Poll of the Day > Damn the hub got rid of a bunch of their compilation videos.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Mead posted...

Lol this is the most libertarian statement ever

They always want a free unfettered market until they realize how fucked up things would be

I'm libertarian insofar as I want less control over the lives of individuals. This is one situation in which the purchasing power of the individual is being directly affected. Presumably this blow to PH would directly limit my ability to patronize a business. I don't think one business should have the ability to prevent another from doing business entirely. I don't think anyone that subscribes to the libertarian ethos would disagree but hey I'm not everyone.

Again this is a situation in which a corporation has bizarrely taken on the role of government. I'm not on board with that.

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This board is way too invested in porn.

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If they can do this, what's stopping them from stopping us not from buying something else they don't like?
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SunWuKung420 posted...

This board is way too invested in porn.

Okay, Terry Crews.

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LinkPizza posted...

If they can do this, what's stopping them from stopping us not from buying something else they don't like?

There is nothing, but governments don't want to be caught either enforcing dodgy morals, or not preventing immorality, so they distance themselves if possible.
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Revelation34 posted...

There has to be some way somebody can sue the companies for not allowing you to spend your money that way.

Visa/Mastercard aren't prohibiting you from spending your money. They're just not enabling you to do so. Hypothetically, there's no reason you couldn't stick $20 into an envelope and mail it to Mindgeek if you really want to spend money on PH, provided they give you the option of processing your payment that way (which they likely would, if given no other choice). Visa/Mastercard provide a service that makes spending money - particularly online - much more convenient than that, which is why they're overwhelmingly people's preferred means of conducting business, but they are far from being the only possible option. As autonomous businesses, they do have the right to refuse to do business with whoever they want. If that means dissociating themselves from a site with a reputation for hosting child porn, that's fair game, and you'll just have to find some other way to pay that site if you want to do so.

Really, the issue is less a question of whether or not Visa and Mastercard should be allowed to make decisions on who they do business with and more a question of whether or not their monopoly (well, bipoly, I guess, but that's not a word) should be allowed to continue. Being the only game in town means decisions like that carry a lot more weight than they otherwise would.

Smarkil posted...

I also find it odd that Visa, Mastercard, and Discover appear to be in lockstep with each other.

It's not all that odd. They all know that if only one of them cuts ties with a business, the others will near-seamlessly take over and mitigate any effect their decision might have had while also taking all of the revenue, so none of them are going to make such a decision unless they can be fairly certain the others will follow suit. In this case, it reflects really poorly on Mastercard if Visa says "we're not doing business with rape peddlers anymore" and Mastercard says "but we will!," so as soon as one declares they're pulling out, the other can be expected to follow suit immediately.

I'd be surprised if there's truly no collusion at all, but I'm guessing it's more in the sense of "we're thinking of pulling out, how about you guys?" to limit the risk of being left out in the cold, rather than in the sense of "let's conspire to hurt this one business."

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

There is nothing, but governments don't want to be caught either enforcing dodgy morals, or not preventing immorality, so they distance themselves if possible.

I just want to spend my money on what I want to spend my money on...
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LinkPizza posted...

I just want to spend my money on what I want to spend my money on...

And Visa thinks it can't be on child porn, and the government isn't going to fight for your right to potentially consume that.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

And Visa thinks it can't be on child porn, and the government isn't going to fight for your right to potentially consume that.

Except its not all child porn. While child porn is most likely on there, it doesnt mean its part of the paid portion. For all we know, its part of the free stuff. Its probably most likely the free stuff.

That being said, when I said, I just want to spend my money on what I want to spend my money on..., I wasnt talking about pornhub, anyway...
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LinkPizza posted...

Except its not all child porn. While child porn is most likely on there, it doesnt mean its part of the paid portion. For all we know, its part of the free stuff. Its probably most likely the free stuff.

That being said, when I said, I just want to spend my money on what I want to spend my money on..., I wasnt talking about pornhub, anyway...

It's the same principle. When a company blocks a moral concern, the government can't deny it without seeming to support the immorality.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

It's the same principle. When a company blocks a moral concern, the government can't deny it without seeming to support the immorality.

Which is really dumb...
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LinkPizza posted...

I just want to spend my money on what I want to spend my money on...

At the end of the day, enabling you to do so is the responsibility of the business selling you that product/service. If Visa/Mastercard doesn't want to work with them, for whatever reason, then finding an alternative payment method is on them. As I said, nobody's stopping you from mailing a $20 to Mindgeek, if they're set up to process such payments.

Now, should Visa/Mastercard have such a monopoly on online commerce that capricious decisions to stop doing business with a company can effectively torpedo it? Probably not. That's a rather precarious situation that gives them more power than they probably ought to have, as much as that monopoly is convenient for both consumers and business owners. But fixing that is going to entail breaking up the monopoly, not making it illegal for Visa/Mastercard to refuse business.

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What also sucks is that you cant always choose who your bank works with. For example, when my bank gives us our cards, they are all visa. So, thats who we have...
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LinkPizza posted...

Hmmm... Idk... I know I still use my visa on Patreon. And I know at least a couple of them are porn... Though, it's drawn stuff...

I think they allowed the cards to be used again once Patreon banned it.

LinkPizza posted...

What also sucks is that you cant always choose who your bank works with. For example, when my bank gives us our cards, they are all visa. So, thats who we have...

Looks like my debit card is Mastercard. I know I had a Visa one when I had Wells Fargo.
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adjl posted...

It's not all that odd. They all know that if only one of them cuts ties with a business, the others will near-seamlessly take over and mitigate any effect their decision might have had while also taking all of the revenue, so none of them are going to make such a decision unless they can be fairly certain the others will follow suit. In this case, it reflects really poorly on Mastercard if Visa says "we're not doing business with rape peddlers anymore" and Mastercard says "but we will!," so as soon as one declares they're pulling out, the other can be expected to follow suit immediately.

I'd be surprised if there's truly no collusion at all, but I'm guessing it's more in the sense of "we're thinking of pulling out, how about you guys?" to limit the risk of being left out in the cold, rather than in the sense of "let's conspire to hurt this one business."

What you're describing is literally collusion. You just think the reason is justified for it and it is in this case, but that doesn't mean it's just fine and dandy. If you believe that to be okay there's literally no reason Visa/MC couldn't say 'Fuck PH our stock is in RedToob' let's make sure that works out.

In this particular case, they're picking and choosing what institutions they do business with and which ones they don't. PH is an easy target right now because of the recent article, but do you know where far more instances of child porn, abuse, and other illegal acts come from? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. PH had something like 117 incidents in their entire catalogue whereas each of those other sites number in the tens of thousands. Has Visa stopped doing business with any of them? Or are they just picking this one site because of an article in the NYT?

Or what about the 100 other popular porn sites. Do you think Visa/MC will stop working with them too? I guarantee each of them has just as much illegal content if not more. I would bet PH, being as popular as it is, is on the lower end of the scale for content of abuse.

At the end of the day this is nothing more than moral grandstanding and I find the larger problem of the monopolistic behavior of Visa/MC to be a problem.

And no, contrary to what you said earlier, it's not feasible for an internet site to operate independently of their transaction processing. There's no possible way for a company to succeed in that market through the internet. You MIGHT be able to do it for a brick and mortar store, but not on the internet. Don't be obtuse.

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Smarkil posted...

PH had something like 117 incidents in their entire catalogue whereas each of those other sites number in the tens of thousands. Has Visa stopped doing business with any of them? Or are they just picking this one site because of an article in the NYT?

The latter. It's very obviously a PR move, not an actual moral stance. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to make such a PR move, though.

Smarkil posted...

And no, contrary to what you said earlier, it's not feasible for an internet site to operate independently of their transaction processing. There's no possible way for a company to succeed in that market through the internet. You MIGHT be able to do it for a brick and mortar store, but not on the internet. Don't be obtuse.

Which is a reason to break up their monopoly, not to prohibit them from making their own choices on which businesses to work with (as I've said). It is indeed a problem that nearly the entire world of online commerce depends on two companies.

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LinkPizza posted...

Which is really dumb...

Agreed, but people are dumb (or extremely ethics focused)
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adjl posted...

The latter. It's very obviously a PR move, not an actual moral stance. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to make such a PR move, though.

But that's what I don't understand about the decision. Why would Visa need a PR move? What do they get out of the bargain? Because as I said earlier, no one appears to be advocating boycotts to Visa even if they could do it. So its not like they're increasing or preventing a decrease of their customer base. In fact, they're most certainly losing a lot of money on the decision by not processing transactions for arguably the most trafficked site on the internet.

adjl posted...

Which is a reason to break up their monopoly, not to prohibit them from making their own choices on which businesses to work with (as I've said). It is indeed a problem that nearly the entire world of online commerce depends on two companies.

If that's what ends up happening to Visa/MC as a result of this then they made an enormous fucking mistake. So they better hope it doesn't go that way.

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Jen0125 posted...

There's so many porn sites out there this shouldn't even be news

This. Can't say I'm surprised but it's also not the place I really use for my kicks. I did wonder why some other sites were coming back with no search results despite having them before. I mean the pages are just blank. Maybe it's related to this. IDK.

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Smarkil posted...

But that's what I don't understand about the decision. Why would Visa need a PR move?

That is a good question. It's not like Visa or Mastercard really need to promote themselves. It may actually be that they were concerned about being held legally liable once the issue was brought out into the public eye, which is fair. Distancing themselves from it at least demonstrates that they are unwilling to continue supporting such content, which could work in their favour if it comes to convincing a jury that they weren't complicit.

Smarkil posted...

If that's what ends up happening to Visa/MC as a result of this then they made an enormous f***ing mistake. So they better hope it doesn't go that way.

If it does, it was going to happen regardless of this particular incident.

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adjl posted...

That is a good question. It's not like Visa or Mastercard really need to promote themselves. It may actually be that they were concerned about being held legally liable once the issue was brought out into the public eye, which is fair. Distancing themselves from it at least demonstrates that they are unwilling to continue supporting such content, which could work in their favour if it comes to convincing a jury that they weren't complicit.

If it does, it was going to happen regardless of this particular incident.

I wish unfair business practices could be used against them.
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There are multiple reasons why credit card companies don't like dealing with porn, and here's two big ones: fraud, and conservative investors. It all comes back to money.

Conservative investors don't like it when their money is going to/coming from businesses they find unsavory, so credit card companies have to be careful about what businesses they do business with. Investors are the real customer base. So if you're wondering about PR moves, keep in mind who they're really relating to. This is one of the reasons you'll see credit card companies being fickle about porn, but not other things.

Internally credit card companies don't like dealing with the amount of stolen cards that get used to pay for online porn, the money laundering this engenders, or dealing with the amount of post-fap chargebacks from likely legitimate transactions. As far as I know, Mastercard won't even accept porn payments anymore. Like, at all, across the board. It's worth mentioning that this is a somewhat western centered problem. Other cultures have different attitudes about sexually explicit material, and they get fewer fraud cases. This is why sites I cannot name can sell hentai in Japan without issues while in the Americas it's a constant struggle to process payments for adult content. Japan is a lower fraud risk.

I wish I could dig up the exact investor material I read this in, but it came from Mastercard and it basically said, "Any time you see us doing something that seems political or socially conscious, it's because it makes us money". It stopped short of outright saying stuff like the Mastercard Foundation exists to get people in developing nations hooked on credit cards, but it was cynical enough that you could read between the lines.

adjl posted...

Distancing themselves from it at least demonstrates that they are unwilling to continue supporting such content, which could work in their favour if it comes to convincing a jury that they weren't complicit.

Also a possibility in this case. It's been an open secret that "Fun"Hub was not doing due diligence in removing illicit material. While I have my doubts about the liability of the credit card companies over it, I'm not 100% sure they're far enough removed either. I think it's possible "Fun"Hub was approaching some threshold of liability themselves that was making an already volatile business partner too unstable to continue working with.

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