6 ms·

American puritanism is the problem. I have enough of those American companies arbitrarily deciding that a nipple is an obscene thing. But how to fight back this

by kome 9y ago

American puritanism is the problem. I have enough of those American companies arbitrarily deciding that a nipple is an obscene thing. But how to fight back this form of cultural imperialism?

corobo 9y ago
I doubt that. Chargebacks are the problem. As soon as you mention to a payment processor that you might be taking for adult content they drop you like a hot brick.
- netsharc 9y ago
  And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why? Puritanism...
  - corobo 9y ago
    I said why in the sentence before the one you ran off with. Because they get higher than usual chargebacks. This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. You'll also have fraudulent cards because there's no physical location they need to order things to to test that the card works. Probably an aspect of underaged users using parents cards due to the nature of the content and a cherry on top in the form of money laundering as the services allows the user to receive money. As it's a service not goods it's much more easy to chargeback. I'd imagine places that sell adult products have less of an issue, because they have proof of goods.
    - aestetix 9y ago
      Is there data on that? I've heard this theory before but never seen any evidence to back it up.
      - corobo 9y ago
        I don't have any sourceable data on hand unfortunately, this is what payment processors told me when I was trying to set a service up
        samsonradu 9y ago
        Can confirm, fees would be high due to chargebacks and fraud in general. See here [1] a couple of numbers from a common industry biller. https://epoch.com/business_services https://epoch.com/business_services
    - Certhas 9y ago
      So charge them a slightly higher fee to account for that. Your reasoning that that in itself would be sufficient to refuse service does not hold up.
      - corobo 9y ago
        The processors that allow "high risk" payments do charge a higher fee. I wouldn't call it "slightly higher" though, it was prohibitively expensive for the service I was trying to set up. In a sister thread on this subject on Reddit someone suggested using Bitcoin as an alternative, which I somewhat regret not considering at the time. To clarify also it's not my reasoning. Adult content is referenced in the Terms of Service for all payment processors, whether they allow it or not. See Stripe for an example[1] [1] https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-infringement-regulated-or-illegal-products-and-services https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-infringement-...
        Certhas 9y ago
        I understand, I simply don't believe that this is a rational decision due to risk assessment. I believe that that is just an excuse. Or rather, that a high amount of the risk involved is not due to customer behaviour, but due to potential pressure from self appointed guardians of morality. As part of this discussion elsewhere people were linking again to an old engadget article about these practices, which in turn linked to this court opinion, which is well worth reading: http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2015/D11-30/C:15-3047:J:Posner:aut:T:fnOp:N:1663542:S:0 http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp... Here is the engadget article: https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war-on-the-sex-industry/ https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-ba... I think strong regulations, something like: Visa/Stripe/PayPal/Amazon have to service every business that is not illegal, would also help these companies against such "moral guardianship". They don't have to look like they are defending the rights of perverts to their other customers.
      - astura 9y ago
        Patreon has to follow the terms of their payment processors. If they want to be involved in porn they'd have to add a separate high risk payment processor for those content creators. I heard porn sites have a CC processing fees of 20+%.
    - jstarfish 9y ago
      > This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. Nah, due to the nature of the purchase, it's almost entirely about what happens when the monthly statement arrives and the wife gets a hold of it before you do. "No, honey, I don't know anything about those charges on the credit card statement. Someone must have stolen our card information." It also doesn't help that historically all those "age verification via credit card" routines inevitably enroll users in opt-out autobilling for services they legitimately don't want and end up disputing. The industry brought this on themselves.
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    No, it's because chargebacks are a nightmare scenario to deal with for the most part.
  - sky_rw 9y ago
    Well, up until recently, they were indeed afraid of the government. Let me introduce you to operation Choke Point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
  - nemothekid 9y ago
    >And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. AFAIK, the only place government wrings the hand of payment providers is for terrorism or they want to specifically choke a political actor. In Patreon's case, I'd imagine it has to do more with fraud, or more specifically how the "big" payment providers won't touch porn. (After all, the big porn sites have been processing credit cards since the dawn of the internet, just not through the same avenues as a eCommerce store would go through, if the government really cared, those sites wouldn't be able to process credit cards either). I see Patreon uses both PayPal and Stripe as their payments processor - Stripe has pornography spelled out in its term of service as prohibited, and PayPal is far less lenient when it comes to breaking their ToS. I can imagine as Patreon grows, Stripe and PayPal (who in turn might be getting their screws turned by Visa and Mastercard), might start forcing Patreon to deal with these creators. It's a very unfortunate spot Patreon is in, and I hope they aren't forced to cleanse their platform.
    - afarrell 9y ago
      > Stripe has pornography spelled out in its term of service as prohibited IIRC in 2011 this was due to the terms of their contract with their banking partner, Wells Fargo. I suspect this is still the case.
  - vacri 9y ago
    It's not government puritanism, it's because pornography payments take place in the shadier parts of the spectrum, where there's a hell of a lot more fraud.
- bambax 9y ago
  In this specific case, maybe chargebacks are the problem, but in general, American puritanism is insufferable (Facebook banning reproductions of 19th century paintings, etc.) Also, it's inexplicable. I would much rather have my kids exposed to a million boobs (that they can see anywhere on the beach anyway -- and why are boobs a problem in the first place is anyone's guess) than to the horrible and dehumanizing violence of war video games where it's apparently ok to shoot at anyone and have blood squirt all over. But, in the case of chargebacks, could it not be solved by simply having patrons agree they will suffer the chargebacks directly? Chargebacks are only a problem if the platform can't make creators cover them, no?
  - function_seven 9y ago
    Excessive chargebacks raise the cost of accepting cards overall. This lowers the value Patreon can provide to their customers. I suppose they could bifurcate the two and offer low- and high-risk plans? Not sure what it would take to implement that, though.
  - Hurricanecane 9y ago
    As to why violence and war is more acceptable I believe the answer lies in that intimacy and explicit content is much closer to home, its relatable, it attracts feelings and is also easily accessible. On the other hand war, violence and gore are really a far away concept that does not resonate with a lot of people. Its also an established ok-thing so it being all around us in the form of entertainment makes people even more numb to the subject.
    - Tuna-Fish 9y ago
      But why does your reasoning apply to the USA but not most of the rest of the western world?
  - ernst_klim 9y ago
    >Facebook banning reproductions of 19th century paintings, etc. My favorite example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Called_Ulysses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Call...
lawnchair_larry 9y ago
This has nothing to do with showing a nipple. This was more about the porn and private sex shows. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons why one might not want to enter that business. That's their right as a business owner.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Not when it becomes impossible to exist as a business without relying on such intermediaries, e.g. VISA or MasterCard. Then they are a monopoly, and can't choose their customers anymore.
  - kbart 9y ago
    Monopoly in what? There are plenty of sites that specialize in sex cams, private shows and amateur porn, so why not just go there? There are legitimate reasons to avoid adult content in your private site as it is very easy to get into serious problems where as site owner/administrator your are legally responsible: underage actors, abuse, prostitution claims (where it is illegal) etc. just to name few.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      I meant payment processors. MasterCard, VISA and PayPal all will refuse to do business with you, or pressure you into changing your business, if you're found to be in the pornography or prostitution business. Even if that's legal in your country. And in Sweden, banks are now collecting fees for getting cash, or paying in cash, of about 10$ each. So you can't really do anything as customer or company without MasterCard or VISA anymore. At this point, these systems should be split up, or replaced by an international payment standard with nationalised implementors.
      - kbart 9y ago
        So how do legitimate porn sites collect money? It's a multi-billion industry, I'm sure they've solved this problem somehow.
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
I'm with you on puritanism, but it's not about "a nipple" it's about porn. "[...] we also must listen to and represent those who simply make porn. Who want to be creative with their porn [...]"
- imustbeevil 9y ago
  Porn is legal. While GP might be semantically incorrect, the point is that porn has been a legal part of American culture for at least 100 years. It makes absolutely no sense to discriminate against processing payments for one of America's largest entertainment industries.
  - madshiva 9y ago
    American culture, you mean a mix between African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American cultures? especially Latin American? You can't grow a culture with 100 years.
    - imustbeevil 9y ago
      That's some weird gatekeeping. Culture is a collection of social norms shared by a local population. It's not determined by time, or Race, it's determined by action. Most Americans live similarly to their neighbors, and have for hundreds of years.
    - davemp 9y ago
      ? American culture was mostly imported from Europe during its infancy. Latin America was barely even a thing then.
kbart 9y ago
I don't think that puritanism is the problem here. Adult content, especially users made one, is notoriously hard and risky to moderate. Just one underage model on your site might be enough to bring everything down, stain your reputation for a long time and under right consequences, even land you in jail. I guess payment processors refuse to cater such type of business for precisely the same reason as nobody wants headlines such as "Payment Processor X is used to fund child porn".

by kome 9y ago

American puritanism is the problem. I have enough of those American companies arbitrarily deciding that a nipple is an obscene thing. But how to fight back this form of cultural imperialism?

corobo 9y ago

I doubt that. Chargebacks are the problem. As soon as you mention to a payment processor that you might be taking for adult content they drop you like a hot brick.

netsharc 9y ago
And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why? Puritanism...
- corobo 9y ago
  I said why in the sentence before the one you ran off with. Because they get higher than usual chargebacks. This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. You'll also have fraudulent cards because there's no physical location they need to order things to to test that the card works. Probably an aspect of underaged users using parents cards due to the nature of the content and a cherry on top in the form of money laundering as the services allows the user to receive money. As it's a service not goods it's much more easy to chargeback. I'd imagine places that sell adult products have less of an issue, because they have proof of goods.
  - aestetix 9y ago
    Is there data on that? I've heard this theory before but never seen any evidence to back it up.
    - corobo 9y ago
      I don't have any sourceable data on hand unfortunately, this is what payment processors told me when I was trying to set a service up
      - samsonradu 9y ago
        Can confirm, fees would be high due to chargebacks and fraud in general. See here [1] a couple of numbers from a common industry biller. https://epoch.com/business_services https://epoch.com/business_services
  - Certhas 9y ago
    So charge them a slightly higher fee to account for that. Your reasoning that that in itself would be sufficient to refuse service does not hold up.
    - corobo 9y ago
      The processors that allow "high risk" payments do charge a higher fee. I wouldn't call it "slightly higher" though, it was prohibitively expensive for the service I was trying to set up. In a sister thread on this subject on Reddit someone suggested using Bitcoin as an alternative, which I somewhat regret not considering at the time. To clarify also it's not my reasoning. Adult content is referenced in the Terms of Service for all payment processors, whether they allow it or not. See Stripe for an example[1] [1] https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-infringement-regulated-or-illegal-products-and-services https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-infringement-...
      - Certhas 9y ago
        I understand, I simply don't believe that this is a rational decision due to risk assessment. I believe that that is just an excuse. Or rather, that a high amount of the risk involved is not due to customer behaviour, but due to potential pressure from self appointed guardians of morality. As part of this discussion elsewhere people were linking again to an old engadget article about these practices, which in turn linked to this court opinion, which is well worth reading: http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2015/D11-30/C:15-3047:J:Posner:aut:T:fnOp:N:1663542:S:0 http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp... Here is the engadget article: https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war-on-the-sex-industry/ https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-ba... I think strong regulations, something like: Visa/Stripe/PayPal/Amazon have to service every business that is not illegal, would also help these companies against such "moral guardianship". They don't have to look like they are defending the rights of perverts to their other customers.
    - astura 9y ago
      Patreon has to follow the terms of their payment processors. If they want to be involved in porn they'd have to add a separate high risk payment processor for those content creators. I heard porn sites have a CC processing fees of 20+%.
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    > This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. Nah, due to the nature of the purchase, it's almost entirely about what happens when the monthly statement arrives and the wife gets a hold of it before you do. "No, honey, I don't know anything about those charges on the credit card statement. Someone must have stolen our card information." It also doesn't help that historically all those "age verification via credit card" routines inevitably enroll users in opt-out autobilling for services they legitimately don't want and end up disputing. The industry brought this on themselves.
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  No, it's because chargebacks are a nightmare scenario to deal with for the most part.
- sky_rw 9y ago
  Well, up until recently, they were indeed afraid of the government. Let me introduce you to operation Choke Point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
- nemothekid 9y ago
  >And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. AFAIK, the only place government wrings the hand of payment providers is for terrorism or they want to specifically choke a political actor. In Patreon's case, I'd imagine it has to do more with fraud, or more specifically how the "big" payment providers won't touch porn. (After all, the big porn sites have been processing credit cards since the dawn of the internet, just not through the same avenues as a eCommerce store would go through, if the government really cared, those sites wouldn't be able to process credit cards either). I see Patreon uses both PayPal and Stripe as their payments processor - Stripe has pornography spelled out in its term of service as prohibited, and PayPal is far less lenient when it comes to breaking their ToS. I can imagine as Patreon grows, Stripe and PayPal (who in turn might be getting their screws turned by Visa and Mastercard), might start forcing Patreon to deal with these creators. It's a very unfortunate spot Patreon is in, and I hope they aren't forced to cleanse their platform.
  - afarrell 9y ago
    > Stripe has pornography spelled out in its term of service as prohibited IIRC in 2011 this was due to the terms of their contract with their banking partner, Wells Fargo. I suspect this is still the case.
- vacri 9y ago
  It's not government puritanism, it's because pornography payments take place in the shadier parts of the spectrum, where there's a hell of a lot more fraud.
bambax 9y ago
In this specific case, maybe chargebacks are the problem, but in general, American puritanism is insufferable (Facebook banning reproductions of 19th century paintings, etc.) Also, it's inexplicable. I would much rather have my kids exposed to a million boobs (that they can see anywhere on the beach anyway -- and why are boobs a problem in the first place is anyone's guess) than to the horrible and dehumanizing violence of war video games where it's apparently ok to shoot at anyone and have blood squirt all over. But, in the case of chargebacks, could it not be solved by simply having patrons agree they will suffer the chargebacks directly? Chargebacks are only a problem if the platform can't make creators cover them, no?
- function_seven 9y ago
  Excessive chargebacks raise the cost of accepting cards overall. This lowers the value Patreon can provide to their customers. I suppose they could bifurcate the two and offer low- and high-risk plans? Not sure what it would take to implement that, though.
- Hurricanecane 9y ago
  As to why violence and war is more acceptable I believe the answer lies in that intimacy and explicit content is much closer to home, its relatable, it attracts feelings and is also easily accessible. On the other hand war, violence and gore are really a far away concept that does not resonate with a lot of people. Its also an established ok-thing so it being all around us in the form of entertainment makes people even more numb to the subject.
  - Tuna-Fish 9y ago
    But why does your reasoning apply to the USA but not most of the rest of the western world?
- ernst_klim 9y ago
  >Facebook banning reproductions of 19th century paintings, etc. My favorite example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Called_Ulysses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Call...

lawnchair_larry 9y ago

This has nothing to do with showing a nipple. This was more about the porn and private sex shows. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons why one might not want to enter that business. That's their right as a business owner.

kuschku 9y ago
Not when it becomes impossible to exist as a business without relying on such intermediaries, e.g. VISA or MasterCard. Then they are a monopoly, and can't choose their customers anymore.
- kbart 9y ago
  Monopoly in what? There are plenty of sites that specialize in sex cams, private shows and amateur porn, so why not just go there? There are legitimate reasons to avoid adult content in your private site as it is very easy to get into serious problems where as site owner/administrator your are legally responsible: underage actors, abuse, prostitution claims (where it is illegal) etc. just to name few.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    I meant payment processors. MasterCard, VISA and PayPal all will refuse to do business with you, or pressure you into changing your business, if you're found to be in the pornography or prostitution business. Even if that's legal in your country. And in Sweden, banks are now collecting fees for getting cash, or paying in cash, of about 10$ each. So you can't really do anything as customer or company without MasterCard or VISA anymore. At this point, these systems should be split up, or replaced by an international payment standard with nationalised implementors.
    - kbart 9y ago
      So how do legitimate porn sites collect money? It's a multi-billion industry, I'm sure they've solved this problem somehow.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

I'm with you on puritanism, but it's not about "a nipple" it's about porn. "[...] we also must listen to and represent those who simply make porn. Who want to be creative with their porn [...]"

imustbeevil 9y ago
Porn is legal. While GP might be semantically incorrect, the point is that porn has been a legal part of American culture for at least 100 years. It makes absolutely no sense to discriminate against processing payments for one of America's largest entertainment industries.
- madshiva 9y ago
  American culture, you mean a mix between African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American cultures? especially Latin American? You can't grow a culture with 100 years.
  - imustbeevil 9y ago
    That's some weird gatekeeping. Culture is a collection of social norms shared by a local population. It's not determined by time, or Race, it's determined by action. Most Americans live similarly to their neighbors, and have for hundreds of years.
  - davemp 9y ago
    ? American culture was mostly imported from Europe during its infancy. Latin America was barely even a thing then.

kbart 9y ago

I don't think that puritanism is the problem here. Adult content, especially users made one, is notoriously hard and risky to moderate. Just one underage model on your site might be enough to bring everything down, stain your reputation for a long time and under right consequences, even land you in jail. I guess payment processors refuse to cater such type of business for precisely the same reason as nobody wants headlines such as "Payment Processor X is used to fund child porn".