[ssalka]

> The shift did not take place immediately. Within six months, traffic at smaller, less regulated sites had grown by 55%, and at larger sites by 10%, with point estimates implying that the traffic was entirely diverted to competing firms. This suggests that regulating only the largest platforms may push traffic to fringe sites and less controlled spaces.

This rings true to me, especially in the recent context of AI adopters looking for uncensored alternatives. This frame of thinking can be applied not only to models, i.e. many move away from OpenAI/ChatGPT in search of less restricted models, as well as being applied to sites providing AI resources. Just the other day, CivitAI (the current leader for distributing custom checkpoints, LoRAs for image-centric models) announced it was taking a much more heavy-handed approach to moderation due to pressure from Mastercard/Visa. Its users are simply outraged, and many I think will be leaving in search of a safe haven for their models/gens going forward.

[krige]

Why are Mastercard/Visa even trying to police this? It's not the first time (Japan got famously hit by them hard), what is this puritan stranglehold.

[pjc50]

PR risk. US evangelicals exert a lot of pressure to apply their particular censorship standards worldwide. The literal puritans.

[potato3732842]

It's not 1999 anymore.

The only thing the payment processors really have to fear at this point is the government itself asking for a bigger pound of flesh than they already take or sticking its fingers in their business to increase its own power (perhaps at the behest of other interests) like the did with Backpage. The avenues by which the government would manufacture the political will for such action would likely be the tried and true "but the children", "terrorists", "trafficking" and the like, perhaps with a modern BS twist on it.

The "christian right" boogeyman basically doesn't a) exist in the volume that people like you pretend it does anymore b) care about adult content anymore seeing as the overwhelming majority of people in the western world don't really remember a time before internet adult content and just take it as a fact of life, this stuff just doesn't really move the needle for anybody anymore.

[pjc50]

Several US states have implemented adult ID requirements, in a way that seems less free than the past wild west.

[potato3732842]

That's political pandering in the face of a macro trend going in the other direction. Ain't no different than NY tightening up its gun laws after getting slapped in Bruen(sp?).

You see this behavior among the hold outs every time. Southern legislatures passed all sorts of dumb laws at the end of the jim crow era. I bet sure a few states will pass absurd laws as weed continues to get legalized.

[nullc]

Because they have been pressured by the US Government to engage in censorship which is unlawful for the government to perform. See also: Operation Choke Point and Operation Choke Point 2.0.

Even in cases where it might be lawful for the government to restrain the target's speech, they'd be entitled to due process and the state (or at least components of it) have found it unacceptably inconvenient to allow their targets access to due process. This 'issue' is resolved by censoring through proxy actors, and particularly through also restricting access to the relevant facts that the target would need to establish standing.

[GuB-42]

Porn is notorious for the amount of credit card fraud that is happening. It is evident by the high fees that "adult friendly" payment processors charge. See https://ccbill.com/pricing

So: high risk of fraud, legal risks (financing child porn, human trafficking, etc...) and not great for the image of a "respectable" company

[stickfigure]

Back in the mid 2000s I was the CTO of a large player in this industry. It's not true.

The high fees are purely because supply is constrained; Visa declares certain industries "high risk" and limits merchant banks to only allow a minor percentage (IIRC, something like 20%) of their transactions to be in this category. The designation is not empirical; our chargeback rates were extremely low, especially compared to online businesses.

This designation is a political issue. Fraud is not actually the problem.

[brookst]

Any actual data you can share?

My understanding from friends in the payment industry is that the “high fraud rates” are just people lying to their credit card companies when their spouse / whoever questions the charge.

If someone has the ability to process fraudulent credit card charges, why in the world would they waste that opportunity buying $20 of digital porn rather than a physical good that can be sold?

I believe GP that the issue is just pressure from evangelicals resulting in a de facto boycott of the woke porn virus.

[qingcharles]

I know people who work in this space. I have seen the actual data. The chargeback rate for these sites is incredibly low. The sites themselves will issue their own refunds without question to avoid getting the card companies involved.

It is 100% a PR issue, not a fraud issue.

[rsynnott]

I mean from the processor's POV it hardly matters _why_ there is high fraud, just that there _is_ high fraud.

[brookst]

Sure, and that's why rates are high. But the person I was responding to was asserting it in the context of "all porn is a massive criminal operation."

[fragmede]

Because otherwise they end up with criminal charges. Civil cases that result in monetary damages is one thing but executives going to jail is something they actually don't want to have happen.

[AnthonyMouse]

This, incidentally, is the actual reason we need to decentralize the payments infrastructure. Because they can do this to not just porn -- something they're formally not allowed to prohibit -- but to anything else, behind closed doors, by leaning on the centralized payment intermediaries to censor whatever they don't like.

[throwaway290]

Last time I checked cash existed.

[praptak]

Internet payments infrastructure provides more than cash can provide. It's also more than Bitcoin alone can provide. I'm talking about having at least some recourse against fraud and at least some attempt at resolving disputes.

Without chargeback or a similar mechanism it's "pay and pray".

[AnthonyMouse]

Chargebacks don't really do anything to prevent fraud, all they do is convert it into a fraud against the merchant. And the only reason there is so much credit card fraud is that the banks have a poor incentive to improve their security (e.g. include some cryptography that lets internet purchasers prove to the merchant that they have physical possession of the card), because the banks are foisting the cost of fraud into the merchants.

They also have no real way to resolve disputes. The merchant says they delivered the goods and the cardholder says they received an empty box, how is a bank supposed to know who is lying?

The way you actually do this is that you don't make any of that part of the payments system. If someone commits fraud, have the police arrest them.

[throwaway290]

> Without chargeback or a similar mechanism it's "pay and pray".

No true. You think if you get fed poison at a cafe you have no recourse if you pay cash, like you somehow waive all your rights as customer?)

What you are talking about is not "some recourse". You have legal recourse. But you mean specifically "get my money back". In many ways it is good for the actually shady dealer because being sued is worse than one chargeback from one wise guy & getting to keep swindling all the others.

> I'm talking about having at least some recourse against fraud and at least some attempt at resolving disputes.

And making it decentralized would kill exactly this among other things. Should I explain how?

[krige]

Yes, pay with cash on a website hosted across the world. Genius.

[throwaway290]

You know mail exists? Cash in the envelope is a thing

[throwaway290]

Because they don't want to make money from CSAM and they have the right and freedom to choose who they do business with?

[mijoharas]

Unfortunately no.

I believe the reason for this is that the risk of chargebacks for adult content is much higher, so the card networks need to pay more to service these merchants and it's less profitable for them (or maybe in some cases unprofitable).

Essentially it just comes down to the bottom line.

[stickfigure]

> the risk of chargebacks for adult content is much higher

Stop repeating this as if it is true.

[qingcharles]

It is absolutely not true. The chargeback rate is incredibly low. People just parrot that line.

[throwaway290]

This is actually easy to debunk.

Timing. MasterCard/Visa ditched Pornhub subs the same month after the story about csam went public. It had nothing to do with chargebacks.

Then they also ditched Pornhub advertisement company. Not relevant to chargebacks.

Read https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mastercard-visa-sus... for how it went down.

And of course big adult sites including Pornhub are not stupid enough to use anything mentioning "porn" on bank statements.

And if you talk to actual programmers working in adult industry you will learn payment processors have special strict rules for adult industry. Literally because of moral standards. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790 where it is discussed.

So no. It was not about chargebacks, it's about making money from child rape videos. Some people have values. Corporations are run by people who have to face their kids and spouses.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I believe the reason for this is that the risk of chargebacks for adult content is much higher

Why do you think this is the case?

[mijoharas]

Sorry a very fair question. This is due to an article I read a fair while back asserting that. Let me see if I can find it or similar. Ok here is an HN comment (relevant section extracted from comment[0], full thread[1]) with some discussion on that.

> In the adult/porn world, there's a high amount of chargebacks and fraud relative to low-risk industries like SaaS software. If you pass a certain chargeback threshold in the adult industry, your account is terminated, and no payment processor will do business with you.

Now it was ages ago that I read this, and I'm sure it's a more nuanced topic than my simplified answer, but that's what I understood from my reading at the time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24294801

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291790

[throwaway290]

If you read your own sources, the thread your linked, the stories shared by people working in that industry make it super clear that the root cause is that payment processors are allergic to adult industry (ie porn) not higher chargeback risk. They specifically set low chargeback tolerance just for this industry. So how can you deny that it is about people's ethics and values. Of people who run corporations and people who are willing to sue them.

And it was ethics and values for Pornhub too. See my other comment or just look up what happened.

[brookst]

People buy porn; spouses see credit card bills; people are performatively outraged and say it must be fraud.

[chownie]

The classic example case is "honey, I don't know what this charge on our monthly expenses is I promise, look I'll charge it back" — ie cover up for an angry spouse.

[throwaway290]

What you and mijoharas allude to is a cute urban myth. Pornhub never appeared as Pornhub on your bank statements and the same goes for every serious adult content site for decades. And if it was about chargebacks Visa would never even touch Amazon or AliExpress.

Read why Pornhub was ditched in 2020/2022. Trigger alert, it involves rape and trafficking victims.

Or read the sources mijoharas posted. They specifically say that payment processors simply do not like porn. I guess he did not read his own links.

[krige]

CSAM? Let's see... no, both support payments on xitter so that can't be the reason.

[throwaway290]

Since this is the first time I hear of this I think's false.

But if you have real evidence of csam on xitter any journalist not owned by alt right will jump on it. One good news story by a reputable outlet and Visa/MasterCard is out of xitter 100%. If you're lucky they'll also stop processing ad money and the platform is toast. Do it, leak it.

Remember, payment providers ditched pornhub the same month the story about csam and other abuse went public. That's all it takes.

But anyway. Payment processors do not like porn. See my other comments. Maybe they are scared to ditch xitter because of current politics but I think it's the matter of time and good reporting. Let NYT write about it

[chownie]

> But if you have real evidence of csam on xitter any journalist not owned by alt right will jump on it. One good news story by a reputable outlet and Visa/MasterCard is out of xitter 100%. If you're lucky they'll also stop processing ad money and the platform is toast. Do it, leak it.

This already happened and I believe nothing changed as a result. 100,000 tweets found between march and may in 2023 which matched at least 1/40 of the CSAM hashes they used.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/06/stanford_internet_obs...

[potato3732842]

>Because they don't want to make money from CSAM

The industry doesn't give a crap as long as they don't know enough to feel dirty/culpable. Ain't no different than moving money for terrorists or whatever.