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FetLife Announcement

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Re: FetLife Announcement

#41

Post by prnthrowaway »

Tharkun wrote: post #36

The problem with major Credit Card companies is that they're all American and that the US of A is incredibly moralistic. For the sake of convenience, I'm considering PayPal to be part of the same club of moralistic knobs. It's virtually impossible to set up any kind of online shop without accepting one or more of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa or AmEx. As soon as you accept money for anything one of these FOUR(!) financial…

It used to be impossible to pay for porn with PayPal, however last year (I think) one of the biggest names in gay porn started accepting them as a payment method, so I guess something changed.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#43

Post by fweespeech »

sp332 wrote: post #39
Tharkun wrote: post #36

The problem with major Credit Card companies is that they're all American and that the US of A is incredibly moralistic. For the sake of convenience, I'm considering PayPal to be part of the same club of moralistic knobs. It's virtually impossible to set up any kind of online shop without accepting one or more of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa or AmEx. As soon as you accept money for anything one of these FOUR(!) financial…

It's not just moralistic. Porn sites have crazy high fraud rates that make them very unpalatable from a business perspective.

If that logic was the case, they'd simply have a fraud metric that if you exceeded you'd have your account disabled.

As someone who works at a company where we literally have thieves testing cards on our site on a daily basis, any site that accepts credit cards has a high rate of frauds as thieves test cards. Somehow, we manage not to pass these cards to credit card processors (and no, I don't mean we use Stripe. I mean we have our own in-house anti-fraud process since we deal with the processors through a merchant account at a major bank like FL does). Porn companies have filtering in place as well for the same reason.

It would be a solid metric instead of "morality" if the cause was what you believe it to be.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#44

Post by tptacek »

zakk wrote: post #35

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era? Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? The same happens when someone is banned from Facebook and Twitter: of course there are other options, but he won'…

Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally.

These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#45

Post by zakk »

tptacek wrote: post #44
zakk wrote: post #35

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era? Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? The same happens when someone is banned from Facebook and Twitter: of course there are other options, but he won'…

Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally. These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.

> These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.

In my opinion they have a lot to do with the First Amendment.

When a few big players can effectively and arbitrarily put someone out of business, that's quite a problem in my opinion.

When a few big players can effectively silence a voice, that's a free speech problem, in my opinion.

As our lives move from physical places to the Internet, I would like to see the same liberties maintained.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#46

Post by modeless »

timmaah wrote: post #32
andreyf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still don't see why they can't just accept bitcoin. Buying BTC via credit card is trivial via Coinbase (and they won't ban customers), and while they won't get 100%, they're much more likely to get quite a bit more than 0.1% even if BTC is the only payment option.

Do you think their lawyers and staff want to get paid in BTC?

They wouldn't have to. There are at least 18 other bitcoin exchanges they could use: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d

Re: FetLife Announcement

#47

Post by modeless »

TylerE wrote: post #15
Shank wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this may be true, Coinbase isn't synonymous for Bitcoin -- the true "idealized" version is that you generate your own BTC transaction system (or use an off the shelf one?) -- not use a processor (ergo, not Coinbase).

Still have to cash out through somebody if you want ActualMoney(tm).

There are at least 18 exchanges supporting Bitcoin to dollar conversion that are not Coinbase: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d

There are also other options such as various OTC trading desks or Gemini's daily auctions. And finally, there are several other full-service payment processors that they could try besides Coinbase.

Coinbase was a really bad pick for them. It's almost certainly the single least likely option to be able to support fringe businesses, due to their close relationship with banks and credit card companies.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#48

Post by problems »

robhu wrote: post #38
andreyf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still don't see why they can't just accept bitcoin. Buying BTC via credit card is trivial via Coinbase (and they won't ban customers), and while they won't get 100%, they're much more likely to get quite a bit more than 0.1% even if BTC is the only payment option.

If it is provable that Coinbase is being used as a means of bypassing VISA et al's restrictions on sites like FetLife, what is stop VISA et al doing the same to Coinbase?

You can already proxy around the CC companies in all too many ways. Buy gift cards, cash cards, heck, prepaid VISA cards for example.

They're not going to bother going after this kind of thing, they'd lose money over it. It doesn't make sense from a financial perspective.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#49

Post by Navarr »

zakk wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally. These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.

> These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment. In my opinion they have a lot to do with the First Amendment. When a few big players can effectively and arbitrarily put someone out of business, that's quite a problem in my opinion. When a few big players can effectively silence a voice, that's a free speech problem, in my opinion. As our lives move from physical places to the Internet…

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

These boundaries have nothing to do with the first amendment.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#50

Post by LordKano »

zakk wrote: post #35

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era? Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? The same happens when someone is banned from Facebook and Twitter: of course there are other options, but he won'…

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business.

Which is just the tip of the iceberg as to why the idea of a cashless society is so terrifying.

Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate?

Oddly enough, if you belong to a group or political faction that is highly reviled, they certainly can.

Remember when a Wal-Mart refused to provide a birthday cake for a child whose name was "Adolph Hitler Campbell"?

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