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Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

soatok.blog

181–190 of 272 posts

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#181
post #142

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.

if only a decentralized alternative had not become a money laundering tool and financial instrument

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#182

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.”

Why does "morality" enforcement always devolve into obsession with what other people do with their genitals among consenting parties and completely ignore empathy, welfare of humankind and others, or any of the inconvenient and possibly expensive "Treating people beneath you nicely?". We never see such "moralists" punishing those who do such profoundly immoral things like actively forbidding helping the homeless.

Conversationally it's probably more about morality. However, for those like myself that have looked into the matter, it becomes a much needed discussion about standards of care. The AMA holds regular meetings to determine standards of care. Fortunately for us, they post these to YouTube. I looked and found the most recent meeting where they adopted standards of care for youth and gender dysphoria. It was a brief section about 1/3 to 1/2 way through the meeting. I'll recant and summarize what I observed from the dozen+ people in this meeting:

Lead speaker: Ok, next is medical transition for youth and adults. I'll admit I just don't know much on this topic so I'm reaching out for someone else to take the lead and discuss it.

pause...

Second speaker: Well, I also don't know that much as it's not my field, but I've looked over the proposal and what I can't find are long term studies on the effects. I think because of that we simply don't know...

Third speaker: Hi this is and while this is also not my field I'm an ally and I can tell you what's been presented to us (the AMA governing body) from the APA is what they ave determined as effaceable procedure.

pause...

Lead speaker: So...I suppose we can take a vote to accept the guidelines sent to us from the APA.

pause...

Then they voted to accept it with no more discussion. I'm shortended the exchange, but it is not much more than what I am presenting to you.

Stop and think about that. We use the terms "standards of care" and understand that to mean there is some authoritative, intelligent, well founded judgement from what you and I assume are experts over these topics. That's not what happened by this review board in the AMA. There was no medical discussion, no weighing of prescriptive protocols, no measure of caution, or even of any medical literature regarding the topic. The American Medical Association simply accepted whatever the American Psychological Association told them was the correct medical protocols. What an abject failure.

I also recently watched a clip, a complaint about how women should not be a special case in medicine. This had to do with menopause and the complaint was that women are (to use a colloquial term) gate-kept from hormonal treatments (in this video, testosterone specifically) where as men not only have an established diagnosis of hypogonadism but that through only a 6 month trial, testosterone was approved by the FDA for treatment, but only for men. The complaint was somewhat of a feminist one, an argument for equity. If men could so easily get testosterone for treatment then why can't women, in terms of ""equity". What surprised me was the approval was only based on a 6 month trial. What of the long term exposure? What are the risks? Why approve something with so little data and medical basis? While I empathize with the video's speaker, I saw what I think is a much more problematic issue. When it comes to medicine, there appears to be less scientific truth underlying these decisions.

So, back to your point:

> what other people do with their genitals

While you may perceive some personal or moral assertion, and I acknowledge that is often true, I submit it is also true that others genitals deserve a lot more medical scrutiny than "we don't know, but someone else said this was better". Because, other people's genitals could potentially be my children's genitals and as a parent, or a grandparent, or other family member, who cares more deeply, I expect there is a factual and provably medically necessary response. If that cannot be proven, then there is no rational basis to move forward with medical treatment. The only treatment that makes sense is psychological, given the other supporting data on this topic.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#183
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still miserable from a UX perspective and for those of us in KYC countries? It can be very burdensome to verify ourselves and actually exchange real money for them. Buying litecoin and sending it to someone else was a huge pain in my butt to put it mildly.

It is burdensome to verify, but once you're past that hurdle, it's absolutely smooth sailing. I don't know which sites or apps you used, but the ones I know of all have an excellent UI.

The website and app UIs for these services weren't my problem, it's the overall UX and KYC is part of that.

I don't want to go over all the issues I had, but to put it simply some were the fault of the service (I had major issues verifying and then reverifying) and some were due to the bank I use and their restrictions.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#184
post #168

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…

What did the processing fees on CCBill look like, or did you get that far?

Here's a part of the message I received from them:

- $25.00 - Monthly fee for the merchant account.

- $19.95 - Monthly fee for the Authorize.net payment gateway (API Connection to your website)

- 3.95% - Keyed rate

- $0.25 - per transaction fee

- $1,450 - HIGH-RISK fee

- 10% Rolling reserve

It just seems unfair, as these fees are for "adult content" sites (i.e. nudity, etc.), which is not what I built.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#185
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say again: > consider how much it limits the viability of an online business to not accept credit cards For the vast majority of online businesses, accepting exclusively crypto, or exclusively bank payments, would result in much less business. Orders of magnitude less business. They are not viable alternatives for the vast majority of purposes.

> For the vast majority of online businesses, accepting exclusively crypto, or exclusively bank payments, would result in much less business. Orders of magnitude less business. I would add a qualifier to your statement: for the vast majority of global online businesses. An online business serving a single country could make use of country-specific payment systems, which are often very popular. If a Brazil-only online…

Sure; that was exactly the kind of case that previously led me to edit my comment to add the "for the vast majority" qualifier. Similarly, bank payments are popular in European countries because there are convenient wrappers around them, if you're only selling to certain countries.

Along the same lines, I qualified it as "online businesses" because there are still some brick-and-mortar businesses that require cash. It's still limiting your business, but less so, especially if you're in a context where people expect many businesses to be that way (e.g. a farmer's market).

But for online businesses that aren't country-specific, which I'd argue is the vast majority of online businesses? You accept credit cards or you get a lot less business. (And the next-most-popular option, PayPal, does even more of this kind of thing than Visa and MasterCard do, and much more capriciously.)

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#186
post #142

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.

It's annoying this is what has to be done, but when all our regulators have their balls chopped off this is the reality.

Rules are made on tiktok, twitter, and in the civil court room. It costs lots of money and is almost never worth it.

Which is why only the big dogs get to play these rules. Apple doesnt care if it burns money on a lawsuit that's stupid. That puts YOU at a huge disadvantage.

IMO payment processors are infrastructure, pseudo public. This amounts to free speech restrictions.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#187
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…

Much more interesting is why these two companies were able to wield this much power in the first place, and why are they using it to censor this kind of content specifically?

You can't understand anything about the situation without replacing it in the context of the far right reactionary wave hitting our societies. Similarly, simply preventing these two companies of their power would be a temporary solution at best. There is a political will -and enough support for it- to push the puritan agenda.

If you truly care about fighting censorship, you should recognize where it actually comes from and fight the source.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The word 'needs' indicates a present necessity.

The present behavior of payment providers show a present lack of economic value to overcome the pressure against supporting these businesses, meaning the present necessity is not met.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the market would punish Apple sufficiently enough for something like that and government intervention wouldn't be required... Ah yes. The invisible magic hand of free market that solves all problems. Except it doesn't. See Uber expanding its service where for a small fee you can avoid dealing with people from undesirable social class. Not exactly the same thing, but still the idea of free market promoting i…

>Ah yes. The invisible magic hand of free market that solves all problems. Except it doesn't. See Uber expanding its service where for a small fee you can avoid dealing with people from undesirable social class. Not exactly the same thing, but still the idea of free market promoting immoral solutions rather than eliminating them. I think you are mistaking the market for the people. The market is a natural manifestati…

>The government thought regulating the drug market (that is, total ban) would make people not want to do drugs

Eh, that is what was sold to the mainstream idiot. The 'war on drugs' has almost always been a fight against immigrants and minorities. The free market doesn't solve racism against minorities.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#190

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.

No protection against theft, insane energy consumption.
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