The real story here is how we let mobile phones become completely closed and privative environments, and how credit card companies got into politics for some reason.
Seems like hackers of today have really let down the public. Even bitcoin is 13 years old and I know nobody getting into it for utilitarian reasons unless they are already into it for investing.
> Seems like hackers of today have really let down the public.
I disagree. It seems like if anything, it's the public of today that has let down the hackers. In all honesty though, it's probably more just, "people gonna people."
You used to have to -want- to be a hacker, and connectivity much less the processing power to receive it was not guaranteed. I had to mow lawns to get a ride to the library to read dusty Bell UNIX surplus manuals. You were lucky to even meet someone other than Dewey D who knew the same words or the nature of what you were doing.
Consequently, when you met someone online, it didn't matter what kind of weirdo they were. You knew that when you were in certain spaces that anybody there had some special something and that kinship bridged all gaps and mismatches. Those friendships were forever and we didn't even know eachother's names or faces. That's not guaranteed now.
Now everyone has an apollo mission's worth of compute on their wrist/pocket and the swill is so sweet nobody's hungry. If you extrapolate the current situation to other events in history, we're headed for danger and that's a good thing, we need that struggle.
"Crises precipitate change", Deltron3030 was right.
p.s. don't say 'mainframe' say 'cloud', you're all set.
Credit card companies didn't get into politics, politics got into credit card companies. The USG (correctly) identified Visa and Mastercard as the "choke point" that would allow them to take action against things they dislike in ways that would be unconstitutional if they did it directly.
This is also, I think, a reflection of American values and culture on the internet and so also a failure of other countries to own more of the internet/tech world. Other countries (especially European) are far less bothered by nudity and adult content.
Mobile apps are so bloated and intrusive these days that I vastly prefer the web app version of most social media sites even when they're feature limited like Facebook.
Originally I switched to using home screen bookmarks to save some storage on a cheap iPhone but now I can't go back.
I wonder how long it will be until a popular social media site avoids the app stores completely due to content and payment restrictions.
If you look at the timing of these decisions, it's pretty clear that that yeah it's risk based, but the risks are political. It's only a week between this op-ed calling on the credit card companies to drop Pornhub and them following through on it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
There was a flurry of congressional bills specifically citing that article at the time. (Here's one for example: https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-introduced-criminalizin...) I can't find one that specifically threatens the payment processors, most go after the sites or their hosting providers, but the payment processors probably had the sense to realize they were in the blast radius and that it was best to pre-emptively self regulate.
I'm certain the reason CC companies want to drop adult services is because of the vastly increased risk of charge backs, but I suspect they'd cast a wider net if not for politics. Absent the risk they'd be happy to pocket the cash, but with it public opinion gives them an out
If it were just an increased risk of charge backs, surely they could just charge them higher fees and make it work out. Or tell them they have to eat all the chargebacks.
Or they could just require 3d secure which iirc lets them say "you did 2fa when you purchased, we know this wasn't a fraudulent transaction, fuck off."
Not really. Merchants are the one who eat the chargebck costs plus the $20 fee for processing it that VISA/MC charge them. That's just pure utter bullshit.
Someone asserted to me that porn purchases have a really horrific chargeback rate, and that's the main reason credit card companies are against them. It sounds at least superficially plausible.
That's not really true. I consulted for two companies that provided payment processing services for... non family friendly websites. They were making out like bandits charging ~30% fees. The blended charge back rate for this side of business was about 5%. The blended charge back rate for the family friendly side of business was around 3%
The credit card companies had a point. By transacting with platforms that openly didn’t care about selling access to content of unwilling, exploited, and underage people, the payment processors opened themselves up to liability and moral guilt. There is a difference between well moderated platforms and platforms that do a halfassed job and pretend that’s ok.
never touched any of the mobile platforms (i did a bit, but quickly dropped) . It's possible to make money just on the web. Don't drink the AAPL+GOOG koolaid
Seems like hackers of today have really let down the public. Even bitcoin is 13 years old and I know nobody getting into it for utilitarian reasons unless they are already into it for investing.