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Comment by potbelly83 | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people are missing the point. Most likely what's happening here is that the issuers (not Visa/MC) see a large number of chargebacks/fraud for adult content sites and have determined that it's much easier if they don't accept transactions from these sites.

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No, what's happening is that people like NCOSE and Collective Shout are putting pressure on the processors. They've loudly bragged about it. It's not the first time they've done it. And they've been known to enlist government actors to help with the pressure ("Operation Choke Point").

Every time this issue comes up, a bunch of people crawl out of the woodwork trying to prove how "wise" they are by mouthing this idea about chargebacks. And the processors are happy to keep their heads down and not dispute it, or even encourage it, since they really want the whole issue to just go away.

Chargebacks are not the issue here, and if you haven't paid any attention at all to what's actually going on, you're best advised not to make yourself look like a fool by talking about what you guess might "most likely" be happening.

Most likely what's happening here is that the issuers (not Visa/MC) see a large number of chargebacks/fraud for adult content sites and have determined that it's much easier if they don't accept transactions from these sites.

That's definitely what I would claim if I wanted to take down content I didn't want. Who is going to prove them wrong?

Why would visa/mc want to decline money? They love making money.

Because the money involved is peanuts, they don't want people running around trying to put them in the headlines as "enabling sexual exploitation", and a certain number of their internal people actually believe in the "cause".

Contrary to popular belief, corporations are composed of humans and do not reliably or mechanically follow only financial incentives. Nor are they always perfect in understanding their actual financial interests. Boycott threats are probably empty, but some people may not want to take the chance, or may have other motivations that cause them to overestimate that risk.

The money in adult content is not peanuts

I would wager it is closer to "economically load bearing" than it is to peanuts

What makes that "most likely," other than that you thought of it?

Occam's razor?

When you have advocacy groups going around in public saying "Look, we successfully pressured VISA/MC to do this", Occam's razor would suggest that that was true.

Sure but isn’t allowing those company to pick and choose what industries they service a dangerous precedent? They’ve monopolized the consumer credit markets and as such, can use that weight to dictate competition in consumer markets.

Their point is it isn't just a couple companies arbitrarily making these decisions. It is a vast network of banks and merchant services companies.

Ideally, you could take your business elsewhere. The problem is providers that handle these industries will expect a premium across all transactions and it would come off badly when customers see that large percentage added to each purchase.

So you have the decision of: your customers pay a premium or you don't carry adult material. If all your business is adult, it's an easy choice. You pay the premium.

This activist organization is pressing them until they are forced to make that decision based on a small amount of their hosted content. This is what I see as likely. Admittedly though, there are not enough details given to say for sure.

Isn't their official explanation that a religious group in Australia forced their hand?

Besides it not being a valid reason at all, they are not even trying to claim chargeback costs.

If this were actually true, then they would have gone after ALL NSFW games on Steam - but they very deliberately targeted specific genres that they didn't like.

You think chargebacks are disproportionately higher on NSFW games revolving around non-consensual themes versus other fetishes? Give me a break.

No. That's an often-repeated bullshit excuse.

Payment processors have ways of passing some of the chargeback risks onto the stores, and it's not like Steam itself is chargeback central. If you just want free games, pirating them is extremely easy, and trying to abuse chargebacks gets you banned.

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