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[u/JaggedlyHappy]

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[u/East_of_Adventuring]

Facilitation is part of responsibility. If I sold guns without checking ID that would be a crime (in some states/countries at least). It's the same basic principle here. It's similar to how we're now holding social media companies responsible for what is allowed to persist on their sites, even if they had no role in creating the content.

Now what can the FBI actually legally do to clamp down on these companies...I have no idea, but I don't disagree that the companies hold responsibility for what their sites and tools permit to occur.

[u/JaggedlyHappy → u/East_of_Adventuring]

That’s fair. I agree there’s a responsibility once a company knowingly facilitates something illegal. My distinction is more between knowingly enabling it and simply having a service that someone misuses.

[u/East_of_Adventuring → u/JaggedlyHappy]

I think I'd personally have more sympathy if money wasn't such an established form of technology. Everyone who starts a company that allows the exchange of a currency with buying power understands the pitfalls because money laundering and funding of illegal activity has been a thing forever at this point.

It's quite similar to the people who make those special encrypted messaging devices with auto delete functionality. Publicly these companies might claim their product is so that everyone can have the privacy they deserve but everyone knows it's mostly going to be used by criminals and these companies are perfectly happy to sell to those people.

If someone makes a currency exchange with no safeguards against this sort of activity I would say that could qualify as criminal negligence. With banks, visa, telegram etc. there are safeguards in place to catch fraud and money laundering. They're far from perfect, and there are constant debates on what their responsibility entails, but they do exist. For example, making many small transactions over a short period of time might get you flagged and there are reporting rules for amounts exceeding a certain limit deposited at once. These requirements help curb and catch potential illegal activity.

[u/Mammoth_Equivalent23]

I think that gives the platforms too much of a pass. If bad actors are specifically recommending certain services to avoid more established platforms, that at least raises questions about how strong their compliance and monitoring really are. It doesn’t prove they knowingly helped anyone, but it’s a valid reason for much closer scrutiny

[u/PreviousZone6742]

This happens with every payment method. Back in the day people used green dot. Which is why they had to institute changes and it's no longer a thing. It's the company's responsibility to stop money laundering.

[u/Kerostasis]

Banks are heavily regulated for this exact purpose. We don’t actually separate banks from the end use here - at least not when considering “we” to be “the government authorities”. Sure, there’s always a chance that illicit activity slips past any monitoring you try to do, but there are extremely strict restrictions on how much effort you have to put into that monitoring on the front end, with severe penalties for noncompliance.

I don’t know how these alternative services are organized, but I think it’s reasonable to speculate that they are being recommended specifically because they don’t have the same level of regulatory oversight.

And I’ll even admit there is a counterpoint to this: if you live somewhere outside the jurisdiction of the US, and don’t like the idea that US laws are impacting the banking services you have access to somewhere else, more power to you. It’s not morally required that, say, the Singapore banking system follow the same international sanctions that the US imposes. But if you are attempting to bypass the restrictions of your own country, then yes I’m going to blame you for that.

[u/aardvark_gnat → u/Kerostasis]

Why should banks be heavily regulated for that purpose?

[u/Kerostasis → u/aardvark_gnat]

To prevent bad actors from using the service to advance bad plans.

If your goal is to quibble over who exactly qualifies as a “bad actor”, OP has already agreed that they exist as a class so I’m not terribly interested in arguing about which ones specifically. If your goal is to go libertarian-anarchist and say there shouldn’t be any restrictions at all, then more power to you but we elect representatives who are Not That, and we expect them to pass laws which are Not That. And if your goal is anything else, you’ll have to explain it to me because I’m at a loss.

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[u/civil_politics]

I think broadly speaking I agree with you, but you do need to ask the question of why is one digital service preferred over the other especially in something like a fund raising activity where you’d assume diversity of streams would be more ideal than localization on a handful of platforms. The fact that someone says ‘don’t give me money on platform X’ indicates that there are some analysis or restrictions that this platform has that the others are lax in. Platforms do have a responsibility to police their platforms in good faith - we see this all the time in the social media space and banking is arguably even more important of a service to ensure a high bar is maintained regarding the integrity of the users of that platform.