Payments 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.
I 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.
> 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.
I 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?
Clarifying 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)
This is a mis-definition of censorship, similar to what happens to 'propaganda', where you're only considering the censorship that you don't like to be censorship.
If your water company stops delivering water to you because you post furry porn it becomes a problem. The problem is when a company becomes so big that it is a natural monopoly (or effectively part of a cartel), while basically being necessary infrastructure to operate in a modern society.
These payment networks fit that description, and should either be broken apart so that you get the necessary competition, or be regulated so that they have to provide service for legal goods and services in a given jurisdiction.
Cryptocurrencies 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.
Diverse, yes - but I wouldn't call it popular as a means of making regular financial transaction.
I would certainly only use it as last resort. Too slow, too cumbersome, most of the benefits being overstated or misunderstood. Even in this case, while you certainly can't block the transaction from going through, the site still needs a payment provider to manage transactions which someone might pressure into not working with adult sites.
The alternative is writing their own payment solution entirely to avoid having to work with anyone, but that's an entirely different rat's nest with regulatory complications.
They're still miserable from a UX perspective and for those of us in KYC countries? It can be very burdensome to verify ourselves and actually exchange real money for them.
Buying litecoin and sending it to someone else was a huge pain in my butt to put it mildly.
Furries making their own 00s-themed site website for chat/art/games powered by crypto would be the greatest thing. Small bonus if the website is open-source and provides data dumps, big bonus if it’s federated.
It would alleviate censorship concerns. It sounds practical, my understanding is that furries are statistically much more tech-savvy and willing to spend money and effort. Copyright and CSAM are issues that must be addressed, but hopefully small enough to be manageable, since it’s primarily furries (not realistic, not in aggressively copyrighted pop culture). And it seems like something many people would like, at least the nostalgic people in online spaces like HN. If it gets popular enough to extend to other niches I would join and help fund.
Honestly, 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.
> 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."
Combine required/trendy KYC.
With trendy reputation score and similar attributes for purchase/sale/trade.
With machine agent automated decision flows.
With pushing everything into digital.
With near mono/duo/tri-opolization of goods/services.
Then, a near invisible control grid is almost complete.
I 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.
I 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.
just 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.
I 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.
I 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.
why not bitcoin? because: "Repeat after me: all technical problems of sufficient scope or impact are actually political problems first" - Eleanor Saitta
33 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 53.6 ms ] thread> 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.
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?
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)
These payment networks fit that description, and should either be broken apart so that you get the necessary competition, or be regulated so that they have to provide service for legal goods and services in a given jurisdiction.
I would certainly only use it as last resort. Too slow, too cumbersome, most of the benefits being overstated or misunderstood. Even in this case, while you certainly can't block the transaction from going through, the site still needs a payment provider to manage transactions which someone might pressure into not working with adult sites.
The alternative is writing their own payment solution entirely to avoid having to work with anyone, but that's an entirely different rat's nest with regulatory complications.
Buying litecoin and sending it to someone else was a huge pain in my butt to put it mildly.
It would alleviate censorship concerns. It sounds practical, my understanding is that furries are statistically much more tech-savvy and willing to spend money and effort. Copyright and CSAM are issues that must be addressed, but hopefully small enough to be manageable, since it’s primarily furries (not realistic, not in aggressively copyrighted pop culture). And it seems like something many people would like, at least the nostalgic people in online spaces like HN. If it gets popular enough to extend to other niches I would join and help fund.
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."
Combine required/trendy KYC. With trendy reputation score and similar attributes for purchase/sale/trade. With machine agent automated decision flows. With pushing everything into digital. With near mono/duo/tri-opolization of goods/services.
Then, a near invisible control grid is almost complete.
But that's the goal on the face of it.
Let's use it for good, all.
found this useful resource to clap back
“You can just start your own payment processor.”
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.
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.
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?