| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago |
| No it isn't. It's struggling on the front page because this is a very old story and it's the same conversation every time: payment processors hate this stuff because digital goods are fraud and chargeback magnets, and that's doubly true of adult content. |
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| ▲ | rcxdude a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| This would be a reason for processing such transactions to be more expensive. |
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| ▲ | altairprime 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Those are valid facts, but this is missing an underlying point: HN’s community is not concerned about this form of discrimination, so each time it crosses the front page, we see lots of threads about deregulation but few about the spectre of ethics raised by these acts. Ethics aren’t typically in-scope for HN unless the party harmed is either a for-profit corporation or a tech worker; since HN doesn’t as a community tend to openly self-identify with the fields of sex work, the ethical issues here are effectively out of scope here. One can imagine a different HN that gave the ethical threats to Others as much airtime as it gives to ethical threats to Self. I remain hopeful. |
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| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Lots of products have the same fraud/chargeback dynamics are are similar disfavored by payment processors. | | |
| ▲ | altairprime a day ago | parent [-] | | If only all moral objections had such plausible-deniability ready to promote disregarding them, we’d never have to teach or debate morality and ethical practices in tech at all! Fortunately, the core debate — should payment processors be required to provide service so long as the operator is cooperative with escrow and other such ‘avoid money going out the door fraudulently’ restrictions on high-chargeback enterprises? — remains a ‘brass ring’ desirable outcome of techno-libertarians and so the issue continues be fought about. (Even if it’s only indirectly a morality debate over sex products.) | | |
| ▲ | tptacek a day ago | parent [-] | | This isn't responsive to anything I've written. It's not in any sense a moral debate over sex products. It's a practical debate over how expensive it is to underwrite transactions in these markets. The people involved in making those payments work are extending credit. | | |
| ▲ | TimorousBestie a day ago | parent [-] | | Payment processors have constructed a “moral ordering of sexuality” [1] that would be entirely unnecessary if, as you claim, their intentions are purely legal and/or related to high chargeback rates. If it’s not a moral issue, then the rules should be simple and easily communicable. Examples: Comply with the law of your jurisdiction. Keep your chargeback rates below x%. Instead, payment processors intentionally refuse to enforce consistent rules across platforms. Not the behavior of an economically-motivated, entirely rational agent. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13634607241305579 | | |
| ▲ | rahidz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | First off, great article, everyone involved in this discussion should read it. Second, agreed, if this was primarily about chargeback rates, there'd be no differentiation between disallowing things like hypnosis, (fictional) non-con, BDSM, etc. over vanilla sexual material. Instead it seems to be a mixture of pressure by (primarily religious, though some feminist) anti-porn activists, negative media portrayals (e.g. Kristof's PornHub article in the NYT), and understandable fear of lawsuits resulting from hosting actual illegal material (Visa/Pornhub case in California). | | | |
| ▲ | tptacek a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is all a pretty naive take on dealing with transaction fraud. You're not going to get the transparency you're after. | | |
| ▲ | TimorousBestie a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m not calling for “more transparency,” I’m calling into question your assertion that the payment processors are acting out of rational self-interest. It’s a little strange to complain about no one being responsive to you when you’ve summarily dismissed every comment in this thread. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Once again this is like the 10th time this discussion has played out on HN. If you want to see a less conclusory set of arguments, use the search bar and go back a couple years. The counterargument here doesn't even make sense. You think payment processors are run by people with weird puritan takes on adult content? No, they're exactly the same nerds that work everywhere else in the industry. I'm sure someone will come up with some just-so story about how payment processors, and only payment processors, are suspectible to influence from religious radicals or whatever, but: special pleading is special pleading. | | |
| ▲ | TimorousBestie 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Once again this is like the 10th time this discussion has played out on HN. If the conversation is too boring and repetitive for you personally due to your long, long history as a commenter, you could always choose not to participate in it. That’s more or less what you’ve done here in any case, with the added efficiency of one fewer step. This is what, past the thirtieth anniversary of Eternal September? I’d think you’ve had plenty of time to cope with the social phenomenon. > I'm sure someone will come up with some just-so story about how payment processors, and only payment processors, are suspectible to influence from religious radicals or whatever, but: special pleading is special pleading. A lot of that going around, huh. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48129408 |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | VerifiedReports 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If U.S. credit-card issuers were worried about fraud, they would have implemented the other half of "chip-&-PIN," which the rest of the world has been using for decades. U.S. customers pretty much JUST got chips in our cards... but issuers "forgot" to implement the PIN part. Zero sympathy for this scumbag monopoly. |
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| ▲ | codedokode 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In my country you usually need to confirm payments with SMS OTP, except for trusted merchants (but they take the risk of fraud by opting out from confirmation). So simply stealing a bank card doesn't get you far. And pretending that you did not pay is also more difficult. Is US different? Do banks and clients trust each other in US and do not require OTP? | | |
| ▲ | BenjiWiebe 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yep. If I take someone's credit card, I can use it all I want, until either 1) they notice and cancel the card, or 2) I trip the fraud protection with unusual spending patterns. |
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| ▲ | kasey_junk a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Chip & pin doesn’t help with chargebacks or merchant fraud which is what costs credit card processors and issuers in adult content. |
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