4 ms·

Holy fuck, this is so pernicious. I don't see Visa as culpable here—no more culpable than the ISP serving PornHub, or their analytics provider, data center, ad

Holy fuck, this is so pernicious. I don't see Visa as culpable here—no more culpable than the ISP serving PornHub, or their analytics provider, data center, ad services, or anything else. If the judge is after Visa, they should be after the others equally. The blame for platforming the content and careless-moderation lies squarely on PornHub. And there are surely other institutions than Visa that should be obliged to take immediate serious issue with CSAM on PH. Why isn't Visa being forced to stop providing payment processing services for liquor stores that sell alcohol to people who drive drunk and injure themselves and others? I swear, this isn't a strawman argument—Visa is as removed from culpability in this case as they are in this PornHub case, and deaths caused by drunk driving are reasonably far more damaging to human life. The specific behavior users posting CSAM on PornHub is unquestionably damnable (and those who posted it are the most culpable, and must suffer the most consequences). This doesn't mean PornHub is a whole is a net-bad. Sex work is real work, and America has a damn hard time appreciating the aesthetics of the human body in a comfortable and unproblematic manner, and the pressure to keep PornHub hidden in the shadows reinforces the negative feedback loop of unhealthy perspectives of sex, and promotes some bad behavior—we can't culturally talk about sex comfortably and openly, when we're all made for it. In any case, Visa's job is not to moderate the content of the internet, nor any other purchases on their platform—aside from an interested best-effort response to deny outright the sale of illegal goods and services. Visa should be able to fine or sue PornHub for breach of contract. Or increase their payment processing fees, and force them provide reports and transparency. It is not ok for Visa to feel forced by external pressure to cut off this entire business category as a whole.

ss108 4y ago
The judge isn't "after" Visa. The government has brought charges against Visa, and seemingly not against the other entities you mentioned
- miracle2k 4y ago
  It'a civil suit, and MindGeek is a defendant. You should probably read the article.
  - ss108 4y ago
    Fair, but my point was merely that the judge wasn't deciding to go after anyone and the potential liability of other actors is irrelevant. It's really the same thing; x party brought the suit against Visa, and that's why Visa is in this position as opposed to anyone else who the poster thinks would or should also be liable under the same logic.
    - nowrong 4y ago
      What the logic of a ruling would dictate in other hypothetical situations is one of the most important factors for whether it's a good ruling.
      - ss108 4y ago
        I don't really view that as precisely the same thing as what we're talking about, though I might be taking the above poster too literally. My interpretation was that the above poster was making more of a fairness argument. Like "why is Visa being singled out and not the ISP, the x, the y". To which the response is simply that nobody sued them. Like I said, I am probably taking them too literally. I express no opinion on whether the ruling is good as a matter of law or policy. Assuming this is a district court judge, btw, the judge may very well not be viewing their ruling as setting precedent. A lot of judges hew to the fiction that they're just deciding individual disputes in front of them, and not making law. While that may be plausible at the trial court level, it's obviously not true of most appellate courts. Yet, appellate judges often say the same thing. Just the other day I was reading a SCOTUS opinion by Rehnquist or Scalia and one of them said "yup, we just resolve individual controversies here, we don't make the law, we just apply it..."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
miracle2k 4y ago
Of course. It's an outrageous suit driven by anti-porn activists. It's especially ironic that so many people oppose crypto-currencies with the argument that "democratic control" is desirable when deciding the rules of our financial system, yet the consequence of this is obvious: the law must force monopolistic financial services providers to serve any entity that is operating legally. If PornHub did something wrong, we have laws and prosecutors for that.
worried4future 4y ago
> America has a damn hard time appreciating the aesthetics of the human body in a comfortable and unproblematic manner, and the pressure to keep PornHub hidden in the shadows reinforces the negative feedback loop of unhealthy perspectives of sex, and promotes some bad behavior—we can't culturally talk about sex comfortably and openly, when we're all made for it. The pernicious thing about this is that the net result of all this may be that only people who go through stringent verification processes can post, meaning that the platforms will be even more dominated by large producers and the content will trend even closer to only having caricatures of the extremes with little representation of what people should really expect from sex once they try it in the real world.
- cptcobalt 4y ago
  So much this. Studio productions rarely show typical humans engaging in healthy sex.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Nobody wants to watch typical humans eating beans and green veg whilst having sex. Well, "nobody" in the statistical sense, anyway.
mattnewport 4y ago
I don't have a lot of sympathy for VISA in this case. They have taken it upon themselves to regulate non-illegal activity by pressuring sites like Patreon to ban users expressing controversial views and by dictating to sites like Only Fans what is and isn't acceptable to them rather than what is and isn't illegal. It should be illegal for them to continue to facilitate illegal activity once they are made aware of it. For everything else they should stay out of it and be a neutral payment provider treating all legal transactions and customers equally. Until they start advocating for that it seems like they just want it both ways.
lesuorac 4y ago
> Why isn't Visa being forced to stop providing payment processing services for liquor stores that sell alcohol to people who drive drunk and injure themselves and others? I swear, this isn't a strawman argument—Visa is as removed from culpability in this case as they are in this PornHub case, and deaths caused by drunk driving are reasonably far more damaging to human life. Well that may be coming next. https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/031138281455.pdf https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022... > Moreover, Visa alegedly had considerable sway over that business’s decision-making, a conclusion amply supported by the allegation that MindGeek removed 80% of its content when Visa suspended its business with MindGeek. Visa is not being asked to police “the billions of individual transactions it processes each year.” (Mem. at 9.) It is simply being asked to refrain from offering the tool with which a known alleged criminal entity performs its crimes.
- HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  As I said below. Hopefully this is the beginning of a process that leads to such an unworkable situation that things move the other way. And leave crime up to the police and government and not PP, backs and CC companies. With any luck we might even be able to get some kind of safeguards. "Financial Services Neutrality Act" maybe?
rolph 4y ago
just because it hasnt been done yet doesnt mean it wont be. ill bet visa is a test case to see if it will make it to court. there may be statements and discovery that will implicate others.
- HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  Hopefully this is the beginning of a process that leads to such an unworkable situation that things move the other way. And leave crime up to the police and government and not PP, backs and CC companies. With any luck we might even be able to get some kind of safeguards. "Financial Services Neutrality Act" maybe?
4oo4 4y ago
Well said, very pernicious indeed. Absent corporate emails saying Visa knew 100% that Pornhub (who very much is culpable based on what we know) was hosting child porn and chose not to do anything about it, this is a really specious argument. As far as I know nothing like that has been presented as evidence. What we have so far is the opposite, that they in fact did something when they had an idea that Pornhub was hosting illegal content. That should indemnify them, rather than make them liable. I'm really curious to see what evidence they present for this, since what we know so far seems absurd and backwards. Victims do deserve restitution but that should come from PH, who 100% knew and lied and profited. I hate that payment companies are defacto internet morality police but it's not surprising that things like this in part force them into that position.
tsol 4y ago
>The specific behavior users posting CSAM on PornHub is unquestionably damnable (and those who posted it are the most culpable, and must suffer the most consequences). This doesn't mean PornHub is a whole is a net-bad. No, but they need a solution. That's a point everyone here seems to be skipping over; that's a problem and needs to be fixed before they can be excused. While not in included in this situation, PornHub has a revenge porn problem as well. These have real consequences, disproportionately on young women. >we can't culturally talk about sex comfortably and openly, when we're all made for it. Well the problem is the conversation isn't just about healthy perspective of sex. When there's a unregulated environment where CSAM is mixed in with regular content it's anything but healthy. This is specifically an issue of appreciating the human body in a problematic and dangerous way. And unless remedied, I fail to see why they should be excused of this

ss108 4y ago

The judge isn't "after" Visa. The government has brought charges against Visa, and seemingly not against the other entities you mentioned

miracle2k 4y ago
It'a civil suit, and MindGeek is a defendant. You should probably read the article.
- ss108 4y ago
  Fair, but my point was merely that the judge wasn't deciding to go after anyone and the potential liability of other actors is irrelevant. It's really the same thing; x party brought the suit against Visa, and that's why Visa is in this position as opposed to anyone else who the poster thinks would or should also be liable under the same logic.
  - nowrong 4y ago
    What the logic of a ruling would dictate in other hypothetical situations is one of the most important factors for whether it's a good ruling.
    - ss108 4y ago
      I don't really view that as precisely the same thing as what we're talking about, though I might be taking the above poster too literally. My interpretation was that the above poster was making more of a fairness argument. Like "why is Visa being singled out and not the ISP, the x, the y". To which the response is simply that nobody sued them. Like I said, I am probably taking them too literally. I express no opinion on whether the ruling is good as a matter of law or policy. Assuming this is a district court judge, btw, the judge may very well not be viewing their ruling as setting precedent. A lot of judges hew to the fiction that they're just deciding individual disputes in front of them, and not making law. While that may be plausible at the trial court level, it's obviously not true of most appellate courts. Yet, appellate judges often say the same thing. Just the other day I was reading a SCOTUS opinion by Rehnquist or Scalia and one of them said "yup, we just resolve individual controversies here, we don't make the law, we just apply it..."
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

miracle2k 4y ago

Of course. It's an outrageous suit driven by anti-porn activists. It's especially ironic that so many people oppose crypto-currencies with the argument that "democratic control" is desirable when deciding the rules of our financial system, yet the consequence of this is obvious: the law must force monopolistic financial services providers to serve any entity that is operating legally. If PornHub did something wrong, we have laws and prosecutors for that.

worried4future 4y ago

> America has a damn hard time appreciating the aesthetics of the human body in a comfortable and unproblematic manner, and the pressure to keep PornHub hidden in the shadows reinforces the negative feedback loop of unhealthy perspectives of sex, and promotes some bad behavior—we can't culturally talk about sex comfortably and openly, when we're all made for it. The pernicious thing about this is that the net result of all this may be that only people who go through stringent verification processes can post, meaning that the platforms will be even more dominated by large producers and the content will trend even closer to only having caricatures of the extremes with little representation of what people should really expect from sex once they try it in the real world.

cptcobalt 4y ago
So much this. Studio productions rarely show typical humans engaging in healthy sex.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Nobody wants to watch typical humans eating beans and green veg whilst having sex. Well, "nobody" in the statistical sense, anyway.

mattnewport 4y ago

I don't have a lot of sympathy for VISA in this case. They have taken it upon themselves to regulate non-illegal activity by pressuring sites like Patreon to ban users expressing controversial views and by dictating to sites like Only Fans what is and isn't acceptable to them rather than what is and isn't illegal. It should be illegal for them to continue to facilitate illegal activity once they are made aware of it. For everything else they should stay out of it and be a neutral payment provider treating all legal transactions and customers equally. Until they start advocating for that it seems like they just want it both ways.

lesuorac 4y ago

> Why isn't Visa being forced to stop providing payment processing services for liquor stores that sell alcohol to people who drive drunk and injure themselves and others? I swear, this isn't a strawman argument—Visa is as removed from culpability in this case as they are in this PornHub case, and deaths caused by drunk driving are reasonably far more damaging to human life. Well that may be coming next. https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/031138281455.pdf https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022... > Moreover, Visa alegedly had considerable sway over that business’s decision-making, a conclusion amply supported by the allegation that MindGeek removed 80% of its content when Visa suspended its business with MindGeek. Visa is not being asked to police “the billions of individual transactions it processes each year.” (Mem. at 9.) It is simply being asked to refrain from offering the tool with which a known alleged criminal entity performs its crimes.

HereIGoAgain 4y ago
As I said below. Hopefully this is the beginning of a process that leads to such an unworkable situation that things move the other way. And leave crime up to the police and government and not PP, backs and CC companies. With any luck we might even be able to get some kind of safeguards. "Financial Services Neutrality Act" maybe?

rolph 4y ago

just because it hasnt been done yet doesnt mean it wont be. ill bet visa is a test case to see if it will make it to court. there may be statements and discovery that will implicate others.

HereIGoAgain 4y ago
Hopefully this is the beginning of a process that leads to such an unworkable situation that things move the other way. And leave crime up to the police and government and not PP, backs and CC companies. With any luck we might even be able to get some kind of safeguards. "Financial Services Neutrality Act" maybe?

4oo4 4y ago

Well said, very pernicious indeed. Absent corporate emails saying Visa knew 100% that Pornhub (who very much is culpable based on what we know) was hosting child porn and chose not to do anything about it, this is a really specious argument. As far as I know nothing like that has been presented as evidence. What we have so far is the opposite, that they in fact did something when they had an idea that Pornhub was hosting illegal content. That should indemnify them, rather than make them liable. I'm really curious to see what evidence they present for this, since what we know so far seems absurd and backwards. Victims do deserve restitution but that should come from PH, who 100% knew and lied and profited. I hate that payment companies are defacto internet morality police but it's not surprising that things like this in part force them into that position.

tsol 4y ago

>The specific behavior users posting CSAM on PornHub is unquestionably damnable (and those who posted it are the most culpable, and must suffer the most consequences). This doesn't mean PornHub is a whole is a net-bad. No, but they need a solution. That's a point everyone here seems to be skipping over; that's a problem and needs to be fixed before they can be excused. While not in included in this situation, PornHub has a revenge porn problem as well. These have real consequences, disproportionately on young women. >we can't culturally talk about sex comfortably and openly, when we're all made for it. Well the problem is the conversation isn't just about healthy perspective of sex. When there's a unregulated environment where CSAM is mixed in with regular content it's anything but healthy. This is specifically an issue of appreciating the human body in a problematic and dangerous way. And unless remedied, I fail to see why they should be excused of this