11 ms·

FetLife Announcement

147 points by dohqu8Zi 10y ago

Shank 10y ago
If there was ever a use for [insert favorite crypto currency here] gaining adoption, the killer feature is that payments can't be halted or frozen to accounts. It sounds like they got hit by people who were unaware of what FetLife is following due diligence in processing card transactions. As far as I can discern, it's just a social network with a darker focus, which led to an overreaction from a card network.
- kefka 10y ago
  The the post lies this answer: Why haven't you embraced Bitcoin to get away from the restrictions of the banks / credit card companies? - @Eibon Answer: We used to accept bitcoins through Coinbase. They dropped us a year ago because we are a kinky site. No joke. If a Bitcoin site wants to accept credit cards, then they have to adhere to rules set forth by the credit card companies. Yes, there are other options, and we are going to look into them, but options like Bitcoin are a nice to have and not currently a viable replacement for being able to accept credit and debit cards on FetLife, no matter how much one might want to believe otherwise. When we offered Bitcoin as an option, it was responsible for less than 0.1% of our daily transactions.
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    Where there is one, there may be more
  - Shank 10y ago
    While this may be true, Coinbase isn't synonymous for Bitcoin -- the true "idealized" version is that you generate your own BTC transaction system (or use an off the shelf one?) -- not use a processor (ergo, not Coinbase).
    - TylerE 10y ago
      Still have to cash out through somebody if you want ActualMoney(tm).
      - madez 10y ago
        You only need to cash out the amount you can't spend in bitcoins. The more things you can buy in bitcoins, the less powerful politically-controlled money becomes.
        jes5199 10y ago
        are you going to pay employees in bitcoin?
        tribaal 10y ago
        Or rent?
      - modeless 10y ago
        There are at least 18 exchanges supporting Bitcoin to dollar conversion that are not Coinbase: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d There are also other options such as various OTC trading desks or Gemini's daily auctions. And finally, there are several other full-service payment processors that they could try besides Coinbase. Coinbase was a really bad pick for them. It's almost certainly the single least likely option to be able to support fringe businesses, due to their close relationship with banks and credit card companies.
      - Coding_Cat 10y ago
        Can't they just pay boringCorp Ltd. in Bitcoin for use of their "bussiness solution" (that is managing your infrastructure or providing the bitcoin transaction platform). The boringCorp Ltd can cash out for ActualMoney(tm) and I'm sure there is some way of accounting to get that money back to where it needs to go.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    The problematic part for Coinbase is probably automatically selling the coins and depositing USD into their checking account. There are other vendors to handle the Bitcoin itself. In particular, I think Verotel does Bitcoin processing for adult merchants.
  - andreyf 10y ago
    Still don't see why they can't just accept bitcoin. Buying BTC via credit card is trivial via Coinbase (and they won't ban customers), and while they won't get 100%, they're much more likely to get quite a bit more than 0.1% even if BTC is the only payment option.
    - timmaah 10y ago
      Do you think their lawyers and staff want to get paid in BTC?
      - modeless 10y ago
        They wouldn't have to. There are at least 18 other bitcoin exchanges they could use: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d
    - robhu 10y ago
      If it is provable that Coinbase is being used as a means of bypassing VISA et al's restrictions on sites like FetLife, what is stop VISA et al doing the same to Coinbase?
      - problems 10y ago
        You can already proxy around the CC companies in all too many ways. Buy gift cards, cash cards, heck, prepaid VISA cards for example. They're not going to bother going after this kind of thing, they'd lose money over it. It doesn't make sense from a financial perspective.
        robhu 10y ago
        Ah. It turns out FetLife were also banned from Coinbase because Coinbase doesn't want to be cut off as a result.
        andreyf 10y ago
- noarchy 10y ago
  The linked text mentions that even Coinbase dropped Fetlife, because they (Coinbase) still processes credit card transactions. So it looks like any use of a cryptocurrency has to be completely decoupled from the credit card world.
  - Senji 10y ago
    Step one: Start a political party Step two: Get in power Step three: Make refusing credit transactions to patrons on grounds of "morality" illegal.
    - FussyZeus 10y ago
      What exactly is the difference between enforcing morality with law and enforcing no morality with law? Morality is an incredibly subjective thing between differing cultures, I don't think it has a place in the justice/civil law systems.
      - Senji 10y ago
        You don't have to write the word "morality" in the law itself. Just make it so they can't deny service to anyone ever.
    - nerfhammer 10y ago
      > Start a political party > Get in power Almost impossible in a FPTP voting system
      - robhu 10y ago
        Surely it is possible and only requires a majority to support you.
      - Senji 10y ago
        You can take over an established party, eg: alt-right and the mainstream conservative right.
  - 10y ago
- RileyKyeden 10y ago
  It's not dark at all. It's just a place for people to list their kinks. Nothing nefarious. It's very popular in the kinkier sub-communities of the furry fandom. edit: I got this mixed up with F-List, which is similar in function with a narrower focus.
  - leesalminen 10y ago
    There is definitely a seedy (read: illegal) element to the site which seems to have been going on for years without concrete efforts on the staff's part to eliminate. I'm not talking about kinks, I'm talking about pedophiles and rapists.
    - RileyKyeden 10y ago
      I got it mixed up with a similar site with the same acronym. I don't know much about FetLife.
xutopia 10y ago
We need more sex positivity in this world. While I agree that some of the contents of Fetlife was objectionable from a legal standpoint the owners did a good job at getting rid of those things. I think the objection today has mostly to do with the fact that they want to tell us what we do in our bedrooms.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > I think the objection today has mostly to do with the fact that they want to tell us what we do in our bedrooms. Yeah we already see the first signs with Trump defunding abortion organizations. However I don't believe Trump to be behind this, much more Mike Pence. And I'm really, really afraid that someone will either successfully impeach, maim or kill Trump - because then Mike Pence will succeed him, without anyone to check his powers, given that he'll have the entire extremist religious people in the GOP behind him.
  - jonlucc 10y ago
    I live in Indiana, and I've been living under a Pence government with a Republican supermajority for the last 4 years. It's better than Trump. Yeah, Pence picks ridiculous fights that cost the state a lot of money and he's a socially regressive person who wants to impose his views on everyone, but he's not an unhinged, unstable narcissist. He doesn't make all of his policy within minutes of it being shown on a cable newscast. I'll be able to sleep at night when Trump is replaced by Pence.
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      Trump isn't that unstable, I believe. He's just blindly following the call of profit (except the pussy-grabbing and sexual assault stuff). Most of the decisions of him and his team up to now can be classified as "will make Donald Trump or his team money in some weird way". And I believe that this will land him in jail or impeachment more sooner than later.
      - explainthisth 10y ago
troncheadle 10y ago
There are things that, in the interest of global freedom, need to be taken out of the hands of corporations and government, permanently, forever. The transfer of value is definitely one of them.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Erm, VISA, Mastercard, American Express, and Paypal are not US Government. They're private companies. Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx are doing this on behalf of their own internal policies. Welcome to the free market.
rhizome 10y ago
This has more front-loaded backstory than a recipe post at Pioneer Woman Cooks, but it sounds like a harbinger for Puritan effects on commerce. Who could be next on the list of these card companies? The cannabis world already has their own troubles, so maybe the ratchet will next tighten on them. That a criteria for canceling an account can be "Illegal or immoral," like those are synonyms, is telling.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > The cannabis world already has their own troubles, so maybe the ratchet will next tighten on them IIRC cannabis merchants can't even open bank accounts, much less accept credit cards. The only way that they can be annoyed further is by restricting the amount of cash they can hold in the store - which actually would make sense, given that a pot stop filled to the brim with cash is a prime target for gangsters.
  - X86BSD 10y ago
    You're correct. AFAIK all those pot shops in Colorado for instance are cash based only. And have vaults built to store all their cash because the banks won't touch it. There was an episode on Vice TV that touched on this I believe.
    - goatforce5 10y ago
      There was an amusing tidbit in CNN's High Profits (I think it was) where the Colorado tax department was having to put on extra security because the pot shops were having to pay their taxes by physically handing over bags of cash.
      - X86BSD 10y ago
        Yeah! It's absolutely crazy!! When legalization gets to my state I hope I have the foresight to have the planning and financing in place to be the first dispensary to open here. These things are just redonculous cash cows.
  - 10y ago
Analemma_ 10y ago
But note that it has been suggested that this is actually an internal political purge with the payment processors and politicians as convenient red herrings: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/23/links-117-inaugurl-address/#comment-457123 http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/23/links-117-inaugurl-addr...
jakebasile 10y ago
This may be naive or old fashioned, but could they take checks? Can banks refuse to cash checks based on "morals"?
- beat 10y ago
  Yes, but how much business would they lose?
  - jakebasile 10y ago
    I'm sure some, but if even half the people who subscribed by card sent in checks, it's better than nothing.
    - msbarnett 10y ago
      Half would be a miracle, with that level of friction.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - Sharlin 10y ago
    All international users, at the very least. Edit: FetLife is based in Canada. Are checks a thing there? (honest question from a European who has never even seen a check)
    - hackerboos 10y ago
      Cheques are very much still a thing in Canada. Especially for private rentals.
      - msbarnett 10y ago
        Really? I haven't seen a cheque in years (also Canadian). I've been renting privately for years, and it's always been accomplished via email money transfer.
drdeadringer 10y ago
I started hearing about this several days ago via a subreddit. There had been some confusion//discussion about what was going on regarding the group deletions. I'm glad to get more of the story.
zakk 10y ago
Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era? Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? The same happens when someone is banned from Facebook and Twitter: of course there are other options, but he won't be able to reach 95% of the Internet audience. Edit: maybe should've spoken about a "different, active enforcement" rather than "better enforcement".
- tptacek 10y ago
  Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally. These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.
  - zakk 10y ago
    > These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment. In my opinion they have a lot to do with the First Amendment. When a few big players can effectively and arbitrarily put someone out of business, that's quite a problem in my opinion. When a few big players can effectively silence a voice, that's a free speech problem, in my opinion. As our lives move from physical places to the Internet, I would like to see the same liberties maintained.
    - Navarr 10y ago
      > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. These boundaries have nothing to do with the first amendment.
      - 10y ago
Tharkun 10y ago
The problem with major Credit Card companies is that they're all American and that the US of A is incredibly moralistic. For the sake of convenience, I'm considering PayPal to be part of the same club of moralistic knobs. It's virtually impossible to set up any kind of online shop without accepting one or more of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa or AmEx. As soon as you accept money for anything one of these FOUR(!) financial behemoths objects to, you're out of luck. You'll be forced to stop using them, and as soon as you do you'll see your revenue drop dramatically. And why? All because a couple of old men in suits think that they know what's "acceptable". Nevermind the legalities. PayPal makes it impossible to sell pornography, which is perfectly legal in large parts of the civilized world.
- sp332 10y ago
  It's not just moralistic. Porn sites have crazy high fraud rates that make them very unpalatable from a business perspective.
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    If that logic was the case, they'd simply have a fraud metric that if you exceeded you'd have your account disabled. As someone who works at a company where we literally have thieves testing cards on our site on a daily basis, any site that accepts credit cards has a high rate of frauds as thieves test cards. Somehow, we manage not to pass these cards to credit card processors (and no, I don't mean we use Stripe. I mean we have our own in-house anti-fraud process since we deal with the processors through a merchant account at a major bank like FL does). Porn companies have filtering in place as well for the same reason. It would be a solid metric instead of "morality" if the cause was what you believe it to be.
    - saurik 10y ago
      Do you have a large percentage of people who legitimately buy stuff from your website later claim they didn't? This is not your standard fraud model: with porn you see a remarkably large amount of "oh shit, someone (usually my significant other with whom I share my finances) just saw this charge on my card, which is totally not OK for whatever reason, so I guess my best strategy here is to totally disavow the charge and pretend it was credit card fraud". A second issue porn has which most websites do not is related: customers actively do not want their statement to accurately state from whom they purchased the product, lest someone sees exactly what their fetish is simply from reading the credit card report. This drastically increases the chargeback rate from people who legitimately do not remember what they bought and do not recognize the charge (particularly if the service uses subscriptions). If you want to accept payments for porn, you need a fundamentally different fraud model than for a standard website, no matter how weirdly digital or in high demand: this is not about scammers or about black card fraud, this is about basic lies and deceipt. I see no real reason to claim PayPal must go out of their way to support this. A company which has is CCBill. They sign you up as a "high risk" Visa card merchant (which is an upstream notion supported by Visa), and then are much more hands on in the checkout process than a normal credit card processor, with a website people can use to look up and manage their subscriptions to websites (so like, imagine if all Stripe purchases required you to use their web form, showing up on the customer statement as only "Stripe", and if the customer could then go directly to stripe.com, enter their credit card details, see they had a subscription with you, and cancel it; to be explicit: PayPal does not have these restrictions, even though they might seem similar to you). (To note: it does bother me somewhat that PayPal doesn't go out of their way to support some of this stuff, but as long as the actual credit card processing firms support it and there exist banks willing to allow it, I don't get pissed off about it as it is totally possible for you to do it yourself... it isn't like you are locked out of the actual network effect of credit cards, which is what is important; and given that there even exist easy well-supported full solutions out there like CCBill, it barely seems like a problem.)
the8472 10y ago
At least in europe wire transfer via SEPA should be a viable alternative.
- hackerboos 10y ago
  Banks in the EU would just close their accounts.
  - the8472 10y ago
    But there are a lot more choices than just 4 payment processors.
    - hackerboos 10y ago
      True but look at the Bitcoin exchanges in the UK for example. You can hop between 12 banks and each one will close your account until none are left. Doesn't bode well for the stability of the business. We need a payment system which isn't Visa/Mastercard and preferably not US based. Honestly, China Union Pay might just say yes to the business that those decline. If only they break into the international markets better...
spangry 10y ago
Why not Bitpay? I'm not associated with them, and have never been on the merchant side of the transaction, but it seems like a 'safe' bitcoin option. And based on my quick read of their merchant TOS[0] bitpay shouldn't (in theory) have an issue with the nature of FetLife's business. As an aside, it's fun to watch a bunch of old, technically-illiterate and conservative financiers unknowingly sow yet another little seed of their own destruction. I guess being at the top of the heap can make one feel invulnerable... [0] https://bitpay.com/about/terms#merchant https://bitpay.com/about/terms#merchant
- mcdoug 10y ago
  They did try Coinbase before and said that it accounted for less than 0.1% of their transaction volume. People just don't use BitCoin enough. I imagine if it was a higher percentage, you could make the case that switching to BTC-only would drive it higher, but at such minimal numbers, staking your entire business on it seems like a bad risk.
mcdoug 10y ago
I am a member of the FetLife community as well as an HN reader. First, let me clear up some misconceptions about FetLife that people on here may have. It's not a porn site, or at least not primarily a porn site. The UX is a lot closer to that of Facebook but specifically for kinky people. If you go to a kink conference and meet someone, they will likely ask for your FL name to connect with you (incidentally Twitter is the other popular mechanism for communicating with fellow kinksters). FL has a subscription model, and the main benefit you get out of that is the ability to view other members' posted media better. There is a section of the site called Kinky & Popular which is similar to Reddit's front page. Since people can Love (e.g. like/heart/etc.) their friends' pictures and videos, some become popular and land on this front page. Viewing more than the top 200 or watching the videos requires a subscription of $5/month. This section is dominated by media of pretty, skinny, submissive women, and can be seen as having porn-like content. Note that what ends up here is purely moderated by the community and is not promoted by the FL staff. The people whose media ends up here do not get paid for it. FL until recently has had a very loose content policy. Things like blood play, consensual non-consent, rape fantasies were all allowed. Illegal things were not: no underage media, no snuff, etc. But people were free to discuss their fantasies, their kinks, etc. without much restriction. Whether you agree or disagree with stuff that gets someone off, you were free to discuss what you want and fantasize about what you want, as long as what you are posting violates no US laws. FL serves an important purpose to our community: it is a place to share events and local community knowledge, to keep up with people, and importantly to identify abusers. This is the main benefit I see in it and it would be the biggest loss if FL went under. These latest developments have obviously put a damper on things at FL. They have contacted several groups that are able to advocate for them and give advice, and even the EFL at one point was involved. However, the outlook is bleak. Sadly, the community is not united in supporting FL due to seemingly arbitrary content restrictions, and FL is unable to provide a reasonable level of service without those. If someone knows a way to help this community, please post it here and I'll do my best to point it out to the powers that be there. I am not affiliated with the FL staff, just a user, but they do talk to the community freely and frequently.
- hollerith 10y ago
  >and even the EFL at one point was involved I think you mean the EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation).
sre_ops 10y ago
I offer a much more banal explanation: * FetLife flopped PCI. It accepted credit cards itself. It still accepts ACH payments itself. Those behind it could not be bothered to take security seriously.

147 points by dohqu8Zi 10y ago

Shank 10y ago

If there was ever a use for [insert favorite crypto currency here] gaining adoption, the killer feature is that payments can't be halted or frozen to accounts. It sounds like they got hit by people who were unaware of what FetLife is following due diligence in processing card transactions. As far as I can discern, it's just a social network with a darker focus, which led to an overreaction from a card network.

kefka 10y ago
The the post lies this answer: Why haven't you embraced Bitcoin to get away from the restrictions of the banks / credit card companies? - @Eibon Answer: We used to accept bitcoins through Coinbase. They dropped us a year ago because we are a kinky site. No joke. If a Bitcoin site wants to accept credit cards, then they have to adhere to rules set forth by the credit card companies. Yes, there are other options, and we are going to look into them, but options like Bitcoin are a nice to have and not currently a viable replacement for being able to accept credit and debit cards on FetLife, no matter how much one might want to believe otherwise. When we offered Bitcoin as an option, it was responsible for less than 0.1% of our daily transactions.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  Where there is one, there may be more
- Shank 10y ago
  While this may be true, Coinbase isn't synonymous for Bitcoin -- the true "idealized" version is that you generate your own BTC transaction system (or use an off the shelf one?) -- not use a processor (ergo, not Coinbase).
  - TylerE 10y ago
    Still have to cash out through somebody if you want ActualMoney(tm).
    - madez 10y ago
      You only need to cash out the amount you can't spend in bitcoins. The more things you can buy in bitcoins, the less powerful politically-controlled money becomes.
      - jes5199 10y ago
        are you going to pay employees in bitcoin?
        tribaal 10y ago
        Or rent?
    - modeless 10y ago
      There are at least 18 exchanges supporting Bitcoin to dollar conversion that are not Coinbase: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d There are also other options such as various OTC trading desks or Gemini's daily auctions. And finally, there are several other full-service payment processors that they could try besides Coinbase. Coinbase was a really bad pick for them. It's almost certainly the single least likely option to be able to support fringe businesses, due to their close relationship with banks and credit card companies.
    - Coding_Cat 10y ago
      Can't they just pay boringCorp Ltd. in Bitcoin for use of their "bussiness solution" (that is managing your infrastructure or providing the bitcoin transaction platform). The boringCorp Ltd can cash out for ActualMoney(tm) and I'm sure there is some way of accounting to get that money back to where it needs to go.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  The problematic part for Coinbase is probably automatically selling the coins and depositing USD into their checking account. There are other vendors to handle the Bitcoin itself. In particular, I think Verotel does Bitcoin processing for adult merchants.
- andreyf 10y ago
  Still don't see why they can't just accept bitcoin. Buying BTC via credit card is trivial via Coinbase (and they won't ban customers), and while they won't get 100%, they're much more likely to get quite a bit more than 0.1% even if BTC is the only payment option.
  - timmaah 10y ago
    Do you think their lawyers and staff want to get paid in BTC?
    - modeless 10y ago
      They wouldn't have to. There are at least 18 other bitcoin exchanges they could use: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d
  - robhu 10y ago
    If it is provable that Coinbase is being used as a means of bypassing VISA et al's restrictions on sites like FetLife, what is stop VISA et al doing the same to Coinbase?
    - problems 10y ago
      You can already proxy around the CC companies in all too many ways. Buy gift cards, cash cards, heck, prepaid VISA cards for example. They're not going to bother going after this kind of thing, they'd lose money over it. It doesn't make sense from a financial perspective.
      - robhu 10y ago
        Ah. It turns out FetLife were also banned from Coinbase because Coinbase doesn't want to be cut off as a result.
        andreyf 10y ago
noarchy 10y ago
The linked text mentions that even Coinbase dropped Fetlife, because they (Coinbase) still processes credit card transactions. So it looks like any use of a cryptocurrency has to be completely decoupled from the credit card world.
- Senji 10y ago
  Step one: Start a political party Step two: Get in power Step three: Make refusing credit transactions to patrons on grounds of "morality" illegal.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    What exactly is the difference between enforcing morality with law and enforcing no morality with law? Morality is an incredibly subjective thing between differing cultures, I don't think it has a place in the justice/civil law systems.
    - Senji 10y ago
      You don't have to write the word "morality" in the law itself. Just make it so they can't deny service to anyone ever.
  - nerfhammer 10y ago
    > Start a political party > Get in power Almost impossible in a FPTP voting system
    - robhu 10y ago
      Surely it is possible and only requires a majority to support you.
    - Senji 10y ago
      You can take over an established party, eg: alt-right and the mainstream conservative right.
- 10y ago
RileyKyeden 10y ago
It's not dark at all. It's just a place for people to list their kinks. Nothing nefarious. It's very popular in the kinkier sub-communities of the furry fandom. edit: I got this mixed up with F-List, which is similar in function with a narrower focus.
- leesalminen 10y ago
  There is definitely a seedy (read: illegal) element to the site which seems to have been going on for years without concrete efforts on the staff's part to eliminate. I'm not talking about kinks, I'm talking about pedophiles and rapists.
  - RileyKyeden 10y ago
    I got it mixed up with a similar site with the same acronym. I don't know much about FetLife.

xutopia 10y ago

We need more sex positivity in this world. While I agree that some of the contents of Fetlife was objectionable from a legal standpoint the owners did a good job at getting rid of those things. I think the objection today has mostly to do with the fact that they want to tell us what we do in our bedrooms.

mschuster91 10y ago
> I think the objection today has mostly to do with the fact that they want to tell us what we do in our bedrooms. Yeah we already see the first signs with Trump defunding abortion organizations. However I don't believe Trump to be behind this, much more Mike Pence. And I'm really, really afraid that someone will either successfully impeach, maim or kill Trump - because then Mike Pence will succeed him, without anyone to check his powers, given that he'll have the entire extremist religious people in the GOP behind him.
- jonlucc 10y ago
  I live in Indiana, and I've been living under a Pence government with a Republican supermajority for the last 4 years. It's better than Trump. Yeah, Pence picks ridiculous fights that cost the state a lot of money and he's a socially regressive person who wants to impose his views on everyone, but he's not an unhinged, unstable narcissist. He doesn't make all of his policy within minutes of it being shown on a cable newscast. I'll be able to sleep at night when Trump is replaced by Pence.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    Trump isn't that unstable, I believe. He's just blindly following the call of profit (except the pussy-grabbing and sexual assault stuff). Most of the decisions of him and his team up to now can be classified as "will make Donald Trump or his team money in some weird way". And I believe that this will land him in jail or impeachment more sooner than later.
    - explainthisth 10y ago

troncheadle 10y ago

There are things that, in the interest of global freedom, need to be taken out of the hands of corporations and government, permanently, forever. The transfer of value is definitely one of them.

dragontamer 10y ago
Erm, VISA, Mastercard, American Express, and Paypal are not US Government. They're private companies. Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx are doing this on behalf of their own internal policies. Welcome to the free market.

rhizome 10y ago

This has more front-loaded backstory than a recipe post at Pioneer Woman Cooks, but it sounds like a harbinger for Puritan effects on commerce. Who could be next on the list of these card companies? The cannabis world already has their own troubles, so maybe the ratchet will next tighten on them. That a criteria for canceling an account can be "Illegal or immoral," like those are synonyms, is telling.

mschuster91 10y ago
> The cannabis world already has their own troubles, so maybe the ratchet will next tighten on them IIRC cannabis merchants can't even open bank accounts, much less accept credit cards. The only way that they can be annoyed further is by restricting the amount of cash they can hold in the store - which actually would make sense, given that a pot stop filled to the brim with cash is a prime target for gangsters.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  You're correct. AFAIK all those pot shops in Colorado for instance are cash based only. And have vaults built to store all their cash because the banks won't touch it. There was an episode on Vice TV that touched on this I believe.
  - goatforce5 10y ago
    There was an amusing tidbit in CNN's High Profits (I think it was) where the Colorado tax department was having to put on extra security because the pot shops were having to pay their taxes by physically handing over bags of cash.
    - X86BSD 10y ago
      Yeah! It's absolutely crazy!! When legalization gets to my state I hope I have the foresight to have the planning and financing in place to be the first dispensary to open here. These things are just redonculous cash cows.
- 10y ago

Analemma_ 10y ago

But note that it has been suggested that this is actually an internal political purge with the payment processors and politicians as convenient red herrings: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/23/links-117-inaugurl-address/#comment-457123 http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/23/links-117-inaugurl-addr...

jakebasile 10y ago

This may be naive or old fashioned, but could they take checks? Can banks refuse to cash checks based on "morals"?

beat 10y ago
Yes, but how much business would they lose?
- jakebasile 10y ago
  I'm sure some, but if even half the people who subscribed by card sent in checks, it's better than nothing.
  - msbarnett 10y ago
    Half would be a miracle, with that level of friction.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Sharlin 10y ago
  All international users, at the very least. Edit: FetLife is based in Canada. Are checks a thing there? (honest question from a European who has never even seen a check)
  - hackerboos 10y ago
    Cheques are very much still a thing in Canada. Especially for private rentals.
    - msbarnett 10y ago
      Really? I haven't seen a cheque in years (also Canadian). I've been renting privately for years, and it's always been accomplished via email money transfer.

drdeadringer 10y ago

I started hearing about this several days ago via a subreddit. There had been some confusion//discussion about what was going on regarding the group deletions. I'm glad to get more of the story.

zakk 10y ago

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era? Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? The same happens when someone is banned from Facebook and Twitter: of course there are other options, but he won't be able to reach 95% of the Internet audience. Edit: maybe should've spoken about a "different, active enforcement" rather than "better enforcement".

tptacek 10y ago
Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally. These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.
- zakk 10y ago
  > These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment. In my opinion they have a lot to do with the First Amendment. When a few big players can effectively and arbitrarily put someone out of business, that's quite a problem in my opinion. When a few big players can effectively silence a voice, that's a free speech problem, in my opinion. As our lives move from physical places to the Internet, I would like to see the same liberties maintained.
  - Navarr 10y ago
    > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. These boundaries have nothing to do with the first amendment.
    - 10y ago

Tharkun 10y ago

The problem with major Credit Card companies is that they're all American and that the US of A is incredibly moralistic. For the sake of convenience, I'm considering PayPal to be part of the same club of moralistic knobs. It's virtually impossible to set up any kind of online shop without accepting one or more of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa or AmEx. As soon as you accept money for anything one of these FOUR(!) financial behemoths objects to, you're out of luck. You'll be forced to stop using them, and as soon as you do you'll see your revenue drop dramatically. And why? All because a couple of old men in suits think that they know what's "acceptable". Nevermind the legalities. PayPal makes it impossible to sell pornography, which is perfectly legal in large parts of the civilized world.

sp332 10y ago
It's not just moralistic. Porn sites have crazy high fraud rates that make them very unpalatable from a business perspective.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  If that logic was the case, they'd simply have a fraud metric that if you exceeded you'd have your account disabled. As someone who works at a company where we literally have thieves testing cards on our site on a daily basis, any site that accepts credit cards has a high rate of frauds as thieves test cards. Somehow, we manage not to pass these cards to credit card processors (and no, I don't mean we use Stripe. I mean we have our own in-house anti-fraud process since we deal with the processors through a merchant account at a major bank like FL does). Porn companies have filtering in place as well for the same reason. It would be a solid metric instead of "morality" if the cause was what you believe it to be.
  - saurik 10y ago
    Do you have a large percentage of people who legitimately buy stuff from your website later claim they didn't? This is not your standard fraud model: with porn you see a remarkably large amount of "oh shit, someone (usually my significant other with whom I share my finances) just saw this charge on my card, which is totally not OK for whatever reason, so I guess my best strategy here is to totally disavow the charge and pretend it was credit card fraud". A second issue porn has which most websites do not is related: customers actively do not want their statement to accurately state from whom they purchased the product, lest someone sees exactly what their fetish is simply from reading the credit card report. This drastically increases the chargeback rate from people who legitimately do not remember what they bought and do not recognize the charge (particularly if the service uses subscriptions). If you want to accept payments for porn, you need a fundamentally different fraud model than for a standard website, no matter how weirdly digital or in high demand: this is not about scammers or about black card fraud, this is about basic lies and deceipt. I see no real reason to claim PayPal must go out of their way to support this. A company which has is CCBill. They sign you up as a "high risk" Visa card merchant (which is an upstream notion supported by Visa), and then are much more hands on in the checkout process than a normal credit card processor, with a website people can use to look up and manage their subscriptions to websites (so like, imagine if all Stripe purchases required you to use their web form, showing up on the customer statement as only "Stripe", and if the customer could then go directly to stripe.com, enter their credit card details, see they had a subscription with you, and cancel it; to be explicit: PayPal does not have these restrictions, even though they might seem similar to you). (To note: it does bother me somewhat that PayPal doesn't go out of their way to support some of this stuff, but as long as the actual credit card processing firms support it and there exist banks willing to allow it, I don't get pissed off about it as it is totally possible for you to do it yourself... it isn't like you are locked out of the actual network effect of credit cards, which is what is important; and given that there even exist easy well-supported full solutions out there like CCBill, it barely seems like a problem.)

the8472 10y ago

At least in europe wire transfer via SEPA should be a viable alternative.

hackerboos 10y ago
Banks in the EU would just close their accounts.
- the8472 10y ago
  But there are a lot more choices than just 4 payment processors.
  - hackerboos 10y ago
    True but look at the Bitcoin exchanges in the UK for example. You can hop between 12 banks and each one will close your account until none are left. Doesn't bode well for the stability of the business. We need a payment system which isn't Visa/Mastercard and preferably not US based. Honestly, China Union Pay might just say yes to the business that those decline. If only they break into the international markets better...

spangry 10y ago

Why not Bitpay? I'm not associated with them, and have never been on the merchant side of the transaction, but it seems like a 'safe' bitcoin option. And based on my quick read of their merchant TOS[0] bitpay shouldn't (in theory) have an issue with the nature of FetLife's business. As an aside, it's fun to watch a bunch of old, technically-illiterate and conservative financiers unknowingly sow yet another little seed of their own destruction. I guess being at the top of the heap can make one feel invulnerable... [0] https://bitpay.com/about/terms#merchant https://bitpay.com/about/terms#merchant

mcdoug 10y ago
They did try Coinbase before and said that it accounted for less than 0.1% of their transaction volume. People just don't use BitCoin enough. I imagine if it was a higher percentage, you could make the case that switching to BTC-only would drive it higher, but at such minimal numbers, staking your entire business on it seems like a bad risk.

mcdoug 10y ago

I am a member of the FetLife community as well as an HN reader. First, let me clear up some misconceptions about FetLife that people on here may have. It's not a porn site, or at least not primarily a porn site. The UX is a lot closer to that of Facebook but specifically for kinky people. If you go to a kink conference and meet someone, they will likely ask for your FL name to connect with you (incidentally Twitter is the other popular mechanism for communicating with fellow kinksters). FL has a subscription model, and the main benefit you get out of that is the ability to view other members' posted media better. There is a section of the site called Kinky & Popular which is similar to Reddit's front page. Since people can Love (e.g. like/heart/etc.) their friends' pictures and videos, some become popular and land on this front page. Viewing more than the top 200 or watching the videos requires a subscription of $5/month. This section is dominated by media of pretty, skinny, submissive women, and can be seen as having porn-like content. Note that what ends up here is purely moderated by the community and is not promoted by the FL staff. The people whose media ends up here do not get paid for it. FL until recently has had a very loose content policy. Things like blood play, consensual non-consent, rape fantasies were all allowed. Illegal things were not: no underage media, no snuff, etc. But people were free to discuss their fantasies, their kinks, etc. without much restriction. Whether you agree or disagree with stuff that gets someone off, you were free to discuss what you want and fantasize about what you want, as long as what you are posting violates no US laws. FL serves an important purpose to our community: it is a place to share events and local community knowledge, to keep up with people, and importantly to identify abusers. This is the main benefit I see in it and it would be the biggest loss if FL went under. These latest developments have obviously put a damper on things at FL. They have contacted several groups that are able to advocate for them and give advice, and even the EFL at one point was involved. However, the outlook is bleak. Sadly, the community is not united in supporting FL due to seemingly arbitrary content restrictions, and FL is unable to provide a reasonable level of service without those. If someone knows a way to help this community, please post it here and I'll do my best to point it out to the powers that be there. I am not affiliated with the FL staff, just a user, but they do talk to the community freely and frequently.

hollerith 10y ago
>and even the EFL at one point was involved I think you mean the EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation).

sre_ops 10y ago

I offer a much more banal explanation: * FetLife flopped PCI. It accepted credit cards itself. It still accepts ACH payments itself. Those behind it could not be bothered to take security seriously.