Not really a meme meme, but i felt like i had to :s
Time for Europe to get its own payment processor and stop being dependent on companies from Gilead.
Gilead? The Pharma company??
Hoover? The vacuum guy?
what even is the point of this cyberpunk dystopia if there won’t even be good porn to wank to?
That’s my thought exactly. Boring dystopia indeed.
This is why some of us love crypto currencies so much despite the hate it gets from so many who claim there is no intrinsic value, it’s a scam, etc.
Stay away from shit coins, no doubt, but the intrinsic value is that you can side step all of the bullshit and spend your money as you choose. No need to get permission first. It’s looking to be a much better path forward, and payment processors inserting their own rules will only drive more acceptance of alternative payment methods.
I mean this is a false dichotomy. You can have a payment system that isn’t a shit show like crypto or a duopoly like Visa and Mastercard.
??? Nothing about what I said was a dichotomy of any kind. Where did I exclude the possibility to create something else?
All I did was use this situation to illustrate why crypto has value today.
Tupã bless Brazil’s pix.
At least I can still buy porn from local furry artists.
Doubt it, how else will Onlyfans funnel money … elsewhere?
Now imagine someone who is not the last person in Europe, but the last person in the world lol…
Undoing all the gains made during the sexual revolution. Conservatives taking us back to the puritanical dark ages.
It’s not even conservative any more. It’s regressive.
Always has been
These conservatives are old, so they are trying to “conserve” ideals that were out of touch in their own time
No. Conservatism has always only been about conserving aristocratic/oligarchic socio-economic power structures and establishing them where absent. Those are the only ideals they’ve ever had. All of the test was just a facade to pretend that their ideology has any place in a free, open, and equitable society.
i wonder if this is the shitgibbons in charge trying to drive up bitcoin prices seeing as how they just publicly bought a bunch of bitcoin.
i know the payment processors have always been prudes but they are really doubling down and its only going to drive folks to crypto.
edit: I don’t think it’s a good idea either but talk to anyone outside lemmy and ask if they understand the environmental impact of crypto and AI and they have no clue.
Bitcoin is really bad for using as currency, due to the fact that there is a permanent, public ledger of all transactions. Why would you want anyone you pay to be able to see and trace every transaction you’ve ever made? Pay rent in bitcoin, now your landlord can calculate your spending and who you do transactions with. And yes, there are services that aggregate and obfuscate transactions in order to make them less traceable, but now you’ve just reinvented the same centralized payment processor system that the whole thing is supposed to be replacing… so… what’s the point?
Cash is good for using as currency.
so… what’s the point?
The point isn’t anonymity, but independence and autonomy. It’s hard to shut down and hard to tax. The banks/governments can’t freeze your bitcoins, nor can they simply print more or regulate the value otherwise.
The banks/governments can’t freeze your bitcoins, nor can they simply print more or regulate the value otherwise.
You’re just listing reasons why bitcoin sucks lol. Oh no!!! Flight risk criminals and terrorists had their accounts frozen!!! Oh no, ReGuLaTiOn BaD!!! Grow up.
Finite currencies (like gold/silver/bitcoin) are deflationary currencies and are genuinely absolutely terrible for an economy. That’s why we don’t use gold anymore.
“Flight risk criminals and terrorists had their accounts frozen!!!”
Yes, those criminals, for example, LGBT people who conservatives believe are pornographic simply for existing. God forbid LGBT artists want to have a way of earning a living. Crypto is relied on by a lot of marginalized groups. It’s used by artists who make perfectly legal art, but whose content conservatives object to. Crypto is used by many queer content creators as they face being cut off from payment processing systems, as again, conservatives consider queer people pornographic simply for existing. Crypto is used by sex workers, often people with few other employment options. Oh, and crypto is used by trans people to get access to healthcare that is quickly being criminalized.
How insane do you have to be, in 2025 Trump’s America, to fall back on the idea that anything criminal is bad. Republicans are trying to criminalize the existence of entire swathes of the population. And those people face being cut off from the banking system entirely, if folks like you, who blindly consider legality=morality, have their way.
Ah yes, that’s why the Trump administration is one of the biggest proponents of crypto, right?? 🙄 did you even try?
How are those related? It is possible for some conservatives to want to purge LGBT voices from the internet at the same time other conservatives want to advance crypto. These are not mutually exclusive goals.
It does however look really bad that such a massive criminal organization (trump and co) are pushing for it so hard.
All of this before getting into just how insanely wasteful and terrible for the world that crypto is.
Sorry that it helps a few artists, but the cost for everyone else is significantly higher to embrace what crypto is.
It wasn’t my intention to come off as supporting it. I was simply giving the objective reasons for its creation. I see it as a tool that can be useful in some situations, but can be problematic in others.
Finite currencies (like gold/silver/bitcoin) are deflationary currencies and are genuinely absolutely terrible for an economy.
Myth. Deflation is just negative inflation, and that’s been fine.
It’s a fact.
Deflation is just negative inflation
Yep, that’s a major problem. The total pool of currency needs to be able to grow with the economy. Take a first year econ course before speaking
It’s a myth.
The total pool of currency needs to be able to grow with the economy.
Go on, back up that statement with references from your first year econ course notes.
Under your model, how was the economy able to grow before 1976?
Under your model, how was the economy able to grow before 1976?
Gold can be mined.
Just ban it worldwide and have the police arrest anyone running a node
oh wow, it’s that easy? we should do it with other things like piracy, human trafficking, tax evasion, insider trading, bribery, cyberattacks and environmental violations as well. oh wait, we did? it didn’t stop it? i’m shocked. /s
Tax evasion is legal several places.
So monero?
You can use a p2p service, like Lightning with onion routing.
You can make intermediate wallets to obfuscate transfers, like throwaways, so the wallet that pays your rent is different from the one ordering a dragon dildo and it’s hard to say if it’s the same person, but it’s a hassle and you’ll get extra transaction fees.
It’s trivial to trace the funding of these “throwaways” to link them together… unless this entire system is supposed to just rely on using a standard bank account to fund them, which… circling back to “so what’s the point?” you could pay from that account directly to get the same benefits. Using bitcoin is completely redundant in that scenario
Obfuscation is not security.
Amazing username
yeah, just grants you plausible deniability
Cash is good for using as currency.
But so insanely annoying to handle and carry with you.
That’s a bad argument. Visa, MasterCard, etc. know who you’re transacting with anyway. That is functionally equivalent to just paying from a Coinbase Bitcoin wallet. On the public ledger, it’ll only show a transaction from a Coinbase wallet. No one would know it’s you other than Coinbase and the porn provider
Woth crypto you could at least send it to your wallet, throw it through Tornado Cash, then put it in another wallet, making it extremely difficult to track
In general though, if the government wants to know who made a digital transaction, they’ll be able to find out. Doesn’t matter if you use a credit card or crypto
What makes Bitcoin bad as a currency is the slow, expensive transaction times
I’m cool with not trying the money that isn’t money but instead is an environmental disaster wrapped in explosive deflation.
Looks like Bitcoin does indeed suck, but Etherium and one called Avalanche(?) Are more environmentally friendly.
Oh cool. Minor environmental disasters wrapped in explosive deflation.
It takes one wind turbine to run all of Ethereum.
Deflation is not relevant for a transaction.
Deflation is not relevant for a transaction
What are you trying to say with this? Cause I’m stuck between the very literal and wildly confusing.
I will say, regardless of your further explanation, that deflation makes transactions less likely to happen, which is the whole point of a currency to begin with. Would you rather pay a debt to a friend off with dollars or a cryptocoin? Cause my money is that most people would say the dollars since the crypto could grow, whereas the dollar is always shrinking. A speculative asset is not something most people would give away like they would money.
If you are storing money in a certain currency then inflation is a problem.
If you owe money in a certain currency then deflation is a problem.
If you are quickly moving money from one currency to another then making an instant one off payment, the time span is too small for either inflation or deflation to have an impact.
The price of the service can be quoted as fixed in USD and adjusted in real time on the crypto side.
Cool. So why would I ever want that? Why would I willingly buy a crypto to pay for a transaction when doing so is always detrimental to me over the person who I am paying? I’ll spend more than the amount of debt I have (thanks to various fees) in order to give the person I’m buying from an asset that’s more likely to gain value than lose. Instead of a dollar, a thing made to do the actual job of a currency that everyone already has and accepts.
If this really does drive people to crypto then I hope it goes to monero or a fork of it. Try blocking or tracking transactions then.
I’ll pass on the tree burning coins
VISA and MasterCard get to build the digital dollar so they don’t care how any of it is manipulated so long as their position as middlemen is secure.
Probably simpler than all that, at least in the US. The Puritans get something like so passed. Fine. Now who in their right mind is going to stand up and say STOP. Imagine the political smear campaign. And it will all be “for the children”.
Let’s make a community run payment processor then. We’ll valiantly process porn payments.
Having worked in the payment industry, there is a lot of work to be done.
Even if you use the EMV standard, which almost all of the payment processor are based on, the challenge is to interface with the banks and making sure that every cards and terminals follow your standard.
And that’s if you can convince banks to even accept you payment standard in the first place.
I’ve been thinking this too. I’ll use it everywhere just because
Mastercard? No sorry, we only take WokeCoin 🤷♂️
MasterbationCard
Vaga
That spelling normally infuriates me, but in service of the pun, we’re going to have to allow it.
I am a world renowned bad speller, so I thank you for your patience with me.
So crypto?
:(
I wonder how long this will last. The NSFW industry is insanely huge. If the current payment processors cut it off, that leaves a giant gap in the market just waiting to get filled (😏).
If they hold firm on this, it might just be a rare opportunity for a new (and hopefully better) payment processor to enter the market.
Or maybe just wider crypto adoption, idk.
I have no idea why all of a sudden payment processors care bout anything but money. What happened ?
Collective Shout happened, an australian organisation decided to wage global war on anything NSFW in games (so far), their key talking points are allegedly being feminist and anti-exploitation of women.
i wonder if they asked the women they’re saying they’re protecting if they want that “protection”, or if they’re imagining that women just don’t make NSFW art
Why would they ask? They know what’s best for everyone. All people. All around the world.
/s
Their (collective shout) open letter to these companies has a headline like “you are profiting from exploitation” basically, but worse. I guess the card networks were thinking about their stock price or something when they made the decision.
Bad press?
Speed running the porn companies making their own payment processor
AFAIK there’s pay processing business that will do nsfw transactions but they ask for extra money.
I’d open a KinkPay account, when offered.
deleted by creator
So, this means that pretty much any paid adult content can’t accept visa, right? Or are they just stomping in the small creators for not being profitable enough?
Looking at you, OnlyFans…
For now, they are targeting more niche “taboo” kinks like incest and bdsm. But as we’ve seen time and time again with bigoted, puritanical christofascists, they will not stop there. Next, they come for the queer content. My guess is furry stuff is next under the bad faith argument of “bestiality”, then more standard queer content, including tame non-erotic content. Finally, all erotic content.
Remember, everything sexual is sinful and evil unless its a straight white cis Christian married couple having joyless missionary sex for the purposes of procreation only.
They’re already attacking furry content featuring “animal-esque genitalia”, as there were people who thought that was “zoophilic”. However, I still remember how much anime fans needed to fight, so that kemonomimi (catgirls, etc.) wouldn’t been labeled as “zoophilic”, which might be the source for the furry/anime divide in the west.
Valve has changed their content guidelines due to the requirements of the credit card processors. Itch.io, too. I wouldn’t call Valve niche.
OnlyFans felt the pressure not too long ago. It’s just when they announced they were banning porn, they realized they didn’t have anything else. So they reversed course and somehow can still take payments.
Wait what? OF banning porn? Is it 2021 again?
This isn’t new. It’s been happening for a while now.
Imagine how many more “Thomas Matthew Crooks” are gonna come out of their basements if you ban their porn. Conservatives secretly love their porn. Might wanna rethink the ban.
Or not, I don’t mind watching a IRL live movie about a rebellion instigated by…
checks notes
…banning porn 🤦♂️🤣
They supposedly love their children too.
My God… All the “pro life” movements make so much more sense now! They actually don’t care about the women, they only want the children around. And worse off the children, the better for them!
Removed by mod
So, why doesn’t some other payment processor step in to fill in the demand gap that the others are willfully abdicating?
the economic moat of regulations and infrastructure that has to be overcome before you even can start acquiring customers. You would need a massive capital outlay just to start in last position to compete. Then you have to pay your sydadmins and sales and help desk and administration for how long before you have enough customers to break even? all on a gamble that the government won’t hamstring you on behalf of their corporate sponsors. and who is to say the rest of the financial world won’t cut you off; you can’t process payments if you can’t access users banks, it’s all cooperative between entities that benefit from it being a small club.
all of this risk to capture the relatively small nsfw market looks like a bad gamble to me, even though i strongly support the nsfw market myself! I spent decades in e-commerce and nsfw ecommerce and it’s trickier than it might look.
The most likely to succeed at the moment, IMHO, would be a standardization of the various local payment systems in Europe, and there is already some movement in that direction in a growing group of countries, but it probably needs a push from the EU itself, similarly to how GSM was pushed as a standard for mobile communications by European governments as a group and ended up dominating globally (which is also why, for a period and until smartphones became a thing, European mobile telephony companies were wildly successful).
I’m sorry for Americans who aren’t assholes (most here in Lemmy as far as I can tell) but the rest of the World does need to decouple from speed-running-to-Gilead America at all levels before it’s too late.
Yoid be starting in 1st position for all these transactions that just lost a market.
that’s not just the smallest market it’s the most troublesome market which is one of the reasons it’s a hot potato. If you limited yourself to just nsfw you would still need the infrastructure to process any types of payments and still be at the bottom of the current players. You would be hamstringing yourself and it would be even tougher.
NSFW and borderline legal stuff (like phone spyware apps) have a chargeback rate that is way higher than traditional retail. Users buy porn then charge it back to their credit card when the post nut clarity sets in. When i worked in the industry that was the constant battle from the retailer side; processors like CCBill were the most lenient but even they would cut you off if your chargeback rate was too high and it was always right on the border. Even on sex toys the chargeback rate is more than double just selling t shirts and stuffies.
I don’t know the financial side and have no idea why the chargebacks were such a massive deal to the processors. I can imagine being a small outfit it would be very difficult though if the margins were super thin.
have no idea why the chargebacks were such a massive deal to the processors.
They don’t have a lot of things to measure when attempting to address fraud, but that’s one of them.
oh that makes perfect sense thanks!
Crypto it is, then.
