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Comment by LudwigNagasena | Hacker News Reader

Uhm, if a company directly engages in illegal activities it should be shut down by the government. The idea that it should be simply cut off from payment networks makes no sense. I don’t see that as fair.

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That's three different entities:

Whoever is supplying content to PornHub has to uphold the law. They do that by providing evidence that there are no minors in the adult content (easy for a legit business) and that they hold copyright (somehow this gets forgotten).

PornHub has to uphold the law. They do this by keeping records supplied by the content producers about verification of actor's ages; when there's a problem, they need to remove the content. If there's a recurring problem, they need to bar the source.

MasterCard has to uphold the law. They do that by investigating complaints, and if they find illegal content, they send PornHub a warning. If PornHub doesn't act, either by showing that the content is legal or by removing it, MC has to drop PH.

Mastwrcard doesn't find illegal content - they find somwthing they Think is illegal, and they could be wrong.

I mean…risk vs reward here. I think I’d rather a bunch of “above board” pornography be accidentally banned so that even just one child getting raped/molested/assaulted doesn’t become digitalized and consumed by people.

Question:

Would it be better for the abuse to happen but not be digitalized and distributed such that there was some hope of said child being rescued by authotities after an investigation is kicked off by someone reporting it?

You have to think through things completely. Out of sight, out of mind doesn't mean that child doesn't get abused. It just means you don't see it.

What you're championing is really "I'm fine if a everyone else's ability to see content I don't care about is jeopardized in order to ensure I never ever see this type of content I do care about."

Which is counterproductive fundamentally, as I assume the welfare of the child is more important than the taboo'd digital artifact, correct? If you can't find it, you can't do anything about it, or pass it along to someone who can.

There is no "the law", laws are local things. If a teen uploads their sex tape that may be legal where they are.

But that's not the point is it? The point is that Mastercard and Visa are facilitating the transfer of money for illegal transactions. In the same way you can't start a bank to facilitate money laundering, Mastercard and Visa cannot knowingly facilitate the transfer of money for illegal goods.

The problem is they are going beyond what’s illegal and cutting off usage/content they just don’t like for whatever reason—see the vampire porn example in another comment, wikileaks, etc.

Do we want unaccountable monopolies making decisions about who can access the financial system and who can’t based on their own subjective values?

I mean there are certainly alternatives to Visa and Mastercard. Credit cards aren't the only way to pay for goods and services. PayPal and Crypto being the most common. For personal transfers there's also Wise (which you can do person-to-person instantly), and if you live in some countries there's stuff like Interac E-Transfer for making personal payments. If worse comes to worse there's bank transfers and ACH, which are accessible from virtually any bank.

I see Visa and Mastercard like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and they seem to have the right to refuse service to anyone they want to.

There should be something like a safe harbour / common carrier provision. We recognised that this was vital for postal and telephone networks, that the benefits of a neutral network outweighed the costs of carrying crime sometimes. It should be the same for money transmission.

Yet they do

https://news.bitcoin.com/5-major-banks-exposed-for-moving-tr...

The idea is that MC and Visa are themselves at risk of being shut down by the government if they knowingly allow payments for illegal activity. Companies being what they are, to avoid the risk of impropriety they forbid more than what the law technically does.

> Visa are themselves at risk of being shut down by the government if they knowingly allow payments for illegal activity.

surely this is a joke. when was the last time government has shut down a major financial institution? From 2008 securities fraud to HSBC being involved in laundering drug money, this never happens

Governments shutdown financial institutions or threaten to pretty regularly.

India suspended mastercard for failing to adhere to their new data privacy laws in 2018 (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mastercard-shifts-f...).

Read as "heavily fine."

> The idea is that MC and Visa are themselves at risk of being shut down by the government if they knowingly allow payments for illegal activity.

Operative word being knowingly. Demanding every customer prove every part of their business is legal activity != "not knowingly allow illegal activity."

Also, the notion that MC or Visa would be shut down over this sort of thing is absurd.

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