Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by walterbell » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

US, UK, Europe and China are exploring CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), e.g. June '21, https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/bank-of-england-tells-...

> Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said during a conference on Monday that programming could become a key feature of any future central bank digital currency ... what happens if one of the participants in a transaction puts a restriction on [future use of the money]? ... Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said digital currencies could be programmed for commercial or social purposes ... “You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.”

At an IMF meeting last October, Swiss BIS director Carstens commented on CBDCs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVmKN4DSu3g&t=1451s

> With cash, we don't know who is using the 100 dollar bill today ... a key difference with CBDC is that the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that determine the expression of that central bank liability .. also we will have the technology to enforce that ... if an advanced economy issues a CBDC, and someone in a 3rd country wants to use it, it will require the consent of the central bank of the residence of that person, therefore the degree of control will be far bigger.

Well-intentioned initiatives like Linux Foundation GHP (https://www.goodhealthpass.org/), EU digital health certificate and Apple+Android digital driver's license can all be drafted into the service of CBDC initiatives which require digital identity for digital currency wallets, unifying online and offline policy for programmable "permissions" like carbon/food quotas or other social credits. If western citizens acclimate to "showing papers" for routine daily movement, then real-time policy can be applied to those movements.

This could replace fungible currency with "colored credits", with policy attached to both the origin of money and a whitelist of possible destinations, goods or services. PayPal has amended their ToS to include merchant content regulation as a condition of payment processing.

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

#82

Post by oleganza » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

pornel wrote: post #76

oleganza wrote: post #43

Since HN generally does not like mentions of Bitcoin, here are some stats. Bitcoin was launched 12 years ago, reached $1'000'000'000'000 monetization this year (>1.5x larger than IMF), exploded interest and funding for cryptography and p2p networking over the past 6-8 years, and is marching towards reaching monetization of gold ($11T). Lightning network runs over 3 years already and growing its capacity exponentially…

Now do stats about energy usage!

Sorry, that's a purely political take, nothing to do with economics or technology. Everyone is using energy to do the things they want to do.

Notice that Bitcoin is somehow specially demonized, but vacation travels or Li-Ion battery production is not. (Although, travels are largerly banned, so there's some progress there.)

I'm pretty sure even if everyone transitioned to "renewable energy" (also largely ideological concept), it would still be useful to demonize Bitcoin for using too much energy, like it's not good to "hoard" money. The reason for that is that Bitcoin is the hardest money there has ever been, so people are fighting to accumulate as much of it as possible before everyone else.

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

#83

Post by oleganza » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:02 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #51

oleganza wrote: post #43

Since HN generally does not like mentions of Bitcoin, here are some stats. Bitcoin was launched 12 years ago, reached $1'000'000'000'000 monetization this year (>1.5x larger than IMF), exploded interest and funding for cryptography and p2p networking over the past 6-8 years, and is marching towards reaching monetization of gold ($11T). Lightning network runs over 3 years already and growing its capacity exponentially…

>and every person has as much bitcoin as they want to carry People never have enough, they can never be satisfied if there is someone else who might have more than them.

I mean, relative to other other assets in your own portfolio. You can always switch between 1%, 10% and 100%, however you like at any point in time. As of Bitcoin, there are plenty of people who have 0% and haven't come about to increase it to X%.

If you want to maximize your $$$ _compared to others_, that's up for your enterprising skills, and nothing to do with bitcoin monetization progress.

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

#84

Post by TacticalCoder » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:13 AM UTC

curtisblaine wrote: post #70

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 / transacti…

> 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.

This would only prevent that possibility for the affected clients and only on Coinbase.

By the way Coinbase already has the possibility to blacklist any USDC address it is required to do so by law enforcement. (USDC being a stable coins basically worth 1:1 with USD at this point). And that is because the smart contract governing USDC can have its list of blacklisted addresses updated at any moment.

So in a way the day you're talking about is already there.

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

#85

Post by cblconfederate » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

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…

Sounds like too much fuss for a what was a tiny amount of videos,and an antiporn crusade started by an NYTimes columnist. Great for the anti porn crusaders i guess but this is the kind of thing that urges people to do away with the dystopian fiat money system. Looking forward to see them suing facebook which hosts far more CP

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

#86

Post by Isinlor » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #28

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…

It should not be so much whether it is legal or illegal in the strict sense. The question is whether bank has sufficient evidence to suspect that illegal activity is taking place.

So bank should be held liable if they:

- do not collect evidence

- do not act on evidence

- if they act without evidence

The bank should face appropriate penalties for making misjudgments in both directions. For example, you should have a right to sue bank for refusing to provide a service. The court could judge whether bank had sufficient grounds to refuse to conduct the business with you.

The bank should also provide the evidence to law enforcement to trigger investigation into alleged illegal misconduct. If the judicial systems clears you, then again, you should be able to compel bank to provide the basic financial services.

There is regulation like that for individuals in EU. Banks are obliged by the law to provide basic financial services (bank account and identification services if I recall correctly) to EU residents as part of the European Single Market.

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

#87

Post by realmod » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:24 AM UTC

traveler01 wrote: post #73

They're basically commiting suicide at this point. With them blocking all that kind of stuff, people will start looking another way (you know).

And this "other way" won't be cryptocurrency. Countries are and will continue to push for e-currency. It is simply too much power and granular control to give up.

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

#88

Post by colde » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:28 AM UTC

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…

MindGeek could obviously have done more. But i don't think you are being transparent about who promoted and ran that petition.

It was heavily promoted by Exodus Cry, an organisation that seeks to completely ban porn, strip clubs and any type of sex work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry

This whole thing has lead to a lot unintended consequences that has significantly hurt, or impacted sex workers negatively, such as the MasterCard changes that made Onlyfans try and get rid of sexual content.

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

#89

Post by foxfluff » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

aomobile wrote: post #3

Can’t read the whole article however, from what is mentioned in the visible part, I find it a bit strange that free speech and monetary transactions, aka earning money with said free speech, is something that should be protected by law somehow.

How about covering the costs?

Is it free speech if it's only for those who can afford it?

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

#90

Post by foxfluff » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #27

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.

It shouldn't be their job, and blanket bans on specific subjects because "someone may do something illegal" is prejudice with a lot of collateral.

If someone is doing something illegal, it should be the authorities job to deal with it.