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My concerns about a cashless society are the power it hands to a few oligopolistic credit card processors. Look at what happened to Pornhub. Regardless of wheth

• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  How could a website function with cash payments at all?
  • walterbell 3y ago
    No one is arguing for a cash-only society. Digital has use cases. Cash has use cases. We can have both.
    • incone123 3y ago
      I don't think they were making that argument, more that websites don't usually take cash anyway. (Can't imagine pornhub selling gift cards at the supermarket checkout next to the App store ones)
      • walterbell 3y ago
        In North America, retail stores often sell prepaid Visa cards that can be used both offline and online. NYC cashless ban law exception allows a fee-free machine to convert cash to prepaid digital payment mechanism, e.g. stored value card. US Coinstar kiosks offer fee-free conversion of coins to Amazon and other gift cards.
        • SoftTalker 3y ago
          Prepaid VISA doesn't get around the payment processor refusing to handle transactions for certain businesses though. Maybe EFT (e-Check) or Zelle does? It's still on line and tracable but is not going through card processor networks.
      • renewiltord 3y ago
        Interesting. We could probably sell cards with crypto on it with immediate resolution by simply transferring the passphrase/wallet rather than on the chain. Could do it with pure stablecoin.
        • landemva 3y ago
          A bitcoin bearer instrument. Like this https://opendime.com https://opendime.com
        • walterbell 3y ago
          Texas has proposed a gold-backed digital currency, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866856 > The comptroller would also be required to create a mechanism that would allow the new gold-backed digital currency to be used by citizens for their daily transactions. “In establishing the digital currency the comptroller shall establish a means to ensure that a person who holds the digital currency may readily transfer or assign the digital currency to any other person by electronic means.”
    • Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
      What? There are people in this comment section doing exactly that.
      • walterbell 3y ago
        For example?
        • Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36116663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36116663 Then there are the people defending the steps to the cashless society because those steps happened to be on people they didn't like: canadian truckers and pornhub. I recall one explicit comment I can't find now so I am willing to believe I hallucinated it.
          • walterbell 3y ago
            Those are people arguing for cash-less society. > No one is arguing for a cash-only society. My statement was about the opposite, i.e. co-existence rather than exclusion :)
            • Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
              My bad. I completely misread your comment. I am sorry for that. Let me be the first to argue for it. Electronic money is horrible. It obscures how much you're really spending on things. It requires a middle man in every transaction skimming a bit off the top. One company runs all the debit payments here. Mastercard and Visa used to split the credit card market but I assume they colluded to monopolize on on MC here. The government has passed laws demanding business partake in the racket but nothing to require acceptance of cash. Cash not accepted for public transport. Laws stating a maximum value of a transaction that is permitted in cash but have never increased the limit while they've been inflating the value away.
    • Spooky23 3y ago
      It’s pretty hard, cash is like contraband in many cases
    • laratied 3y ago
      The idea elected politicians want a cashless society is utterly absurd to me. It misses the obvious fact that an elected politician needs the privacy of cash for taking bribes. A cashless society can only work in an authoritarian regime that simply doesn't care if the populace knows about bribes or not.
      • walterbell 3y ago
        Billions of dirty money have passed through existing digital systems, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119556 Future digital payment systems can have a wide range of transparency, they are unlikely to be limited to public blockchains. China is rumored to have a do-not-see list which excludes selected elites from detection by ubiquitious surveillance cameras.
  • Seattle3503 3y ago
    I don't know. Cash is nearly impossible to use on the internet. The web is a window into what the physical world will look like without cash. Incidents like Pornhub's show us the power a few companies will wield over us when the transition to cashless happens.
    • throw383734 3y ago
      It depends on the infrastructure. Some websites have "Cash on Delivery" options or going to a convenience store to pay. When I was in Asia using UberEats and Food Panda, "Cash on Delivery" was the recommended option by most of the locals.
  • skeeter2020 3y ago
    I think you're missing the point of the example. It wasn't that websites can't function without cash payments, but that without cash you're held hostage to the whims of a few gatekeepers (like PH).
  • wsgeorge 3y ago
    Indirectly. Uber "accepts" cash in some countries, as do major online retailers in those same markets like Jumia. It's essentially cash on delivery, but it works AFAICT. I've only used my card with Uber a handful of times in 2016.
    • nottorp 3y ago
      Uber will happily take card in the app or cash to the driver here. Just select before calling the car.
    • atdrummond 3y ago
      I love using cash for Grab in Singapore, seeing as non-residents are capped on how much they can spend on a card weekly (and it is an extremely low amount).
  • invalidname 3y ago
    I think the point is about the monopolistic nature. Not that they would accept cash. Without cash we will see credit fees rise significantly.
  • jon-wood 3y ago
    Mullvad have made it work, but it’s definitely not smooth. I believe their process is to assign a unique ID to your invoice, which you can then write on an envelope stuffed with cash you mail to the correct address. On receipt they match your cash with the invoice and mark it as paid.
    • danpalmer 3y ago
      This might work but sending cash in the mail is a pretty terrible idea. Most postal services strongly discourage it, or you're using recorded services which are expensive and add all the same tracking issues.
      • orhmeh09 3y ago
        Which postal services? The USPS doesn't strongly discourage it.
        • Wohlf 3y ago
          They absolutely do and may refuse to mail it in some cases. It increases the risk of theft astronomically, that's why money orders exist.
          • orhmeh09 3y ago
            Can you provide a source? I can provide two indicating they do not. https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/can-you-send-cash-in-the-mail-upsp-verify-mailing-money/65-4c217fd1-e7fc-4d6b-80bf-ed681fc5389c https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/can-you-send-cash-... https://apnews.com/article/archive-fact-checking-9264421609 https://apnews.com/article/archive-fact-checking-9264421609 You should report to the postmaster general if you are refused service; they would be interested in hearing about this.
      • phpisthebest 3y ago
        Postal services deny liability. If you send cash and it is stolen you can not sue or get redress from the postal system
  • londons_explore 3y ago
    If you visit Georgia (the country, not the state), they have a cool system for cash payments to websites. You go on the website, order your stuff. When the normal payment screen that comes up, instead of Mastercard or visa, you choose "Cash". You'll then be sent a text message with a number (or the number appears on the screen if you don't have a phone). You go to any ATM anywhere in the country, put that number into the ATM, feed the cash into the coin and note slot, and then your goods will be ordered. The same system is used for paying taxes in cash, utility bills in cash, etc. They can do refunds in cash using the same system. You do pay a fairly hefty (10% if I remember correctly) fee for using that service though.
    • kredd 3y ago
      That is still depended on some sort of payment rails though, no? Bank, government or whoever can decline transactions to that “cash” action.
      • itake 3y ago
        I think what is different though is they don't know what you're buying (I think).
        • DANmode 3y ago
          It's more expensive to know.
        • kevin_nisbet 3y ago
          Or it's accessible for those who operate without banks. I think there is a term for it, "unbanked" or something like that... there's some decent chunk of the population that doesn't have a bank account / can't get a credit card / etc.
        • Groxx 3y ago
          Not sure why that would be any different than credit card payments, which don't itemize every purchase either - they still know how much and to what seller, tracking a seller and banning them seems just as easy. What they don't get is the buyer's information. ...except for the time and place, with a device that almost certainly has cameras for theft deterrence. Which might be fine now, but seems pretty law-enforcement-capturable.
  • AmenBreak 3y ago
    How did businesses manage payments before the Internet and credit cards etc?
    • mistrial9 3y ago
      checks and similar
  • tenebrisalietum 3y ago
    Money order physically sent to a mailing address. Slow, and a bit inconvenient, and there is no support for automatic recurring debits. But it does work, and it worked before the Internet.
  • efitz 3y ago
    It has been happening for years. You go to 7-11 or Target and buy a “<app name> points card”, it gets activated at the register when you pay with cash, and then you use the code on the back to get Minecraft coins or Xbox points or Fortnite bux or whatever. It’s how kids and people with no credit or a distrust of banks participate online.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • RobotToaster 3y ago
    When ebay was new I bought loads of stuff using postal orders, which aren't far from cash. Hell, people would buy things from me and just post cash in an envelope.
  • mertd 3y ago
    cdnow.com or Amazon used to accept money orders. You'd place your order and they would give you a slip to print and send with your money order. Once the payment made it there, they would ship your item.
  • lost_tourist 3y ago
    The website could hold it in escrow while they wait for your cash? It isn't hard actually, just a couple more steps. I mean not everyone needs 2 day Amazon shipping.
  • collyw 3y ago
    Here in Spain it is still relatively common to make a bank transfer and show the receipt. Especially for anything government related. Stand in queue, talk to person. You need to pay 12 euros. Go to bank, pay, get receipt. Go back and stand in the queue again. We don't need to be giving our governments any more control over the way that we spend our own money. And we certainly don't want to give them the power to shut people out of the system.
• 908B64B197 3y ago
  > the power it hands to a few oligopolistic credit card processors And the government. In Canada the government suspended the constitution (because that's a thing over there?) because of some peaceful, free-speech protected, protests in the capital and started arbitrary freezing protester's bank accounts. Of course, without any due process (remember, constitutional rights were suspended!).
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • arcticbull 3y ago
    Yep, and hat tip to the government for a job well done. There's a right and a wrong way to protest, they were given time to choose to do it right. Now that the threat is over and dispersed they're welcome to come back and protest peacefully. For an end to the vaccine mandates, that ended already. Silly sausages. For reference, the Emergencies Act doesn't 'suspend the constitution' it suspends certain Charter rights for a period of time. [1] You may be thinking of the 'notwithstanding clause' but that's totally different. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
    • 908B64B197 3y ago
      > the threat You can see here how wrong and violent these protests were. The bouncy castle and hot tub were a danger to society! [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74pbbhCZng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74pbbhCZng [1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hzfwaSVIvoA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hzfwaSVIvoA
      • arcticbull 3y ago
        Do you live in Canada, have family in Ottawa, or are you just consuming right-wing content in the US? They loaded up the capital area with 3,200L of fuel and started bringing in propane tanks. You think that wouldn't be considered a threat in front of the White House? Especially since the fortified compound around the White House is significantly further from the roadway than the comparatively unguarded Parliament is from Wellington St. With respect, I suggest you stick to commenting on the US, or at least things you have some specific knowledge of. Maybe read some contemporaneous news coverage. From Ottawa where it was happening. > Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency Sunday after a dystopian weekend of carnival-like scenes, heightened lawlessness, growing tensions between protesters and residents, and relentless noise, diesel fumes and fireworks. The fact you think the situation was limited to 'bouncy castles and hot tubs' is pretty telling of how little you know about what you're discussing. You know the invocation of the Act was supported by multiple political parties at the Federal level and Provincial Premiers of all parties? [1] https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mayor-declares-emergency-after-weekend-of-chaos-police-begin-choking-off-fuel-supply-to-protesting-truckers https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mayor-declares-eme...
• anony23 3y ago
  Crypto fixes this to some extent, but would require a chain that could handle a large volume of small transactions.
  • rahen 3y ago
    This is done off-chain with a layer two. Think of Lightning or Liquid on top of the BTC blockchain.
    • arcticbull 3y ago
      Lightning requires an on-chain transaction to create a channel, which means that you would need about 75 years, trillions of dollars of electricity and the entire remaining block reward to set up a channel for everyone alive now, assuming no births or deaths. Stop thinking about lightning, it's just meant to distract people from the actual scaling issues.
      • EscapeFromNY 3y ago
        You can fit more than one operation in a transaction. The paper from 2017: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320247611_Scalable_Funding_of_Bitcoin_Micropayment_Channel_Networks https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320247611_Scalable_... The general idea is called channel factories.
        • arcticbull 3y ago
          So how many years do you think it'll take to onboard people? And how many dollars?
          • EscapeFromNY 3y ago
            Back of the napkin math: - 8 billion people - 96% reduction in block space over the naive approach, per the paper. (EDIT: the signature aggregation being referred to is Schnorr signatures, and it's become reality since the paper was published) - 7 transactions per second, 86400 seconds per day, 365 days per year 8000000000*(1-0.96)/7/86400/365 = 1.45 years Current transaction fees are $3. Assuming that stays constant, every group of 20 users would need to come up with $3 between them.
• arcticbull 3y ago
  I'll take this opportunity to advocate for 'payment network neutrality' - given their importance in the economy, I agree payment processors should be required to process all lawful transactions, by law. We should require this of any national payments processor in the US at the federal level - or state, I'm looking at you, CA and NY.
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    Can't co-exist with chargebacks IMO and chargebacks are the entire reason we have credit.
  • powera 3y ago
    Any proposal that requires companies to ignore signs of fraud is Dead-On-Arrival.
    • arcticbull 3y ago
      I literally said 'lawful' transactions. Fraud is not lawful.
      • nordsieck 3y ago
        > I literally said 'lawful' transactions. Fraud is not lawful. The problem is, it's almost all allegedly fraud. No one has the time or money to prosecute all of the attempted fraud in the system.
        • arcticbull 3y ago
          Same exact process as now, except you have a guaranteed right to appeal.
          • novok 3y ago
            And your effectively at the same spot again
• mc32 3y ago
  Also the threat to civil liberties was exposed in Canada when the government saw it fit to freeze people's bank accounts. I believe this is being reviewed and maybe something will come of it so that the gov is not allowed to cavalierly freeze accounts in the future, but you can see how even liberal people are ready to violate people's civil liberties when they see it fit. It's like principles are only followed when times are easy. In reality principles earn their keep when they persist in the toughest of times.
  • efitz 3y ago
    The US has wantonly applied “sanctions” all over the place, which in lay terms means “we take your money electronically and/or prevent you from moving money”. This has been applied both against governments and individuals, even individuals not accused of any crime in the US.
    • mc32 3y ago
      Yes! We have faithless actors as well. Civil forfeiture is another one. They should not be able to confiscate people's property until they have had due process and found to have unlawfully come to said property. I use Canada as an example because it was a vast and wanton act by the government affecting and threatening thousands of accountholders at once. It's a shame we don't have more libertarians representing the interests of the people in the Congress. Can only hope whomever might be the next president would have the Coglioni to reform civil forfeiture.
      • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        But as long as the people who are victimized first are unsympathetic, no one's going to complain about it. They were rednecks and vaccine deniers and white supremacists and blue collar workers, all the sorts of people who are bad. Thus, doing this to them was justified and good. Meaning the government should have such powers. If only there were some sort of clever computer algorithm that could create a money system that no one can track of block.
  • 3y ago
• willmadden 3y ago
  Pornhub? How about the Canadian truckers protest where Canada's handful of banks froze their accounts and their gofundme was seized? How about all of China? There's no way government can be trusted. We would need a bill of rights applied to our money first to protect us and have a check and balance. We already need this!
  • johncessna 3y ago
    Or Russia.
    • willmadden 3y ago
      Or the US. Look at Operation Chokepoint or all of the people locked out of payment processors for wrong think. It's a theme that seems to transcend national boundaries that is accelerating. It's even on this forum. I just had a mod threaten me for making a snide but perfectly G-rated comment about NPR. It's not good!
    • wiseowise 3y ago
      What’s there?
• pharmakom 3y ago
  not to mention the privacy aspect.
• UI_at_80x24 3y ago
  And this was one of the key hopes that I had for bitcoin.
  • darkmighty 3y ago
    I think, in hindsight, we should have known better, but I was probably too young and naive like everyone else: it's really a form on anarchism that tends to fly in the face of several realities. One of them is that this kind of anarchism tends to quickly turn into a plutocracy. Another is that systems don't exist in a vacuum. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ If third parties want to regulate you, they will. So we've just added a layer of indirection that may be harder to manipulate by governments, great, but is manipulated by mining cabals and cryptomillionaires. I don't mean to say it's all bad, there are very valid fringe use cases for cryptocurrencies. But it was never supposed to replace mainstream currency. The government is already a system for consensus, and frankly one that would be deeply unwise, to say the least, to throw away (in particular one in favor of money voting or mining voting). Specifically democracy is the best invention of mankind in my opinion. (Weirdly enough, I think all big crypto thinkers have been trying to invent, using arcane cryptographic techniques and a lot of algorithms, something slightly (or significantly) worse than what we already have, which is a democracy where every real world individual is given a voting right. In their credit democracy is great, but it's already here, use it!)
• cyanydeez 3y ago
  Look at what it did to crypto.
• BlueTemplar 3y ago
  I mean it's not like businesses can refuse to take cash as payment - it's legal tender ! (The inconvenient bit is that they are not required to give change.)
  • kayodelycaon 3y ago
    It’s legal tender for debts. Not payments.
    • BlueTemplar 3y ago
      Depends on the jurisdiction I guess ? I just checked, and around here cash is the only type of payment that cannot be refused, and if they get caught trying they would be fined 150€.
      • psychlops 3y ago
        A debt must be incurred for them to refuse it. If one walks up to a counter to pay for something, there is no debt and a business can refuse to take the cash.
  • wiml 3y ago
    Lots of businesses in my city refuse cash transactions. There's minor controversy about how it tends to shut out marginalized people, but AFAIK it has survived legal challenges. It doesn't matter that cash is "legal tender" if the business can just refuse to enter into the transaction in the first place.
    • BlueTemplar 3y ago
      I guess it's going to depend a lot on whether you can just plop down the money (and change) on the counter, and leave after the service has been done / with what you bought... or not (because you have to pay upfront for instance).
• rsaesha 3y ago
  There is an option: a direct payment system provided by the Central Bank to the general public. In Brazil it is called PIX, and was implemented in 2020. Last month it has processed more than 3 million operations. Works 24/7, 0 fees to end users, low cost for business. IMO, going cashless is not an "if", it is a "when". https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en
  • throwuwu 3y ago
    Who controls the central bank in Brazil? Who can implement changes to this system? How much PII is recorded with each transaction and who can view it?
    • yesbut 3y ago
      I'm not familiar with Brazil's system, but moving a central bank to being democratically controlled is betterbthan leaving this in the hands of a private company. The US central bank isn't currently democratically controlled, but it could be. Then collectively we could decide how a Brazil type system should function. People are better served when their banks aren't run for-profit.
      • lazide 3y ago
        Until it’s politically uncool to be you, and the gov’t bans your ability to buy food. The Nazi’s got elected in their first time, democratically (ish).
        • rsaesha 3y ago
          Brother fckn nazis taking the government is a much bigger systemic problem that no financial system can protect against. The system works if democracy works. If we lose democracy, of course, the blocks built on top of it would crumble. That does not means everyone should stop building on top of democracy. Even more so for things that makes the life of the people better.
• throw_m239339 3y ago
  I really couldn't care less about Pornhub and any other digital pimps that made money off revenge porn and CSAM for decades. I'll never feel sorry for them, its executives are rich and without a conscience. > The small organization that helped bring the porn industry to its knees https://www.godreports.com/2022/12/the-small-organization-that-helped-bring-the-porn-industry-to-its-knees/ https://www.godreports.com/2022/12/the-small-organization-th... > How Pornhub – one of the world's biggest sites – caused untold damage and pain https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/16/pornhub-untold-damage-pain https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/16/pornhu... > Pornhub sued for allegedly serving “under-age, non-consensual” videos https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/pornhub-hosted-rape-revenge-porn-and-child-sex-abuse-videos-lawsuit-alleges/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/pornhub-hosted-r... > The Children of Pornhub https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra... A simpler exemple would be independent new commenters, political organizations, or non aligned artists suspended by Crowdfunding platforms, Patreon, Paypal or even VISA directly because the competition or politicians don't want them to exist. > PayPal shuts accounts of anti-war publications Consortium News and MintPress News https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/04/uofx-m04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/04/uofx-m04.html > Visa & Mastercard Reportedly Refuse Service to David Horowitz - Newest Victim of SPLC's Anti-Conservative Purge? https://www2.cbn.com/news/us/visa-mastercard-reportedly-refuse-service-david-horowitz-newest-victim-splcs-anti https://www2.cbn.com/news/us/visa-mastercard-reportedly-refu... > PayPal Partners with Anti-Defamation League to Research Financial Pipelines of ‘Extremist’ Groups https://www.nationalreview.com/news/paypal-partners-with-anti-defamation-league-to-block-financial-pipelines-of-extremist-groups/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/paypal-partners-with-ant... > Why Is PayPal Denying Service to Palestinians? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/why-paypal-denying-service-palestinians https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/why-paypal-denying-ser...
  • jlawson 3y ago
    So you want to hurt the people you dislike, and (presumably) help the people you like. That's fine, but please understand that some of us believe it's worth having principles. We think it's better for society and humanity if people think above the dislike=hurt/like=help dichotomy.
• xg15 3y ago
  Businesses are one thing, but what I find truly dystopic about the idea of 100% cashless societies is that you could off people in the same way. If today, you lose access to your bank account for whatever reason, you still have various options how to purchase necessities: If you got some spare cash, you could use that; otherwise you could ask a friend to lend you some cash. In a cashless society, that won't work: Even if the friend wants to help you, they have nothing to wire the cash to. They'd literally have to buy the individual goods for you. The only way to fix this would be to get a new temporary bank account until the old one is accessible again. But if you got banned for whatever reason, chances are the bank will ban the new account as well.
  • KennyBlanken 3y ago
    5% of the US population is unbanked. A "cashless" society would shut out a massive number of poor, undocumented, homeless, etc and make life even more difficult for them. It would also cause skyrocketing issues with burglary, mugging, etc. Many porn actors have been blacklisted from the US banking system. Conservatives got tired of losing US supreme court cases over censorship laws and regulations and shifted to enforcing their morals via the private banking system. Ever notice that there's no law or regulation requiring banks provide even basic checking service to anyone who can establish a valid identity? Going cashless cannot happen unless either the government starts providing essential (checking, savings, credit card, and home/personal/auto financing) services they are mandated to provide to everyone (which will never happen because the banking industry would lose a ton of control) or banks must be mandated to provide non-lending services to anyone and provide lending on an identity-blind basis (ie, only metrics may be used, none which identify the type of banking or business or employment or spending you do.)
    • TimJRobinson 3y ago
      Your assumption is that only Government and Banks can process payments, which is not true. You must think outside that overton window to realize there are ways of paying people that don't require either.
    • whimsicalism 3y ago
• pessimizer 3y ago
  Look what happened to Wikileaks and Assange. I think that was the test that began the slippery slope. edit: Wikileaks to sue Visa, Mastercard over "financial blockade" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-to-sue-visa-mastercard-over-financial-blockade/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-to-sue-visa-mastercar...
  • sclarisse 3y ago
    Also consider Operation Choke Point, where the government pressured banks not to do business with firearms dealers, tobacco dealers, and a variety of other firms they didn’t like. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
• KennyBlanken 3y ago
  This all started way, way before Pornhub. First it was federal and state moral laws (mostly porn, but also race and gender related stuff) with state/local and USPS cops handling enforcement, back when there was no internet and the way you got information out was via newsletters, zines, and such. USPS cops used to literally spend their days steaming open envelopes and rifling through people's packages that seemed like they might contain lots of flyers for unions or newsletters for black panthers, or nudie mags. But religious conservatives lost court cases left and right, eventually giving up on that front. So they shifted to banking to enforce a moral code in the private sector they couldn't do so via the government. After all - if you can't ban something, just starve it of money...making it impossible, or very expensive and inconvenient, to fund. For decades, porn stars have been basically shut out of the banking system, blacklisted, finding their bank accounts suddenly closed with little warning, with little or no explanation. I'm not talking prostitutes - I'm talking people who are clearly employed and receiving paychecks for being adult actors in films, all very verifiable. What's wild is that clearly banks are spending labor and resources to have computers and staff go through and find these accounts and close them. Criminals figured out pretty quick that porn stars had lots of cash hanging around, and they became targets for both organized (and less so) crime...as well as a place for organized crime to dump/launder money. The credit card industry claims they restrict / charge such high fees for porn because of fraud rates, but...look at the gym industry, which is infamous for fraudulent billing practices, and how they have access to credit card processing and even ACH access. The banking industry also seems more than delighted to handle the finances of boy scout troops and catholic churches. When ads dominated revenue, that was how censoring happened - major advertisers would contractually ban adult content from sites running their ads. With subscription fees taking over, it's now credit card payment processing. Most of the major crackdowns on adult content on various platforms have come from merchant and processing banks threatening to pull service because they don't like what they see on the site...or from the site trying to get an app onto Google and Apple app stores. Speaking of which: that's also why Apple is so paranoid about adult content in apps, podcasts, etc. They make a massive amount of cash off their take from app purchases and subscriptions. Even a slight increase in the percentage they pay, due to "risk" or some percentage of the fees going to adult content - means a huge, huge loss in revenue for them. Well, that and I think Tim Cook has internalized a lot of the conservative "gay = child predator" stuff which is why he's so fucking obsessed with Protecting The Children (coughCSAMcough) - but that's another story. ChatGPT, by the way? They didn't implement prudish (and pretty ineffective) censoring out of some moral code (otherwise they would have better filtered the training set, which clearly contains a LOT of porn), they did it to satisfy their credit card processor. The really big crackdown on naughtiness recently? Notice it happened right when they were submitting their iOS app for approval...
• ledgerdev 3y ago
  I also feel strongly we need some sort of semi-local payment system that connects merchants, local banks and customers. Sending a payment to my local municipality should not involve wall street.
  • missedthecue 3y ago
    I think there's a lot of value in a big payment network. It is very convenient to be able to take my Visa card across the country, or to another continent, and it's accepted everywhere.
  • sacnoradhq 3y ago
    Like cash?
• EGreg 3y ago
  This is why we started https://intercoin.org https://intercoin.org It is everything people on HN deride. Smart contracts. Web3. But it is necessary to save us from a future of CBDCs and Big Tech payment systems being the only choice.
• jjtheblunt 3y ago
  > ... without due process is due process applicable? has the supreme court established if a vendor is free to turn down business? (i do not claim to know the answer, but i believe there was some recent such issue they saw)
  • clnq 3y ago
    I mean... due process, by definition, is process that is due. Due process exists in the legal context (especially judicial), but also ethical/moral. Different schools of ethics have a lot to say about ethical due process before depriving someone of liberties.
• throwaway14356 3y ago
  the most worrisome part is that the legal system is apparently to lazy to just follow the process. Fearmongering big tech companies into doing their job for them should be banned by international treaty. If we/the voter wants a copyright monitoring system or transaction monitoring bolted onto every tube we should get a bill for it. We should pay for every bit of work done at our request by the companies. Let it cut deep into the budget. We want to know what the orwellian society costs.
• _8j50 3y ago
  Not just that but the fact that in order to simpy exist your transactions must be tracked by some company! Screw that. That society should not exist. Period.
• sacnoradhq 3y ago
  1. Power to credit card processors, banks, and potentially the government. 2. 1.) can shut you down and you can be left without any form of durable payment or value. 3. Makes it very easy to track all of your consumption habits. 4. Creates a tiered society where the unbanked (poor and unhoused) are second-class citizens and cannot access the same things as others.
• thiuo2i3432434 3y ago
  [flagged]
• kylsssssanzle 3y ago
  Anyone with a brain will be using bitcoin cash or monero.
• faeriechangling 3y ago
  Which is the problem that crypto solved for the most part, independence from a few oligopolistic PROCESSORS. While I am still not a "Buying literal digital currency is a sound investment" true believer, I feel recent events are making people keen to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the notion of decentralised crypto as a medium of exchange.
  • TimJRobinson 3y ago
    Yea stablecoins (fiat tokens) are by far the biggest successful use case of crypto. It's unfortunate that so many on Hacker News still think crypto is Bitcoin and other wannabe currencies (which never made sense as mediums of exchange) so don't notice the solution to these issues is already here and being adopted all over the world already.
  • menus 3y ago
    After watching Folding Ideas' video on crypto and NFT (1) I am less convinced that is decentralised. It goes over how crypto ended up becoming the very thing it swore to destroy (banks and oligopolies). Also anyone with the means can still do a 51% attack if they wanted. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
    • TimJRobinson 3y ago
      They can't though. Firstly NFTs and their image storage location are unrelated to tokens. In regards to 51% attacks they aren't going to happen to Bitcoin or Ethereum. For possible flaws, to put it in terms that technical non-crypto people understand, his arguments are like saying "well Heart Bleed happened and this could happen again thus all computers are unsafe and you can never trust them to be secure" which is technically true but that doesn't mean we should abandon storing our own data and give it all to google to keep it safe for us (which we do with money today). Blockchain developers are very smart and build defense in depth against attacks, there's a reason why Ethereum has tens of billions of USD stored on it. There are protocols for transferring cash on Ethereum (LUSD, RAI) that you can use that no one, not even nation states spending billions of dollars can stop you from using. The tradeoff is they won't scale to the world. But then there are less secure protocols (DAI, USDC) that do scale which will be fine for 99.9% of people (who aren't terrorists or being targeted by the government). Tech is all about tradeoffs and you can learn about them from experts in the field rather than an obviously anti-crypto YouTube video to understand them. All of these are far more censorship resistant than any banks or traditional financial services.
• m463 3y ago
  Also all the electronic tie-ins from cashless transactions. I've seen less technical friends getting their email or phone number tied to transactions, or installing apps to complete them.
  • collyw 3y ago
    It seems to be getting worse. I order something online. Get asked to confirm the purchase on my bank app. Log in to my bank website from my laptop as I am already there, enter my password. Then I get prompted to open my phone and enter the same password to confirm that it is me logging into the bank app. I am allowed into the banks web app, where I tell it, yes it's me and I want to make that purchase. It's at the stage where physical shops might actually be quicker and less hassle, especially if you have forgotten or mistyped the password and need to go through the process of resetting it.
• amelius 3y ago
  How would you pay PH in cash? Would you send them an envelope with money?
• jasonkhanlar 3y ago
  BlackRock -> https://weforum.org/partners/#B https://weforum.org/partners/#B JPMorgan Chase & Co. -> https://weforum.org/partners/#J https://weforum.org/partners/#J Mastercard -> https://weforum.org/partners/#M https://weforum.org/partners/#M PayPal -> https://weforum.org/partners/#P https://weforum.org/partners/#P State Street -> https://weforum.org/partners/#S https://weforum.org/partners/#S Visa -> https://weforum.org/partners/#V https://weforum.org/partners/#V etcetera Inevitably, the financial system is rigged to collapse, and it's just a matter of time before critical mass of people realize what otherwise currently at least hundreds of thousands of people across 160 countries realize and continue to. Apes Together Strong released recently on Amazon and Vimeo offers a reasonable perspective that does not intentionally lie by omission, despite that so many details are omitted probably due to time constraints and keeping information introduction simple for everyone not yet aware.