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> If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card, a smaller company will have no chance at all. We're seeing a sterilization of legitimate porn on t
by actually_a_dog 5y ago
> If PH is having trouble processing any form of credit card, a smaller company will have no chance at all. We're seeing a sterilization of legitimate porn on the internet, done by legitimate tax paying western companies. It'll be left to whoever can operate beyond those constraints, which is kind of a sad state of affairs for free speech, separation of church and state, and policing in general.
Welcome to the "free(ish) market." As I've said before, people love to say they're in favor of the "free market," until they get one. There is no law preventing any payment processor from accepting clients in the adult content space. They do it simply because of risk and to protect their corporate image.
- nickff 5y agoWell, there may not be laws against it, but the government doesn't always play by the rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
- posguy 5y agoThe chokepoint isn't the government in this case, but rather the major card brands (Visa, MasterCard, American Express). In the US, these brands have embedded morality clauses that prohibit these payments from riding their rails[1]. That being said, most US debit networks (Star, Pulse, Coop, etc) don't have these restrictions. It does damage the user experience to limit your card acceptance to most debit cards. 1 - https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-updates-policy-for-adult-content-sellers https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-upda...
- formerly_proven 5y agoIt's that weird American kind of funny that you can't pay for porn with an American Express credit card, but you can buy guns and a few crates of ammo.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI know, why can't we have both?
- nickff 5y agoYou're slicing the baloney pretty thin if you agree that the government has taken action against these same financial institutions, with respect to their processing similar payments, but it's completely unrelated to the current situation, and that the financial institutions should act as if nothing's ever happened before.
- Scoundreller 5y agoOr non-action. Europe and Australia have regulated/reduced credit card interchange fees, but USA has not. This whole “pay with card to get a lot of points!” thing while also allowing processors to have anti-competitive terms forbidding surcharges for credit card payments is a huuuuuuuge boon for their industry.
- thatguy0900 5y agoIt's really pretty crazy when you think about it. My card is 2% cash back everywhere. Discover is basically letting me steal 2% of the revenue of every shop I visit and the shops can't do anything about it.
- webinvest 5y agoThis is a perfect opportunity for 1 credit card company to step in / step up and differentiate themselves from the rest. I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard of Star, Pulse, and Coop before. Probably has something to do with the Durbin Amendment.
- TeeMassive 5y agoI wonder which morality clause they used for blocking payments to Wikileaks?
- kenneth 5y agoThis is where you build a UX around buying some crypto-token in the check-out flow via a simple redirect to a partner, fix your credit card issue, and the partner immediately gets you a USDC transfer after charging the credit card. Yes, there are companies out there that will do this.
- Alex3917 5y ago> They do it simply because of risk and to protect their corporate image. They're only allowed to operate because they're licensed by the government, and the government can yank their license at any time.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoOkay, so, let me ask you a question: there are payment processors that process adult transactions; has a single one had its license pulled because of that? I can't find a single instance of that happening, only more instances of adult content providers being targeted this way: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are-still-policing-your-sex-life https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are...
- sbuttgereit 5y agoPerhaps not, but it's not exactly leaving them alone either: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-doj-forcing-banks-to-terminate-the-accounts-of-porn-stars https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-doj-forcing-ba...
- actually_a_dog 5y agoSo? Spin off everything "risky" into another corporate entity, and charge more. The simple fact that they don't do this tells me they just don't want to.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoThis is America, nobody will ever take seriously the argument that it's not the government doing it when they can get cheap internet points by saying "but muh freedoms!1!!"
- nl 5y agoIf an article asking questions about it from 2014 is the most compelling piece of evidence that this is a serious issue then I'd say it isn't particularly compelling. Note that the "Operation Chokepoint" wasn't just about porn - it was also shutting down payday lenders and firearm dealers. The operation was stopped by the government in 2016 and bipartisan legislation passed in 2017 to stop it happening again: https://www.forbes.com/sites/norbertmichel/2018/11/05/newly-unsealed-documents-show-top-fdic-officials-running-operation-choke-point/?sh=484f6c271191 https://www.forbes.com/sites/norbertmichel/2018/11/05/newly-...
- mcdevilkiller 5y agoYeah. But, supposedly, in a free market, if there's demand for it (a payment processor that accepts porn), there would be supply. Someone would come up with a company devoted to just that.
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoThe problem isn't that you need an alternative to PayPal, you need an alternative to Visa and MasterCard. That's a lot harder because they have more of a network effect. People have a Visa or MasterCard because it's widely accepted and it's widely accepted because a lot of people have one. The solution to this is to make it easier for people to get or accept the alternative payment network. Only now you're into regulatory barriers. The critical feature of PornCard is that you don't have to give your name, right? Except that they're specifically prohibited from offering that. The regulatory cost of establishing a new card is effectively the same whether you have a hundred users or a billion, so high regulatory costs put a disproportionate disadvantage on small and upstart networks, which would then have to charge higher fees, which would then cause no one to accept them. The regulations destroy competition and without competition you don't have a free market.
- the8472 5y agoIf only there was a Standardized Electronic Payments API supported by all banks, perhaps with interoperable bank account numbers. Then you could just send money to any account without the need for credit card providers.
- bobthepanda 5y agoTarget date 2023: https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...
- teatree 5y agoIn India its called UPI. Maybe others can pick up on this innovation?
- seph-reed 5y agoThe reason nobody can compete is because of regulations. If it was a free market, there wouldn't be so many regulations, and people would be able to compete. The unfortunate truth is that anarchy is better than a weak democracy, because weak democracies just become oligarchies with more steps. Ofc, a strong democracy is better than either, and regulations are extremely important. But in this case, those regulations are more for the oligarchs than the people. If you really want a great example of anarchy vs oligarchy, take note that the anarchy of the private world ran Trump into the ground repeatedly and called him a loser while our public world gave him all the power it could and started a cult. Anarchy isn't great, but it's better than that.
- syshum 5y agoWow, this is sooo disingenuous I can not believe it is even being said Aside from the fact that where a metric ton of regulations targeting processing adult content payments under the guide of "protecting the children" There is another metric ton of regulations around creating and operating a payment processing system. There is a reason no competitors to paypal have really emerged. That reason is GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS.. Please stop saying people do not like a free market when they get one as there is NOTHING FREE MARKET about the banking industry in either the world or the US
- autoexec 5y agoHow many of those government regulations were written by private companies who lobbied (read bribed) politicians to pass them specifically to keep out competitors? Government regulation is a very important tool, but like any tool it can be abused and used in harmful ways, especially if you don't do anything meaningful to prevent it.
- oconnor663 5y agoThe libertarian free market folks are 100% in agreement with the "those rules were written by the businesses that are supposed to follow them" point. Businesses love the regulations that protect their market share. They may be pro-free-market when times are good, but when times are bad they cry foul about speculators and lobby for bailouts. I'm sure if I was a business I'd do the same :)
- syshum 5y agoGovernment Regulation is not an important tool, and it will ALWAYS be abused in harmful ways. This has always been true, and will always be true The Stronger and more centralized the government, the more abuse and harm will come Weak, distributed government power is the only resolution to corruption, people never want to admit that however. Government should be limited to the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense of Individual rights, and nothing more
- autoexec 5y ago
- dmix 5y agoThis pedantic argument is so tired. This is not about arguing over the details of some economic model. The problem is culturally pushing some neopuritan nonsense, always in a highly selective way as you can always find a ton of contradictions. Not to mention when you consider the practicality of outright banning entire market categories in order to combat tiny edge cases. These conversations should be about the end results and not just blindly accepting a culture of overreacting to every sort of risk. Forcing companies to middleman sales at gun point isn't any better of a solution either, nor is it even probable, which is really the only other economic model (besides some true-scotsman bitcoin solution). Trying to work with the system is better than abandoning it for some pipedream or throwing up our hands like there's no solution.
- h0l0cube 5y agoI think there's an expectation from people who casually support economic libertarianism, that the social compact will not come to bear on commercial enterprise when governance is removed. Anyone who thinks a little deeper about it knows it won't play out this way, and that reputation is part and parcel of the product, and public opinion will always need to reckoned with by any enterprise that wants to scale.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"This is not about arguing over the details of some economic model. The problem is culturally pushing some neopuritan nonsense" The problem is these companies have accumulated so much power, they can push anything they want on you. They can reach into your device, scan you files, canxell your transaction, etc. and there is fuck all you cam do about it.
- me_me_me 5y agosounds like a free market model to me. Anyhow free-market is a meaningless label akin to socialism. People misuse it so much that it lost any meaning. Free-market means legislative anarchy of anything to do with markets. The moment the is a mandate ie corn subsidies, banned substances its no longer free by the definition.
- 5y ago
- anm89 5y agoI refuse to believe this is some free market issue of payment processors wanting the right to not interact with businesses they find morally objectionable. This is about liability and regulation. The processors are scared to process these transactions. It's not that they don't want to.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoYou can prove that, right? Because, as I said, there's no law against processing porn payments, and risk can be mitigated by just charging more. Your refusal to believe anything is irrelevant.
- anm89 5y agoWhy is the burden of proof what's important? Can you prove that it isn't. How does one go about proving the intent of a company? That concept is irrelevant
- lmm 5y agoThe problem exists because payment processing is a duopoly, not a free market (something that, in the case of a natural monopoly, can only be maintained through vigorous regulation).
- actually_a_dog 5y agoPayment processing is not a natural monopoly. The fact that it is a duopoly demonstrates that there could be competition in the space, so you can't use that as an excuse.
- lmm 5y agoThey remain a duopoly rather than a monopoly only because they're already the subject of massive (though still inadequate) antitrust action. An economic modelling result I saw once suggested that a competitive market requires that the top four competitors own no more than a combined 60% of the market.