Stripe has frozen Gab.com's account
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Can someone please tell me why we're letting payment processors control what kind of content we're allowed to pay for when tech giants are under near constant scrutiny for their moderation of user-generated content?
Stripe has pretty strict rules over prohibited businesses (https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses). For example, here's their list of "high risk businesses", prohibited by their financial partners:
> Bankruptcy lawyers; computer technical support; psychic services; travel reservation services and clubs; airlines; cruises; timeshares; prepaid phone cards, phone services, and cell phones; telemarketing, telecommunications equipment and telephone sales; drop shipping; forwarding brokers; negative response marketing; credit card and identity theft protection; the use of credit to pay for lending services; any businesses that we believe poses elevated financial risk, legal liability, or violates card network or bank policies; any business or organization that a. engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property, or b. engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence toward any group based on race, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or any other immutable characteristic
"Travel reservation services and clubs" bit me at some point, I wanted to build a flight reservation service and was surprised to hear I couldn't. But apparently, it's a high risk business because lots of people chargeback flight tickets.
Also, Gab completely fails that last criteria, they're not kidding anyone.
Oh I can't possibly think of a reason why someone would chargeback Alex Jones' Totally Legitimate Line of "BURN ALL YOUR FAT" products. Health & Wellness is a known high risk category.
> [...] firearms?
I'm talking about Visa and MasterCard. Banks have regulations to worry about.
I just skimmed it, looks like a good piece of investigative work. I don't see where you're reading they're "legit products", all the article seems to say is that they're not outright dangerous.
And this holds absolutely no value to payment processors, btw. Health & Wellness is a high risk category, period. I don't know why you think "but they're legit!" is even sort of relevant.
I also don't think that accusing MasterCard/Visa of 'funding terrorism' is a good rebuttal to this. Terrorists are probably better at evading the payment networks than legitimate content creators that want nothing more than to legitimately accept payments.
I'm sure you can find inconsistencies because other people/businesses are better clients, don't pain a target on themselves, and if they break rules they aren't so blatant about it.
There is more to the financial industry than credit cards. In the EU you have SEPA which basically allows you to charge a bank account like a credit card (though if you're high risk you'll need written consent from the owner).
Stripe (et al) could just require higher risk categories complete AVS and 3DS to be authorised. Card companies could also manually force out-of-band verification (SMS, email, etc) you can ask but guarantee the cardholder is the card owner.
Yeah that adds the requirement for two factor authentication with flexible out of band options, by September 2019.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-4961_en.htm
So yes, this further lessens the risk of "that wasn't me" when a significant-other checks the bank statement and sees a pile of porn purchases. That's the historical risk element of legitimate adult transactions.
Perhaps the card processing chain will relax after that.
This is about the chilling effect of regulator's behavior.
Compliance is expensive, hard, and detailed. And if you fuck it up, it can sting very badly. Financial companies get away with a whole hell of a lot in America, but they can still get very expensive fines, and whole departments exist to mitigate this risk.
Financial software engineering is precisely as poor as you think it was. In 1985. Forget the scary stuff they build on purpose. The real fear is the scary stuff you didn't realize you built until an auditor finds it.
You don't ever want to do the kind of thing that causes an auditor to say "let's examine this closer", even if that thing is ultimately legal for reasons X and Y. You want the system to pass inspection with the minimum amount of scrutiny.
Being genuinely compliant for many types of nuanced clients is great. But it's a lot cheaper, and a lot safer, to be strictly compliant for limited types of generic clients. When you support services like this, you put a target on your back[0].
Mastercard and Visa are like Palantir. They're not innocent, but they're single nodes in a large machine that you'll never hear about because it doesn't interface directly with the public, and so they get all the shit because nobody knows where else to send it. Payment processors like FIS, the many institutions that issue cards through the card companies processed by the processing companies, they all have their own shaky infrastructure and compliance fears. No one org decides to shaft the public. They're all covering their asses. As a result, the set of industry best practices converges on the safest common denominator.
You want them to risk millions in fines and investigation that unearths more skeletons so you can host gifs of boobs? Through services where margins are measured in basis points? Good luck.
TLDLR: Visa and Mastercard are following orders from America, and behaving sanely given a corporation's fiduciary duty to not die. The correct place to attack this is with regulation that mandates equal access. Or better yet, blind access. Again, good luck.
I imagine your alternative is some cryptocurrency that becomes worthless as soon as people stop running the nodes. Yeah, that definitely has less risk than a legal financial entity backed by the United States Government.
Capitalism: It's a free country. Don't like it? Start your own business.
So many commenters on this are jumping to a slippery slope fallacy as if Stripe has any moral imperative to uphold free speech. They are a private company and have their own reasons to disassociate from any client they wish. That is their prerogative, and as long as they are not discriminating against anything that is a federally protected class (and last I checked, hosting porn is not federally protected) they can cut off services to anyone.
the "private company" argument doesn't apply super well when there are only a handful of options and they all have the same political ideology.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/cours...
"We always remove images of explicit sexual activity or fetishes, and nude or partially nude people in sexually suggestive poses."
Does GabTV have anything like this in their terms of service? Answer: No. They signed up with Stripe, agreed to the ToS, and now are generating moral outrage when Stripe comes knocking.
This is a true fact. But it is completely unrelated to your previous point, about slippery slopes.
This very much does seem to be a slope that is quite slippery.
Yes, a couple psuedo oligopoly payments processors could indeed collude together, and ban whatever the controversial thing of the day is.
This would be perfectly legal and the fact that it is perfectly legal and easy says something about our society. It says that the metaphor of a slippery slope where more and more people get censored, because they were on the wrong side of a corporation, is an accurate analogy.
But that's not what's happening here. Stripe has a very specific rule that gab.ai agreed to when they signed up. That is, no porn. Every company that uses Stripe that I've found includes some blurb in their ToS referencing "No Porn Allowed." I've also found it very difficult to find porn on these platforms using some generic search terms.
Of course gab.ai wouldn't want to do include this in their ToS, since they bill themselves as "champions free speech, [and] individual liberty". So now when Stripe comes to their front door asking about that thing they agreed to, now they are whipping up everyone into a moral outrage of "we are losing our free speech!"
Don't fall for it. Yes, those who control the purse strings control the speech, and yes payment processors who allow porn are very very limited and outrageously expensive. But from my experience in webhosting, this is very much tied to the fraud associated with the domain. If they don't like it, they can integrate with a payment gateway and merchant account themselves instead of using a full stack payment processor.
One thing Stripe cited was their underwriting FI wouldn't allow it. IIRC that FI was Wells Fargo, we my company has had a happy relationship since we started five years ago.
Downvote me all you want, but you can check for yourself, this is just a white supremacist cave.
Don't believe their freed of speech crap they promote.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/11/the-alt-right-created-a-para...
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywxb95/gab-is-the-alt-rig...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/growing-platform-gab-woos-alt-...
https://www.fastcompany.com/3065777/inside-gab-the-new-twitt...
So mostly Nazis, then.
Gab is the home of free speech online powered by The People. Always has been, always will be.
CEO of Gab.com here.
Here is our full response to Stripe:
Hello Stripe Support,
To our knowledge no one is using GabTV to specifically livestream adult content and certainly not charging to access this live content because that is not possible on Gab. Can you please cite any specific examples for our review if you have discovered any? Currently only GabPro accounts can livestream content, but Gab native video uploading can be used by anyone including free version users. I think you may be conflating GabTV livestreaming with Gab native video uploading. Further, anyone can view and access any native video or livestreaming content for free on Gab without processing any payments through Stripe or anyone else. We do not offer any form of "exclusive" video unlocking access features via GabPro.
Secondly, we have several protocols and user guidelines in place to prevent any illegal activity on the site. We work with law enforcement regularly and see to it that any illegal content is reported to the proper agencies. We also have several technical features in place such as PhotoDNA to scan for and report any illegal content, machine learning systems that detect nudity which is not properly labeled NSFW, and user guidelines that require any adult content to be marked as Not Safe For Work; which is a setting that is on by default for all users and public-facing links. Both our User Guidelines and our GabPro Content Creator Agreement state that we do not allow any illegal activity on our service.
We believe these guidelines and our user agreements already cover what your own guidelines require and we will certainly take action on any offending accounts if you can point us to specific violating examples. We will also work to add improved reporting features to GabTV videos to make it easier for users to flag this content in the future.
We are happy to jump on a call if it is easier to discuss because some of your requests are not clear. For example your demand that we remove all adult content from the entire site, which is a bit unreasonable considering the many technical and user guidelines we have in place to ensure the specific Stripe guideline you cite is not violated and that no illegal activity is happening on the site.
Please advise
Andrew Torba CEO, Gab.com
PS HN: We release our API today. Hit me up if you want to build something cool: andrew@gab.com https://developers.gab.com/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...
>While Torba paints this as a free speech issue, YC told BuzzFeed that he was kicked out for “for speaking in a threatening, harassing way toward other YC founders” — particularly in this Facebook comment:
>“All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it. I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks.”
>Torba had also tweeted a screenshot of another founder’s Facebook comment (the founder’s name was removed) that “being a black, Muslim or woman in the USA is going to be very scary” with his own comment: “Build the wall.” Then, in another thread, a YC alum alluded to Torba’s behavior without mentioning him by name, prompting him to jump in: “Say my name when you talk about me, coward. Build the wall.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DooMz4QV4AEEuv4.jpg:large
Here is the link to his comment if you wish to reply:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18136380
And make sure you turn on 'showdead' in your settings otherwise miss key comments like this.
The guy is banned, clearly because he's been an asshole to others. Since you have showdead, behold the kind of person he is: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rvcamo
As someone who regularly defends some pretty vile shit for ideological free speech reasons, it makes me uneasy how "freedom of speech" is starting to sound way too synonymous with "unrestricted license for nazis and assholes to spread their ideology and hatred even on private services".
The real damage neo-nazis can do is to turn people against the concept of free speech.
So I suggest we call this "Freedom of hate", instead.
Banned users' comments get killed automatically. We often unkill good comments posted by banned accounts. I've unkilled that one.
If you see a comment that shouldn't be [dead], click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. (There's a small karma threshold before those links appear.) You can also email us at hn@ycombinator.com to point out a comment that needs to be unkilled. Complaining off-topically in the thread does nothing but add noise, so please don't do that.
It's a tough call: I don't want to see losers abuse a private company's terms of service, nor do I want to see businesses be constantly virtue-signalling.
Virtue-signalling is itself a dirty business: how long 'til we see the neo-communists (or whatever, you choose) who happily sell Che shirts on Stripe?
No?
The problem with the slippery slope argument here is that it assumes the political, social and legal energies involved can and must only flow in one direction (in this case, towards maximum censorship.)
Yet human society doesn't operate like a fluid in a vacuum. Most people are capable of appreciating nuance, and of objecting to certain kinds of speech while not equivocating all forms of speech to the point that "everyone" becomes "a neo-nazi equivalent," simply because most people can see a difference between "neo-nazi" (read: someone who espouses white supremacist and/or anti-semitic ideals resembling those of the Nazi party) and "everyone" who espouses an opinion with which anyone else may disagree.
1. Gab.com signs up with Stripe, agreeing to “no-NSFW” rule in the TOS/contract
2. Gab.com allows NSFW content
3. They get mad when caught 2 years later
This seems pretty cut and dry. Are they claiming this is some sort of censorship and the NSFW thing is a straw man reason?
Maybe they shouldn’t have provided Stripe with such an obvious TOS violation. What did they think was going to happen?
There’s nothing special going on here.
Payment processors treating both identically is complete bullshit. Some people just hate porn, and they are trying to force their views on the world. Sadly, because there are no competitive competitors (adult payment processor fees are outrageous) they have no incentive to change their policies.
Does not imply:
"Freedom to use power to silence other people arbitrarily".
In fact it implies the opposite:
"Responsibility to uphold speech even if you disagree with it."
To believe a right exists means to believe it should be upheld, which means you should uphold it.
I'll arrange for you to tithe in support of organizations promoting those causes. I'll also arrange for someone to show up at your home, every day, and deliver a one-hour lecture on the ideas you dislike.
I'm sure you'll do this because, after all, you believe in free speech and you believe you must "uphold" it by requiring people to support ideas with which they disagree, Yes?
You seem to think that your response to any possible political idea MUST be either to donate to it, or use all possible power to attack and silence it. It's obviously a ridiculous false dichotomy. It is possible just to live and let live.
1. Not actively providing resources to a position you dislike
2. "Using your power to silence" positions you dislike
I know you've said these are equivalent, because you're arguing that certain people owe other people a platform and associated services (1), and you've used the language of (2) to shame them for not doing it.
The only thing left to do at this point is ask if you're willing to practice what you preach.
Simply treating a customer the same as other customers is not equivalent to actively providing resources to a political cause.
And yes, payment processors do owe it to customers to treat them equally with regards to their politics and beliefs (as well as their race, gender, language, and so on).
You seem to want to live in a world where wrongthinkers are viciously persecuted by every person, every business, everyone in every possible way. Because you think you'll always be in the team with the power to do that. When you have the experience of being the hated minority, you'll understand the value of equal treatment and the norms of individual freedom.
Politicians of explicitly right-wing alignment control:
* The US Presidency
* The US Senate
* The US House of Representatives
* 33/50 US governorships
* Legislatures of 26/50 US states
and are about to install a conservative-leaning majority into the US Supreme Court.
Rosa Parks you ain't, bud.
You're right it's not silencing if there are many alternatives, e.g. if someone wanted to buy a wedding cake.
It's fucked up even if it's neonazis (but I disagree with your usage of that term). It sets a precedent that you can willy nilly drop customers that might be relying on you.
Amazon did something similar to me a while back. I was livid.
It doesn't set the precedent (any private company can drop customers) and it wasn't "willy nilly" as you clearly acknowledge ("this was over nsfw content")
When gab.com decided to use Stripe, they willingly agreed to abide by those terms.
It’s not like Whole Foods came out of left field, having no relationship to things at all, and all of a sudden said “you have to close your website.”
What's your stance on the gay wedding cake supreme court case btw?