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Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
61–70 of 272 posts
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
But say you're a concreter, you've worked with a client who's an absolute prick - doesn't do anything illegal exactly but he's a total stickler with your work, calls you all the time with stupid questions, tries to find problems everywhere to justify a discount (despite you having hypothetically done the job perfectly), pays as late as possible. Shouldn't you have the right to not take on another job for this guy?
You're right - but in that instance the justification in my mind (and what you'd presumably argue if challenged legally) is that they're difficult to work with - which I'm okay with. But not wanting to concrete that person's driveway because they're in the army, or because they're a politician or whatever else along those lines I think shouldn't be allowed.
Okay, I will now say "they are difficult to work with" or "i don't have time" every time a client walks up that I don't want to serve. Infact, that's exactly what a lot of handymen say already to avoid the irritation associated with declining a job.
I hope you see how your "ought" will be difficult to implement in practice
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#63I had never heard the term "jawboning" before. According to Merriam-Webster it is "the use of public appeals (as by a president) to influence the actions especially of business and labor leaders" or "broadly : the use of spoken persuasion". Regarding TFA: I don't think trading freedoms of one group (the platform users) for those of another (the platform operators) is a good solution. Visa/Mastercard should have the r…
> Visa/Mastercard should have the right to refuse service. Given their market dominance, they should absolutely not have any right to refuse service. At that level of scale, they need to be treated like common carriers, who must handle all communications/transactions.
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.
If the gov doesn't clamp down hard on them, I can only assume the gov is in on this grift of having corporations acting as unofficial censors and freedom of speech moderators for the state under the loophole of "the state didn't mess with your constitutional rights to freedom of expression, but what you did broke the ToS of the payment processors, so now they're free to de-bank you and take away your ability to buy and sell things. Tsk tsk, shouldn't have sent those memes making fun of JD Vance and Trump I guess".
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#64Clarifying I find the furry art weird, and not pornographic. (Weird is fine btw, normal is the worse insult imho) I think the biggest issue is the damage that the word "Censorship" has taken in the last few years. If I ran a payment processor, the first thing I would do is try to be as neutral as my moral compass allows. The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was u…
> Its not censorship when amazon removes a book Analogies like this are misleading, IMO. Like if a theater chooses not to show a certain movie that's obviously not censorship, but if the water company effectively prevents the movie from showing by threatening to cut off the theater's water, colloquially the term would certainly apply. And what happened here seems a lot closer to the latter than the former. > best thi…
In a perfect world, Visa/Mastercard would turn around to the advocacy groups and say "Alright, obviously you are not happy with our service level, so we do not force you to be our customers. In fact, we just cancelled all the cards of your members. Have a nice day."
It would even make sense financially, because porn sure brings in more dough in processing fees than Kristian Karen who pays for her Starbucks Latte with plastic.
As long as being unreasonable does carry no risk people will continue to be unreasonable.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your assessment of the current situation. But I think the solution is to break up the duopoly, either by leveling the playing field or creating government-run alternatives, rather than force the duopoly to do certain things.
This is the “instead of providing school lunches, eliminate poverty” argument. I am fully supportive of fostering competition. But until the market actualky changes, monopilies / duopolies should be regulated to prevent this abuse of power. Rejecting a simple tactical solution in favor of a future systemic overhaul is classic perfect vs good.
Calling for the creation of a government run alternative isn't arguing against School Lunches. It's the exact opposite.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because we know that not doing so leads to bad outcomes, and in some cases, to outright catastrophe. A person who was not invested in subprime mortgages in 2006 had no skin in the game - yet the fact that others did invest in subprime mortgages created instabilities that threatened them. Virtually everyone agrees, in retrospect, that something should have been done then. But it wasn't, with precisely the justificatio…
I'm not seeing where private citizens are prevented from engaging in lawful private microeconomic activity when a privately owned payment processor doesn't want to engage in certain transactions. The private citizen has the option to pay cash, bitcoin, trade goods or services, etc. Are these options as convenient in this day and age as tapping a credit card? No, but that doesn't mean everyone is entitled to convenien…
> The private citizen has the option to pay cash, bitcoin, trade goods or services, etc.
As far as I understand, this isn't an option. I'm Brazilian, so I can easily pay with PIX (and I have never used a credit card with Steam, since PIX is just so much more convenient). But Steam isn't allowed to sell me that content; if they try, even if they restrict it only to those who pay with PIX, my understanding is that these two global payment processors will stop working with them. And since unfortunately most of the world doesn't have yet something similar to PIX, that would mean losing access to a lot of people.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#67Cryptocurrencies are sufficiently diverse and popular in this day and age that this should be a non-issue at this time. So many sites accept them already. I even advise using Monero to fully shield the user.
At some point they'd probably want to convert back to fiat and that's the trick. Coinbase or whichever company will probably follow suit.
I think payment processors blocking Coinbase would open them up to large legal liabilities.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#68Cryptocurrencies are sufficiently diverse and popular in this day and age that this should be a non-issue at this time. So many sites accept them already. I even advise using Monero to fully shield the user.
At some point they'd probably want to convert back to fiat and that's the trick. Coinbase or whichever company will probably follow suit.
It just needs the economic value of supporting this trade to outweigh the value they assign to control and influence.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#69Waiting for the furry-led, sex-positive counter activist group called "Collective Snout".
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I'm the sole owner and only employee of a small business, should I have the right to choose my clients? If so, at what size/scale/level of market capture should I lose my rights?
It's an interesting one - I've always thought that businesses should have no right to refuse business, and it kind of already exists, for example you can't refuse to serve a customer purely on the basis of their skin color. Likewise, if a casino or betting company (ladbrokes, for example) have customers that win too often, I also think it should be illegal to stop them betting. Fundamentally if you're running a busin…
This is completely unworkable in the real world