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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

#141

Post by whatamidoingyo »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #137
whatamidoingyo wrote: post #120

I spent months working on a dating website. Had Stripe configured, spent the whole time testing with it. Published the site, swapped Stripe to production, and boom, account was closed/banned. According to their own documentation, dating sites are indeed allowed, so long as there's no adult content. The site I built didn't allow adult content. I argued my case, provided the TOS as well as showed that I had features bu…

Why not Square? Why not crypto? I realize HN kinda hates crypto as a group, but it solves your situation here, does it not? I realize it’s another step for users who don’t already have it, but I guess you need to determine whether it would cause enough friction to not get signups.

> Why not Square?

I looked for alternatives, such as PayPal, and Square. They consider dating websites "high-risk", so they would most likely ban the account as well. It just seems like too much of a headache to rewrite the codebase to just have the account banned again.

> Why not crypto?

I thought about this as well. I don't dislike the idea of crypto, but what would users think? It would probably be a huge red flag and look like a scam site.

So, the dating sites that are already in existence are it - they own the market. I'm pretty sure I've read that the execs of Stripe are also invested in Tinder/Bumble*, etc. No wonder it's extremely difficult to compete.

* - not sure if this is actually true.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#142

Post by cedws »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #120

I spent months working on a dating website. Had Stripe configured, spent the whole time testing with it. Published the site, swapped Stripe to production, and boom, account was closed/banned. According to their own documentation, dating sites are indeed allowed, so long as there's no adult content. The site I built didn't allow adult content. I argued my case, provided the TOS as well as showed that I had features bu…

You should kick up a major fuss. Call the media. Write a blog post. These companies should not be the moderator of what is socially acceptable.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#143

Post by Anon1096 »

altairprime wrote: post #72
linotype wrote: post #3

It pains me to say this, but this might actually be a valid use case for cryptocurrency. These companies are cowards.

The article linked by this post disagrees: > I’ve seen some comments floating around that suggest that the fix is to jettison Visa and MasterCard in favor of cryptocurrency. > I think this is fundamentally a losing strategy: It moves the burden and risk of being unbanked onto the developers and publishers rather than the platforms. Yes, it decentralizes (to a point), but each node has less resources to defend themsel…

The author is very confused. For one, not having access to VISA/Mastercard isn't being unbanked. And more importantly, there is no need for the burden of supporting CC payments to fall on developers at all. Steam, itch, etc can just add it as a payment method. (personally I don't really think it's an amazing solution due to crypto volatility)

Seems that the West has just now realized that the payment processors are a threat to adult content and are getting in an uproar. Japanese sites selling adult content have been banned for years at this point, they've moved on to supporting JCB as the only accepted credit card and otherwise accepting site-specific points you buy at convenience stores. I've seen crypto as well by proxy via Bitcash.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#144

Post by notjoemama »

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…

> I have IRL facepalmed reading this. This comment gave me the equivalent exposure to 10 hours on X/Twitter.

I don't know man, jumping into a conversation like this is a great way to get people to NOT listen. I agree with your following point and would add I find these matters more complicated. For example, you wouldn't be typing a comment on this site without the kind of corporate freedom that raised the standard of living for the entire planet resulting in a shared technological advancement. Seems this is always a trade off, how much freedom are you willing to give up for centralized fascist governmental control?

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#145

Post by [deleted] »

coldpie wrote: post #91
danaris wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies in question are monopolies . If you can't get your payments processed by Visa and Mastercard, you are effectively debanked. We collectively agreed long ago that monopolies do not get to enjoy the same freedoms that other companies do.

> We collectively agreed long ago that monopolies do not get to enjoy the same freedoms that other companies do. I think that's generally only the case for natural monopolies, such as power infrastructure, where breaking them up isn't really a feasible solution (ie we don't want 20 different power lines running to each house). I don't think payment processing meets that standard, we could easily break them up and re-…

[deleted]

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#146

Post by RankingMember »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #54
phyzix5761 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have this idea that big corporations are these giant scary entities disconnected from real people? Majority shareholders for Visa are the retirement accounts of regular people and retail investors. We want the public to dictate the actions of what other regular people do with their money without taking on any financial risk for those policies.

> Why do we have this idea that big corporations are these giant scary entities disconnected from real people? Because they are. The corporate structure as well as the internal and external systems in our political/legal/economic systems are designed specifically to make corporations work as economic engines where risk, responsibility, and liability are distributed and diluted to the point it they pretty much evapora…

I think this is a core reason behind the amount of public elation seen when the United Healthcare CEO was killed: people were happy to see an example of the piercing of a corporate structure carefully constructed to shield leadership from personal responsibility for its decisions.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#147

Post by Der_Einzige »

VegaKH wrote: post #122

I agree with the premise of this post, but I'd like to see it made by someone else (and not only because this is on a furry blog.)Their argument is also poorly formed and poorly written. They start by defending their use of furry art and railing against potential backlash from HN. Then spend a lot of words talking about how Collective Shout isn't anti-LGBTQ, but could potentially become anti-LGBTQ, but even if it's n…

[flagged]

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#148

Post by Der_Einzige »

nicman23 wrote: post #118

just use bitcoin. there is literally no downside. it is easier to implement than most payment providers that i know. moreover there are payment provider that work with bitcoin so you do not have to.

Horrible fees, long waiting times, forced centralized exchanges. That’s after they claimed cheap, fast, decentralized. Fk that scam, I’ll stay with regular money.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#149

Post by [deleted] »

duped wrote: post #115
dedicate wrote: post #25

Honestly, I think focusing on what is being censored is missing the point. Today it's adult content, which is an easy target. But what about tomorrow? What if they decide your political donation is 'problematic', or the indie news site you subscribe to is 'misinformation'? We're handing a kill switch for legal commerce to a handful of unelected execs.

> Today it's adult content, which is an easy target. Not even that easy of a target, because the crazy people in America want to call anything that acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ people or how they exist within greater society is "adult content" or "pornographic."

[deleted]

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#150

Post by woodrowbarlow »

danaris wrote: post #89
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…

The companies in question are monopolies . If you can't get your payments processed by Visa and Mastercard, you are effectively debanked. We collectively agreed long ago that monopolies do not get to enjoy the same freedoms that other companies do.

i'd add, they're also not private. i mean, i know a publy-traded company is "in the private sector", but it's still a collectively-owned resource and that's a lot different from compelling a privately-owned company.
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