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speederyesterday at 4:44 PM3 repliesview on HN

For those thinking is only related to chargebacks and fraud, it is not.

VISA and Mastercard have been banning a lot of content that is not porn but has political values that are disapproved by certain billionaires and investors. There is a bunch of links I wanted to post about, such as US billionaires bragging he personally called VISA CEO to ban content on PH or japanese politicians mad at the censorship of japanese art with certain values because of these companies. But I am on phone walking home so if anyone else has such links please post.


Replies

Ancapistaniyesterday at 6:58 PM

Yep.

They've colluded with the US federal government in the past on those issues as well. "Operation Choke Point" was ostensibly about fraud, but included transactions related to firearms in its scope. As a result, several major banks and payment processors dropped legitimate firearms dealers. For a while it got to the point that I was helping a couple of local gun stores contract with "high risk" payment processors that also serve the porn industry and get set up.

To this day if you're on a gun forum and mention that you use Bank of America, people will pile on to tell you horror stories of both companies and individuals having their accounts closed and funds held for weeks or months after completely legal transactions. In one case in particular, they claimed it happened after buying a backpack at a gun store.

Again, these are 100% legitimate and legal businesses. Federally licensed (FFL) gun stores had trouble for years even keeping a working business account. It was clearly not about fraud, at least not in practice.

Politics completely aside, the financial landscape for gun stores today looks a lot like the cannabis industry: a few institutions are quietly known in those communities to allow them to operate, but many choose to do business only in cash and most prefer it if given the option. The porn industry is similar from what I can see.

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raincoleyesterday at 6:24 PM

Of course it's not. Steam already has a very generous refund policy. It's hard to imaging the chargeback rate would be that high even for nsfw games when you can simply refund. Refund takes about 3~4 clicks on steam website; Chargeback takes a phone call with your bank and can get your steam account locked.

And people who laundry money out stolen cards won't do that with nsfw games. They'll do that with CSGO knifes.

miohtamayesterday at 11:22 PM

Visa/MasterCard porn ban was driven by American extremist Christian organisation called Exodus Cry, which is also anti-gay, etc.

https://screenshot-media.com/politics/human-rights/pornhub-p...

Exodus Cry leader was later fired for sexual misconduct

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/anti...

Trump changed banking regulations so that "reputation" can no longer be a reason for banks to "derisk" customers after crypto industry outcry, but the reason to exit customers must be factual money laundering or similar reason. But the change does concern cards, as payments are not under FDIC surveillance.