Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
1–10 of 272 posts
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#2Payments are pretty much 'public infrastructure' at this point and should be treated the same as utilities. ie they should be required to provide service for anything legal.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#3It pains me to say this, but this might actually be a valid use case for cryptocurrency. These companies are cowards.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#4I 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 right to refuse service. The solution being explored in the EU makes more sense: facilitate competition so users have more choice of platforms. Or another alternative: can we reduce the power of small but vocal minorities to prevent them from "jawboning" companies?
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#5Clarifying 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 uncomfortable with on a personal level. I dont support a thing, so I wont give material support to a thing. Thats not censorship. Its not censorship when amazon removes a book, or a publisher takes something out of print. If everything is censorship, including freedom of association, nothing is censorship.
I think the best thing that can be done about this problem is to promote and create alternate payment processors. The second best thing is to help these sites accept crypto payments (yes I know the article hung a lantern on that, but still)
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#6Clarifying 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…
> The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was uncomfortable with on a personal level
Corporations do not have a "personal level"
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#7Clarifying 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…
Broadly speaking I'd usually agree, except that Visa/Mastercard are a two-company oligopoly at this point, with effectively no meaningful competition. Yes, other payment mechanisms exist, but consider how much it limits the viability of an online business to not accept credit cards.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#8I 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…
Companies shouldn't have rights.
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#9I 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…
Companies shouldn't have rights.
Please elaborate?
Re: Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
#10Clarifying 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 thing .. to promote and create alternate payment processors
That would only make sense in your analogy, where the shutoff stemmed from the payment processor owner's moral compass. What actually happened here is that an advocacy group hounded the biggest processors into it, so as other processors get big enough, by symmetry the same thing will repeat.
It seems to me that what's needed here is other advocacy groups willing to hound the processors in the other direction.