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Comment by KolmogorovComp | Hacker News Reader

For many (notably mastercard and VISA), when they say “ethical” they really mean anything but porn.

So....

  ffmpeg -i porn.mp4 -vf "crop=crop_w:crop_h:coord_x:coord_y" "definitely not porn.mp4"
  *faceswap "definitely not porn.mp4*
  ffmpeg -i porn.mp4 -i "swapped definitely not porn.mp4" -filter_complex "[0][1]overlay=coord_x:coord_y" -c:a copy "deepfake porn.mp4"

Got it

That they do, but perhaps the relevant context is that while porn is globally unregulatable, but the one entity that has proven its ability to regulate it (or at least exercise some control over it) have been payment processors like Visa and Mastercard.

FT had a fantastic podcast on the porn industry and the guy behind Mindgeek. Like many stories about multinational entities, you constantly hear the usual refrains - noone can regulate this, the entities keep changing their name and face, there is no accountability, etc. But when Visa and Mastercard threaten to pull their payments, the companies have to listen.

Visa and mastercard are the de facto regulators of porn today, and mostly do so to prevent nonconsentual and extreme fetish stuff from being displayed on mainstream platform.

From what I gathered from the podcast, they're not super keen on being the regulator - but it's a dirty job and somebody has to do it.

They don't care about the content, they care about the correlation with customers who have an exceptional rate of chargebacks or other payment avoidance on legitimate purchases.

Cryptocurrency and the like may offer a way out of that problem by allowing direct purchases, but only for companies willing to deal with the support burden of making everything nonrefundable.

Finance is also an extremely socially conservative industry. There are very recessive attitudes behind closed doors.

And also the recessive policies come out in the open in front of the world from people like the ones who created "operation chokepoint", who are perhaps not help us as being super 'socially conservative'.

Your choice of entertainment, information and tools is under attack from all sides when they can get away with it.

cryptocurrency doesn't offer credit card chargebacks, but why can't you refund customers by sending them the same amount of crypto back from where it came from? I've gotten merchants to give me refunds to a different credit card before.

Chargebacks are done by the customer and card agency, not the merchant.

There have been some instances where they have been 'about the content'-

The statements about chargebacks and porn were certainly true around 20 years ago, but that became less and less over time.

I don't think this is the case - because then we'd see them pull card services for porn websites altogether. This clearly didn't happen, nor was it the intention. They never did anything that would reduce revenue.

Instead, it was more a case of regulation to avoid looking like their services were financing illegal or illicit content.

that seems like an overreaction. the card processors ban much more questionable trades - such as weapons and terrorism financing

That's because the state is forcing them to.

The state has never stopped the funding of terrorism.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/us-taxpayers-may-funding-ta...

Sure, but that doesn't mean it wants competition in that space.

I can't find anything to support your claim about weapons. Seems pretty much all online arms dealers I can find selling anything from grenades, machine guns, and even rocket launchers take credit cards and I'm fairly certain stores also accept them too.

I am not sure what the current state of the issue is, but there was an initial effort to restrict gun sales in various devious and deceptive ways since it is illegal to overtly do so because it is legal trade and economic activity.

I would not be surprised though if the clear illegality of the violation of the Constitution of such efforts were brought to the attention of the payment processors, and they were reminded that they would severely regret hastening attention on an effort that still needs to happen, a public electronic payment processing capacity.

It's not illegal to not enable weapon dealing. Try selling a Glock on Amazon and let me know how long it takes before they ban your account.

> grenades, machine guns, and even rocket launchers

Umm, yeah - what country are you buying live grenadesor working rocket launcher online with a Mastercard? Cuz it’s not the US or Canada. And if it’s not a live grenade or working rocket launcher, it’s no different than any hunk of metal.

uh. yeah... us and canada are a tiny fraction of the world, also what is really buying using visa or mastercard? if i use visa to byy crypto and then get explosives (which can be transparently done) there is nothing they can or will do about it... - buying things online has nothing to do with countries or borders, nor is it always clear, to payment providers or even customers, what kind of scheme enables a payment..

I buy weapons with my Visa card all the time.

And backed off from blocking Onlyfans.

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