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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

#191

Post by pixl97 »

eastbound wrote: post #17
cmitsakis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While freedom of association is fine on a personal level and maybe for small businesses, big corporation that are monopolies or oligopolies shouldn't have this freedom. They should be regulated and forced to serve everyone otherwise they have the power to exclude some people completely from such services with no alternative. Due to their power, their decisions affect people as if they are government decisions, yet we…

What philosophical argument would you make for or against excommunication in the Middle Age?

That religion and government have no place with each other.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#192

Post by pixl97 »

fenomas wrote: post #92
armada651 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> also, how are these "puritan" groups doing the hounding? I mean, are they threatening some kind of legal action? based on old (or not so old) obscenity laws? They're not suing them in civil court, they're threatening to use the court of public perception against them. If they allow these payments the activism groups will set up a campaign titled something like "Visa facilitates incest and child abuse!" and "Masterc…

Also, it's worth reading the wiki page on the group behind this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist#Collecti... To me it doesn't look like this group is so powerful that they forced the payment processors to do stuff. It looks more like, this group campaigns tirelessly, year in, year out, against all kinds of miscellaneous stuff they dislike, and every so often they get a W somewhere because they're…

The defender needs to win every battle, the attacker only needs to win one.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#193

Post by SirMaster »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #157
coldpie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-…

Having a payment processing industry with a lot of competing providers would be miserable Imagine having to support every single type of provider for every transaction. I don't think it is a good idea at all

It wouldn't be so bad if they all supported some same standard.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#194

Post by xphos »

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…

I think the problem you have is they are clearly supporting one side or other which is accurate but I think they have censorship fear. There is no reason why they can't be called pornographic and lose access to payment systems.

I think there is credibility in saying that hiding behind the banner of stopping abuse as thin veneer of enforcing political or religious ideology. An argument is often made in the same vein for outlawing encryption. Clearly we must be against crime so we need to destroy encryption and if you don't destroy encryption you like crime. This type of argumentation is pretty similar to targeting distributors rather than content directly. Its definitely more effective but it seems like you just want to enforce your ideology rather than anything else.

Maybe you don't feel that argument was made after all it was a little bit all over the place but I saw it and there were a lot of links to organizations and achieve links and bills for you to continue research from. I am trying to balance here though because i see both yours's and the others perspective

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#195

Post by const_cast »

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…

We already compel private behavior all the time when the private sector starts acting public - i.e. by running infrastructure and being vital to the function of the public.

The real solution IMO is even more unpopular: nationalize them. If it's a public service it should be handled by the public sector, such that the entirety of the constitution applies. We might even consider funding it not with payment fees, but tax dollars. Every American has a desire to have reliable instant transactions. So they should all pay.

Effectively, they already are - the 2-3% tax on card processors is a tax. If we nationalize it, we can even lower it, since we'd not longer be burdened by the pursuit of profit.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#196

Post by wolfgang42 »

tomhow wrote: post #84
xg15 wrote: post #69

Waiting for the furry-led, sex-positive counter activist group called "Collective Snout".

Please don't do this here.

I know puns are considered the lowest form of humor, but I still appreciate the occasional bit of levity to lighten the mood in serious discussions.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#197

Post by ranger_danger »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #184
jfyi wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not just go straight to authorize.net? Or your local bank can probably set you up with them... always worked for me.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#198

Post by ranger_danger »

busterarm wrote: post #133

At least in Japan, I'm surprised that they haven't expanded Suica and similar systems to include online shopping.

They did back in the 2000s, I used to buy stuff online with Edy. The problem was you had to buy a FeliCa USB adapter, or have a Sony Vaio or similar laptop that had a reader embedded. It never took off and people stopped offering it.

But even more IRL merchants are now accepting 交通系 IC cards as payment methods. I can use mine at the arcade and never worry about coins.

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#199

Post by SirMaster »

anal_reactor wrote: post #30
willprice89 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... 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…

> For example in my country it's an issue that you can't have a business without a bank account but sometimes banks just... refuse to make an account for you and your company won't function.

But is everyone entitled to have a business? Is that written in the country's laws somewhere that everyone must be allowed to have a business?

Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

#200

Post by fknorangesite »

jfyi wrote: post #168
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…

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

More than it's worth. Even if their fees weren't astronomical, their platform is a nightmare to work with.
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