It isn't just payment processing. Recently looking at various ethical ETFs, I'm finding that they all filter out companies for social harm. Which includes porn. Even the green ETFs. So on the first few paragraphs of the disclosure doc you are investing in companies with carbon targets meeting whatever criteria, no fossil fuels, etc. And next find out they are also skipping gambling, guns, tobacco and adult entertainment.
The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
341–350 of 372 posts
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bank transfers are still a thing, aren't they? And payment processors built around those? I can't recall when was the last time I paid on-line using my card . On that note, the whole reliance on cards for on-line feels like a stupid hack that got way out of control. A card is just a physical access token for the account - it shouldn't be reused on-line like this. You should be able to generate per-payment tokens on d…
That being said, there are several initiatives that can hopefully challenge the visa/mc hegemony: https://payid.com.au/ is gaining wide adoption in Australia. It seems like Australia has abandoned their homegrown payment rails (EFTPOS) in recent years and all bank cards are actually visa/mc. But maybe with PayId on phones this will change again. https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta... is comin…
eftpos has been quiet while doing quite a lot of innovation (eg - [0]). ATMs and any CHQ/SAV transaction still run on their rails, and there’s a lot of iceberg below what you see in terms of branding at point of sale and plastic cards.
[0] https://www.eftposaustralia.com.au/news/eftpos-has-started-c...
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's getting causation wrong, it's just confusing 'accountable to [in its opinion] the wrong entities' with 'unaccountable'. The banks are accountable to their boards which are accountable to their shareholders, which (the ones that matter) are increasingly .. I hate to use the word but 'woke' activists - nudging companies in the 'right' direction either from a moral standpoint or from a perceived moral…
The bank prudery is a response to the government's willingness to hold banks accountable for turning a blind eye to money going to illicit purposes. Yes, both PornHub and OnlyFans haven't been careful enough with screening their material but we normally don't hold hosts responsible for perfect policing of user content--except when sex is involved.
Governments have been willing to reign in banks in some capacity? That hasn't been a thing since the 90s it feels like.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your point? That someone at the Guardian does not share your personal opinion? As for me, I'm not okay with either banks discriminating against free speech and banks discriminating against porn. For example, I was vigorously against banks blocking Wikileaks payments. Therefore, I'm fine with the Guardian article.
What about banning Proud Boy accounts or Gab/Andrew Torba?
That's an absurd false dichotomy. We don't need to choose between being okay with banks discriminating in all circumstances and discriminating in no circumstances. If you support banks serving the Proud Biys are you okay with them serving Jihadi terrorist groups and autocratic dictators? Porn isn't trying to establish a white ethnostate.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#345'The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks'
So the fact that there's underage children selling porn on OnlyFans isn't a scandal? What about the bestiality on sale?
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is there any fraud these days with 3d secure, etc?
Even with 3DS challenges, people are persuaded out of their one-time passcodes by phishing, using an increasingly elaborate series of text-message and voice-call based deceptions. I hate the term, but search for “smishing” and there’s a bunch of material explaining the exploits. Depending on the region, only a small fraction of payments are enrolled in the framework to do that validation / challenge anyway, it’s been…
Yeah but why would anyone bother with with all the hassle and some porn. Other than few people for the lulz, I can’t imagine this being serious problem (when 3ds works)
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it either a form of discrimination that doesn’t line up with any protected class, or a bona fide discrimination against areas that have a high chargeback rate? I’m interested in how much the morals we don’t like line up with the cold stats we would follow.
Sex workers are effectively a subset of women. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a protected class. My personal sense of justice leads me to think that there should be some amount of protection for any worker, even if the powers that be disagree.
Yes, though sex workers aren't workers of an employer, who give worker's rights. I'd like greater amounts of protection, but is requiring Visa and Mastercard to do business the right move?
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Competition is not apples to apples, but it is possible. You have no realistic options to take payments from a mass audience if payment networks cuts you off - that is a huge difference.
> Competition is not apples to apples, but it is possible. Ok, demonstrate that by creating a YT competitor with 2 billion users. Then tell us how possible it is.
You're moving goal posts. The vast majority of users on YouTube has no realistic access to an audience that size.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a difference between a platform that can be easily replaced choosing not to serve certain content, and infrastructure providers choosing to deny service. I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition. I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being allowed to choose, because their position then makes them eff…
What a nonsensical argument. There's no replacement for Youtube or Twitter in the same exact sense that there's no replacement for when a banking/CC industry bans you. Yeah, there are vastly inferior alternatives which almost nobody uses (Bitchute, Minds, cryptocurrencies), but that cuts you off from the vast audience that they've monopolized. An audience that want to read you and wants to pay you, evident by the vas…
What cuts you off from the vast audience is that most of them will never see your content. The network effect can make a difference, but it's exaggerated in the sense that the vast majority of people will never get much exposure.
Twitter stats are a good example of this. Look at the stats for your individual tweets. I have an account with 45k. I can beat the organic exposure for a tweet with 1-2 USD of ads.
That's not to say the big networks have no value, and you could end up one of the lucky ones with huge exposure.
But they remain giants because people keep thinking they're much more important than they are.
They are important if you get big on them. The vast majority will never get big or even mid sized on them.
Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that the banks all move in lock step, undermining the basic principle of the free market. If one bank decides it doesn’t want to deal with porn, fine. But when all the banks decide that, that’s very very bad. The cumulative effect is a chilling of protected speech in a way that congress could never legally get away with.
> The issue is that the banks all move in lock step, undermining the basic principle of the free market. The banks all doing the same thing is exactly what you would expect in a free market. They are all in the same market (credit card processing) and all have the same information on the risks and costs and revenue in that market for handling various types of transactions. All of them that make rational decisions sup…
Operation chokepoint