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Similar to the recent actions by Twitter, Google, Apple and Amazon; Visa and Mastercard are private companies and can do whatever they want. Anyone who has an

Similar to the recent actions by Twitter, Google, Apple and Amazon; Visa and Mastercard are private companies and can do whatever they want. Anyone who has an issue with what Visa/MC did must also take issue with the others.

cathyreisenwitz 6y ago
"Visa and Mastercard are private companies and can do whatever they want." Not without DOJ pressure, unfortunately.
bjeds 6y ago
<I deleted my comment because people only want to argue.>
- marcinzm 6y ago
  [delete]
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    > browse PornHub's recommended videos in incognito mode. Go through a few pages. Click into a few categories. Don't even do weird searches, just go through what it recommends. Yeah, I totally never did that before at all.
  - jowsie 6y ago
    >I found some of what it promoted disturbing to be honest. But was it illegal?
  - andrepd 6y ago
    Are you implying abuse, or just "kinky shit"?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Daho0n 6y ago
    >No, no it's not. Seriously, browse PornHub's recommended videos in incognito mode. Go through a few pages. Click into a few categories. Don't even do weird searches, just go through what it recommends. I found some of what it promoted disturbing to be honest. Disturbing !== illegal.
fwip 6y ago
This argument always reminds me of the evergreen dril tweet: https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en (cw: profanity). You've rhetorically zoomed out so far that only the most abstract description of the category of the action is up for discussion. But this is begging the question - there's no reason that this must be the case. This rhetorical trick of categorizing all of these as "private companies denying service," is the same one used by those who opposed anti-discrimination laws. Should an ice-cream store be able to kick out a person pissing on the floor? Should they be able to kick out a black person for being black? In each case, it's simply "a private company doing whatever they want." But, obviously, these two cases are not the same. Personally, I think it's quite a different thing to kick people who incite violence off your social media platform than it is to ban sex-workers from using you as a payment processor. And, because they are different actions, with different intent and effects, it is, of course, possible to think "Hey, it's good that [x] is happening, but bad that [y] is happening."
- manigandham 6y ago
  I compared these situations because both are about explicility illegal activities clearly defined by law. They're more similar than different. Your personal opinion on which decision you support is just that, your personal opinion, and only reinforces my point about the subjectivity and inherent hypocrisy of it all and whether private company action over state prosecution is the correct course of action.
  - fwip 6y ago
    Just because something is subjective does not mean it is hypocritical.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
I'm willing to revise my take on the "big tech takedown" when someone explains to me how a random member of the American public can pay a pornographic performer/model without using Visa/Mastercard and in less than 24 hours. If there were no alternatives to Twitter, Android, iOS and AWS then I'd be as unhappy about that as I am about Visa/Mastercard's decision here. However, it's my judgement that there are alternatives to these technology platforms to do what recently became less easy for some people to do. I don't believe there are any viable alternatives for payment processing. Show me how I'm wrong.
- occamrazor 6y ago
  Android/iOS is a duopoly as pervasive as Visa/MasterCard. The ither examples only to a much lesser degree.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Well, here's the thing. If you agree that the required ability is "use my portable cell-connected computing device to exchange messages with others on their similar devices", then absolutely, I agree that there's a duopoly there (I'm ignoring the possibility to use alternative app stores on Android, because it doesn't seem particularly central). But if you instead think the required ability is "be able to exchange messages with others in more or less realtime", then the duopoly in the portable cell-connected computing device world is of much less importance. For years, because I don't have a cell phone, I was excluded from communications taking place via SMS (there were a few 1-way linux-accessible gateways, but they didn't really change anything there). But I didn't feel that my ability to communicate with others was really particularly impaired, and eventually Telegram (and others came along) that I could use from a desktop, and I was more or less back at parity for "real time communication with others". So whether or not the android/ios duopoly matters in this sort of instance depends on precisely what functionality it is that you think people have a "right" to ...
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    can someone ELI5 why Visa/MasterCard is frequently called a duopoly? as someone who mostly uses my amex and discover cards for day-to-day purchases, I don't really understand this. four major processors (two being their own issuers) seems like a decent amount of competition and diversity of offerings.
elric 6y ago
> Anyone who has an issue with this must also take issue with the others. Yeah .... no. For a variety of reasons. But for one, it's impossible to do business online if you're not in the good graces of major payment providers (assuming you want to get paid). It might be hard(er) to advertise your business if Twitter bans you, but that's in no way comparable to how essential Visa/MC are to any business. Providers of critical infrastructure (payments, search, appstores, probably a few other things), when they're big enough to be a monopoly/duopoly, could really use more oversight. If you piss off Google/Apple, your business can be ruined, and you'll have virtually no recourse -- as evidenced by the frequent "google/apple killed my app" threads on HN.
- manigandham 6y ago
  None of this is considered critical infrastructure today, that's the point. What's important to you is entirely subjective and these are private companies that can apply their terms however they see fit. Visa/MC can easily say that ACH and cash payments exist as an alternative. If you feel that monopolistic powers by major tech companies need more oversight then that should apply equally. I don't see why communications networks are any less important than payment networks.
  - adrian_b 6y ago
    Visa/MC are really critical infrastructure, because for many people they are the main means of payment or even the only one. In most cases they are the only existing means for making remote payments. I would have much preferred a world in which the remote payments would not have been done by credit cards, but by wire transfers (with much lower fees than the current fees for wire transfers), but we do not live in such a world. I am not sure about what weird conditions might be written in the small print of the contracts for credit cards, but certainly when Visa/MC advertise their services, they claim that you should pay for their cards in order to buy anything that you want, they do not invite you to pay them in order to let you buy only what they like. So I do not believe that it is correct to say that VISA/MC are private companies that can do anything they like. They have also obligations towards the customers who use their cards and they cannot decide unilaterally to ban some sellers, unless those are selling something illegal, which is not the case with Pornhub (after they took down what was said to be illegal content). I do not think that making a referendum among Visa/MC customers about whether to ban some vendor or another would be the most appropriate solution, but certainly unilateral decisions taken just by the Visa/MC management are an abuse. While I have never used Pornhub, so I have no opinion about how correct were their actions, I have paid in the past for a few other sites with erotic content and I would not like to discover one day that Visa or MC has again decided to block such a site without any valid reason.
slg 6y ago
This is a bizarre comment. The complaint isn't that Pornhub, Visa, or Mastercard lack the right to do what they are doing. People are explaining reasons why it is a bad decision and those reasons aren't relevant to Twitter, Google, Apple, and Amazon. There is nothing contradictory about someone who believes these companies have the right to kick people off their platform while also thinking that these companies can make mistakes regarding who they kick off.
- manigandham 6y ago
  The point is that if you have an issue with companies taking private action over state prosecution then that should apply to all decisions. Whether you consider an individual decision to be a mistake is entirely subjective and irrelevant.
  - slg 6y ago
    >The point is that if you have an issue with companies taking private action over state prosecution then that should apply to all decisions. Why? I can agree that someone has a right while also disagreeing with how they exercise that right. I have no idea why you are labeling the specifics irrelevant.
folli 6y ago
I'm getting slightly fatigued with this point of view ("X is a private company and can do what it wants"). If a company reaches a certain size and has a quasi-monopolistic position so that other people or companies depend on it, it starts to have some degree of responsibility towards society that's beyond value maximization for shareholders.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ars 6y ago
  Does that mean you are against AWS, Google, and Apple shutting down Perler? All of those are large enough, and are quasi-monopolistic to meet your definition.
  - TingPing 6y ago
    Other hosts exist. But Apple shouldn't be allowed to prevent sideloading which makes the app store no longer a monopoly.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    I'm not OP, and I'm not a trumper or Conservative but I am 110% into free speech and I don't like the parler ban. That said, it's really not equivalent. There are 101 other services if AWS turn you down. You can still access the parler site from an apple/android phone too. On android you can still install the app, just not via the play store. Censorship is incidious because many people support at least some. So you convince liberals to support banning parler and conservatives to support banning porn payments (or whatever). And they're both poorer for it. We should all be agreeing on this, not being fractional... We should all be uniting in our call to get Visa , Mastercard, Apple, Google and a dozen others declared utilities. Rather than arguing over which problem is biggest, solve them all.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      Except that ban was clear collusion by Google, Apple and Amazon against a single organization. It's concerning when an alternative no longer just means an alternative of the same service but also the entire infrastructure stack. We've seen similar situations during the digital piracy era of the early 2000s.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wmf 6y ago
The banking/payment industry is acting as a cartel to shut down certain activities. This is what antitrust law is for.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
>Anyone who has an issue with this must also take issue with the others. That doesn't follow. Someone can acknowledge that companies have the right to run itself however it wants but disagree with this particular decision. It is possibly incoherent to argue that Twitter may ban people but Visa may not ban anyone; it is perfectly coherent to argue that Twitter should ban certain people and Visa should not ban these particular businesses. Also, I don't think it's a contradiction even to say that Visa may not ban anyone. Running a website is a form of speech. Every website absolutely must be moderated beyond what is required to remove spam or what is required by law. Telling them what kind of community they are allowed to run is an excessive infringement on their freedom of speech. This is similar to why I support net neutrality but fervently oppose any sort of mandatory neutrality on websites. It would take a tortured argument to claim that routing packets is a form of speech (particularly when these packets are encrypted), while running a website always requires taking an editorial role. No one would find it strange if a book store decided not to carry a particular book. People would find it very strange if their credit card company refused to process a payment for a particular book. I neither support nor oppose banning payments to Pornhub since I don't know much about the website. I have no skin flicks in the game.
adrian_b 6y ago
Visa and Mastercard should not do whatever they want, because they are just middlemen in transactions and all their decisions affect their paying customers, much more than themselves. Visa/MC take the money of their customers, who use their cards, by promising to help them pay for anything they want. Visa/MC do not have any right to decide unilaterally what their customers might want to buy (as long as no illegal goods are involved), without consulting their customers first.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  As it stands right now they do have the right to do whatever they want. I guess you are proposing that this needs to be changed.
  - adrian_b 6y ago
    All large companies that have a quasi-monopoly, e.g. the large cable providers, ISPs, mobile phone companies, and so on, take frequently abusive decisions that affect negatively many of their customers. In most cases the customers are forced to accept these unilateral decisions, because they do not have the power to attempt a legal battle with those companies, e.g. for modifying the fees or the data caps. Nevertheless, even when we do not want or cannot fight such decisions, we should not say that they are private companies and they can do whatever they want. Those companies are not independent to do whatever they want, they are in contractual relationships with their paying customers. They may use their power to unilaterally change the contracts as they want to, but that does not mean that we must accept that might is right.
    - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
      I agree that they should not be able to do what they want. I’m just saying that they can. Which is something also think should be changed but it doesn’t change the reality of how it is currently.
- manigandham 6y ago
  I'm only saying that what Visa/MC did is the same as what Twitter/Google/Apple/Amazon did. They all took private action against what they deemed as illegal acts without involving the state or any law enforcement. I would much rather leave such things to the proper authorities instead of massive corporations that control so much without any accountability or transparency.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Really they're utilities.

cathyreisenwitz 6y ago

"Visa and Mastercard are private companies and can do whatever they want." Not without DOJ pressure, unfortunately.

bjeds 6y ago

marcinzm 6y ago
[delete]
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  > browse PornHub's recommended videos in incognito mode. Go through a few pages. Click into a few categories. Don't even do weird searches, just go through what it recommends. Yeah, I totally never did that before at all.
- jowsie 6y ago
  >I found some of what it promoted disturbing to be honest. But was it illegal?
- andrepd 6y ago
  Are you implying abuse, or just "kinky shit"?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Daho0n 6y ago
  >No, no it's not. Seriously, browse PornHub's recommended videos in incognito mode. Go through a few pages. Click into a few categories. Don't even do weird searches, just go through what it recommends. I found some of what it promoted disturbing to be honest. Disturbing !== illegal.

fwip 6y ago

This argument always reminds me of the evergreen dril tweet: https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en (cw: profanity). You've rhetorically zoomed out so far that only the most abstract description of the category of the action is up for discussion. But this is begging the question - there's no reason that this must be the case. This rhetorical trick of categorizing all of these as "private companies denying service," is the same one used by those who opposed anti-discrimination laws. Should an ice-cream store be able to kick out a person pissing on the floor? Should they be able to kick out a black person for being black? In each case, it's simply "a private company doing whatever they want." But, obviously, these two cases are not the same. Personally, I think it's quite a different thing to kick people who incite violence off your social media platform than it is to ban sex-workers from using you as a payment processor. And, because they are different actions, with different intent and effects, it is, of course, possible to think "Hey, it's good that [x] is happening, but bad that [y] is happening."

manigandham 6y ago
I compared these situations because both are about explicility illegal activities clearly defined by law. They're more similar than different. Your personal opinion on which decision you support is just that, your personal opinion, and only reinforces my point about the subjectivity and inherent hypocrisy of it all and whether private company action over state prosecution is the correct course of action.
- fwip 6y ago
  Just because something is subjective does not mean it is hypocritical.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

I'm willing to revise my take on the "big tech takedown" when someone explains to me how a random member of the American public can pay a pornographic performer/model without using Visa/Mastercard and in less than 24 hours. If there were no alternatives to Twitter, Android, iOS and AWS then I'd be as unhappy about that as I am about Visa/Mastercard's decision here. However, it's my judgement that there are alternatives to these technology platforms to do what recently became less easy for some people to do. I don't believe there are any viable alternatives for payment processing. Show me how I'm wrong.

occamrazor 6y ago
Android/iOS is a duopoly as pervasive as Visa/MasterCard. The ither examples only to a much lesser degree.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Well, here's the thing. If you agree that the required ability is "use my portable cell-connected computing device to exchange messages with others on their similar devices", then absolutely, I agree that there's a duopoly there (I'm ignoring the possibility to use alternative app stores on Android, because it doesn't seem particularly central). But if you instead think the required ability is "be able to exchange messages with others in more or less realtime", then the duopoly in the portable cell-connected computing device world is of much less importance. For years, because I don't have a cell phone, I was excluded from communications taking place via SMS (there were a few 1-way linux-accessible gateways, but they didn't really change anything there). But I didn't feel that my ability to communicate with others was really particularly impaired, and eventually Telegram (and others came along) that I could use from a desktop, and I was more or less back at parity for "real time communication with others". So whether or not the android/ios duopoly matters in this sort of instance depends on precisely what functionality it is that you think people have a "right" to ...
- leetcrew 6y ago
  can someone ELI5 why Visa/MasterCard is frequently called a duopoly? as someone who mostly uses my amex and discover cards for day-to-day purchases, I don't really understand this. four major processors (two being their own issuers) seems like a decent amount of competition and diversity of offerings.

elric 6y ago

> Anyone who has an issue with this must also take issue with the others. Yeah .... no. For a variety of reasons. But for one, it's impossible to do business online if you're not in the good graces of major payment providers (assuming you want to get paid). It might be hard(er) to advertise your business if Twitter bans you, but that's in no way comparable to how essential Visa/MC are to any business. Providers of critical infrastructure (payments, search, appstores, probably a few other things), when they're big enough to be a monopoly/duopoly, could really use more oversight. If you piss off Google/Apple, your business can be ruined, and you'll have virtually no recourse -- as evidenced by the frequent "google/apple killed my app" threads on HN.

manigandham 6y ago
None of this is considered critical infrastructure today, that's the point. What's important to you is entirely subjective and these are private companies that can apply their terms however they see fit. Visa/MC can easily say that ACH and cash payments exist as an alternative. If you feel that monopolistic powers by major tech companies need more oversight then that should apply equally. I don't see why communications networks are any less important than payment networks.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  Visa/MC are really critical infrastructure, because for many people they are the main means of payment or even the only one. In most cases they are the only existing means for making remote payments. I would have much preferred a world in which the remote payments would not have been done by credit cards, but by wire transfers (with much lower fees than the current fees for wire transfers), but we do not live in such a world. I am not sure about what weird conditions might be written in the small print of the contracts for credit cards, but certainly when Visa/MC advertise their services, they claim that you should pay for their cards in order to buy anything that you want, they do not invite you to pay them in order to let you buy only what they like. So I do not believe that it is correct to say that VISA/MC are private companies that can do anything they like. They have also obligations towards the customers who use their cards and they cannot decide unilaterally to ban some sellers, unless those are selling something illegal, which is not the case with Pornhub (after they took down what was said to be illegal content). I do not think that making a referendum among Visa/MC customers about whether to ban some vendor or another would be the most appropriate solution, but certainly unilateral decisions taken just by the Visa/MC management are an abuse. While I have never used Pornhub, so I have no opinion about how correct were their actions, I have paid in the past for a few other sites with erotic content and I would not like to discover one day that Visa or MC has again decided to block such a site without any valid reason.

slg 6y ago

This is a bizarre comment. The complaint isn't that Pornhub, Visa, or Mastercard lack the right to do what they are doing. People are explaining reasons why it is a bad decision and those reasons aren't relevant to Twitter, Google, Apple, and Amazon. There is nothing contradictory about someone who believes these companies have the right to kick people off their platform while also thinking that these companies can make mistakes regarding who they kick off.

manigandham 6y ago
The point is that if you have an issue with companies taking private action over state prosecution then that should apply to all decisions. Whether you consider an individual decision to be a mistake is entirely subjective and irrelevant.
- slg 6y ago
  >The point is that if you have an issue with companies taking private action over state prosecution then that should apply to all decisions. Why? I can agree that someone has a right while also disagreeing with how they exercise that right. I have no idea why you are labeling the specifics irrelevant.

folli 6y ago

I'm getting slightly fatigued with this point of view ("X is a private company and can do what it wants"). If a company reaches a certain size and has a quasi-monopolistic position so that other people or companies depend on it, it starts to have some degree of responsibility towards society that's beyond value maximization for shareholders.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ars 6y ago
Does that mean you are against AWS, Google, and Apple shutting down Perler? All of those are large enough, and are quasi-monopolistic to meet your definition.
- TingPing 6y ago
  Other hosts exist. But Apple shouldn't be allowed to prevent sideloading which makes the app store no longer a monopoly.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I'm not OP, and I'm not a trumper or Conservative but I am 110% into free speech and I don't like the parler ban. That said, it's really not equivalent. There are 101 other services if AWS turn you down. You can still access the parler site from an apple/android phone too. On android you can still install the app, just not via the play store. Censorship is incidious because many people support at least some. So you convince liberals to support banning parler and conservatives to support banning porn payments (or whatever). And they're both poorer for it. We should all be agreeing on this, not being fractional... We should all be uniting in our call to get Visa , Mastercard, Apple, Google and a dozen others declared utilities. Rather than arguing over which problem is biggest, solve them all.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Except that ban was clear collusion by Google, Apple and Amazon against a single organization. It's concerning when an alternative no longer just means an alternative of the same service but also the entire infrastructure stack. We've seen similar situations during the digital piracy era of the early 2000s.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wmf 6y ago

The banking/payment industry is acting as a cartel to shut down certain activities. This is what antitrust law is for.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

>Anyone who has an issue with this must also take issue with the others. That doesn't follow. Someone can acknowledge that companies have the right to run itself however it wants but disagree with this particular decision. It is possibly incoherent to argue that Twitter may ban people but Visa may not ban anyone; it is perfectly coherent to argue that Twitter should ban certain people and Visa should not ban these particular businesses. Also, I don't think it's a contradiction even to say that Visa may not ban anyone. Running a website is a form of speech. Every website absolutely must be moderated beyond what is required to remove spam or what is required by law. Telling them what kind of community they are allowed to run is an excessive infringement on their freedom of speech. This is similar to why I support net neutrality but fervently oppose any sort of mandatory neutrality on websites. It would take a tortured argument to claim that routing packets is a form of speech (particularly when these packets are encrypted), while running a website always requires taking an editorial role. No one would find it strange if a book store decided not to carry a particular book. People would find it very strange if their credit card company refused to process a payment for a particular book. I neither support nor oppose banning payments to Pornhub since I don't know much about the website. I have no skin flicks in the game.

adrian_b 6y ago

Visa and Mastercard should not do whatever they want, because they are just middlemen in transactions and all their decisions affect their paying customers, much more than themselves. Visa/MC take the money of their customers, who use their cards, by promising to help them pay for anything they want. Visa/MC do not have any right to decide unilaterally what their customers might want to buy (as long as no illegal goods are involved), without consulting their customers first.

PurpleFoxy 6y ago
As it stands right now they do have the right to do whatever they want. I guess you are proposing that this needs to be changed.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  All large companies that have a quasi-monopoly, e.g. the large cable providers, ISPs, mobile phone companies, and so on, take frequently abusive decisions that affect negatively many of their customers. In most cases the customers are forced to accept these unilateral decisions, because they do not have the power to attempt a legal battle with those companies, e.g. for modifying the fees or the data caps. Nevertheless, even when we do not want or cannot fight such decisions, we should not say that they are private companies and they can do whatever they want. Those companies are not independent to do whatever they want, they are in contractual relationships with their paying customers. They may use their power to unilaterally change the contracts as they want to, but that does not mean that we must accept that might is right.
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    I agree that they should not be able to do what they want. I’m just saying that they can. Which is something also think should be changed but it doesn’t change the reality of how it is currently.
manigandham 6y ago
I'm only saying that what Visa/MC did is the same as what Twitter/Google/Apple/Amazon did. They all took private action against what they deemed as illegal acts without involving the state or any law enforcement. I would much rather leave such things to the proper authorities instead of massive corporations that control so much without any accountability or transparency.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Really they're utilities.