Perfect Victims (and the guys who made the cash register)

[lb_lee]

Okay, so to quickly explain what's going on with itch.io (and Fansly, and Steam, and Patreon, and OnlyFans, and and and...)

So, when you buy something from a website, there's you (the customer), the creator of the thing (the maker), and the website you buy it on (the shop). But then there's the payment processor. The payment processor is a middle-man between you and the shopkeeper.

The metaphor I use is: imagine you go to a store and decide to buy a cookie. You go to the shopkeeper to give them your money, and suddenly a guy jumps out of the bushes and tells you, "NO! You are only allowed to buy pure, clean, HEALTHY food with your cash!"

You say, "Who the fuck are you, a cop?"

"No."

"A politician? Are cookies illegal now?"

"No."

"Are you involved with the shop? The cookie makers?"

"No! We made the cash register!"

It sounds laughably absurd in an offline context, but online, this is what happens. Don't ask me why people don't just make a new payment processor because I am not a banker; all I know is, it's apparently wicked fucking hard and expensive and so a few companies seem to have a stranglehold on the entire US online market.

Every time this comes up, people will claim that this is about child pornography and sex trafficking. This is a derail. If it's actually about the sexual abuse of children and sexual slavery, why was All in the Family banned in the itch.io sweep? Why was erotic hypnosis banned from Patreon? Why was fictional furry porn, which involves no human beings whatsoever, banned from Fansly? Why has FOSTA-SESTA, AKA the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, done jack all to support its purpose, according to the US government itself in 2021? (Here's an article on it if you want a distillation.) Why does it make sex workers have a harder time making money, and thus pressure them into more dangerous working conditions to pay their rent?

The fact is, the people behind this stuff don't care about people who have survived child sexual abuse or sex trafficking in the real world. They only care about us as symbols, mythological innocents to save, and no one can stay atop that pedestal for long. They don't want to look at the reality of us, because we are dirty, flawed, imperfect... inconvenient. They want to be seen as supporting survivors and fighting child exploitation far more than they want to do the hard, unglamorous work of doing so: making sure we have enough to eat, a safe place to sleep, health care for the damage.

itch.io isn't the problem (though I am annoyed at the sweeping robo-ban). The problem is that a handful of guys who made the damn cash register get to extralegally insure we can't buy or sell our legal goods. Cash, by the way, doesn't have this problem! And that's why, if you see me at an event for the love of fucks pay me in cash.

Comments

[beepbird]

Obligatory "not an expert but..."

As I understand it, a big part of why it's so hard to make a new payment processor (aside from the actual coding) is regulatory compliance. Actual laws are an obvious issue, but it's not always an Actual Law in play.

To process online payments, the money has to come from somewhere. Sure, you could mail cash and wait however long that takes for the processor to get it and then send it off to the receiver, but it would be a nightmare to do that at scale, painfully slow, and it doesn't feel very trustworthy. There needs to be a digital method to pay...

...which means that payment processors tend to want to accept the same digital payment methods that people already use. Like credit and debit cards. Like Mastercard, Visa, and all the companies causing this fuss to begin with. If you ask me, the problem is less with the payment processors themselves (though they aren't really helping) and more with the payment methods themselves forcing the processors to comply with whatever whims they're enforcing that day (or else they'll refuse to let them process that payment method at all, which means a lot of lost business for the processor).

The companies involved in the mainstream payment methods that work on the internet have a lot of say over what people are "allowed" to do when processing their cards. If you've ever had to do PCI DSS compliance, then you've seen how much power they hold. That's not a law. That's a standard the credit card companies agreed to treat as a semi-regulation where if you refuse to follow it, they won't let you process their cards until you pay the penalty and show you adhere to it. They're fully capable of saying "nope, you won't get any money through us."

And sure, a processor could just refuse to accept those cards and only accept direct bank transfers or cryptocurrency (ugh), but the interests of supporting as many people as possible tend to win out. Not to mention that regulations do still exist (a few notable ones: PSD2, AML, GDPR, GLBA...), and making sure you follow all of them from every single country you intend to legally support is not a one person startup kind of job. There are standards and advice booklets out there, but they run long and dry- we're talking dozens to hundreds of pages of jargony reading. It gets into the weeds fast.

Starting a new processor that meets all those regulations could probably still be done, but you'd likely want a big team with legal expertise, cybersecurity expertise, financial expertise, and so on to make sure you could actually take and process payments without massive fines, data breaches, or other regulatory issues.

[lb_lee]

At this point I’m ready to take checks through the goddamn mail. (Except now apparently banks won’t let me deposit shared-branch checks without a smartphone...)

Or direct bank payment, but I’ve only really seen that for online rent payment stuff, dunno why.

[wolfy_writing]

Every time this comes up, people will claim that this is about child pornography and sex trafficking. This is a derail. If it's actually about the sexual abuse of children and sexual slavery, why was All in the Family banned in the itch.io sweep? Why was erotic hypnosis banned from Patreon? Why was fictional furry porn, which involves no human beings whatsoever, banned from Fansly?

Yeah, these things are presented as preventing real abuse and exploitation, but they quickly come to include porn/erotica which doesn't involve harm to real people, and also content that's not porn/erotica but deals with topics the people making the rules disapprove or find uncomfortable. It's such a predictable pattern and more people need to get wise to it.

[lb_lee]

Yeah, like when ASMR got banned. It’s like for fuck’s sake, let me watch a lady fold towels in peace, what’s wrong with you?

[beepbird]

Haven't heard about the ASMR one- what?

[lb_lee]

Yeah, I heard about it and while we were already downloading all our favorite vids, that certainly didn’t make us regret it! Some links:

https://old.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/v6gs3n/many_vtubers_doing_asmr_on_youtube_may_be_at_risk/

YouTube spokesman saying it’s due to “sexualization of minors” but gives no examples or explanation: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/vtubers-taking-down-asmr-videos-youtube-alleged-policy-change-1843977/

[bodyetal]

the sexual abuse prevention thing is paper thin on its face and in many ways, but the bit i find most obvious is like… laundering money when buying illegal goods is super easy, guys. this by its nature can only possibly affect people doing legal sales.
if someone wants to sell/purchase CSAM they are not doing it through an itch.io book called CLICK HERE TO BUY EVIL CHILD ABUSE CONTENT (VERY BAD) or a steam game that’s trojan horsing as a regular nsfw game, because that’s super dumb! -crow& (+ tw)

[lb_lee]

Mori: even the fucking PizzaGate dorks came up with better ideas than that! And they’re PizzaGate dorks!

[(Anonymous)]

"The fact is, the people behind this stuff don't care about people who have survived child sexual abuse or sex trafficking in the real world. They only care about us as symbols, mythological innocents to save, and no one can stay atop that pedestal for long. They don't want to look at the reality of us, because we are dirty, flawed, imperfect... inconvenient. They want to be seen as supporting survivors and fighting child exploitation far more than they want to do the hard, unglamorous work of doing so: making sure we have enough to eat, a safe place to sleep, health care for the damage."

Oh god yea that's like. Exactly what it is. Oh we're doing this to prevent sexual abuse (but not for those people cause they're the Bad Abuse Victims(tm))

[lb_lee]

Mori: turns out, when you’re an abuse victim, you often pick up habits or issues that make you unpleasant to be around! It’s way easier to just not have us around to ruin the glamour. :p

[silvercat17]

A whole lot of people have been calling Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and Stripe because this is ridiculous.

Pillowfort.social, like Dreamwidth, uses a payment processor that allows adult material.

BTW, re your music: Tom Lehrer just died (may his memory be a blessing)

[lb_lee]

Mori: Yeah, it’s why we quoted his music, in memory of him. What a mensch!

I really want to know what payment processor DW uses but if they’ve ever stated it, I can’t find it. I am getting real tired of playing Banned Book Bingo!

Oh, we’re contacting them... with PAPER MAIL! >:)

[silvercat17]

I could ask Denise/Rahaeli on Bluesky since she posts there a lot, if you want.

Relevant link - https://www.theverge.com/report/756841/itchio-adult-content-creator-backlash-steam-paypal (tw high contrast blinking gifs, fairly slow blinking)

[lb_lee]

That’d be super helpful, since her DW says not to ask her any questions about the platform. I know Dreamwidth has to pay nosebleeding fees for their payment processor, but long as the damn thing doesn’t disappear, I’m interested in learning about it!

[silvercat17]

I asked. Probably whatever they're using won't work for a single artist. The link to the Verge had a newsletter for smut peddlers about the issue and there's probably other round-ups around.

[silvercat17]

Her answer: We used to use a high risk payment processor that I can't in good conscience recommend because the fees were 18-20% and they require a merchant bank account (which is a pain ) and are difficult to integrate. We're using Stripe now and keeping the high risk as a hot swap option in the event of Issues

[lb_lee]

Bahhhh, I suspected something like that, since DW wasn't shouting its names to the heavens. CURSES! Thanks for checking for me, Lydean.