The main reason why companies don't allow NSFW content is because of puritan payment processors that see that stuff and then go absolute sicko mode and lock people out of the traditional finance system.
It is amazing that in the year 2023, where things are possible that were science fiction until recently, we still rely on private payment processors, credit card companies, which extract fees for a service that doesn't have any technical necessity anymore. I think the reason is just inertia. They work well enough in most cases, and the fees aren't so high as to be painful, so there is little pressure to switch to something more modern.
It is not just inertia; it is government malice. The government loves that there are effectively only two payment processors, because this lets them exercise policy pressure without the inconvenience of a democratic mandate.
Yes, financial companies mostly regulate themselves. They have lawyers telling them what regulators are likely to approve of, and make rules based on that for themselves and their customers. If they do something sufficiently bad, regulators go after them. That’s how banks get regulated, too.
That’s how most law works, actually. There’s a question of how detailed the regulations are, but mostly you don’t go to court, and if you do, whether it looks bad to the judge or jury is going to make a difference.
I’m wondering what you’re expecting from democracy? More oversight from a bitterly divided and dysfunctional Congress? People voting on financial propositions?
If entire classes of financial transactions can be blocked through backroom conversations between financial companies and regulators, don't you think that's bad for democracy? We have laws which allow the US to tackle money laundering issues and it's understandable that regulators would create regulations along those laws; they have a clear mandate to. It's not clear to me that other classes of transaction should be blocked based on amorphous dealings with regulators and companies.
Part of the issue is that it's usually American regulators setting these rules, but they're applied globally due to the more-or-less duopoly of credit card companies.
>we still rely on private payment processors, credit card companies, which extract fees for a service that doesn't have any technical necessity anymore
The technical necessity is there; for your chase-backed visa card to pull money from chase and deposit it into your shop's citibank, there needs to be some infrastructure. Whether a private company or the government provides this infrastructure is another story.
(Although if the government provided you could argue that there would likely be even more political headaches that prevent what goes across the wire).
Bank transfers are a thing. They don't require an intermediary credit card company. The problem is that currently such a transfer is usually slow because of software/protocol issues.
Yes, the current system is a good-enough solution, and any better alternative has to be not just better but so much better that it is worth the large cost of switching to a different solution. Game theoretically, it's an "inadequate equilibrium".
And conversely: For online payments, credit card payments are my least preferred method. But I still use them quite often, because everyone accepts them.
I would be very surprised if something based on Blockchain or similar software doesn't offer a solution here. Another route would be to establish a protocol for near instantaneous bank transfers, and try to get a lot of banks on board. The immediacy of transfers seems to be the main reason why companies use credit card services, not buyer protection or actual credit.
I have no particular love of legacy systems (whether they be banks, imperialism, or Electoral Colleges), but what about your comment is plausible given the widespread recognition that blockchain technologies have been oversold, leading to widespread fraud and failure?
Maybe I’m missing something, but the above comment reminds me of the blockchain naïveté of 10 years ago. I don’t mean to be dismissive; I’m suspending disbelief long enough to ask what you mean in detail.
This is possible, and I don't have any deeper knowledge of cryptocurrencies / Blockchain. But payment systems don't seem to have a necessary connection to speculation and the high volatility which comes with holding a cryptocurrency. Maybe I overestimate the amount of problems those payment systems can solve.
There are permissioned "blockchains" which are just private ledgers, that banks could use with permission from the US gov't. These can be anything from a centrally run DB with ACLs or something like Hyperledger with permissioned P2P access. Whether you call it a blockchain or a DB with ACLs is immaterial; it's still much cheaper, faster, and pleasant to use this system over the current system of complex intermediaries in the US. Europe seems to have solved this problem with SWIFT.
There is a system called Faster Payments in the UK, which is "near instantaneous" between the UK banks which participate (most of them offering current accounts as far as i know).
But it is a permanent and final transfer, no easy charge backs like with a credit card, or fraud protection from debit cards.
You have to know which account you are paying into (sort code and account number), which is the main part of what Visa/Mastercard do. They are the layer in front of the bank account which means customers don't have to send money directly to an account.
I suppose now everyone has a smart phone it would be easier to hook up something like Faster Payments in a user friendly way with an app and a QR code/NFC reader that the merchant has. But Visa/Mastercard are entrenched obviously.
Well, chargebacks are not possible for ordinary bank transfers. The problem is that the they are too slow and not convenient enough. This is a software / standardization issue. Credit: PayPal is successful despite it only offering very short credits in order to ensure quick transfers. And in physical shops credit cards often seem to be no more than a convenient way to pay without cash. In Germany you can actually pay in all shops and restaurants with a form of debit card, which is just as convenient as paying with credit cards, but has less fees for the shop, since there is no credit card company in the middle. As a result most people don't own a credit card. This doesn't work so well online though.
> I would be very surprised if something based on Blockchain or similar software doesn't offer a solution here.
There is, it's a layer-2 on Ethereum called zkSync. It's not totally satisfactory (the company that makes it can steal your money, centralized sequencer, etc), but it's pretty mature and works quite well. To replace Visa you want high throughput and low latency and zk-rollups like zkSync can provide both. (There are other options too, like Starknet, but AFAIK zkSync is the most mature.)
No PayPal is basically a credit card company. It is an intermediary which gives short credits in order to achieve near instantaneous payments. And extracts fees along the way.
The main selling point to online shops would have to be a substantial reduction in fees compared to credit cards / PayPal. Most shops don't care about censorship since they wouldn't be affected anyway.
Yeah I don’t see that happening anymore. Crypto is always going to have fees and off-ramps, although I do think it’s helped create competition in the transfer space.
The real way crypto will work or not work is programmable money. If that works that will be huge, if it doesn’t then maybe someone will pick it back up 50 years from now.
The problem in this specific space is that many people don't want their payments to a NSFW company to be associated with them. Most blockchains makes this trivially traceable by design.
The ones that don't (eg Tornado cash) end up being used for money laundering so on/off ramps won't touch them. We'll see what happens with the ZK-based chains, but this seems a systematic problem that is difficult to fix.
Wow, this seems to be just what I meant. Unfortunately it appears it is so far only widely supported by Indian banks. (In Germany there is a similar system, called GiroPay, but it hasn't really caught on yet. And it isn't even intended as an international solution.)
I think the difference is that OpenAI wants to sell their text generation services to big companies that will show AI content directly on their platforms (think chat support bots), whereas Bing is selling eyeballs to advertisers (who also don't want their ads shown alongside porn by the by).
If OpenAI has the reputation of serving up porn to whoever asks, there's no way the Walmarts of the world will sign up.
It's also because the companies are backed by VCs. VCs get their money from limited partners like pension funds who don't want their money invested in porn.
It's because NSFW content has higher risks of chargeback and fraud (there's a reason their payment processors charge 20%+). Besides, companies don't want to be on the bad side of outrage; it only takes one mistake of processing a payment for child pornography and your name will be plastered everywhere as a child porn enabler.
Do you really think the execs at Visa and Mastercard are puritans and not profiteering capitalists that will process payments for NSFW content if they were able to?
Everything to do with one politician essentially getting their way by targeting a payment processor with legal shit concerning potential enablement of CP/CT. Nobody wants that kind of attention.
The whole US society seems more puritan while more capitalist at the same time, seen from this side of the pond. It’s a paradox I can’t really explain, any clues?
US society isn’t some anti-sex dystopia. Its average compared to the rest of the world, It’s just Europe that is super pro-nudity etc and projects. Like everything else they think they are objectively right in their beliefs and systems.
Not allowing sex apps on AppStores and banks and credit cards refusing to process sex-related transactions seems pretty anti-sex to me.
Also getting all bent out of shape at a the image of a nipple, breast or pubic hair while not batting an eye at a person dying in evening TV movies seem a bit unbalanced.
> Plenty of greedy people in non-capitalist systems.
Totally agreed. But I am not placing any moral value on either greed or capitalism. I would think, however, that capitalists would not ignore such an obvious profit center as the sex industry. Thus my bafflement.
What you missing is that by chosing this obvious profit center they risk a much larger profit center because the backlash. It's not a moral thing, it's a calculated choice. That's why who takes this risks also charges a much higher fee to make up for the opprtunity cost in other areas.
> But I am not placing any moral value on either greed or capitalism
That is a missed opportunity
* Capitalism: A system where who owns resources matters more tan who needs them is a morally bankrupt system. A system where starvation and homelessness is an acceptable outcome
* Greed. Greed is bad for everybody. Concentrates scarce resources where they are not needed, that too is moral bankruptcy
Funny enough my country was starving under communism but we are living in plenty under capitalism. Since I lived under the alternative and I have seen its evilness, I will take capitalism any day - the very system that allowed and incentivized us to create those resources you are eyeing in the first place.
As for greed, I have yet to meet a person more greedy than the ones claiming to know where to direct those scarce resources they did not create, if only we’d give them the power to do so. Such high morals too, unlike those "morally bankrupt" capitalists who greedily built businesses, jobs, countless goods and services to only enslave us and enrich themselves, obviously.
I'm glad you chimed in with this. This is the point: capitalism knows self-interest exists, and creates a system to harness it. Communism and similar pretend greed doesn't exist, and creates overly powerful central bodies to make everything fair.
> I would think, however, that capitalists would not ignore such an obvious profit center as the sex industry
Because you're conflating capitalism and greed. Capitalism doesn't mean "do anything for money". It means "as much as possible, people get to decide among themselves how to allocate their money and time". Some of them will invest in anything, just as people in non-capitalist countries. Most will only invest in certain things.
But look at how investment in weed, which was once considered "drugs == bad", flourished after legalization, with ETFs and such. Lots of sex work, including porn, is legal afaik. However banks and other civilian gate holders (Apple AppStore, etc) keep stifling investment in it.
> Do you really think the execs at Visa and Mastercard are puritans and not profiteering capitalists that will process payments for NSFW content if they were able to?
Pornhub was blocked by Visa and Mastercard after an op-ed in NYT generated a lot of outrage
> This is not an argument for crypto, it's an argument for better regulations so that processors don't make up their own rules.
Better (which I assume is your euphemism for "more") regulation isn't neceesarily the answer, or even particularly the answer. Do you want to force payment processors to do work they don't want to do? Isn't there a word for that?
Not necessarily more. Better in this context means clearer and enforced.
PayPal is the prime example where it's operating very similar to a bank. You have an account with a balance and can send and receive money, but it doesn't see itself as a bank and in many countries doesn't have a bank license. At least in part this is done to avoid the regulatory work that comes with it.
I absolutely want to force payment processors to do work they don't want to do. For example, banks in Germany are forced to provide you with a basic bank account regardless whether they want to or not. That's because a bank account is simply a must have to take part in modern life. If PayPal decides it doesn't want to do business with you, for whatever arbitrary reason, you are effectively locked out of a lot of online stores that only accept PayPal as a payment method. There is plenty of examples of PayPals really sketchy behaviour online. Every few months you can even see complaints on HN about it.
PayPal offers you a virtual account that you can pay money into. You can use that money to make purchases online, send and receive money from friends or other businesses. In effect, it acts like a bank account. However, it's not an actual bank account. In Europe, any money you put into that account is also not ensured by the government, like a normal account would.
If I pay with a credit card, there are processes in place to deal with fraud and charge backs. PayPal is well known to automatically close accounts with little recourse to access the money on those accounts.
Reasonably regulating payment processors is far from authoritarian.
If you are on a scale like Visa and MasterCard you're not just any private company anymore. Just those 2 companies control well over 75% of the US market alone. Not having access to a debit/credit card today will effectively block you from taking part in many aspects of modern life. It's absolutely reasonable to place stipulations on what they can and cannot do.
I don't disagree with your objective, it's the path you are taking to get there. Legislating obedience is authoritarian and is solution that many people love due to its simplicity.
Regulators love working with large businesses like your card duopoly, I don't think you will see much improvement.
It certainly stretches the bounds of reason for me that you could put a person in an isolation chamber with a powerful computer with no network connection, and after they type a few words into it, if the output of the computer has certain qualities, they are now a felon and the output is illegal to possess.
But this seems like the world the “AI-regulators” seem to want.
A skilled artist can already easily do that and there's no law against it that I know of. (Granted, I haven't researched it because I'm neither an artist nor a pervert...)
Now, if they were drawn to resemble specific people and the producer of the "artwork" used them to harass those people, that's harassment. If they used them to groom other kids, that's an existing crime too. But my point was that the production of gross art in isolation, or the possession of it, didn't need to be criminalized. (Actual photographs of the same were criminalized because of the pretty decent assumption that minors were coerced, harmed, exploited. Probably all of the above.)
Servers and domains are one of the easiest things to buy with crypto.
I actually just migrated away from Hetzner last week (for unrelated reasons) to two new providers to whom I'm paying crypto (no KYC required) based on this list:
https://bitcoin-vps.com/
I'm not sure to what you're referring by "your own token", but most do offer a range of popular tokens by using one of the 3rd party payment providers like Coingate.
I had paid for my servers with some Litecoin I have that I usually use for small purchases because of the low fees.
