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Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
- linotype 1y agoIt pains me to say this, but this might actually be a valid use case for cryptocurrency. These companies are cowards.
- CaptainFever 1y agoThis is literally the original use case for cryptocurrency.
- recursivecaveat 1y agoHonestly I think Visa/MC appreciate being nudged into this situation. Normalization of them as financial gatekeepers gives them a big favor that they can grant to governments by cutting the tap off to orgs/companies/people whenever. Its a direction that is convenient for them and a lot of the heat for the move gets passed on to some Australian non-profit instead of them. Hard for me to square their behavior unless they are quietly quite receptive.
- londons_explore 1y agoIf this were the case, we'd probably see very different policies for every country. Yet this doesn't seem to be the case. Pornhub doesn't say 'payment for interracial porn is available in all countries except Opressionland'.
- altairprime 1y agoThe article linked by this post disagrees: > I’ve seen some comments floating around that suggest that the fix is to jettison Visa and MasterCard in favor of cryptocurrency. > I think this is fundamentally a losing strategy: It moves the burden and risk of being unbanked onto the developers and publishers rather than the platforms. Yes, it decentralizes (to a point), but each node has less resources to defend themselves in court when the oppressors change their tactics again. I believe it’s better to stand together than fragment.
- Anon1096 1y agoThe author is very confused. For one, not having access to VISA/Mastercard isn't being unbanked. And more importantly, there is no need for the burden of supporting CC payments to fall on developers at all. Steam, itch, etc can just add it as a payment method. (personally I don't really think it's an amazing solution due to crypto volatility) Seems that the West has just now realized that the payment processors are a threat to adult content and are getting in an uproar. Japanese sites selling adult content have been banned for years at this point, they've moved on to supporting JCB as the only accepted credit card and otherwise accepting site-specific points you buy at convenience stores. I've seen crypto as well by proxy via Bitcash.
- jacknews 1y agoPayments are pretty much 'public infrastructure' at this point and should be treated the same as utilities. ie they should be required to provide service for anything legal.
- tylerflick 1y agoI mean this is just the ultimate form of price discrimination which happens to be legal. My question is why? This industry (payments) is completely driven by financials and occasionally regulations. They have no dog in a moral fight, so this must be about profits to them.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Henchman21 1y agoThis feels naive. Power is a goal too and clearly they’re pursuing that.
- willprice89 1y agoI had never heard the term "jawboning" before. According to Merriam-Webster it is "the use of public appeals (as by a president) to influence the actions especially of business and labor leaders" or "broadly : the use of spoken persuasion". Regarding TFA: I don't think trading freedoms of one group (the platform users) for those of another (the platform operators) is a good solution. Visa/Mastercard should have the right to refuse service. The solution being explored in the EU makes more sense: facilitate competition so users have more choice of platforms. Or another alternative: can we reduce the power of small but vocal minorities to prevent them from "jawboning" companies?
- cwillu 1y agoCompanies shouldn't have rights.
- shswkna 1y agoPlease elaborate?
- willprice89 1y agoIf I'm the sole owner and only employee of a small business, should I have the right to choose my clients? If so, at what size/scale/level of market capture should I lose my rights?
- BomberFish 1y agoWell there's a difference between a small business and the effective duopoly that is Visa/Mastercard.
- bfg_9k 1y agoIt's an interesting one - I've always thought that businesses should have no right to refuse business, and it kind of already exists, for example you can't refuse to serve a customer purely on the basis of their skin color. Likewise, if a casino or betting company (ladbrokes, for example) have customers that win too often, I also think it should be illegal to stop them betting. Fundamentally if you're running a business that is an uneven coin toss (to your favour) and you have customers that are able to make money off you - that's your fault for having a bad business model. So to answer your question, any size.
- protocolture 1y agoClarifying I find the furry art weird, and not pornographic. (Weird is fine btw, normal is the worse insult imho) I think the biggest issue is the damage that the word "Censorship" has taken in the last few years. If I ran a payment processor, the first thing I would do is try to be as neutral as my moral compass allows. The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was uncomfortable with on a personal level. I dont support a thing, so I wont give material support to a thing. Thats not censorship. Its not censorship when amazon removes a book, or a publisher takes something out of print. If everything is censorship, including freedom of association, nothing is censorship. I think the best thing that can be done about this problem is to promote and create alternate payment processors. The second best thing is to help these sites accept crypto payments (yes I know the article hung a lantern on that, but still)
- bluefirebrand 1y ago> The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was uncomfortable with on a personal level Corporations do not have a "personal level"
- protocolture 1y agoThey do lol. They are run by humans.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoBroadly speaking I'd usually agree, except that Visa/Mastercard are a two-company oligopoly at this point, with effectively no meaningful competition. Yes, other payment mechanisms exist, but consider how much it limits the viability of an online business to not accept credit cards.
- TZubiri 1y agoThere's a gajillion currencies, banking systems, wallets, crypto, amex. Widen your category definition and you'll see it.
- OutOfHere 1y agoCryptocurrencies are sufficiently diverse and popular in this day and age that this should be a non-issue at this time. So many sites accept them already. I even advise using Monero to fully shield the user.
- wombat-man 1y agoAt some point they'd probably want to convert back to fiat and that's the trick. Coinbase or whichever company will probably follow suit.
- hx8 1y agoI think payment processors blocking Coinbase would open them up to large legal liabilities.
- Tadpole9181 1y agoLike payment processors threatening the largest game platform on the planet for decades would, right? There are no legal protections, it needs to be fixed at the government level with payment neutrality policies. Steam has hundreds of millions of users and couldn't fight it. Itch had to go nuclear and kill every single NSFW game ever put on their platform, likely affecting millions.
- hx8 1y ago1. Blocking coinbase would be anti-compeitive behavior which are totally different laws. 2. Valve is not publicly traded so we cannot do a detailed comparison, but all indications show Playstation is a larger gaming platform than Steam. Steam is not "the largest game platform on the planet". 3. Yeah I agree that strong legal regulations for the payment processing industry would be good. I think a public electronic payment processing system would be better, and wide adoption of a crypto-currency based solution would be the best. My trust in governments and central banks to handle monetary policy is very low. My trust in private for-profit companies to handle payment processing is even lower. It's one thing to do well over a few decades, and another thing to do well over a several centuries and real economies operate on a very long timescale. 4. It's disappointing that we treat NSFW as such a taboo.
- dedicate 1y agoHonestly, I think focusing on what is being censored is missing the point. Today it's adult content, which is an easy target. But what about tomorrow? What if they decide your political donation is 'problematic', or the indie news site you subscribe to is 'misinformation'? We're handing a kill switch for legal commerce to a handful of unelected execs.
- bfg_9k 1y ago100% agreed and I think many people are missing the forest from the trees on this issue. This stuff always starts off with "think of the children" and then evolves into something else entirely. How about when we have a game spewing rhetoric about religion being bad (the Assassin's Creed franchise being one example) - should card processors force steam to remove those too, to continue using their payments infrastructure?
- duped 1y ago> Today it's adult content, which is an easy target. Not even that easy of a target, because the crazy people in America want to call anything that acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ people or how they exist within greater society is "adult content" or "pornographic."
- notjoemama 1y ago[flagged]
- Nasrudith 1y agoBanality of evil. Being affable to you in particular doesn't mean not evil, especially to others. And the eliminationism on LGBT status is pretty damn evil.
- notjoemama 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
- xg15 1y agoWaiting for the furry-led, sex-positive counter activist group called "Collective Snout".
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't do this here.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wolfgang42 1y agoI know puns are considered the lowest form of humor, but I still appreciate the occasional bit of levity to lighten the mood in serious discussions.
- tomhow 1y agoGee sometimes it's hard to know what's going to be considered egregious vs whimsical by this community! I've taken off the penalties.
- xg15 1y agoAll good and sorry. I get that there is a risk of this board turning into Reddit if too many whimsy/joke comments are permitted. It would indeed be bad if that happened. I'll be more watchful with my posts in the future.
- draw_down 1y ago[dead]
- potbelly83 1y agoI think a lot of people are missing the point. Most likely what's happening here is that the issuers (not Visa/MC) see a large number of chargebacks/fraud for adult content sites and have determined that it's much easier if they don't accept transactions from these sites.
- iknowSFR 1y agoSure but isn’t allowing those company to pick and choose what industries they service a dangerous precedent? They’ve monopolized the consumer credit markets and as such, can use that weight to dictate competition in consumer markets.
- jfyi 1y agoTheir point is it isn't just a couple companies arbitrarily making these decisions. It is a vast network of banks and merchant services companies. Ideally, you could take your business elsewhere. The problem is providers that handle these industries will expect a premium across all transactions and it would come off badly when customers see that large percentage added to each purchase. So you have the decision of: your customers pay a premium or you don't carry adult material. If all your business is adult, it's an easy choice. You pay the premium. This activist organization is pressing them until they are forced to make that decision based on a small amount of their hosted content. This is what I see as likely. Admittedly though, there are not enough details given to say for sure.
- Goronmon 1y agoMost likely what's happening here is that the issuers (not Visa/MC) see a large number of chargebacks/fraud for adult content sites and have determined that it's much easier if they don't accept transactions from these sites. That's definitely what I would claim if I wanted to take down content I didn't want. Who is going to prove them wrong?
- quest88 1y agoWhy would visa/mc want to decline money? They love making money.
- boopmaster 1y agohttps://yellat.money/ https://yellat.money/ found this useful resource to clap back
- xfeeefeee 1y agoI create music videos which can be provocative, though not necessarily pornographic, and this kind of thing really bothers me since I've run into similar problems even just with hosting and donations. Thankfully, I don't try to make this anything more than a creative outlet, so I don't have to worry about taking payments, and I'm happy enough that any expenses are at least covered by a few donations. But it concerns me that it is not an option for others who might find themselves in similar gray areas.
- throwpoaster 1y agoChina just banned OnlyFans as degenerate, as did Sweden. We should probably be _increasing_ enforcement of public morality through private systems. “You can just start your own payment processor.”
- bavent 1y agoWho’s morals? Yours, specifically, I’m assuming?
- throwpoaster 1y agoI support the anti-porn feminists resisting the capitalist commodification of the female body, yes. What moral system do you advocate? Laissez-faire?
- Tadpole9181 1y agoI'm sorry, did you just in one breathe say we need payment processors to enforce an arbitrary morality and then in the next breathe criticize laissez-faire morality? And what if, tomorrow, the payment processors capitulate with a new morality? They decide women politicians shouldn't be allowed to take donations, for instance? Sex workers should be better supported and the markets cleansed via strict regulation of the labor and how it's treated, and strong unions. Payment processors making a shady porn underground using backdoor finances, even more than it already is, will do nothing but make this problem worse.
- throwpoaster 1y agoI'm not saying morality is arbitrary, no. I'm saying that commodifying human bodies is reprehensible and your advocacy for same is shameful. Live sex work already involves existing payment processors. Porn addicts are definitionally addicted to fantasy. I wish you luck with the rest of your comment.
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
- nicman23 1y agojust use bitcoin. there is literally no downside. it is easier to implement than most payment providers that i know. moreover there are payment provider that work with bitcoin so you do not have to.
- justonceokay 1y agoThe downside is of course that you limit your potential clientele to those who have bitcoin, and that every transaction is publicly logged forever.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nicman23 1y agoyou can just add them along with others. then limit ie adult content to bitcoin payments
- busterarm 1y agoUnless you live in China, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Iraq...
- nicman23 1y agothey first have to prove you have bitcoin.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoHorrible fees, long waiting times, forced centralized exchanges. That’s after they claimed cheap, fast, decentralized. Fk that scam, I’ll stay with regular money.
- nicman23 1y agoso you are quite wrong on fees https://phoenix.acinq.co/faq#where-is-my-on-chain-balance https://phoenix.acinq.co/faq#where-is-my-on-chain-balance if you want to read about recent bitcoin wallets.
- whatamidoingyo 1y agoI spent months working on a dating website. Had Stripe configured, spent the whole time testing with it. Published the site, swapped Stripe to production, and boom, account was closed/banned. According to their own documentation, dating sites are indeed allowed, so long as there's no adult content. The site I built didn't allow adult content. I argued my case, provided the TOS as well as showed that I had features built into the site to prevent that sort of stuff. Still banned. The next step was to go for CCBill, etc. But they all charge a ~$2,000 setup fee. Not happening. It had so many features built into it, and was by far my favorite project. Sadly, I just unpublished it and it will probably forever sit in my project folder unused.
- hellooooooo 1y agoCould it run on lightspark?
- unstatusthequo 1y agoWhy not Square? Why not crypto? I realize HN kinda hates crypto as a group, but it solves your situation here, does it not? I realize it’s another step for users who don’t already have it, but I guess you need to determine whether it would cause enough friction to not get signups.
- PaulHoule 1y agoMost crypto protocols are completely transparent so somebody can write down your wallet address and hassle people you trade crypto with. For instance if you want to turn your crypto into cash the transaction can be blocked there.
- cyanydeez 1y agoalso, there's no legitimate uses for crypto currentl.
- whatamidoingyo 1y ago> Why not Square? I looked for alternatives, such as PayPal, and Square. They consider dating websites "high-risk", so they would most likely ban the account as well. It just seems like too much of a headache to rewrite the codebase to just have the account banned again. > Why not crypto? I thought about this as well. I don't dislike the idea of crypto, but what would users think? It would probably be a huge red flag and look like a scam site. So, the dating sites that are already in existence are it - they own the market. I'm pretty sure I've read that the execs of Stripe are also invested in Tinder/Bumble*, etc. No wonder it's extremely difficult to compete. * - not sure if this is actually true.
- VegaKH 1y agoI agree with the premise of this post, but I'd like to see it made by someone else (and not only because this is on a furry blog.)Their argument is also poorly formed and poorly written. They start by defending their use of furry art and railing against potential backlash from HN. Then spend a lot of words talking about how Collective Shout isn't anti-LGBTQ, but could potentially become anti-LGBTQ, but even if it's not anti-LGBTQ it's bad because it's anti-abortion. None of this is actually pertinent to the argument. Then they talk about alternatives to Visa /Mastercard, such as crypto, WERO, FedNOW, petitions, blah blah blah. Next we move on to some good-old-fashioned self promotion, talking about how they helped save some library from the evil right wing politicians. And the article ends without even making one coherent argument, which should be this: two American companies should not be able to dictate the moral standards of censorship for the world. They have too much power and too little oversight. Let's start with that.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago[flagged]
- WorldMaker 1y ago> two American companies should not be able to dictate the moral standards of censorship for the world. They have too much power and too little oversight. Let's start with that. To be fair, it's more than just two companies (and not all of them are US based). It's an ecosystem of companies with two major choke points. Groups like Collective Shout work because Visa and MasterCard have deeply conservative Terms & Conditions and you can whine to them enough legally that they aren't taking their T&Cs correctly and "must" do a thing. Visa and MasterCard's T&Cs are heavily conservative not just because they are conservative banking companies, but because they are conservative banking middlemen. A lot of their T&Cs also reflect all the Merchant Banks that these networks rely on to float the liquidity of the networks. Those Merchant Banks want a minimal risk on their high volume of investments in micro-loans. They express that minimal risk desire in strict, conservative T&Cs. (It's a fun hypocrisy of the US-based Merchant Banks especially to want such minimal risk given they have the ability to use Federal Reserve 0% loans to back their portfolio of payment network loans. They have almost nothing but upside and surprisingly minimal risk naturally from that. But these are business-to-business banks that make their money the lowest risk ways.) Visa and MasterCard get squeezed at both ends with what the Merchant Banks want and what these groups like Collective Shout want and become the easy chokepoint to attack. If the Merchant Banks backed off some Visa and MasterCard could potentially loosen their T&Cs. Unfortunately as business-to-business banks, most of the biggest Merchant Banks (which often don't have recognizable consumer brands), several of which are not US-based, have very little interest in hearing from us and I don't see an easy strategy to encourage them to take more risks in the same way that a vocal minority team can encourage Visa and MasterCard to take fewer risks because their T&Cs already say so. I can still blame Visa and MasterCard for being cowards on these and related subjects and not pushing back against loud complainers and highly conservative Merchant Banks, while also respecting that their position on some of this is between a rock and a hard place, as much "just a middleman" as a controlling character in what is happening.
- busterarm 1y agoAt least in Japan, I'm surprised that they haven't expanded Suica and similar systems to include online shopping.
- AshamedCaptain 1y agoSo that Visa buys them, like it happened to French Carte bleue the moment it started targetting online shopping?
- AlexeyBelov 1y agoVisa can only buy you if you sell.
- ranger_danger 1y agoThey did back in the 2000s, I used to buy stuff online with Edy. The problem was you had to buy a FeliCa USB adapter, or have a Sony Vaio or similar laptop that had a reader embedded. It never took off and people stopped offering it. But even more IRL merchants are now accepting 交通系 IC cards as payment methods. I can use mine at the arcade and never worry about coins.
- _--__--__ 1y agoDLSite (the closest thing to a Japanese itch.io) was one of the first targets of this push over a year ago. I'm pretty sure they just stopped accepting Visa/Mastercard on the site but set up a weird 'third party' where you could buy 'DLSite points' with your credit card.
- lucyjojo 1y agoPayPay?
- yiffinhell72525 1y ago[dead]
- jjcob 1y agoNot sure if stuff like WERO will help. I talked to a social worker who works with sex workers, and apparently a major problem they have is that local banks refuse them as customers. Which is ridiculous. Why should a sex worker not be able to open a bank account?
- Henchman21 1y agoBecause whores must be punished. First day in the USA? And for those that need it: */s*
- jjcob 1y agoI don't live in the US, I live in Austria. Different country, same hypocricy.
- gus_tpm 1y agoI did not know this was such a widespread problem until everyone online started talking about it. Going to try and find out if this also affects Portuguese sex workers even though I feel like it 100% does
- throwpoaster 1y ago[flagged]
- Jzush 1y agoI don’t care for furries myself but I think so long as it’s legal and doesn’t harm anyone. I don’t care what an adult chooses to spend their own money on. And neither should payment processors. They have no business being gatekeepers for anyone’s money. My money isn’t and shouldn’t be subject to their shareholders interests.
- throwpoaster 1y ago> as it’s legal and doesn’t harm anyone Porn harms everyone involved.
- Jzush 1y agoThat’s a personal opinion not a fact with any merit. And as a personal opinion has no bearing on what an adult should be allowed to spend their money on.
- throwpoaster 1y agoTell that to the sex trafficking victims. Are you a Tate supporter? In reality, the belief that porn is harmless has no evidentiary support. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography
- Jzush 1y agoIt’s not worth debating if you dissolve everything to a black and white argument. In your definition someone sending a cute sexy picture via text to their significant other is tantamount to rape and slavery. The argument is ridiculous on the face of it and just not worth discussing at that point. Payment processors aren’t taking a stance against slavery and human trafficking by blocking the sales of X rated games on Steam and itch.io and you know that. And payment processors certainly have no right inserting themselves into any transaction period. They are not the money police. For any other issues between a person and a product there are other infrastructures in place that should have intervened before it ever got to the point of “supporting human trafficking”. Ridiculous.
- pluto_modadic 1y agowhy not bitcoin? because: "Repeat after me: all technical problems of sufficient scope or impact are actually political problems first" - Eleanor Saitta
- gs2gs06 1y agoContact Numbers Payments— they are experts in this space.