I'm very puzzled as to how these "advocacy campaigns" are able to control all of the payment processors like this. That Collective Shout "open letter" must be the tip of the iceberg.
These groups like "Collective Shout" don't seem organic to me. Where do they find members? In churches? I'm pretty clued-in to the going on in various churches, nobody knows anything about Collective Shout. It just materialized out of thin air, with a slick website and loudly claiming responsibility for these bans. "Look at us! We did this! No need to look elsewhere!"
Let me put on my aluminum-foil hat for a minute... Could this all be social engineering by some government agency that wants to ban porn (not outright, but make porn sites go out of business) to increase the birth rate to avoid demographic collapse? Just asking questions here.
My answer to that has always been - if a "private company" is so important and critical to a nation or economy, like a payment processor, then that company has lost the right to be private and needs to be nationalized and become a public service. Had this argument all the time back in '08; if a company needs bailed out by the government or the nation/economy will collapse, its clearly too important to be a private for profit enterprise and should be nationalized and become a public service
Not everything needs, nor should be, a private enterprise for profit. Payment processors, utilities, etc. should just be public services, available to all equally and for all legal purposes.
A much milder, and more sensible, expression of your underlying sentiment is:
If an activity becomes this essential, the government should provide a competitive entrant in the same field.
Now the incumbent provider has competition, and there is a market participant tied to other incentives, etc.
No theft necessary.
I'll admit I didn't even think of that, and yeah I'd agree that's a good solution worth pursuing in cases like this. I can think of many industries where we need to inject competition into the market.
It just seems like the government entity would need to actively engage with seeking profits or just existing to artificially lower costs. I don't think the majority of people would want the government to have a for-profit arm that exists to compete with businesses, and I don't think corporations would just play nice.
I'd say that USPS is the closest example of this, and it's a pretty good example of how things can go wrong as well. The active attack against the postal service to try to privatize it is terrible. It will do nothing but continue to isolate power to the ultra wealthy and make people's lives worse. For-profit corporations and the government just have (or ought to have) fundamentally different incentives to exist.
I'd be curious to know of any examples of this working well. I don't mean to be so antagonistic, I just am really struggling to understand how this could work in any way.
The issue is not how complicated and difficult such an endeavor is (and you rightly identify it as such).
The issue is, if we're going to do this heavy lifting anyway, might we do it in a way that doesn't involve theft ?
Expropriation usually involves paying the owners so it isn't theft, its just the government buying out the stocks just like a private corporation would. Are you saying Elon musk stole twitter? That is the same thing.
Anyway, here since this is shared between countries its better to just regulate what these processors can do, like the EU does when they regulate how large payment processing fees can be etc. Since its used for international trade no single country can own it.
It's not at all the same thing.
Twitter could have said no.
We must NOT expect the government to excel at anything. We must assume it is, and will always be, a mediocre follower of established playbooks. To ensure the government accomplishes X, we must stress in the playbook that X is mandated and cannot be compromised in any way.
You cannot mandate competitiveness.
I'd agree, although considering our nation's decline into an authoritarian state I wouldn't trust a government competitor to be any better about protecting artistic works from censorship. Project 2025 makes the administration's feelings on this topic pretty clear.
There's always the other, less visible but more lethal attack front..
the CFO whispering in the board's ear about chargebacks.
I think what we need to get a handle on is guys, or gals, telling their spouses, "Oh I have no idea what that charge is doing on our card!?!?!"
Of course it's going to be disputed. We need some method of attribution that is definitive. So that people can't go around doing that any longer.
Make no mistake, these companies are about money. Morality or no morality, if you take chargebacks reliably back in hand adult content would likely show itself to be more profitable than nearly every other segment of their business.
Would there still be a line? Absolutely. But it would be a line that nearly everyone would be in agreement with, and the line would exclude nowhere near the amount of content it does today.
Lies: these transactions don't get charged back at a higher rate.
https://apnews.com/article/gun-violence-shootings-new-york-c...
Visa and Mastercard were getting pressure from New York officials to put firearm purchases into their own category, something that the gun control advocates say could help stop potential mass shooters by red flagging large gun purchases. The initiative was stopped by Republican politicians and other lobbyists.
https://apnews.com/article/mastercard-visa-guns-second-amend...
Paypal IIRC also won't process payments for anything firearm related.