>This is not the world you live in. [A world where people get debanked for political reasons.]
I know quite a few people, and entities affected by it in Europe. Some of them even personally, individual accounts, not just their companies and organizations. I would elaborate, except I suspect that will be counter productive. Please read site guidelines. Let's agree to disagree.
The idea that the debanking of individuals on political basis has only happened in Canada is wrong. Furthermore, this also only happens to, let's say one side of the political dialogue.
> This [KYC/AML] will affect the typical user of the financial system precisely zero times during their lives.
I've been affected by this nonsense, and so have friends and family. Quite inconvenient when you're trying to buy a house and trying to keep things moving on time. I may not be "typical" but my mother certainly is. I can tell that patio11 is highly invested in the finance industry, not wanting to burn bridges, and I think he is incentivized to try to make people believe that KYC is beneficial and highly effective, but it's just not the case. It reminds me of the people inside Google working on their auto-banning systems who won't admit that it doesn't always work perfectly.
"Debanking will also not infrequently swiftly cascade to accounts in the same household, regardless of title (non-specialists can round this to “name on the account”; industry can’t). Banks institutionally consider those accounts in the same household to be highly likely to be under common control, regardless of what paperwork, account holders, or politically influential subcultures believe."
My parents live 1000 miles away and we haven't been in the same household for 20 years. Either our troubles were independent and uncorrelated events, or banks are crawling through people's family trees like they're 23andMe. Maybe my cousin who I haven't seen since we were kids did something shady and tainted our whole family tree in the eyes of the banks, who knows anymore.
> or banks are crawling through people's family trees
I work in securities. Our KYC screens aren’t as sophisticated as the banks’. We absolutely see family relations. (They’re typically gleaned from public records and social media. It's unfortunately not uncommon for kids to open accounts in parents' names and vice versa, even after a long time.)
If people have actually read the article, they will have spotted the bits where patio11 himself has been adversely affected by this at least twice!
> I think he is incentivized to try to make people believe that KYC is beneficial and highly effective
I don't think the article is arguing that at all. It's describing the "system", not endorsing it (and explicitly complaining about it in several places).
If nothing else having to do more paperwork is very common.
British banks tend to not open accounts for people abroad because of the cost of KYC, and they even close accounts if you move abroad. Difficult if you have assets or a pension in the UK but live abroad. As you say, it makes it very hard for people who move around.
There are definitely political biases in closing bank accounts in the UK, and many cases of accounts being closed because banks did not like someone's politics. Not even fringe political views, associations with the previous government's part has caused problems in some cases, and definitely association with smaller but significant parties.
People also avoid taking on jobs that might make them "politically exposed persons" because the rules are too broad, and that (although it affects only a few people) does a great deal of damage because it reduces the number of people from outside in organisations, which worsens governance and corruption.
> If nothing else having to do more paperwork is very common.
British banks tend to not open accounts for people abroad because of the cost of KYC, and they even close accounts if you move abroad.
How are their so many non-dom retirees if that's the case? They have to have some sort of income.
As patio11 made abundantly clear in his article, banks are not homogeneous in their preferred customers, their ability to serve specific needs or their tolerance for risk. It may well be true that some banks don't like non-resident customers, but many banks offer products specifically tailored for these customers.
The term "non-dom" usually means foreigners in the UK making use of the tax dodge. In that case, British banks are happy to open accounts for them, especially as they are rich.
Some accounts will be opened for other foreigners in the UK - sometimes the "basic" accounts .
Also happening in Japan. Quite a number of big-name vendors like DMM, DLsite, and others are getting heavy pressure from Visa and Mastercard to censor certain merchandise for no justifiable reason (as in no legal basis) and in some cases have been blacklisted outright.
The Japanese response, and this is after placating the first round of censor demands, has been to reverse-blacklist Visa and Mastercard because Japan realized that giving an inch only means they will then demand a mile, then a league, and so on.
This reads like an American, once again, deciding to enforce American cultural norms on other nations
I'm not defending or condemning any of the artwork in question, just pointing out that American corporations have been forcing through their own cultural norms for decades, even in countries where that may not always be welcome
In turn, this makes American corporations the arbiters of what is de facto legal, despite not being the ones elected to write the laws
> I feel like you are omitting the content that visa and mastercard find particularly objectionable that is commonplace in japan but not elsewhere.
At this point, I would argue that the reasoning isn't even cohesive or unified. Some sites lose all processors (e.g., Amex bails too) whereas others lose only Visa and MasterCard, and the distinctions aren't made clear to end users.
Sure, DMM and DLSite end up offering a large variety of pornography, but it's not just that -- Niconico Douga's premium subscription service was also blacklisted, despite the fact that it's basically just YouTube Premium for Japanese livestreamers (i.e., not pornography).
A lot of people argue that the reason is specific genres of pornography, but the practical reality is that it can be basically any type of content of reason. Stripe considers pornography an industry that's too-hot-to-touch, for example, despite the fact that some processors do work with pornography, and end up charging much higher processor fees for the hassle. A lot of user-generated content, which is wildly uncontrolled, combined with a relatively high risk of refunds, can lead to this type of action without necessarily transgressing a general rule like "this specific variety of pornography is bad".
>DMM and DLSite end up offering a large variety of pornography
What's really twisted is these same payment processors seemingly have no qualms about Steam's large variety of pornography[1], some of which are Japanese eroges[2] (with less/no censoring![3]) that DMM, et al. are demanded to delist.
Banks and payment processors really need to stick to just doing their business, which is securely storing money and facilitating the transfer of money between two parties regarding legal business transactions.
It's clearly Japanese amateur content publishing economy that they are after. They're leaving professional comic/porn sections of same websites as-is, while cutting off multiple amateur bookstore chains[1] altogether. This is not even double standards.
Their intent is undoubtedly to throw wrenches into Japanese manga ecosystem that incubate and train authors rather effectively through out-of-economy feedback mechanisms in social media and self publishing, massively supercharged in the past decade through Twitter; it had proved immune to foreign replication attempts, financial incentives, leverages, even generative AI tools[2]. Those tools don't do much, other than raising barrier to entry by raising expectations and bolstering Japanese dominance.
Some crazy person somewhere must be on a cultural crusade trying to "solve" that problem, not understanding that trying to deny financial incentives just widens the cost-performance gap between Japan and the rest of the West by suppressing market valuation of Japanese manga and anime, allowing it to be more heavily subsidized by authors' dayjobs. They never made money in manga. Introducing money to disinterested then refusing it achieves nothing. Otherwise it makes no sense.
1: as in small videogame-shop-like franchises that specialize in casual self-published books - yes, that's a thing in Japan.
2: AI is completely useless in manga, I mean, there's no way copyright flamewar and watermarking movement existed if it worked. Pornographic voice drama authors[3] are loving it for generating cover arts for free. But even they don't look interested in AI content generation, they just love free covers.
3: yes, it's a thing in Japanese language, seem to be steadily growing even among English speakers. They're picking up Japanese fast. The hardest language on Earth, not anymore.
Omitting that tends to result in more productive discussions. Most people are much more principled when discussing in the abstract than when it comes to something that they have been two minutes' hating for their whole lives.
Your feelings as a non-Japanese have absolutely no bearing on what flies in Japan.
Whether the content concerned is tentacle hentai, or goth lolis, or genderbent King Arthur and Leonardo Da Vinci, or whatever else, that stuff is legal under Japanese law and Visa/MC are violating Japanese rights ordering Japanese creators and merchants to censor them. Visa/MC are quite literally engaging in foreign interference and subversion of democracy and Japan's very culture.
That's a, uh, rather overheated statement and ironically, a very Western point of view. Japan is one of the richest nations in the world, they can (and do) run their own payments systems.
Also, it's risible to call that stuff Japan's "very culture". It's not. Otaku culture is fringe there, too. Japan is not anime.
Also, there are plenty of legal things that are (rightly) publicly shamed and ostracized.
For example, I don't want white supremacists to go to jail for what they say, but I want their lives to be as annoying and lonely as possible.
> For example, I don't want white supremacists to go to jail for what they say, but I want their lives to be as annoying and lonely as possible.
Do you want e.g. electricity companies to refuse to do business with them? Do you think that's a private business decision that doesn't need any particular right of appeal or evidentiary standard?
(The author deliberately presents the notion that a bank account is something different from a utility as though this were an objective, immutable fact of nature, rather than the product of choices that the financial industry makes because it finds it very convenient to think of itself that way)
The idea of making people with 19th century views actually live in 19th century conditions is extremely amusing. We could try it, sure.
On a more serious note, I don't think it's accurate or fair to say it's merely because of industry choices.
The US stretched the idea of the common carrier (ie everyone has equal access to send freight on the railroads) to things like oil pipelines and telecommunications lines. Utilities offer services under license from the government and have special rights and subsidies.
I don't think a bank account is that similar. It's essentially floating you a loan - you can cash a fraudulent check and skip out with the money, for example, and the bank eats the cost.
>Japan is one of the richest nations in the world, they can (and do) run their own payments systems.
Indeed. JCB and certain western credit cards contracted with them for access into Japan (namely AMEX and Discover) have no problems (and why should they) with what Visa/MC want to censor.
>Also, it's risible to call that stuff Japan's "very culture". It's not. Otaku culture is fringe there, too. Japan is not anime.
Tentacle hentai goes back at least as far as Katsushika Hokusai[1], so you are mistaken. Otaku culture is very much a part of Japanese culture and inseparable.
>Also, there are plenty of legal things that are (rightly) publicly shamed and ostracized.
When legal tender cannot be used for legal transactions, there is a problem.
> When legal tender cannot be used for legal transactions, there is a problem
Why? Something being legal for you doesn't make it compulsory for others. With limited exceptions, nobody is required to do business with you.
Also, I must stress again that Japan is a real country with real people. It is not anime, and it's even more risible to point to famous historical porn and say it's analogous to modern porn.
That's like gay slurs are deeply central to American culture because the Roman poet Catallus lost his cool once at some critics.[0]
>> When legal tender cannot be used for legal transactions, there is a problem
> Why? Something being legal for you doesn't make it compulsory for others.
Because this undermines soverignity. Nation monopolizes violence. There can't be a private police with its own laws, that's a mafia. Once an entity has powers comparable to that of the nation it resides in, within few orders of magnitudes, that power must to be destroyed and transferred to the government of the nation.
In this case, the US government, as well as the governments of other nations, will tacitly impose its monopoly on violence against banks, processors, and merchants to ban content it doesn't like. So it was with Wikileaks, and so it goes with ero-manga. The only mafia are the ones prodding the credit card companies into a financial dilemma between legal liability and cutting off a market.
VISA isn't doing it in compliance right now. It's doing its things using "global standards" as an excuse. That behavior is not democratic, and such functions need to be regulated out.
I remember seeing people debating who's the kingpin and where the orders are coming from, as it'll change which of anti-monopoly laws, financial transaction laws, trademark laws, outsourcing laws, etc. would apply or has to be amended.
Whoever it is, it's kind of obvious that the mafia isn't a US or European official government entity or employee. Last I've heard, people doing this research-activism seem to have largely excluded direct involvement of VISA Inc. in US as well as its Singapore subsidiary, and was poking around few specific VPs in VJA or something.
>Why? Something being legal for you doesn't make it compulsory for others.
Money is legal tender for all debts public and private, money has value precisely because everyone can and should use and accept it.
If banks or payment processors inhibit or prohibit my ability to conduct business by refusing to transact my money with no justifiable basis, then that is violating my and the other party's rights to free association as well as destroying the very essence of money.
If you truly do not see the very serious problem here, I'm not sure what it will take to enlighten you.
>Also, I must stress again that Japan is a real country with real people.
You are literally talking to a Japanese man, I probably know about Japan more intimately than you will ever do.
>It is not anime
Otaku culture is an inseparable part of Japanese culture and attacking it like Visa/MC are doing is attacking Japanese culture, what part of that do you not understand?
>it's even more risible to point to famous historical porn and say it's analogous to modern porn.
Kinoe no Komatsu[1] is quite literally a doujinshi-equivalent[2] from its time. Classic Japanese eroges are sometimes featured[3] as a symbol of Japanese culture of its time.
>That's like gay slurs are deeply central to American culture because the Roman poet Catallus lost his cool once at some critics.
Whitewashing histories and cultures is nothing short of reprehensible. Whatever happened to diversity and heritage?
[3]: https://x.com/Ian_Fisch/status/1820897232746594354 - The lower screenshot (it is SFW) is from Words Worth[4]. The dialogue translates to English like so: [Astral]: Hey Katra... Are you always peeping at Sharon when she's naked?
It's a throwaway account intended to be detached and hopefully untracable to whoever the owner/main account is.
What I'm wondering is what point you're trying to make here; account age has no bearing on whether it's a throwaway or not, though the longer a throwaway is used the more it accumulates an identity of its own.
We live in a society. There were a bunch of pedos in the Netherlands who tried to start a political party to change age of consent.
It did not go well for them.
The middle class and below live paycheck to paycheck so that's an issue they don't have. I suppose the author refers to this (ironically or not)
But debanking happens, or has happened, to _almost_ everybody who has some assets and cash, probably from the higher middle class until the ~1% .. as for the super wealthy, this class enjoys offshore private banking, has assets split into dozens of accounts and is mostly unbothered by AML.
> debanking happens, or has happened, to _almost_ everybody who has some assets and cash
I don't think this is true. I know many people with assets and as far as I know, none of them has been debanked. Surely I would know someone who has been debanked if almost everybody with assets has been.
You need to provide data behind your claim that debanking is so widespread as to use the word almost everybody.
Never ever heard any person I know being denied banking services, except for some unlucky (were they?) entrepreneur with very shady is-he-laundering-money situations.
I feel exactly the same. I tire of people on HN talking about their accounts being closed but providing 10% of the relevant information to their case. I have said it before and I will say it again: If your accounts are wrongfully closed, immediately: (1) Visit your your bank in protest and meet with the branch manager and (2) send physical letter of complaint to (a) local branch (b) head office (c) national bank regulator and make it clear you have CC'd all. I bet 99% of legit cases will be reinstated within 30 days.
If you look in the details of the "paycheck to paycheck" surveys, people reporting they make 200k+ a year also say yes to that, so I think it's just unclear what they think it means.
> But debanking happens, or has happened, to _almost_ everybody who has some assets and cash, probably from the higher middle class until the ~1%
Can you back up this claim? The wealthier you are the less chance you're going to be debanked. Marc Andressen and all the crypto bros will never have an issue with debanking. Banks are rolling out the red carpet for him and everyone else with his net worth.
What they (1%) want is to own the bank and own (and create) the currency without ever having to be an actual bank. They invest in crypto to make a massive profit, and it's foolish to play along with these things as some sort of benefit to society. Together these guys could end world hunger and still have more money than they would ever need, but no, they've decided VBucks are a pressing issue.
I know quite a few people, and entities affected by it in Europe. Some of them even personally, individual accounts, not just their companies and organizations. I would elaborate, except I suspect that will be counter productive. Please read site guidelines. Let's agree to disagree.
The idea that the debanking of individuals on political basis has only happened in Canada is wrong. Furthermore, this also only happens to, let's say one side of the political dialogue.