lesath

Lesath

@lesath

fairy futch; vaguely vespoid

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lesath
@lesath
maddievision
@maddievision
ireneista
@ireneista

look, the problem is the law

SESTA/FOSTA make it very difficult for a payment processor to be queer-friendly. they genuinely do create a very high barrier of legal liability for payment processors that do not proactively enforce this institutionalized hatred on our community

if somebody is a lawyer and has the funds to hire an accountant and wants to start a payment processor that tries to hold space for queer people as long as possible, please do, just understand that it's going to be an uphill battle with many very painful retreats, if it's viable at all. the regulatory requirements for becoming a payment processor are arduous, by design, that's always been true. we would never, ever want to demotivate someone who understands that and wishes to fight that fight

another possible point of advocacy is to change the fucking law. like yes, it won't get through the US Congress any time soon, that's true, but there is still reason to push, if only to slow things down

this is a war, for survival. we need to continue fighting on all fronts. good luck all <3

maddievision
@maddievision
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in reply to @ireneista's post:

ireneista
@ireneista

we forgot to mention this above, but we said "is a lawyer" not "knows a lawyer" because in our experience, lawyers are much like programmers in that they strongly prefer to either create their own startups and non-profits, or join ones created by other lawyers. if you're not a lawyer and are trying to hire a lawyer who is also an activist to do all the important parts of your business, you will find that difficult to do. not impossible, just, again, from our experience in non-profit leadership, you shouldn't count on being able to do it. fortunately, there are many awesome lawyers out there who might wish to do this themselves!

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cgranade
@cgranade

Gah, and all that before you even get to KYC laws, or even to wind things far enough back, PATRIOT Act bullshit.

Separately, there's a reason I briefly got lured into Bitcoin shit, and it was precisely the idea that there could be a way to circumvent the huge unaccountable monopoly that payment processors have over effectively pretty much all digital transactions.

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ireneista
@ireneista

yeah absolutely

it took us a long time to sort out our own beliefs on all that. it's simple now that we understand it...

we're anarchists, so we absolutely believe that it's important that it be possible to do financial transactions without close scrutiny by governments. for example, the move away from cash is inherently oppressive. no government in human history has ever had as much ability to surveil financial transactions as there is right now, and civilization isn't able to handle the consequences of it.

however, anarcho-capitalism is a destructive ideology that simply seeks to control others while pretending to be about freedom. the other negative stuff we see in cryptocurrency circles, such as disregard for environmental consequences and support for pyramid schemes, is downstream of that. anarcho-capitalists cannot be permitted to control payment systems, any more than statists can.

anyway :/ yeah

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ann-arcana
@ann-arcana

Yeah but ... also the CEO of Mastercard is a conservative weirdo who was directly and successfully targeted by a fabricated propaganda campaign orchestrated by a far right religious church, in order to convince people of a conspiracy theory that online porn sites were all secret cover ops for child trafficking.

Like that's just a thing that did happen, and whose effects continue to be felt, largely because we have an effective monopoly system on payment processing.

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nys
@nys

got like 70% of the way through solving the issues with setting up a payment processor before we started hitting really tough roadblocks that increased costs by an order of magnitude. it’s all these NCOSE underlings and plants that make it a fucking minefield especially. was talking to an insider and they were like “you have to be ready for x and y to hit crazy delays if you get unlucky with who sees it”. and this would be the kind of delay where you have to have a bunch of stuff ready to go so the cost is basically “oh it might take an extra 6 months but we need to keep paying people”.

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nys
@nys

oh they are the people behind the who puritanical war on payment processors. they were the ones who pressured mastercard and got that sheriff to start reporting them for SESTA/FOSTA violations even though he had no jurisdiction. basically if you look deep enough in the anti-sw payment processor crusade their grubby little fingerprints are all over it

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