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Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

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Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#101

Post by baggy_trough »

cwillu wrote: post #8
willprice89 wrote: post #4

I had never heard the term "jawboning" before. According to Merriam-Webster it is "the use of public appeals (as by a president) to influence the actions especially of business and labor leaders" or "broadly : the use of spoken persuasion". Regarding TFA: I don't think trading freedoms of one group (the platform users) for those of another (the platform operators) is a good solution. Visa/Mastercard should have the r…

Companies shouldn't have rights.

Companies are groups of people. Why should people have rights separately but not when they decide to work together in a group?

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#102

Post by FirmwareBurner »

coldpie wrote: post #76
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS. Why is this PoV even controversial? Especially given that the videogames in question weren't even illegal. Hell, I don't even like those games, but it's about the precedent of corporate overreach: if it's all legal, Visa/MasterCard shouldn't be able to decide for me what games I'm allowed to buy, no matter how weird they may be. It's not their job to judge the legal kinks I'm up to in the privacy of my own home…

> THIS. Why is this PoV even controversial? Because it is stating that the government should control private behavior, which bumps into free speech and freedom of association issues. That gets pretty controversial. There are other solutions to the stated problem: > Given their market dominance, they should absolutely not have any right to refuse service. The fix is to address the precondition in that statement: their…

>not passing new laws to compel private behavior.

I have IRL facepalmed reading this. This comment gave me the equivalent exposure to 10 hours on X/Twitter. Mate, the reason you now have clean air, safe to eat food and drinking water is BECAUSE OF government compelling private behavior.

With your logic we should have just waited for free market competition to kick in for Cocal-Cola and McDonalds to decide on their own to stop putting arsenic into our food or for Ford and GM to produce engines with lower emissions.

The reason we have government compelling private behavior is that corporate interests are more likely and more easily to collude to fuck over the consumer together for profit, than consumers can do the same in order to intact desired change on the free market.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#103

Post by ACCount36 »

potbelly83 wrote: post #77

I think a lot of people are missing the point. Most likely what's happening here is that the issuers (not Visa/MC) see a large number of chargebacks/fraud for adult content sites and have determined that it's much easier if they don't accept transactions from these sites.

No. That's an often-repeated bullshit excuse.

Payment processors have ways of passing some of the chargeback risks onto the stores, and it's not like Steam itself is chargeback central. If you just want free games, pirating them is extremely easy, and trying to abuse chargebacks gets you banned.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#105

Post by arghwhat »

OutOfHere wrote: post #12

Cryptocurrencies are sufficiently diverse and popular in this day and age that this should be a non-issue at this time. So many sites accept them already. I even advise using Monero to fully shield the user.

Diverse, yes - but I wouldn't call it popular as a means of making regular financial transaction.

I would certainly only use it as last resort. Too slow, too cumbersome, most of the benefits being overstated or misunderstood. Even in this case, while you certainly can't block the transaction from going through, the site still needs a payment provider to manage transactions which someone might pressure into not working with adult sites.

The alternative is writing their own payment solution entirely to avoid having to work with anyone, but that's an entirely different rat's nest with regulatory complications.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#106

Post by Hizonner »

willprice89 wrote: post #21
anal_reactor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Visa/Mastercard should have the right to refuse service. No. A company beyond certain size functions more akin to a government body providing public service, and should be treated as such. Imagine the only ISP in the area refusing to provide service because fuck you that's why. Or Microsoft banning you from using Windows ever again. Think about it for a second - if Apple made a policy "iPhones cannot be sold to bla…

I think the market would punish Apple sufficiently enough for something like that and government intervention wouldn't be required... What about a small, local ISP? Should they be able to refuse to provide service? At what size can/should the government step in a force companies to do things?

> I think the market would punish Apple sufficiently enough for something like that and government intervention wouldn't be required...

There was a time when if you served "Negroes" at your soda fountain, you could expect the market to punish you. You'd lose your white customers, who had a lot more money to spend at soda fountains.

It took a whole lot to change over to a world where doing the opposite would lead to market "punishment", and it's not obvious that it wouldn't be damned easy to change back.

Get out of fantasyland and stop worshipping the market. It's not a benevolent god.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#107

Post by arghwhat »

windward wrote: post #68
wombat-man wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point they'd probably want to convert back to fiat and that's the trick. Coinbase or whichever company will probably follow suit.

It just needs the economic value of supporting this trade to outweigh the value they assign to control and influence.

Which we can conclude from the current situation is not the case.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#108

Post by bavent »

throwpoaster wrote: post #104

China just banned OnlyFans as degenerate, as did Sweden. We should probably be _increasing_ enforcement of public morality through private systems. “You can just start your own payment processor.”

Who’s morals? Yours, specifically, I’m assuming?

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#109

Post by coldpie »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #102
coldpie wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> THIS. Why is this PoV even controversial? Because it is stating that the government should control private behavior, which bumps into free speech and freedom of association issues. That gets pretty controversial. There are other solutions to the stated problem: > Given their market dominance, they should absolutely not have any right to refuse service. The fix is to address the precondition in that statement: their…

>not passing new laws to compel private behavior. I have IRL facepalmed reading this. This comment gave me the equivalent exposure to 10 hours on X/Twitter. Mate, the reason you now have clean air, safe to eat food and drinking water is BECAUSE OF government compelling private behavior. With your logic we should have just waited for free market competition to kick in for Cocal-Cola and McDonalds to decide on their ow…

You are correct, I don't think not being able to purchase porn games rises to the same level of danger as unsafe food or climate change, to require the government to tell businesses how they may operate.

> With your logic we should have just waited for free market competition to kick in Cocal cola and McDonalds to deiced on their own to stop putting arsenic into our food.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. No one is dying here. I do think the government should step into this market and perform major intervention by breaking up the big two companies into many little ones who can compete. After that, some payment processors may choose to support these business models despite the hit to their stock price (or whatever Visa's dumb argument is for not allowing these games).

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#110

Post by charlieyu1 »

coldpie wrote: post #76
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS. Why is this PoV even controversial? Especially given that the videogames in question weren't even illegal. Hell, I don't even like those games, but it's about the precedent of corporate overreach: if it's all legal, Visa/MasterCard shouldn't be able to decide for me what games I'm allowed to buy, no matter how weird they may be. It's not their job to judge the legal kinks I'm up to in the privacy of my own home…

> THIS. Why is this PoV even controversial? Because it is stating that the government should control private behavior, which bumps into free speech and freedom of association issues. That gets pretty controversial. There are other solutions to the stated problem: > Given their market dominance, they should absolutely not have any right to refuse service. The fix is to address the precondition in that statement: their…

The alternative is to allow private behavior to do the dirty jobs instead, which is even worse
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