Patreon Is Suspending Adult Content Creators Because of Its Payment Partners (vice.com)

Some adult content creators on crowdfunding site Patreon are being suspended due to the suggestive material they produce. The platform said that they are increasing efforts to review content, due to payment processor pressure. Motherboard reports: In late 2017, Patreon expanded its adult content guidelines, to include stricter guidelines for "bestiality, incest, sexual depiction of minors, and suggestive sexual violence." At the time, it resulted in suspensions and bans of many adult content creators whose work Patreon previously permitted, but no longer fell in line with new guidelines. Now, many more adult content creators are reporting that they're experiencing a renewed wave of suspensions on the platform. Patreon's guidelines for adult content state that "all public content on your page be appropriate for all audiences," and "content with mature themes must be marked as a patron-only post." For several of these reports, Patreon warned that "implied nudity" was the reason for the suspension, where it appeared in public areas or publicly-visible patron tiers and banners. "You can't use Patreon to raise funds in order to produce pornographic material such as maintaining a website, funding the production of movies, or providing a private webcam session," the guidelines state.

Comments

Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they're propping themselves up like kings.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[KiloByte]

This. A payment processor should never be allowed to refuse any legal transaction, when in a doubt that's the police's work not theirs. An ISP should never be allowed to ban or slow down any sites, any questions of legality need to go to the police not to the middlemen (and even then, it's not up to the ISP to enact bans). A non-curated (ie, done by the public rather than exclusively by the provider) news/blog/etc site should never be allowed to discriminate content based on political views. Etc, etc.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

A payment processor should never be allowed to refuse any legal transaction, when in a doubt that's the police's work not theirs. An ISP should never be allowed to ban or slow down any sites

Why? The idea that these people are in some morally neutral position is odd. May as well loop in Steam here too. I just can't sign onto the "Don't blame us, we're just proving a market for stuff" excuse.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Payment processors are a conduit. The service they provide, that of moving funds from one party to another, is wholly independent of what the parties on either end of that conduit do with the funds that are being moved. Any morality issues rest solely outside of this conduit, with the parties using the conduit.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[KiloByte]

Sounds like you're advocating making "Republican use only" roads in some states and "Democrat use only" in others. That's why the concept of common carrier is so important.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[alvinrod]

It's not always the payment processors that are pushing for this directly. There are often laws put in place designed to crack down on certain behaviors (see Craigslist closing down their personals section recently) and payment services are required to abide by them. If the laws are vaguely defined then the processors are going to be more strict than necessary because running afoul of law even once is nightmare for them.

Think of it this way. If I'm a payment processor I get paid by processing payments. I really don't care if those are for groceries, commissioned artworks, illicit drugs, or prostitutes. I get paid either way and it's in my best interest to process as many payments as possible. However, the government isn't powerful enough to be able to even put a dent in behavior it doesn't like and can't even begin to unilaterally enforce it. So they make laws that make processing payments for certain things illegal. It's much easier for them to go after me than it is hundreds of people buying drugs, so it's in my interest to not let anyone pay for anything that looks like illegal drugs using my system even if that means I inadvertently prevent some hippies from buying some herbal tea that's in no way illegal from time to time. You can still get that without laws (say that 90% of my customers are Mormons and don't want me to process payments for coffee) but it's rare.

And even though I disagree with the new age puritanism that's making the rounds, I don't think it's my right to tell a company that they can't give in to pressure from their customers if they want to. If they think keeping the 90% Mormon customers at the expense of losing the other 10% is better than potentially losing a good chunk of 90% of their customers, that's their own business decision. If it's a bad business move, they'll fail and get replaced by a company that does a better job of serving consumers.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[sunking2]

Lol, no they just don't like the publicity of being called into an investigation for some sort of sex trafficking that has used their service. And the lines between good and bad sex are so blurred they have taken the path they've taken.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Pinky's Brain]

Because payment processors have a defacto monopoly and allowing them to arbitrarily restrict legal commercial speech gives them power which should be restricted to government.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Square, CitiBank and other such "woke" payment processors need to get that memo so they will resume processing of accounts for registered firearms dealers at legal gun shows (and in their own stores I suppose), and for the NRA and its members.
Good luck with that...
RO

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Visa MasterCard Discover Amex all have a monopoly... on their respective shares of the market???

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Aighearach]

You make me glad I'm American and not under the gun of a government with your theory about the breadth of their management responsibilities.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[Aighearach]

Well, that all sounds good, until you realize that those laws don't actually push them to do this at all. They just don't want their name on the document subpoena, because they communicate with the world in such a way that nobody believes anything they say, and if they're asked about they'll put their foot in their mouth by default because their communications are all stuffed full of horseshit by policy.

That's the real reason, because their PR drones can't answer a question about an investigation without making them sound complicit, so they don't want to serve industries that get investigated.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

So youâ(TM)d be OK if the payment processor offloaded ALL risk and legal compliance onto the payer and payee right? Like digital cash, all the risk plus traceability in case you buy Girl Scout cookies from an account that wouldnâ(TM)t pass an OFAC check.

Theyâ(TM)d love to just shut down their entire disputes, risk, and compliance departments, believe me. A new, enormous federal law enforcement organization would have to be created to prosecute illegal accounts and transactions happening at the individual level, or accept organized crime accelerating to stupidly high levels.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

An iron-fisted cartel is arguably just as bad as a true monopoly. The big credit bureaus act as one in bans like this, history has shown.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[Destructo-Bot]

Fully agree, lots of people say "there should be a law" when there should not be. In this case, there should. We should have a "Common Carrier" rule for payment processors.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could build systems which are at least a little bit proactive about fraud?

"O u have the secret number? Haha ok bro looks good enjoy!"

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the brain dead "progressive". How fucking retarded are you that you can't see they're using the Red Hen situation as a comparison and not explicitly saying anything else? Your type of people love sex workers and you should find the comparison apt.

Have you read any books in the past year? If I were you, I would be ashamed to have such poor reading comprehension. If there's a god, may he have mercy on your pathetic, fragmented soul.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[morethanapapercert]

Much as hate such seemingly morals based refusal to do business polices, I have to admit I see some important points from the payment processors side of things.

Online payments (primarily credit card based, but I include things like Paypal and Bitcoin) are effectively forms of banking transactions. While it would be nice from a libertarian point of view to consider financial transaction providers as common carriers like the post and telephone networks, the reality is that they can't be. There is a large amount of laws and regulations that dictate how financial companies can do business. For actual banking in cash, as long as the bank follows the regulations, does the due diligence reporting of suspicious activity and allows law enforcement access to customer accounts, they do have common carrier-like protection from being considered an accessory to any criminal activity on the part of the customer(s). But those laws were mostly written in the pre-Internet age They generally assume that a person in country A is paying someone else in country A using a bank based in country A.

Online payments however are a significantly different proposition. A person in country A could be paying a person or business in country B via a web portal hosted in country C and using a financial services provider from country D. Which nations countries laws apply here? Note that the US dominates both the web hosting and financial services industries. So regardless of where the customer and artist happen to live, they both end up being controlled by US law.

Furthermore, unlike the banks, online payment processors are not as legally separated from a customers crimes as a physical bank would be. IANAL of course, but I think under US law, if person A in Canada bought content that was created by an artist in Australia but was hosted in the US and payment was processed in the US where that content was illegal, then the payment processor can be charged as an accessory to a crime. (I'm reminded of the hoary legal joke about the man convicted of taking a bribe from the man who was acquitted of paying it)

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

someone only has to disagree with you, or have a differing opinion, to be "brain dead" or "retarded". maybe you are the thing you say others are.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you lack reading comprehension abilities too. I'm saying they're brain-dead for making a knee-jerk, retarded response, that has fuck all to do with anything that was written. They're lashing out at someone like a rabid animal. It has nothing to do with their ideology in this instance.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Pinky's Brain]

Your supreme court just invokes the commerce clause to allow government to regulate anything it damn well pleases. If there was a recognized church of porn games then Patreon/Paypal/Mastercard/Visa would all be forced to cooperate with the transactions for instance ...

So having established that you're already under their gun lets just determine when they should use it.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, yes. In practice it's abusive like the DMCA is.

You're pushing off the legal issue to the state, where public funds are consumed in persuing the legal matter, while your private business reaps the benefit of the illegal activity.

The situation really needs to be bent the other way. Where the payment processor is not permitted to refuse payment of any legal transaction as a condition of doing business in that country. If something is legally questionable (eg the most stolen content from Patreon is furry porn, which is basically bestiality) there needs to be a 3 piece test administered to determine if the payment processor should defer it to law enforcement, block it, or ignore it:

1. Consent - Did both the seller and buyer consent to this transaction.
2. Lawful - Does it break the letter of the law.
3. Endorsement - Does the site endorse a specific payment method (eg to avoid fees, legal culpability, etc.)

If there is no consent for the transaction (eg stolen cards, banking credentials), then the payment processor must halt the payment, and forward the payment to the federal investigation authority that deals with financial crimes

If there is consent for the transaction, but the content purchased is of dubious lawfulness (eg "barely 18", "lolita", "lolicon", furry/bestiality, copyright infringement), it should not be up to the payment processor to determine if that is lawful, it should be up to the law enforcement agency to determine if it's lawful. Hence if bestiality is illegal, then all furry porn is illegal, and paying for it is not the criminal activity, but producing it is. So for such cases the payment processor may either allow the transaction to go through but logged for suspected crime, or may refuse the transaction if law enforcement says the sites intended purpose appears to be to facilitate crime. Which is where "Endorsement" comes in. If a site is endorsing some kind of criminal activity, the payment processor may proactively deny serving them.

This is where Patreon is running into a wall. Pateron is endorsed by both legitimate adult art creators AND, questionable art like those who produce child-abuse and bestiality pc games, but you won't know that content exists since often the Patreon "description" is to support the artist/programmer working on it, not for the content itself.

Weaseling around legal requirements. The content they may produce is technically illegal, but the distribution is not tracked as such. So the games and art tend to end up on publicly accessible sites. The people paying the patreon author are thus endorsing it.

Where Visa/MC/Amex/etc may argue they don't want people paying for sex with their payment methods... how the fuck do you think think this works? The entire point of systems like CCBill was you pay a higher risk premium, and CCbill takes the risk of chargebacks and fraud. You can't operate a carding operation (eg stolen cards) and still accept cards as payment.

Hence pressure from Visa may twist Patreon's arm into kicking all the adult content off, but it will just migrate somewhere else, or we may see a few cryptocurrencies take up this goal, putting financial systems at greater risk for fraud.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Peter P Peters]

Aww, do you want me to call the waaaaaambulance, snowflake?

People still use the word snowflake? That's the best you could do?

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the perfect opportunity for Crypto to gain traction particularly a coin like Nano, that has no transfer fees.?

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[stealth_finger]

Now shut up and draw me the Michelle Obama doing Barry in the ass while eating a cake, you fucking bigot.

Take that request to a company that makes its money on drawing pictures for the public and you may have a point.

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[jythie]

Now? Using payment processors as a tool in morality crusading has been going on since at least the 70s. If you can't make something illegal, pressure the banks to cut off funds.. pretty time honored. And as new systems get larger they get the attention of crusaders and the same pressure gets put on them.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[AutodidactLabrat]

Snowflake,you made yourself the joke.
Put down the shovel

Re:Middlemen should be invisible

[Anonymous Coward]

Legal in which country? The internet is a global tool. What is legal in the US may not be legal in Iran, may not be legal in Austrailia, etc. We have governments threatening criminal charges for activities that happened in a country other than their own between people who will never step foot on those governments soil.

Re: Middlemen should be invisible

[Aighearach]

None of that is even true.

You're an idiot whose ideas about American law come from some foreign newspaper's editorial pages.

There are in fact churches dedicated to sex, and no they don't end up with access to the credit system. They have to use cash. Same as the church that worships marijuana.

You don't comprehend the commerce clause, you don't comprehend the separation of church and state, and you don't comprehend who is in charge of decisions about which businesses have access to the credit card systems.

Are they suspending Amanda Fucking Palmer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you know. Highly offensive boobs or something.

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fine with keeping adult content out of public areas, but the rest is censorship.

I thought Patreon was already on thin ice with their content creators?

Re:Censorship

[KiloByte]

I thought Patreon was already on thin ice with their content creators?

No idea about content creators, but they're kilometers under cold water with possible patrons, at least as I'm concerned. Any content creator that relies exclusively on Patreon will not get a broken penny from me.

Re:Censorship

[tepples]

What subscription service would you recommend instead of Patreon?

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The only service I can recommend is the service you can do for yourself -- learn how to do it without the help of others. Over-reliance on platforms is what's been getting so many people, projects and businesses into trouble on the Internet lately. The Internet was not built on platforms, it was built on /protocols/.

You want to run your business as independently as possible? Don't build it on top of things like Facebook or YouTube or Patreon. Build it on top of things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. If you don't want to learn these skills, hire someone who can do these things for you, and make *certain* they comment all of their work in case you need it maintained by someone else in the future. The amount of time and/or money you spend on that talent be worth it.

Sure, you'll save money in the short term by just dumping everything on a "free" platform, but then they own you. If you absolutely must, build your customer or fan base on platforms, but use those platforms to coax them onto your domain. Don't get comfortable on platforms, that's when things always go bad.

Re:Censorship

[Plus1Entropy]

Do you have any idea the kind of hoops you have to go through so you are able to take electronic payments by credit card?

It takes a bit more work then just knowing some PHP.

Re:Censorship

[Cederic]

You want to run your business as independently as possible? Don't build it on top of things like Facebook or YouTube or Patreon. Build it on top of things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. If you don't want to learn these skills, hire someone who can do these things for you

Hmm. Why go to that expense when you can easily just outsource to someone that's already done this. Such as Patreon.

Sure, you'll save money in the short term by just dumping everything on a "free" platform, but then they own you

Patreon is not free, and they do not own the people that use their services.

Further to that, most people raising funds on Patreon are earning tens of dollars a month at most. That's not going to cover much bespoke development.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Hatreon - It's where right wingers went after the leftists at patreon started censoring them. The radical leftists are starting to feel the first pain of the political pendulum swinging back to the right. Beware, all their tactics will be turned against them soon enough, and they'll be the ones whining about censorship (current leftist argument is, "It's only censorship when govs do it. 'muh FreezePeach, cry me a river you evil white cishet neurotypical abelist scum!"

p.s. TFA has nothing to do with gov shit, everything to do with moral authoritarianism (sex-negative femynism).

captcha, approaching levels of sentience Google's AI only dreams of: mutual

Re:Censorship

[drinkypoo]

What subscription service would you recommend instead of Patreon?

I for one would recommend none of them. The last thing I need is another recurring payment, which represents another opportunity for my payment details to be stolen.

I'd love to be able to make micropayments to sites, but there's still no decent service for that. (I tried flattr, it's crap.) But I won't subscribe.

Re:Censorship

[tepples]

"Like what you see? Drop some coins in my hat at Hatreon." Got a nice ring to it.

It's not just adult content creators.

[Anonymous Coward]

The author/artist of 2Kinds got hit by this because some of his art was basically too fan-service-y.

Several others posting stuff that is no worse than Sports Illustrated are getting dinged for it as well.

- WolfWings, too lazy to login to /. in way too long.

Re:It's not just adult content creators.

[Pinky's Brain]

Tamest furry shit ever, they might as well go after Donald Duck.

Re:It's not just adult content creators.

[Hartree]

Yeah, I was amused/annoyed that Patreon thought that the 2 Kinds side comic pics were too racy for public consumption. That pic of Kat having a bit too much to drink and Zen admiring her figure is obviously going to undermine the fabric of society and result in dogs and cats sleeping together. ;)

(For those who don't follow it, 2 Kinds is a furry comic that has side sketches on Patreon. The sketches often are idea submitted by the readers and are generally pretty harmless. You can find far worse searching on Google with safe search on.)

Re:It's not just adult content creators.

[DontBeAMoran]

They should! He never wears any pants!

Talking about TwoKinds, Kathrin Vaughan is the cutest. ^_^

Re:It's not just adult content creators.

[DontBeAMoran]

Google's own logo is suggestive too.

Re:It's not just adult content creators.

[DontBeAMoran]

Yeah, I was amused/annoyed that Patreon thought that the 2 Kinds side comic pics were too racy for public consumption. That pic of Kat having a bit too much to drink and Zen admiring her figure [...]

That was my reaction too. When I saw the "under review" message, I thought "wow, that must be a really great drawing" and then... well, it was Kat being her usual cute self so I was happy, but I was expecting more than that.

Only in America

[nagora]

is "implied nudity" a reason to ban something but banning weapons that enable you to massacre a crowd from a quarter of a mile away is controversial.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Implied nudity is a reason to appeal to religious fundamentalists and puritans, however feminists joined the sex-negative retardation fray as of late and apparently feminists should be treated differently for the same retardation.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

In the end, those who wish to control will promote violence, and suppress very individualistic activities like s3x. The most individualistic thing about a person is s3x, which is evolution's prime directive. Suppress all things around that - and they control people quite well. As for the violence part, the perception by the people that the world is violent gives a raison' d'etre for heavy security and oppression, which is bogus at its base, but unfortunately well accepted by populaces.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

“If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.”

Re:Only in America

[misexistentialist]

Some payment processors block firearms transactions. Anyway there is a ton of regulation of firearms from the government despite being specifically forbidden in the nation's foundational law, while there there are no restrictions on porn storage, carrying, or safety limits on penis size or ejaculation volume.

Re:Only in America

[Tsolias]

same thing happens with lorries, vans.
People don't realize that momentum is dangerous.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

stay butthurt nerd

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, ban those weapons EXCEPT for the military? So there will still be military weapons, but somehow the public won't have access, right?

Well I see it doesn't appear to work in Mexico where the narcotraffickers have military automatic weapons. But owning those firearms is apparently illegal anyway.

So please do tell us how you plan to stop that. Or did you think everyone would just be good and honest, even people contemplating outright murder and mayhem.

Yeah, that's what I thought. You don't have any answer, just more laws to ban things and pretend it's all going to be OK.

Re: Only in America

[Nidi62]

Half the time in Mexico the narcos are the military or police. The rest of the guns get bought in the US and smuggled into Mexico and then modified

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a country that isn't fucked up like the UK (well not yet anyway). Most criminals will avoid guns because it just isn't worth the risk being caught with them, and it probably helps that the police, in general, don't have guns either. If a teenager goes mental and wants to shoot up their school, well they won't be able to steal their parents gun or uncle's gun to do it because there won't be one to steal, and it is a lot harder to kill a classroom full of kids with a knife.

And if you think you should have guns because you are afraid of your own military, then you've already lost. Your military can bomb your sorry ass with a drone, your guns won't help you then.

Personally I prefer living in a country where I can't accidentally be shot by a trigger happy cop because the cop doesn't have a gun, the worst they could do is taze me and spray me with pepper spray, which is far more survivable than being shot.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Such typical right-wing bullshit. And you wonder why liberals treat you at best with condescendence, at worst with disdain.

Of ALL the civilized countries in which things are exactly as you describe (weapons for law enforcement and the military only) and who function perfectly well, you had to pick THE country where things don't do as well. You right-wingers always do the same thing: Pick ONLY the very small part of reality that fits your agenda, and discard all the rest.

No wonder you actually believed a known crook, scammer and con-artists when he told you that he would make America great again (whatever the f..k that means).

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. Once you've succeeded at disarming American law enforcers, let's talk again about disarming the citizenry.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a country that isn't fucked up like the UK (well not yet anyway)

How is a nanny state not fucked up? You can't even use pepper spray on someone trying to rape you without getting charged for assault.

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

is "implied nudity" a reason to ban something but banning weapons that enable you to massacre a crowd from a quarter of a mile away is controversial.

No. But Progressives banning something explicitly allowed in the US constitution and religious conservatives banning basic human instinct means you both suck.

Re:Only in America

[sarbonn]

It's always been this way. When Americans talk about "morals", they're talking about sex, but violence is perfectly okay.

Patreon want a competitor

[hyades1]

Since Patreon takes a slice of the pie, it would be nice to see how happy they'd be if everybody who had material even a little bit suggestive took their projects to a new site that dealt unabashedly with porn. Such a site would be well-advised to reserve an area for head-to-head competition with Patreon for family friendly projects. I'll leave the social dynamics of the situation for another day, but I think we can all agree that the people most interested in pornography are sometimes the same ones who would love to have an excuse for "accidentally" straying into the wrong area.

Call the site "Pudtreon" or something.

Re:Patreon want a competitor

[Tsolias]

there's already a Patreon alternative, called Hatreon, and it was created to house those who are not accepted on Patreon due to political reason.
Isn't it progressive that the first castrated from any set are the "politically incorrect" and then years later that same set of people start examining pedos, animal fuckers and others who promote sexual violence?
I already feel the progress inside my vains.

Re:Patreon want a competitor

[Tsolias]

hmm... so many syntactical and grammatical mistakes.
be gentle.

Re:Patreon want a competitor

[Pinky's Brain]

We need to get away from credit card type transactions for these small amounts. Paypal needs far too much overhead to deal with charge backs.

Leave it to the court. Keep every transaction in escrow for say a month and freeze his account if you can present evidence that the recipient is being sued by someone who send him money. That should cut way down on nuisance charge backs and overhead, but still allow money sent to a scammer to be recovered. Obviously you couldn't do this through credit card companies though, it would have to be done through direct debit.

Re:Patreon want a competitor

[DontBeAMoran]

1. websites should take crypto-currencies as payments (it doesn't have to be Bitcoin, there's hundreds of crypto-currencies, ex: Litecoin, Reddcoin, Dogecoin, Dash, Monero, etc).
2. websites could then exchange those crypto-currencies for money on any crypto-currencies exchange.

Re:Patreon want a competitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Hatreon appears to be out of operation and possibly out of business. Perhaps they've been censored / purged / disappeared.

Re:Patreon want a competitor

[sarbonn]

Entities like Patreon and Paypal before it all have a mixed history when it comes to adult material. Quite often, they get their inroads by offering a place where such media can thrive, and then when they get established, they start to become negative towards the type of material that gave them their start. Youtube is another entity that has done exactly that. I imagine that the next payment processor the sex industry uses as its standard will hit a point where it stops allowing adult material to be processed through its machinery. There's this weird desire to become "legit" that ends up being the reason why it then starts to fail (the porn producers leave and magically, so does the profit). So far, a few have still managed to survive, like Youtube, but I suspect that may just because I'm early at watching what's happening with it.

The transactions are high risk

[rsilvergun]

it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[KiloByte]

That's why we need a way of making payments that can't be arbitrarily denied by middle-men. Bitcoin was great before it got hijacked by ponzi scheme "investors".

The credit card mafia speaks with one voice, with Mastercard differing from VISA by nothing but name. They collude for prices, collude for policies, collude for denying business. And collude for bribing legislators to deny competitors who are not a part of the cartel.

Re: The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

They should increase the fees they charge the parties involved with the transaction if there are excessive costs due to refunds or cancellations or what have you. The service itself should not be cancelled.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Hognoxious]

If these disputes were half as onerous as you claim then the porno industry would have packed up business years ago.

It hasn't. Umm, or so I'm told.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[CaptainDork]

Bitcoin was great before it got hijacked by ponzi scheme "investors".

No, Bitcoin was great before it found a way to convert to fiat currency..

Re:The transactions are high risk

[jeti]

At one point, Visa tried to prevent German shops from selling Cuban cigars. I guess these transactions were high risk as well and Visa did not try to police the world according to US political views.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Aristos Mazer]

The ability to buy fiat currency with bitcoin is a key part of its ability to replace fiat currency. Those "investors" that KiloByte put in quotes do the same thing with fiat currency. Monetary traders mediate the prices between different currencies and make money on the margins.

There's no ponzi scheme for bitcoin that is any different from the ponzi scheme of fiat currency... only the volatility is different. Bitcoin doesn't have a Federal Reserve or equivalent to stabilize itself. No one is moving banking interest rates in order to stabilize the Bitcoin currency, so it fluctuates on pure demand. That's how currency works.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[AmiMoJo]

It makes you wonder how porn sites take any payments.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[CaptainDork]

In the beginning, batshit crazy Bitcoinerites touted the "off the grid" anonymous, fee-less utopia of cryptocurrencies.

We of sound mind informed that as soon as Bitcoin found a way to convert to more traditional currency, the shit would hit the fan.

And, that's precisely what's happened.

Now Bitcoin is subject to regulation, has lost its anonymity, is a commodity with exchange rates to fiat, and the IRS is working to tax transactions.

Effectively, across the planet, Bitcoin is a proxy USD.

Re: The transactions are high risk

[reanjr]

Probably by having tight relationships with a small set of sympathetic payment providers, keeping very detailed records, eating the excessive chargeback fees, and building their entire pricing structure based on the reality in which they operate.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live almost everyone has a debit card but credit cards are very rare. You are considered a bit insane for using one.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

The payment processors are only responding to upstream pressure on them (much of it perceived). They don't like to contemplate going to jail for handling a transaction which has been connected to an exchange of goods/services banned by the gov't. Unfortunately, it's easy to write laws that make a large slice of the pie untenable for the population, while the (alleged) purpose of the law was concerned with only a sliver of the pie. Chill effect in action.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[uffe_nordholm]

Not only Visa: http://cphpost.dk/news/interna...

Re: The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Mail cash or check, and good luck with that.

The problem is you want someone to mitigate the risks of those transactions for you and somehow not be a middleman that has to mitigate their own risks.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[MtHuurne]

Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge).

That doesn't apply to Patreon though, since Patreon charges just show up as "Patreon" on the credit card statement; the specific creators that received the money are listed in an e-mail instead.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[BlueStrat]

's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

It has little to do with disputed CC charges.

It has everything to do with government pressure applied to banks/CC companies to remove the ability to perform financial transactions from certain select legal businesses/individuals without due process or any proof of any crime. It was called "Operation Choke Point" under Obama and Holder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The same tactics are being used selectively against many adult/sex-related industries as well as gun dealers/stores and others the government considers "unsavory" for whatever political/ideological/moral/financial/religious reasons they choose.

It was bad under Obama, it's bad under Trump. This should not be partisan at all. If the Rule of Law were still a thing in the US, those responsible would be seeing a prison cell, but sadly... .

Strat

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

In the beginning, batshit crazy Bitcoinerites touted the "off the grid" anonymous, fee-less utopia of cryptocurrencies.

We of sound mind informed that as soon as Bitcoin found a way to convert to more traditional currency, the shit would hit the fan.

And, that's precisely what's happened.

Now Bitcoin is subject to regulation, has lost its anonymity, is a commodity with exchange rates to fiat, and the IRS is working to tax transactions.

Effectively, across the planet, Bitcoin is a proxy USD.

and every other good or commodity can, in essence, be traded for the USD or any other currency....it's called a transaction, using a currency.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Cederic]

That's a curious 'correction', given that it's unfortunately very wrong.

VISA and Mastercard are both in public ownership and are very different companies.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Cederic]

At the end of the week I'm going to make a payment of round 4k GBP online.

I could use my debit card, I could use a direct bank transfer, I could be a total fuckwit and use paypal.

Instead I'm going to use the payment mechanism that includes free fraud protection, so that in the event I'm totally fucked up and transferred 4k to a scammer I'll get my money back.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Aristos Mazer]

Exactly! Basically, bitcoin is behaving exactly the way it should be behaving, following every economic model we would predict for a commodity.

> Effectively, across the planet, Bitcoin is a proxy USD.

Seen that way, it's also a proxy for all the other fiat currencies that people use to buy/sell bitcoins. I've seen a fair number of European traders working in euros. It's a commodity, like oil or gold, but with some very currency-like behaviors in its production that make it useful as a transactional currency. It's a new tool in the economic toolbox, like hedge funds and debt swaps. It might even be the currency of the future, edging out fiat currencies, but it'll take time to find its place in the trade markets.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[CaptainDork]

....it's called a transaction, using a currency.

Yep.

But at the outset there was a bitter battle about whether Bitcoin was a currency.

We just settled that, right?

Re:The transactions are high risk

[CaptainDork]

I agree with you.

I'm skeptical of cryptocurrencies and blockchain right now , because I think we'll be looking back after we get both in versions 2.0 and above.

I'm a retired IT guy and I was not an early adopter.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Peter P Peters]

It has little to do with disputed CC charges.

It has everything to do with government pressure applied to banks/CC companies to remove the ability to perform financial transactions from certain select legal businesses/individuals without due process

From your link 'companies believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering.'
I'm pretty sure that fraud and money laundering aren't legal business...

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Orrin Bloquy]

I've read the merchant agreements for MC, VISA and Amex. Their terms to merchants are nearly verbatim. If you can tell us how the two are "very different," be my guest.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[BlueStrat]

From your link 'companies believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering.'
I'm pretty sure that fraud and money laundering aren't legal business...

Those were the reasons given but they were not the only reasons.

But the reasons are irrelevant to the fact that such threats by the federal government are blatantly unconstitutional as they attack legal businesses without any charges or due process involved. It is entirely unilateral with no judicial review or oversight nor authorized by any law or Act of Congress. The government cannot skirt the Constitution by using a monkey's paw.

Strat

Re: The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Fyi all currency behaves like a commodity in the sense you are describing it. Just so you know.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.
 

Not quite. There are many different kinds of credit cards, the ones used on adult sites are mostly anonymous, _PREPAID_ cards. They are 100% secured (monetary) and asset backed, most have clauses absolving them of any chargebacks.

Most sites bar their members from chargebacks too unless it can be proven in rather awkward detail that the request was not fulfilled. Members are more likely to be given credit on the site (tokens).

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

"They don't like to contemplate going to jail for handling a transaction which has been connected to an exchange of goods/services banned by the gov't."

What country does that happen in? It's sure as hell isn't the good ol' USofA

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

The government cannot skirt the Constitution by using a monkey's paw"
But nothing will stop them from trying

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

By definition, a prepaid card cannot be a credit card, since credit means a loan.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[houghi]

Just some extra info about the "Dispute a charge" thing.

Credit Cards work like a franchise. That means very little people have a contract with e.g. Mastercard. They have one with their bank.
So if a dispute comes in, it is the bank that will decide to take that cost on them or not.

So what hgappens if there is a dispute will depnd.
1) If it is a legimate dispute, the momey will be taken back from the vendor.
2) If it is actual fraud, it will be taken on Mastercar, who will take the losses. This is an extreme small amount comparted to all the transactions. You (or your bank) pay for that in insurance included in the anual fee.
3) If it is not a legimate dispute or a fraud, the bank will look at the transaction AND your account and will decide what to do. This obviously will differ from bank to bank and account to account.

If you pay the card every month 100%, you do not use the credit and they do not make any money. A bank will then also look at what other things you have with them. If you only have a card that you pay back 100%, they will likely decline the request. They will gain money if you leave.

If you have a loan, a card that is maxed out all the time and still pay on a monthly basas, they make a shitload of money and happily take that small loss to keep you as a cusomer.

Obviously with security that is available in the whole world, except in ther US, it becomes harder to deny the accidental porn site visit.

What happens more often is that people order a "free sample" or "extremely cheam sample" of some thing and do not read the fine print where it says that they get a subscription that they need to cancel in the next month, otherwise they will get billed.

Unfortunately that is not fraud. It is misleading often, but not fraud.
Also: if you order something that is extremely cheap, be aware that you might be buying fake stuff. If all you lose is the money, it is not that bad. If it is stopped at the border and it has some issues with Trademarks, you might pay even more. Fake stuff is not good to buy.

What most people do not realize is that you should look at your credit card as cash together with an ID. Do you give those to a stranger in a dark alley who promisses you to come back with a cheap car audio system?

To summerize: in most cases it is that bank that will be taking the loss as they al;ready make a shitload of money from you. If you do it too often, they will drop you.

And no, it is not that expensive (at least outside of the US where there is a decent system, like PIN and 3Dsecure) to prove that you bought it.

One major leak is that many airline companies still do not implement 3D Secure and similar systems, becaus not all countries (Caugh*USA*Caugh) are ready yet to implement it.

And I would say that not only companies are amoral, most people are as well when it comes to money. I do not even 100% trust kids that run a lemonade stand.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[thegarbz]

it's not nothing to do with moral policing.

Actually it has plenty to do with moral policing. Credit card processors were single handedly implicated in the end of the beasiality porn industry in the USA even before *some* states passed laws banning the practice. Credit card processors have led some very targetted moral campaigns in the past. You're right in the general case that porn represents a high-risk to them, but within the industry they are very effective moral police.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[thegarbz]

The beastiality industry on the other hand has been completely destroyed. The GP is right that porn represents risk in the general sense, but is very wrong that the payment processors don't also act as a moral police.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Cederic]

What the fuck do merchant agreements have to do with company ownership?

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly question; they probably are using a back-end to take it (the payments, that is).

Re:The transactions are high risk

[TeknoHog]

If these disputes were half as onanous as you claim then the porno industry would have packed up business years ago.

FTFY.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[darth.hunterix]

As someone who used to work with EFT terminals I'll tell you, that they do differ: VISA has better (as in: more secure) certification procedures for endpoint devices, while MC focuses on payment processing servers. Which means jack shit for a consumer, but I a lot for developers such as myself :)

Re:The transactions are high risk

[darth.hunterix]

In order to process transaction, POS device must pass certification from each one. Certification process greatly differs for all of them and has different costs associated with it. It is entirely possible (but economically stupid) to have POS device certified for only for VISA and it would only deny payment with other cards. Since AMEX is nearly non-existent in my country my company only bothered with VISA and MC.

By the way, what do you mean by agreement between merchant and MC/VISA/AMEX? In my country credit card companies have agreements with middle men called acquirers, and those middle men have agreement with merchants. Is it any different in USA?

Re:The transactions are high risk

[jythie]

I have often heard how these restriction are valid because adult merchants are high risk, but I have never found any numbers to back this up.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're technically correct, but for practical purposes your opposition is useless.

OP should rephrase "Visa and Mastercard are identical companies." Two owners, same rules, same fees, for the customer (be it card holder or service/shop) the choice is moot. The only people who'd care are ones who invest in stock of one or another.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm going to go through an insured bank transfer. The money is protected from fraud just the same, but instead of incurring a debt on a credit sub-account, I'm just deducting the amount from my main account.

And since it's a 'push', not a 'pull' mechanism, there's no way someone can overcharge me, or keep charging over and again, forcing me to dispute and pushing me into extra debt and possibly overcharge fees. The only way they can scam me is not to deliver their contracted part, and for that I have the insurance.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the link, and your commentary. Much appreciated.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

For this particular transaction, it's possible that Visa's own location in the US required such an action.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unfortunately that is not fraud. It is misleading often, but not fraud.

If there is no meeting of the minds there is no contract. If they would not have agreed had they known the term was there, the term isn't there. This is well-established law.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Or so you've been told.
right? right?

Re:The transactions are high risk

[dgatwood]

And I'm going to go through an insured bank transfer. The money is protected from fraud just the same, but instead of incurring a debt on a credit sub-account, I'm just deducting the amount from my main account.

Except that with an insured bank transfer, you pay the cost of the transfer (probably with an extra fee for the insurance). With a credit card transaction, the seller pays that cost, and it gets built into the cost of the product. It makes the accounting easier if you can point to a single line item and say "this is the cost".

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Shirley Marquez]

Visa and Mastercard are separate companies. But they're separate in the same way that Tweedledee and Tweedledum are separate people. They move in lockstep.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

From your link 'companies believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering.'
I'm pretty sure that fraud and money laundering aren't legal business...

Actually, both fraud and money laundering are routinely engaged in by governments at all levels in the USA, as well as many businesses such as universities.

It's apparently ok when the establishment does this stuff, but not ok when third parties do. Have to maintain the illusion of legitimacy, after all.

For example, many governments take money from traffic fines, and place it into their general fund. This frees up money to pay for the salaries and benefits of judges, police officers, and prosecutors, plus provides funds for politicians to spend in such a way as to help them get re-elected (the same politicians who often decide on promotions and benefits for the judges, polices officers, and prosecutors).

When governments do this, it is appropriately viewed as a form of money laundering: it's just a way to pretend that the money is legitimate by playing games with accounting, but money laundering never actually makes dirty money clean. It's no difference on an ethical, moral, or legal basis from money laundering done by non-governmental organizations.

The ability of government to launder money creates ethical conflict of interest on the part of the judges, police officers, and prosecutors, and hence violates the dual 9th Amendment rights to ethical government, and ethical practice of law. Because of this conflict of interest, we have no way of knowing how may tickets and fines are actually legitimate, and as such we can not even begin to trust our government. In practice, a lot of the tickets are not legitimate, and everybody knows it. Government agents, for example, have been caught red-handed changing the timing of traffic lights to get more tickets. All this is a big part of the reason why hardly anybody trusts government in the USA these days, and it's common to hear conversations where people are wondering whether we need to start over, or do a reboot of how government works in the USA.

These bogus tickets tend to take resources away from actual legitimate police work - how often do you see people doing stupid things on the road and there are no police officers anywhere around? They've gone home after filling their quotas, because padding the budget is the priority, not doing their jobs. Or, resources aren't being spent in the right places - government is busy spending money on things that illegally pad the budget, instead of spending it on things that are actually important. People are doubtless dying on the highways and in other places because government is breaking the law instead of doing it's job.

Note that the right to ethical government, and the right to practice of law, as rights "retained by" the people, can not be taken away by ANY entity of government, including legislative bodies, or ANY court. If they could be taken away by government, they would no longer be retained by the people - a contradiction in the law.

Hence, the money for penalties has to be treated entirely separate from the regular budget, and can NOT be used for any function we would normally expect government to provide, as the use of this money for any such function would free up funds to pay salaries and benefits of government officials as described above.

There are lots of ethical things that could be done with this money, so it's not as if they didn't have options: the decision to break the law and engage in money laundering is either a deliberate, conscious decision, or gross negligence concerning the legal obligations of government. Similarly, there are lots of ethical ways for government to get money, so it's not as if they don't have alternatives to breaking the law.

Similar considerations apply to money obtained via civil forfeiture, or to money saved via inappropriate handling of eminent domain.

In short, for government to keep the money for fines or civil for

Re:The transactions are high risk

[BlueStrat]

Hence, at present, many governments in the USA are basically criminal organizations.

Governments are tough on crime because they hate the competition. This is true of all governments to a greater or lesser degree.

This is the reason why small and relatively weak central governments are necessary to maintaining a relatively free & open society along with a relatively non-corrupt government. Government corruption and authoritarianism grow in an exponential fashion in direct relation to the amount of money and power a government controls.

Strat

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

...are you sure?

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I pay ONLY the cost of the optional insurance - tick a checkbox and about 0.5% of the sum is added. My bank provides unlimited free bank transfers. The seller receives the entire amount (minus insurance of course) - and the bank just offers lower percentage on the money in my account, plus paid services like express money transfer, debit limit, extra insurances etc.

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Agripa]

it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.

Tell that to companies which have anything to do with firearms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://nypost.com/2018/06/11/...
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/...

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Cederic]

Well, it's only £20 but I'll save £20 by using my credit card instead.

I've never encountered insured bank transfers in the UK, I'm not sure that's an available product. Do they provide cover for non-fraudulent failure to provide the goods/services too?

Re:The transactions are high risk

[Cytotoxic]

it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.

This is a great take.... and unfortunately it is just not correct.

This move is the direct result of Operation Choke Point.

The US Federal government began threatening banks back in 2013 that if they did business with disfavored industries, they risked being taken down by the Feds. It is often sold as being about "money laundering", but it targeted legal business that were in disfavor with the administration like firearms dealers, check cashing services and payday lenders. Along with this other groups were impacted like adult entertainers like porn actresses and producers.

These are perfectly legal businesses that the government decided they wanted to run out of business by threatening anyone who does business with them.

And that is why Patreon is even in the conversation. Because they can have trouble even getting bank accounts. So adult entertainers and others have been forcibly "unbanked". Now they have to hunt around for other ways to move money and get paid.

Even though the official program was recently ended, the effect lives on.

The last 18 years has seen a massive shift away from civil liberties in many ways (USA PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, metadata collection, etc.) and things like Operation Choke Point have changed the culture to the point where people actually see this sort of thing as acceptable. It isn't.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nudity is evil and should be banned

Hatreon

[Mal-2]

Use Hatreon. Yes, they accept absolutely deplorable projects, quite openly, but that's the price of no censorship. If the mainstream sites are going to shun adult content, then adult content needs to shun the mainstream and see who wins. (It won't be the mainstream.)

Re: Hatreon

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of Patreon competetors and other sites affiliated with the alt-right were recently cut off by Stripe.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/06/stripe-cuts-off-freestartr-and-bitchute.html

Was Hatreon uneffected?

Re: Hatreon

[Mal-2]

I don't know that they ever accepted Stripe as a means of payment in the first place.

Re:Hatreon

[drinkypoo]

Use Hatreon. Yes, they accept absolutely deplorable projects, quite openly, but that's the price of no censorship.

Hatreon is invite-only. They are the opposite of no censorship.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"At the time, it resulted in suspensions and bans of many adult content creators whose work Patreon previously permitted"

That seems to suggest there were Patreon creators engaged in beastality or incest, and/or that Patreon used to allow that. Really?

Re:Hmm

[PPH]

engaged in beastality or incest

Someone uploaded excerpts from the bible?

Re:Hmm

[king neckbeard]

More likely, there were Patreon creators that made furry and incest porn. If that surprises or shocks you, welcome to the internet.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I see you have no idea that one of the main functions of Patreon was to provide erotic artists a way to sell their art. You know how that stuff can be. Personally, I find repressive prudes to be a blight on the race that make the world an uglier and more boring place, while I surely do not care what they think of me.

Re:Hmm

[thedarb]

HAH! ROFL!

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about games, comics, 3D/2D arts, etc.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

engaged in beastality or incest

Someone uploaded excerpts from the bible?

I don't know why my Complete Picture Book of the Bible for Kids was so controversial. Parents practically force children to read the stuff. Personally, I'd rather my children watch something of comparative light comedy like Game of Thrones.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

R. Crumb's Illustrated New Testament.

Re:Good.

[MightyMartian]

"Smut peddlers"? What year is it? 1938?

Big opportunity

[Kohath]

The same thing is happening to firearms dealers doing online sales (which have all the same safeguards and background checks as in-person sales — and actually more traceability because credit card sales are more traceable than cash sales).

Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.

This creates a big, expanding opportunity for a payment processor who won't bow to the Twitter mobs and their blacklists and witch hunts.

Re:Big opportunity

[misexistentialist]

Regulation makes starting a payment business difficult in itself, and the sex, drugs, and guns markets are especially targeted by government. Backpage is dissolved and the operators will likely get hard time, and it was just a basic website

Re:Big opportunity

[Kohath]

Yeah, but if you read up on backpage you will see why they ended up that way. The stories I read said backpage was helping to rewrite ads offering sex with minors to avoid legal scrutiny.

The market for porn and guns may not be huge. The market for anything the Twitter mobs don't approve of is growing to include more and more things every day. @jack just had to apologize for going to Chick-fil-A a couple weeks ago to avoid being bullied.

Guns and porn today. Legal drugs tomorrow. Then church donations and non-socialist political candidates will be blacklisted. Who knows where it leads.

It’s an expanding opportunity for someone.

Re:Big opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Do these online gun dealers verify the identity of their customers when the delivery is made? It is no good doing background checks unless you can be sure you are checking the person who will be getting the gun.

Re:Big opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding marijuana, it is still illegal on the federal level and can be illegal on the state level. Banks, credit unions, and payment processors don't want to be involved with facilitating criminal activity.

Re:Big opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The payment processors aren't bowing to mobs, they're doing it from government pressure. The US gov did it back around 2008 to kill off a bunch of businesses it didn't like but couldn't squash directly due to free speech laws or because they were based in other countries. So it was 'Nice income you've got going there. It'd be sad if something happened to it... or you could drop this list of companies and prevent customers from sending them any money.' Why would the companies willingly kill off parts of their income streams? The card processors don't have highly public reputations to maintain.

This is one area where a currency like BitCoin could have helped, but eventually processors would be pressured to pressure exchanges to not perform any transactions which could be traced to 'immoral' sites. You can't use cash as governments will simply seize those assets and never release them. Can't use credit cards due to issues like this. That leaves you with gift cards and checks. Eventually gift cards will be locked down. Checks are easily faked.

This is what we get for tolerating corrupt companies which can then be blackmailed and for congress creatures who use their positions for personal crusades instead of working for the general benefit of the country.

Re:Big opportunity

[Aighearach]

You can't just process payments on a wish and prayer, though. How does the money eventually move? Existing payment processors are owned by banking conglomerates, and banks already have agreements to move money.

It is easy to imagine making a new user-facing part, or imagining what your merchant policies would be, but how does the money get from the consumer to the merchant? Does the consumer have to mail you dollar bills, or what? Maybe they mail you a check or money order in advance, and then you mail the merchant a check?

Even to build a low quality service like that where everybody had to pre-load their accounts, which could only be used at a few online vendors, you'd still have to have the investment money to start an actual real bank that is normally regulated. Otherwise, how do you access the ACH system to process checks?

Re:Big opportunity

[Aighearach]

Guns and porn today. Legal drugs tomorrow. Then church donations and non-socialist political candidates will be blacklisted.

Patreon is mostly an American service. So no.

Re:Big opportunity

[Kohath]

Patreon doesn't do payment processing, so it is not their call. They are at the mercy of 3rd party payment processors.

Re:Big opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

obligatory: If you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns.

Background checks are bullshit security theatre anyway. You can make a zip-gun or shot-gun with some iron pipe, fittings, a nail, and rubber band. And you can make black-powder from urine and ash. All this fear over gun ownership is incredibly stupid.

If you don't care about background tests for plumbing parts or gumbands or nails, then you shouldn't be concerned at all about background checks for pre-assembled guns.

Captcha, now assuming direct control: allowed

Re:Big opportunity

[Peter P Peters]

Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.

Interesting thought process you have there. You presume something based on nothing more that hot air, then proceed to form a conclusion based on that presumption that has no basis in reality.?
I used to work in a bank and I can assure that bankers have no morals. Every decision made in a bank is about money or the risks of losing that money. This has nothing do with any perceived moral crusade, it is merely a higher risk of fraud which might coast a bank exec his/her bonus. If porn and marijuana is being targeted it is merely because those markets attract a much higher rate of fraud. Nothing more.

Re:Big opportunity

[Kohath]

Interesting thought process you have there. You presume something based on nothing more that hot air, then proceed to form a conclusion based on that presumption that has no basis in reality.?

Yeah, predicting the future is more or less always like that because no one knows the future.

Re:Big opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

If porn and marijuana is being targeted it is merely because those markets attract a much higher rate of fraud. Nothing more.

You know what else affects the bank's bottom line?
Government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

Re:Big opportunity

[terrycarlino]

Coming soon to Britain. Outlawing kitchen knives that have points, plumbing parts, gumbands and nails.

Re:Big opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats for writing one of the stupidest things on the Internet for the day. The fact that you "can" make a firearm using those items doesn't mean it will be effective if you want to perform some large scale shooting.

Re:Big opportunity

[Peter P Peters]

Yeah, predicting the future is more or less always like that because no one knows the future.

Right so we may as well jump to the stupidest possible guess then. Let me know how that works out for you...

Re:Big opportunity

[tlhIngan]

The same thing is happening to firearms dealers doing online sales (which have all the same safeguards and background checks as in-person sales â" and actually more traceability because credit card sales are more traceable than cash sales).

Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.

This creates a big, expanding opportunity for a payment processor who won't bow to the Twitter mobs and their blacklists and witch hunts.

No, it's actually all about risk management. Payment processors hate chargebacks - it's extra processing on everyone's end, and your chargeback rate (as well as industry chargeback rate) determines your processing fees.

Naturally, adult content is one area of concern, because when wife opens the Visa bill and sees a charge to "Hot Sluts.com" she'd confront hubby, who will deny signing up (yeah right, he did do it), and then get on the phone and be all innocent and say it was a fraudulent charge. And then starts all the arguments and generally speaking, the porn site will relent and allow the chargeback through.

Firearms are less of an issue in general, though if it's a kid buying up guns to shoot up his school behind his parent's back, well, the parent might be spending a few hours on the phone with Visa wondering about those charges.

Likewise same for marijuana sales - charges to "Weed-R-Us" might get some denials of the truth.

You see, these activities are restricted not because they are "socially unacceptable" but because the person doing it doesn't want others to know about it (i.e., it's socially unacceptable to them). I'm sure firearms charges are fine in a family who goes hunting a lot, and if they're open and honest, so would things like marijuana and adult content.

It's all about risk and risk management - how likely is this business likely to be engaged in something that people will force chargebacks to? Chargebacks cause a lot of risk the in system - if the chargeback fails (merchant out of business or funds cannot be locked for it), then all the banks are on the hook for the money. And if the charge is legitimate, then it's a lot of wasted effort on everyone's side, and that effort has to be paid for.

It's less about social unacceptability and more about users doing things that they will later deny. Thus even if you ran the loosest payment processor in the world and allowed all these activities, chances are you'd get bogged down handling chargebacks to your clients

It's not your client's fault, really. It's your client's customers. The same way every parent denies their son does {drugs|guns|etc) even though they were just caught with (drugs|guns|etc) and how they're the best kid in the world with straight A's and impeccable record.

The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[rsilvergun]

are still pretty low. The odds of her getting knocked up are much higher. We regulate sex more than violence because relatively few people want to commit wanton acts of violence while just about everybody want sex. And if you've ever known anyone who's had an unplanned pregnancy or had one yourself you know it's just as life changingly devastating. Maybe moreso. Blow me away and my life insurance kicks in but if I go knock somebody up I've got a $12k+/mo bill for at least the next 18 years.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

You're off by an order of magnitude.

s/mo bill/yr bill/

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[JaredOfEuropa]

And pretty much all statistics and research into the subject shows that the best ways to fight teen pregnancies are good sexual education and access to prophylactics and birth control, not repression, pretending sex doesn't exist, censoring porn, or preaching abstinence.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

If the odds of getting gunned down are pretty low, why do schools have active shooter training? Fuck, my high school period was bad enough without having to worry about being gunned down in school. I cannot imagine what that must be like, and I pity the children.

Better to worry about getting knocked up than about dying. There's always abortion .... oh wait! Perhaps it is time to start worrying ;)

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[king neckbeard]

Because humans are bad at intuitively understanding statistics, especially when there is a sensationalism bias involved.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Tom]

There are two different approaches to the question of truth.

The scientific approach: Make up some theory, compare it against reality, adapt it as necessary to be a better fit, repeat until you can't think of improvements anymore

The religious approach: Make up some theory, tell everyone else about it, build a system around it, selectively pick those facts that confirm your theory and with the support of the system you built, push these facts and suppress the others

The US is an outlier in western civilisation. The importance of religious is comparable to 3rd world countries, but not to other western countries. As is the attitude towards anything sexual.

(note that attitude doesn't mean people don't have massive businesses in this area. it just means they are considered smutty)

The "abstinence programs" that the entire developed world (and good parts of the developing world) laugh about are not explainable in terms of western civilisation or education or anything except the backwater religiousity of the USA. Once you understood that religious thinking is the cause for such insanities, you understand that contradictory facts have zero effect.

If anything, contradictions strengthen religious belief.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[grep -v '.*' *]

pretending sex doesn't exist

But sex doesn't exist. At least not around me, anyway. ;-(

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Peter P Peters]

are still pretty low. The odds of her getting knocked up are much higher.

For 50% of the population, getting pregnant is impossible...

anyone who's had an unplanned pregnancy or had one yourself you know it's just as life changingly devastating. Maybe moreso. Blow me away and my life insurance kicks in

This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. Having a family member is no big deal because think of the money!
FWIW my wife had an unplanned pregnancy, it turned out to be one the best things that ever happened. Not devastating at all...

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Peter P Peters]

murdered... forgot a word...

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Rande]

It's even worse when it's near, but not near enough to see or touch.

Noisy sex is fun when both you and your flatmates are getting it on like dueling saxes.

Not so much when it's just them, and you are trying to drown it out with the headphones on.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

But sex doesn't exist. At least not around me, anyway. ;-(

Not even the one-player mode?

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[fafalone]

I love these holier-than-thou posts about these other enlightened countries, despite the little problem of all of them still also rejecting science and reason, to send a moral message, at the cost of lives, when it comes to enforcing prohibition as their drug control policy. The absolutely most progressive country on this, Portugal, still only decriminalized possession of tiny amounts. Nowhere offers the legal market that would eliminate most of the harm and minimize addiction, despite having the evidence showing that's the right path, because actually granting people permission to conduct those transactions offends their sense of moral decency, so they let tens of thousands of people die and get victimized, just to be able to not be "soft" on drugs. That it's not based on religion is hardly material.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

This. The statistics for school shootings are largely skewed by false reporting (i.e. a shooting takes places adjacent to a school, involving nobody from the school in any way, but because of proximity it counts as a school shooting). It's not to say that school shootings never happen, but stuff like Sandy Hook/Virginia Tech/Parkdale are far and few between.

You're about as likely to get gunned down at the average school as you are at the average bowling alley (assuming nobody tries to cheat Walter over line crossings).

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

Math error. That's 12k/yr or 1k/mo.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Serenissima]

Yeah, but the Single-Player campaign kinda sucks - it may be fun to play for a while but it ends up being a let-down. Everyone knows that Multiplayer is where it's at. Especially if you can find a good team - then it's a whole new game.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[terrycarlino]

Yeah because sex education as a deterrent to unplanned pregnancies has worked so well for the past 40 years.

The best birth control, abstinence is 100% effective.

The pill is 99.9% effective. That sounds pretty good right? So If you have sex 1000 times, or three times a day for a year you have 100% chance the pill will fail and you will end up with an unwanted pregnancy. Much more likely if you have sex once a day for three years your chance of having an unwanted pregnancy is likewise 100%

No one wants to pretend that sex doesn't exist. They want to acknowledge that sexual intercourse has a consequence. And they want to acknowledge that that consequence is much more acceptable when you have a self-supporting income, are in a stable relationship, and have planned to take on parenthood.

Or you can continue to pretend that sex is some kind of recreational sport and continue contributing to the culture dumpster fire that the sexual revolution has become.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because sex education as a deterrent to unplanned pregnancies has worked so well for the past 40 years. The best birth control, abstinence is 100% effective.

There's plenty of actual scientific studies that show that abstinence only education is worse at preventing teen pregnancies than proper sex education.

The pill is 99.9% effective. That sounds pretty good right? So If you have sex 1000 times, or three times a day for a year you have 100% chance the pill will fail and you will end up with an unwanted pregnancy. Much more likely if you have sex once a day for three years your chance of having an unwanted pregnancy is likewise 100%

lol

That's now how those numbers work. Those numbers are for a given year, not per sex act. moron

Or you can continue to pretend that sex is some kind of recreational sport and continue contributing to the culture dumpster fire that the sexual revolution has become.

Sex is a lot of fun. You should try it some time. I've had sex thousands of times most of it while married and never gotten anyone pregnant.

Look, sarcasm aside, you should realize you were wrong by two order of magnitude. You seriously need to start questioning your assumptions and question those who mislead you.

Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Tom]

I love these holier-than-thou posts about these other enlightened countries,

You misunderstand me. I am not lauding other countries. I am criticising the US. Other countries have their own issues.

when it comes to enforcing prohibition as their drug control policy

one policy does not make a society. You seem oddly fixated on this one thing, which is not even anywhere near any part of the original topic.

Re: The odds of my kid getting gunned down

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still a problem. We need to forcibly confiscate weapons from all civilians. My child should not be unsafe so sickos can have some fun.

Only The Small Ones

[Anonymous Coward]

Studio FOW is still online, despite advertising themselves as "creating crazy videogame porn." Before they hid their donations I remember seeing they were getting about $40K per month. Presumably Patreon don't want to lose the revenue so are only banning the small creators.

Re:Only The Small Ones

[Anonymous Coward]

They did the same with Sumer Time Saga, which is generating over 30K a month. When they started cracking down on incestual content, they let them off the leash for a long time and only recently forced them to adjust their content.
Every one of these actions indicates payment processors forcing them to do it.

Re:Good.

[cascadingstylesheet]

"Smut peddlers"? What year is it? 1938?

Has what's right and wrong changed since 1938?

Or are we just magically comparative super experts on what is right and wrong, in 2018, because reasons?

Obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Come up with a(n electronic) payment system that isn't based on loans.

Even better, make it a "hard" as in hard to reverse system. Of course, to make that work you need something more secure than some numbers printed on a bit of plastic as your entire authorisation mechanism. But if you have that, you no longer have to chase down "potentially fraudulent" anything, the costs to run the scheme drop, and the applicability of the thing increases.

Re:Good.

[MightyMartian]

Lots of things have changed since 1938. You can't refuse to serve an African-American, same sex marriage is equal, and so on and so forth.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone that dares to be born nude should be immediately put into jail for life. how dare they go against someone else standards. Think of the children when they allow these things to be posted.

censorship is how the immoral right works

[Anonymous Coward]

Those that can't feel free unless they are taking other freedoms away always use cowards tactics in trying to eliminate whatever they feel is wrong. They know they have no right but that doesn't stop them. They think they are making the world a better place and if everyone would just think like they do there wouldn't be so much trouble in the world. In other words. A child's way of thinking.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[cirby]

You haven't noticed that the major force behind censorship now is the left?

They're after people for sexual content (the serious feminists hate sexual content they don't approve of), for political content, and whatever else they can get away with.

The current political right just isn't that concerned with sexual censorship, no matter what you may think. They're too busy with other things, to start.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[Revek]

Yeah they are to busy trying to get a theocracy started. Everything the right accuses the left of is what the right actually want for themselves.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[sfcat]

Yeah they are to busy trying to get a theocracy started. Everything the right accuses the left of is what the right actually want for themselves.

You and the GP are both right. But the right isn't anywhere close to actually creating a theocracy and doesn't seem to be moving in that direction. However, the hard core feminists really do hate sex and right now this is the only type of action the left can get accomplished as its something the religious right and the feminists on the left agree upon. Also, neither group is very interested in looking at research on the topic and instead rely upon an ideology which often makes things worse for the folks they are claiming to protect (much like climate change, the war on drugs, and issues around sex ed in schools). Ask the women (and men) who do sex work and they have ZERO love for the feminists.

This is because feminism isn't really about poor women. Poor women have always had jobs. Feminism is about rich women who could be homemakers but instead feel like they must work and be in some weird competition between the sexes. Also, consider when women first entered the workforce in large numbers is about when middle class wages began stagnating. So now we have a situation where both parents now work but the family income is basically the same amount as before women started working (partially because now a good chunk of that second income is now spent on child care). Not saying this is a bad thing but its not nearly as simple as "empowering women" makes society a better place.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, consider when women first entered the workforce in large numbers is about when middle class wages began stagnating.

Middle class wages began stagnating around 1973. Women first entered the workforce in large numbers at the end of the second world war.

It amazes and disappoints me that people will draw sweeping conclusions that inform their political decisions on the basis of statistics they construct out of whole cloth that "sound right" to them.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even more puzzling how they're hitting themselves in the wallet. These porn projects generate revenue of millions each month.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't noticed that the major force behind censorship now is the left?

No, because it's not true. E.g. in the UK the Conservative government is pushing restrictions on pornography.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't trying to ban sexual content. They are enforcing laws about depictions of underage characters having sex. You may want to have sex with a elementary school kid. The rest of us do not.

Re:censorship is how the immoral right works

[terrycarlino]

Yes woman started entering the workforce in large numbers at the end of WWII.

That is, single women started entering the workforce at the end of WWII. That is instead of immediately marrying. When they got married they quit. As a matter of fact many places went so far as to request married women quit so as not to take jobs away from single women who needed them. And in almost every case jobs were in areas that men did not work and pay was less, because single women did not "need" the high pay that a man who had to support a family needed. (Or at least that was the theory.)

In the 1970's married women started to enter the workforce or women kept working even after they married and had children. This was as a result of second wave feminism

It's amazing to me that people will draw conclusions based on incomplete information that informs their political opinions.

It's time for the madness to end

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are these unelected clowns? Credit cards need to be entirely killed off. It will happen one way or another with competition such as SWIF RPS coming online. The credit card system is run by cartels who extract billions in profit from every transaction in exchange for doing nothing.

They throw security rules at everyone costing hundreds of billions of dollars simply because at its core their comically dangerous and outdated systems use a pull rather than push model.

What we need instead are common interfaces allowing banks to participate directly with only centralized management being to facilitate an interface while denying centralized visibility or ability to police transactions.

The solution is as obvious as it is trivial.

I want to buy something. In real-time:
I give you a single use token.
You redeem it.

The interface should be kept simple and agnostic to underlying implementations as much as possible.

Most importantly system must never try to address payments to named identifiers unlike SWIF's realtime payment system. Indicating identity must never be allowed to be part of in-band token exchange. Trust building intermediate exchanges should be allowed:

I give you a conditional single use token
We both check each other out and agree
You redeem

So long as both parties to the transaction are able to petition/follow up with identity after the fact with ordering and beneficiary banks to address any liability or fraud concerns this is sufficient.

The only security parties to transaction are responsible for WRT transaction is guarding tokens from receipt to the time they are redeemed by beneficiary bank and guarding trust relationships between their respective banks that allow them to send and receive payment. Since system is realtime people will know real quick if their security measures were sufficient or not.

Keeping transactions out the hands of middlemen makes sure no single party is able to aggregate and leverage power over all of commerce. The reign of Visa et el must end.

Re:It's time for the madness to end

[Tom]

The credit card system is run by cartels who extract billions in profit from every transaction in exchange for doing nothing.

And that won't change. Only the players will. Maybe it won't be credit cards anymore, but the new players will simply do the same thing - make profit on transactions.

(and remember: If you get a service or a good for free, that doesn't mean it actually is for free. It only means you are not the customer, you are the product)

Re:It's time for the madness to end

[Cederic]

WTF is SWIF?

Also, this single use token you think should be used. How do I validate that it's legitimate? Are the funds embedded within the token, and if not how do I validate the source? If so, how do I comply with AML laws and regulations such as financial sanctions against Russian oligarchs? Is the payee embedded within the token because if not it's now a transferable instrument and not single use at all.

Sounds like you're going to be terribly rich if you can make this work.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously certain things have changed. That wasn't the question. Has what's right and what's wrong changed?

Next up Twitch Thots

[Anonymous Coward]

Next up how the weak teenage bro's at Twitch allows women stream in skimpy outfits to show their T&A for money, giving shit about their streaming policies while swinging the ban hammer for minor offenses by the men streaming.

Re: Good.

[jmdevince]

Right and wrong is what society deems to be morally acceptable. Just a decade ago it was wrong for two gay people to get married. 50 years ago it was wrong for African-Americans to be treated as equal. See where we're going with this? Patreon is a private business and has the right to dictate what content is distributed on their network. That's the proper reason for removing content creators that don't abide by their rules. Not because "Omgherd nudity and pornography is wrong."

Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[CaptainDork]

... FTA:

According to a Patreon blog about creator fees, these partners include Stripe and PayPal (which has a history of refusing to serve sex workers), but the pressure to turn sex workers away comes from major banking networks.

It's the payment partners .

Any objections should be addressed to those payment partners.

Patreon just wants to make a buck.

Re:Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they should dump Stripe and PayPal and tell their users to do the same, instead of being capitulant little bitches.

Re:Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[CaptainDork]

Which approach makes them more money, your approach or their decision to be capitulant [sic capitilating] little bitches?

Re:Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whichever approach makes the least amount of customers leave.

If I can't pay to someone's Patreon, due to some stupid rules, Patreon doesn't get paid any more than the creator of the content that was forbidden.

Patreon is being stupid here. Less customers for them means less money for them. They need to put their foot down.

Re:Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't Ask. Don't Tell.

Re:Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[CaptainDork]

All they need is to make money. They don't have any feet.

Re:Has nothing to do with Patreon ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being able to process any payments means less money too. There are other things on Patreon besides adult content.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has what's right and wrong changed since 1938?

Since this is not a philosophy class, yes, yes it has. Next question?

Re:Good.

[nightfire-unique]

Has what's right and wrong changed since 1938?

No. What changed is that we're generally better educated, and today many people are able to successfully reject the onslaught of religious idiocy that was much more prevalent back then.

The phrase "smut peddler" harkens back to an age when North America was dominated by religious people looking to control the sexuality of stupid people for monetary and/or power gains, and so intelligent people mock those who use it today.

Re: Good.

[MightyMartian]

If certain moral stances, or at least how strongly they are held or enforced has changed, then right and wrong are not fixed, but rather the product of social consensus. Nudity has never been that big a no no in art, and porn has become so mainstream that even the "smut peddlers" can't compete with the mom and pop shops.

Actually you don't regulate sex

[aepervius]

We regulate sex more than violence because relatively few people want to commit wanton acts of violence while just about everybody want sex.

This is bollocks because you DO NOT regulate sex. Want you want to do ? Stop two teen having sex ? how ? Having them a iron udnerwaer with a lock for which you have only the key ? Just get real. No you don't regulate sex (except the separation adult/minor). What you do is restrict access to information. And what happen when access to information is restricted ? Well kids STILL have sex, but they do it without being fully aware of the consequence, or use and info rumor gossip and hoax circulating (like "you can't get pregnant if it is a rape". oh wait my bad that one was a politician - but sad joke aside misinformation is bad). That is why where teen get sex ed, they have consistently LESS unwanted pregnancy, and abstinence policy lead to MORE pregnancy. This is simply plain statistic and whether you are religious or not cannot deny, you can refuse them, pretend they do not exists, but we can all see them for what thy are.

Re:Actually you don't regulate sex

[Areyoukiddingme]

That is why where teen get sex ed, they have consistently LESS unwanted pregnancy, and abstinence policy lead to MORE pregnancy. This is simply plain statistic and whether you are religious or not cannot deny, you can refuse them, pretend they do not exists, but we can all see them for what thy are.

It is plain truth, but "we" are not seeing them for what they are. We fail to realize that this outcome is intentional.

Whole swaths of religious sects in the United States take the phrase "be fruitful and multiply" as literally as possible. Some politicians in the deep South pay lip service to the idea that teen pregnancy is bad, but most just ignore it. Their constituents don't believe it's some terrible thing to be prevented at all costs. Quite the opposite. I have seen the argument made against porn that it reduces the amount of sex young people are having, and this is bad and should be prevented by banning porn. Abstinence only "education" is so perfectly designed to exploit the teen tendency to try the forbidden that if my tin foil hat was just a little tighter, I'd call it a conspiracy.

Re:Good.

[nmb3000]

I'm glad to see payment processors taking an active role in what they facilitate.

Oh, really? And how would you feel if your Visa card was declined because they felt that you should stop stuffing your obese face at McDonalds 4 times a week? And PayPal rejected your payment to your church fundraiser because they thought the group had too many extreme-right racist undertones for their liking?

Payment processors should allow any legal transactions without trying to be the Morality Police. This is also the problem when a few middlemen consolidate too much power and is another reason why anyone who values freedom or privacy should push back against "cashless" societies.

Perhaps we need some kind of "common carrier" laws for large payment processors. If Visa wants to control 70% of the credit card market then they must also allow any legal transaction between consenting parties or they are found in violation of common payment laws.

I was thinking about using Patreon once

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of people or groups (webcomic creators, for example,) I was (past tense) considering supporting via Patreon, but now that Patreon is going to try to be my morality for me, I think I will have to find some other way to support them, or not support them at all, if the only way they have to do so is Patreon. Unless someone can tell me that Patreon doesn't take any, (not one lousy penny.) of the money being funneled through them, (one way or another, I'm pretty sure they're getting paid,) I cannot conscionably support someone who pulls this sort of thing. #BoycottPatreon #DontPatreonizeMe

BTW, here's a snippet from their "policy":

We also do not allow other fringe sexual fetish content, such as incest, necrophilia, or fetish content that is hard to distinguish from non-consensual sex.

Who the FUCK is Patreon to DECIDE what is "fringe"? They only allow good, clean, wholesome fucking of the kind they approve of? Not that I'm a fan of any of this shit but I AM a fan of not having other people deciding what it's okay for anyone else to like. FUCK. THAT. SHIT. And fuck Patreon.

Re:I was thinking about using Patreon once

[terrycarlino]

So this is the real question as far a Patreon is concerned.

If two people who support their stand to eject questionable content by donating to content creators they support, for every person who leaves in disgust over it, it's a win for them.

If two people leave in disgust for every new patron they get because they support Patreon's new limits it's a loser for them.

I guess we'll see which way it goes.

Re:Good.

[BeanThere]

Didn't you get the memo? Puritanism is in again, and the sexual revolution all but forgotten.

Even schools are now teaching that 'porn is bad', which makes one wonder who is behind this new trend back to Dark-Ages values.

INB4 they claim that they suspended Naomi

[Anonymous Coward]

because she has the chars 's-e-x' in her nic.

It's not looking too good, patreon.

That's what patreon was for

[Anonymous Coward]

A content create could just use a paypal button.
As long as it is no adult content.
If it is, he can use patreon which does not have such stupid limitation.
At least we thought so.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The phrase "smut peddler" harkens back to an age when North America was dominated by religious people looking to control the sexuality of stupid people for monetary and/or power gains,

You mean like the 2010s ?

Yourbrainonporn.com

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of you really need to visit that site and change your lives... pornography is ruining you.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, if you want to see actors sat on a bed, without at least one foot on the floor at all times, then you're clearly a deviant of the highest order.

Re:Good.

[Kjella]

Didn't you get the memo? Puritanism is in again, and the sexual revolution all but forgotten. Even schools are now teaching that 'porn is bad', which makes one wonder who is behind this new trend back to Dark-Ages values.

I don't think teens got the memo, every indication I've seen is that teens have better access to porn, watch more porn and try to act more like in porn. And porn is bad if you think porn is an accurate representation of reality and not a staged and edited fantasy. It's full of pretty faces with silicone tits, botox lips, waxed slits, bleached assholes and men with really large dicks. Nobody in porn has erection problems or premature ejaculation or trouble coming or use any lube or let out a fart and everyone is super horny and ready for sex in any hole or all holes and group sex and girls like having their face sprayed with cum and have multi-orgasms if you touch their elbows. And nobody is ever rejected or refused or asked to stop.

A lot of young, insecure people get performance anxiety from porn. And they do things or accept things because porn makes them think it's okay or how sex should be. Of course there are a few that still want to back to abstinence and figuring it out on the wedding night under the covers with the lights off but I'm pretty sure they've lost and are still losing ground. The rest are mostly worried that porn is giving people a false pictures and wants more love and feelings, less sex olympics. Not that it's just porn, all of society has gotten pretty sex fixated. And having sex is constantly becoming more casual through apps like Tinder and such and of course if you disconnect sex from having feelings for the person you're having sex with then it's all about the performance. 7/10 would fuck again.

Re:Good.

[BeanThere]

Thank you, you just helped prove my point by regurgitating a string of the same irrational anti-porn talking points they're teaching kids in school - silly arguments that are popular with millenials as what is effectively the new Puritanism takes hold in our culture ... just a few decades ago it seemed we were entering an era of more enlightened, rational values. Now the curtains are closing and it's going dark again.

Re:Good.

[drinkypoo]

Has what's right and wrong changed since 1938?

Yes. "Right" and "wrong" are social constructs, and their meanings have indeed changed since 1938.

Or are we just magically comparative super experts on what is right and wrong, in 2018, because reasons?

We know that pornography is not harmful because we have studied it repeatedly and every time we do, not only can we not draw a link to harm, but it appears that it may have beneficial effects. (Also not proven, because there's no money in doing so; porn already sells.)

Re: Good.

[drinkypoo]

Nudity has never been that big a no no in art

Uh, except for that period when the religious fanatics were in charge, and a whole bunch of nudes got painted over so as to clothe them or otherwise disguise their naughty bits...

That moment when you..

[Xnet Project]

Read this and was half expecting someone in the comments to say "It's not bestiality, it's inter species erotica.".

2 12 year old characters going at it

[Anonymous Coward]

is not adult content. It's illegal.

Re:2 12 year old characters going at it

[Areyoukiddingme]

2 12 year old characters going at it is not adult content. It's illegal.

Two 12 year old fictional characters going at it is illegal in the United States only if it's obscene, where obscenity in this case must meet the Miller test. See Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), which is considered at the appellate level to be the controlling case in litigation involving the PROTECT Act. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that such images are legal if viewable only over the Internet. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. The court's decision was nuanced in that it specifically distinguished between the Internet being a fundamentally "pull" technology (you have to request any content to receive it) vs. a "push" technology like radio or television (any content may appear on the channel to which you are tuned without your request). The conviction of Dwight Whorley was not appealed to the Supreme Court, so the decision of the Fourth Circuit has not been tested.

Geo Fence Washington DC

[doesnothingwell]

When Senator Goodfart and his aids can't get any online smut, book an escort, or order anything fun online, maybe they'll wake up from this dream of moral superiority.

Amoral = literally psychopathic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always said that the entire industry world is 99% psychopaths and 1% soon-to-be-bankrupt companies.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell, you're comparing Civil Rights and Gay rights to raping a 9 year old girl in the name of Islam? This is the definition of the slippery slope fallacy, and on top of that incredibly stupid and fear mongering.