A couple of months ago, there was a huge controversy when the ‘adult’ website OnlyFans suddenly announced that it would stop broadcasting “sexually explicit” videos and images. However, it did not take him a week to back down and clarify that everything would remain the same on the platform.
What had changed in those days? Basically that they had “obtained the necessary guarantees” from the two sectors that had put on the table the need to change criteria: banks and payment processors.
It is not the first time that the latter have been pointed out as the reason for some editorial change or the closure of a platform: their veto – potentially arbitrary – is capable of overthrowing platforms or business models in a flash and not seen. services such as PayPal, Stripe, Etsy or Square constitute an insurmountable oligopoly for most of those looking to monetize their businesses online.
And while these kinds of services have been recipients of the wrath of the ‘creators’ of pornographic material in recent times, now yet another ‘guild’ joins the previous one, feeling equally ‘discriminated against’ by payment processors: the ‘occult workers’.
Thus, a few days ago Meg Jones, a writer and online tarot reader, published an article in the American technological medium Wired, recounting the problems she has suffered to monetize her activities.
According to her, payment processors display a “serious misunderstanding” of occult professionals (She repeatedly uses the term “metaphysical professionals”, but we don’t want Plato and Aristotle to roll over in their graves). Jones recounts how both his tarot website and the newsletter he created on Substack during the pandemic received notices from Stripe:
“I received a notice from Stripe that my sales violated their terms of service, as my work as a tarot reader seemed to fit into their broad category of ‘psychic services’ and was therefore considered a restricted and ‘high risk’ business. .
Stripe’s official policy regarding ‘ineligibility’ status of this kind of business, is summarized in this paragraph from an e-mail sent by her support team to Meg Jones:
“These companies often make claims that are not supported by science or past evidence, which can lead to a high chargeback rate. Clients will be promised a result, and when that is not true they will dispute a charged as ‘Product not acceptable’ “.
Increasingly, payment processors are gaining power to decide – ‘turning off the tap’ on payments – who stays online or not
According to Jones herself, Stripe is the favorite payment processor for popular platforms such as Substack, Teachable, Shopify, Medium or Clubhouse, and operates on more than three million websites. With such a level of ubiquity it is inevitable that it will impact on any product or service that you consider “ineligible” for payment processing:
“It has led to many people and companies in this sector being kicked off the platform, often without warning. Books, courses, workshops, conferences, consultations, readings and other services are essential sources of income for many freelancers.”
The protagonist of this story explains that the first two times she was able to contact the Stripe and explain to those responsible for the user suspension the exact nature of their services. However, the third time was the charm– Last spring, when you swapped your Substack for a post in Ghost and turned on the Stripe integration,
“They once again marked me as a restricted business. It didn’t matter how many emails I sent – this time I couldn’t convince them to let me stay, even though they never had to process a single refund from a dissatisfied customer. […]. Six months later, I am still struggling to make up for the income I lost. “
Jones echoes the statements of multiple guildmates in his article in the same vein as hers; one of them summarizes the unprotected content creators from payment processors:
“These payment processors without fail collect their monthly fees and keep their percentage of our sales […]. However, without prior notice, they can close our business in a matter of minutes. How can that be fair? “
Porn, witches … and rightists
Although they may feel legitimately discriminated against, these ‘occult professionals’ at least face arguments related to specific economic criteria (the aforementioned ‘high rates of return’); however, there have also been accusations of ideological motivation in some of these vetoes from Stripe and similar companies.
And it is that this class of measures, always perceived as arbitrary by those affected, also have sometimes affected entire social platforms, such as Gab (2018) and Parler (2020), in high-profile cases due to their ‘editorial line’.