I had never heard the term "jawboning" before. According to Merriam-Webster it is "the use of public appeals (as by a president) to influence the actions especially of business and labor leaders" or "broadly : the use of spoken persuasion".
Regarding TFA: I don't think trading freedoms of one group (the platform users) for those of another (the platform operators) is a good solution. Visa/Mastercard should have the right to refuse service. The solution being explored in the EU makes more sense: facilitate competition so users have more choice of platforms. Or another alternative: can we reduce the power of small but vocal minorities to prevent them from "jawboning" companies?
cwillu · 23m ago
Companies shouldn't have rights.
shswkna · 10m ago
Please elaborate?
anal_reactor · 3m ago
> Visa/Mastercard should have the right to refuse service.
No. A company beyond certain size functions more akin to a government body providing public service, and should be treated as such.
protocolture · 37m ago
Clarifying I find the furry art weird, and not pornographic. (Weird is fine btw, normal is the worse insult imho)
I think the biggest issue is the damage that the word "Censorship" has taken in the last few years. If I ran a payment processor, the first thing I would do is try to be as neutral as my moral compass allows. The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was uncomfortable with on a personal level. I dont support a thing, so I wont give material support to a thing. Thats not censorship. Its not censorship when amazon removes a book, or a publisher takes something out of print. If everything is censorship, including freedom of association, nothing is censorship.
I think the best thing that can be done about this problem is to promote and create alternate payment processors. The second best thing is to help these sites accept crypto payments (yes I know the article hung a lantern on that, but still)
cmitsakis · 5m ago
While freedom of association is fine on a personal level and maybe for small businesses, big corporation that are monopolies or oligopolies shouldn't have this freedom. They should be regulated and forced to serve everyone otherwise they have the power to exclude some people completely from such services with no alternative. Due to their power, their decisions affect people as if they are government decisions, yet we don't have a say on it like we do with the government so it's even worse than government censorship yet some people justify it because they are "private companies" as if that means something.
JoshTriplett · 23m ago
Broadly speaking I'd usually agree, except that Visa/Mastercard are a two-company oligopoly at this point, with effectively no meaningful competition. Yes, other payment mechanisms exist, but consider how much it limits the viability of an online business to not accept credit cards.
bluefirebrand · 28m ago
> The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was uncomfortable with on a personal level
Corporations do not have a "personal level"
nine_k · 8m ago
This is fair, as long as you're a small operation, and those you didn't like can go shop elsewhere. Visa + MasterCard are a duopoly controlling the overwhelming majority of the market, and if they ban a seller, there's little else the seller can switch to.
I think a processor like Visa could benefit a lot from the status similar to the "common carrier". Like a telephone network must offer service to anyone, but cannot be held liable for the content of the communication (even if criminals are using it), Visa could accept the requirement to pass payments to any counterparty in exchange for dropping the KYC requirements. Let banks and merchants care about that.
I don't think that the US or EU government would agree to grant such a status though.
fenomas · 10m ago
> Its not censorship when amazon removes a book
Analogies like this are misleading, IMO. Like if a theater chooses not to show a certain movie that's obviously not censorship, but if the water company effectively prevents the movie from showing by threatening to cut off the theater's water, colloquially the term could certainly apply.
> best thing .. to promote and create alternate payment processors
That would only make sense in your analogy, where the shutoff stemmed from the payment processor owner's moral compass. What actually happened here is that an advocacy group hounded the processors into it, so if there were more processors, by symmetry the same thing would happen. It seems to me that what's needed here is other advocacy groups willing to hound the processors in the other direction.
linotype · 38m ago
It pains me to say this, but this might actually be a valid use case for cryptocurrency. These companies are cowards.
OutOfHere · 6m ago
Cryptocurrencies are sufficiently diverse and popular in this day and age that this should be a non-issue at this time. So many sites accept them already. I even advise using Monero to fully shield the user.
wombat-man · 1m ago
At some point they'd probably want to convert back to fiat and that's the trick. Coinbase or whichever company will probably follow suit.
jacknews · 41m ago
Payments are pretty much 'public infrastructure' at this point and should be treated the same as utilities. ie they should be required to provide service for anything legal.
Regarding TFA: I don't think trading freedoms of one group (the platform users) for those of another (the platform operators) is a good solution. Visa/Mastercard should have the right to refuse service. The solution being explored in the EU makes more sense: facilitate competition so users have more choice of platforms. Or another alternative: can we reduce the power of small but vocal minorities to prevent them from "jawboning" companies?
No. A company beyond certain size functions more akin to a government body providing public service, and should be treated as such.
I think the biggest issue is the damage that the word "Censorship" has taken in the last few years. If I ran a payment processor, the first thing I would do is try to be as neutral as my moral compass allows. The second thing I would do is intentionally stop processing payments on behalf of anyone I was uncomfortable with on a personal level. I dont support a thing, so I wont give material support to a thing. Thats not censorship. Its not censorship when amazon removes a book, or a publisher takes something out of print. If everything is censorship, including freedom of association, nothing is censorship.
I think the best thing that can be done about this problem is to promote and create alternate payment processors. The second best thing is to help these sites accept crypto payments (yes I know the article hung a lantern on that, but still)
Corporations do not have a "personal level"
I think a processor like Visa could benefit a lot from the status similar to the "common carrier". Like a telephone network must offer service to anyone, but cannot be held liable for the content of the communication (even if criminals are using it), Visa could accept the requirement to pass payments to any counterparty in exchange for dropping the KYC requirements. Let banks and merchants care about that.
I don't think that the US or EU government would agree to grant such a status though.
Analogies like this are misleading, IMO. Like if a theater chooses not to show a certain movie that's obviously not censorship, but if the water company effectively prevents the movie from showing by threatening to cut off the theater's water, colloquially the term could certainly apply.
> best thing .. to promote and create alternate payment processors
That would only make sense in your analogy, where the shutoff stemmed from the payment processor owner's moral compass. What actually happened here is that an advocacy group hounded the processors into it, so if there were more processors, by symmetry the same thing would happen. It seems to me that what's needed here is other advocacy groups willing to hound the processors in the other direction.