The text is on there and is very straightforward. As far as I can tell it's a basically good bill.

Historically, payment processors were usually against republicans, which is why you see them acting in support of this.

Debanking is a form of social deplatforming that (for now) mostly targets right-wing causes. That's not at all to assert that the bill is wrong or that censorship is right—I'm just clarifying why it's Republicans on the side against censorship, in this context, when in other contexts the roles are flipped.

You can read the bill's author (Kevin Cramer) discussing that bill and his motives for writing it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250715113010/https://fedsoc.or... ("Debanking: The Newest Threat to Free Speech and Religious Liberty?) (2024)

> [Senator Kevin Cramer] "...I've heard that one from some pretty big bank presidents - but they get a lot of noise in their left ear and you have activist investors and whatnot that are saying, hey, you know what? We don't like coal. We don't like oil, we don't like natural gas. We don't like private prisons, or we don't like ammunition shops or gun manufacturers or whatever the case might be, the entire category or industry and says, "Well, so we're not going to bank them. We're going to debank them. We're not going to bank them. You're disqualified from getting money from us.”, and they're starving these industries out. And all this really is, in my view, you guys is this is a political agenda where they're utilizing the leverage of the financial services sector to accomplish policy goals that they can't accomplish any other way."

> and now I'm wondering what awful shit is hiding in it.

Had to look into it a bit.

From looking at the text of the bill, it looks like the sponsor did not like Operation Choke Point [0], which was specifically targeting banks that did business with Payday Lenders, Ponzi Schemes, and other shady vendors.

This also included pornography, but I'm willing to bet that's not what Sen. Cramer was upset about. More likely, he's simply serving the interest of his donors.

He also might have extremist "small business" constituents that are perhaps selling racist/sexist/homophobic merch, and they don't like being told that their bank/credit card processors are refusing to process payments on that swag.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

> Turns out it's actually an R bill, with exclusively R sponsors, and now I'm wondering what awful shit is hiding in it.

It seems to me like if you thought something was good and then switched to thinking it was bad based just on who proposed it, you need to stop being prejudiced. Evaluate ideas (or bills) for their merits, not based on who originated them.

>Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have always been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use it. I want to buy something not support everyone that get their hands in my transaction chain.

But you're doing this with credit cards already? Different amounts, but still supporting everyone in a chain. If you want to "buy" something without supporting intermediates, then barter is the only way to go. Everything else requires common trust, and common trust comes with operating cost.

> Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have always been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use it.

That's not true, at least not in general. Polygon (and USDT/USDC on Polygon) fees are near zero, Ethereum is lately very cheap, and even Bitcoin fees are no longer outrageous. EDIT: ...and Bitcoin Lightning is cheap.

A lot of p0rn payment processing is done in crypto for exactly the censorship reasons. If you can't use the payment processor, who cares what their fees are? (not saying they are cheaper or more expensive than crypto - I don't know)

This has mostly been solved. Bitcoin's lightning network, ethereum layer 2 networks, etc all have sub-cent fees.

> The US government can break up the duopoly and open up payments processing federally.

Between that and someone actually creating a viable Steam competitor, I will say the government breaking them up and rolling out their own solution would be even less likely. You'd have fights on both sides of the isle and from privacy groups. Not that we have much privacy now under the current scheme, but there's at least a tiny bit of separation between V/MC and the government.

What should happen instead is regulation. They should be held to the same standards as legal tender since they're used in place as such. They shouldn't get to decide how it's used, and that should be enforced.

They actually bother purchasing it? They don't simply pirate it rampantly to around access problems?