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Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

kotaku.com

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Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#91

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #84
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks frequently refuse to do business with, or heavily restrict, businesses that they deem risky from a financial perspective. Adult content, pharmaceuticals and travel are all industries that experience significantly higher occurrence of fraud and chargebacks than others. For example, your spouse sees a weird item on your credit card for a porn site. "Wasn't me! Must be stolen I'll report it." Sometimes it's the ot…

This hand-waving about fraud is complete nonsense. The banking industry shrieks about fraud and chargebacks yet gyms, which are basically the scummiest retail businesses on the planet aside from payday lenders, are allowed to use the ACH system and get direct access to money, not credit - that is a royal pain in the ass to revoke? So much so that my state has an entire set of laws devoted toward curtailing the gym in…

Brick and mortar is a whole different ballgame.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#92

Post by Cyph0n »

btown wrote: post #20
schnebbau wrote: post #3

So who is pressuring the processors?

The actual answer: hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bswuu1nfc040h... & https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-suspends-payments-for-ad... > But he was friendly with Mastercard’s then-CEO Ajay Banga, whom he had met through a mutual friend. Ackman texted Banga, providing a link to Kristof’s story with his tweet: “Amex, VISA and MasterCard should immediately withhold payments…

Huh, the same person who was behind crushing the campus protests & blacklisting/cancellation of protestors at Harvard that were in opposition to the Gaza genocide.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#93

Post by dec0dedab0de »

saltyoldman wrote: post #71
presbyterian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any data on this, so don't quote me on it at all, but this feels more like an excuse made up by paypros than an actual good explanation.

No one would have data on something like that! Wife finds out, husband says, someone stole my card! You expect them to own up later?

The reason doesn't matter, the data would be on the amount of chargebacks being made.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#94

Post by bootsmann »

codedokode wrote: post #39

Why payment processors do it? Why people in America do not want to earn more money from commissions? Strong church lobby? Legal risks? I think its mostly religious groups who who are against adult content and sex, or there are other groups? Also this is why we should work to increase circulation of cryptocurrency. No stupid religious restrictions and stupid political sanctions. Also why PornHub and OnlyFans are immun…

I think Mastercard and Visa are deathly afraid of having their nice duopoly regulated more tightly (as is already done in the EU) and therefore they consequentially put in a lot of effort to steer clear of topics that would give politicians a good excuse to do so.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#95

Post by chimeracoder »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #86
chimeracoder wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adult content, pharmaceuticals and travel are all industries that experience significantly higher occurrence of fraud and chargebacks than others. For example, your spouse sees a weird item on your credit card for a porn site. "Wasn't me! Must be stolen I'll report it." Sometimes it's the other direction. No, it has nothing to do with chargebacks. It's not even presented that way in their policies when they ban it.…

For some types of explicit content, sure, I don't disagree. I've seen instances where "fraud" was used as an excuse for an otherwise unpalatable brand. There hasn't been sufficient reporting on all the lobbying and back-room dealing.

> There hasn't been sufficient reporting on all the lobbying and back-room dealing.

There has been tons of reporting on this in the industry. It is not hidden. The war on sex work is extremely well-documented, as is the explicit shift in tactics to targeting financial infrastructure as a tactic.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#96

Post by laweijfmvo »

This is the least of my concerns with Kickstarter. It’s so trivial to completely scam an entirely fake campaign, with zero repercussions, that no one should take this site seriously at all. I say this as someone who has backed a campaign that posted updates and even claimed that shipments were out while all the comments were the same: I received nothing.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#97

Post by chimeracoder »

maxk42 wrote: post #88
wahnfrieden wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective Shout is behind several major campaigns. Info on its conservative lobbyist leader, their extreme views and hypocrisies: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/s/1FHaaaIs6T As for why they do it? Because conservative Christian lobbying is a lucrative grift: https://youtu.be/ms26YefUNds?si=3KLCj1RALES3aKDT The owner runs a for-profit speaking engagement business alongside the registered charity. Many such people get…

And they're Australian, not American.

Collective Shout is Australian, but there are plenty of similar groups in the US , UK, and Europe.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#98

Post by eggbrain »

Aurornis wrote: post #52
codedokode wrote: post #39

Why payment processors do it? Why people in America do not want to earn more money from commissions? Strong church lobby? Legal risks? I think its mostly religious groups who who are against adult content and sex, or there are other groups? Also this is why we should work to increase circulation of cryptocurrency. No stupid religious restrictions and stupid political sanctions. Also why PornHub and OnlyFans are immun…

Stripe (their payment process) will handle adult content payments. It puts the account into the high risk category due to the high rate of fraud in those categories. There's no actual evidence in the article that payment processors made them do it. They actually banned pornography long before this. They just updated the terms to clarify what counted as pornography. > Also this is why we should work to increase circul…

> Stripe (their payment process) will handle adult content payments. It puts the account into the high risk category due to the high rate of fraud in those categories.

Stripe _says_ they will handle these type of payments, but more often than not, within roughly a year of implementation you'll get an email from them kicking you off their platform, no matter how vigilant you were, or even if the things you were selling were more rated R than rated X. Source: my own insider knowledge along with colleagues in the space.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#100

Post by grishka »

danso wrote: post #54
grishka wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have one in Russia, called Mir (world/peace, somewhat ironically). While, yes, there was literally zero downtime on card payments when Visa and MC left the country, they are still irreplaceable for international payments. As a result, everyone who needs to make them or travels a lot has a foreign bank account now, with, you guessed it, a Visa or MC card. Edit: forgot to say, Mir cards used to work in a few other c…

Has Mir in the past ever implemented any kind of bans or restrictions for specific vendors or use cases?

None I'm aware about. But there's a growing list of things that the government itself considers straight up "extremist" or other forms of forbidden, so it doesn't get to the payment processor banning them.
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