We get up in arms about it because we think that it's unethical in all but the last case. Society as a whole should be publicly deciding which personal transactions are forbidden, not the payment processing platform.
seriously though, i don’t really think it’s in a company’s purview to promote those values, otherwise they’d let their employees vote on who their ceo should be or wether their jobs should be outsourced or not etc... it definitely is in their purview to maximize their profit and at least in the short-term it would seem banning is “easier” (aka profitable) since it quells any “controversies” quickly enough...
please note, i’m not defending tech companies or payment processors banning merchants etc, just stating how i see it for my limited experience...
>seriously though, i don’t really think it’s in a company’s purview to promote those values, otherwise they’d let their employees vote on who their ceo should be or wether their jobs should be outsourced or not etc... it definitely is in their purview to maximize their profit and at least in the short-term it would seem banning is “easier” (aka profitable) since it quells any “controversies” quickly enough...
Indeed. I may not support the political views of (checks notes) ultra-nationalist furries, but I damn well think in a free society, their right to (checks notes) draw furry pr0n with Nazi flags in it should be abridged only by democratically discussed and broadly supported hate-speech laws.
An "ew no" to one is an "ew no" to all!
Or, a little more seriously, if we're not going to go through with actual social control over these decisions, we shouldn't control them at all. The lived experience of freedom is simply having the smallest possible number of choke-points between you and what you want, subject to not violating anyone else's rights or doing anything so morally horrific it was actually banned by the government (eg: organ trafficking or whatever). Our society needs to stop accepting that privatized, for-profit choke-points somehow give us "more freedom" than a law banning the choke-points (ie: common carrier regulations, First Amendment restrictions on state action, etc).
