frankly, even short-term... | partner. | | If there's one thing that evolutionary psychology has | shown, it's that women's psychology for the mating market | is not wired that way. | carlhjerpe wrote: | If you sat any significant amount of people down with a | licensed clinician you'd find a lot of mental illness. | moneywoes wrote: | Unfortunately based on their numbers, it's a lot of men | regularfry wrote: | That in no way affects how likely they are to pay, given | that (in some volume) they already do. | rodgerd wrote: | 1. There's an ethical argument for people that they ought to | pay for work. | | 2. The above is stronger for areas that aren't well-served - | women directed producers for example. | | 3. Parasocial relationships have become a huge driver of | revenue for performers - hence OnlyFans and other Patreon- | like services. | throwuxiytayq wrote: | There's so much of it out there _for a reason_. Never | underestimate how horny (some) people are. | jjtheblunt wrote: | > the next place | | is there a current place they're commonly used ? | mrkramer wrote: | Satoshi about porn: | https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=671.msg13844#msg1384... | [deleted] | toyg wrote: | I know of at least one sex-related forum that now supposedly | requires btc to join. (This said, the related statement on the | homepage mentions an absurdly high amount, probably set years | ago and promptly forgotten...) | Melting_Harps wrote: | > I've suspected that the next place cryptocurrencies will see | usage for actual consumer payments will be porn. | | It's been done, to various levels of success; it has it's | humble beginnings with cam girls via BTC (look up Girls gone | Bitcoin), and then as alts got traction post 2017 things like | CUM (Cryptographic Ultra Money) [0] try to make headway but | failed miserably as most alts usually do. | | After Onlyfans threatened to take down all the adult content it | had a real chance of making itself a MVP in this ecosystem, | unfortunately these projects live and die based on short-term | price swings and as you can see the value has made it | essentially unfavorable for anyone but pump and dumpers. | | I'd argue that BTC can and has shown more promise for sex | workers, I've gone into detail about my first hand experience | when in the early stage of my startup I interacted with the | 'ladies of backpage' when Visa and MC shutoff access to | purchasing ads on Backpage on here before. I just think that | sex workers have enough on their plates that it shouldn't be | this hard to just to solve something so trivial which many pay | for, espcially if either Visa or MC want to be puritanical it. | | 0: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cumrocket/ | meirelles wrote: | I think their business model is like a gym - they need people | making an effort to cancel, not to renew... Crypto works for | one-time payments, but it sucks for recurring transactions. Too | much hassle to pay every month, people would just give up. | ChadNauseam wrote: | That's a good point. I think other business models are | possible, though, if less lucrative. One example is one-time | payments to buy videos, or to tip an artist that you for some | reason feel like tipping. | Stevvo wrote: | I can sign 12 transactions with my private key now and | automate sending them out every month. If I don't want to be | responsible for sending the transactions, a smart contract | can do it for me. This can be abstracted away from the user | and made as intuitive as any other payment flow. | rglullis wrote: | > I think their business model is like a gym | | With micropayments, the business model becomes (quite | literally) pay-per-view. | | > it sucks for recurring transactions. | | The UX is bad at the moment, but with crypto there is this | idea of "streaming payments", which work very well as a | substitute for subscriptions. Basically, you make only one | initial transaction to set up the "subscription" with a | locked deposit. On every block (or on every X seconds if you | are doing off-chain), a small transfer is made. You only pay | gas if you need to "top-up" the balance or when you want to | close the stream. | abraae wrote: | It's a good point but worth noting that the Mullvad VPN | (which, like porn, has a strong driver for privacy) recently | got rid of susbscription payments altogther. | | Their reasoning was that you can't handle recurring payments | without holding a lot of personal data. | | Perhaps porn sites that want to offer inter-species furry | porn should bite the bullet and only accept one-off payments, | just so they can make effective use of crypto. | Hellbanevil wrote: | aranchelk wrote: | I think recurring payments are a pretty good use case for | smart contracts, you load up a wallet defined in the contract | with some cash, similar to a prepaid debit card, then | authorize scheduled payments specifying a recipient, a | frequency, and an amount. | | It's not ideal for that type of derelict subscription | business model (e.g. the gym), but neither are prepaid debit | cards or virtual cards with predetermined spending limits, | and they probably already contend with those. | racl101 wrote: | Who even pays for it these days? | sedev wrote: | This would be a great time to reread the classic "Better Than | Free" essay. https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/ By | my count, the average OnlyFans account absolutely nails 5 out | of the 8 "generative" qualities that Kelly identifies. | rodgerd wrote: | > I've suspected that the next place cryptocurrencies will see | usage for actual consumer payments will be porn. | | If cryptocurrencies were useful for this problem, they'd have | been adopted already. It's an sector whose businesses and | workers are very savvy about anything that helps them evade | repression. | adammarples wrote: | Curious why FT articles always seem to only show up on HN about 5 | days after they're published | codebolt wrote: | And they should be doing much more. Age verification should | require a credit card. The idea that hardcore porn should be | freely accessible to anyone (including children) on an anonymous | basis needs to be put to rest. | roflyear wrote: | Have we lost our minds. If you're worried about your kid seeing | porn don't let them on the internet. | hulitu wrote: | And they shall support more guns. Every child is entitled to | its own gun, to defend itself. | | I don't know about ... but as a child my access to porn was | rather ... limited ( to not say restricted ). | nly wrote: | Requiring a _credit card_ for age verification before getting | access to otherwise free porn (like on pornhub) will likely | just leave paper trails for millions of men accessing porn, | cause embarrassment, lead to privacy issues, blackmail, and | wreck relationships. | | It will also probably lead more men to pay for porn, since the | companies running these websites will then make it one click. | | Systems like Mozilla Persona would solve this on a technical | basis, and was way ahead of its time, but there's no political | incentive to standardise on something like this. | ALittleLight wrote: | That sounds like a problem for those men. If your partner is | against you consuming porn perhaps that's something for you | and your partner to resolve. Exposing children to hardcore | pornography in order to save dishonest men some inconvenience | seems a poor trade. | nly wrote: | It's not for you or I to dictate how much people should | share within their personal relationships. | | Maybe telling your partner that something isn't any of | their bloody business is a perfectly valid thing to do, and | an acceptable answer, even after, say, 50 years of | marriage? It's a relationship, you are not a single | conscienceness. | | Personally, I'd argue having secrets from your partner | doesn't necessarily make you dishonest. _Lying to your | partner_ makes you dishonest. | | Anyway, my broader concern is I still wouldn't want my | _credit card company_ knowing my sexual preferences anymore | than I 'd want an ad company like Google knowing my medical | status. | ziddoap wrote: | darawk wrote: | Remember this the next time someone asks what the point of | politically neutral money could possibly be. | amelius wrote: | Apple is too. | stefantalpalaru wrote: | notnice wrote: | https://archive.ph/zXKuD | tiffanyh wrote: | For those confused by the title, here's what's going on ... | | Mastercard/Visa are required by law to not knowingly allow the | purchase of illegal goods/services (they can't facilitate the | payment of illegal activites). | | As such, they require such websites (merchants) to prove that | individuals in such videos are of legal age (no minors in the | videos, because if so - that's illegal and horrible). | | This seems totally fair, commendable and hard to disagree with - | if you ask me. | [deleted] | pastacacioepepe wrote: | Identity and age verification is a very important tool against | revenge porn and exploitation so I personally welcome it, | whoever pushes for it. | hbn wrote: | How would this stop that? This would only stop the sale of | known revenge porn. I don't think most of it makes it way on | the internet through sale. It gets posted anonymously on porn | sites. | | Revenge porn is already illegal. If someone were to sell it, | the problem with that scenario is not that those people were | able to exchange currency, and I don't like the idea of | setting up more barriers on the ability to give someone | money. | pastacacioepepe wrote: | > I don't think most of it makes it way on the internet | through sale. It gets posted anonymously on porn sites. | | Yes, and as far as I know you can't do that on websites | like OF or PH, due to them requiring you to verify the | identity of everyone involved in the video. | | Thus, it's impossible now to upload content without the | consent of everyone involved, at least on those 2 (major) | websites. | hbn wrote: | > at least on those 2 (major) websites | | So... you didn't stop it. You only stopped it on a couple | websites by making all content creators to provide | identity verification | | The only way to actually stop it is completely remove | anonymity from the internet. Which is a nightmare | scenario for many reasons. But it seems to be the current | direction we're going. | jdasdf wrote: | It's not their business. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | Uhm, if a company directly engages in illegal activities it | should be shut down by the government. The idea that it should | be simply cut off from payment networks makes no sense. I don't | see that as fair. | ehhthing wrote: | But that's not the point is it? The point is that Mastercard | and Visa are facilitating the transfer of money for illegal | transactions. In the same way you can't start a bank to | facilitate money laundering, Mastercard and Visa cannot | knowingly facilitate the transfer of money for illegal goods. | scarface74 wrote: | Yet they do | | https://news.bitcoin.com/5-major-banks-exposed-for-moving- | tr... | lmm wrote: | There should be something like a safe harbour / common | carrier provision. We recognised that this was vital for | postal and telephone networks, that the benefits of a | neutral network outweighed the costs of carrying crime | sometimes. It should be the same for money transmission. | danenania wrote: | The problem is they are going beyond what's illegal and | cutting off usage/content they just don't like for whatever | reason--see the vampire porn example in another comment, | wikileaks, etc. | | Do we want unaccountable monopolies making decisions about | who can access the financial system and who can't based on | their own subjective values? | dsr_ wrote: | That's three different entities: | | Whoever is supplying content to PornHub has to uphold the | law. They do that by providing evidence that there are no | minors in the adult content (easy for a legit business) and | that they hold copyright (somehow this gets forgotten). | | PornHub has to uphold the law. They do this by keeping | records supplied by the content producers about verification | of actor's ages; when there's a problem, they need to remove | the content. If there's a recurring problem, they need to bar | the source. | | MasterCard has to uphold the law. They do that by | investigating complaints, and if they find illegal content, | they send PornHub a warning. If PornHub doesn't act, either | by showing that the content is legal or by removing it, MC | has to drop PH. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Mastwrcard doesn't find illegal content - they find | somwthing they Think is illegal, and they could be wrong. | bitwize wrote: | The idea is that MC and Visa are themselves at risk of being | shut down by the government if they knowingly allow payments | for illegal activity. Companies being what they are, to avoid | the risk of impropriety they forbid more than what the law | technically does. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > Visa are themselves at risk of being shut down by the | government if they knowingly allow payments for illegal | activity. | | surely this is a joke. when was the last time government | has shut down a major financial institution? From 2008 | securities fraud to HSBC being involved in laundering drug | money, this never happens | tflinton wrote: | Governments shutdown financial institutions or threaten | to pretty regularly. | | India suspended mastercard for failing to adhere to their | new data privacy laws in 2018 | (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mastercard- | shifts-f...). | KennyBlanken wrote: | > The idea is that MC and Visa are themselves at risk of | being shut down by the government if they knowingly allow | payments for illegal activity. | | Operative word being knowingly. Demanding every customer | prove every part of their business is legal activity != | "not knowingly allow illegal activity." | | Also, the notion that MC or Visa would be shut down over | this sort of thing is absurd. | xyst wrote: | This is fine. But they also use their weight to punish sex | workers. | | There was a case recently that forced PH to delete a shit ton | of content. Some of it was not even porn (just random gaming | videos). | | No due process. Just visa/mc threatening to no longer process | their transactions | adrr wrote: | Pornhub execs can go to jail if they don't remove stuff that | is illegal and prevent sex trafficking on their site. | Facilitating and distribution itself is a crime. PH isn't a | government prosecutor they have error on the side of caution | and due process is right you have with the government not a | private business. | elmomle wrote: | It's probably more correct to say that the whole system | exploits sex workers. No intention to punish is necessary--MC | & Visa are happy to make as much money as possible while | ultimately dumping all risk onto the individuals making the | content. | jdmichal wrote: | I'm confused... Where does due process come into play in a | contractual relationship between two companies? It's | applicable to governmental entities in criminal law. Contract | disputes both do not involve the government outside of a | request by the parties for litigation, and are civil and not | criminal law. | skeaker wrote: | Because the credit companies are acting under the guise of | the law. "I don't want to end business with you, but the | law compels me to do this!" If you haven't broken the law, | there's no way to appeal this decision they've made as they | do not have a route for that. | | That aside, the ability to pay a service is pretty much | fundamental to its existence. Being able to at-will | terminate any company you want, even ones that are provably | innocent, with no way for them to so much as appeal against | your decision is a worrying amount of power for a company | to hold. I don't think that even the government can do | something like that (at least not legally). | jdmichal wrote: | The law tells them who they can do business with, and | they comply. That's not really a _guise_ , unless me | driving the speed limit is also a guise... If there's any | challenge here, it's that such law restricts card | networks' freedom of association. Which the US only has | as an extension to freedom of speech... So I'm not sure | that challenge would work, when the entire point is that | certain forms of speech are what's being limited. | vorpalhex wrote: | Mastercard and Visa are not a court system. There is no due | process. There is no appeals process. | ehhthing wrote: | What, exactly is the alternative? The system might not be | perfect or even good, but as far as I can see there is no | alternative to this kind of issue. Even if there were a | million different credit card companies (and god help us if | that ever happens), they would still be bound by the same | requirements. | dymk wrote: | There is no competition in the duopoly that is MasterCard / | Visa, and so there will be no improvement in service. They | don't have to build things customers want to not go out of | business. | | The solution is something like Section 230 but for CC | vendors. If Visa processes an illegal payment and the | government finds out, Visa is off the hook, and the | merchant gets a letter from the government. The payment | processor has a duty to report, and that's it. | klabb3 wrote: | > What, exactly is the alternative? | | A simple solution is to let the government do the | blacklisting, and payment providers only need to (1) comply | with the blacklist, (2) report suspicious activity, same as | today. It would be a serious offense for companies to keep | their own moral blacklists. | | > Even if there were a million different credit card | companies [...], they would still be bound by the same | requirements. | | Under monopolistic market conditions, there's way less | incentive to saturate all corners of the market. Just | because it didn't pass VISAs risk/reward calculation | doesn't mean that other companies would come to the same | conclusion. It's hard to give an exact prediction, but | generally when monopolies/oligopolies go away the market | situation improves for all other parties. | noasaservice wrote: | One such possibility is for the USPS to open a non-profit | banking system at every post office in the country. That | would allow the now-unbanked to get an account. | | And the USPS has strict regulations on when they can and | cant deal with, especially in packages. I could see similar | on banking regs too. | | Naturally, Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Discover really dont like | this. | KennyBlanken wrote: | More banks and wire transfer companies like Wells Fargo | and Western Union, as well as the mega-banks like BoA | that make their money off poor people getting hit with | fees...less credit card companies. | pyrale wrote: | e.g. Mastercard and Visa could be required to report | suspected violations to a regulatory body, to which the | incriminated party could appeal. | | That would help separate denial of service derived from | regulation and denial of service derived from corporate | policy. It's a big step in terms of transparency of the | impact public policies have. | danenania wrote: | The alternative would be that payment processors don't deny | anyone unless a government regulator tells them to, and | then it's the regulator's responsibility to draw the line. | | It certainly wouldn't be perfect either, but at least there | would be some measure of legislative/electoral | accountability. | jandrese wrote: | This of course runs into the problem that the government | doesn't have a regulator for the Internet. The FCC could | maybe be pressed into the role, but it's not entirely | clear what mandate they could have over what is | effectively a giant privately held network. The | government doesn't run the root nodes nor any of the | nodes between you and the porn. They do run large | networks, but those are merely attached to the internet, | not integral to it. | | There is the other issue that people are rightfully | concerned about the creation of morality police, as they | have a long and sordid history of suppressing minority | communities for reasons that aren't in the public good. | Everyone agrees that child porn videos should be | banned/prosecuted, but after that it gets down to where | to draw the line and that's an endless source of | conflict. Some people will claim that homosexual content | is just as damaging as child exploitation while others | will say that banning homosexual content is damaging to | the community. They will not find a working compromise. | TimPC wrote: | I know the current Supreme Court of the US is grossly | biased in their decisions on such questions so it's not | clear what organization in the US would actually be | capable of enforcing this fairly. | danenania wrote: | These are good points. But the problem, as discussed in | this article and the comments, is we already have defacto | morality police: the credit card monopolies. | | Given we're going to have content police in some form (we | clearly do need them to an extent), shouldn't they be as | transparent and accountable as possible? | | We should have the equivalent of bodycam footage when a | decision is made--a paper trail showing who signed off | and what the rationale was. There should be a process for | appeals. Decisions shouldn't be political or religiously | motivated. | | Being cut off from the financial system is as much an | imposition on a person's rights as being fined or | arrested by the government. Sure, it needs to happen | sometimes, but there should be protection against being | targeted in an arbitrary or abusive way. | regularfry wrote: | Also: which government? I also don't want US regulators | controlling UK content because historical accident has | put payment oligopolies under US jurisdiction. | pyrale wrote: | > This of course runs into the problem that the | government doesn't have a regulator for the Internet. | | The thing needed here is a regulator for payment | services, not one for the internet. That's a much | narrower scope. | SilverBirch wrote: | It's also worth pointing out that it was only after a peice in | the NYT that Visa/Mastercard really actually paid attention to | the fact that Pornhub really was only paying lipservice to | these laws. It's not like Visa have been going around on some | moral crusade, they were brought to this through bad press | after close to a decade of not really doing their job. | CaliforniaKarl wrote: | > As such, they require such websites (merchants) to prove that | individuals in such videos are of legal age (no minors in the | videos, because if so - that's illegal and horrible). > > This | seems totally fair, commendable and hard to disagree with - if | you ask me. | | Indeed! Though it's important to note that it's more than just | that (as important as age verification of performers is!). | | Mastercard and Visa are also acting as de facto controllers of | what is acceptable content. In other words, not just who is | participating, but what is being done. | | For example, "... blood is banned, even blood obviously made of | ketchup. This is a disaster for vampire porn, which is akin to | a forbidden good on the internet." That's not my thing, but I | also don't think Mastercard and Visa should be the ones who | regulate that. | theturtletalks wrote: | Yes, OP also misses the fact that Visa and MC can gate-keep | legal activities as well. Selling smoking accessories is | legal under US law, but good luck getting a payment processor | that'll let you sell those goods online. You can get a high | risk processor, but they hold your funds for longer, charge a | higher rate, and you can lose processing ability at any time. | | If you're established, Visa and MC will make exceptions, but | who decided to make Visa and MC the deciders on what people | can and cannot sell. That's what US laws are for. In my | opinion, this is the only use case for crypto that I can see | playing out, decentralized payments. Sure fees maybe higher, | but at least a private company can't restrict what you can | sell online while whitelisting some competitors. | KennyBlanken wrote: | > Sure fees maybe higher, but at least a private company | can't restrict what you can sell online while whitelisting | some competitors. | | Until exchanges turn around and do the same thing as | Visa/Mastercard once they have enough market share...and | they aren't subject to anywhere near as many regulations. | theturtletalks wrote: | Sure that could happen, but I'd hope there's enough | competition in crypto payment processing that keeps them | honest. Visa and MC have too big of a strong hold right | now. | tiffanyh wrote: | > OP also misses the fact that Visa and MC can gate-keep | legal activities as well. Selling smoking accessories is | legal under US law, but good luck getting a payment | processor that'll let you sell those goods online | | Visa & MC are not processors. | theturtletalks wrote: | Yes, but Stripe or Paypal adhere to their rules. Visa and | MC are the reason those processors don't allow high risk | businesses. | | For example, OnlyFans last year nearly banned adult | content because their processor was going to drop them. | Visa/MC were blamed for that, but they ended up making an | exception. If you go out to build an OnlyFans | alternative, you won't get a processor. | tiffanyh wrote: | So are you suggesting Visa/MC shouldn't comply with laws | & regulation? | | Visa/MC aren't the "bad guys" here. They are just trying | to adhere to the required laws & regulations impose on | them. | | EDIT: I can't reply to your comment below, so I'm going | to reply here. | | > If selling adult services or goods is "illegal," then | the US law should codify it, not leave it up | Visa/MC/processors to decide. | | This is where I think you're confusing matters. Visa/MC | aren't "deciding". They are simply asking a merchant to | prove if unknown activity is NOT illegal. | | If the merchant can't prove its not illegal, then correct | - that merchant can't continue to transact. | | But they aren't deciding. And that's the big difference. | theturtletalks wrote: | >> So are you suggesting Visa/MC shouldn't comply with | laws & regulation? | | Of course Visa/MC should stop payments for illegal | activities, but they go after legal activities as well. | That's the issue. If selling adult services or goods is | "illegal," then the US law should codify it, not leave it | up Visa/MC/processors to decide. And it Visa/MC straight | up banned these sort of payments, it wouldn't be an | issue, but they play favoritism for some companies and | ban others out right. Not to mention, many legal | businesses lose payment processing ability without even a | reason. They claim that even giving a reason will give | violators too much information about their internal | security. | | The EU is actually building their own payment system to | combat this [0] and I really think the US should as well. | | 0. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/payment-services- | psd-2-directi... | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Why hasn't crypto made inroads into this world yet? Porn is | historically an early adopting industry (online payments, | thumbnail play w/scroll, VR, etc.) and this seems like a | theoretically optimal use case where someone would desire | some level of anonymity or at least some obfuscation as to | their identity | theturtletalks wrote: | I was very excited about Solana Pay[0] when it dropped | last year, but it doesn't seem to have gotten much | traction. | | 0. https://solanapay.com/ | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Interesting, will they have a TOS similar to Coinbase | Commerce (which bans porn as a business category) | https://commerce.coinbase.com/legal/terms-of-service/ | duskwuff wrote: | Yep. The problem is that the credit card issuers' regulations | go _way_ beyond determining that the content being purchased | is legal, and well into judging the morality of that content. | Credit card processors go even further; many of them forbid | sales of adult products and services entirely. | quest88 wrote: | I don't believe that. These companies want to make money | and would love to make more. They also don't want to lose | money, so they find ways to decrease risk. Their lawyers | probably tell them what's risky and draw the line there. If | you don't want them making these judgements then voters | should tell their regulator exactly what is and isn't ok. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > then voters should tell their regulator exactly what is | and isn't ok. | | like what, a list of allowed porn Ganres? thats not | making any sence. | robonerd wrote: | Vampire fetish stuff seems harmless to me, but I'm not | surprised Visa and Mastercard don't want to get into the | weeds of determining the difference between special effects | and actual self-harm / mutilation. There is a whole lot of | gray area in between there (piercing fetish, etc), but they | probably feel compelled to draw a line somewhere. Whether or | not the video _seems_ to show blood (real or fake) seems like | a criteria that can be judged with reasonable objectivity, | and errors on the side of caution. | Barrin92 wrote: | that is literally not what's going on given the content of the | article. As the article points out the self imposed regulations | do not only concern minors or illegal content, but an entire | plethora of sexual content. From furries, to 'vampire porn', to | depiction of aliens, any mention of blood (a livecammer giving | the example of not even being able to mention the word | 'period') and so on. | | The topic is not mastercard/visa indirectly enforcing the law, | it's a private institution pushing their own sexual morality on | others, by virtue of controlling the payments industry. | jshen wrote: | this is not fair because they don't do this consistently in | other industries. | polote wrote: | Visa and mastercard can do anything they want as long as they | want to do it. They just don't want to deal with porn by choice | quest88 wrote: | Really? You think a company that likes money says "You know | what, we don't need to make any more.". Given that they like | money, they're probably afraid of losing money from lawsuits | due to breaking regulation. | NineStarPoint wrote: | Plenty of other reasons they might decide not to deal with | it besides regulation, such as the large chargeback issue | the industry has or pressure from fundamentalist groups | that hate pornography on principle. | | It also isn't actually that uncommon for companies to make | decisions for moral reasons, for all that we talk of | corporations as money-hungry husks they are ultimately made | up of people and have their own internal culture. | Traditionally they'd eventually be outcompeted by a company | who doesn't have an issue with the action, but given the | stranglehold Visa/MasterCard have on the industry that | seems unlikely in this case. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | a comoany doesn't have a brain, people do. And people have | personal agendas. | mrmanner wrote: | > A section on furries, an online subculture interested in | anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities, reads | "content that depicts furries and humans engaged in sexual acts | are not permitted across the board. Content that depicts furry | engaged in sexual acts with another furry is acceptable across | the board." Lest that leave any room for misinterpretation: | "Please note, per Visa regulations a furry that contains human- | like characteristics is not permitted." So, no half-man, half- | furry. | | Oh, what I would give to be a fly on the wall in that meeting | hombre_fatal wrote: | This reminds me of alt.sex.stories with disclaimers like "all | events in this erotic story take place on a planet where 1 year | in the story = 100 earth years." So the step-dad in the story | is merely hanging out with a 1,700-year-old babysitter thus | it's not lewd at all. | mometsi wrote: | A fly with human characteristics doubly so | minimaxir wrote: | David Cronenberg really predicted the future in 1986. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | And so if you want to control (regulate / protest) pornography | start with the Mastercard AGM. | | It is interesting to note that Mastercard and other "reluctant | content moderators" are starting the slow process of identifying | the minimum globally acceptable standards. What is legal in one | place may be illegal elsewhere but some global common level / | trade off is being sought. | post_break wrote: | They are also the regulators of guns and accessories. Operation | Choke point for example. Apple is the purity police too. | bediger4000 wrote: | This is just as it should be. Let the markets decide! | ralston3 wrote: | > Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn | | This doesn't have to be the case. There is infrastructure in | place for these adult content providers to switch to crypto. It | seems to be rather trivial for them to setup fiat on/off ramps | for their customers. | staticassertion wrote: | So then the exchanges would be the regulators? Also now you | have a nice public ledger of what porn everyone is buying lol | goldcd wrote: | I'm just bemused by the world I find around me. | | We seem to have completely lost our grasp on differentiating | "real things" and "made up things" | issa wrote: | Not entirely related, but in my personal cache of "I was almost a | billionaire" stories, my favorite is when I was approached to | build a porn platform that would accept payment in Bitcoin. Who | knows if the site would have made money, but we would have | purchased a LOT of Bitcoin at under $1. | cowtools wrote: | I think the scarcity is a bad feature for a currency used for | payments. It encourages users to hold instead of spend. | | I imagine that's a major reason why we don't see many payment- | oriented cryptocurrency use-cases. The allure of speculative | investment is too great for many. | UnpossibleJim wrote: | So just to move this into a recent topic (and please have a civil | conversation - or I'll just delete this thread), given that this | will soon be a grey area in many of the U.S. states, would it | behoove Visa and Mastercard to regulate purchases of the "Morning | After Pill" or "Plan B" to avoid future litigation or moral | outrage, if they are also going to take such "moral high ground" | stances against a rather banal item as pornography? | fossuser wrote: | This article doesn't seem to mention it, but this is only a half | truth. | | There was a legal liability change around payment providers and | accidental support of sex trafficking that changed the calculus | around risk for supporting these services. | | As a result many of the payment providers backed out. | | They're not really the "de facto" regulators - they're responding | directly to incentives placed on them by government regulators. | | Write up on this law here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a- | controversial-new-sex-traf... | KennyBlanken wrote: | The issue is not MC or Visa protecting sex trafficking victims | or kids. It's purely a moral code. | | > Out of curiosity, about five years ago Stoya contacted | CCBill, one of the biggest payment companies specialising in | porn. Rather than the "acceptable use" policy on its website, | she asked if she could see their full guidance. The detailed | list. The one that precisely laid out the limits of what CCBill | believed Visa and Mastercard would tolerate. | | > The four pages of rules shared with her are written in a | lawyerly tone and are, in parts, totally bizarre. A section on | furries, an online subculture interested in anthropomorphic | animal characters with human personalities, reads "content that | depicts furries and humans engaged in sexual acts are not | permitted across the board. Content that depicts furry engaged | in sexual acts with another furry is acceptable across the | board." Lest that leave any room for misinterpretation: "Please | note, per Visa regulations a furry that contains human-like | characteristics is not permitted." So, no half-man, half-furry. | hulitu wrote: | > Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn | | TBH i'm sure that the C{E,I,T}Os of Mastercard and Visa can | recomend us some good sites. | beckingz wrote: | cxo works as shorter placeholder. | | At least for companies that don't have a Chief eXperience | Officer. | paxys wrote: | Mastercard and Visa aren't regulating porn due to some moral or | religious reasons. Believe me they would love to take your money, | no matter what line of business it was from. | | Ultimately they have to comply with a whole bunch of federal laws | regarding sale of illegal goods, money laundering, human | trafficking, child pornography and more. So if you want to blame | regulation, point your fingers at the people writing those laws | (aka your elected representatives). | staticassertion wrote: | As far as I know there is nothing illegal about drawn furry | pornography and no requirement on the part of Visa/Mastercard | to restrict access to that content. We even saw Mastercard | reverse their decision on OnlyFans recently due to major | backlash, so they obviously have the power to do so. | workingon wrote: | This is a false article. The largest porn site in the world | doesn't take visa and mastercard. Sounds to me like they aren't | being regulated by them at all. | s1k3s wrote: | GekkePrutser wrote: | Personally I think they should not be able to decide such things. | A payment provider should be forced to accept _all_ legitimate | customers. It is absolutely unwanted for a private business (in | an unrelated category no less) to be playing the role of | legislator. | | The problem is once a majority of payment providers (especially | in this category where there's only really 2 major ones) starts | blocking things, it becomes really difficult for fringe groups | that are in fact perfectly legal. I understand that porn payments | are a bit more risky but the providers can simply have a policy | to deny chargebacks for this category and shift the risk to the | customer. Similar to the way returns of sex toys are not accepted | for hygiene reasons. | | Recently there was a lot of news in the Netherlands about | prostitutes not being able to open bank account because all banks | refused them. Think of prostitution what you will but over there | it's legal work and they pay their taxes. But not being able to | get a bank account gets them into very difficult situations and | pushes them to shady people (which was exactly what the | legalisation was avoiding). | | Also other platforms like fetlife have recently been forced to | validate their users, leading to potentially serious consequences | if this data ever becomes compromised. Many people there don't | even show their face so the result is that they have to give a | lot more personal info now than they would have wanted to. | themitigating wrote: | Businesses shouldn't be forced to serve customers | standardUser wrote: | That sounds like a libertarian perspective that may apply to | a radically different system of economy and government (one | that does not exist in practice), but the system we actually | have is not even remotely close to libertarian. In the mixed | economic system adopted by nearly every nation on the planet, | business face all manner of regulation and the more | fundamental they are to everyday life, the more they tend to | be regulated. | makeitdouble wrote: | Businesses should be free to pick and choose only when there | is also a public funded alternative or the product is | targeted at a minority. Otherwise society starts falling | apart. | | Imagine there's only 3 car dealers in your region and they | all blacklist customers who have at least once followed Elon | Musk on twitter. | oifjsidjf wrote: | At some point when 50% of the world uses your service the | rules must change. | | Facebook and Twitter can sway elections with a press of a | button. | | Once your company can directly affects direct democray and | lives of billions these kind of statements make no sense | anymore. | | Unless you like to be ruled by corporations. | li2uR3ce wrote: | > At some point when 50% of the world uses your service the | rules must change. | | It's worse than that. They've effectively levied a tax on | everything (without representation). Even if you pay cash, | you pay (e.g.) Visa if the vendor accepts Visa. Businesses | are contractually obligated hide the transaction cost from | the consumer. This means all products and services have | their prices jacked up to cover the cost of accepting Visa, | MasterCard, etc. Even if you're paying cash, you're paying | into it. | | "Cash back rewards" are essentially a discount on the tax | they've imposed. | | So they tax you, they decide what you can buy, and you | don't get a say. Kinda fucked up. | jcadam wrote: | Yes, anti-trust laws came about for a reason. | jayparth wrote: | Yes, and we don't apply them to some companies for a | reason. | | We call these businesses natural monopolies and regulate | them. Like forcing them to serve everyone or cap their | profits. | themitigating wrote: | Facebook and Twitter users sway elections. | | Every company can affect democracy in some way. Foxnews had | a massive effect on elections, Gas prices being high | affects elections. Should these be regulated? | benatkin wrote: | > Facebook and Twitter users sway elections. | | That's not what gp is saying. | | Facebook and Twitter control what users, in bulk, say in | a way that can sway elections. | | Facebook and Twitter moderate and suspend and users | adjust what they say in order to not get suspended again, | if they care to not get banned. (Those who don't care if | they get banned are a red herring.) | | There is also the algorithmic feed which gives a lot of | control over what users say to other users. | evandale wrote: | I just quit Reddit and deleted all my accounts despite | gilding > 10 comments over the past year because I got | blacklisted from every community subreddit I wanted to | participate in. I brought up the bias to the admins and | was told mods can run their subreddit however they want | despite Rule 1 of the mod guidelines saying to assume | people are arguing in good faith. | | I got banned because I say controversial things like | Black people are not disproportionately targeted by | police due to their race, but rather due to them | disproportionately having guns and knives when the police | show up. | | The general public have a serious problem understanding | nuance and statistics and I think it's disgusting that | the media cry racism at every corner because it enrages | people and gets clicks. | | It's even more disgusting that people fall for it without | realizing what the media is doing to them because they | can't read past headlines. | | I'll link to the actual TPS report that shows this but | I'm on a slow connection right now and can't do it. | | edit: nvm I'm dumb; it's not that but the report is named | 9082-2018-TPS-Annual-Report.pdf if you can find it on its | own. You can google "tps force report 2018 -2020 pdf". | I'd find it myself but I'm downloading a 12mb pdf that's | taking forever and I'm pretty sure this is the one. | themitigating wrote: | Subreddits moderate themselves, it has nothing to do with | Reddit. If a Reddit Admin bans you then you lose your | entire account. | lovich wrote: | Nah bud, you're just peddling lies and no one wanted to | hang out with you. Deleting your account after having | been banned everywhere has some "you can't fire me, I | quit energy" | evandale wrote: | I believe this is the report and if remember right it's | on page 52 or maybe 54. Decide for yourself. | | https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/ohrc-interim- | report-to... | | edit: nvm I'm dumb; it's not that but the report is named | 9082-2018-TPS-Annual-Report.pdf if you can find it on its | own. You can google "tps force report 2018 -2020 pdf". | I'd find it myself but I'm downloading a 12mb pdf that's | taking forever and I'm pretty sure this is the one. | themitigating wrote: | This isn't what this Hackernews post is about. You | complained about people not understanding nuance but you | want to dive right into argument about the police and | minorities? | evandale wrote: | I'm responding to the claim that Twitter and Facebook ban | points of view they don't want people to see and I'm | pointing out Reddit does the exact same thing. | lovich wrote: | So how many times on a weekly basis would you say you | bring up the numbers 13 and 50? | themitigating wrote: | In what way is facebooks moderation on or algorithm | related to specifically to elections | [deleted] | [deleted] | munchenphile wrote: | Civil Rights Act and the ADA disagree. As does Sherman Anti | Trust and dozens of others. | dfadsadsf wrote: | Businesses are forced to serve customers everyday - from | anti-discrimination laws to universal service for phone | companies. There is also argument that oligopoly should not | de-facto control payments and work as moral police. | willcipriano wrote: | This is how people want it. It's been two years of "Twitter | is a private platform" over and over again. If you aren't | going to stand for free speech when someone wants to talk | about the Wuhan lab, why the hell would you expect anyone | to defend your right to furry porn? | chipotle_coyote wrote: | Because it's not automatically the same thing just | because both are private (e.g., non-governmental) | organizations. A newspaper can exercise editorial control | over what it publishes, but AT&T can't exercise editorial | control over your phone calls. Hacker News can moderate | user content, but an ISP can't moderate what you send | over its network. | | The question of whether Twitter and Facebook should be | treated like a phone company than they are like Hacker | News isn't a stupid one, and I don't think it's as | clearcut as people on both sides of this debate would | like it to be. But the question of whether a _payment | processor_ should be able to exercise this kind of | editorial control over transactions using them as an | intermediary is not really the same question. | | Also, keep your paws off my furry porn. | willcipriano wrote: | Payment processors similarly prevented right wing sites | from accepting donations and payments. Gab as one example | had to create their own server farm and payment system in | order to operate since they were shut out of every other | provider. | | Did you have a problem then? | robonerd wrote: | > _This is how people want it._ | | Some people sure. Maybe even the "twitter consensus" or | "HN consensus", but I think you should be very careful | about taking apparent consensus on these sort of social | media platforms as indicative of a broader consensus in | society. | giantrobot wrote: | > talk about the Wuhan lab | | When this is just coded language meaning "racist | conspiracy theories", sites don't want to carry those | posts. Social media sites are catching on to the coded | language game. | thebradbain wrote: | Personally I think they should, with objective, explicit | exceptions common to all merchants, something like: | 1) rudeness or disrupting 2) age and health | 3) intoxication and indecency 4) whatever else | society can agree on (good luck!) | | Both service providers and customers keep ending up in court | because the "right to refuse service to anyone" too often | becomes "discriminating against a protected class", and the | lines get blurrier every day. Much easier to just say "serve | everyone or don't go into the business of serving people" and | be done with it. | | In fact, the obligation to serve customers by law would serve | as both a consumer and merchant protection for cases exactly | like this -- the fact that, until sodomy laws were ruled | unconstitutional in the US just a couple decades ago, many | banks refused to lend to otherwise-credit worthy gay couples | or unwed heterosexual couples for mortgages (afraid of being | accused of supporting illegal activities), which would be | more of a moot point in this sense because the onus is no | longer on the bank to scrutinize how someone lives their | personal life so long as they meet objective measures of | credit worthiness. | SkeuomorphicBee wrote: | Monopolies/oligopolies should. Imagine if your power company | decided they don't want to serve you. | micromacrofoot wrote: | Break up the oligopolies and I agree completely. | | If Mastercard and Visa refuse to do business with you, you | will soon find yourself out of business. | c3534l wrote: | Normally I would disagree with you, but there's only two major | credit card companies. People aren't given a choice. | bsder wrote: | > but the providers can simply have a policy to deny | chargebacks for this category. | | Which then allows the porn providers to do very shady things. | | The problem with porn is that the players on both consumer and | provider side tend to be really shitty. The consumers are | causing a bunch of chargebacks whenever they get called out for | porn or trying to get porn for free. | | However, the providers aren't innocent either. _LOTS_ of | OnlyFans girls get called out for not delivering what they | promised which certainly should be able to be charged back. The | big aggregators are generally run by people that will | absolutely push the boundaries of dark patterns fully knowing | that in person interaction will be embarassing while a | chargeback isn 't. | toast0 wrote: | I agree, you can't end chargebacks on this category. You | could maybe require a chargeback for 'i didn't buy this' to | disable that card for that category (maybe that's a feature | you want anyway?). You could maybe require enhanced | authentication for this category (3D-secure??). You could | charge merchants a higher fee and/or hold payments for a much | longer time to avoid the need to pull the money back from the | merchant. I think most chargebacks need to be started within | 120 days of the initial charge, and it's fairly annoying to | need to wait 4 months to get paid, but it's better than not | being able to access payment methods. | gnopgnip wrote: | Do similar laws apply to any businesses besides public | utilities? | giantg2 wrote: | We have non-discrimination laws on a variety of protected | classes. It seems there could be support for expanding those | classes, like the recent story about political affiliation | and that dog shelter. | GekkePrutser wrote: | This is a really good point. I think payment providers are | like utilities these days, as cash becomes more obscure in | society. | fsckboy wrote: | _Think of prostitution what you will but over there it 's legal | work and they pay their taxes._ | | I don't know if this has any impact on V & MC payment | processing, but the trafficking of women is still a problem in | countries with legal prostitution | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_the_Nethe... | yieldcrv wrote: | which should be treated the same as labor trafficking | | the overlap with all forms of work are too numerous to point | that out as if it needs a different solution | | labor rights, more avenues for reporting, outreach, help, | evaluation of the employer | | and thats only available in a place with some form of | legalized framework (which can be greatly improved even in | those places) | giantg2 wrote: | "Personally I think they should not be able to decide such | things. A payment provider should be forced to accept all | legitimate customers." | | Payment providers are companies. They should be able to decide | what they'll cover or not. In this case the bigger issue is | that you essentially have a duopoly that allows 2 companies to | affect the market with those decisions. | franga2000 wrote: | > Payment providers are companies. They should be able to | decide what they'll cover or not | | Companies exist to provide people with goods and services. | They have no inalienable rights beyond that. If a company | does so in a way we see as unacceptable (in this case | discriminatory), we have the right to force it and the only | rights it has are to comply or cease operation. | | > In this case the bigger issue is that you essentially have | a duopoly that allows 2 companies to affect the market with | those decisions. | | Yes, everyone know that's an issue. The solution, obviously, | is to limit their ability to manipulate. We can achieve a big | part pf this this by forcing them to serve everyone equally. | GekkePrutser wrote: | I feel like in today's world they are also kind of utilities. | This is where the trouble starts. If you want to run a | business these days (especially online) you _need_ a payment | provider in many cases, and pretty much always need a bank | account. | timcavel wrote: | monksy wrote: | Also in this category. Buying weed from a depensary. You can't | buy it with a debit card or credit card. The processors won't | allow it. | | But you can ATM loophole your way through it. | MBCook wrote: | Isn't that different? | | Weed is still federally illegal. Porn is not. | tflinton wrote: | I think this is more because its illegal on a federal level, | not because of brand or pressure. | makeitdouble wrote: | I am coming to the conclusion that we're in the current | situation by design. | | A bunch of powerful people feel some stuff should be punished, | but they can't make it illegal. So they'll stay in good term | with de facto gate keepers and nudge them in their direction. | | In the article it's some billionaire, but ruling parties are | probably doing the same extensively: instead of making the | controversial decisions themselves, go through all the | paperwork and get all the backlash, they'll have a private | entity deal with 95% of the problem (the industry "self- | regulating") and call it a day. | | A pettier exemple than money transactions: there's no reason | smartphones shouldn't be able to record calls out of the box | (using it within legal boundaries should be on the user) but | phone makers will self-block that behavior with no specific | interest on their side. | ravel-bar-foo wrote: | > there's no reason smartphones shouldn't be able to record | calls out of the box (using it within legal boundaries should | be on the user) but phone makers will self-block that | behavior with no specific interest on their side. | | Which smartphones block call recording? Every brandname | Android I have had enables this feature for voice calls. | (Although the feature is missing for app calls, and I'm now | at least 5 years behind the newest phones.) | GekkePrutser wrote: | > Which smartphones block call recording? Every brandname | Android I have had enables this feature for voice calls. | (Although the feature is missing for app calls, and I'm now | at least 5 years behind the newest phones.) | | This explains a lot because this is a more recent | development. https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-is-banning- | call-recording-... | | As the article says it was blocked a couple years ago but | there was still a loophole which is now being closed as | well. Though it's by blocking apps using it from the play | store which can still be avoided by sideloading so | technically there still is a loophole :) But it's | definitely seeing more and more restrictions. | goldcd wrote: | I slightly disagree - I don't think Visa et al should be forced | to do anything. | | I think the problem is external to Visa, where a once | capitalist money accumulating machine, is having internal | debates on what Furry depictions are allowed. | | I feel the unnoticed casualty of the "Culture Wars", that | neither side seems to care about, is that harmless stuff should | just be left alone. | | We don't have to have a view on everything. | cwillu wrote: | Deciding who controls the definition of "legitimate" is exactly | the problem. | makeitdouble wrote: | In this specific case, banks already have definitions and | obligations regarding who they can refuse to deal with. I'd | argue credit cards should at least be as permissive as these. | markus92 wrote: | Lawful? That's up to the government to decide. | jcranmer wrote: | Which government? If you're talking about something like | paying for an abortion or marijuana, you're likely to get | very different answers if you ask the US federal government | versus certain state governments. | fipar wrote: | To expand your point, the impact can be international. | | Weed is legal in Uruguay (restrictions apply, but you can | do some paperwork and you'll then be able to buy it) yet | the Central Bank suggested pharmacies to only sell it in | cash, out of fear that it would have negative | consequences for other CC transactions in the country, or | for the country as a whole I suppose. | | I can understand CC companies not wanting to accept | payment for weed in another country if the card was | issued in the US, but for local cards, that's basically | enforcing one country's laws over another. And you could | have local CC companies, which we do, but then those are | only accepted here. So if someone local wants to have a | CC that can be used abroad, they need to accept the fact | that the CC company will enforce the laws of the US even | if they do a transaction outside of that country. | philistine wrote: | And yet here in Quebec, we pay for weed with credit cards | all the time. What's up with that dichotomy? | bryanrasmussen wrote: | so which side are you arguing here - credit card | companies can decide who they want to provide services | for even if they decide not to service legal companies or | that they should be forced to service legal companies? | PenguinCoder wrote: | Most specific law applies then. Not hard. | krrrh wrote: | Yeah, subsidiarity or lack thereof can get messy, but | it's not that unusual to get different answers from | different levels of government. It's a totally different | situation when a private duopoly or oligopoly supersedes | democratic control. | pilif wrote: | I see two answers to this: | | 1) if something is legal wherever the purchase was made, | then the credit card companies, as basic utilities, | should be compelled to process the purchase. | | which would be the easiest for me to understand, but | possibly more complicated to enforce than | | 2) if something is legal wherever the credit card company | is incorporated in, then the credit card companies, as | basic utilities, should be compelled to process the | purchase. | | If laws or enforcement are unclear about the legality of | a thing, handle it like it would be handled in case of a | cash sale or have the credit card company be cautious and | enforce the strictest rule. | giantg2 wrote: | You have to define legal. In the case of pot, it's not | actually legal - the feds simply choose not to enforce | the law in states that have legalized it at the state | level. There is substantial risk there as a payment | processor. If it were actually up to the states, then it | could be more like you describe. | sshine wrote: | > Think of prostitution what you will but over there it's legal | work and they pay their taxes. | | Prostitution may be a line of work where less tax is paid. | | This does not make the act of prostitution less legitimate. | | Hair dressers and tattoo artists also, on average, declare less | of their total income, and we don't consider hair dressers and | tattoo artists illegitimate businesses. We just expect them to | pay taxes and tolerate, to some degree, if they don't. Going to | the hair dresser or getting a tattoo isn't seen as morally | objectional because of what they pay in taxes. | | Less tax is paid because of cash. | | This is also true for prostitution. In part because the | anonymity of cash is preferable among the customers, because | the sex worker avoids scrutiny by the bank, and because sex | workers don't necessarily have work permits in the countries in | which they operate. | | Conversely, we can think of morally objectional jobs where | taxes are paid. | GekkePrutser wrote: | I agree tax and legitimacy are not the same thing. Tax | avoidance being common in an industry does not make the work | itself illegitimate. | | The reason I mentioned tax is that not having a bank account | was making it more complex for them to actually pay their | taxes as a business. Taxation in the Netherlands is no longer | something you can pay with an envelope of cash. If you want | to run a legit business you can't do so without one. It was | one of the things mentioned during the debate about this. | | I'm not sure how it turned out because I don't live there | anymore but there was talk of mandating the banks to offer | them an account. After all without overdrafts or loans there | is no real risk to the bank anyway. | handmodel wrote: | I wonder if the card companies themselves would be happy with | those rules. I don't think it's a grand conspiracy. I think | they are just looking at the business and realizing that the | amount of money to be made from it (especially with | chargebacks) is very small compared to the potential | lawsuits/headlines of facilitating child pornography and as a | result have been conservative. | | If they were forced to allow it then it would give them cover | and also their competitors would be as well - so there'd be no | competitive disadvantage. | bilekas wrote: | Yes, payment processors should 'process' all legit payments. | However.. | | Visa/Mastercard hire people to do risk analysis though, those | people are rightly assessing that pr0n payments is a higher | risk than the insurance premium is worth. Which is newsworthy | itself, goes to how credit card fraud is overtaking the | insurance market and maybe those 2 companies should invest in | that area.. But that's gonna take too long. | | There are a lot of reasons for that. On a 'credit' card this | makes sense. They own/lend the outgoing funds, you just pay | them back with some interest. | | The debit cards are not, the debit card is your balance being | debited. Instantly. With 0 interest. I'm not 100% sure about | the insurance on that, but from experience the bank itself will | be the point of contact to dispute a payment that is | fraudulent. The bank may or may not pursue lost monies from the | insurance or debtor etc. But VISA as a whole, just processed | the transaction. | | There used to be, in Ireland at least, a debit card issued by | banks under the name "Laser" so it was your 'laser' card you | paid with.. Only in recent years, I realised this was | competition. So V & MC cornered the market, "Use at X amount of | ATM's worldwide" etc. | | I would love to say "there is a way out, once the payment | processors process without influence from V/MC" but imagine, a | payment processor not accepting one of those.. That's game | over. | | I do think companies like N26/Revolut and co have standing to | create their own 'standard' after really generating an | incredible userbase, would prefer maybe open source but | financal companies are slow to adopt. | | Imagine a payment gateway standard that wasn't restricted, open | source/readable and had it's own userbase. I'm not a proponent | of using crypto as currency but you can see why they got | carried away. The problems to overcome are just... Well, | bureaucratic. | kshahkshah wrote: | I feel like the only thing worst than Visa or Mastercard | regulating this would be the US government. | polote wrote: | They are not the porn regulator. The porn space is much more than | pornhub and actually most websites have learnt to live with | border legal financing options for a long time. The ceo had | probably always wanted to cut out pornhub and this was the | perfect moment to deliver his agenda. | | Porn is everywhere and there is no way to prevent that. | scarface74 wrote: | There is something even more disturbing. I have a friend who | caters to the LGBTQ community. She does parties, party busses, | promotions with famous artists at clubs, etc. She once told me | that many of the credit card processors wouldn't do business with | her. This was a decade ago. I don't know if she still has the | same issue. | lelanthran wrote: | I don't find that _more disturbing_ than cutting off furries, I | find it _equally disturbing_. | car_analogy wrote: | Not remotely limited to porn - they are also arbiters on the | range of allowed political thought: | | https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/mastercard-activists-... | | https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/biggest-blacklist-a... | adamrezich wrote: | not sure why this is being downvoted when it's a true statement | related to--but not touched upon in--the article. plus it's a | counterpoint to some of the other comments here saying that | this is all _solely_ due to these companies ' proverbial hands | being tied by federal regulations. | car_analogy wrote: | Because, they will argue, those bans are justified. And | because they are justified, we should pay no attention to | them. We should not even know they exist. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | these people would be happy to be tyranically opressed so | long as the opressor is registered as a private | corporation. | Linda703 wrote: | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | It's not just that "Mastercard and visa are the de facto | regulators of porn". It's that one billionaire called up a | ~10s-100s millionaire and said "stop this because I read a NY | Times article that made me really angry", and the response was | "On it." | | More rule-by-oligarchy, as usual. | bmelton wrote: | That may be true and I'm not arguing that it isn't, but at | least where I've come to learn about it more concretely | happening, it's always been the result of things like Operation | Choke Point[1] or Redlining[2] which were pressure campaigns by | the governments who regulate the banks. In the case of the | former, it was Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB, while the latter | was the FHA working through the FHLBB. | | Banks are so inherently risk averse that even the most stalwart | of them is likely to submit to even regulatory-coercive | overtones, which effectively makes them arms of the government, | but with enough "by proxy" to leap around constitutional | hurdles. | | [1] - Operation Choke Point: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point | | [2] - Redlining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining | toyg wrote: | _> Banks are so inherently risk averse _ | | ... that 2008 never happened. | | Banks are risk-averse when it suits them to be so. | bombcar wrote: | Risk for a bank is having the government crawl up their | various orifices, not losing money. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Thanks for this, especially the link about Operation Choke | Point. | | But I think the details around Operation Choke Point give me | confidence, not wariness. Yes, Operation Choke Point _was_ | government overreach, but when the truth came out: | | 1. US Congressional reps proposed laws to stop the practice. | | 2. The FDIC Inspector General and the DoJ investigated the | operation. | | 3. The FDIC issued a letter "effectively ending the practice" | in early 2015. | | 4. The government officially ended the practice in 2017. | | That is, IMO, government _worked_ here: overzealousness came | to light relatively quickly, was debated publicly, and was | terminated. | [deleted] | rodgerd wrote: | If you cared about "cancel culture" and platforms having too much | leverage, you'd be a lot more concerned about this duopoly than | whether Twitter lets Nazis speak. | yew wrote: | They're not the government. They've no obligation to platform | anyone at all, whatever sort of extremist they are. Get used to | it, examine why the world will be a better place, move on. | cowtools wrote: | I don't think that the town squares and forums of the | internet should be controlled and paid for by advertising | companies. Nazis are not banned on any moral or political | basis: It's purely a buisness decision. It sounds fine but | when you begin spouting some unprofitable ideas they're not | going to hesitate to ban you too. | tick_tock_tick wrote: | > They've no obligation to platform anyone at all | | That's just objectively false we have a long history of | forcing companies to take customers from Utilities, Americans | with Disabilities Act, anti trust laws, forcing companies to | license technology, and a whole bunch of other ones when | needed; This is no different. | | We are talking about it because we find the current state | with Visa and MasterCard as unacceptable. | odessacubbage wrote: | any internally consistent application of civil liberties means | caring about both. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Can someone explain to me why there hasn't been a crypto payments | use case that solves this? Of all the fields that crypto should | be able to gain adoption in, one where people don't want their | standard accounts and credit reports to reflect they subscribed | to any porn, however bland, seems like the ideal (legal) use | case. | dogman144 wrote: | The volatility is the elephant in the room. In my opinion, vol | slowly smooths out as adoption increases, happens with most | currencies. But this slowly might be a long time. | | You are one of the few comments ITT that bring this up though. | On one hand, it shows how the tech's real purpose hasn't really | permeated the general or tech public yet. On the other, it is | literally the only digitally native payment solution that | offers cash-but-online and solves the specific risk of payment | censorship . There might be other innovations down the road | though, but for now caring about these events means caring | about cryptocurrency, if you care about solving the problem | with today's tech vs what's still to come. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | But if transactions settle immediately with crypto shouldn't | you be able to just convert to fiat or a stablecoin to avoid | the volatility? Or do you mean volatility for a consumer that | holds the currencies beforehand? It's just surprising it | hasn't been adopted somewhere yet as this isn't a new problem | facing the industry and I wonder if there are bigger barriers | I'm not seeing. I think Coinbase had a payments function | similar to a Stripe integration but maybe they also don't | allow such use cases? https://commerce.coinbase.com/ - I'll | dig into their TOS out of morbid curiousity | | Edit w/update: It is indeed not allowed in their TOS, "Adult | Content and Services: Pornography (including literature, | imagery and other media); sites offering any sexually-related | services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per view, or | adult live chat features." is under the 'Prohibited' section | dogman144 wrote: | Without an easy way to interact economically with the | currency beyond one time use cases, it's more like a gift | card that is very volatile with heavy compliance | requirements. | | I could spend all my money via gift cards, but the process | of buying gift cards constantly is annoying. Using crypto | for one time uses is like this, but with the added | requirement of compliance teams evaluating what you've used | the giftcard for (the crypto to fiat swapping process). | | However, where there exists consistent market worth staying | in crypto, you do see adoption. Unfortunately, this is | darknet markets so not great for marketing further | adoption. But good proof of concept. | kkielhofner wrote: | The number of people interested in paying for content not | permitted by Visa/MC and who can actually figure out how to use | crypto for anything other than trading on an exchange is tiny. | | Not surprisingly the only resources online about porn payments | and cryptocurrency are a variety of high profile CSAM stories. | | Yet another of one of the many problems with crypto adoption - | it's so frequently used/cited/associated with illicit activity | that (again other than gambling on an exchange) many (most?) | law abiding people associate it with criminals outside of the | Disneyworld playpen that is Coinbase. | louloulou wrote: | > Can someone explain to me why there hasn't been a crypto | payments use case that solves this? | | There has - most porn sites accept payment in bitcoin. | | https://lifehacker.com/how-to-pay-for-porn-with-crypto-and-w... | oneng wrote: | This argument reminds me of Taleb's note on Minority rule: | https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... | | "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small | Minority" | | "The black-and-white character of these societal laws can be | explained with the following. Assume that under a certain regime, | when you mix white and dark blue in various combinations, you | don't get variations of light blue, but dark blue. Such a regime | is vastly more likely to produce dark blue than another rule that | allows more shades of blue." | | One of the bigger bangers from the chapter: | | "Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. | Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world." | sydthrowaway wrote: | dogman144 wrote: | A digital payment rails that functions like cash, as in my bank | can't prevent me from handing it over to whoever I want for | whatever legal reason is a critical aspect of a free society that | has gone digital. | | You might disagree with bitcoin and co being the answer for this, | but it's the only tech that's posed a viable solution as of now. | Viable is not perfect. But if this article bothers you, at least | understand this a (the) major aspect of why people work on | serious cryptocurrency projects. | gigatexal wrote: | Seems like Bitcoin or other crypto would have filled this usecase ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-28 23:00 UTC)