Настроение:	sick
Музыка:	Malice Mizer - MEMOIRE DX
Entry tags:	censorship

установление цензуры руками процессинговых монополий
Длинный коммент в реддите про историю цензуры в Интернете
и каким образом американское правительство добилось
установления цензуры руками процессинговых монополий.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/14a7r6k/apparently_even_pixiv_is_starting_to_screw_with/
>It still blows my mind how the whims of a handful of
> payment processors is shaping the modern
> internet. Especially when it comes to the question of why
>now?

This didn't just happen overnight - this has been a
growing problem for two decades now.

It started with everything that happened in the wake of
9/11 and the Patriot Act.

The US government wanted some extrajudicial ways for going
after suspected terrorists. But thanks to the
Constitution, they couldn't just openly shut people down
without a trial. So what did they do?

They made a very insidious deal with the creditcard
companies & payment processors - "we will allow you to
create a monopoly on electronic payments, and in exchange,
you blackball the people we tell you to cut off".

This arrangement was initially aimed at anyone involved in
radical Islam. But already during the Bush era, it was
expanded to drug trade (including legal marijuana trade in
states where it had been legalized!) and the more dubious
kinds of pornography (child pornography, of course, but
also legally ambiguous stuff like bestiality).

Then the Obama administration came, and this arrangement
was maintained and expanded. And in addition to the old
targets, the payment processors now also began to target
gun stores and the like. Eventually they also began to go
after rightwing activists (though the Obama administration
usually still preferred to harass them via the IRS).

The Obama years is also why Operation Choke Point happened.

Eventually, the payment processors and creditcard
companies became comfortable with the power that they had
been given, and the scope of these activities grew. That's
why they forced Patreon to ban a whole range of out-there
but generally legal types of porn (suchas drawn depictions
of incest and bestiality, etc.) in October 2017 (link to Patreon's
own blog post about it).

Things have only been getting worse and worse since
then. The creditcard companies also went after
PornHub in 2020 and OnlyFans in
2021 after several investigations exposed that both
sites were regularly hosting underage content. The fact
that both companies got exposed for being rotten is still
a good thing - but the payment processors still cut them
off without any input from a judge. Only a court of law
should have the power to shut someone down financially,
even if the target is explicitly guilty.

...and since last year, it's become apparant that the
payment processors are even going after non-US and
non-Western companies like Pixiv.

The worst part is that, as far as US law goes, drawn
depictions of out-there stuff are legal no matter
what. Whenever such cases went to court, this sort of
material consistently got ruled as protected under the
First Amendment.

In other words: the creditcard companies are now using
extrajudicial means to ban things that are legal under US
law.

...but this rabbithole doesn't really end, though. Reddit
alternatives like Voat have been shut down because of -
you guessed it - payment processor bullshit. That's just
the tip of the iceberg, too. Because from at least the
later Obama years, the US has been fostering
government-compliant social media monopolies in much the
same way as that it has been fostering creditcard
monopolies.

And it has already used the creditcard monopolies to crack
down on upstart competitors for the social media
monopolies. Note how interconnected this shit is.

* * *

Бразилия в этом плане впереди планеты всей, бразильцы
ввели систему Pix, с которой платить можно кому угодно
сколько угодно без всяких монополий и цензуры,
любой семен семеныч может заплатить петру
ивановичу, без каких-либо ограничений.
Очень удобно если надо купить-продать
что-то в Интернете, ну и вообще.

Привет