HeyItsMatt

The state is saying Visa is committing the crime. The states media cheerleaders are squawking it to all that will listen.

If Visa loses, payment processors have little choice but to remove processing from sites that allow user generated content, including Reddit. They are legally responsible for all under-18 content, and as "Big Evil Corporations" they have no support from anyone in the community that matters.

The EU and UK is even worse in this regard, so no anonymous commercial social networks will ever be created again.

Nothing to do with transaction risk. Congress and the executive branch have a myriad of ways to harm a large business if they don't get what they want.

Visa's issues with religious fundamentalists started in the Tipper Gore days. During the Bush presidency it was nearly impossible for a porn site to get a US payment processor.

Google+ and circles were a good idea and should have been given a team with a lot of free rein and left to grow organically.

Google+ died because it was forced on everyone that had a Google and a Youtube account by psychopathic managers to "grow the numbers". This included forcing a realname policy on non-G+ users that explicitly did not want their online persona connected to their identity. It became the least cool platform on the internet overnight.

To replace Pichai the two largest Google shareholders would have to give a shit about the direction of the company. But they've been absent for longer than Pichai has been CEO.

I can't surface them at all for non-programming sites. Occasionally automotive, but it's still mostly AI generated made for adsense junk. I can use site: filters on sites I know about, but I can't find anything on a page I don't know that way. Your filter bubble may be different.

I mostly use Yandex now. It's not great.