Visa and MasterCard Are Trying to Dictate What You Can Watch on Pornhub
eff.org
eff.org
What’s funny is that most people would disagree with one of my proposed solutions and agree with the other, depending on who the affected parties are. Blocking payments to a porn website? A lot of people applaud this on a moral stance. Refusing to make a cake for a gay couple? A lot of those same people condemn this action. But they are very similar actions once you take away the emotional pleas.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that we can’t have one solution on day one and then switch to another solution on day two. Trying a mix is how we created these problems. I could expand but I think I’ll leave it here before I get to political.
Edit: I guess I should acknowledge that a fully regulated market is inefficient and slow, and that’s part of the reason communism/socialism ended in the collapse of the USSR. A fully deregulated financial market would probably mean some shady payment processors would pop up and take advantage of people. But what we have right now allows a small group of unelected people to make decisions for us by taking advantage of the situation they’ve lobbied for. I guess you have to decide whether you like this status quo or if you want to try an alternative.
There are always frictional losses for even the smallest of transactions, and if all participants have to accommodate for these losses ahead of time, or pay the penalty if not (eventually), then there is in effect path dependency to any possible market behaviour. Really, a global maxima solution of ‘truly free’ anything is unobtainable in the real world. (And even if it was achieved by happenstance, how could we tell it’s the global maxima?)
I imagine the actual trade off wouldn’t be the simple one dimensional spectrum either, since the problem space is obviously multi-dimensional, the ideal solution would almost certainly require multi-dimensional optimization.
Moreover, they're not even the primary payment processors for most adult websites, and haven't been for over a decade.
Even in a 'free market' you're not free from the consequences of your actions, and you're not unaccountable. And furthermore, just because two actions are motivated by ethical judgements, doesn't mean they're equivalent. Being a homophobic cake vendor isn't the same as trying to stop the funding of child porn.
The EFF article seems to suffer from the same misconception, accusing Visa and Mastercard of 'censorship' and asks where they got the authority to 'regulate speech'.
In free societies there is another freedom, namely freedom of association, which these firms exercise when they decide not to do business with Pornhub, which nobody ought to compell them to. Also as a sidenote, declaring pornsite payments freedom of speech is a strange reframing of the concept
We can let Visa and MC have their freedom of association or we can let them have their protected position in the market, but we can’t have both. It’s not working. But because this case is all “somebody think of the children” then people are letting them get away with it.
What about the other instances that the EFF linked to where a porn site wasn’t doing anything illegal? Are you going to have any options when it’s your (healthy and legal, but maybe niche) kink under attack? What about when it’s not even porn, but Visa and MC decide that Discord is used to enable piracy, and cuts off payments? Are you going to support these actions when a popular chat app with many legitimate users is the one affected?
You see this all the time with these industries, there are countless of advertisers, but almost all of them avoid the porn industry, because nobody wants to be associated with it. It's not a market power issue, that's only tangential in this case.
People don't want to be commercially associated with scandal plagued porn sites, any business would lose most customers or suppliers if it acted like this, and I think that's fine. IF you think the American people are too harsh on porn sites then you gotta take it up with them.
It's comparable to say, Google throwing Alex Jones of YouTube. Yes, Google is huge, but that's not the reason they're doing it, it's because they're anticipating public backlash which is bad for their business. If there were 10 youtubes, 8-9 of them would have thrown him off too. It's way too simplistic to say that a large company is exercising undue market power every time it makes a decision about who to do business with. That's only true if the size is the actual motivation for that decision, not if they're just responding to consumers.
I think that this drama is good for everyone except for payment processors. PornHub is forced to self-police more, payment processors are spotlighted for having too much power, and crypto-currencies show their value.
Who comes out of this poorly in my eyes is the EFF which has spent the last 2-3 years wandering so far from their original path that I have stopped what used to be a regular recurring donation to them.
The EFF's changes are an excellent demonstrations of Conquest's Second Law of Politics, "any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing".
I disagree with people arguing that companies like Cloudflare should not be allowed to choose their customers. Because there are countless other similar services that can for the most part, do what Cloudflare does.
But the 3 big payment processors are an oligopoly and you effectively cannot do business without them. Crypto is a joke when it comes to relative adoption. There are no other options if you plan to run a business today.
I can imagine the US, at least, moving towards a future where Bitcoin is allowed as a financial instrument, but transferring to a wallet you control requires background checks and waiting periods like firearms. Either due to pressure from governments, credit card processors, or both.
At this point pornhub is big enough, that fb, google and twitter all banning it might honestly be less of a threat to them than their payment processors pulling support.
Convincing users to type a dns name into the address bar of a very famous website seems easier than convincing the users to mail a cheque (esp. Internationally where people dont use cheques) or pay bitcoin
This is reality for millions of people. You need a accepted phone number for all of these services, and not every country/provider is accepted.
The fact that "less convenient way that put off 80% of customers" exists is no excuse for payment processors not being neutral.
Imagine being a rather large consumer electronics web store. You're doing very well, with a good brand loyalty and major part of the market and pride yourself on fast delivery times. Suddenly, your credit card processor drops you because you sold an electronic sex toy that one time and that's against Jesus or whatever. Now the only way to get paid is through bank transfers (takes up to 2 days to go through, fees, pain in the ass) or cash at delivery (huge fee, need to withdraw cash in advance). There are 3 other stores in your market that never made that fatal mistake - who do you think will still buy from you? You're left with only a handful of business customers. Once you downsize because 80% of your revenue is gone, they leave too. F
We have instant payments without heavy fees for both parts as swiss exclusive solution (twint) and online banking (normal eu transactions) are easier than ever with modern banking apps.
The main reason to have a credit card around here is using foreign online services. I know many people that simply never got one, because no need.
I am sure other countries go similiar paths.
I'd argue that's the much smaller part than cards used for travelling. (At least that used to be the case and will again be the case).
Try renting a car, or checking into a hotel without a credit card.
Booking an airline ticket with cash may also provide you with extended attention by security personnel.
There basically is no fraud. At least i never was involved in a case. European banking is well protected with different tan systems. As well as insuries usually including bank fraud afaik.
Edit:// The only fraud issues i have are with credit cards.
So, if the puritans and the advertisers in the US are against e.g. BDSM or feet fetisism, or whatever, people all around the world should just bend over and take it (pun intended) because the two monopolies in payment processing decided to make businesses offering them unviable?
Fuck this (pun intended). Payment processing should be like ISPs: neutral. If something is illegal, they sure can take it out. Anything else, it's not their place, and it's even less the advertisers place to exert undue influence.
Payment neutrality is just as important, and as required as net neutrality.
I hope in response to this more companies adopt cryptocurrencies and help make visa/mastercard obsolete.
Pornhub is an easy target especially for those leftist activists and extortionists who make lots of noises in the "respected" media outlets.
Seems unlikely. I presume you have a source for that assertion. And anyway, as I said, Visa and Mastercard acted in response to allegations of illegal content not just the fact that there was porn
> leftist activists and extortionists who make lots of noises in the "respected" media outlets
I think that might just be in your head.
PornHub isn't under attack because of child porn, or non-consensual porn, it's under attack by people who think porn is inherently bad, and who have found that they don't need to convince people to agree with them as long as they can make it seem like their targets are particular venues for content that is uncontroversially bad, which inevitably involves distortion and ignoring mainstream venues that are much more significant channels for the problem they want to pretend to be fighting.
PornHub is just porn. And they've been on notice for years that CP and non-consensual videos are being uploaded to their system yet don't very little to stop it. They claim that they have filters and other systems in place to stop illegal uploads, but those systems are so useless that PH claimed they had 0 illegal porn on their website, when that was demonstrably false prior to them removing all unverified user-uploaded content.
The only reason I can see for not be concerned more about the former than the latter is that the concern about CP/non-consent is feigned and the real concern is about legitimate porn, with the CP/non-consent as merely convenient pretext.
Which is also consistent with those concerns becoming more shrill when the porn site takes drastic action to deal with the problem which removes the pretext.
Until PornHub is found guilty by that system, then Visa and Mastercard withdrew their services because of a dislike of the service provided.
The basic rule is, these social media sites have to make a reasonable effort to keep that stuff off their sites. Based on the NYTimes report, Pornhub was absolutely not doing that. Visa and MC's lawyers would have given them no choice but to stop working with Pornhub.
I personally wouldn't use PornHub, as I have a negative impression of their moderation standards. Being exposed to child porn could put me at serious legal risk, if I were to inadvertently view the wrong thing. But, that is a simple risk calculation on my part. And I am already surprised so many people would put themselves at risk, of using a website which lets anyone to submit content.
There are investigative articles showing how journalists have directly contacted Pornhub/similar sites because of that and they didn't take down videos in question.
That said, if Pornhub thinks they have a right to get payment processing from Visa/Mastercard, they should probably sue them. Judicature and executive are really fundamentally different from Visa/Mastercard. For instance they don't have any means to force Pornhub to any action apart looking for better customers. I don't see any ambiguity there.
They are doing this to avoid the appearance off having something to do with child porn, not due to legal liability
I am sorry but how are you not understanding that this is one and the same?????
If it were proven in a court of law that
- your associate’s business knowingly trafficked in child pornography - you had reason to believe they were complicit in child pornography - you continued working with that business anyway
then that exposes you to severe criminal liability, the kind that sends you to jail even if you’re a Vice President at VISA. And it should! Child pornography is a heinous crime that goes unpunished far too often. “Gee officer, I’m just a humble MasterCard corporate lawyer, how was I supposed to know?” is a ridiculous excuse.
Payment processors are pretty near a utility at this point. Without access to them it's very hard to do a lot of things in the modern world. They certainly seem more essential than phone and internet service.
That's like saying we should boycott the telephone company because a child molester made a phone call.
If there is evidence that they were aware of child pornography on their platform and did nothing about it that would be different .
It is also not like these issues are new. Pornhub has been criticized for allowing underage pornography since at least 2009, when footage of men raping a 14-year-old girl was uploaded to the site and not removed for 6 months, despite the videos racking up hundreds of thousands of views and the girl’s family repeatedly pleading with PornHub to remove the video. This has been a known problem with PornHub for over a decade. Even if the executives are just profoundly ignorant and bad at their jobs, that is not a good enough excuse in a court of law.
> That's like saying we should boycott the telephone company because a child molester made a phone call.
It is really more like saying that we should boycott the phone company because the child molester ran a nationwide criminal conspiracy around sexual assault using a premium phone service, and the phone company did nothing despite the problem being repeatedly brought to their attention. In which case: yes, boycott the damn phone company and demand a criminal investigation of its executives.
A big part of the problem is people completely trivializing the issue. The EFF doesn’t even mention child exploitation! Pretending this is just about censoring legal pornography, or blowing small instances out of proportion, is completely dishonest and morally despicable.
In a way yes. Should the utility stop providing electricity because to someone they think I'd using it to manufacture illegal drugs?
I don't think so. The punishment is for a court to decide, not some of their service providers.
Now, arguably, there should be a fallback payment system with utility-like requirements for universal service that can be cutoff only with due process (certainly, that's needed on the consumer side of banking to deal with the problem of the unbanked, but there's arguably good cause of it on the merchant side of financial exchange as well.) For one thing, an explicit guarantee would make it harder for government officers from using informal pressure on private payment processors as a means to punish targets while evading due process, which it has historically done quite often, with the deniability that it is a free decision.
If a person or firm has a reasonable belief that a business partner is committing crimes or even just behaving unethically, I would say they have an obligation to curb the activity or end the business relationship.
This idea that only the courts should limit or punish crimes pops up here once in a while and I've always found it bizarre.
If child porn was not a crime would you be ok with Visa and MasterCard doing something then? Is it in your view that should they only not do something because it's a crime?
Isn't that the entire point of a court? to have a monopoly on punishing crimes so that people aren't unfairly punished on the basis of gossip or false allegation and so that society doesn't sink into a cycle of vengence where one group punishes the other group for their punishment, and so forth.
That said, punishing a crime is different from refusing to do business with someone because you don't like them. I think the objection is that payment processors are an oligopoly which gives them too much power to behave arbitrarily. If you live in a city and one grocery store doesn't do business with you, that's fine go somewhere else. If there is only one grocery store, then that's akin to starving someone and it should require the evidentiary standard of wrong doing a court would have.
The courts do have a monopoly on certain types of punishment, like prison. Other, informal types, such as declining to do business with somebody, are available to individuals and companies. I don't see that as a contradictory or undesirable situation.
For example anything related to prositituion. Perfectly legal here and any neighboor countries. Yet the only payment processors available basically refuse to work with startups (i.e. companies that not already charge 100000+ via credit card)
I may be missing something, but right now these few grandfathered sites that exist have the full monopoloy just because nobody else can realistically charge for the service.
If visa/MasterCard learned that you were using their card to buy drugs and guns for children, they would terminate your account and contact social services.
You would need to be a merchant bank (ODFI) to control ACH payment access, and the US govt. doesn't normally grant banking charters any more, as all the YC batches have learned the hard way. So you'd have to buy an existing bank.
But Visa and Mastercard still wouldn't process cc payments.
Maybe they'll do something with crypto, but more likely they'll give people some in-house currency (PornBucks) that are spendable on the Mindgeek network. Maybe the big 2 processors would be okay with that again (they seem to still have hope), but it'd also be perfectly doable through wire transfers. Heck, if they have the ambition they could expand from there.
Isn't it challenging for, amongst others, adult entertainers, the legal marijuana industry and bitcoin/crypto currency businesses to maintain stable banking relationships?
They censor things by the landscape created by litigative US citizens who have money. Now why should any EU citizen have anything in common with this?
But they they come for you...
Shortsightedness.
So, it sounds like credit card companies' main goal is to not support exploitation of underage and non-consenting women.
Pornhub is removing all of their unverified videos because that's the only way both parties can be satisfied that what remains is consenting & legal-age.
I think this title is misleading.