Personally I think they should not be able to decide such things. A payment provider should be forced to accept all legitimate customers. It is absolutely unwanted for a private business (in an unrelated category no less) to be playing the role of legislator.
The problem is once a majority of payment providers (especially in this category where there's only really 2 major ones) starts blocking things, it becomes really difficult for fringe groups that are in fact perfectly legal. I understand that porn payments are a bit more risky but the providers can simply have a policy to deny chargebacks for this category and shift the risk to the customer. Similar to the way returns of sex toys are not accepted for hygiene reasons.
Recently there was a lot of news in the Netherlands about prostitutes not being able to open bank account because all banks refused them. Think of prostitution what you will but over there it's legal work and they pay their taxes. But not being able to get a bank account gets them into very difficult situations and pushes them to shady people (which was exactly what the legalisation was avoiding).
Also other platforms like fetlife have recently been forced to validate their users, leading to potentially serious consequences if this data ever becomes compromised. Many people there don't even show their face so the result is that they have to give a lot more personal info now than they would have wanted to.
I am coming to the conclusion that we’re in the current situation by design.
A bunch of powerful people feel some stuff should be punished, but they can’t make it illegal. So they’ll stay in good term with de facto gate keepers and nudge them in their direction.
In the article it’s some billionaire, but ruling parties are probably doing the same extensively: instead of making the controversial decisions themselves, go through all the paperwork and get all the backlash, they’ll have a private entity deal with 95% of the problem (the industry “self-regulating”) and call it a day.
A pettier exemple than money transactions: there’s no reason smartphones shouldn’t be able to record calls out of the box (using it within legal boundaries should be on the user) but phone makers will self-block that behavior with no specific interest on their side.
I'm the exact opposite. this is regulatory automation gone haywire because one bad thing happened in the past.
for example: I work in a repair shop and I know I can buy absolutely zero bottles of acetylene on the company card because visa will flag it every time. they report it to the atf and you get a lovely visit...
but propylene? just as dangerous and flammable but i can buy it by the ton. we literally swapped out all our equipment for hot work cutting because visa.
Unless the name of the company is Acetylene R Us or something, I don't see how visa is finding out. And if visa is somehow finding out what you buy, how is the company selling it not telling it's customers and warning them they can't pay with visa?
> there’s no reason smartphones shouldn’t be able to record calls out of the box (using it within legal boundaries should be on the user) but phone makers will self-block that behavior with no specific interest on their side.
Which smartphones block call recording? Every brandname Android I have had enables this feature for voice calls. (Although the feature is missing for app calls, and I'm now at least 5 years behind the newest phones.)
> Which smartphones block call recording? Every brandname Android I have had enables this feature for voice calls. (Although the feature is missing for app calls, and I'm now at least 5 years behind the newest phones.)
As the article says it was blocked a couple years ago but there was still a loophole which is now being closed as well. Though it's by blocking apps using it from the play store which can still be avoided by sideloading so technically there still is a loophole :) But it's definitely seeing more and more restrictions.
In some cases there might be local laws involved. If you buy a Samsung (or LG, but they don't make phones anymore) in Korea it will come with call recording available.
The main issue is that neither Google nor Samsung seem to understand European law on this point - it is blocked by both of them in Europe, presumably because of GDPR, but any lawyer who claims that GDPR prevents an individual for recording their own phone calls locally for personal use would get laughed out of the room.
Except at Google and Samsung apparently. And there's no way to contest this decision for users, query it or even get a straight answer out of either company on it.
I'm not sure of the current state of Android but back in the early days this feature also wasn't there (there were tons of apps that claim to do it but they all exploited some device-specific quirk and wouldn't work universally) despite the hardware being capable of doing this from day 1.
The reason call recording is shunned is that tons of scummy companies would suddenly end up in trouble if call recording becomes widespread and accessible to anyone.
Not just scummy companies…. Politicians, cops, judges, bureaucrats, managers, bankers, and so on. Corruption is endemic in our world, and these laws are there to protect that status quo.
It might have something to do with the high fidelity voice calling having a reasonably large bandwidth that you could theoretically use as a data channel - many times larger than an old v.92 modem. Maybe that's not so relevant these days with more people having unlimited data plans.
(And in any case, as you suggest most people pay more per bit transmitted on a mobile voice call than they pay per bit as data.)
Purely for fun, it would be interesting to hack up two smart phones to transmit data over a voice call. Presumably, you can keep everything binary, if you control the end-points.
SMS is transmitted over digital signaling or transport channels. There was never any analog coding involved (except for a few retrofitted implementations on landlines in Europe).
Fourth Amendment is the most aggregiously sidestepped by Third Party Doctrine.
Though I suppose a case can be made for the Fifth as well. The fact is that the Federal Government loves wielding access to the Financial System as a gigantic exercise of soft power. Centralization nakes exercising that power feasible.
> Think of prostitution what you will but over there it's legal work and they pay their taxes.
Prostitution may be a line of work where less tax is paid.
This does not make the act of prostitution less legitimate.
Hair dressers and tattoo artists also, on average, declare less of their total income, and we don't consider hair dressers and tattoo artists illegitimate businesses. We just expect them to pay taxes and tolerate, to some degree, if they don't. Going to the hair dresser or getting a tattoo isn't seen as morally objectional because of what they pay in taxes.
Less tax is paid because of cash.
This is also true for prostitution. In part because the anonymity of cash is preferable among the customers, because the sex worker avoids scrutiny by the bank, and because sex workers don't necessarily have work permits in the countries in which they operate.
Conversely, we can think of morally objectional jobs where taxes are paid.
I agree tax and legitimacy are not the same thing. Tax avoidance being common in an industry does not make the work itself illegitimate.
The reason I mentioned tax is that not having a bank account was making it more complex for them to actually pay their taxes as a business. Taxation in the Netherlands is no longer something you can pay with an envelope of cash. If you want to run a legit business you can't do so without one. It was one of the things mentioned during the debate about this.
I'm not sure how it turned out because I don't live there anymore but there was talk of mandating the banks to offer them an account. After all without overdrafts or loans there is no real risk to the bank anyway.
If you want taxes, just fund the IRS. Allow and enable them to legally update and automate their systems off of 70's level technology and staffing levels which have persisted into the *2020's. Raise salaries. Improve image. Regulate tax preparers more so that not just any idiot with a PTIN can do a $20 million dollar company's return and put whatever they're told to on the return. It's not trucking rocket science.
Even easier, just simplify the tax code. But tax preparation lobbyists blocked those attempts.
The IRS is getting record funding. They are stockpiling ammo with all the extra funds. Taxation is theft anyways. The complicated tax code ensures that wealthy people pay less taxes while the IRS can go after middle class earners. Throwing more money at the problem won't help in my simple minded opinion.
Not really. Just pretend that living in a country is like renting a shop in a mall. The owners of the mall decide what they want to charge you for. In the simplest case, they just demand rent, but they could also charge you for the number of blue scarves displayed. That's just silly, but not theft (as long as the possibility of such a charge is mentioned in the rental contract).
If you don't like the mall, move and set up shop in a different one.
Similarly, most countries let you leave, too. (Even though eg East Germany and North Korea weren't/aren't so keen on that, and the US charges you an exit fee.)
Vote with your feet!
(For example, I grew up in Germany, but wasn't too keen on the package of taxes and government services on offer there. After a few years in different countries, I settled in Singapore, which is much better value for money. I'm happy with what I am getting here for the modest amount of taxes they take.)
> If you don't like the mall, move and set up shop in a different one.
Except in a lot of (if not most) cases, you can't. I grew up in Russia and I feel blessed to live in Estonia now. Most of my fellow Russians can't, especially nowadays.
Another point is, you can set up your own mall and don't pay anybody, but good luck setting up your own state and not getting shot by your neighbour (provided you even find a little piece of terra nullius where you can do that – most of the land is claimed by one government or the other, even though it's mostly sitting there unused).
I think it's more to do with prostitutes needing to keep the identities of their clients secret. So they keep no records, and are hard to audit for taxes.
It would be interesting to compare to other (legal) business that keep identities secret in this way.
When I go to the barber, I don't need to tell them my name either. Similar for the supermarket when I'm paying in cash.
So I'm not sure prostitutes are anything special?
Both barber and supermarket keep records of what services they performed or goods they sold, but not who purchased them (when paying in cash). A prostitute could do exactly the same.
> It would be interesting to compare to other (legal) business that keep identities secret in this way.
Basically almost any business where you can pay in cash?
Typically hair dressers and tattoo artists are artisans who rent a chair.
There’s no pimp trafficking you or getting you hooked on drugs and in debt to so you can make him money. Despite what the pornhub interviews tell you, it’s typically a low skill gig where you end up, not aspire to.
I wonder if the card companies themselves would be happy with those rules. I don't think it's a grand conspiracy. I think they are just looking at the business and realizing that the amount of money to be made from it (especially with chargebacks) is very small compared to the potential lawsuits/headlines of facilitating child pornography and as a result have been conservative.
If they were forced to allow it then it would give them cover and also their competitors would be as well - so there'd be no competitive disadvantage.
I think "the right to spend and receive money" is (or should be considered) a human right. Being able to live is for a large part contingent on paying people and/or receiving money from people. Companies involved with payments should be regulated on this basis.
This doesn't address the banking thing, although spending and receiving money at times requires a bank account.
Eh, the right not to touch money that was involved in activities you don't like has just as much standing in my opinion.
Or do you want to force people to deal with money made from 'blood diamonds' or from fossil fuels or tobacco or abortion clinics or gay wedding cakes or pineapple pizza etc? (I deliberately picked examples from different points of politics and with different levels of severity.)
Instead of regulating more heavily, we should look into lowering barriers to entry, so that people doing legal things can find someone to facilitate their payments (without the need to force anyone to facilitate payments they disagree with).
On level of individuals I would agree. You should be free to choose your customers.
But when you are the dominant player let's say 20%+ of market alone or with your partners it really changes. At that point no, you should not be able to choose your customers. Outside individual reasons like repeated fraud or attempts of such.
I think sibling has a stronger argument, but I just want to add that, even if you take a free market approach for everything else, I think paying and receiving money deserves to be treated separately.
Monetary transaction is fundamental to civilization, more than any other single service or good. You very nearly can't participate in civilization and can't at all in the free market without being able to freely spend and receive money. And this is the first time in history that monetary flow has been centralized to this degree, and it's hard to imagine things going less digital.
> I understand that porn payments are a bit more risky but the providers can simply have a policy to deny chargebacks for this category and shift the risk to the customer. Similar to the way returns of sex toys are not accepted for hygiene reasons.
But chargebacks have nothing to do with return policies [1]. In theory, when you issue a chargeback you are basically saying "I didn't authorize this purchase". How do you have a general policy that says "you won't get charged for fraudulent charges, unless those fraudulent charges are porn"?
[1] If I buy a sandwich with my credit card, I can't then return it if I decide I'm not hungry 15 minutes later. But I can dispute the charge (dishonestly) and say that I never bought a sandwich in the first place.
But isn't that what 3D secure and SecureCode are supposed to solve? They confirm the customer gave personal authorisation. They can offer it only with those.
Maybe it depends on the country, but here in the EU with the latest regulations we have MFA for payments, with either an SMS, or authorising in the bank's app all payments over a certain sum. So the merchant, the payment processor and the bank are a 100% sure it's you.
The only case remaining is "i did initiate the transaction, but the merchant scammed me by not providing what was agreed".
You need to steal someone's bank card, know their phone number and operator, socially engineer your way through it, execute a payment and validate it with the code received by SMS, before the victim realises either their card is missing or their SIM card no longer works? That's a stretch, and in any case that's why most banks do MFA with their app.
> but the providers can simply have a policy to deny chargebacks for this category.
Which then allows the porn providers to do very shady things.
The problem with porn is that the players on both consumer and provider side tend to be really shitty. The consumers are causing a bunch of chargebacks whenever they get called out for porn or trying to get porn for free.
However, the providers aren't innocent either. LOTS of OnlyFans girls get called out for not delivering what they promised which certainly should be able to be charged back. The big aggregators are generally run by people that will absolutely push the boundaries of dark patterns fully knowing that in person interaction will be embarassing while a chargeback isn't.
I agree, you can't end chargebacks on this category. You could maybe require a chargeback for 'i didn't buy this' to disable that card for that category (maybe that's a feature you want anyway?). You could maybe require enhanced authentication for this category (3D-secure??). You could charge merchants a higher fee and/or hold payments for a much longer time to avoid the need to pull the money back from the merchant. I think most chargebacks need to be started within 120 days of the initial charge, and it's fairly annoying to need to wait 4 months to get paid, but it's better than not being able to access payment methods.
True but in Europe this is really hard to use. My work gives me an Amex and requires I pay all business expenses with it, which is really horrible over here (they know this as it's an EU company but they probably get great kickbacks or something).
For starters, only hospitality sectors accept it here (hotels, restaurants). Outside that you can forget it. Even taxi drivers will laugh in your face in a country like Romania. In France some will accept it but usually the machine is suddenly 'broken' when it's time to pay. Then when I whip out my personal Visa it suddenly works. Right... I often have fights with the finance guys over this because I had to pay with foreign cash or my personal card.
I think the issue is that Amex charges the merchants more or something. But it's just not a useful thing over here. I curse that card.
I don't think any bank here offers it to their customers either, it's always bank-branded mastercard or visa.
>I think the issue is that Amex charges the merchants more or something. But it's just not a useful thing over here. I curse that card
At this point it’s just network effects. Visa charges more for their premium tier cards (VISA infinite/Mastercard world elite) than AMEX charges for their basic cards; but people won’t turn away a Chase Sapphire Reserve
"Personally I think they should not be able to decide such things. A payment provider should be forced to accept all legitimate customers."
Payment providers are companies. They should be able to decide what they'll cover or not. In this case the bigger issue is that you essentially have a duopoly that allows 2 companies to affect the market with those decisions.
Power companies, water companies, natural gas, heating oil companies, telephone companies are also private companies, that we classify as utilities because they are essential. They aren't allowed to discriminate at all. In 2022, I think credit cards should be viewed as a utility, as well as the internet itself. It's very difficult to live without either in the US and a lot of the world.
I would potentially even go further than that. I think governments should make their own (digital) card payment systems that work like cash. Ie they should be as anonymous as cash and would have to serve all customers. This would have drawbacks in cases of fraud, but it could then be used exactly like cash is, but with less inefficiency.
I would go even further and say that governments should get out of the business of issuing cash. Especially having a monopoly on issuing cash.
(For this proposal in eg the US, the Fed can still control the money supply. It's just that banks would print their own cash; exactly like they mint their own account balances that you can use to pay with already.)
Wouldn’t that just cause a massive amount of confusion over what was legal cash and what exchange rates are? One of the economic strengths of the US is its unified currency which has been poorly copied by the euro.
A provably anonymous and untraceable digital currency backed by a government would see instant adoption. Before anyone complains about catching baddies just remember that serious criminals will astutely avoid any traceable currency or will find ways to launder it, only law abiding citizens and bunglers will be caught up in a surveillance state. The corrupt and criminal will remain as free as ever.
> Wouldn’t that just cause a massive amount of confusion over what was legal cash and what exchange rates are?
In practice, this has never been a problem, when it was tried historically.
What typically happens is that the different vendors standardize on a common unit of account (eg Pound Sterling in Scotland or Canadian Dollars in Canada, both of which were defined as a particular amount of some precious metals).
Typically issuers will redeem not only their own notes, but also accept other vendors notes at par---as long as that vendor is known to be solvent.
(The US was an exception to the latter, owing to their widespread bans on banks having more than a single office.)
The situation was pretty similar to how bank accounts still work today: if you have a dollar in an account at bank A, bank B will typically accept a transfer at par.
If someone is trying to pay you, you only need to know whether your own bank accepts the notes in question (or respectively whether your own bank accepts a wire transfer from their bank).
> One of the economic strengths of the US is its unified currency which has been poorly copied by the euro.
That was also a global strength during the gold standard. Common acceptance at par is enough for this. It's not necessary for everyone to use the same brand of currency.
George Selgin's book 'Good Money' is especially interesting. It's about Britain during the Industrial Revolution when the Royal Mint refused to mint enough small coins for factory owners to pay their staff. So some factory owners made their own coins (redeemable in demand into Pound Sterling).
There was this pedophile in my neighborhood that received water, gas and heating from companies. People were upset because without water he wouldn't have been able to become a pedophile
The difference is that you have one electric line to your house (often via infrastructure controlled bh the municipality), but you do have the option to hold credit cards from various providers. The issue is that antitrust isn't being enforced.
More often than not, antitrust laws are used by the side who can afford lawyers to inconvenience the competition.
A more straightforward approach would be to lower barriers to entry. Both for startups but also, and probably more importantly, for companies from other industries and other countries who want to branch out.
At one point, Walmart wanted to become a bank in the US. The existing banks lobbied hard against that and prevailed. Say what you want about Walmart, but that would have been a breath of fresh air for retail customers and much needed real competition.
And we should strive to minimize what companies need to be classified as utilities.
Eg these days it doesn't make much sense anymore to classify phone companies as utilities.
> In 2022, I think credit cards should be viewed as a utility, as well as the internet itself. It's very difficult to live without either in the US and a lot of the world.
It's also difficult to live without food, or without an apartment. That doesn't mean providers of either of these should be treated as utilities.
Btw, I never had a credit card in my life and don't intend to get one. It's perfectly possible to live without them. (But that's only a minor and pedantic quibble: I agree that it is hard to avoid the major payment processors like Visa and MasterCard. I just happen to use them via debit cards, not credit cards.)
I take phone company in this case includes ISPs and mobile providers. And I would say that those are the most important utilities in this age. Even more so than water and electricity.
The difference is that power companies aren't liable when their services are used to distribute child porn. This is the problem with cancel culture. Without any external pressure, there is no reason for Visa and Mastercard to care about regulating porn at all because that's creating an unnecessary cost center for the sole purpose of rejecting revenue sources. In these sort of cases, a group of busybodies, which can be anyone from politicians to keyboard warriors, want to cancel something, but are too uncreative and lazy create a set of standards and moderate the content themselves. Instead, they choose to pressure those in their reach to act, which in this case is Visa and Mastercard. This way, Visa and Mastercard receive all the backlash to the rules instead of themselves. Don't blame the companies for responding to market incentives. Blame the people who are creating them. This applies basically for all forms of internet censorship (e.g. Youtube).
If “cancel culture” is even one-tenth as effective at influencing the credit card duopoly’s polices as you think, how is it that Donald Trump is still accepting credit card donations?
I'm referring to cancel culture as a tool, not an ideology.
Visa actually did temporary halt political donations, so they were definitely entertaining the idea. However, they aren't really threatened by activists because nobody is going to stop using their credit card because Visa processes donations to Trump. Internet companies are much more vulnerable to activists, who can bring enough bad negative attention to dissuade companies from advertising on a platform.
In Visa and MasterCard's case, it's likely regulators or politicians pressuring them.
> Payment providers are companies. They should be able to decide what they'll cover or not
Companies exist to provide people with goods and services. They have no inalienable rights beyond that. If a company does so in a way we see as unacceptable (in this case discriminatory), we have the right to force it and the only rights it has are to comply or cease operation.
> In this case the bigger issue is that you essentially have a duopoly that allows 2 companies to affect the market with those decisions.
Yes, everyone know that's an issue. The solution, obviously, is to limit their ability to manipulate. We can achieve a big part pf this this by forcing them to serve everyone equally.
>Why don't we force all companies to do this then?
Because this can end up adding a barrier to entry for new businesses, especially in new niches. However, I think once any company becomes large enough then this should apply to them.
I feel like in today's world they are also kind of utilities. This is where the trouble starts. If you want to run a business these days (especially online) you need a payment provider in many cases, and pretty much always need a bank account.
> They should be able to decide what they'll cover or not.
Why? Companies can be regulated. In cases where there isn't effective competition providing real consumer choice, I think it's perfectly reasonable to regulate them in the manner suggested.
If there is not enough competition, the problem is one of two things:
* barriers to entry created by regulatory restrictions
* a naturally monopolistic industry creating a tendency toward monopoly/oligopoly
In the case of the former, the govermment should simply repeal the regulatory restrictions.
In the case of the latter, the government should directly provision a public option, until that public option becomes the de facto monopoly. With blockchain technology, the government could even subsidize the development of public good smart contracts that enable participants to coordinate, without an intermediary, to provide the good/service in question.
I don't see any moral justification for allowing private citizens to build their own successful enterprise, and then seizing control over the enterprise to dictate how it is utilized.
That's an exaggeration. For example, we already require companies to serve disabled customers. They can't just choose to refuse service to them. Have we already "seized control" over these companies? I don't think so. Nor would it be the case with this proposal.
>>Have we already "seized control" over these companies?
Yes, the government has. It just allots them quite a bit of liberty over how those companies are managed.
Fundamentally, once the state dictates how the property may be used in private interaction, it has abrogated the right of the nominal owner to their private property.
> Payment providers are companies. They should be able to decide what they'll cover or not.
Legislation in other industries ensures that companies are not allowed to decide what they cover or not, because when companies pick and choose it leaves parts of the market being under-served (as is happening here).
As an example - Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies in the USA can't refuse to cover you or charge you more just because you have a “pre-existing condition”.
Or as another example, the idea of net neutrality.
> Payment providers are companies. They should be able to decide what they'll cover or not.
Restaurants are companies, but that doesn't mean they can stir shit into the food. There's no law, rule, or ethical principle that says that companies cannot be regulated.
I'm not sure how stirring shit into food is analogous, but restaurants, like payment providers, are allowed to refuse service to people in many different situations.
And disallowed from refusing service to people in many other situations, just as they are disallowed from stirring shit into food. That we tell businesses what they can and can't do is a fact, so it's:
1) useful to discuss whether or not we should allow or disallow things, and
2) useless to discuss whether private business can do whatever they want because they are private businesses. The answer to that is that private businesses can't do what they want, instead they're allowed to do what we haven't told them they can't do, and must do what we've told them they must do.
It cuts both ways. Visa/MC have to deal with high numbers of fraud on these sites. Even worse, they have to deal with “fraud” where husbands get caught and blame it on fraud. It seems like linking porn accounts to phone numbers is the most sensible solution but how popular is that idea going to be?
But shouldn't that be handled on a commercial level? Riskier site, with higher chargebacks or less identity verification (like the historical no-signature-present) get charged higher rates and fees. This already happens, but the rates could be even higher if needed. There doesn't seem to be any need to police content, that is just factored in the risk and thus cost of service.
How about we stop trying to by default create identifier networks with the sole purpose of increasing the amount of information open to disclosure via Third Party Doctrine? The closer you get to a de facto UUID for a person, the faster it's going to be abused.
> But not being able to get a bank account gets them into very difficult situations and pushes them to shady people (which was exactly what the legalisation was avoiding).
It's the same situation for dispensaries or other legal cannabis companies operating legally in states where it is approved, yet because of the federal status, banks will not accept them either.
Not quite the same thing. The dispensaries are operating illegally. The fact that the states "legalized" it, doesn't mean it isn't illegal. There are plenty of other federal laws that don't have state equivalents outlawing them that are widely understood to be illegal as well.
But what is different are the social norms and expectations. The general agreement that they are legal, makes them defacto legal ... except where the federal jurisdiction matters. But, if there was political appetite for it, federal law enforcement could arrest and prosecute everyone involved in the recreational cannabis business in "legal" states. There is just no political appetite. The Rohrabacher–Farr amendment, though, prohibits this for medical usage (just enforcement, it still is illegal).
Note I do think we should broadly decriminalize (not the same as make fully legal) most drugs, and fully legalize things like cannabis.
Which government? If you're talking about something like paying for an abortion or marijuana, you're likely to get very different answers if you ask the US federal government versus certain state governments.
1) if something is legal wherever the purchase was made, then the credit card companies, as basic utilities, should be compelled to process the purchase.
which would be the easiest for me to understand, but possibly more complicated to enforce than
2) if something is legal wherever the credit card company is incorporated in, then the credit card companies, as basic utilities, should be compelled to process the purchase.
If laws or enforcement are unclear about the legality of a thing, handle it like it would be handled in case of a cash sale or have the credit card company be cautious and enforce the strictest rule.
You have to define legal. In the case of pot, it's not actually legal - the feds simply choose not to enforce the law in states that have legalized it at the state level. There is substantial risk there as a payment processor. If it were actually up to the states, then it could be more like you describe.
To expand your point, the impact can be international.
Weed is legal in Uruguay (restrictions apply, but you can do some paperwork and you'll then be able to buy it) yet the Central Bank suggested pharmacies to only sell it in cash, out of fear that it would have negative consequences for other CC transactions in the country, or for the country as a whole I suppose.
I can understand CC companies not wanting to accept payment for weed in another country if the card was issued in the US, but for local cards, that's basically enforcing one country's laws over another. And you could have local CC companies, which we do, but then those are only accepted here. So if someone local wants to have a CC that can be used abroad, they need to accept the fact that the CC company will enforce the laws of the US even if they do a transaction outside of that country.
My guess is guess Canada is less afraid than Uruguay about the potential implications, the asymmetry between the US and Canada is a lot less than that between the US and Uruguay.
Yeah, subsidiarity or lack thereof can get messy, but it’s not that unusual to get different answers from different levels of government. It’s a totally different situation when a private duopoly or oligopoly supersedes democratic control.
so which side are you arguing here - credit card companies can decide who they want to provide services for even if they decide not to service legal companies or that they should be forced to service legal companies?
In this specific case, banks already have definitions and obligations regarding who they can refuse to deal with. I’d argue credit cards should at least be as permissive as these.
I agree, given their hegemony of payment systems they should be required to accept payment and government should state that they have to provide payment services to any _legal_ enterprise. That would also give them cover from the bible thumpers.
This is the reality. Payment processing is a utility. Small businesses literally cannot operate online without payment processing. On first glance there appears to be many third party providers, but ultimately they are all processing Visa/MC, and are selecting customers on the same criteria.
We have non-discrimination laws on a variety of protected classes. It seems there could be support for expanding those classes, like the recent story about political affiliation and that dog shelter.
I agree that they shouldn't be able to do this. I think once businesses become too big then they should have to serve all customers.
This is one type of regulation that I think needs to be more common. When the governments take the choice of playing politics with their customers away from large companies, then those companies can't be pressured into doing so by activists.
I slightly disagree - I don't think Visa et al should be forced to do anything.
I think the problem is external to Visa, where a once capitalist money accumulating machine, is having internal debates on what Furry depictions are allowed.
I feel the unnoticed casualty of the "Culture Wars", that neither side seems to care about, is that harmless stuff should just be left alone.
There are those, sadly, who argue that one person's "harmless, innocent thing" is a "crime most heinous". The measure societally is how much of the population considers it taboo.
To illustrate, take the artform known as 'loli'. Drawn pictures of fictional neotenous girls doing recognizably adult things most people would say crosses the line into being child pornography, even though the act of drawing it hurts no one real. The argument goes, by facilitating the fulfillment of the demand you create a follow-on market for the real thing, which is definitely illegal.
The problem isn't a harm inflicted against someone directly, but a perceived harm in potentia to the social/moral fabric and eventually the incentive structure to underpin physical harm to real victims by normalizing some form of deviance. A less controversial example (today) would be sex toys, (50 years ago) "free love", etc... In the past, many of these things were considered obscene, or at least things "not spoken of in polite company". This is exactly how you get businesses discussing whether these odd niche things are allowable on the basis of straddling the obscenity/deviance line, which necessarily entangles itself to some degree with the concept of legality.
Scale makes every question relevant. While I agree with your assertion we don't have to have a view on everything, I assure you, with a hierarchical power structure consolidating the power to make policy in fewer individuals, this necessarily means that statistically speaking, you're going to have a much smaller slice of the world that happens to
A) be a payment processor/business facilitator, and
B) think your niche is harmless.
So in short, while normatively we don't have to have a view on everything, practically speaking, it is guaranteed we will. Striking the right balance is a really tough nut to crack, and virtually guarantees somebody is leaving disappointed.
This post brought to you by a really interesting Philosophy of Art class covering the interface between obscenity and cultural systems. I find the nature and mechanisms of determining exactly the periphery of the obscenity line in the highest resolution possible fascinating.
Does it? Bitcoin just says anyone can transact. But that doesn't really solve the problem. The problem is that legal businesses should be able to transact. Illegal businesses should not.
Bitcoin just removes all the limitations. But that creates new problems, quite frankly. Plus, it's very difficult for businesses to utilize Bitcoin. Fiat onboards have similar limitations to Visa/MC. Many legitimate business models will be denied accounts at reputable exchanges.
For me it solves the problem. I provide advertisment for a visa forbidden area. In Switzerland I can exchange directly to SWIFT up to $1000/day and whatever it is per year without even KYC.
Crypto is the only common factor for payment I get these days. Every region/niche has their own weird alternatives with their own weird limits (Payeer, perfect money, ...)
Point is nobody can deny anything as I am 'processing payments myself'
I wouldn't call the stock market a direct democracy. In a direct democracy, every citizen/participant has the same vote as another and all it takes is simple majority can invalidate the rights of every individual. Obviously that's not the case in the US, and for the better.
> At some point when 50% of the world uses your service the rules must change.
It's worse than that. They've effectively levied a tax on everything (without representation). Even if you pay cash, you pay (e.g.) Visa if the vendor accepts Visa. Businesses are contractually obligated hide the transaction cost from the consumer. This means all products and services have their prices jacked up to cover the cost of accepting Visa, MasterCard, etc. Even if you're paying cash, you're paying into it.
"Cash back rewards" are essentially a discount on the tax they've imposed.
So they tax you, they decide what you can buy, and you don't get a say. Kinda fucked up.
Every company can affect democracy in some way. Foxnews had a massive effect on elections, Gas prices being high affects elections. Should these be regulated?
Facebook and Twitter control what users, in bulk, say in a way that can sway elections.
Facebook and Twitter moderate and suspend and users adjust what they say in order to not get suspended again, if they care to not get banned. (Those who don't care if they get banned are a red herring.)
There is also the algorithmic feed which gives a lot of control over what users say to other users.
The issue is that they sway elections. Why is it more important how they sway elections versus the amount of influence? It seems the latter would have a greater effect.
You are either incredibly naive, or you are being intentionally obtuse. When you can pick and choose what ideas or people are acceptable to even discuss, you are controlling the extent to which people can explore ideas on your platform, and subsequently, how they might vote. The innate human needs to belong to a community are easily exploited by a social network that is not necessarily organic. Same way religious institutions can sway elections, or any institution that dictates culture. Tech just enables that process to scale.
I just quit Reddit and deleted all my accounts despite gilding > 10 comments over the past year because I got blacklisted from every community subreddit I wanted to participate in. I brought up the bias to the admins and was told mods can run their subreddit however they want despite Rule 1 of the mod guidelines saying to assume people are arguing in good faith.
I got banned because I say controversial things like Black people are not disproportionately targeted by police due to their race, but rather due to them disproportionately having guns and knives when the police show up.
The general public have a serious problem understanding nuance and statistics and I think it's disgusting that the media cry racism at every corner because it enrages people and gets clicks.
It's even more disgusting that people fall for it without realizing what the media is doing to them because they can't read past headlines.
I'll link to the actual TPS report that shows this but I'm on a slow connection right now and can't do it.
edit: nvm I'm dumb; it's not that but the report is named 9082-2018-TPS-Annual-Report.pdf if you can find it on its own. You can google "tps force report 2018 -2020 pdf". I'd find it myself but I'm downloading a 12mb pdf that's taking forever and I'm pretty sure this is the one.
Engage in Good Faith
Healthy communities are those where participants engage in good faith, and with an assumption of good faith for their co-collaborators. It’s not appropriate to attack your own users. Communities are active, in relation to their size and purpose, and where they are not, they are open to ideas and leadership that may make them more active.
The actual post that was removed on me was in r/toronto a story I told about helping a homeless man wandering down the middle of the street in downtown Toronto. It was supposed to be a discussion of things you've done in the city that make you feel good. Moderators removed it because it wasn't relevant to Toronto just because it happened in Toronto.
Visit r/toronto and you will see feel good stories like this all the time in the subreddit. I pointed this out to the admins and still got nowhere.
I also wanted to post "We should try UBI but you have to vote to qualify. Thoughts?" in r/onguardforthee but that was also removed for trolling. That subreddit has posts similar to that one all the time.
I was definitely treated unfairly and double standards were used against me because of my reputation. I don't troll though, I just enjoy having difficult and philosophical conversations, which is why I can see it's perceived as trolling. I enjoy challenging people to think. I would never say something I didn't believe.
The admins doing nothing about the abuse was the last straw that proved to me Reddit doesn't care about finding the truth.
> I also wanted to post "We should try UBI but you have to vote to qualify. Thoughts?" in r/onguardforthee but that was also removed for trolling. That subreddit has posts similar to that one all the time.
Dude, cannot you see why if you start posting about how _Universal_ Basic Income, should not be universal and based on some sort of test, that people might think you are being a troll?
Like legitimately, what is the difference between your behavior and a troll who misinterprets things on purpose?
The difference is that this user is legitimate, asking legitimate questions for legitimate reasons to have a legitimate dialogue while following all the rules. The mere supposition of their malintent is an invalid litmus test. It's about as good as treating someone as innocent until suspected of acting similar to a person guilty of annoyance, then banning them from the community in perpetuity.
"Because I we couldn't be sure" is never a legitimate reason to act so certainly in a manner which removes a member from a society.
Asking the same type of questions with the same type of answer and only providing same debunked evidence is not asking legitimate questions, it is sea lioning[1] combined with a gish gallop[2]. He is using his polite tone to convince us that he is acting in good faith.
Do you think it’s plausible that a person has been so curious on this topic that they’ve done deep research, can pull up such hard to find data that it takes them multiple attempts to find some esoteric source that supports them, and they didn’t find the high school level answers to the questions they are asking and require us to debunk each and every point they throw out without ever engaging with your counterpoints?
You’d have to believe that this person is incredibly competent at research while being simultaneously incapable of grasping the basics. You’ll notice he never tackled any point or counterpoint there. Just kept posting new sources as they were discarded while complaining that no one would look.
Edit: sorry, missed that this was a sibling thread. If you missed it the same user elsewhere in this post is also trying to argue that he was kicked off a Reddit merely for bringing up the unassailable point that cops only arrest black people more because they are inherently more dangerous. I assume you can see why I’m pointing out that the poster is unbelievable. I am already confident that they are not posting in good faith and only doing counterpoints for random third parties who might read this thread and be persuaded by the poster due to the lack of any counterpoint
Double edit:tbh this actually had the hallmarks of a 4channer mocking us to their buddies. I was one of those assholes in my youth and recognize the tactics. His “I just wanted to post, ‘{controversial statement}, Thoughts?’” is an easy bait sentence that brings out all the free speech absolutists to defend you for just “asking questions” while talking past the group engaging with the {controversial statement} portion of the sentence.
If you have not been on 4chan/8chan/2chan/whateverPermutation boards and wish to engage in internet debate it would be illuminating to observe. In between the gore and the shock porn they have random threads where they openly discuss using these tactics as they believe “normies” won’t be able to stomach their shock content to read deeply into it
Hi all, I had to use Yandex to find this. Google wasn't showing the result. I hope this also shows how dangerous Google's censorship of search results is as well. I challenge you to find this report in Google search results!
I can't download the PDF but if I remember right the table in question is somewhere in the 50s or 60s. You can ctrl+f for it. It breaks down by suspect race and weapon type when police arrive on scene.
The third side nobody wants to talk about in this argument is that police disproportionately use force against suspects with weapons when they arrive on scene.
edit: nvm I'm dumb; it's not that but the report is named 9082-2018-TPS-Annual-Report.pdf if you can find it on its own. You can google "tps force report 2018 -2020 pdf". I'd find it myself but I'm downloading a 12mb pdf that's taking forever and I'm pretty sure this is the one.
This isn't what this Hackernews post is about. You complained about people not understanding nuance but you want to dive right into argument about the police and minorities?
I'm responding to the claim that Twitter and Facebook ban points of view they don't want people to see and I'm pointing out Reddit does the exact same thing.
Because that’s the level of discourse I’d expect from someone claiming that the statistics show it’s black people at fault for their over representation in police brutality instances while linking a study that has this prominently in the abstract
> The SIU Director’s Reports reveal instances where there was a lack of a legal basis for police stopping Black civilians in the first place, inappropriate searches and unnecessary charges or arrests. The reports and legal decisions also raise broader concerns about officer misconduct, transparency and accountability.
> The data shows an over-representation of Black people in use of force cases that result in serious injury or death.
And yes I saw your edit, but no I don’t care. You’re bringing up the same tired arguments that have been discounted over and over and then you end up linking studies disproving your point but we should consider you’re replacement cherry picked article?
I’ll be charitable and assume you are arguing in completely good faith. Unfortunately your topic looks _exactly_ like one that is being pushed by people lieing for political gain at the expense of an oppressed group.
If you want to overcome peoples legitimate reaction to your points that are completely indistinguishable in both content and tone from racists whose arguments were proven to be based on lies and omissions, then you need to come with a much higher quality of evidence and discourse
> Whenever there is an argument between two sides, find the third side
That is not an argument. That is a value statement. If someone says the sky is blue and someone says its tie die, should I find a third person whose of the opinion that the sky is mauve? Being different doesn't make an argument correct
You repeated arguments that have been debunked numerous times
You linked a study explicitly stating the opposite of your assumption
You now want me to go through tomes of data to be convinced to your side.
No, come up with something new that doesn't require us to do a bunch of work for you. Your arguments are tired and were not gonna waste more time on them.
I've explained why I can't link directly. It's somewhere on page 52 or maybe 54. It might be in the 60s but it's in that range. There is a table you can ctrl-f for and it has stats broken down by race and the weapon the person has when police respond to calls.
The third side here is that police disproportionately use force against people who have weapons.
I hope you can find the table on your own because I gave you everything you need to find out. If not, I'll reply in an a few hours or so with a direct link.
Alright, seriously. I'm finally somewhere with internet. The fact that this was so god damn hard to find is so telling. Look starting at page 63. I really can't believe this information is _so_ difficult to find.
Look at fleeing police in Table C20: Civilian actions at the time of police encounter (as concluded by
the SIU), SIU use of force investigations, Toronto Police Service, 2000 – 2006
Look at resisting arrest in Table C21: Civilian actions at the time of police encounter (as concluded by
the SIU), SIU use of force investigations, Toronto Police Service, 2013 – 2017
Look at who has guns and knives in Table C22: Civilian possession of a weapon at the time
of police encounter (as concluded by the SIU), SIU use of force
investigations, Toronto Police Service, 2000 – 2006
Look at guns and knives in Table C23: Civilian possession of a weapon at the time of
police encounter (as concluded by the SIU), SIU use of force
investigations, Toronto Police Service, 2013 – 2017
There's all the stats and numbers directly linked and the relevant tables. Am I still a racist?
btw, this conversation would have gone a lot smoother if you had just said you didn't see the tables with the race/weapon breakdown. Then I would have realized I was linking to the wrong thing this entire time. You wanted me to be a racist so badly that you were letting me flail around looking like an idiot with irrelevant links (even though I told you my situation - I couldn't _see_ the PDF because I couldn't download it) and weren't even trying to work with me here or give me the benefit of the doubt.
> btw, this conversation would have gone a lot smoother if you had just said you didn't see the tables with the race/weapon breakdown
It’s not that I couldn’t find the data, I did not look because you did not indicate the data would be any different than the same arguments that also come out defending the police when it comes to discrimination. And your data still follows that! It’s just crime stat! It does not account for police prejudice that leads to overpolicing
> Am I still a racist?
If you walk away from these stats thinking black peoples actions are the root cause of the overpolicing, then yea you probably are
Businesses are forced to serve customers everyday - from anti-discrimination laws to universal service for phone companies. There is also argument that oligopoly should not de-facto control payments and work as moral police.
This is how people want it. It's been two years of "Twitter is a private platform" over and over again. If you aren't going to stand for free speech when someone wants to talk about the Wuhan lab, why the hell would you expect anyone to defend your right to furry porn?
Because it’s not automatically the same thing just because both are private (e.g., non-governmental) organizations. A newspaper can exercise editorial control over what it publishes, but AT&T can’t exercise editorial control over your phone calls. Hacker News can moderate user content, but an ISP can’t moderate what you send over its network.
The question of whether Twitter and Facebook should be treated like a phone company than they are like Hacker News isn’t a stupid one, and I don’t think it’s as clearcut as people on both sides of this debate would like it to be. But the question of whether a payment processor should be able to exercise this kind of editorial control over transactions using them as an intermediary is not really the same question.
Payment processors similarly prevented right wing sites from accepting donations and payments. Gab as one example had to create their own server farm and payment system in order to operate since they were shut out of every other provider.
If we want to subject payment processors—or social media—to the common carrier standard, then obviously, they can’t deny services to anyone who isn’t violating the law. Having politics Visa, Mastercard, or Stripe doesn’t like isn’t illegal.
The point I’m making is that I don’t think it’s hypocritical to suggest that such a standard applies to some companies, not all companies, which is what your original post seemed to suggest. I’d personally want to set the bar pretty high when it comes to taking away any business’s right to choose their own customers.
Some people sure. Maybe even the "twitter consensus" or "HN consensus", but I think you should be very careful about taking apparent consensus on these sort of social media platforms as indicative of a broader consensus in society.
When this is just coded language meaning "racist conspiracy theories", sites don't want to carry those posts. Social media sites are catching on to the coded language game.
If you want to make noticing that a few miles up the road from the epicenter of the COVID outbreak was a lab, doing experiments with that very virus, a racist act. I'd then make that claim that those who consume furry porn are pedophiles with greater accuracy.
Ah yes, great examples. The people were clearly only pointing out that COVID originated from the same city where a virology lab exists...wait a second, they're both promulgating the "China made COVID" line.
There's a big difference between saying COVID originated from Wuhan and conspiracy theories saying COVID was manmade.
Personally I think they should, with objective, explicit exceptions common to all merchants, something like:
1) rudeness or disrupting
2) age and health
3) intoxication and indecency
4) whatever else society can agree on (good luck!)
Both service providers and customers keep ending up in court because the "right to refuse service to anyone" too often becomes "discriminating against a protected class", and the lines get blurrier every day. Much easier to just say "serve everyone or don't go into the business of serving people" and be done with it.
In fact, the obligation to serve customers by law would serve as both a consumer and merchant protection for cases exactly like this -- the fact that, until sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional in the US just a couple decades ago, many banks refused to lend to otherwise-credit worthy gay couples or unwed heterosexual couples for mortgages (afraid of being accused of supporting illegal activities), which would be more of a moot point in this sense because the onus is no longer on the bank to scrutinize how someone lives their personal life so long as they meet objective measures of credit worthiness.
Businesses should be free to pick and choose only when there is also a public funded alternative or the product is targeted at a minority. Otherwise society starts falling apart.
Imagine there’s only 3 car dealers in your region and they all blacklist customers who have at least once followed Elon Musk on twitter.
That sounds like a libertarian perspective that may apply to a radically different system of economy and government (one that does not exist in practice), but the system we actually have is not even remotely close to libertarian. In the mixed economic system adopted by nearly every nation on the planet, business face all manner of regulation and the more fundamental they are to everyday life, the more they tend to be regulated.
Yes, payment processors should 'process' all legit payments. However..
Visa/Mastercard hire people to do risk analysis though, those people are rightly assessing that pr0n payments is a higher risk than the insurance premium is worth. Which is newsworthy itself, goes to how credit card fraud is overtaking the insurance market and maybe those 2 companies should invest in that area.. But that's gonna take too long.
There are a lot of reasons for that. On a 'credit' card this makes sense. They own/lend the outgoing funds, you just pay them back with some interest.
The debit cards are not, the debit card is your balance being debited. Instantly. With 0 interest. I'm not 100% sure about the insurance on that, but from experience the bank itself will be the point of contact to dispute a payment that is fraudulent. The bank may or may not pursue lost monies from the insurance or debtor etc. But VISA as a whole, just processed the transaction.
There used to be, in Ireland at least, a debit card issued by banks under the name "Laser" so it was your 'laser' card you paid with.. Only in recent years, I realised this was competition. So V & MC cornered the market, "Use at X amount of ATM's worldwide" etc.
I would love to say "there is a way out, once the payment processors process without influence from V/MC" but imagine, a payment processor not accepting one of those.. That's game over.
I do think companies like N26/Revolut and co have standing to create their own 'standard' after really generating an incredible userbase, would prefer maybe open source but financal companies are slow to adopt.
Imagine a payment gateway standard that wasn't restricted, open source/readable and had it's own userbase. I'm not a proponent of using crypto as currency but you can see why they got carried away. The problems to overcome are just... Well, bureaucratic.
> Personally I think they should not be able to decide such things. A payment provider should be forced to accept all legitimate customers. It is absolutely unwanted for a private business (in an unrelated category no less) to be playing the role of legislator.
Why? I would say just the opposite: by default people should be able to decide who they want to do business with. Payment providers are no exception.
Some people might want to refuse to facilitate payments for eg bakeries that refuse to bake cakes for gay weddings. Some other people might want to refuse to facilitate payments for bakers that bake cakes for gay weddings. (Similar for many other issues you can think of.)
> Recently there was a lot of news in the Netherlands about prostitutes not being able to open bank account because all banks refused them.
The bigger problem here seems to be a lack of competition? If barriers to entry were low enough, presumably someone would open a bank that accepted prostitutes' money and make a tidy profit (since there would be less competition, when they are the first ones).
Banking is regulated so heavily in an attempt to keep out even slightly 'shady' things, that the effect is to drive people into the arms of the really shady.
The problem is once a majority of payment providers (especially in this category where there's only really 2 major ones) starts blocking things, it becomes really difficult for fringe groups that are in fact perfectly legal. I understand that porn payments are a bit more risky but the providers can simply have a policy to deny chargebacks for this category and shift the risk to the customer. Similar to the way returns of sex toys are not accepted for hygiene reasons.
Recently there was a lot of news in the Netherlands about prostitutes not being able to open bank account because all banks refused them. Think of prostitution what you will but over there it's legal work and they pay their taxes. But not being able to get a bank account gets them into very difficult situations and pushes them to shady people (which was exactly what the legalisation was avoiding).
Also other platforms like fetlife have recently been forced to validate their users, leading to potentially serious consequences if this data ever becomes compromised. Many people there don't even show their face so the result is that they have to give a lot more personal info now than they would have wanted to.