Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's not chargebacks specifically, but you can find a handful of articles and websites detailing how MasterCard and Visa in particular deciding that they will not allow certain kinds of adult content.

They flex this by putting leverage on the banks to not support this either, as they could lose the ability to work with Visa or Mastercard if they start doing banking outside their TOS.

There are some reasons why this could be a good thing - pornography is an industry rife with problems of trafficking, abuse, etc. and denying funding of that kind of behaviour is not without reason. But this tends to spill over to just about everything that /isn't/ abusive as well, which leads to adult sites and the like not being able to secure their own funding or get support from banks.



> pornography is an industry rife with problems of trafficking, abuse, etc.

In my experience in the industry that is perception, not reality. There were a few cases to make the news cycle, like the Girls Do Porn lawsuit and the MindGeek/PornHub controversy with user-submitted content.

But precisely because of public perception the adult industry tends to be pretty good at self-regulating in my experience and opinion. I remember getting an email from a sponsor of mine several years ago telling us that their content could in no way be associated with text that includes "drunk / drinking / intoxicated" etc. and they told us that we had to change the copy on the pages that featured their content. Consent is a huge topic and way more nuanced than most people assume.

The finance industry on the other hand? We're talking about institutions that fund weapons dealers and warlords. With global investments from rights-infringing countries. Not to mention the white collar crime and corruption that comes out of that industry.

Public perception of the adult industry being "rife with problems" stems from the taboo and ideology IMO. Nothing is without problems, but it's all relative and some industries do have it worse than others.


What you say matches my suspicions. In the end, the problem is that sex is taboo -- coincidentally the same thing that makes many porn websites "tick" -- and the conservative sectors of society will find a way to be alarmed about it. So getting alarmed about trafficking in porn to me seems like getting alarmed about cars being used to abduct kids and therefore trying to ban cars because of this.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: