9 ms·

> for these corporations this is not a matter of free expression, as it ought to be, but one of morality Is it really true that banks block transactions relate

by float4 5y ago

> for these corporations this is not a matter of free expression, as it ought to be, but one of morality Is it really true that banks block transactions related to sex work because they are morally against it? Last time I checked banks just want to make money. This is a genuine question by the way. > But just a few weeks in, Twitch shut it down after a change of policy that included, among other things, a ban on visible nipples for those who “present as women”. At a time when societal views around gender and sexuality are in many ways opening up, restrictions on sexual expression [...] feel positively archaic and seem to demonstrate that [...] there remain highly unaccountable powers making decisions about how we express something so utterly natural and human. Although I fully support the free the nipple movement, I can absolutely understand that a streaming platform wants to ban nudity / sexual content. Sure, sex is natural and normal, but compared to other human behaviour it is still in a league of its own.

pydry 5y ago
They're reacting to regulations designed specifically to make it too much of a headache for them to service these customers.
- fossuser 5y ago
  This is also my understanding - though I think it’s mostly a side effect of the regulation (which is intended to increase the liability around enabling sex trafficking). The article mentions this, but I agree with pessimizer that the article seems to get the causality backwards. I also agree with float4 re: why platforms may not want sexual content. I’m sensing some agenda driven motivated reasoning behind this article that’s being used to shoehorn the events into its frame. There is something to centralized software companies and payment processors being in a position to do this at all though (whether required by regulation or not). Both blockchain based protocols that create decentralized incentive structures like Audius, and (non-blockchain) approaches like Urbit (along with just regular crypto) help to solve this problem. I’d bet this is what will enable them to be more resilient in the long run. https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit
  - pydry 5y ago
    >This is also my understanding - though I think it’s mostly a side effect of the regulation (which is intended to increase the liability around enabling sex trafficking). Sex trafficking is the flagship target of these regulations but it's fairly obvious from their messaging that the original lobbyists are trying to shut down sex work of all kinds and using sex trafficking as an excuse.
- PixelOfDeath 5y ago
  I feel the influence of the "Christian Taliban" in the ranks of the US government gets underestimated.
  - anon19876 5y ago
    Ah, yes, the “Christian Taliban” that is beheading those that disagree with it in broad daylight and broadcasting those beheadings to the rest of the world. Here’s a tip: if you want to be persuasive, try using a little less hyperbole. There may be a point to be made here about the influence of organized religion on U.S. laws, but you’re alienating even those who would be willing to listen to your point by drawing such an absurd equivalence.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attacks-mapped https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attack... "Since 1977 there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons targeted at abortion clinics and providers across the United States." It's not on the same scale, but the faction clearly exists that would do it if they could get away with it.
      - Noos 5y ago
        ...in 40 years. This is indistinguishable from random people being nutcases imo; you use the numbers to try and make them scarier than they are.
    - Smashure 5y ago
      I see someone already put a link up, but extremism is extremism and the Christian extremism in the U.S. parallels Islamic extremism quite a bit. Including openly murdering those you disagree with.
      - luckylion 5y ago
        This feels like "yeah, gang crime is kind of like the Holocaust -- people die". There's really no similarity, and pretending otherwise is just trivializing the Taliban.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  Webcam porn sites seem to be doing quite well. If Twitch would suddenly allow nudity, the chance that they get sidetracked is high - just compare OF and Patreon. They offer basically the same thing, but Patreon is rather strict on porn and OF is known for only porn.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
LinuxBender 5y ago
My understanding is that banks don't really care about sex. At least the one I worked for didn't seem to care. They will take all the money they can get. The more they have, the more they can lend out based on the fractional reserve system. They do care if people are not investing money in their banks and there are investors that don't wish to be associated with adult related organizations. Perhaps there is a way to shield investors from this association without cutting off adult content businesses?
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Are chargeback rates higher for porn businesses? If so, that alone could be a reason to stop servicing them.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    Chargebacks are more common in adult businesses and banks often eat some of this cost. This puts more onus on the banking customers to implement some protections and ID verification that may be seen as cumbersome to small businesses, startups, etc... There are banking and credit sites that provide tips and techniques to minimize charge-backs. Banks can also help businesses learn how to implement these measures, but admittedly there is still an operating cost to this. Here is a past thread talking about some aspects of these issues. [1] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538460
  - pilsetnieks 5y ago
    Price it into their fees.
- imtringued 5y ago
  >The more they have, the more they can lend out based on the fractional reserve system. Although the name fractional reserve might be correct it is highly misleading as to how modern banking actually functions. Practically speaking banks are limited by the availability of solvent debtors. Colloquial language is describing an ancient process that is no longer in use. Debtors are people who promise to work, they sign a contract that they will pay in the future. That debt contract called a bond is an asset of the bank, it is a future income stream just like the share of a company. In exchange the debtor obtains a liquid form of his debt contract. The bank grants credit equal to the principal owed in the contract. Essentially, bank money is just a share in the bonds that the bank owns. It's almost equivalent to buying a bond ETF whose share price is fixed to $1. The profits of the bonds are then distributed through interest rates. Now, the big question is, what happens when the bank is losing money because the bonds are worthless (think 2008)? It does not pass on the losses because of the free deposit insurance program that the government pays for. In fact, the incentive is to write as many (possibly bad) loans as the bank can get away with. Add onto the fact that US dollars are a shared currency among private banks, you get a pee in the pool scenario... The central bank then engages in QE which is basically the act of transferring the bonds to the central bank and now private banks have a metaphorical share in the bonds the central bank owns. If there are 10 banks and 1 with 50% bad loans then after QE there are 10 banks with 5% bad loans. The central bank has the pee now and diluted it to the point the pee is no longer noticeable. Of course, the "correct" solution is to just lower the value credit. That's usually done via inflation but the problem is that this "after the fact" inflation must be done through government spending. Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the value of credit the same just pass on losses directly? That would imply negative interest rates. In practice it doesn't work because cash gives a risk free 0% return which forces returns on every investment to be above 0% to justify the investment and that includes 0% interest rates on bank accounts. Essentially, inflation targeting only exists to allow representation of negative real interest rates on cash. It's a huge hack. I wanted to limit it to the first paragraph but I felt it would be too difficult to understand without further explanation.
roenxi 5y ago
We know exactly what lengths the bankers are willing to go to when securing a profit. The leadership environment literally selects for the sort of people who are willing to throw a family out of their home because the financial implications don't make sense. They aren't fuzzy, friendly "forgive the debt because of religious teachings" people. There is no way there is a moral stand here, the idea is absurd. They're locking out sex work because some regulation is making it risky for them. Or maybe the charge-back issue. But probably regulation.
- danaris 5y ago
  Or, perhaps, fear of the political bloc that is Evangelical Protestantism in the US? I am not aware of any existing regulations that would make this particularly risky for the banks. I am aware of a very vocal minority that wants to limit sex to heterosexual and procreative (and ideally not fun at all), and then only when the man wants it.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    This is probably the regulation you’re unaware of: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-trafficking-law-will-change-the-web/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-traf... I suspect the increased liability risk is the main cause of what we’re seeing.
  - rnd0 5y ago
    >Or, perhaps, fear of the political bloc that is Evangelical Protestantism in the US? Not just politics -but finances as well. The Evangelicals represent a huge amount of money -particularly when you're talking about the mega-churches. Also, it's quite, quite possible that a large number of decision makers in the banking industry are themselves conservative hard-line Christians.

by float4 5y ago

pydry 5y ago

They're reacting to regulations designed specifically to make it too much of a headache for them to service these customers.

fossuser 5y ago
This is also my understanding - though I think it’s mostly a side effect of the regulation (which is intended to increase the liability around enabling sex trafficking). The article mentions this, but I agree with pessimizer that the article seems to get the causality backwards. I also agree with float4 re: why platforms may not want sexual content. I’m sensing some agenda driven motivated reasoning behind this article that’s being used to shoehorn the events into its frame. There is something to centralized software companies and payment processors being in a position to do this at all though (whether required by regulation or not). Both blockchain based protocols that create decentralized incentive structures like Audius, and (non-blockchain) approaches like Urbit (along with just regular crypto) help to solve this problem. I’d bet this is what will enable them to be more resilient in the long run. https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit
- pydry 5y ago
  >This is also my understanding - though I think it’s mostly a side effect of the regulation (which is intended to increase the liability around enabling sex trafficking). Sex trafficking is the flagship target of these regulations but it's fairly obvious from their messaging that the original lobbyists are trying to shut down sex work of all kinds and using sex trafficking as an excuse.
PixelOfDeath 5y ago
I feel the influence of the "Christian Taliban" in the ranks of the US government gets underestimated.
- anon19876 5y ago
  Ah, yes, the “Christian Taliban” that is beheading those that disagree with it in broad daylight and broadcasting those beheadings to the rest of the world. Here’s a tip: if you want to be persuasive, try using a little less hyperbole. There may be a point to be made here about the influence of organized religion on U.S. laws, but you’re alienating even those who would be willing to listen to your point by drawing such an absurd equivalence.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attacks-mapped https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attack... "Since 1977 there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons targeted at abortion clinics and providers across the United States." It's not on the same scale, but the faction clearly exists that would do it if they could get away with it.
    - Noos 5y ago
      ...in 40 years. This is indistinguishable from random people being nutcases imo; you use the numbers to try and make them scarier than they are.
  - Smashure 5y ago
    I see someone already put a link up, but extremism is extremism and the Christian extremism in the U.S. parallels Islamic extremism quite a bit. Including openly murdering those you disagree with.
    - luckylion 5y ago
      This feels like "yeah, gang crime is kind of like the Holocaust -- people die". There's really no similarity, and pretending otherwise is just trivializing the Taliban.
Sebb767 5y ago
Webcam porn sites seem to be doing quite well. If Twitch would suddenly allow nudity, the chance that they get sidetracked is high - just compare OF and Patreon. They offer basically the same thing, but Patreon is rather strict on porn and OF is known for only porn.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

LinuxBender 5y ago

My understanding is that banks don't really care about sex. At least the one I worked for didn't seem to care. They will take all the money they can get. The more they have, the more they can lend out based on the fractional reserve system. They do care if people are not investing money in their banks and there are investors that don't wish to be associated with adult related organizations. Perhaps there is a way to shield investors from this association without cutting off adult content businesses?

londons_explore 5y ago
Are chargeback rates higher for porn businesses? If so, that alone could be a reason to stop servicing them.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  Chargebacks are more common in adult businesses and banks often eat some of this cost. This puts more onus on the banking customers to implement some protections and ID verification that may be seen as cumbersome to small businesses, startups, etc... There are banking and credit sites that provide tips and techniques to minimize charge-backs. Banks can also help businesses learn how to implement these measures, but admittedly there is still an operating cost to this. Here is a past thread talking about some aspects of these issues. [1] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538460
- pilsetnieks 5y ago
  Price it into their fees.
imtringued 5y ago
>The more they have, the more they can lend out based on the fractional reserve system. Although the name fractional reserve might be correct it is highly misleading as to how modern banking actually functions. Practically speaking banks are limited by the availability of solvent debtors. Colloquial language is describing an ancient process that is no longer in use. Debtors are people who promise to work, they sign a contract that they will pay in the future. That debt contract called a bond is an asset of the bank, it is a future income stream just like the share of a company. In exchange the debtor obtains a liquid form of his debt contract. The bank grants credit equal to the principal owed in the contract. Essentially, bank money is just a share in the bonds that the bank owns. It's almost equivalent to buying a bond ETF whose share price is fixed to $1. The profits of the bonds are then distributed through interest rates. Now, the big question is, what happens when the bank is losing money because the bonds are worthless (think 2008)? It does not pass on the losses because of the free deposit insurance program that the government pays for. In fact, the incentive is to write as many (possibly bad) loans as the bank can get away with. Add onto the fact that US dollars are a shared currency among private banks, you get a pee in the pool scenario... The central bank then engages in QE which is basically the act of transferring the bonds to the central bank and now private banks have a metaphorical share in the bonds the central bank owns. If there are 10 banks and 1 with 50% bad loans then after QE there are 10 banks with 5% bad loans. The central bank has the pee now and diluted it to the point the pee is no longer noticeable. Of course, the "correct" solution is to just lower the value credit. That's usually done via inflation but the problem is that this "after the fact" inflation must be done through government spending. Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the value of credit the same just pass on losses directly? That would imply negative interest rates. In practice it doesn't work because cash gives a risk free 0% return which forces returns on every investment to be above 0% to justify the investment and that includes 0% interest rates on bank accounts. Essentially, inflation targeting only exists to allow representation of negative real interest rates on cash. It's a huge hack. I wanted to limit it to the first paragraph but I felt it would be too difficult to understand without further explanation.

roenxi 5y ago

We know exactly what lengths the bankers are willing to go to when securing a profit. The leadership environment literally selects for the sort of people who are willing to throw a family out of their home because the financial implications don't make sense. They aren't fuzzy, friendly "forgive the debt because of religious teachings" people. There is no way there is a moral stand here, the idea is absurd. They're locking out sex work because some regulation is making it risky for them. Or maybe the charge-back issue. But probably regulation.

danaris 5y ago
Or, perhaps, fear of the political bloc that is Evangelical Protestantism in the US? I am not aware of any existing regulations that would make this particularly risky for the banks. I am aware of a very vocal minority that wants to limit sex to heterosexual and procreative (and ideally not fun at all), and then only when the man wants it.
- fossuser 5y ago
  This is probably the regulation you’re unaware of: https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-trafficking-law-will-change-the-web/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-controversial-new-sex-traf... I suspect the increased liability risk is the main cause of what we’re seeing.
- rnd0 5y ago
  >Or, perhaps, fear of the political bloc that is Evangelical Protestantism in the US? Not just politics -but finances as well. The Evangelicals represent a huge amount of money -particularly when you're talking about the mega-churches. Also, it's quite, quite possible that a large number of decision makers in the banking industry are themselves conservative hard-line Christians.