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Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

economist.com

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Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#21

Post by MattGaiser »

epicureanideal wrote: post #2

Reluctant? Really? Citation needed.

Reluctant because they aren't taking the initiative on these things. Some lawmakers or activist groups created a lot of pressure and they bowed to it.

I don't think they want to be dealing with any of this as it is costly (compliance staff and lost revenue) and fraught with political peril. But when the alternative is press releases arguing that Visa is helping aid sexual exploitation, they are going to choose to wash their hands of the market segment.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#22

Post by matheusmoreira »

rektide wrote: post #14

Weird to me how misdirected the mass outrage against tech censorship feels, given that it's really the payment processors doing the most to stigmatize & make untenable any form of speech & commerce they consider risky.

Google and other advertisers are also part of the problem. They set policies on what is and isn't acceptable for sites with ads they serve. Sites will literally censor themselves out of fear Google will pull their ads.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#23

Post by streamofdigits »

Everybody wants to become a "reluctant regulator of the web" if it means them getting a cut of all economic activity (as the new tax man) without any liability

Let us not be naive. The decades long preference for oligopolistic rather than competitive markets is what created behemoths (both new and old) and now the only question is who of them is going to be granted the keys to the digital kingdom by fiat.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#24

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

RL_Quine wrote: post #20
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar, semi educated situation as you are. But my interpretation of what I have read so far is different: As far as I understand it: When a channel you have open is closed by the other side of the channel your wallet needs to know this within a certain time (24 hours? Can't remember). So to avoid having to read the blockchain updates once a day, you would subscribe to some service that tells you when one o…

You're misreading the graphs, the chain size can grow at most by 576MB a day. A maximum of 4MB per block, 6 per hour, 24 hours per day.

Oh, it is "368.664K Megabytes", not "368.664K Bytes"?

The day before yesterday it shows: 368.471K

Yesterday it shows: 368.664K

So "0.193K" up in that day.

What does that mean? 193 Megabytes?

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#25

Post by lawn »

RL_Quine wrote: post #17
lawn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That provide liquidity, open or manage channels for you, watch your channel so you don't lose your money or even hold your keys (as is the case with some popular wallets people recommend). And the network itself centralizes around large hubs (otherwise route finding doesn't scale).

The repeated comments about "routing not scaling" are sort of weird, there's no real technical hurdle to overcome. Approximations of route finding are really all that's necessary, there's no strong centralizing force to be found there.

"no real technical hurdle to overcome"

Uh, this kind of route finding is still an open problem, and there's not even an idea of how to address it.

Approximations don't scale, as routes will start failing more and more as the network grows(due to liquidity issues). Therefore routes will go through well-connected and well-funded nodes, which is the centralizing force you're looking for.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#26

Post by RL_Quine »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #24
RL_Quine wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misreading the graphs, the chain size can grow at most by 576MB a day. A maximum of 4MB per block, 6 per hour, 24 hours per day.

Oh, it is "368.664K Megabytes", not "368.664K Bytes"? The day before yesterday it shows: 368.471K Yesterday it shows: 368.664K So "0.193K" up in that day. What does that mean? 193 Megabytes?

I don't know, blockchain.com has a history of showing just complete garbage information.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#27

Post by vineyardmike »

throwawaysea wrote: post #13

Payments should be treated like a public utility services, so that they cannot deny customers or uses that are legal. It is a bad idea to let any private service that is so widespread and fundamental to function as a proxy regulator of speech. This problem was very apparent when Wikileaks faced a payment blockade a decade back ( https://www.commondreams.org/news/2012/07/18/wikileaks-break... ). We are overdue to reig…

> they cannot deny customers or uses that are legal

What about services that are maybe-legal? As I understand, a lot of the sex-related industry (porn, etc) have some issues related to revenge porn, consent, exploitation, etc. Its hard for the payment processor to trust that every transaction is legal. Especially when occasional illegal content slips in.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#28

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Isinlor wrote: post #8

I would want to see regulations where banks are explicitly forbidden from blocking legal transactions. If it's legal then banks should have no choice but to handle it.

The biggest problem with this is that we already have regulations than punish banks for processing illegal transactions.

If you don't want that, and you want the banks not to refuse any legal transactions, that's easy. They then don't refuse to process any transactions at all.

If you do want them to refuse illegal transactions, and they're allowed to refuse legal transactions, that makes it easy for the bank because then they just refuse anything marginal even if it's totally legitimate. This is what we have now. It's not a problem for the bank but it's a big problem for the people getting unjustly locked out.

Expecting the bank to process no illegal transactions and all legal transactions is an impossible burden, because nobody actually knows what that means. The meaning of a lot of laws isn't even settled until they get litigated in court and set a precedent. It would require the bank to be infallible, and know everything about everybody's business, because a mistake in either direction would incur penalties.

So which one do you want? (The first one actually looks pretty good when you consider the alternatives. Let the police be the police and the bank be the bank.)

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#29

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

lawn wrote: post #25
RL_Quine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The repeated comments about "routing not scaling" are sort of weird, there's no real technical hurdle to overcome. Approximations of route finding are really all that's necessary, there's no strong centralizing force to be found there.

"no real technical hurdle to overcome" Uh, this kind of route finding is still an open problem, and there's not even an idea of how to address it. Approximations don't scale, as routes will start failing more and more as the network grows(due to liquidity issues). Therefore routes will go through well-connected and well-funded nodes, which is the centralizing force you're looking for.

Even if there were only as many nodes as there are countries in the world, that would make a more open payment network than the credit card systems.

There are 195 countries in the world. And a user could pay via any of those 195 nodes.

When you accept a certain credit card type (Visa, Mastercard etc) only users who are customers of that company can pay you.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#30

Post by 0xy »

Isinlor wrote: post #8

I would want to see regulations where banks are explicitly forbidden from blocking legal transactions. If it's legal then banks should have no choice but to handle it.

It's a very difficult task to determine if a transaction is legal or not, sometimes impossible. Regulations differ not only on the country and state level, but sometimes the city level.

For example, can you buy alcohol in Delaware? Well, not if it's Sunday. How about a weekday? Not if it's between 1am and 9am.

Can you buy alcohol in New Jersey on Sunday? Sure, well not if you're in Bergen County.

That's one product. How do you propose these companies codify the entire world's regulations? It would require thousands of people to maintain the rule engine.

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