Totally happy to see racist platforms like Gab shrivel up and die, but uneasy about payment processors being the arbiters and instruments of their death.
The payment processors have enormous, largely invisible and unchecked, power (ask sex wokers or anyone involved in an even mildly controversial business). The fact that they are using it for good here doesn’t change my discomfort with where this power is being concentrated.
Anyway, nothing about any of this is simple or obvious to me.
Before you say “bitcoin”, I thought so too, a long time ago. (I even chaired the financial crypto conference). But it got hijacked by scammers and consumed by volatility that has rendered it useless for its intended purpose. This is hard.
In any case, it just seems unfortunate if we end up de facto ceding control over and enforcement of the standards of our community to the financial industry, perhaps the most aggressively amoral business sector we have.
