US local phone numbers, English:

Master card
800-627-8372,1,1

Visa
800-847-2911,1,4

Script:

I’m calling to urge you to immediately end your new policy that unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers even more vulnerable. I’m also asking you to sit down with stakeholders- specifically sex workers and adult content creators- to develop solutions that ensure equitable access to financial services, create stability, and reduce harm for sex workers.

  • Dremor@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    Is it uncivil to state that @Dremor is a twat?

    Yes, by definition

    Now, if you could give everyone the context so everyone can judge if your behaviour is childish or not

    1. You posted a meme you made (which is now this topic thumbnail btw), with an exact copy of this very thread, which are both rule 4 violation
    2. You reposted it as soon as I deleted it, adding an insult toward the moderation, without even trying to clarify with said moderation why the first one was removed. Rule 4 was once again called, as well as rule 2.
    3. I sent you a direct message to try to explain you why it was removed, and direct you toward consolidating on this topic, that was, once again, posted not so long ago with the very same info (including the various linking errors) by no other than yourself. At least you seem to have registered the last part, as we can see here, but looks like there was no attention left for the first part.

    So feel free to do your pool, which I find childish (but that’s my opinion). I’ll give you an hour or two to counterargue, and I’ll consider if I should or not give you a temp ban after that.

  • FrogmanL@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    So I appreciate the pushback, but for those of us with the option, what should we choose? Amex? Bitcoin is non-viable.

    I’m too tired from all the bullshit. I just want a solution, not another problem. I live in America, and we have WAY too many problems already.

  • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    We need to stop making this about sex work and porn and start making it about the fact that payment processors should not be allowed to control how we legally spend our money.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      Yup, it has much broader implications than just porn. If payment processors are allowed to gatekeep how people legally spend their money, then there’s nothing stopping them from targeting other “undesirable” businesses. It’s basically the Net Neutrality situation all over again.

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    Why call some drone in an outsourced call center?

    Find out the home addresses and numbers of their C-staff and board. Call them, send them physical letters. Picket their homes.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Wouldn’t that be considered cyberstalking/harrasment by searching for, obtaining, and using any business employee’s personal contact info for matters related to their business in most places in the world?

      Yes, I understand that in places like the USA that info is technically public info usually, but I feel like contacting someone’s private contact for matters related to their business is crossing a line that I wouldn’t want someone to do to me. I don’t want someone blowing up my personal phone every time something happens at my work, whether I was even involved or not, but especially if I was not involved at all.

      Obviously this is a complex issue, but I personally would not look for personal contact info from any employee, nor do I personally recommend it.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        When a business starts dictating morality to the general public, it too crosses a line from “just business” to a legit public concern that merits a stronger response. Hiding from the consequences of their actions because it’s “just business” is the reason so much of the world is so incredibly shitty right now, and we need to move past it’s acceptability as an excuse.

  • AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    I don’t understand this fully, from a profiteering gluttons standpoint, why wouldn’t they want to process anything and everything and make all the money they can?

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      I’m guessing there’s legal pressure from some countries, and to stay in their good graces (i.e. ward off alternatives), they’re making these policies global.

      • Norah (pup/it/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        It’s not at all countries, with the recent round of censoring on Steam and Itch it was an Australian TERF/SWERF advocacy group called Collective Shout. But other policy changes have been linked to their sister orgs in places like the US. They got 1000 people to complain until the policy was changed.

    • x0x7@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      I’ll tell you why. Government uses soft threats to encourage private business to censor things. I know some of you guys don’t like this side of this parallel story, but do you remember when the FBI was marking posts for twitter to take down as “misinformation,” and accounts to ban, that then was shown to not be misinformation, but rather just inconvenient for the current presidency in charge. Whether you like it or not, that happened, and it was wrong.

      The legal code in the US is so large and companies engage in so much activity that it is impossible to run a 100% legal business. Companies instead run by an “ask forgiveness later” model. It’s the only one that can actually work in the US. But to be able to run that model you need the good graces of the government. The government can always decide to prosecute on an otherwise small matter instead of advise correction. So when it says jump companies do it.

      There was a time when you could be banned off of twitter for saying factual things the FBI didn’t like. And it’s not like the FBI didn’t know better. We didn’t need independent verification of the Hunter Biden emails because we had confirmed cryptographic signatures on all of the emails. Journalists get a pass because they are technologically illiterate, but the FBI and Twitter sure didn’t. The FBI said “It looks like something Russia would hoax.” Sure. It does. But they didn’t because we have cryptographic signitures. Always did.

      What’s crazy about this is that the supreme court ruled against this use of third parties. But the practice wasn’t new when it hit social media because it’s been a long practice with payment processors. So my question when that ruling came out was “what about the existing similar practice in payment processors.” Apparently the government and processors are still in cahoots in violation of that ruling. That relationship was actually started in an effort to crack down on bestiality porn, which is never the less legal in the US.

      So the question is do you like to government directing third parties to censor?

    • CocaineShrimp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Probably image. They don’t want to be associated with something they think the public will perceive as negative. Bitcoin was vilified initially because “criminals were using it” (but let’s forget about the part where cash is also untraceable). So they prob don’t want to be the “credit card company that supports pedophiles and rapists”

      • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        Cash is traceable (at least bills). All bills have serial numbers and any time cash enters a bank it’s tracked who took it into or out of the bank.

        So if I withdraw cash, hand it to you and you put it in the bank, the bank knows we are somewhat connected.

  • duchess@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    And what‘s an underpaid, outsourced call center agent supposed to do? This will do nothing. Stop buying shit with their services.

      • JustARaccoon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        For every person who’s civically aware enough to choose not to there are 10 people out there who don’t know or don’t care enough to do the same.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        Stop buying things. Go to your bank and withdraw cash. Write checks.

        Catch a goose and catch an octopus. Wring the ink out of the goose, pluck a feather out of the octopus, dip the feather in the ink, and write a check like they did in the good old days.

          • sqozenode@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            6 days ago

            My mother asked me the other day “does $LocalGroceryStore still take cash?”

            I looked at her like she had five heads and said, “yes”

            • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
              0·
              5 days ago

              It’s mostly small places that don’t. I think they started during covid so they didn’t have to physically take anything from the grubby customers, and found they didn’t lose much (if any) business over it.

              Cash still costs money to handle, either for the time or wages of taking it to the bank, or paying somebody to collect it every day.

              I guess it helps that contactless payments are now ubiquitous. Practically everyone has a phone, and readers like SumUp and Square can be had for a few quid.

              But then there are places that still only take cash, because it’s easier to hide that from the tax man.

              • dkppunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                5 days ago

                Recently, I’ve actually found the opposite to be true in the US. Smaller places prefer cash because they can avoid the CC fees that they get charged for every single swipe. Many places have a sign at the register that they add an additional ~3% to the bill to cover fees which it can be avoided by paying in cash. I’ve started using cash over the last year to avoid the additional charges, especially for takeout.

                • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
                  0·
                  5 days ago

                  We had a card surcharge ban bought in a few years back. The shops aren’t allowed to charge extra, and unless you’re employing family members or not declaring the cash (and for a lot of small takeaways, it’s probably both of those) it probably works out more expensive to handle the cash.

    • vane@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      They suppose to say they need more people to work because they get more calls because of executives decisions.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      I think the reasoning is something like this: these companies employ such call center employees for a reason, either they legally have to for one reason or another or they’ve determined that in some way, it is more profitable to have the capacity for people to call them than not. If the call centers are swamped, then they still cost the company money, but their benefit to the company is reduced, because the “real” calls can’t get through in a timely fashion. As such, it’s in the company’s interest to avoid having people spam them, and if the policy those people want changed won’t really cost the company anything to change, then just doing that might be the most profitable option for them.

      • duchess@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        There aren’t any other options than credit cards in the US to pay without cash?

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          5 days ago

          Here are the options:

          • credit - visa, MasterCard, discover, American Express (all ubiquitous)
          • debit - mostly mastercard, some are visa
          • Prepaid cards - mostly MasterCard and Visa, amex has one too
          • mobile Payments (Samsung, Apple, Google) - you pay using credit or debit; I’ll include PayPal here too
          • cash - doesn’t work online obviously, and some places don’t accept it or at least discourage it (e.g. many self checkouts, food trucks, smaller restaurants)
          • checks - like cash, but many stores don’t accept them at all

          Some online places accept bank transfers, but that’s mostly for paying regular bills, not anonymous checkout.

          There are some fringe ones like money orders (basically cash), cryptocurrencies (very rarely accepted), and Venmo (mostly just food trucks, fairs, and small restaurants).

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          the card NETWORK is the part at issue; not the type of payment

          the same is roughly true for europe and the rest of the world too: payment processors facilitate transactions over various card networks which communicate between banks

          a single payment probably involves at least 6 different business facilitating the transaction, and only a couple of them are your bank, and the business you’re paying

        • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          There are only 4 credit card networks in the US, regardless of the credit card brand: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Anecdotally Visa and Mastercard are by far the most commonly used and accepted, but I couldn’t tell you why, beyond it often being the default debit card issued by banks.

        • cfi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          No, even our debit cards use credit card companies for the actual processing

          Ditto for PayPal, ApplePay, and Google Pay.

    • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      From what I can tell, they’re just trying to replicate what the religious lobbyists did to cause this situation in the first place, so they’ve shown that this works.

    • DeceasedPassenger@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      They tell their manager. That’s it. Enough of them tell their manager, that manager has to tell their superior. It goes upwards from there.

      • duchess@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        Their managers are also call center employees who will filter that noise out. That’s one of the reasons to employ a call center.

        • Gift_of_Gab (they/them)@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          Their managers are also call center employees who will filter that noise out. That’s one of the reasons to employ a call center.

          Then how did Collective Shout cause all of these companies to do what they want with ~1000 phone calls?

          • reactionality@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            0·
            6 days ago

            Because of a risk of suing. There is no such risk when removing content, but adding content can lead to that risk…

            • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
              0·
              6 days ago

              who would sue who? who is being harmed? the crazies sure can’t: what harm have they suffered by mastercard facilitating transactions between 2 unrelated parties?

              • reactionality@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                0·
                6 days ago

                I’m not saying it from the perspective of collective shout, not even that they would be the ones suing.

                I’m saying if a payment processor allows in illegal content, they are in the wrong legally.

                While if they rescind some legal content’s availability because of potential risks, they’re not wrong legally speaking.

                That’s what my comment was about, in replying to the one above it.

                Collective Shout themselves did not need to sue anyone, the threat of outside legal action was enough to make the payment processors cold sweat. That’s why they did it. And that’s why petitions and counter-campaigns don’t have the weight of what collective shout convinced them of…

                Because there’s always the hypothetical scenario, what if one of the removed games was actually illegal in some form, and by reinstating it in a new decision the payment processor opens itself up to being sued?

                That what if is on execs’ minds.

                • Rymrgand's Daughter @lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  6 days ago

                  I hadn’t yet (I might now tho) because I understand what you’re trying to say even if that argument is actually nonsense. It’s not even like evangelicals could use a different payment system to replace these companies after they lose from running out of money or getting ignored completely because they can’t actually sue these companies. Especially not for this.

                  This is clearly another attempt to control steam because other methods failed. 1000 anything couldn’t get visa/PayPal etc. to do something unless they were already in on it. The only reason flooding them 10-100x in calls and emails won’t work is this apart of their grand master plan to get murdered by horny neckbeards. Seems right up Thiel’s alley

        • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          Until their manager has to explain to his manager why they are unable to get their regular calls handled. He’s not gonna filter that out.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      In Lemmy, there are dozens of us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t recruit people we know who are on Facebook, Instagram, Xitter, Bluesky, TikTok, etc.