Why are payment processors so prudish about kinky stuff (e.g., threatening to ban fetlife's payments if people post bloodplay or rapeplay)? Are these rules coming from the payment processors themselves or from laws they're subject to?
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How would they even know the specific content? I think I might be missing something in my understanding of those platforms and what they communicate to processors?
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I don't know if they know, but if you're big enough it's hard to hide; fetlife is a pretty big platform and it's pretty easy to check to see what's tolerated there.
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With no evidence, I suspect that payment processors have a lot of barely-enforced laws aimed at them, so when an enforcer "suggests" that e.g. they disapprove of fetish sites or kratom vendors or whatever, processors act, because strict enforcement would put them out of business.
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I hear the feds threaten to audit you to "make sure you're not facilitating human trafficking/child porn" if have too many sex workers working with you. Those audits are very invasive and expensive.
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Not sure if fear litigation, fear of regulators, fear of public opinion, or fiscal losses due to people pretending they didn’t make those charges
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A possible dynamic
1. People buy stuff in secret
2. Their spouse finds it on the bill
3. They say "It wasn't me, must have been fraud"
4. Falsely dispute the charges
5. Payment processors see this pattern and say 'well fuck this'
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I think it’s not the laws themselves but the anticipation of additional regulatory attention as a downstream consequence of public attention
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Possibly pressure from banks which are themselves beholden to vague regulations and politically-appointed regulators.
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It’s indirectly from laws; a chilling effect. The government is less likely to crack down as long as organizations seem like they are “responsibly” self policing. So they preemptively self police.
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