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Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't responsive to anything I've written. It's not in any sense a moral debate over sex products. It's a practical debate over how expensive it is to underwrite transactions in these markets. The people involved in making those payments work are extending credit.

Payment processors have constructed a “moral ordering of sexuality” [1] that would be entirely unnecessary if, as you claim, their intentions are purely legal and/or related to high chargeback rates. If it’s not a moral issue, then the rules should be simple and easily communicable. Examples: Comply with the law of your jurisdiction. Keep your chargeback rates below x%. Instead, payment processors intentionally refus…

This is all a pretty naive take on dealing with transaction fraud. You're not going to get the transparency you're after.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment processors have constructed a “moral ordering of sexuality” [1] that would be entirely unnecessary if, as you claim, their intentions are purely legal and/or related to high chargeback rates. If it’s not a moral issue, then the rules should be simple and easily communicable. Examples: Comply with the law of your jurisdiction. Keep your chargeback rates below x%. Instead, payment processors intentionally refus…

This is all a pretty naive take on dealing with transaction fraud. You're not going to get the transparency you're after.

[deleted]

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

#293

"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…

>>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. Sir/Ma'am, this is HN, we dont actually read the articles here. WE just look at the title and get outraged

His(?) Majesty. You are addressing the King of England himself

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment processors have constructed a “moral ordering of sexuality” [1] that would be entirely unnecessary if, as you claim, their intentions are purely legal and/or related to high chargeback rates. If it’s not a moral issue, then the rules should be simple and easily communicable. Examples: Comply with the law of your jurisdiction. Keep your chargeback rates below x%. Instead, payment processors intentionally refus…

This is all a pretty naive take on dealing with transaction fraud. You're not going to get the transparency you're after.

I’m not calling for “more transparency,” I’m calling into question your assertion that the payment processors are acting out of rational self-interest.

It’s a little strange to complain about no one being responsive to you when you’ve summarily dismissed every comment in this thread.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them do. It's a math problem: If a credit card processor takes 3% of the purchase price and the average purchase is small like a $10 item or a $5 monthly commitment, it doesn't take many disputes to blow up their business model. Disputes are costly because you have to pay humans to deal with paperwork and phone calls.

Why do you believe this? They charge you a large fee for every chargeback. They get the full purchase price of the transaction back without any effort. It's automatic. Meanwhile your merchant fee per transaction is directly tied to how many chargebacks you produce. Chargebacks do not cost the payment network any money at all. All cost is borne by the merchants. That's the whole point. That's why chargebacks are effec…

Stripe has a $15 chargeback fee last time I worked on this.

If you believe $15 covers all of the human labor involved plus the cost of their management chain and employment, I wish I could be as optimistic as labor costs as you.

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all a pretty naive take on dealing with transaction fraud. You're not going to get the transparency you're after.

I’m not calling for “more transparency,” I’m calling into question your assertion that the payment processors are acting out of rational self-interest. It’s a little strange to complain about no one being responsive to you when you’ve summarily dismissed every comment in this thread.

Once again this is like the 10th time this discussion has played out on HN. If you want to see a less conclusory set of arguments, use the search bar and go back a couple years.

The counterargument here doesn't even make sense. You think payment processors are run by people with weird puritan takes on adult content? No, they're exactly the same nerds that work everywhere else in the industry. I'm sure someone will come up with some just-so story about how payment processors, and only payment processors, are suspectible to influence from religious radicals or whatever, but: special pleading is special pleading.

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

#297
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it doesn't allow chargebacks You can have chargebacks in crypto if the payment is scripted to allow chargebacks. It would be up to the merchant and the buyer on whether or not to allow that, and who would mediate the dispute.

That's not a chargeback, that's an escrow service.

That is charge back. Even with a credit card, your bank is the mediator between you and the merchant.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not calling for “more transparency,” I’m calling into question your assertion that the payment processors are acting out of rational self-interest. It’s a little strange to complain about no one being responsive to you when you’ve summarily dismissed every comment in this thread.

Once again this is like the 10th time this discussion has played out on HN. If you want to see a less conclusory set of arguments, use the search bar and go back a couple years. The counterargument here doesn't even make sense. You think payment processors are run by people with weird puritan takes on adult content? No, they're exactly the same nerds that work everywhere else in the industry. I'm sure someone will co…

> Once again this is like the 10th time this discussion has played out on HN.

If the conversation is too boring and repetitive for you personally due to your long, long history as a commenter, you could always choose not to participate in it. That’s more or less what you’ve done here in any case, with the added efficiency of one fewer step.

This is what, past the thirtieth anniversary of Eternal September? I’d think you’ve had plenty of time to cope with the social phenomenon.

> I'm sure someone will come up with some just-so story about how payment processors, and only payment processors, are suspectible to influence from religious radicals or whatever, but: special pleading is special pleading.

A lot of that going around, huh. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48129408

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet X can still accept payments even though it officially allows paid CSAM generation. I am not sure if CSAM is the only reason for this group - notice they specifically listed MILF/DILF, that doesn't involve or imply CSAM in any way.

"CSAM generation" is an oxymoron. The justification behind criminalizing mere possession of CSAM is that it requires the abuse of a child to produce. This is not the case with fictional content. If the media does not depict an actual child being abused, is is by definition not CSAM.

People always retroactively justify anything they see as convenient and uncontroversial, stick to “everyone's opinion” (which does not exist, and is the product of their own projections).

One needs education to explain that, for example, hentai manga has little to do with realism, that character drawing styles have a long history that is only partially intertwined with lolicon wave started in the early 1980s (and that they even cross-pollinated with female-oriented manga along the way), or that the strict indecency ban (again, thanks to US) had created it in the first place (so little girls were actually used to portray proverbial 900 year old vampiresses because you could not draw those vampiresses that way).

Then we can see that any kind of image, even highly realistic, even photographs, is a deliberate set of choices made by the author, not a 1:1 copy of of “reality”. Then we can switch to the viewer side, and study how the contents of people's head define what they see, and how they react.

Here's a party trick. Japanese entertainment industry still produces a significant amount of media with young women in bikini. Weekly Young Magazine (one of the biggest manga periodicals) keeps placing idols on the front cover to this day. Ask someone about it, and listen to the expected comments about “questionable”, “seedy”, and “exploitative” nature of those (which are obviously true to a large extent). Then compare that to Western media products, global pop stars and such, and enjoy the excuses about it being completely different, “suitable for the whole family”, and “playing by the rules”.

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"CSAM generation" is an oxymoron. The justification behind criminalizing mere possession of CSAM is that it requires the abuse of a child to produce. This is not the case with fictional content. If the media does not depict an actual child being abused, is is by definition not CSAM.

I'm partially with you on that one ("computer generated") but the laws converge to the position that if the computer-generated pixels are arranged in such a way that it's a young human, it's CSAM. Also we're not arguing the language here or its adherence to the specific reality, but the blunt tool the laws are. Putting other countries laws aside, I believe that digitally manipulating the image of the real child in th…

Laws do nothing without people who believe in them (just like they believe any other idol), or profit from them, or make an excuse that they are getting paid to enforce them, therefore “it is OK”.

People should be pre-conditioned to lose their marbles at the mere idea of someone being naked, and rush to the saviours in power as a consequence. It is not universal, there are many places where people are not trained by hyper-sexualised culture to treat children as sexual objects first and foremost (of course, it's always because of some “other” maniacs “everywhere”). That does not mean that those places are “better” or “safer”, just not that crazy.

In simple terms, viewers taught how to feel by the Jerry Springer Show (and by that I mean all “respectable” globalised media together, the difference is superficial) put on the cork hats, and dictate how everyone else should act. All while being 100% sure they are “progressive”, unlike those “savages”.

Obviously, certain people really like that they can keep any international hosting company, or business in general, on a leash, and they like it to be that way forever, so it's essential that you keep supporting the hypocrisy.

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