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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

#101

Post by numpad0 »

codedokode wrote: post #64
advisedwang wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The payment processors say the reason is high fraud and charge-back rates in those industries that make it unprofitable to service. I don't know if this is true or an excuse. Either way, its an excellent reason why this critical infrastructure shouldn't be under corporate control.

Well that is fair point, but cannot they just increase the commission to cover them? Also I think it is weird that when someone steals a bank card, they use it to buy adult games instead of buying an iPhone or MacBook and shipping it to the third world country.

I see random offhand unsubstantiated online comments here and there including here on HN, that 1) chargeback rates of porn, games, and digital contents are significantly lower than anything else, and 2) credit card companies already charge higher fees for porn despite that.

Combined with prevalence of the suspiciously well standardized "because porn users and gamers chargeback Steam purchases way too often" canned responses, I think it's just an excuse, if not "the" excuse somewhere - like the basis for using incorrect data for internal risk modeling or something like that.

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

#102

Post by codedokode »

Aurornis wrote: post #81
codedokode wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that is fair point, but cannot they just increase the commission to cover them? Also I think it is weird that when someone steals a bank card, they use it to buy adult games instead of buying an iPhone or MacBook and shipping it to the third world country.

They do! It's called a high risk merchant account. Their payment processor would do it: https://stripe.com/ie/resources/more/high-risk-merchant-acco... > Also I think it is weird that when someone steals a bank card, they use it to buy adult games instead of buying an iPhone or MacBook and shipping it to the third world country. iPhone or MacBook purchases are expensive enough to trigger fraud detection reliably. A $…

> Adult content purchases have another problem where purchasers often deny having made the purchase when their significant other finds it on the credit card statement. Shaggy's "It wasn't me" defense.

Ridiculous. People who consume adult content could at least behave like adults.

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

#103

Post by chimeracoder »

turlockmike wrote: post #99

FOSTA-SESTA is the source of this. A well intentioned bill, that, once again, has unintended consequences beyond it's original intention. Mastercard/Visa/Banks don't want legal liability.

> FOSTA-SESTA is the source of this. A well intentioned bill, that, once again, has unintended consequences beyond it's original intention.

You're right that these are connected to FOSTA/SESTA, but you're missing the actual connection.

FOSTA/SESTA were not "well-intentioned". They were the product of lobbying from explicitly religious, anti-sex, anti-pornography groups. Those same groups are behind recent campaigns to require providing government ID to access pornography, to allow attorneys general to prosecute LGBTQ content, and to ban pornography from platforms like Steam and Itch.io.

FOSTA/SESTA have worked exactly as they were intended to! The intention was to make it harder to conduct sex work legally and safely, and they accomplished that goal!

These policies have little to do with FOSTA/SESTA themselves, in that the text of those laws has no bearing here. But those bills were the first big, national victory of these campaigns, and they used that momentum to raise absurd amounts of money to lobby for the other laws mentioned above, and to target financial infrastructure as an easy point of leverage to accomplish their goal of banning pornography across the Internet.

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

#105

Post by qball »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #62
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…

For specifically sexually explicit stuff, it's because chargebacks are __significantly__ higher for these types of purchases. High enough that it messes with the credit and counterparty risk modeling that processors use. You can use your imagination to come up with many reasons these result in more chargebacks than normal purchases. Theoretically, they could just split out "explicit" vs "normal" risk categories, but…

>it's because chargebacks

Sorry, but that's just bullshit. This is nothing more than your standard pseudogovernmental meddling in the "just build your own financial infrastructure" vein, and it's coming from foreign countries this time rather than the US itself (it currently has an administration less hostile to business).

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

#108

Post by ecshafer »

nekusar wrote: post #23
schnebbau wrote: post #3

So who is pressuring the processors?

If you dig, this issue has been brewing for quite some time. Long story short, its the hard-right conservatives and/or Christians who demand everybody *else* follow their recidivist ethics. Exodus Cry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry explicit christian thinktank Collective Shout - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout not explicitly christian, but mirrors Exodus Cry almost verbatim Going down the r…

> Collective Shout was founded in 2009 by Melinda Tankard Reist, an Australian conservative political activist, writer, anti-abortion feminist and anti-pornography activist

So close

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

#110

Post by Xeoncross »

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…

It's not religion, it's litigation and money.

1) non-consensual or illegal (CP) content could come with expensive lawsuits.

2) Adult content has higher abuse (charge-backs, fraud, etc..).

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