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The payment provider has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason, being forced to do business with someone is the same thing as compelling someone

The payment provider has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason, being forced to do business with someone is the same thing as compelling someone to speak (or not speak). Two wrongs don't make a right.

littlestymaar 1y ago
There are two parts in this argument I disagree with: - that doing business is akin to speech. - that corporations are entitled human rights (freedom of speech). Also, freedom of speech means nothing for humans if corporations can force their customers not to discuss certain topics in the name of “I don't want to do business with someone who says that”.
- arcfour 1y ago
  Freedom of speech is freedom from being arrested for your speech. It is not the freedom to force others to give your speech a platform. Just like how it's not freedom to force other people to listen to your speech. If it is, then I exercise my freedom of speech to place bumper stickers on YOUR car that say things that you find distateful. "But that's my property!" Yes, and Steam's servers and software are Valve's property. Mastercard and Visa's platforms are theirs. If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism, you would probably find this objectionable. Why? Because if you walked into a bookstore and there's a bunch of books there full of Nazi propaganda, you would probably wonder if the owner of the store was a Nazi. You don't want to be associated with or seen as promoting it. This is why it's akin to speech.
  - throwawaysoxjje 1y ago
    > Freedom of speech is freedom from being arrested for your speech. It is not the freedom to force others to give your speech a platform. Yeah and when that was written the act of paying with a credit card would have looked like magic Maybe things have changed a bit
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    > If it is, then I exercise my freedom of speech to place bumper stickers on YOUR car that say things that you find distateful. "But that's my property!" And in fact, you cannot stop me from putting leaflets on your car, no matter how distasteful you find the content, just because it's your property. In fact, in many jurisdictions, putting stickers is allowed too, the line being drawn at damaging the property of someone else. (I can write stuff on your car with easy to wash water paint, but I can't carve a message on it). > If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism Welcome to the life of every bookstore clerks in the world. And it turns out they aren't allowed to remove books they disagree with, nor add their own favorite book in the store. If the owner of the store can force that on its clerks I see no reason why the legislator couldn't do the same on the owner. In fact, in countries that aren't hypocritical about freedom of speech, you cannot get fired by your boss if they dislike what you say, but you can definitely be fired if you refuse a customer, which shows doing business has nothing to do with freedom of speech. So at the end of the day, having refuted your two arguments, my point still stand: Doing business isn't akin to speech, and corporations aren't human beings in the first place so they shouldn't be entitled human rights anyway. Also, property right isn't some special kind of right that trumps everything else, it's one basic right like any other and have no precedence/superiority over the others.
    - cthalupa 1y ago
      You have done nothing to refute any of these points because you do not understand the fundamental legal concepts at play here. You have expressed your opinion, which you are certainly able to have, but the objective reality is that freedom of association applying to businesses is incredibly old and consistently reiterated precedent. If you want to change it in countries where this is the law of the land, you're going to need to pass new laws (and in the case of the US, amend the constitution.) But the problem is that you seem to misunderstand the difference between being protected from the government compelling speech/association/etc. with the law compelling the protection from other individuals, businesses, etc. from being able to take action because of their disagreement with what you said. Frankly, I have no idea how the world you are envisioning would function. It would be a neverending argument over what side trumps the other in every disagreement of this nature. It's just not viable and this is one of the reasons that the precedent here is so strong and so universal.
  - djray 1y ago
    The reality is more akin to me agreeing to have my car covered in your bumper stickers (and anyone else's, as long as they abide by my particular set of bumper sticker rules), and then having to remove some without notice at a later date because the chap at the gas station got offended and wouldn't serve me any more. And there being only one gas station. And the guy having not objected to the exact same bumper stickers for the last 15 years. Visa have said this is because of 'enhanced risk' caused by this content, but they've been fine with it up to now. It's only because of the Australian group's censorious actions that they've decided to act. That's the frustrating thing, at least to me. Whether they have the legal right to do it or not, it's still a dick move. (If you'll forgive the pun.)
johnnyanmac 1y ago
Okay. That isn't their argument, though. >We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers. Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction. So they are trying to outright lie or they are so disconnected they are ignorant of what other parts of their company are doing. Neither are a good luck.
- jfyi 1y ago
  It's a good indication that it came from their processors and not from Visa.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Maybe for Itch, but I believe Valve is more than large enough to need to work directly with Visa to for payment processes. They likely tried to do as much processing in house before that point as well.
    - jfyi 1y ago
      It looks like they both use paysafe and paypal for processing.
taurath 1y ago
The payment provider does not have that right, in fact.
- arcfour 1y ago
  Yes, they do, and if they dont, they should.
  - 8note 1y ago
    they however ahould also be broken up grom a duopoly into maybe 500k different payment providers, each with their own bent on who to do business with
    - danaris 1y ago
      And how will that work for the rest of us? Everyone has to carry around half a million credit cards? Every merchant has to make half a million separate payment processing agreements, each with its own card machine? No; this is a natural monopoly situation, and just needs to be regulated hard.
      - littlestymaar 1y ago
        There are two providers (more in fact, if you count country-specific providers), and they are interoperable. Yes regulation are necessary, including for interoperability, but I don't really buy the natural monopoly argument (at least not more than any tech companies).
      - phatskat 1y ago
        Eh sounds more like we need payment processing to be a public utility
        danaris 1y ago
        I don't object to that idea at all. It sounds like Brazil has been having success with that recently. ...Of course, we do need some more safeguards first to make sure that such an entity wouldn't be massively abused by tyrannical executives cheerfully twisting the law into bizarre pretzel shapes in order to attack anyone who disagrees with them.

littlestymaar 1y ago

There are two parts in this argument I disagree with: - that doing business is akin to speech. - that corporations are entitled human rights (freedom of speech). Also, freedom of speech means nothing for humans if corporations can force their customers not to discuss certain topics in the name of “I don't want to do business with someone who says that”.

arcfour 1y ago
Freedom of speech is freedom from being arrested for your speech. It is not the freedom to force others to give your speech a platform. Just like how it's not freedom to force other people to listen to your speech. If it is, then I exercise my freedom of speech to place bumper stickers on YOUR car that say things that you find distateful. "But that's my property!" Yes, and Steam's servers and software are Valve's property. Mastercard and Visa's platforms are theirs. If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism, you would probably find this objectionable. Why? Because if you walked into a bookstore and there's a bunch of books there full of Nazi propaganda, you would probably wonder if the owner of the store was a Nazi. You don't want to be associated with or seen as promoting it. This is why it's akin to speech.
- throwawaysoxjje 1y ago
  > Freedom of speech is freedom from being arrested for your speech. It is not the freedom to force others to give your speech a platform. Yeah and when that was written the act of paying with a credit card would have looked like magic Maybe things have changed a bit
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  > If it is, then I exercise my freedom of speech to place bumper stickers on YOUR car that say things that you find distateful. "But that's my property!" And in fact, you cannot stop me from putting leaflets on your car, no matter how distasteful you find the content, just because it's your property. In fact, in many jurisdictions, putting stickers is allowed too, the line being drawn at damaging the property of someone else. (I can write stuff on your car with easy to wash water paint, but I can't carve a message on it). > If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism Welcome to the life of every bookstore clerks in the world. And it turns out they aren't allowed to remove books they disagree with, nor add their own favorite book in the store. If the owner of the store can force that on its clerks I see no reason why the legislator couldn't do the same on the owner. In fact, in countries that aren't hypocritical about freedom of speech, you cannot get fired by your boss if they dislike what you say, but you can definitely be fired if you refuse a customer, which shows doing business has nothing to do with freedom of speech. So at the end of the day, having refuted your two arguments, my point still stand: Doing business isn't akin to speech, and corporations aren't human beings in the first place so they shouldn't be entitled human rights anyway. Also, property right isn't some special kind of right that trumps everything else, it's one basic right like any other and have no precedence/superiority over the others.
  - cthalupa 1y ago
    You have done nothing to refute any of these points because you do not understand the fundamental legal concepts at play here. You have expressed your opinion, which you are certainly able to have, but the objective reality is that freedom of association applying to businesses is incredibly old and consistently reiterated precedent. If you want to change it in countries where this is the law of the land, you're going to need to pass new laws (and in the case of the US, amend the constitution.) But the problem is that you seem to misunderstand the difference between being protected from the government compelling speech/association/etc. with the law compelling the protection from other individuals, businesses, etc. from being able to take action because of their disagreement with what you said. Frankly, I have no idea how the world you are envisioning would function. It would be a neverending argument over what side trumps the other in every disagreement of this nature. It's just not viable and this is one of the reasons that the precedent here is so strong and so universal.
- djray 1y ago
  The reality is more akin to me agreeing to have my car covered in your bumper stickers (and anyone else's, as long as they abide by my particular set of bumper sticker rules), and then having to remove some without notice at a later date because the chap at the gas station got offended and wouldn't serve me any more. And there being only one gas station. And the guy having not objected to the exact same bumper stickers for the last 15 years. Visa have said this is because of 'enhanced risk' caused by this content, but they've been fine with it up to now. It's only because of the Australian group's censorious actions that they've decided to act. That's the frustrating thing, at least to me. Whether they have the legal right to do it or not, it's still a dick move. (If you'll forgive the pun.)

johnnyanmac 1y ago

Okay. That isn't their argument, though. >We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers. Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction. So they are trying to outright lie or they are so disconnected they are ignorant of what other parts of their company are doing. Neither are a good luck.

jfyi 1y ago
It's a good indication that it came from their processors and not from Visa.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Maybe for Itch, but I believe Valve is more than large enough to need to work directly with Visa to for payment processes. They likely tried to do as much processing in house before that point as well.
  - jfyi 1y ago
    It looks like they both use paysafe and paypal for processing.

taurath 1y ago

The payment provider does not have that right, in fact.

arcfour 1y ago
Yes, they do, and if they dont, they should.
- 8note 1y ago
  they however ahould also be broken up grom a duopoly into maybe 500k different payment providers, each with their own bent on who to do business with
  - danaris 1y ago
    And how will that work for the rest of us? Everyone has to carry around half a million credit cards? Every merchant has to make half a million separate payment processing agreements, each with its own card machine? No; this is a natural monopoly situation, and just needs to be regulated hard.
    - littlestymaar 1y ago
      There are two providers (more in fact, if you count country-specific providers), and they are interoperable. Yes regulation are necessary, including for interoperability, but I don't really buy the natural monopoly argument (at least not more than any tech companies).
    - phatskat 1y ago
      Eh sounds more like we need payment processing to be a public utility
      - danaris 1y ago
        I don't object to that idea at all. It sounds like Brazil has been having success with that recently. ...Of course, we do need some more safeguards first to make sure that such an entity wouldn't be massively abused by tyrannical executives cheerfully twisting the law into bizarre pretzel shapes in order to attack anyone who disagrees with them.