10 ms·

To me, too. Paypal isn't a government institution. They can choose who to partner with by whatever metrics they want.

wyager 9y ago
While I agree with this reasoning, I wish it was used consistently; on other issues, people here frequently bring up things like redlining or (hypothetical) refusal of services in rural areas as examples of why companies shouldn't be allowed to choose their customers.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  As far as I have ever found in the literature, redlining was an outcome of financial risk calculations, not based on discriminatory racial ideology.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - wyager 9y ago
    This is true, but people still took issue with it because (as far as I can tell) they believe anything that happens to end up effectively along racial lines is racist regardless of intent. This is also orthogonal to the question, which is whether businesses should be allowed to choose their customers.
devrandomguy 9y ago
That argument becomes weaker as responsibilities and power are transferred from the government to the private sector. How many of the rules that we follow are currently dictated by a corporation, rather than a government? Do we not want checks and balances on all rule-makers?
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  Then why shift such responsibilities to the private sector in the first place? If they must be regulated as stringently as the public sector (especially in terms of things like free speech) then they should be public goods. I think it's much more viable to translate some of these privately owned aspects of the internet to publicly owned institutions. Then you obtain the free-speech allowances you desire without burdening a private company with further regulation and restrictions. This isn't the only solution of course though. But just claiming that these goods are so important doesn't necessarily mean they should be treated like government entities. They're not - that's not how the laws here work.
  - devrandomguy 9y ago
    I don't believe that government is seriously hindered by free speech, but rather by it's lack of profit-incentive and by the perverse incentives of our current implementation of democracy. We should expand the free speech rights, and other basic human rights, to cover all people in all situations. Actually, that profit incentive thing is debatable, I take that back. A for-profit government could be quite horrifying.
cortesoft 9y ago
Not completely; they couldn't decide to use 'whiteness of yoru skin' as a metric for decision. I think there should absolutely be limits to what you can use to determine if you do business with someone, but where exactly the line is is not an easy question to answer.
- mholt 9y ago
  IF skin color did correlate to higher fraud rate or expenses for PayPal, then requiring them to service people of all colors equally would be unfair to the company. In this case PayPal is refusing service apparently because processing payments for the adult industry is inherently risky and correlates with higher rates of fraud or illegal activity or chargebacks, etc. Since the same issue doesn't exist for skin color, you can't really draw that as a parallel.
smsm42 9y ago
> Paypal isn't a government institution So tired of this argument. The fact that Constitution does not prohibit them from doing it does not mean what they are doing is a good thing. "It's not unconstitutional" is a very low bar to clear, and clearing it doesn't mean you are doing everything right - it only means you are not directly violating the law, which you should be doing anyway. Nobody should get any praise for just not violating the law. And paranoid panicky reaction to literature that mentions sexual relationships is idiotic on the paypal side, is just wrong. I can see how dealing with certain kinds of shady sites in adult industry may be a burden, but dreamwidth is clearly not one of them, and it can be seen very easily if somebody at paypal was willing to spend 10 seconds on it. They just don't care. > They can choose who to partner with by whatever metrics they want. And, of course, this is not true for a long time - there's a number of non-discrimination and social-engineering regulations that substantially limit by which metrics you can choose your customers.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  > Nobody should get any praise for just not violating the law That's not people's point. Sorry but you're taking the wrong idea from the argument. The point is that there are no laws in the United States that demand private forums have any semblance of "free speech". It's not that it's "not illegal". It's just simply not a concept that has any laws backing it up. People bring this up because if you have any background in constitutional law, you know that free speech is something that took a long time to define (and most people don't even know what it is...). It's a legal concept, not a societal one. So when you complain that Paypal isn't respecting your free speech, anyone with a background in law goes "???" Free speech is a legal term. When you say "Free Speech" you're referring to a very specific set of laws and rules that apply to public entities in the U.S. - not private ones. If you're actually talking about a sociological concept, then preface it as such. And if you feel that the laws don't match up in the United States to our perceived values, then say that as well. But as is, Paypal has nothing to do with free speech. If you want to talk about some other idea, that's not the legal concept of free speech, but how you want Internet companies to operate in the U.S. you need to preface your statement as such. Otherwise it just comes across as if you don't know what free speech is, so people respond with the tried and true "Paypal isn't the government". They're not trying to shut down any possibility of Paypal being regulated in a way that matches our current definition of free speech, just correcting your improper use of the term (is it pompous? I would say it could be framed better.) In other words, ya'll are arguing circles around each other.

While I agree with this reasoning, I wish it was used consistently; on other issues, people here frequently bring up things like redlining or (hypothetical) refusal of services in rural areas as examples of why companies shouldn't be allowed to choose their customers.

lr4444lr 9y ago
As far as I have ever found in the literature, redlining was an outcome of financial risk calculations, not based on discriminatory racial ideology.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- wyager 9y ago
  This is true, but people still took issue with it because (as far as I can tell) they believe anything that happens to end up effectively along racial lines is racist regardless of intent. This is also orthogonal to the question, which is whether businesses should be allowed to choose their customers.

devrandomguy 9y ago

That argument becomes weaker as responsibilities and power are transferred from the government to the private sector. How many of the rules that we follow are currently dictated by a corporation, rather than a government? Do we not want checks and balances on all rule-makers?

spaceseaman 9y ago
Then why shift such responsibilities to the private sector in the first place? If they must be regulated as stringently as the public sector (especially in terms of things like free speech) then they should be public goods. I think it's much more viable to translate some of these privately owned aspects of the internet to publicly owned institutions. Then you obtain the free-speech allowances you desire without burdening a private company with further regulation and restrictions. This isn't the only solution of course though. But just claiming that these goods are so important doesn't necessarily mean they should be treated like government entities. They're not - that's not how the laws here work.
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  I don't believe that government is seriously hindered by free speech, but rather by it's lack of profit-incentive and by the perverse incentives of our current implementation of democracy. We should expand the free speech rights, and other basic human rights, to cover all people in all situations. Actually, that profit incentive thing is debatable, I take that back. A for-profit government could be quite horrifying.

cortesoft 9y ago

Not completely; they couldn't decide to use 'whiteness of yoru skin' as a metric for decision. I think there should absolutely be limits to what you can use to determine if you do business with someone, but where exactly the line is is not an easy question to answer.

mholt 9y ago
IF skin color did correlate to higher fraud rate or expenses for PayPal, then requiring them to service people of all colors equally would be unfair to the company. In this case PayPal is refusing service apparently because processing payments for the adult industry is inherently risky and correlates with higher rates of fraud or illegal activity or chargebacks, etc. Since the same issue doesn't exist for skin color, you can't really draw that as a parallel.

smsm42 9y ago

> Paypal isn't a government institution So tired of this argument. The fact that Constitution does not prohibit them from doing it does not mean what they are doing is a good thing. "It's not unconstitutional" is a very low bar to clear, and clearing it doesn't mean you are doing everything right - it only means you are not directly violating the law, which you should be doing anyway. Nobody should get any praise for just not violating the law. And paranoid panicky reaction to literature that mentions sexual relationships is idiotic on the paypal side, is just wrong. I can see how dealing with certain kinds of shady sites in adult industry may be a burden, but dreamwidth is clearly not one of them, and it can be seen very easily if somebody at paypal was willing to spend 10 seconds on it. They just don't care. > They can choose who to partner with by whatever metrics they want. And, of course, this is not true for a long time - there's a number of non-discrimination and social-engineering regulations that substantially limit by which metrics you can choose your customers.

spaceseaman 9y ago
> Nobody should get any praise for just not violating the law That's not people's point. Sorry but you're taking the wrong idea from the argument. The point is that there are no laws in the United States that demand private forums have any semblance of "free speech". It's not that it's "not illegal". It's just simply not a concept that has any laws backing it up. People bring this up because if you have any background in constitutional law, you know that free speech is something that took a long time to define (and most people don't even know what it is...). It's a legal concept, not a societal one. So when you complain that Paypal isn't respecting your free speech, anyone with a background in law goes "???" Free speech is a legal term. When you say "Free Speech" you're referring to a very specific set of laws and rules that apply to public entities in the U.S. - not private ones. If you're actually talking about a sociological concept, then preface it as such. And if you feel that the laws don't match up in the United States to our perceived values, then say that as well. But as is, Paypal has nothing to do with free speech. If you want to talk about some other idea, that's not the legal concept of free speech, but how you want Internet companies to operate in the U.S. you need to preface your statement as such. Otherwise it just comes across as if you don't know what free speech is, so people respond with the tried and true "Paypal isn't the government". They're not trying to shut down any possibility of Paypal being regulated in a way that matches our current definition of free speech, just correcting your improper use of the term (is it pompous? I would say it could be framed better.) In other words, ya'll are arguing circles around each other.