Well everyone who wants to accept payments on the internet ultimately relies on VisaMasterCard. They will shut you off and get other payment processors to shut you off like happened to SubscribeStar when they set up as a Patreon competitor.

https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s... Long twitter thread on the relation between MasterCard, Visa and Patreon and how the credit card cartel is attempting to minimise political risk.

Transcript of a call with the head of Patreon’s Censorship department where they as much as say MasterCard made them do it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...

Why does it bottom out in these credit card companies? Is it just prohibitively hard to set up a competitor because you need some critical mass of banks to sign on? Or because people want to pay with credit card and cc companies will prohibit transactions to a fledgling competitor?

Ultimately the ones who issue the credit are the banks. Banks have a lot of rules to follow set by the government. They are the ones who created visa and mc. PayPal, stripe all these other services ultimately rely on them. You can do BTC, but there is risk there to with trasaction costs and changing exchange rate.

These banks want to reduce thier risks as much as possible. CC laws in America provide a lot of protection for the consumer.

It's not about 'rules' and not even so much mitigating risk - it's just basic cartel/oligarchy practices.

They do it because they think it's good for them, and/or they can.

It sometimes only takes one person, doing what they think is right, for whatever reason, for a lot of this stuff to happen.

Edit: we like to think that large systems are intelligent. Sometimes they are, if there are thoughtful rules and processes. More often than not - there aren't. CEOs lean on M&A teams to buy companies for a lot of money on a hunch. Because they 'liked' someone, or something, even when the research shows otherwise. When situations are politicized especially outside the scope of clear operational guidelines ... it can just be 'one person'.

Example: the CEO or someone else could send a half-sentence email 'do this' (i.e. shut down a customer) and it will get done. Maybe there was process, maybe not. Maybe it's politics, risk aversion. Maybe it's not corporate risk aversion but individual risk aversion, i.e. a VP not wanting to create a fuss. Maybe there's an outside body putting pressure on Visa/MC and someone inside doesn't want to put up a fuss. Maybe it's favours for favours. Maybe it's avoiding the ire of the Feds. Maybe there's a specious court order that Visa/MC thinks is spurious, but they don't want to bother arguing it. Maybe a a key customer or two are complaining. Maybe the PR lead is putting up a scare, indicating that there's going to be some major press about it soon and they need to get ahead of this. Maybe the VP Legal is protecting themselves. Or is being risk averse.

Even when it's complicated, it's often not complicated in a nice, rational way.

In my experience with large organization, it's really the reduction of personalities, self-interest, risk avoidance, sycophantism, 'following orders' etc.. There's rarely an overall coherent, thoughtful dynamic to these kinds of things.

But maybe there is a clear story here ...

"you’re not recording, I’m not recording"

Funny how it ended up in a transcript

There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge".

Simply put, being associated with hard-right political figures is seen as problematic by Mastercard, Patreon, Paypal etc., and they are trying to minimize their risk, because they don't want to lose business. They have to do this, due to their obligations to shareholders, boards of directors and advertisers, who are all very concerned about public opinion's influence on their bottom line.

If you want to get to the heart of this "voluntary censorship", you have to either improve the public image of hard-right figures, so they're no longer seen as problematic, or break the reputation/bottom line relationship, or outright change the way businesses are run and held accountable, which would probably mean changing some fundamental things about capitalism.

Unless you want to abolish capitalism outright, I would suggest lessening the grip of corporations on payment services, and introduce a federal bank and federal payment service for the people. After all, isn't the ability to make and receive payment a public good on the level of water and electricity? Make it for everyone, equally.

Or... they could just not do anything. They're payment processors and moving legal funds is their purpose. Nobody knows they underpin a lot of these payments and being invisible infrastructure is their advantage.

Getting involved makes everything worse as now a larger population knows what's happening. It's a perfect example of the Streisand effect.

> There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge".

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maajid-nawaz-splc-apolog...

SPLC Apologizes, Pays Settlement to Islamic Reformer It Wrongly Labeled ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’

The Southern Poverty Law Center has reached a settlement with liberal Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for wrongly including them on its now-defunct list of “anti-Muslim extremists.”

The SPLC announced Monday that it has agreed to pay Nawaz and Quilliam $3.375 million “to fund their work to fight anti-Muslim bigotry and extremism.” The settlement was the result of a lawsuit Nawaz filed in April over his inclusion on the SPLC’s “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6646994?ec_carp=612494826...

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson has been added to the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s (SPLC) list of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender extremists.

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/29/guidestar-rem...

Gunmen have twice targeted conservatives specifically cited by the SPLC for hate: Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, who was shot June 14 by a fan of the SPLC Facebook page, and the Family Research Council, whose security guard was wounded in 2012 by a man who said he found the FRC on the SPLC’s list of “anti-gay groups.”

As far as conservative organizations are concerned, being labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center isn’t just annoying — it’s dangerous.

SPLC serves a very important role of shining a light on dangerous extremists, such as this guy:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/12/20/longtime-anti...

Scary stuff. That's the real reason to use and encourage Crypto: to avoid political censorhip and control. Its a shame it was co-opted by mining and speculation.

Had bitcoin not been sold as a way to get rich, it's likely that most people would have still never heard of it.

It's unfortunate that most people misunderstand what Bitcoin is because they can only think of it in terms of legacy financial instruments (ie, treat it like a stock).

However, there's no doubt that many people who are in it for the technology and liberty got to know about it because someone else made money and started bragging.

This is something I've understood for awhile; I agree with you in all but timing. I think the original idealism behind crypto-currency started to die when the first providers and vendors started accepting bitcoin for services or products.

Those first few folks made a decision, either consciously or subconciously, and it was based on how much 1btc is worth. Ideologically, it's worth 1btc. So either they accept that, or they themselves begin to shape the exchange rate to other currencies.

The beginning of the end was probably well before that; it started with whoever the first person to exchange btc for other currencies was.

It _is_ a pyramid scheme, in which the originators and some early adopters all of the BitCoin. 0.1% of bitcoin owners have over 50% of all BitCoin. 1% of owners have over 90%. That's 2017 data. If adoption grows, the fractions of owners will essentially drop by another factor of 10.

These people's coin cannot be devalued by inflation - only by dumping Bitcoin. So encouraging adoption is encouraging buying into the pyramid scheme and enabling these people to use their ill-gotten gains to take people's stuff.

  co-opted by mining

Mining is a fundamental requirement for crypto..

Yup, they froze the Neo900 project's funds and caused them to miss a bunch of supplier contract deadlines: https://neo900.org/news/paypal-trouble-delays-project

Basically killed the project. It's still sortof moving, but a shell of what it once was.

PayPal's size allows them to dictate terms like "We'll screw you worse than a bank but you can't sue us like a bank", and nobody's been able to take them down yet.

One can only hope.

They've screwed countless group buys by locking the organizers account and freezing funds after "detecting" unusual spending (ie receiving money from a bunch of other users in a short period of time). Same thing happened to a friend organizing a group gift for another mutual fiend. Unethically, PayPal kept receiving funds to the account after they froze it.

They screwed over Something Awful as well, due to a fundraiser for the victims of hurricane Katrina: https://www.somethingawful.com/news/paypal-fiasco-summary/

They simply froze the donated funds and kept them in limbo while forcing the operater of SA to jump through ridiculous hoops in order to unfreeze the money.

Don't use Paypal for any sort of fundraiser. Ideally never use Paypal for anything, ever.

Same thing happened to me years ago: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/12/09/december-2011-links-paypa.... Why anyone uses Paypal today is beyond me. Why anyone doesn't expect this is really beyond me.

Paypal is practically the only commonly accepted online payment method that doesn't require me to have a credit card. The reason people use Paypal today is that they offer a service without much competition to people who want to pay, so if you want to get paid you're leaving money on the table if you don't accept Paypal.

This does of course depend on where your customer base is. Credit cards are universal in the US, not so much internationally.

Also, it's pretty much the only international way to pay without giving your card credentials to the seller.

When buying locally you can usually pay by wire transfer or Swish, but otherwise PayPal is the least bad option (as a buyer).

people only use paypal because vendors accept paypal.

you wouldn't have a paypal account otherwise.

and outside of the usa, most bank systems have ways to forward money based on other records. I've implemented a few in south American countries where by accepting CC from one operator you also get an optional printable invoice (boleto) that can be paid on the bank (online or not) and it transfer same day to your account.

> people only use paypal because vendors accept paypal.

> you wouldn't have a paypal account otherwise.

Sure, if I couldn't use it to pay for anything, I wouldn't have a Paypal account. I don't use Paypal to send money to friends or anything like that, just for (international) online payments.

> and outside of the usa, most bank systems have ways to forward money based on other records.

Sure, but those aren't generally accepted online, internationally.

For example, the vast majority of online payments in the Netherlands are done through iDEAL, but that only works for Dutch banks. Some (generally large) stores support it, but most don't.

In the UK we mostly use debit cards these days, although the term ‘credit card’ seems to generally include debit cards. I haven’t had a credit card for almost a decade. Everytime an online store says credit cards only, it’s taken my debit card.

> we mostly use debit cards these days

Which seems odd to me. Credit cards offer the advantages of points/cashback and more importantly the Consumer Credit Act, such that the card issuer is jointly liable for the goods. I only use my debit card to withdraw cash as the protections and incentives with my credit cards are much better.

The UK has more consumer protection laws in general, so the need for the card issuer to provide protection is not as necessary.

Credit cards have some perks, but they also have interest rates which debit cards do not. Many people would rather avoid getting into debt at all, because it can be very easy to go just over budget and end up paying more than you wanted, or getting locked in a debt spiral where you can't afford to pay off the growing interest.

I can understand not wanting a CC if you don't trust yourself to be responsible, but if you are responsible its effectively the same as debit card + better perks. I have never paid any interest in the 14 years of using CCs and use them for everything.

Now I understand that being responsible is easier said than done, given various circumstance. I grew up without a lot money and my parents were pretty religious about budgeting cash weekly into envelopes, but even they eventually switched to using CCs and only spending what they had cash for. Too hard to pass up cash back on gas, groceries, bills, etc. Every little bit helps.

Do you live in Europe? Because to get all those benefits you mention credit card is quite a bit more expensive than the debit one. Also cashback is not a thing in Europe.

I do. And while I pay a fee for one of my credit cards, another (that gets me cashback in a supermarket) is free.

Interesting, cashback doesn't exist in the country I live in. You can get loyalty points from grocery stores and gas stations etc, you can even get a debit/credit card that doubles as loyalty card but it will still be points and you will only be able to convert them into discount at specific vendors but not to cash.

> need for the card issuer to provide protection is not as necessary

It is a legal responsibility upon the issuer, rather than a discretionary benefit. It is particularly beneficial when a retailer goes out of business; an undelivered or broken order will be refunded, whereas if the bill was paid by debit card you'd just be considered a creditor.

You are correct but from my experience when I was visiting UK in 2008 you get charged with extra fee it was ~2% if you want to use the credit card or it was no extra fee if debit, so I was advised not to use credit card. Now I don't know if it was only specific places like aldi/tesco since I've only been there few weeks, and only to those places. Also cashbacks are not a thing even in 2018 in eastern europe at least, you can get miles, loyalty points, but not cashback.

Such a surcharge was banned in the UK in January 2018. Now vendors have to accept all forms of payment they accept at no additional cost to the consumer.

Here in Lithuania we have this since ~2013 or maybe even earlier, that you can't charge lower price because of the payment method. But to get around that law vendors here give discount, i.e. you are not banned from saying - we give x discount if you pay cash.

Although I stopped seeing it lately so I guess it was banned as well, most shops started rollout of their own or joint loyalty schemes with points, and they are very clear on that points are not money but x points equals certain amount of discount, which is funny to watch but it is essentially a loophole around this law once again.

The percentage of links to your blog that you post in your comments is extremely high and extremely notable. Make of that what you will.

I don’t have a problem to people linking to their blogs as long as it’s relevant and helpful to the conversation.

I do not either. The alternatives are:

Do not make us aware

Copy paste, and someone will likely say [citation needed]

Paraphrase

Etc...

Where relevancy is high, links make sense.

It’s almost like he’s written a lot about many things for years and would like to point others to his thoughts and experiences.

exogeny said... The percentage of links to your blog that you post in your comments is extremely high and extremely notable. Make of that what you will.

HN uses rel=nofollow links so he's not posting links as part of some SEO plan. Cursory review of his previous comments shows he links to other sites more often than his own. It makes sense someone would often post links to their own blog though - if they're interested in a topic, they're likely to both comment on and blog about it.

Beats users linking to one of the near-web-monopoly sites like twitter or facebook constantly!

I'm shocked you're essentially chastising someone for having their own domain and publishing articles on it they then link to. If anything we should be encouraging this behavior.

What are the alternatives?

This site was banned probably due to copyright violations: http://attrition.org/errata/plagiarism/thehackernews/

> Completely relying on any third party

What other options are there that exist where a regular person could still make a payment?

you are kind of asking for it... :) Bitcoin

That excludes the regular person part.

...how do you get bitcoin without some kind of a third party?

How do you get money without some kind of third party?

What's positive is that there is no monopoly with regards to who can be that third party.

Sell a good/service and receive payment in Bitcoin

That's not really a practical way to acquire bitcoin since there is very little economic activity in the cryptocurrency world besides trading various cryptocurrencies. I know this first-hand since the e-commerce startup I work for brings in roughly 300k USD in sales monthly, with bitcoin sales never having exceeded $80.00 USD worth of value and often none at all.

May I ask where you work? And also, why bitcoin? It's a slow cryptocurrency right?! Do you make users to wait for confirmation(about 30-40 mins)? You could experiment with fast Altcoins and convert to Bitcoin eventually.

I'd prefer not to attract any attention from my postings to my employer, but it's a small shop, nothing noteworthy.

> why bitcoin? It's a slow cryptocurrency right?! Do you make users to wait for confirmation(about 30-40 mins)?

Those decisions are outside of my responsibilities, but we use bitpay to accept bitcoin payments so it all works in real time. I suppose bitcoin was selected because it's the most popular coin so it is most likely to service customer needs, but I believe bitpay allows you to accept a few cryptocurrency options.

> You could experiment with fast Altcoins and convert to Bitcoin eventually.

IMO, there's no reason to bother doing so since experience has demonstrated that nobody really uses cryptocurrency to buy typical retail goods.

you still need a 3rd party to realistically convert USD into BTC.

at this point, might as well trade in casino chips.

(see gnu taller for a less cassino-like alternative to payments)

this third party is not linked to where you want to send them. anybody can get BTC from fiat conversion and send it wherever they want without censorship. That's what we are talking about right?

yes, not linked to the destination of the funds, but still very much required.

The 3rd parties that convert your USD to BTC aren't censoring people, whereas PayPal is.

So that is a significant difference. Apparently PayPal is censoring way more people than the average crypto exchange.

> you still need a 3rd party to realistically convert USD into BTC.

Can't the same be said of credit cards?

Good, old fashioned, non-electronic money orders and cashier's checks, perhaps? Granted, you're still relying on a bank but I can't imagine any bank refusing them for a person without refusing all that person's business entirely.

No sympathy for site in question, but cashiers checks and money orders aren’t particularly low-friction for website users/online shoppers.

> Completely relying on any third party is a bad idea. We should consider the risks when we signup to any service.

I agree somewhat but I will note my different viewpoint: completely relying on only one third party is bad. Its usually smarter at least in the case of payments to accept more than one method of payment other than just PayPal.

I know theres even third parties that will accept PayPal on your behalf. Now how that might or might not shield your paypal from being banned I am not certain. One I remember is 2checkout but I havent looked at them in years, so I am not sure if they still work with PayPal.

"completely relying on a 3rd party..."

Okay, agreed it's not ideal, but for payment processing what's the alternative?

GNU Taler is aimed at this. https://taler.net/en/

They say phishing is impossible and don’t immediately explain why? All kinds of alarm bells going off.

I bet they could use contributors if anyone is bored

Are there no other options? I get that it's difficult if you want international payments, but surely for inter-American payments enough other options are available? (Genuinely curious)