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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

#231

Post by throwaway0a5e »

doublescoop wrote: post #181
some_random wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It will soon be the case where the majority of Americans live in states where recreational cannabis is legal (it was ~1 in 3 last year but NY, NJ and others will push it over). Yet you can't use a credit card to buy cannabis pretty much anywhere AFAIK. There is not a single state where cannabis is legal, there are only states that have decided they won't enforce federal law.

No states enforce federal laws. The federal government does that. If there is no state law criminalizing cannabis use there it's legal in that state.

The locals generally enforce and investigate and then the feds prosecute.

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

#232

Post by MelvinButtsESQ »

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…

Bullshit. It's pretty common for young women to consent to do porn and then after the fact (weeks, months, years later) decide that they shouldn't have. If you sign a contract, you've signed a contract and need to abide by it. I'm of course against non-consensual stuff, but don't cry "I was a victim" later on because you've had a change of heart.

The other unfortunate reality of sex work is that women "busted" by law enforcement are of course going to claim their trafficked when it gets them out of a legal bind.

The root cause of all this a puritanical western society using the power of the state to impose their morals on others. What consenting adults do among themselves, even if for compensation, is nobodies business besides those involved ... and CERTAINLY shouldn't be illegal. So many of us are still conflating sex work with "human trafficking" ... and are party to the PERCEIVED problem by not understanding it can be legitimate work.

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

#233

Post by mbesto »

jonas21 wrote: post #182
cletus wrote: post #130

I don't think they're that reluctant, honestly. But it goes beyond credit card companies too. It applies to the whole banking system. It will soon be the case where the majority of Americans live in states where recreational cannabis is legal (it was ~1 in 3 last year but NY, NJ and others will push it over). Yet you can't use a credit card to buy cannabis pretty much anywhere AFAIK. Worse, dispensaries have to opera…

> Granted, the legality of cannabis is a grey area since states allow it but the Federal government still maintains it as illegal. This isn't some incidental detail - it's the entire reason why the banking and credit card industry doesn't want to interact with cannabis right now. Guess who regulates the banking industry and has authority over interstate commerce? The federal government. This particular example has no…

> This isn't some incidental detail - it's the entire reason why the banking and credit card industry doesn't want to interact with cannabis right now.

FYI - Banks do work with cannabis in states where it's legal. Those banks just can't be national banks - they have to be state ones that are regulated by the state. In other words, Chase/BoA/etc. can't touch it because they operate at the federal level and are highly regulated.

https://www.riskscout.com/post/the-state-of-cannabis-banking

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

#234

Post by techwizard81 »

arcticbull wrote: post #222
Spivak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there’s a big difference between “dudes with guns will throw me in prison for this” and “as a company we cannot in good conscience contribute to xxx.” Banks and CC companies by usual standards are staying out of things more than average. If it’s not a risk to their liberty or wallets the financial sector is happy to stand back and watch all sorts of awful things.

And frankly, I don't want them to project their own morality on my transactions any more than I want Comcast to. It's the job of legislators to decide what is and isn't legal. This is just financial infrastructure.

In the case of adult content, they aren’t doing this because they are morally against it, it’s because there is a lot of porn from human trafficking, underage or simply non consensual (like stolen personal videos or revenge porn). It should not be allowed to profit from these things, so I think it’s right that the bank imposes rules on those sites for them to be able to process credit card transactions.

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

#235

Post by varispeed »

cletus wrote: post #130

I don't think they're that reluctant, honestly. But it goes beyond credit card companies too. It applies to the whole banking system. It will soon be the case where the majority of Americans live in states where recreational cannabis is legal (it was ~1 in 3 last year but NY, NJ and others will push it over). Yet you can't use a credit card to buy cannabis pretty much anywhere AFAIK. Worse, dispensaries have to opera…

> Yet you can't use a credit card to buy cannabis pretty much anywhere AFAIK.

You can in the UK. Dispensaries here do accept credit cards.

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

#236

Post by saurik »

shapefrog wrote: post #150
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> we shouldn’t be okay with censorship of anyone regardless That is not a balance, that is an absolute position in favour of one side of the coin ... regardless

The "balance" is based on something that, while explicitly stated, you somehow disregarded: that some--and, by and large, the current legal landscape--considers the freedom of speech right of the platform to censor people, and so to obtain "anyone can say anything" we have to take away "the freedom to not say something"... which we actually already do in various instances (often involving protected classes) and so, personally, I consider that to be a tractable goal to regulate: some things are "utilities" or even "quasi-governmental entities" and should be forced to be something like a common carrier.

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

#237

Post by sojournerc »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #170
mmastrac wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a cursory search for banking and cannabis will reveal the pressure the US government puts on this industry. Banking for cannabis is much easier in canada. You can purchase weed with a Visa no problem.

> the pressure the US government puts on this industry Sure. But OP mentioned the U.S. government "currently blocking transactions" from cannabis businesses.

AFAIK, a bank could lose their FDIC backing (Federal deposit insurance) if they support cannabis transactions.

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

#238

Post by ashtonkem »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #230
542458 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Any suggestion that “the banks won’t deal with $GROUP even though they could be making money” is an allegation that the banks aren’t actually very profit-motivated. This allegation seems unlikely to me. As far as I can tell, the stuff the banks won’t touch is either legally risky (weed) or financially risky.

So they why do payment processors (paypal in particular) avoid firearms stuff? That's big business and the consumers involved pretty much all have discretionary income by definition. You'd think they'd be all over that.

Because gun purchases are a high chargeback risk; this is explicitly the reason that PayPal gives. I had a colleague of mine have a debit card stolen from them and then used to try and purchase a handgun. Given the criminal utility of a firearm purchased under a fake name with a stolen card, I doubt this is a rare problem.

(PayPal also cannot be used for cigarettes or porn, so they have a policy of avoiding what they see as high risk items, including items regularly handled by other card professors)

On the flip side Amazon will sell all kinds of firearm related accessories, just not the firearm itself or ammunition, presumably because they're not actually a FFL and can't handle the legal requirements.

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

#239

Post by jaywalk »

kroltan wrote: post #229
jaywalk wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Speaking of credit card companies: why do they exist?? Why can't my card just sign a digital request for transfer and tell the POS terminal to send it to my bank to be executed. Because the POS terminal (or more likely, the payment processor) would have to work with thousands of individual banks. The credit card companies handle that complexity so that payment processors only have to integrate with a handful of cred…

That's because there is no open standard for it, which is mentioned in the following sentence. > A room of computer science students could write an open standard for that in like a month and have a working implementation within the year. (While I don't share the optimism regarding the timeframe, I agree with the general sentiment)

There are standards, however making them "open" wouldn't change anything. You've obviously never tried to integrate with a large number of separate entities before.

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

#240

Post by 542458 »

arcticbull wrote: post #221
542458 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Any suggestion that “the banks won’t deal with $GROUP even though they could be making money” is an allegation that the banks aren’t actually very profit-motivated. This allegation seems unlikely to me. As far as I can tell, the stuff the banks won’t touch is either legally risky (weed) or financially risky.

The financially risky stuff they're usually willing to take on too, but the folks providing the service usually find the associated interchange fees unreasonable.

Exactly. Companies like CCBill specialize in high-risk transactions and will handle anything legal, but your fees might be as high as 14.5%!

https://ccbill.com/pricing

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