Live data from Hacker News

Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

economist.com

281–288 of 288 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments the world over are surveiling you without your consent right now. How could you possibly trust them? Centralized economic systems are nothing but yet another state surveillance apparatus. People think it is normal for the state to demand complete identification data on every person businesses transact with. It sacrifices our privacy yet fails to prevent crime. No amount of crime justifies this. We need de…

Man. You can't outrun the government. You can vote, you can try armed insurrection. Reform or revolt, those are the choices, and revolt is guaranteed suicide. Believe me, you can't outrun it with your fancy digital currency with "so many nodes in operation no single government on earth has any hope..." is terribly naive. They can seize the networks man, they can arrest you, they can shoot you. They eat your bitcoin f…

>>>Reform or revolt, those are the choices, and revolt is guaranteed suicide.

Revolt has worked out decently for the Iraqi Kurds and the Taliban. Jury is still out on the Burmese and the Houthis. Libya is a violent mess but technically they successfully overthrew the central government with significant external help, so at the very least that's a non-fail. Just for a few timely and relevant 21st-century examples that disprove your statement of "guaranteed suicide".

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

#282

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…

> 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.

Women who consent is out of topic. Although how much some of this consent is meaningful is another can of worms.

> 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.

So what kind of evidence do you need that a woman has been raped? Can there be such evidence that can’t be disputed by you or someone else? Can we ever say that a woman has been raped?

I’m seriously curious how you’re reasoning here.

> The root cause of all this a puritanical western society using the power of the state to impose their morals on others.

The West is hardly puritanical, porn and prostitution in general are large industries. The laws are not puritanical, Pornhub got a slap on the wrist relative to what they’ve done. Maybe it’s too puritanical for you, I don’t know.

> So many of us are still conflating sex work with "human trafficking"

That’s a straw-man. It can be argued that an increase in prostitution is positively correlated with an increase in sex trafficking. But that’s not like saying that they are one and the same, no one here is arguing that they are.

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The false equivalence here between your house and your company platform is so ick.

I take it you dont believe them to both be private property?

A home can't take credit card payments.

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

#284
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…

As for sex work, in particular, this one is tricky. While I fully support body autonomy and in an ideal world, sex-for-money and the like should be legal, it's not that simple in reality. Why? Because the sex industry is deeply tied to human trafficking. I have no idea how to solve that problem. You can't solve that problem, but I believe you could mitigate it by making prostitution legal. Funny thing is that prostit…

The Netherlands can serve as a counter-example to your wrongly held belief

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

In my opinion it's not the role of the card issuers to make this determination or to implement unilaterally the restrictions. This is a matter of law and should be handled in court.

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for sex work, in particular, this one is tricky. While I fully support body autonomy and in an ideal world, sex-for-money and the like should be legal, it's not that simple in reality. Why? Because the sex industry is deeply tied to human trafficking. I have no idea how to solve that problem. You can't solve that problem, but I believe you could mitigate it by making prostitution legal. Funny thing is that prostit…

The Netherlands can serve as a counter-example to your wrongly held belief

> The Netherlands can serve as a counter-example to your wrongly held belief

This is vague. What are you saying? Please cite sources for whatever position you’re presenting (I’m not trying to be argumentative; truly can’t tell).

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands can serve as a counter-example to your wrongly held belief

> The Netherlands can serve as a counter-example to your wrongly held belief This is vague. What are you saying? Please cite sources for whatever position you’re presenting (I’m not trying to be argumentative; truly can’t tell).

Parent has unbased beliefs, and I should do the work of doing the leg work for him?

For those that has yet to learn about the Googles, then they should know that sex work is legal in the Nethelands: https://www.government.nl/topics/prostitution, yet human trafficking for prostitution is still a very real problem there: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/10/some-6000-people-a-yea...

Post reply on HN