Yet another AI company has been debanked and forced to censor its content, while Civitai is still unable to get a full payment processor on board a month and a half+ after losing the old one despite making very harsh concessions. I have concluded that to preserve AI as anything more than a corporate tool it can use to squash upstart competitors and employee count, these financial tyrants must be met with force! The kind exerted via the only entity lawfully able to use it (government).
Currently a bill (or rather, two, one for House and one for the Senate that appear to be identical. This is normal.) is already under consideration by the Legislative branch of the United States, with not insignificant support, that would address these concerns. The Fair Access to Banking Act, currently S.401 and H.R.987, would ensure (quote)
No payment card network, including a subsidiary of a payment card network, may, directly or through any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, by contract, requirement, condition, penalty, or otherwise, prohibit or inhibit the ability of any person who is in compliance with the law, including section 8 of this Act, to obtain access to services or products of the payment card network because of political or reputational risk considerations.The full text of these bills and other information can be found on Congress’s official website.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/987
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401
I think the restrictions on payment card networks are a little too open in the current wording compared to how it treats banks proper, but this can be fixed with an amendment to strengthen the wording before it goes to a vote. The key is for Americans to actually voice their interest in the bill and strengthening the wording so that it can pass. As someone with plenty of experience hounding officials, I would like to encourage others to do the same and provide instructions for those in the 50 States of the United States or Washington D.C. (I can't help for other areas).
Step 1: Find your Representative
First step is finding who your Representative is and their contact info. The official way to do this is through this site using your zip code, though several zip code areas will overlap so you'll need to input more info.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
If you somehow don’t know your zipcode, check your mail (the physical stuff). By definition, it should have the five digit code (rarely nine digits with a hyphen after the first five) as part of your address. Otherwise the US Postal Service has a lookup service.
https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm
From there it’s a simple matter to check their status on this legislation (check for their name under “cosponsors” tab of the above linked page on Congress) then search for their official website. On their official website you should be able to easily find their office phone numbers and call them. Most should have both district offices and DC offices. I can’t tell you which office is better to call: Even within the same congressional district for successive congressmen from the same party using the same building and number I’ve been told conflicting claims on if the the DC office or the local should be contacted. My opinion is the best one for existing legislation is the one that will actually have a human pick up at. If you’re in one of the six districts with a vacant seat due to death or resignation, skip to the next step.
Step 2: Find your (State’s) Senators
Except for residents of Washington D.C, if you have a voting representative (or are supposed to have one), you(r State*) should also have two Senators (barring vacancies which there currently are none) to contact. Figuring these out is much easier since they cover the entire State. From there, you can visit their official website to find their office numbers.
Step 3: Call them
As far as I’m aware, calling is the most effective way to contact legislators. Anything about handwritten letters is a myth made by them to slow down volume of contact: Mail can be scanned, digitized, and OCRed then sorted by terms automatically, and given an automated reply (one of my ex-Senators actually had the audacity to autopen his signature onto his stock replies!), with email not even needing to be physically handled. Calls however need human bandwidth to handle and are thus the greatest consumer of an office’s resources yet are one of the easiest to do. It’s optimal to call when the office is open (typically ~9AM to 5 PM DC time, local offices will vary) but leaving a message is still way better than not contacting them at all.
Be sure to have the following information ready when you call, because you'll be asked for it
Your name and spelling of your surname in the NATO phonetic alphabet . (You will be asked to spell your name, and spelling over the phone with any other method is a horrible experience.)
Your zipcode (some offices accept town/city, but zipcode is standard. See above)
Your return phone number
The bill number (currently S.401 for Senate and H.R.987 in House)
Tell them your name, zip code, and phone number and urge them to support the bills by name and number and that it needs an amendment to strengthen the wording on payment processors in section 5, or, if they are already a co-sponsor, urge them to push for a vote on it and amend it to strengthen the wording on payment processors. Be polite but firm. Tell them whatever arguments for it you want (e.g., this is an erosion of “all debts public and private”, that it is surrendering the “AI war” to China, that even government officials aren’t immune to this assault, that other rights have been attacked under the same gap in law, etc.). If you are at all unsure if they got it right, ask them to repeat what they’ve written down (I’ve heard some that were egregiously wrong on what I was asking for)
Step 4: Save their numbers
Figuring all this out the first time is work, but once you have it, you can keep using it for whatever legislative issues you run into till they’re gone (and even then, their successors will often keep the same number). Your officials want it to be work to contact them so you’ll stay silent and let them do as they please, but keeping them in your address book lets you call at will for any legislative demands.
Step 5: Get more people to call
The only thing Washington hates more than someone telling them to do something, is people telling them to do something! Volume is the main thing that matters to these suits.
*The constitutionality issues of the Seventeenth Amendment over its deprivation of equal suffrage for each State in the Senate is beyond the scope of this article (and website).
Update July 17th: Three new cosponsors in House (up to 73 and 43 for House). Keep calling!
Update July 23rd: House and Senate are out of session for rest of month. This may impede updates on cosponsor count, and may impact which office is better to call, and also gives chances to personally demand co-sponsor/amendment (check their websites and social media for event information). Also large(ish) digital games store Itch dot Io ordered to remove massive amount of content by payment processors.