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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

#61

Post by mildmotive »

There was this case where Pornhub hosted a lot of rape footage of teenagers[1]. Victims came forward, they testified of their abuse and said that they tried very hard to remove videos involving their sexual assault from the platform. They were however unable to successfully do so because not only were Pornhub careless and unresponsive, the videos would shortly after being removed (if they ever were) resurface on the same platform. A petition was launched and signed by circa 2 million people (including myself). Pornhub was brought to court[2] and found themselves forced to remove any material that they could not verify was consensual. Millions of videos ended up getting purged[3]. Visa refused to handle payments from them as a result of what had happened[4].

What Pornhub and by extension its mother company MindGeek has done is obviously beyond despicable. After myself knowing the context of some of the services that these payment processors have refused to work with (particularly in the “adult” industry), I would never call what they are doing censorship. I’m instead happy that someone with authority is stepping up. Could this authority be abused? Sure. Is the aforementioned an example of abuse of authority? Absolutely not. It’s an example of when people in authority are doing their job. I don’t want to see anyone’s mother, sister or daughter getting raped and have their rape being filmed for the sexual gratification of millions of viewers online. Seeing Visa and others do the right thing in this case is a breath of fresh air.

[1] https://traffickinghubpetition.com/

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=b4auDHtorGM

[3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/pornhub-purges-a...

[4] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/14/business/mastercard-visa-...

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

#62

Post by rich_sasha »

0xy wrote: post #30
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.…

The bar should be, is this business legally allowed to conduct business, not finer grained. It’s on the business not not break local laws.

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

#63

Post by Cthulhu_ »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #19

What do you mean, "are becoming"? They have always been. If the payment processors don't want to be associated with a service, they'll refuse to handle payments and then there's simply no way for the service providers to get paid. See wikileaks and other "problematic" sites. Advertisers are also regulators. I've seen sites start heavily censoring themselves because someone complained to Google and they pulled the ads…

And they should, for their own protection; they will be taken down hard if they are found to be complicit in financing things like terrorism and child pornography.

When it comes to the recent events around Pornhub and Onlyfans, the payment processors erred on the side of caution, because those two customers of theirs couldn't for definite guarantee that nothing shady was going on on their websites.

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

#64

Post by busymom0 »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #40
kmfrk wrote: post #31

More than ten years ago since Visa, Mastercard etc blocked access to WikiLeaks: https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html . I guess they started blocking things The Economist care about.

Yeah, and didn't seem reluctant at all at the time.

Every single time there’s a HN discussion about censorship and I comment about how we shouldn’t be okay with censorship of anyone regardless of how offensive they might be or whether or not it’s some private corporation and usually it gets downvoted. When the wind starts blowing the opposite direction, only then do people wake up.

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

#65

Post by thriftwy »

rawbot wrote: post #50
matheusmoreira wrote: post #19

What do you mean, "are becoming"? They have always been. If the payment processors don't want to be associated with a service, they'll refuse to handle payments and then there's simply no way for the service providers to get paid. See wikileaks and other "problematic" sites. Advertisers are also regulators. I've seen sites start heavily censoring themselves because someone complained to Google and they pulled the ads…

This is a recent situation. Back in the early 00's, paying for something online with a credit card, other than porn, was a novelty. I think things started to change in the late 00's. I remember a LOT of software being sold online (licenses and such) was sold via money orders or sometimes wire transfers.

Travel is what enabled CC payments over the net. Airline/train tickets and hotel accomodations and internet payments are a match.

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

#66

Post by lawn »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #29
lawn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The comparison should be with cryptocurrencies, which problems LN was supposed to solve, not the credit card companies.

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

#67

Post by shapefrog »

busymom0 wrote: post #64
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and didn't seem reluctant at all at the time.

Every single time there’s a HN discussion about censorship and I comment about how we shouldn’t be okay with censorship of anyone regardless of how offensive they might be or whether or not it’s some private corporation and usually it gets downvoted. When the wind starts blowing the opposite direction, only then do people wake up.

So you demand freedom for all ... except those that are using their freedom in the way you dont like.

For the avoidence of doubt, I am talking about the freedom to not have someone in your house / your company platform.

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

#68

Post by zpeti »

mildmotive wrote: post #61

There was this case where Pornhub hosted a lot of rape footage of teenagers[1]. Victims came forward, they testified of their abuse and said that they tried very hard to remove videos involving their sexual assault from the platform. They were however unable to successfully do so because not only were Pornhub careless and unresponsive, the videos would shortly after being removed (if they ever were) resurface on the…

Don't forget that in this case 2 million people signed a petition saying what's happening on the platform is non consensual, AND they got taken to court and lost.

That is the legal system working. Taking payments away for someone who has lost in the legal system, on the censorship scale is probably more acceptable even to someone who's very pro free speech.

It's another thing when visa and mastercard ban forums or subscriptions for people who are voicing their personal political opinions. That becomes a slippery slope very quickly. What court or jurisdiction or due process to visa and mastercard have to decide what is acceptable or not? Is being anti immigration acceptable, or is that racist? What about anti illegal immigration? What about feminists worried about trans rights? What about covid vaccinations? Youtube has blanket banned pro and anti vaccination content. Should mastercard follow? What about anti climate change discussion? What about anti green tax discussion, does that count as anti climate change?

We are on this slippery slope already IMO. And it's not looking very good good for free speech.

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

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

shapefrog wrote: post #67
busymom0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single time there’s a HN discussion about censorship and I comment about how we shouldn’t be okay with censorship of anyone regardless of how offensive they might be or whether or not it’s some private corporation and usually it gets downvoted. When the wind starts blowing the opposite direction, only then do people wake up.

So you demand freedom for all ... except those that are using their freedom in the way you dont like. For the avoidence of doubt, I am talking about the freedom to not have someone in your house / your company platform.

No, they demand a principled balance between the two freedoms, that's independent of the content of the speech. What you're talking about is what's status quo - freedom for private businesses to not serve someone, except when it contradicts certain narratives, at which point it becomes a national news story about bigoted business owners.

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

#70

Post by curtisblaine »

I always thought that cryptocurrencies and the whole circuit around them are "useful" in the sense that they provide an alternative to the Mastercard / VISA duopoly - see all the "free speech" platform that were refused by CC circuits and at the moment are alive only thanks to crypto payments.

Obviously, a day will come when the biggest processors (ie Coinbase) will be forced to not accept certain clients / transactions, effectively destroying in practice the possibility of exchanging cryptocurrencies with dollars.

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