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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

#231

Post by chimeracoder »

NoahZuniga wrote: post #207
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe (their payment process) will handle adult content payments. It puts the account into the high risk category due to the high rate of fraud in those categories. There's no actual evidence in the article that payment processors made them do it. They actually banned pornography long before this. They just updated the terms to clarify what counted as pornography. > Also this is why we should work to increase circul…

pornhub doesn't even accept payment via credit card. A while back they were kicked off due to there being too much CSAM.

> pornhub doesn't even accept payment via credit card. A while back they were kicked off due to there being too much CSAM.

There are orders of magnitude more CSAM on other platforms, such as Facebook. As explained elsewhere in the comments, Pornhub was targeted by evangelical, anti-pornography groups which weaponized claims of CSAM against Pornhub for their own political purposes, despite the fact that Pornhub had vanishingly few instances even compared to other pornography platforms, let alone non-pornography platforms (like Facebook).

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

#232

Post by adamrezich »

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…

This religious lobby idea you have is hardly a real thing in the way you seem to imagine it being.

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

#233

Post by chimeracoder »

maxk42 wrote: post #158
whynotmaybe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more expensive? Because it cost more to check that my CC wasn't stolen when I buy NSFW? Or because there are more chargeback?

Chargebacks. "Oh, honey, I don't know how that got there. A hacker must've stolen my card! I'll call the bank immediately!" Worked in the adult industry and traditional e-commerce. It's a perennial problem.

> Chargebacks. "Oh, honey, I don't know how that got there. A hacker must've stolen my card! I'll call the bank immediately!" Worked in the adult industry and traditional e-commerce. It's a perennial problem.

As explained elsewhere, this is a problem for the merchants, not for the platforms. The platforms don't lose money on this, and may in fact profit off of it.

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

#234

Post by majorchord »

tavavex wrote: post #137
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is the common explanation I see when this topic comes up, but it always made zero sense to me. It frustrates me that people fail to realize the amount of purchaseable things that could qualify as 'explicit'. This is Kickstarter . Do we really think that someone crowdfunding a risque board game or comic is as likely to ask for a chargeback as some middle-aged man trying to hastily cancel a subscription on some po…

How do you define the difference between explicit content and porn?

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

#235

Post by majorchord »

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…

I wish they could just raise the fees to account for the chargebacks so at least it's not banned entirely.

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

#236

Post by Scaled »

criddell wrote: post #197
Scaled wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just FYI, the high rate of fraud is FUD. I am in the field, have a very good chargeback rate, and still cannot secure card processing at fair terms. The processors I have spoken to know chargeback rates are low, but it's a rigged system designed to extract maximal revenue by middlemen.

That's like a 16 year old saying the auto insurance game is rigged because they are a very good driver but can't get cheap insurance. Maybe your rates are high because of the risk pool you are in.

I have spoken to others in my field and we all have good chargeback rates.

The problem is the VIRP/BRAM requirements push adult content into using only a handful of acquiring banks, and thus there is insufficient competition to get them to lower rates since where else you gonna go?

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

#237

Post by thegrim33 »

"Forced to ban adult content by payment processors"

If you go through and click all the links and hunt down the source, the final source underlying it all is a comic author who says, without quoting anything, or any proof, that that's the reason why. Just a random guy saying that Stripe made them ban it, without any evidence.

I'm the King of England. There, I guess I "am" the King of England, because all it takes is for a random person to make a statement and it becomes true.

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

#238

Post by habinero »

Scaled wrote: post #191
numpad0 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I've seen the chargeback rates, they are low. Consider that most adult consumers are repeat purchasers (subscribing to their favorite artist/dev/performer). They do not want to get banned for a chargeback and lose out on content! Most adult content creators also have friendly voluntary refund policy when requested. So chargeback rates are very low in adult. Meanwhile other industries like travel have crazy high charg…

> So travel ends up having high chargebacks... and yet has minimal trouble getting processing.

Nope, not true. They're #2 on Stripe's high risk business list, after porn:

https://stripe.com/resources/more/high-risk-merchant-account...

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

#239

Post by csa »

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…

> Why payment processors do it?

Short answer — there are lots of chargebacks and (sometimes) fraud around this content. Vanilla payment processors don’t like high rates of chargebacks and fraud.

> Also why PornHub and OnlyFans are immune to religious lobby?

They use a high-risk payment processor that takes a much higher cut of each sale (basically as insurance).

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

#240

Post by micromacrofoot »

marcosdumay wrote: post #196
micromacrofoot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a law though, it's a choice of who to do business with

Eh... Go read the article again, or just the title.

no need, these are two businesses making business decisions... specifically not being government allows them to do this
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