[rc5150]

This is the same logic that has parents buying games like GTA for their prepubescent children and being dumbfounded that the kids are exposed to violent images.

While we can definitely point the blame at tech companies that manipulate algorithms, engage in dark patterns, etc, it's ultimately up to the consumer to consume judiciously and moderate their own well being. Nobody ever asked Apple or Google to "deliver what's best" for society. What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.

[mrguyorama]

America has an entire political party who runs a party line that unregulated businesses will naturally do what's "best" because of "free market mumble mumble". They even sometimes outright insist that "best" in that context means "best for humans and society", and that any attempt to constrain that will be Communism and cause all of society to collapse.

>What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.

That same party insists that you should be able to choose to enroll your child in a school that does nothing but teach weird christian doctrines, and outright lies like "Evolution is controversial" or "Continental drift is not proven" or "The USA is a Christian country". They demonstrably want to be able to direct my tax dollars to these institutions, based on their choice.

Everyone should spend time checking out what the tens of millions of self reported fundamentalist "Christian" americans pay money for. There is an entire alternative media economy and it is horrifying. It exists to reinforce tons of outright false and delusional narratives, like an imagined persecution complex against christians.

If you think those tens of millions of Americans don't have power or sway in this country, they are literally the reason why visa and mastercard keep shutting down porn businesses (the higher fraud claim is just false and probably a lie, ask me how I know!) and the current House majority leader is their guy, as well as Trump's previous VP, as well as maybe technically JD Vance, as well as like Joe Rogan, who insists that AI is the second coming of christ because it doesn't have a mother, just like christ. Not joking, that is a real thing that Joe Rogan has made millions of dollars saying to over 20 million people. Oh, and at least one Supreme Court Justice.

[justinclift]

> the higher fraud claim is just false and probably a lie, ask me how I know!

How do you know? :)

[mrguyorama]

Our business is one of the most straightforward ways to turn a stolen credit card into usable money for a fraudster. I know what our fraud rates are. At no point has any payment processor cared at all about a payment flow with high fraud. At most, they will charge us a tiny bit more money to service those transactions.

Credit Card companies do not care about chargebacks, as long as you don't substantially hurt consumer goodwill. They get their money back from the merchant, and every successful chargeback is a reminder to consumers of how credit cards will protect you. A false chargeback would also be unlikely to harm consumer confidence in that protection, since the consumer knows they weren't defrauded.

We know Ashley Madison had millions of paying subscribers. The idea that porn websites have "Higher fraud rates" entirely comes from the unstated assumption that porn consumers will chargeback their payment, and this claim is not justified. Consumers do not make a habit of making false chargeback claims, it just isn't substantiated in the data. We also have substantial evidence that lots of people want to genuinely pay for porn, and will pay significant amounts.

If 1 out of every 5 people who paid for pornhub tried to do a chargeback, that would not be a payment stream the credit card processor would be bothered by.

Meanwhile, the facts on the ground are that there is a fundamentalist religious organization formerly known as Media Matters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Expl... who have been working since at least the Nixon administration to ban things like sex toys from sale, to ban sex education, to stop same sex marriage legalization, to prevent the decriminalization of sex work. They were part of LBJ's commission on obscenity and pornography. They asked Reagan to ban pornography in 1983. They are significantly responsible for the large media blitz in 2020 that demonstrated that pornhub had a genuine problem with things like revenge porn and underage porn that lead to pornhub deleting 90% of their content, which frankly is a good thing, but they are demonstrably and openly not out to help sex workers or keep porn safe, but rather to kill it. Their official stance is that porn is a public health crisis. They were one of the principle supporters behind FOSTA, a bill that most sex workers insisted would make their jobs less safe.

Why is there a popular, trite, completely unsubstantiated narrative that is super popular on places like reddit for how porn companies lost the ability to take payments despite open and direct and admitted actions by an organization that has openly worked for decades to ban porn who helped sue porn companies? Gee, I wonder why.

Meanwhile, two months ago, the stepson of the chairman of that very organization was charged for child porn, so you know, the standard religious right style of "We have to protect the children" while literally abusing children.

Notably, the recent spat with getting some really, uh, """Niche""" adult oriented games off steam was not (at least, publicly, but this is not an accusation) done by them, but an unaffiliated Australian organization that has a better track record of doing what they claim. Steam also is still selling lots of porn games.

[justinclift]

> there is a fundamentalist religious organization formerly known as Media Matters

Looking at the wikipedia article you linked to, it doesn't have "Media Matters" mentioned anywhere on the page.

Why do you feel they're the same crowd?