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Comment by CaliforniaKarl | Hacker News Reader

> As such, they require such websites (merchants) to prove that individuals in such videos are of legal age (no minors in the videos, because if so - that's illegal and horrible). > > This seems totally fair, commendable and hard to disagree with - if you ask me.

Indeed! Though it's important to note that it's more than just that (as important as age verification of performers is!).

Mastercard and Visa are also acting as de facto controllers of what is acceptable content. In other words, not just who is participating, but what is being done.

For example, "… blood is banned, even blood obviously made of ketchup. This is a disaster for vampire porn, which is akin to a forbidden good on the internet." That's not my thing, but I also don't think Mastercard and Visa should be the ones who regulate that.

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Yes, OP also misses the fact that Visa and MC can gate-keep legal activities as well. Selling smoking accessories is legal under US law, but good luck getting a payment processor that'll let you sell those goods online. You can get a high risk processor, but they hold your funds for longer, charge a higher rate, and you can lose processing ability at any time.

If you're established, Visa and MC will make exceptions, but who decided to make Visa and MC the deciders on what people can and cannot sell. That's what US laws are for. In my opinion, this is the only use case for crypto that I can see playing out, decentralized payments. Sure fees maybe higher, but at least a private company can't restrict what you can sell online while whitelisting some competitors.

> Sure fees maybe higher, but at least a private company can't restrict what you can sell online while whitelisting some competitors.

Until exchanges turn around and do the same thing as Visa/Mastercard once they have enough market share...and they aren't subject to anywhere near as many regulations.

Sure that could happen, but I'd hope there's enough competition in crypto payment processing that keeps them honest. Visa and MC have too big of a strong hold right now.

> OP also misses the fact that Visa and MC can gate-keep legal activities as well. Selling smoking accessories is legal under US law, but good luck getting a payment processor that'll let you sell those goods online

Visa & MC are not processors.

Yes, but Stripe or Paypal adhere to their rules. Visa and MC are the reason those processors don't allow high risk businesses.

For example, OnlyFans last year nearly banned adult content because their processor was going to drop them. Visa/MC were blamed for that, but they ended up making an exception. If you go out to build an OnlyFans alternative, you won't get a processor.

So are you suggesting Visa/MC shouldn’t comply with laws & regulation?

Visa/MC aren’t the “bad guys” here. They are just trying to adhere to the required laws & regulations impose on them.

EDIT: I can’t reply to your comment below, so I’m going to reply here.

> If selling adult services or goods is "illegal," then the US law should codify it, not leave it up Visa/MC/processors to decide.

This is where I think you’re confusing matters. Visa/MC aren’t “deciding”. They are simply asking a merchant to prove if unknown activity is NOT illegal.

If the merchant can’t prove its not illegal, then correct - that merchant can’t continue to transact.

But they aren’t deciding. And that’s the big difference.

EDIT2:

> Now, it’s within Visa and MC’s prerogative to operate how they see fit. A government-backed or decentralized network would bring some needed competition.

The merchant doesn’t have to accept those card networks. They could accept cash, check, ACH, bitcoin, bank transfer, PayPal, WePay, Zelle, etc.

>> So are you suggesting Visa/MC shouldn’t comply with laws & regulation?

Of course Visa/MC should stop payments for illegal activities, but they go after legal activities as well. That's the issue. If selling adult services or goods is "illegal," then the US law should codify it, not leave it up Visa/MC/processors to decide. And it Visa/MC straight up banned these sort of payments, it wouldn't be an issue, but they play favoritism for some companies and ban others out right. Not to mention, many legal businesses lose payment processing ability without even a reason. They claim that even giving a reason will give violators too much information about their internal security.

The EU is actually building their own payment system to combat this [0] and I really think the US should as well.

0. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/payment-services-psd-2-directi...

>> This is where I think you’re confusing matters. Visa/MC aren’t “deciding”. They are simply asking a merchant to prove if unknown activity is NOT illegal.

This is the fundamental difference. Why is the burden of proof on the merchant of wrongdoing? And in reality, payment processors don’t ask for proof, they ban without recourse. Just google getting banned on PayPal and you’ll see thousands of merchants selling legal non-adult goods getting banned.

Now, it’s within Visa and MC’s prerogative to operate how they see fit. A government-backed or decentralized network would bring some needed competition.

"Can't prove a negative." Law is too vague and extensive to work this way.

They're going after all kinds of random nonsense, not just legality.

Yes they're the "bad guys". They are not just trying to adhere to laws.

Why hasn't crypto made inroads into this world yet? Porn is historically an early adopting industry (online payments, thumbnail play w/scroll, VR, etc.) and this seems like a theoretically optimal use case where someone would desire some level of anonymity or at least some obfuscation as to their identity

I was very excited about Solana Pay[0] when it dropped last year, but it doesn't seem to have gotten much traction.

0. https://solanapay.com/

Interesting, will they have a TOS similar to Coinbase Commerce (which bans porn as a business category) https://commerce.coinbase.com/legal/terms-of-service/

Hmmmm, maybe because both of them allow people to pay with credit card and send crypto. True decentralized payments would be crypto to crypto but that would force users to hold that crypto in a wallet.

Solana still regularly goes down because it has little rate limiting or DDoS protection. Until that is fixed it's unlikely many will adopt it for payments.

> Why hasn't crypto made inroads into this world yet?

Why do you assume it hasn't? If I try to purchase premium on PornHub[1], it ONLY shows cryptocurrency as an option, and says: "Unfortunately we are unable to accept credit cards at this moment"

(Maybe in other regions it's different)

And I'm sure almost all porn websites accept crypto.

Also 4chan pass[2], can ONLY be purchased with crypto as well.

[1] Not linked in case it violates HN guidelines

[2] https://www.4channel.org/pass

Hey, what do you know! I've never actually clicked through to subscribe on any of these sites, I just assumed from the article and all the comments that there was no alternative to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly. Thoughts on why it hasn't achieved much adoption?

> Thoughts on why it hasn't achieved much adoption?

You mean crypto for porn payments, or crypto in general?

If crypto is not only accepted on basically all porn websites, but also the only option in many of them, then I'd say adoption is quite good. If PornHub accepts only crypto, and (someone on this post claimed) that half of their income comes from subscribers, then a significant amount of people must be using crypto to pay for porn.

We probably just don't hear about it because people are ashamed of spending money on porn.

A lot of these sites also prefer to pay their content providers in crypto.

For me it shows bank transfer and bitcoin as payment options. I'm in the US.

Yep. The problem is that the credit card issuers' regulations go way beyond determining that the content being purchased is legal, and well into judging the morality of that content. Credit card processors go even further; many of them forbid sales of adult products and services entirely.

I don't believe that. These companies want to make money and would love to make more. They also don't want to lose money, so they find ways to decrease risk. Their lawyers probably tell them what's risky and draw the line there. If you don't want them making these judgements then voters should tell their regulator exactly what is and isn't ok.

> then voters should tell their regulator exactly what is and isn't ok.

like what, a list of allowed porn Ganres? thats not making any sence.

And neither does regulation preventing purchasing porn either. But be explicit about what’s ok and what’s not if you’re going to regulate it. Otherwise companies decide for themselves and we end up here.

Vampire fetish stuff seems harmless to me, but I'm not surprised Visa and Mastercard don't want to get into the weeds of determining the difference between special effects and actual self-harm / mutilation. There is a whole lot of gray area in between there (piercing fetish, etc), but they probably feel compelled to draw a line somewhere. Whether or not the video seems to show blood (real or fake) seems like a criteria that can be judged with reasonable objectivity, and errors on the side of caution.

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