It's crazy that we live in a world where maybe a few dozen people's weird ideas about what shouldn't be allowed can cause payment processors to pressure the storefronts to delist the titles. It is censorship of something they personally find distasteful. guess what: nobody is forcing you to play weird art games about trauma.
obviously we must keep the pressure up on payment processors to reverse course, but we also need to push back against people in society who think they can decide what other adults are allowed to do on their own time. If folks IRL have weird ideas pushed back on IRL we wouldn't get to crisis points like this.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> a few dozen people's weird ideas about what shouldn't be allowed
I want to underline the absurdity of a foreign feminist organisation [1], in this political environment, dictating what Americans can and cannot see.
I was under the impression that Australia was more America than America in a lot of ways.
Supposedly you can still hear the last of the V8 interceptors roar in the wild there...
averageRoyalty · 4h ago
Good. The rest of the world is used to rolling our eyes at Americans who can't handle the word cunt or show a dick on TV and the impact it has on us. It's not a bad thing to get a reality check for you.
shagie · 2h ago
The group that did this is Australian based on Australian laws on illegal pornography.
averageRoyalty · 1h ago
Yes, and the things I described are based on American decision makers with American sensibilities. What is the point you're making?
rodgerd · 7h ago
No more absurd than US card schemes dictating what I can and can't buy in another country.
JumpCrisscross · 6h ago
> No more absurd than US card schemes dictating what I can and can't buy in another country
Philosophically, sure. Practically, no.
America is an economic and military superpower. Washington having influence over its trading partners and military allies isn't unusual. To the extent I can think of something that mirrors the absurdity of this situation, it's American evangelicals running off to Uganda to stone gays.
makeitdouble · 6h ago
Visa/Mastercard banning porn has been a consistent and steady policy for years now.
Maybe this time it was triggered by this specific group, but it comes in a line of events that all went into that direction for years and years.
American puritanism is neither a flash in the pan nor a fringe movement of people that just need to be told how it is, IMHO.
galleywest200 · 6h ago
Worth pointing out that this group that pushed this, Collective Shout, is Australian.
latentsea · 4h ago
If I were Visa/Mastercard, I would make it look that way too.
averageRoyalty · 4h ago
Yep, and their motivation was different (the opinion that banning these types of games reduces domestic violence) to Visa/Mastercard, but the goals align.
Twirrim · 5h ago
> Visa/Mastercard banning porn has been a consistent and steady policy for years now.
Yeah, because they got sued for processing payments on some porn sites that weren't taking down revenge porn. They're not puritans, they're concerned about their bottom line, and the lawsuits threatened them with losing lots of money.
makeitdouble · 3h ago
> They're not puritans
They don't need to. I'm saying that we've seen the same pattern for a while now, and puritan groups have enough money/influence to dictate a lot of how the online world looks like now.
I'd argue Visa/Mastercard could deal with the issue if they really wanted to, but as you point out they're following the money, and I wouldn't expect them to do otherwise either. I still think they share the blame (being opportunistic doesn't mean being above criticism), but you're right that more or it lays on other shoulders.
wordsinaline · 21m ago
can you please list some puritan groups you refer to? maybe explain with an example what theyve done before to shape the internet atm? i have zero idea what is going on.
Yeul · 6h ago
I will say one thing for Puritanism they would have exiled Trump not vote him mayor.
sojournerc · 6h ago
Despite the down votes I think this is right. The reason the "conservative" side has voted for Trump is more voting against the other side. With maybe a Mitt Romney type and an actual primary, the religious right would go that way. Many conservatives do not like trump, but consider him better than the alternative.
I'm grateful my parents, who were life long conservatives, haven't lived to see the tragedy of what passes for Republicans these days.
makeitdouble · 5h ago
Trump is in favor of giving more power to US corporations and letting money speak ("deals", or bribery depending on your POV).
He's a very good defense against politicians with stronger ideologies, especially those more aligned with international values which tend to smooth out specific cultural gripes.
johnnyanmac · 6h ago
You're not wrong, in a vacuum. Proper puritanism would have been disgusted by trump for a good 20 years before his presidency. .
It's too bad that puritanism is often co-opted by the largest hypocrites. SO perhaps they would vote him in in practice.
catigula · 9h ago
"People" isn't really the right concept.
Most of these groups buckle to well-funded lobby groups.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> well-funded lobby groups
Collective Shout isn't this. They're closer to outrage entrepreneurs.
They identified a non-issue that one could generate outrage around, fundraised on that manufactured outrage, and then launched an attack nobody was defending against because the issue was made up.
catigula · 6h ago
I'm less concerned about them and more concerned about groups that are known and bill themselves as credible resources for "extremists" but have extensive ties to foreign states.
LtWorf · 6h ago
Sounds like the debian community team asking for immediate removal of offensive fortunes after they had been there for several decades, without of course even understanding the language the fortunes are written in.
nitwit005 · 8h ago
It's still people. There's a small group of decision makers that matter.
They're absolutely ignoring a bunch of other well funded lobby groups. This idea just appealed to them, for whatever reason.
throitallaway · 6h ago
The founding fathers knew what they were doing vis a vis separation of church and state.
leoqa · 4h ago
I really disagree. I think hentai is a flimsy wrapper around child fetishization and needs to be heavily regulated. I think having rape or torture simulators are extremely harmful in multiple ways.
Really would prefer the government outlaw these things but I don’t mind companies protecting themselves from liability.
Seb-C · 3h ago
In my opinion, this content has a net positive effect on society.
While of course I cannot approve those activities, we cannot ignore the fact that there exists people who are sexually attracted and aroused by children, torture, rape and many other things. And we know that you don't get to choose your sexual orientation, it just happens.
As a parent, I find it reassuring to live in a country where those people can relief their pulsions through fictional content. Stripping them from this option would only make them suffer through this pain and shame until a point where they cannot endure it anymore and end-up harming real people.
We know that harassing and witch-hunting minorities doesn't work and actually makes the situation worse. As uncomfortable as this specific case is, I believe that it's much better to help them find a way to live peacefully in society.
const_cast · 4h ago
We can't go banning things just because they can, potentially, be used for "child fetishization".
Movies can be used for that purpose, and certainly Hollywood knows that. Books. TV. Any form of media.
Not to mention, rape and torture "simulators" (do you by change mean media?) are integral to our understanding of those things. What if rape survivors could not speak it, for it is too shameful?
And, the elephant in the room, sex is alone on this pedestal. Sex, alone, is uniquely stigmatized to a degree that nothing even comes close. Violence, no matter how gruesome and vile, does not reach even 1/1000th the scorn of even modest sex.
This is a purity game, plain and simple. The shame around sex and the extreme desire to control it comes from the patriarchy and religious ideals. These should not be humored.
wkat4242 · 19m ago
> Violence, no matter how gruesome and vile, does not reach even 1/1000th the scorn of even modest sex.
Ehh in the US yes. In most of Europe not so much (the UK and maybe Hungary as the most notable exceptions)
fruitworks · 4h ago
I don't think it's a good idea to deputize payment processors. They are practicially natural monopolies due to network effects.
If it's illegal then the government should pursue it directly. It's better tested in court than behind closed doors.
Spivak · 4h ago
Well, at least in the US, it's legal to draw, sell, and purchase those drawings—no wrapper needed it can be explicitly cp. And while I have negative infinity desire to consume or encounter this kind of content I nonetheless think it should exist as a 'methadone' for folks whose sexual frustration might otherwise drive them to do something horrible.
And if we allow it at all I don't think it makes sense to pick and choose what artistic mediums it's allowed to take no matter how abhorrent I might personally find it.
littlestymaar · 9h ago
Freedom of speech goes both ways, even people we disagree with are free to express their opinions.
The real problem is how can it be legal for payment provider to forbid stuff that isn't illegal, no matter what it is.
Had Steam decided to deplatform some content, it's up to them (although centralization through steam of other platform causes an unwarranted concentration of power) but that third parties can intervene an have a say in what is allowed and what isn't anywhere on the internet is a very serious trouble.
arcfour · 6h ago
The payment provider has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason, being forced to do business with someone is the same thing as compelling someone to speak (or not speak).
Two wrongs don't make a right.
taurath · 35m ago
The payment provider does not have that right, in fact.
arcfour · 31m ago
Yes, they do, and if they dont, they should.
8note · 17m ago
they however ahould also be broken up grom a duopoly into maybe 500k different payment providers, each with their own bent on who to do business with
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
Okay. That isn't their argument, though.
>We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers. Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction.
So they are trying to outright lie or they are so disconnected they are ignorant of what other parts of their company are doing. Neither are a good luck.
jfyi · 5h ago
It's a good indication that it came from their processors and not from Visa.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Maybe for Itch, but I believe Valve is more than large enough to need to work directly with Visa to for payment processes. They likely tried to do as much processing in house before that point as well.
jfyi · 3h ago
It looks like they both use paysafe and paypal for processing.
littlestymaar · 6h ago
There are two parts in this argument I disagree with:
- that doing business is akin to speech.
- that corporations are entitled human rights (freedom of speech).
Also, freedom of speech means nothing for humans if corporations can force their customers not to discuss certain topics in the name of “I don't want to do business with someone who says that”.
arcfour · 6h ago
Freedom of speech is freedom from being arrested for your speech. It is not the freedom to force others to give your speech a platform. Just like how it's not freedom to force other people to listen to your speech. If it is, then I exercise my freedom of speech to place bumper stickers on YOUR car that say things that you find distateful. "But that's my property!" Yes, and Steam's servers and software are Valve's property. Mastercard and Visa's platforms are theirs.
If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism, you would probably find this objectionable. Why? Because if you walked into a bookstore and there's a bunch of books there full of Nazi propaganda, you would probably wonder if the owner of the store was a Nazi. You don't want to be associated with or seen as promoting it.
Funny when at the same time people call democracy "the tyranny of the majority".
gsf_emergency_2 · 6h ago
both can be true at the same time: when the majority are voting for the same policies they have always been, and the parties move their positions such that they divide the votes between themselves as evenly as possible, the outcome does depend on a minority of swing voters
Taleb's examples are a variant of this, where the majority is passive instead of static
xscott · 4h ago
> the parties move their positions such that they divide the votes between themselves as evenly as possible
That's something I'd like to understand better... Why would they TRY to divide evenly? Where's the party that takes the majority position for each topic? It seems foolish to play for a draw or tie, so something else must be happening.
From what I've seen in my life, people are more likely conform to their party than vice versa. But I've got a very small sample size.
gsf_emergency_2 · 3h ago
You don't have to ascribe free will to the politicians; just agency. They have metrics to game, the voters don't, that's enough. For instance, Trump recently tried to get Coca-Cola to replace corn sugar with cane sugar.
It reminds me of WWI attrition tactics..
(I'm trying to analyze the data on this ATM- please tolerate 8my current read. If you've got a better way to say it don't hold back!)
You brought up a "silent minority" effect that I've to think/find out more about. Your friends that disagree with their party line usually stays out of the vote. However,that seems to make (the impact of) the actual swing voter even stronger, according to my very preliminary analysis
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
If we had a fair popular vote, perhaps. As is, National US elections is disproportionately focused on appealing to 6-7 purple states opposed to who has the best platform for the country.
politelemon · 9h ago
To me this is also a stark warning over silicon valley companies instilling their morals and assumptions on other parts of the world. It's not a popular take because it's got many touch points into our spheres of working.
xtracto · 9h ago
If only there was some kind of decentralized technology that allowed us to move value between two independent entities in a trustless manner, at very low cost and very very fast.
No, I'm not talking about the POC that the pseudonimus guy proposed. Maybe something later that actually scales... a man can only wish that such technology will be invented sometime in the future.
root_axis · 9h ago
So if it solves so many problems, why do you think nobody uses it except for gamblers, drug dealers, and celebrity scammers?
ipaddr · 7h ago
And regular people who don't make the tiktok reels.
fruitworks · 4h ago
Look into chaumian ecash. It is distinct from cryptocurrency, it uses blind signatures to anonymize payments
KetoManx64 · 9h ago
I imagine this currently would be deflationary and be a superb store of value to keep inflation from eating away your life savings and possibly become the best performing asset of this generation.
Magical thinking of course.
Dylan16807 · 7h ago
You're suggesting things that make it a worse currency.
KetoManx64 · 12m ago
Guess we'll see in the next 10 years.
x0x0 · 9h ago
I read a long interview about porn regulation and the star-chamber-esque process whereby visa and mastercard determine what porn is allowed.
Fundamentally, it's a failure of government. The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules. But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
Telemakhos · 9h ago
Alternatively, the failure of government here is not in their failure to regulate porn but in their failure to regulate Visa and Mastercard properly and thus deprive the payment processors of the opportunity or excuse to run "star-chamber-esque" processes. If non-cash payment rails are now a necessity to run a business, then access to them has to be a right. The payment processors need to be required to allow every business to accept money through their service, for the same fee as any other business is charged. Otherwise payment rails become a de-facto government in that they gain the power to license or prohibit businesses at their caprice.
zeta0134 · 7h ago
An argument I tend to hear is risk management, since the adult industries deal with a higher level of fraud. (And shameful refunds, perhaps somewhat understandably.) I think what we are likely reacting to is a legitimate desire to curb this sort of fraud that has evolved, over time, into a moral panic because inconveniently legal vices correlate strongly with that fraud.
The solution cannot be to turn Visa/Mastercard into the morality police. Or any payment processor, really. That is not their job, and they are ill equipped to perform it. Hard agree that access to payment processing should be based on legality of the sale and nothing else. If Visa/Mastercard want to then *measure* a business's overall fraud level as it happens in reality, and then adjust their rates accordingly, they can still do that in a fair manner. In other words, the riskier businesses deal with higher fees or something, but we aren't trying to define whether furry art is somehow porn or some other nonsense in the crossfire. Separate the streams please.
brookst · 5h ago
The fraud argument doesn’t hold water. Adult sites pay higher transaction fees, and it would be bizarre for a moral outrage campaign to be aimed at ensuring profitability for private companies.
x0x0 · 5h ago
There's an (iirc) several hundred page long document, available only to merchant banks, detailing in excruciating detail what is allowed. It's not a fraud thing; that's controlled by rates. It's a few banks want to deal with the hassle and the audit requirements to work with porn producers. Because the banks themselves must audit per visa/mastercard's requirements.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> their failure to regulate Visa and Mastercard properly
It's probably fear of such regulation that motivates Visa and Mastercard to bow to such pressure.
warkdarrior · 8h ago
Outside of US there are lots of payment processors that do not touch Visa/MC rails. And in US one can use ACH/Zelle. Nothing stops a business from avoiding Visa/MC. But that may reduce their customer pool, due to increased checkout friction.
tbrownaw · 7h ago
> Nothing stops a business from avoiding Visa/MC. But that may reduce their customer pool, due to increased checkout friction.
"Nothing stops this, except this things that stops it."
0xCMP · 7h ago
I guess you mean users would need to manually send money to the company's E-mail/Phone on Zelle right? Then it's up to the merchant to know if the payment has been received.
Cause I don't think there is any kind of way to buy things with Zelle and possibly it would be a TOS issue.
cogman10 · 9h ago
The reason the government has failed here is religion.
Politicians don't want to wade into porn regulation because saying anything other than "we will outright ban it" will be construed as condoning something a large population chunk sees as immoral in all circumstances. And, obviously, an outright ban will upset the other large set of the population who has no moral qualms with porn.
Prostitution has exactly the same problem. Legislation that regulates sex work would be seen as condoning sex work. So instead, it's outright banned, which pushes sex work into a black market which endangers the sex workers and their patrons.
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
This is why all politicians pretend to be "good Christians" because of the undue power of group(s) of unreasonable people who share similar beliefs of magical thinking.
knome · 9h ago
>The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules
They may not want to make the rules, but they do want the rules. They just don't want the blame. Otherwise they would just, not have the rules around who they'll work with. They would just work with anyone and tell anyone that complains about it to complain to the government, that it's company policy to work with any legal company.
DNS doesn't stop to check if you're okay to have a name. Water company and electric don't refuse to hook up your building because they don't like your business.
They have chosen to become content arbitrators. It was not foist upon them.
bluGill · 9h ago
The government has a history of going after the payment processors if an illegal purchase is made.
JohnFen · 8h ago
But they're only actually liable if they knew the purchase was illegal.
bluGill · 8h ago
That can still be several hundred thousand in lawyer fees.
jlawson · 6h ago
There is no hint that what they just censored (i.e. Steam games) was illegal.
This isn't about fear of handling illegal payments; it's purely morality enforcement.
fidotron · 9h ago
This is the payment people making excuses.
If something isn't illegal it is legal, and therefore they should be allowing payment for it.
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
Sort of. Any company is free to boycott goods or services it doesn't approve of, however consumers also are free to boycott payment processors by paying with crypto made through ACH or wire transfers, or some other P2P payment method. I really think that credit card processors as predatory loan enablers and oligopolies need to be abolished and replaced by nonprofit credit unions with an electronic payment system that is universal, low cost, and non-discriminatory.
wkat4242 · 16m ago
The problem is those other options aren't very common and crypto is pretty useless as a payment method these days due to slow processing and high value fluctuations. Wore transfer is also slow.
It's indeed ridiculous that you need to get a loan just to be able to pay with your own money. At least here in Europe most "credit cards" are actually debit cards. Because we really frown on loans (the best credit rating is for the person who has never even needed to take out a loan)
jvanderbot · 9h ago
This right here is the law that congress would have to pass to make that a reality. A sort of "common carrier" law for money.
Otherwise, they are under no obligation (or protection!).
JoshTriplett · 7h ago
We don't need a new law for this. We need to enforce monopoly law.
We just had a demonstration that the two biggest payment processors, together controlling the vast majority of credit card payments, made the same policy change at the same time and in the process completely suppressed many people's businesses.
Treat them as an anti-consumer oligopoly and regulate accordingly.
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
Maybe in 2029 we can dream of proper trust busting. Probably sooner given current events. But this administration definitely isn't the one to deal with this.
JoshTriplett · 5h ago
And especially, they'd be negatively inclined to do anything based on this motivation. If anything, they'd cheer the payment processors on.
Khaine · 5h ago
The other side of this is the US Government imposes strict requirements around KYC and AML/CTF. Banks have effectively been deputised by the US government to enforce and regulate payments.
A bank can't merely process any transaction that comes its way. You need to know who the parties are, you need to check they aren't on a prohibited list, or in a prohibited country/region. You need to know the purpose of the transaction (to pick up money laundering, or drug/terrorism financing).
dv_dt · 9h ago
Legislators are more often chipping away common carrier protections on communications with various age and id laws than they are extending common carrier type protections into other areas. The fact that it seems to be happening around the globe makes me think its a coordinated campaign.
GuinansEyebrows · 7h ago
it's definitely the result of lobbying; i've experienced it firsthand in a former job. a private dark fiber provider successfully sued the county to prevent expansion of a previously-laid tax-funded municipal fiber project on anticompetitive grounds - he used every trick in the book including lobbying and it worked. and that was just one asshole who didn't want to compete with a small public project. scale that up to ILEC levels with billions in revenue and a revolving door economy and... yeah, i don't see this sort of thing playing out in the peoples' favor any time soon.
bluGill · 9h ago
Governments have not promissed they won't go after them for things that are 'near the line' but it isn't clear over. So they must stay far away as they have money.
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
While this is ideaologically motivated, there are business reasons to not want to deal with porn. Porn has traditionally had disproportionately high charge-back rates, and it does waver on legal lines in several regions, even for US laws. It's a large cost center that I'm sure the business side won't miss dealing with.
shermantanktop · 9h ago
Ideally, they should be able disallow whatever they want, and give up that business if they don't want it.
What they can't do is create a monopoly situation and continue to be that selective---because there is no other game in town, due to their own actions.
t-writescode · 9h ago
Not when the systems in place have made these tools as the “de facto”, safe method of money transfer throughout the globe.
All credit card companies collectively have made themselves “the way” to do it; and they all moralize.
devmor · 9h ago
They already have a monopoly situation, so either they must be forced to allow all transactions or they must be forced to allow those that will to use their networks.
salawat · 7h ago
Tell ya what. When the postal service runs a card network to compete with them, that charges lower interest, and doesn't monetize by selling transaction sets, then we can talk about CC companies being able to be picky about transactions. Til then? Nah...
vunderba · 9h ago
100% - in the face of regulatory capture and monopolies - it's the exact same reason that net neutrality should be upheld.
sybercecurity · 9h ago
>But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
That is somewhat intentional. Governments haven't, usually because they believe they will lose in court (at least in the US), but they still want restrictions so there is pressure put on payment processors to make the determination. That way, it is a private entity doing the banning and not the government. Or at least that is the appearance.
brigade · 7h ago
Governments have made a variety of rules on what acceptable for their individual country. The issue is that some groups don't like that governments (often, governments other than their own) aren't as restrictive as they want.
Like here, the driving group is Australian. Similar groups have been quite successful in getting the Australian government to ban the sale of video games with content they find objectionable, but is very arguably non-pornographic, like Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact. To the point that they're far more restrictive than Nintendo.
const_cast · 4h ago
> But governments haven't
Yes they have. Porn is absolutely, unequivocally, legal. The problem is people don't like that rule.
But, what is permissible and what is not is well established.
latentsea · 4h ago
Governments already determine what's permissible. That's literally what the law is for. So long as it's lawful, it's permissible.
skybrian · 9h ago
My understanding is that for banks, governments regulators don’t want to make rules either, so sometimes they just require banks to have rules that achieve certain goals.
A similar thing might end up happening here?
Kapura · 8h ago
the people who said governments were doing too much regulation basically won. this is where it left us.
salawat · 7h ago
>Fundamentally, it's a failure of government. The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules. But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
Politicians fallacy. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it. It completely glazes over the fact that it's an equally valid course of action to not do something.
s17n · 8h ago
Bro it's not a "weird art game about trauma" its a rape simulator. Should payment processors be involved here? Probably not. But the game is definitely a bad thing that should not exist and whoever made it is 100% a bad person.
ijk · 7h ago
Given that at this point the games that have been delisted include IGF award winners and art games that have been shown in museums, I think we're pretty far past pointing at any individual games as a reason to justify this.
accoil · 7h ago
They're probably talking about Mouthwashing which was announced to be delisted from itch (not steam though) today [^1]. Not played the game, only read synopsis, but it's a horror game instigated by a rape. As far as I know, the rapist is not meant to be a sympathetic character.
I've played it, and without spoiling, there's no way to play it through and come to the conclusion that the rapist (and mass murderer) is an even halfway decent person. It's not titillating (not that the graphics or art style would allow for that in any case), and it's not played in any way except upsetting and mature.
Tbh it's a pretty impressive narrative experience, it really leverages the difference between watching a story and experiencing it.
accoil · 6h ago
I think I will give it a go. Just not immediately, as I don't have the headspace for that prepped.
EA-3167 · 6h ago
It's definitely one to play when you're 100% up for it, and I'd argue it might even be best played with other people. It's genuinely rough, but impressive as hell, and it's a great example of people making their vision come to life with pretty simple tech.
nitwit005 · 8h ago
Should we ban the bible? It certainly has rape and extreme violence. Clearly written by a bad person.
Make a list of the most popular films and games. You'll find a lot of violence and sexual assault. You'd have to ban _most_ media to get rid of it.
Kapura · 8h ago
brother i don't even know what specific thing you're talking about. hundreds, thousands? of games have been delisted on storefronts for the sin of including themes that the lobbiers found objectionable.
const_cast · 4h ago
I don't care if something is bad or not. That's not my concern, and that shouldn't be anyone's concern.
You don't like the game? Is there a gun to your head making you play it? No. The conversation should be over then.
Maken · 8h ago
The problem here is how opaque and arbitrary the entire process is. Because someone could sue Visa/Mastercard over certain games' content in an arbitrary jurisdiction, they have imposed a ban worldwide in every game storefront in existence.
voxl · 8h ago
I've got some bad news for you about the kind of media millions of men and women, some of whom being victims of sexual assault, consume.
But hey they're all bad people I guess, victims included.
throitallaway · 6h ago
I guess we're also going to have to ban movies like A Clockwork Orange then. Stanley Kubrick and all the other people involved in production? 100% bad people.
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
Dylan16807 · 7h ago
The targeting here is very broad. As a reminder, Collective Shout has tried to get GTA blocked. And Detroit: Become Human for having you play as an abused woman and child as they escape the abuse.
EA-3167 · 8h ago
So do what 99.9999% of us already do: don't play these games. You deciding to make it a moral issue that you get to determine for everyone else is where you turn a personal opinion (really just an understandable sense of disgust) into a policy.
If we still decided what was allowed based on the sense of disgust it engenders in some people, we'd still be living like Medieval peasants. Adults should be free to make informed choices, that includes purchasing and consuming things that you and I find repellent.
latentsea · 4h ago
Question... do you or would you be willing to extend this line of reasoning to child porn? As in, some people want to watch it, and most people find it repulsive, but those that don't should be allowed to make the informed choice to watch it?
If not, where do you draw the line? And why there?
const_cast · 4h ago
> do you or would you be willing to extend this line of reasoning to child porn?
No, because that's illegal.
Slippery slope morality arguments are stupid and deserve to be treated as such. I've already heard this a thousand times with homosexuals. Men fucking men? What's next, men fucking kids? Men fucking dogs???
No, it's a stupid line of reasoning and, in fact, it's so stupid that even just a few seconds of inspection is enough to have it crumble and fall between the cracks of your hands.
> As in, some people want to watch it, and most people find it repulsive
You have a very fundamental misunderstanding here.
Okay, people find murder repulsive too. But is the reason that we outlawed murder because it's repulsive? Think about it. Throwing up is repulsive. Do we throw people in jail if they feel sick?
No. Whether or not ANYONE thinks something is repulsive is completely unrelated to if it should be allowed.
We did not, have not, and will never ban child pornography on the grounds it's "repulsive". It is, but that doesn't matter. We ban it because children are unable to consent, and subjecting unconsenting people to sexual acts is rape. Distributing the material is equally bad because it creates a market for it - meaning, more rape.
> If not, where do you draw the line? And why there?
When it comes to sex, consent. That's the only place you can draw the line. Otherwise I can easily weaponize your arguments against you. There are many sexual things you personally do which I find repulsive - please, tread carefully. This line of reasoning is dangerous.
mcphage · 7h ago
> Bro it's not a "weird art game about trauma" its a rape simulator.
What game are you talking about?
miniBill · 8h ago
No one is defending the game. Everyone is just saying that payment processors should not be judge, jury and executioner
numpad0 · 9h ago
I suspect a lot of people are rather comforted by the fact that it was pornographies that were removed at first. Now the waterline has moved up to horror games[1]. Mouthwashing(2024) is a horror adventure game available on all 3 major game consoles as well as Steam, and now it's hidden on itch.io. Think about that.
The current discussion included games like Detroit: Become Human, which AFAICT does not include the kind of content being objected to here[^1].
[^1]: I think there is a sexual assault scene against a robot — but the game isn't glorifying SA; if anything, exactly the opposite, since the entire point of the story is focused on questions of sentience and moral grey to outright morally horrendous areas around the rights of robots who are gaining sentience but exist in a society that does not see them as beings deserving of rights, but rather as objects, and the conflict/problems that creates.
To classify it as "rape content" or "porn" would require stripping it of literary & artistic value. Which seems to be the endgame of most of these book-burning groups.
colonwqbang · 8h ago
Crazy, that's a very acclaimed game which won multiple awards. The story alludes to past rape but nothing is depicted in the game.
Many of the books we read in school would be banned if these people had their way.
justsid · 7h ago
No worries, this pearl clutching is getting many books that we read in school banned as well.
tofof · 6h ago
Always has been. Julie of the Wolves is a Newbery winner and the sexual assault in the first quarter of the book is central to the entire story. The Giver is another, and deals with euthanasia and infanticide (literally 'abortion after birth'). Number the Stars, again a Newbery winner, dealing with escaping genocide. The Slave Dancer - guess that topic? Summer of the Swans, with a mentally disabled sibling? Shiloh - animal abuse. Maniac Magee - racism.
And they've always been being banned for these things. And these are just from the <100 Newbery winners.
vunderba · 8h ago
Unfortunately, many people will support a law provided that the first order consequences align with them ideologically - irrespective of the potential PRECEDENT aforementioned law results in.
throitallaway · 6h ago
Next up: anything with LGBTQ characters. GTA 6 is going to have to get some rewrites!
on_the_train · 8h ago
Porn wasn't the first by a long shot. It was just the first that people felt comfortable speaking up against. Up to that point everyone seemed mighty fine that these companies rule the world
benoau · 9h ago
> “We raised our objection to rape and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months,” reads a blog post from Collective Shout. “We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.”
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
Terr_ · 9h ago
Especially when it's just the opening wedge for groups that obviously plan on an indefinitely escalating list of demands.
averageRoyalty · 4h ago
> Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
Why should they? They have a global duopoly, there's not going to be any long term impact here.
BolexNOLA · 9h ago
The problem is that in the current environment all it takes is one right wing grifter to go “visa protects rapists and pedophiles and their sick twisted games/fantasies” for conservative “boycotts” and negative PR campaigns to go in to full swing. And if they survive that, there’s always a chance the current White House will catch wind and use it themselves as a cudgel.
jennyholzer · 9h ago
Are these "cancel culture" takedown campaigns at all reflective of popular sentiment?
In 2018 and 2019 these campaigns and their ramifications (be they positive or negative) were consistently present in in-person conversations I was having at the time.
In 2025, these campaigns strike me as outdated and significantly less popular compared to 5-7 years ago. The people I know in real life talk about other things.
It is plainly clear to me that with a decent botnet one can easily manufacture the illusion of social outrage on Twitter/X.
With that in mind, I find it hard to believe that there is even a critical mass of people supporting this takedown campaign.
Has anyone with any sort of reputation backed this takedown campaign?
fn-mote · 9h ago
> Has anyone with any sort of reputation backed this takedown campaign?
Once the payment processors are on board, it doesn’t matter who else is involved. That’s all the rep you need.
Even if this was entirely the result of manufactured outrage (and I think this is your point?), you need a way forward.
I believe it is not getting rolled back even if someone were to discover the instigators are (say) Russian sock puppets.
BolexNOLA · 8h ago
>Are these "cancel culture" takedown campaigns at all reflective of popular sentiment?
I mean look what happened to Budweiser for sponsoring one person identifying as trans and making like 2 cans for it. Doesn’t matter if it’s popular or not, if the outrage is loud enough you can dominate these businesses.
EasyMark · 1h ago
I just don't believe those boycotts have the power they think. How many people are going to give up their Visa card because some do-gooder pearl-clutching MAGAtastic group is crying about it on tik-tok and facebook
zahlman · 5h ago
> In 2008,[4]: 84 [Melinda Tankard Reist] co-founded Collective Shout for a World Free of Sexploitation (or simply Collective Shout), which self-describes as "a grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture."[14]
Is that what "right-wing grifters" look like nowadays?
BolexNOLA · 2h ago
>in 2008
You have to go back 17 years to make a modern cultural argument? 2008 is as far from 2025 as it was 1991, for reference. Instagram came out 2 years after your reference.
zahlman · 2h ago
> You have to go back 17 years to make a modern cultural argument?
I am not "going back" 17 years; I am pointing out that they have been doing this continuously for 17 years, which is an awful lot of effort for a "grift".
stelonix · 9h ago
It is not specific to right wing grifters. Left wing grifters use the same talking points but with a different reason behind. Yet they want to censor the same products: one group based on puritanism & moralism while the other based on feminism & LGBT rights. Both extremes want the same thing.
Terr_ · 6h ago
Are there any examples where someone got "de-banked" or "de-payment-processored" because of misogynistic (but legal) content?
Two different people might both want $100 from you, but that isn't enough for an equivalence: I'm sure you'll agree there's an enormous practical difference between the one that does/doesn't think "knife stabs" are a valid tactic. Or even just between two where only one owns a knife.
zahlman · 4h ago
> Are there any examples where someone got "de-banked" or "de-payment-processored" because of misogynistic (but legal) content?
You don't even have to express misogynistic ideas to attract that kind of attention; you only need to question the current mode of politically correct thought.
> [Super Seducer] came under fire by a number of video game critics; one described it as the "world's sleaziest game",[37] and another criticized the game for "normalizing rape culture"[38] Prior to its release, the game had its crowdfunding campaign suspended by Kickstarter. According to its press release, this was due to "inappropriate content, including but not limited to offensive or pornographic material", and "spamming or abusive behavior, offering rewards in violation of Kickstarter's rules."[39][40]
This is absurd characterization of the gameplay, but the entire concept of "pick-up artistry" causes strong prejudice.
Literal debanking etc., I wouldn't know. I haven't kept tabs on these kinds of stories for many years.
That said, Collective Shout is explicitly arguing that the porn content they're trying to censor via these tactics is inherently misogynistic.
And it wasn't, as far as I can tell, right-wing groups complaining about the Senran Kagura series several years back, either the games or the anime. Just look at the domain names that come up in searches if you try to look that one up; you don't get conservative forums, but you do get ResetEra and VICE, along with the usual "gaming news" rags.
jennyholzer · 9h ago
I don't think it makes sense to label either group of grifters based on stated political affiliation; These groups are linked because they are both grifters.
The politics are just a costume that ingratiates the grifter with their target market.
AlexandrB · 8h ago
I don't get why they're being called grifters. These groups - both left and right - probably genuinely believe this stuff is harmful and are following their beliefs to their logical conclusion. I don't think companies should bow to such pressure, but that doesn't make them "grifters".
"Grifter" seems like the new shorthand for "person I don't like".
benoau · 6h ago
The grift is they are asserting a power and authority over everyone else that is not warranted. That's why they sabotaged Valve, Itch.io and adult content creators using the payment networks instead of taking them on in court or at the legislative level where they would face many hurdles coercing them to their will.
zahlman · 4h ago
> The grift is they are asserting a power and authority over everyone else that is not warranted.
Reading this it seems to equate feminism and LGBTQ rights with extremism, which doesn't feel correct at all
holsta · 9h ago
> Both extremes want the same thing.
Citation needed. The 'extreme' feminism & LGBT tends to revolve around identical pay, being able to walk down the street without getting assaulted or being able to work without being harassed or discriminated against.
pseudo0 · 8h ago
Feminist groups also regularly try to get games banned from Steam, typically for sexism or violence against women. Eg.
> Women in Games CEO Dr Marie-Claire Isaaman has called on Valve to “act urgently” and remove the game from Steam, saying the game’s content “is not only vile and dangerous, but also actively promotes the dehumanisation of women and girls.”
>The 'extreme' feminism & LGBT tends to revolve around
There are countless statements from feminist authority figures that are impossible to reconcile with this claim. But HN is not the place to have this argument, or even to attempt to turn it into a discussion; and elsewhere on the Internet, I have repeatedly seen people persecuted as misogynists simply for collating such evidence.
BolexNOLA · 2h ago
It’s very easy to make everyone you agree with sound incredibly reasonable when you don’t have to give any examples of when they showed their true colors.
zahlman · 2h ago
If this wasn't your point, perhaps you should consider how this applies to
holsta's comment.
duxup · 9h ago
Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an issue where they couldn't take credit cards. No warning, they weren't even told, they were just added to a list and couldn't take payment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They still haven't completely resolved the issue / don't know how they ended up on a bad list.
The idea that someone somewhere else complains inside an opaque system, and your ability to do business ends without warning is absurd. You can't appeal, you can't talk to anyone, you're just hosed. In some cases you AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on.
shagie · 9h ago
> Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
Yes... but if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal, then they have an interest in not being in that situation.
> Jan 24 (Reuters) - Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
> The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
> On Friday, July 29, a federal court issued a decision in ongoing litigation involving MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and other websites. In this pre-trial decision, the court denied Visa’s motion to be removed from the case on a theory that Visa was complicit in MindGeek’s actions because Visa payment cards were used to pay for advertising on MindGeek sites, among other claims. We strongly disagree with this decision and are confident in our position.
Given this, it is a completely reasonable position for payment processors to decide not to touch anything that they can be brought into legal liability.
They'd likely prefer not being gatekeepers of money, but if they're going to be brought into a court and sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal, they're going to take steps to not be brought into court.
pembrook · 9h ago
The fundamental issue is the existence of an iron clad monopoly of 2 payment providers.
It’s a choke point on the entire economy for any sufficiently motivated interest group that wants to ban something that would otherwise be legal…lobbying a few executives at Visa/Mastercard to shut off the taps is much easier than lobbying government to pass a law.
With no mandated open protocol for (legal) payments or legal protections like the internet has, this will continue to be a problem and will only get worse.
Ultimately I think digital payments should be facilitated on government rails just like cash is. Where any decision to block a payment should be determined by law, and require actual skin in the game from elected representatives who are fireable by their constituents.
Workaccount2 · 7h ago
I have had running ideas for creating a credit card company for about a year now. It's an idea my head keeps wandering back into. The system is so ripe for disruption.
But the start-up costs are mind-bogglingly insane, and the organizations best equipped to help you with capital and/or navigation are the very organizations you would be rug pulling in some way or another.
averageRoyalty · 4h ago
> The system is so ripe for disruption.
Is it? Assuming nobody opposed you, you'd need to convince merchants to have a different payment terminal and train staff on it. You'd need to convince POS providers to provide an integration. You'd need to convince banks to allow your card to be accessible in their systems (or find an alternative way for your customers to pay their card). Once this is done you have to convince people to become your customers for a card that only works in some scenarios.
Assuming absolutely everyone felt neutral about this, what's the incentive for any of the above parties to say yes? For everyone involved it seems to be a lot of work for little benefit.
Khaine · 5h ago
It has nothing about it being a duopoly, it has to do with the fact that governments have deputised payment processors and banks to regulate payments.
mistercheph · 8h ago
Bitcoin
shrell · 8h ago
This would end up with the exact same problem when people found the processing time unreasonable.
mistercheph · 8h ago
Lightning
shrell · 4h ago
For the average person wont this just change to the leading custodians having the near monopoly similar to the exchanges or how credit card providers were before becoming what we have today?
koakuma-chan · 6h ago
Why downvoted?
qualeed · 9h ago
>if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal
>sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal
The removed content was gross, but it was legal content. That's the heart of the issue.
pryce · 9h ago
It sounds like the payment processors aren't well-equipped to know what item counts as illegal content or not, and that relying on the reckons of some evangelical activist group with a history of homophobia is predictably terrible option.
I suppose other than the expensive and years-long task of developing significant domain expertise themselves, payment processors would probably like instead to defer their decisions to some other legal entity, perhaps some kind of government-funded organisation.
With the surge in anti-gay 'groomer' conspiracy theories now retargeted towards trans people comprising much of the electoral campaign of the incumbent president, it is hard to imagine a less appropriate climate for a US government to create anything to fill that gap.
bluGill · 9h ago
Are you 100% sure it is legal? No possibility that something is illegal.
> “If Visa was aware that there was a substantial amount of child porn on MindGeek’s sites, which the Court must accept as true at this stage of the proceedings, then it was aware that it was processing the monetization of child porn, moving money from advertisers to MindGeek for advertisements playing alongside child porn like Plaintiff’s videos,” Judge Carney wrote.
> Judge Carney: “When the Court couples MindGeek’s expansive content removal with allegations that former MindGeek employees have reported a general anxiety at the company that Visa might pull the plug, it does not strike the Court as fatally speculative to say that Visa — with knowledge of what was being monetized and authority to withhold the means of monetization — bears direct responsibility (along with MindGeek) for MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, and in turn the monetization of Plaintiff’s videos.”
qualeed · 8h ago
That article and case are about child sexual abuse material. Steam is not distributing child sexual abuse material.
No one is arguing that Visa/MC should be forced into processing illegal transactions.
Part of the issue is that Steam wasn't properly enforcing rule 6.
6. Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available.
Some of that content was violating the laws for what was available in Australia.
And since they weren't doing that, the payment processors were getting pressure and in turn putting pressure on Steam.
So now we've got rule 15.
15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
qualeed · 8h ago
Then it should have only been removed from the Australian storefront, rather than the payment processors forcing its removal worldwide. The payment processors shouldn't have been involved at all.
Wherever a good or service is legal, a global duopoly of payment processors should be forced to process payments for it.
giantg2 · 8h ago
"That content is illegal in Australia."
So why wouldn't the Australian government go after Steam? If you're a legitimate company legally operating in a locale, then it would be reasonable to assume they are following the law if the local authorities are not taking action.
Maken · 8h ago
That should be the responsibility of the storefront, and there should be publicly actionable ways to force them to comply. Payment processors reaching extra judiciary agreements is not the way to go.
giantg2 · 8h ago
"If Visa was aware that there was a substantial amount of child porn on MindGeek’s sites,"
It would be reasonable for anyone to believe that a registered business that is a major operator is following the law. If they are not, then why hadn't the government intervened? As a user when you go to pornhub or any other site with the legal footnote about age, you have the reasonable expectation that you aren't going to get child porn.
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
"substantial" is doing a massive heavy lifting here as well. I don't really buy that somehow Pornhub has more CSAM than Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter. They were targeted for ideaological reasons.
bluefirebrand · 8h ago
How is this even a counter argument?
Was anyone ever arguing that child porn is not illegal? And from the Judge's statement, Visa and Mastercard were aware it was there and also aware it was illegal
So.. what are you even trying to say here?
Make an argument, don't just blindly post paragraphs like that is supposed to discredit what I'm saying
And just to clarify for certain: what I am saying is that when Visa and MasterCard became aware of the child porn they should have taken action at that time
This is clearly about them failing to do so
shagie · 8h ago
Anytime that someone is going to get sued for monetizing something that is illegal somewhere, the payment processor is likely to get pulled in also as part of the lawsuit. It's been shown that the payment processor can't say "we just move money from one customer to another" and absolve themselves of liability in the court case.
While some of that content may be legal in the US, it isn't everywhere else in the world. As such, they're going to be in the situation of Collective Shout saying "when we sue {company} for hosting that content, we're going to sue you too for allowing {company} to monetize it through your system."
Payment processors have lost that court case before and are likely rather risk adverse to be brought into another one.
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
Yes. Like any other lawsuit. They try to sue anyone tangentially related to the case. That is more a quirk/issue with the American legal system more than anything.
>While some of that content may be legal in the US, it isn't everywhere else in the world.
Okay, then they deal with it in the other parts of the world. We wouldn't have much of the internet available if companies had to comply worldwide with every local law.
bluefirebrand · 8h ago
Maybe Payment Processors shouldn't be a nearly global duopoly then
warkdarrior · 8h ago
How is the duopoly relevant here? If there were 10,000 global processors, would be they be less likely to be sued?
bluefirebrand · 7h ago
No, they wouldn't all be global
They can follow their regional laws and whatever
If we're not going to have a global law we shouldn't have global companies and global payment processing
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
yes. odds are 9997/10000 would be thrown out if you tried to add them to a lawsuit.
miohtama · 8h ago
But in this case the advocate group Collective Shout was exercising the laws of God, not the laws of court
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
On Steam, in the US? Yes, pretty much. They don't even allow 18+ live action actors for such content. They got in an issue over a dev on that in 2023.
Itch.io, in the US? I'm 99.9% certain. I don't believe any game there has the presentation to do any live action stuff to begin with.
ragebol · 9h ago
But why should the payment processors be in court? They are just a 'road for money'. Normal roads nor toll road operators aren't going to be charged with a felony if a criminal uses their roads, why should that be different for payments processors?
No comments yet
the8472 · 9h ago
Well, then stop doing those transactions in <country>, not globally. Why am I not allowed to buy something just because some organization in <country> threatens lawsuits there or whatever?
In other cases multi-nationals (e.g. AWS) are perfectly willing to claim that they're operating a local company under local laws and you can totally trust them to protect local customers from extraterritorial government reach.
Additionally, if this were only about legal risk to the payment processors themselves there would be no reason for them to demand that those games are delisted. They'd only have to refuse supporting the transaction. The game stores could continue to list them and require different payment methods.
garyfirestorm · 8h ago
Why should they be responsible for what is hosted on OF? It’s like blaming an ISP for letting you use internet because you accessed illegal stuff.
A payment processor, by definition, does not know what is being bought, it merely mediates payment, And as such is not a party in crime.
tracker1 · 9h ago
I've seen this happen to a lot of businesses around all kinds of arms, even if not directly selling weapons, but doing training, etc. I've also seen social media figures who are prominently politically oriented face similar issues with donation platforms due to pressure from payment processors/cc companies.
It's really icky to say the least. There's plenty of groups I'd love to see debanked on a personal level... that said, I think it's entirely wrong for anyone not breaking domestic laws where they are.
axus · 8h ago
Can you buy a gun with a credit card in the US? I presume yes. Why would other weapons be different?
giantg2 · 7h ago
Becuase guns have higher protections, more stringent seller regulations, and advocacy groups. In some localities, things like swords can be illegal to own. The dealers generally don't need a special license. With guns, you have an FFL which is heavily regulated. So as a payment processor, there's a greater chance that a merchant selling a sword might be violating the law than an FFL selling a gun. Then the advocacy groups for guns are much more active than the ones for knives and swords.
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
you could have just said advocacy groups and be done with it. That's all that matters, someone who can yell loudly when they try to ban something. There's regulations and protections around an 18+ anything as well.
Ferret7446 · 8h ago
Because Visa said so presumably, which is the issue at hand.
monocasa · 8h ago
Yes, you can.
cyanydeez · 9h ago
Thankfully, politics is now a arm of corporate policies so theres really no real concerns about fascism.
quantified · 8h ago
Don't forget the </sarcasm> tag.
kelseyfrog · 9h ago
> Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
This is what the end-game of unspooling government functions into the private sector looks like. The decision still has to be made, but rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars where optics and boycott pressure are the levers of change for our collective rights.
Ferret7446 · 8h ago
Not quite, the payment processor monopoly is maintained in part due to regulation, so the government has a hand in this private-public scheme, and this would not happen if there were competition, which is why porn sites and such often accept crypto now.
const_cast · 4h ago
No, the monopoly is natural and obvious. It would have always happened.
Do you, as a developer, want to wrangle together 20 different payment processors so you can sell shitty 100% polyester T-shirts? No.
Do I, as a customer, want to have to carry around 20 different cards just so I have a chance at being able to pay at an arbitrary merchant? No.
And do I, as a business, want to pay for the additional complexity of managing fees across so many processors? No.
So everyone actually wants the same thing: very, very few payment processors.
Dylan16807 · 7h ago
> The decision still has to be made
Well, not really. Right now we're making two separate decisions. One for what is legal to sell, and one for what you can meaningfully sell. Those shouldn't be different, so the latter decision shouldn't be happening.
iAMkenough · 9h ago
> rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars
This sums up my experience with my representatives in recent years. You only get a meeting with my reps if you're a large donor or you cause enough public outrage.
Otherwise they feel no obligation to their constituents and hope that the automated form letter (in varying font sizes and colors between paragraphs) they send you in response is enough to appease you.
wwweston · 9h ago
Having gatekeepers isn’t so much the problem — there’s stuff almost everyone agrees should be gatekept (and other things that maybe should be even when not everyone agrees).
The problem is that we build these systems where no one seems to want to or have incentive to thin about responsible administration, reasonable feedback, appeal, and accountability. Everybody who can just gets lawyers that work to insulate themselves, sometimes because they don’t give a damn and sometimes because that’s what the incentives of exposure sometimes abused are.
ozim · 8h ago
Article is about how angry crowd just overwhelmed support lines for those companies.
Let’s just think why it would not be feasible to build proper system.
Maybe because bunch of angry assholes would take it down instantly filing bogus claims.
Molitor5901 · 9h ago
It's essentially a duopoly that should be broken up.
Khaine · 5h ago
The US Government has forced payment processors to be gatekeepers through legislation like AML/CTF
zzo38computer · 9h ago
I prefer to pay in cash when I can do so. I think payment by cash and by barter will be better, in situations where that works.
However, for computer payment, I had another idea is to make a "computer payment file" that contains the order division and payment division, and with encryption and signature, and send that to them. You will first receive the file telling what payments are acceptable and can use that to make the file to send to them. Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it, too; after you figure out the price, you can receive the payment code and include that in the payment file. Other methods of payment would be possible (e.g. store credit), so the payment file can work independently of what kind of payment.
lawlessone · 9h ago
>Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it
I haven't seen a working payphone since the 90s lol.
quantummagic · 8h ago
Here, it's not just about poor maintenance. Every single payphone in my city has been removed. They just don't even exist any more.
KetoManx64 · 9h ago
Overcomplicated and unnecessary considering that Bitcoin and lightning exist and are growing exponentially every month.
Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
quantified · 8h ago
Porn has driven improvements in a bunch of tech: adoption of higher-speed broadband and payment systems being two of them.
If paid sites started accepting bitcoin, it would definitely spur wider adoption.
zzo38computer · 8h ago
One problem with bitcoin is requiring too much energy use, but anyways it is independent from the "computer payment file" which can be used with multiple methods of payment. (Computer payment file is also intended to solve some other problems involved with computer payment, including various types of cheating that the merchant might do.)
Ferret7446 · 8h ago
It's an unfortunate mathematical requirement to create trust in a hostile/trustless reality. Just like how it's inefficient but necessary to spend money on defense in a world with potentially hostile foreign powers, we need to spend energy to ensure no parties can compromise the blockchain. There's no way around it (no, PoS is flawed).
jgilias · 8h ago
I happen to know a guy who has invested a lot in solar parks. He’s deeply unhappy about that investment because the electricity prices are often zero or negative when the sun is up and he’s underwater on that investment.
I also know a guy who recently installed a dummy load in a thermal power plant which they switch on when they can’t give the power to the network due to overcapacity, as they can’t just switch off the plant willy nilly.
The point is, in a grid with lots of renewables in it not only there’s a lot of stray energy that can be captured, but a flexible load that can be switched on/off in milliseconds is actually hugely valuable if we’re to have stable grids.
adolph · 8h ago
> problem with bitcoin is requiring too much energy use
How much energy is the "right" amount?
How does that compare to the amount of energy used for paper and coin?
Can any amount be more than the "right" amount as long as the cost of the energy is willing borne by the entities conducting the transaction?
viraptor · 7h ago
ETH (for example) at least sets a reasonable lower level of what's possible. BTC is just wasteful by comparison.
fruitworks · 4h ago
It is easy to save energy when you are OK with a lower level of decentralization. I could probably run a payment processor on my computer alone that handles 100k transactions per second.
The proof of stake idea is like a ponzi scheme
KetoManx64 · 5h ago
There's a reason that ETH is barely hanging in there and will never catch up to Bitcoin. I doubt it will survive the next decade.
viraptor · 4h ago
Barely hanging there? With the second largest market cap and 5th trade volume (for the coin itself, higher for the network)?
mistercheph · 8h ago
How much energy is consumed to back the value of USD?
KetoManx64 · 5h ago
On top of that, how many people die each year due to the American War Machine that can only exist due to the US Dollar and the Fed's ability to print money and pass off the debt to the future generations?
jgilias · 9h ago
It’s telling you’re being downvoted. But yeah, for one, Bitcoin does actually fix this.
JohnFen · 8h ago
Sure, but it also brings a whole lot of other problems along with it. Personally, cryptocurrencies are a nonstarter for me because of them, but if it's an acceptable solution for others, then more power to them.
jgilias · 8h ago
What problems does Bitcoin bring along?
(Because this is a textual medium, I need to state explicitly that I don’t ask that in an adversial way, just want to have a conversation!)
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
1. availability. Be it from strongarming or lack of popularity, most places don't take BTC
2. stability. Crypto is basically a meme stock and it's a mess trying to store currency within it. It's a full time job tracking its worth.
fruitworks · 4h ago
I think these are both self-fufilling prophecies
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Sure I can recognize that:
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong." - Scott Alexander [0]
I don't have an answer on how to address that, though. You need to have a very strong stance early on to prevent witchery so your communtiy adjusts accordingly. But decentralization, by its nature, has no way to moderate behavior outside of the core design of the tech.
Banking is sadly one of those few aspects where you need some centralization, in my eyes. That's why finance is regulated the hardest in any given society. You need trust above all else to keep and use a digital currency.
Non reversibility of transactions by an outside arbiter in the event you get scammed.
This is a feature for most crypto enthusiasts and a nightmare for anyone who is not capable of properly maintaining software systems or basic security
jgilias · 8h ago
The trade-off is different, sure. Much like the trade-offs between using a gasoline vs an electric car are different. But it doesn’t mean it’s not a solution to sidestep private corporations needing to serve as global content gatekeepers.
lovich · 7h ago
Your question was
> What problems does Bitcoin bring along?
Not “is this tradeoff worth it?”
For a class of non technical people having the bank or credit card company in this case help them reverse charges when they’ve been scammed, and they are at risk of being scammed for a significant chunk of their resources.
I get why crypto enthusiasts like the irreversibility but the inability to understand why someone would want a protected system with an arbiter over it feels like the same energy I get from engineers who can’t fathom why anyone would choose the walled garden that comes with Apple products despite ample evidence for their popularity with the average joe
Ferret7446 · 7h ago
This is also true for debit/cash, basically all payment methods throughout history except for credit cards.
This is also not entirely true, to a minor extent law enforcement and the legal system can provide redress for scams. It helps to only do business with registered entities so you can at least take them to court/small claims.
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
credit cards make it relatively easy to get a chargeback, few questions asked. They will do the trouble of blacklisting the merchant instead of battling with the consumer. That's very much not the case with crypto.
lovich · 7h ago
> This is also true for debit/cash, basically all payment methods throughout history except for credit cards.
Of course it is, since credit cards are a recent innovation if you are analyzing across historical time frames.
And even so, do you see most people preferring to pay in cash nowadays? Or debit card even? I’m not sure on debit vs cc usage rates but I’d for sure be surprised if cash was in use at a higher rate than cc
mistercheph · 8h ago
This is also a property of cash transactions.
You could reimplement the traditional censorable banking system on top of bitcoin, where users never touch the asset, and instead interact with tokens/promises of money and transactions were reversible. Reversibility is not an inherent property of the medium of value it’s the property of the trustful model we’ve layered on top.
The difference is that normal people have access to uncensorable digital payment rails if they are motivated and accept the associated risks (the same they accept when performing cash transactions)
johnnyanmac · 5h ago
if you don't mind keeping your currency in one of the most volatile tenders out there, sure.
yieldcrv · 9h ago
It’s funny because lightning recreates this article’s problem
jgilias · 9h ago
Genuinely curious, how so?
yieldcrv · 8h ago
Lightning channels are centralized entities with their own fee structures
They can be opened peer to peer, or hop between other channels, similar to dns routing
They are prefunded with a certain quantity of bitcoin that dictates the size of bitcoin that can move in that route at once - although smaller denominations can go through in rapid succession this just means more fees levied
All of this incentivizes a larger channel to be created by a well funded party, which can be coaxed into censoring transactions because they are a payment processor or institutional service. Likely an incumbent such as Visa joining the lightning network as a victim of LN’s own success.
There are some mitigations built in and actively developed. We are 8 years deep into Lightning.
Ferret7446 · 7h ago
The difference is that becoming a larger channel is not gatekept by regulation, and not at all necessary. Creating small channels between two parties, e.g. for subscriptions, is viable. Though not as convenient, it is at least more convenient than getting blacklisted by Visa.
yieldcrv · 7h ago
yes, but this circumvents the egalitarian nature
lighting channels are expensive to open and close
as it stands, there already isn't enough block space for “mass adoption” users to all have their own single lightning channel
let alone several
lightning in its ultimate form will always be a hosted solution
and those with the acumen and willingness to pay to open and close channels (or perhaps use the L1 bitcoin) will be a separate class of people
jgilias · 7h ago
Right, yeah, but isn’t the network large enough by now where a transaction would be routed around the censoring nodes regardless? Much like how there are censoring miners on the mainnet, but the censored transactions still go through due to not everyone doing the censoring?
yieldcrv · 4h ago
Yes, they can route around. I think the number of people needing to open channels to deal with this, undermines the utility and scaling point of the Lightning network if it ever takes off. L1 will be so bogged down with channels opening and closing.
DrillShopper · 8h ago
Too bad Bitcoin is a piss poor medium of exchange unless you're ransoming personal data or stealing pensions from old ladies.
Yeul · 8h ago
Steam tried BTC and it didn't work.
Hell the whole reason why Steam got big is how FRICTIONLESS it made buying videogames.
Still people will go a long way for their porn fix so who knows?
viraptor · 7h ago
It didn't work at the time at the time before the bans and before many improvements in crypto. It's a different landscape today. Maybe they'll retry.
lenerdenator · 8h ago
I love how the thing that got the pushback wasn't some small business getting screwed without recourse, but cutting off gooner games.
Ah, priorities.
duxup · 8h ago
It's always funny to me how may of the local small business folks align themselves with what they think are business friendly politicians. Those politicians don't care about them ... they care about big business and big business doesn't care about small / happy to push them out of the way.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Consumers don't necessarily care about businesses, they care about products. And even then they will feel like bad products getting screwed "deserved it".
But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.
AlexandrB · 8h ago
That's not really surprising. The size of the audience for the latter >> the size of the audience for the former. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to sit on the phone for hours because a small business in another country is being treated unfairly.
calvinmorrison · 9h ago
Paypal blocked our entire account because we sold a product called "La Aroma De Cuba", a cigar manufactured in nicaragua. No discussion would resolve it. We regexed the product name on the payload to replace it with LADC and we were reinstated.
devmor · 9h ago
I had a similar experience with a payment processor for a client that sold manufacturing accessories for a completely benign industry - but one morning they were suddenly cut off and forbidden from processing all transactions. The payment gateway would not tell us why, just that the account was permanently suspended for “service violations”.
We had to quickly onboard them onto a new gateway, and while testing in their sandbox environment a rep saw the issue. Turned out one of their products ended up with an auto-generated part code that had the four-letter term for sexual assault in it. That was it.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
You'd think we'd be passsed basic word filters for major industries like this. I guess all grapevines (and wineries, by extension) are screwed as well.
And people wonder why many are anxious about AI. Garbage in, garbage out. Automating the process amplifies that.
viraptor · 7h ago
I wonder how many rapeseed oil sellers ran into this. Scunthorpe problem strikes again.
bell-cot · 9h ago
At least in the US, tobacco products are generally subject to pretty strict state & local regulations and taxes. Might that have been the issue?
stronglikedan · 8h ago
They sell tobacco products, so they would know that's not the issue.
calvinmorrison · 7h ago
actually it's a huge issue. we had to use a non-good tech stack credit card provider that constantly went down becuase they were the only ones who would take us because we sold tobacco. No braintree or auth.net just some janky stuff from the 90s because that was the only company that fit our risk profile.
The amount of times we got paged because we coudlnt take cards was ridiculous, because we couldn't ever do anything about it.
catlikesshrimp · 9h ago
Is there any chance that "La aroma de Cuba" brand is associated to tobacco, while LDAC sounds more like a sound codec? Tobacco might be the issue in that case.
I am in no way implying there is no Cuban embargo, nor Cuban censorship.
By the way, why is the name "La aroma de Cuba" and not "El aroma de Cuba"?
duskwuff · 9h ago
It was 100% because the name contained the word "Cuba".
Source: had the exact same problem with PayPal about ten years ago, except the trigger word was the name of another sanctioned country.
nailer · 9h ago
> Is there any chance that "La aroma de Cuba" brand is associated to tobacco
The post you are replying to mentions it is a cigar.
Igrom · 9h ago
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
calvinmorrison · 7h ago
a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke - Rudyard Kipling
calvinmorrison · 7h ago
it was a tobacco retailer. we did plenty with PeePal
Yeul · 8h ago
If an airline company treats you like trash you can shame them on social media and book with someone else next time.
Why would Visacard care about complaints? You need them more than they need you...
jajko · 9h ago
I hate to say it, but one more reason for crypto or any other alternatives. Those companies became too central and crucial. And with power always comes pressure from various sides and corruption.
mywittyname · 9h ago
There's a ton of other payment methods that don't go through CC processors. Wire transfers, ACH, digital checks, payment apps (which are an abstraction over these), or direct payment platforms (like Paypal).
Game retailers could get together to form their own payment company, let's call it GamerPay, which deducts purchases directly from a bank account, just like most other bills we pay. They could probably get a lot of non-gaming related companies on board if they offered lower fees and/or more transparency.
People seem to forget that banks have been transferring funds between accounts for much longer than credit cards have been around. The infrastructure exists for bypassing credit cards, they just aren't what the majority use.
kasey_junk · 9h ago
Remember that in any digital transmission either your system can’t claw back funds or you are extending credit to someone.
Where you set that dial is the kind of fraud you will get.
snvzz · 5h ago
Regulation in place, lobbied into law by the major CC processors, is designed to make the appearance of new payment processors hard to impossible.
xandrius · 9h ago
Why do you hate to say that a non-centralised approach is better than a strict duopoly?
bad_haircut72 · 9h ago
Crypto is obviously not without its own issues
seanclayton · 9h ago
Yes it, too, has its issues. It appears no system is perfect.
shortrounddev2 · 9h ago
Because Crypto has historically found more use as a form of high tech gambling and vehicle for fraud than it has as actual currency
asterix_pano · 9h ago
Because almost no administration was ready to regulate it until recently. Payment and remittances are such obvious use cases but if every transaction create a tax event, it's also too cumbersome to implement for most merchant.
shortrounddev2 · 9h ago
If the government has to regulate cryptocurrency for it to be useful as a currency, then it's not very useful as a decentralized currency, is it? In my view, most cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, at the very least) are built on fundamentally unsound economic principles which incentivize hoarding and speculation.
KetoManx64 · 9h ago
The US dollar is used by just about all drug dealers, money launderers and human traffickers, yet we also use it for our daily transactions.
viraptor · 7h ago
Sure. GP wrote "found more use" - it's about relative not absolute value.
shortrounddev2 · 9h ago
Well yes because the US dollar's value is regulated by economic experts. Bitcoin's core idea was always based on pseudo-economic monetary theories
getpokedagain · 8h ago
Are we surprised at this outcome? Most of HN encourages forming companies to find a niche in the world, build an arbitrage over it and charge rent. Payment processors and banks do that. Just like startup founders they then listen to the stakeholders with the biggest wallets. It turns out prude Christians have fucking money and apparently more than horny gamer bros.
ffjffsfr · 9h ago
> gatekeeping and censorship
that's a weird thing to say about simply banning payments to people who profit from rape and incest content.
> AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on
it is very clear what is going on, they are making content profiting from rape and incest and they are getting punished for it.
duxup · 8h ago
I don't think you read my post entirely / clearly.
ffjffsfr · 8h ago
I don't think you read the post you are commenting about. Article says explicitly what is the problem with problematic content. It explicitly mentions rape and incest content.
duxup · 7h ago
You quoted my words, if you aren’t interested what I was saying/ my example … don’t reply to me or quote me then?
const_cast · 3h ago
Is this content legal, or do you just personally find it objectionable?
Because, no offense, nobody cares what you find objectionable. You could've replaced "rape and incest content" in your comment with "silly content" and it would've had the same impact.
Not that I don't think rape or incest are objectionable, of course I do. I just don't think I or you get to make that determination. I'm self-absorbed, but not that self-absorbed. That's a collective decision that should be made.
ThrowawayR2 · 9h ago
The leadership at Visa, Mastercard, etc. know damned well that consumers and businesses have no other realistic options than them and that a consumer campaign is unlikely to sustain itself for more than a few weeks. What we need is pressure on politicians, particularly Democratic legislators and candidates who are desperate for an issue that will garner them support and votes.
persolb · 7h ago
Is AmEx any better? I’m planning to cancel my Mastercard with this gatekeeping as a reference to why. It seems to be the most effective lever most of us have.
daveoc64 · 3h ago
American Express has always had stricter policies about adult content than Visa or MasterCard.
They don't allow their cards to be accepted by pornography sites.
VWWHFSfQ · 9h ago
> Democratic legislators and candidates who are desperate for an issue that will garner them support and votes
"gamer fury" over not being able to buy porno video games with their credit cards is not exact something that is going to garner the Dems any new support or votes.
qualeed · 9h ago
If that's how you choose to frame it, you're absolutely right.
If, instead, you frame it as "Duopoly of payment processors are deciding which legal content you are allowed to purchase.", surprise, you'll get more support.
ianferrel · 6h ago
"gamers who want porn games" is how it will be phrased by their political opponents, and I expect they'll be more persuasive. This is probably not a winning political issue.
Censorship has lots of popular support most places. The reason it's less successful in the US isn't because people in the US are broadly opposed to it; it's because the courts have traditionally upheld strong rights to freedom of expression under the 1st Amendment.
zahlman · 4h ago
I'm not sure how I feel about the implication that authoritarian force is required to get hoi polloi to go along with core democratic values.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> "Duopoly of payment processors are deciding which legal content you are allowed to purchase.", surprise, you'll get more support
From whom?
There are better free-speech hills to die on. Unless gamers start organising themselves civically, this issue has too many weaknesses to base on.
qualeed · 7h ago
While this specific issue began with games, I'm not sure why the underlying issue is only a problem for gamers.
There's comments here talking about other industries and goods that have been affected by similar decisions as well.
I'm also sure that people can rally around more than one free speech issue at a time.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> I'm not sure why the underlying issue is only a problem for gamers
It's not. But framing matters. Gamers are a terrible political beachhead for anything.
qualeed · 7h ago
For sure. Which is why my re-framing removed the gaming aspect.
JumpCrisscross · 6h ago
> why my re-framing removed the gaming aspect
Needs to be specific. Visa and Mastercard, to their credit, are picking their battles carefully.
qualeed · 6h ago
My original comment was more highlighting that framing it as "unable to buy porno games" was obviously bad, and there are certainly better ways to frame it (and offered an example, off the top of my head).
However, someone smarter than me will have to come up with what that looks like. I don't have the perfect framing to present to you, or I would be heading up the political movement myself.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Worked for the Right in 2016
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
any politicians who want to take an anti-trust approach. So, very few in the US.
>There are better free-speech hills to die on.
And that attitude is why the Left has gotten so weak. The Right died on the hill of some emails and a laptop. Maybe we should start with some smaller battles first.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Right died on the hill of some emails and a laptop
Conspiracy and cover-up by the leader of the opposition is a great hill to die on. It comes with a built-in constituency who will actually show up.
The problem the American left has had is it keeps picking niche issues that appeal to folks who only show up in deep-blue cities.
johnnyanmac · 1h ago
>Conspiracy and cover-up by the leader of the opposition is a great hill to die on. It comes with a built-in constituency who will actually show up.
Until you become the leaders covering it up, I suppose. It's a great thing Trump doesn't think that far in advance. A proper personality conman would be truly terrifying.
Maybe it's a good hill to climb. A stupid one to die on if you don't deliver. Conspiracy theorists only have allegiance to justifying themselves, not a personality.
>appeal to folks who only show up in deep-blue cities.
So, half the population? Seems like a large base to appeal to. Oh well, nothing a little gerrymandering won't fix.
JumpCrisscross · 58m ago
> Until you become the leaders covering it up, I suppose
Sure, covering up your own messes is survival. That said, it’s not like Trump being a rapist and liking them young was concealed from the electorate ex ante…
> Maybe it's a good hill to climb. A stupid one to die on if you don't deliver
It’s a lucrative hill to climb. I wouldn’t say it’s a good one.
The funny thing about Trump is he’s been done in, in part, by his authoritarianism. He can’t credibly claim an external force is holding him back (as he did with his tax returns) because he’s eviscerated all such forces.
> half the population?
Oh man no, maybe 5% of the population in Manhattan shows up. So maybe half of that. (Which is a lot of people. But not a lot of districts.)
VWWHFSfQ · 8h ago
Sure, but that's way too abstract and nobody is going to understand that. They'll say, OK, but what's an example of the problem? And then the gamers have to explain that they can't buy pornos on their gaming rig anymore.
viraptor · 7h ago
You'd think that people would ask about the details, examples and dig deeper in those situations, right? Yet there's so many people who think gamergate was about journalism ethics.
spencerflem · 8h ago
They don’t seem to be acting very desperate to me
eastbound · 9h ago
The question I have about most conspiracies including this one is: Why? What’s the motive?
You can do everything with a debit card, it probably already happened that Visa was used to facilitate buying a weapon for a school shooting: Were they annoyed?
You can buy a dildo with a Mastercard on Amazon: Are they annoyed?
But games? Why?
devmor · 9h ago
Ideology. Some religious, some not.
Loud, wealthy people with extremist beliefs are behind most of the actions that restrict our ability to exercise our rights.
This one in particular is an attack on art. It’s not just games, but traditional types of art as well that are currently affected by this issue. There is a certain ideology that views non-mainstream art - particularly art that tells a story about uncomfortable subjects - as something “degenerate” to be eradicated.
flumpcakes · 9h ago
I would strongly argue that a game that's only purpose is to seek enjoyment from the forceable rape of your family members is no 100% squarely in the 'degenerate' camp. Fictional media or not.
devmor · 6h ago
I strongly suggest that you spend a couple minutes reading what that word means and where it comes from before you continue to use it. It may say something about you to others that you would really rather not have them believe about your beliefs.
> as in corrupt
> having or showing lowered moral character or standards
> a movie about a gang of degenerate drug dealers
> as in pervert
> a person who has sunk below the normal moral standard
> a degenerate who is uninterested in anything but his own gratification
Seems to fit perfectly to describe a video game that is pro sexual assault and rape.
devmor · 2h ago
Again, where it comes from is an important part of this. You are cherry picking the most extreme example you can think of while using a word specifically implying genetic inferiority.
You are using that term when talking about an issue that disproportionately targets marginalized groups and victims of traumatic assault.
There is one very specific, well known group in history who would take your side on this issue and use the same terminology. You know who they are.
cherioo · 9h ago
It is always about money. Visa was sued for facilitating child porn, and I am guessing they don’t want to wander into another one.
dehugger · 9h ago
Is there a reason steam hasn't just changed policy so that adult games can only be purchased with store credit? They already have systems in place to load a steam balance, which isnt refundable, and then buy games with it. Just lock these games to only use that payment type...
qualeed · 9h ago
Visa/Mastercard can, conceivably, just tell Steam "if X content is available on the platform at all, regardless of payment method, we will no longer process your payments."
deepsun · 9h ago
Well, if they block whole Steam, it will create way larger outrage. I am sure they will dare not.
mrweasel · 9h ago
I'm sure they do. Who would last the longest, VISA or Valve? The court proceedings would drag out long enough the kill Valve. Afterwards VISA and MasterCard would just ask "How else would you pay?".
As long as VISA and MasterCard are only targetting adult content they are pretty much free to do whatever they want because no politician is going to go out and defend pornography.
mywittyname · 9h ago
I'd pay for Steam content however they wanted me to. Up to and including hooking up my bank account details or buying gift cards in a store.
Steam has a large and dedicated user base. They are one of the companies that has access to enough users to conceivably build their own payment processor with enough volume to be profitable from the start.
Industry giants are often toppled by companies who started out in some niche the giant is ignoring/avoiding.
colonwqbang · 8h ago
When it looked like Microsoft might close off Windows, Valve built their own SteamOS Linux distro. It now runs many AAA and indie titles, making Linux-based gaming very practical. This is something which was at one time considered impossible.
Valve also have an extremely loyal customer base. If they have to open an account at the Bank of Gaben to get their fix of smutty games, they just might.
psunavy03 · 7h ago
Valve has an extremely loyal customer base, but only a subset of that customer base is interested in smutty games.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
>only a subset of that customer base is interested in smutty games.
the topic up chain was " if they block whole Steam, it will create way larger outrage. I am sure they will dare not.". But it seems Valve doesn't want to take the gamble there.
63stack · 8h ago
I wonder how feasible would it be for Valve to start a campaign that they will add a 10% discount on everything you purchase with an international bank transfer, instead of a card.
I'm quite sure it would cause a massive amount of people to start paying using bank transfer.
DoctorOW · 9h ago
Bank Transfer, Bitcoin, etc. Maybe even work with debit card rails, my local grocery store only takes debit and Discover. Steam could even include an error message, "Sorry, Mastercard has not approved purchases from Steam. You can call their customer support for more information."
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Given the rabid audience there, I'd bet on Valve to be honest. They are causing this much issue over a niche section of games. Imagine if every steam purchase was affected, there'd be legitimate riots.
aftbit · 7h ago
Perhaps Valve will create their own payment processor, just as they created their own app store for games.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
To the extent there is someone gamers can pressure in this system, it's Valve. (Who would, in turn, take the mantle of organising gamers' interests against Visa and Mastercard.)
_Algernon_ · 8h ago
Honestly, in Europe, if they added SEPA transfers to fill steam wallet I think they would do fine. This is the company that has — albeit not singlehandedly — made Linux a viable alternative to Windows for many gamers. They are used to taking on much bigger fish than themselves, and being a private company not beholden to shareholder profits they have a lot more room to weather a short term loss.
The Proton / Steam deck play was a decade long strategic play that has clearly paid dividends and made Steam much less dependent on Microsoft. It would not be surprising to me if Valve in 10 years time has positioned itself to be much more independent of Visa and Mastercard than it is today.
qualeed · 9h ago
It would mean some bad PR for Visa/MC for awhile, and it would absolutely decimate Steam.
If I were Steam, I would not call that bluff.
nemomarx · 9h ago
It would also basically shut down steams income for a while, so neither one of them really wants to test it right?
bsder · 8h ago
> I am sure they will dare not.
I think Visa/MC very much would dare.
Valve isn't ready for this battle ... yet.
I imagine they are girding for it, though. It simply wasn't a feasible battle until probably this year. FedNow and other things are just coming online. I suspect that Valve will begin incentivizing using that system rather than Visa/MC extremely strongly.
sherburt3 · 9h ago
There are better hills to die on
catlikesshrimp · 9h ago
Why would Steam die on the hill of adult content?
No comments yet
crvdgc · 8h ago
The problem of Visa/Mastercard blocking Steam is not the loss of revenue per se, but a potential viable alternative could capture this niche market and use it as a base to displace them entirely. To buy games, we have to set up GamerPay, then why not use it for the next online shopping?
In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.
toomuchtodo · 9h ago
Stablecoins and FedNow instant payments are options. Walmart is about to offer Pay by Bank using FedNow instant payments rails to avoid credit card interchange fees, for example. Does Coinbase offer payment processing yet? Could be the next Superapp competing against PayPal’s global digital wallet.
qualeed · 9h ago
Coins, maybe. FedNow is US-specific, though.
In any case, as it stands right now, Steam losing Visa/MC processing entirely would be catastrophic to their business.
toomuchtodo · 9h ago
Visa and Mastercard are for profit companies. Harder for commercial banks and the Federal Reserve to block payments unless you’re straight up breaking the law or KYC/AML.
(payments are adjacent to my day gig, and I have to talk to FiServ and other FIs occasionally on the topic of moving money at a fintech)
qualeed · 9h ago
>Harder for banks and the Federal Reserve to block payments
That will vary by country, and the Federal Reserve is also US-specific. There are gamers in more countries than just the US :).
But yes, I certainly agree that the duopoly of Visa/MC needs to go.
toomuchtodo · 9h ago
How does this work with UPI and Pix?
blackoil · 9h ago
Steam has recently added UPI. Since it is completely interoperable, one company/bank can't block it. Govt. may block some account, but than they can do so much more.
qualeed · 9h ago
I'm not sure. I live in Canada, we have a system called Interac, but it is not an accepted payment method on Steam the last I checked.
toomuchtodo · 9h ago
Do they have any history of gating or censoring payments?
qualeed · 9h ago
I am not aware of any situations, no.
But this is getting a bit into the weeds, I think. The point is that as it stands right now, today, Visa/MC is what Steam runs on. It would take a long time (months, if not years) for Steam to roll out support for every country that has their own system (Interac, Pix, etc.). We also can't forget that not every country has systems like that.
The most reasonable course of action today is to hope that Visa/MC can be forced into providing payment processing for all legal goods and services. Meanwhile, Steam will hopefully roll out other payment methods, other countries will adopt non-Visa/MC systems, and the duopoly can slowly be broken.
No comments yet
tracker1 · 9h ago
Given how Canada interprets a few things, and the actions the govt took to protesters, I'd be more surprised if they didn't.
jmb99 · 8h ago
You're welcome to be surprised then. Only cases I've heard of Interac blocking accounts is KYC/AML and actual fraud. E-transfer (the Interac's name for bank-to-bank online transfers between different people) is about as close to handing somebody cash as you can get, albeit with amount limits varying between $2k and $20k.
utbabya · 1h ago
Interesting, DDoS in real life. Or rather slashdotting, since those are legitimate queries.
If I were Visa/Mastercard leadership I think at least part of me would be happy to see this blow up, long term wise. Hey it's not me pushing back now, it's prigs versus the people, with a much higher chance of legislation change come out of it. Which IMO is just in this case, common carrier status as it should have, open to judicial requested blockages based on laws that are draft by folks elected by the population.
We've a buncha RFCs specifying the architecture with three branches to deal with these problems in the most agreeable way to most people, as good as we could come up with as a species. Rather than drafting new RFCs without understanding the why those three branches needed to exist, how about patching them. Complete rewrite works too but that should incorporate all the crystalized knowledge in the legacy version, which we all know is hard.
motbus3 · 9h ago
What is happening to the world right now where everyone wants to act like the censor or the ruler?
Omg
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
It's nothing new, just the newest wave of credit card attacks based on ideaology.
But what's going on: lots of unrest in the world mixed with a dying generation with the most wealth trying to secure a legacy. Awful combination for freedom and livelihood.
averageRoyalty · 4h ago
Visa/Mastercard have been doing this for decades, it's certainly not a "right now" thing. You might just be hearing about it.
_Algernon_ · 8h ago
It's a consequence of concentration of power. People and organizations do what they have the power to do. Which is why the democracy is built on splitting power between as many people as possible.
Private, consolidated mega-corporations largely sidestep the democratic process, and these kind of things are the consequence of that.
CivBase · 9h ago
This isn't new. It's just an increasing problem in a digital, cashless world and people are getting sick of it.
ksec · 3h ago
There is no better time to push for a third payment processor. One that focuses on privacy ( although may not necessarily be anonymous ), smaller amount, maximum of $800 per transaction. Wanting to buy a few hundred dollar worth of goods in modern day does not need to neg or kowtow to some payment companies.
Japan has Suica, Hong Kong has Octopus. But I wonder why a lot of these never made their way to online payment. Something I thought Apple Cash would do. But somewhat never materialise.
wting · 4h ago
Visa, Mastercard, payment processors, banks, etc act as accountability sinks[0] for governments and political group by design. They are arbiters for moving/blocking money, not taking principled stances; there is no net neutrality equivalent for financial networks.
There's a lot of wasted discussion talking about an intentional design decision because they're arguing from consumers' perspectives, ignoring the huge benefit to political organizations (e.g. freezing Russian assets).
Some things should be regulated heavily. But payment that is private by default and censorship free should just be a public (government run taxpayer funded) service.
bsenftner · 8h ago
Doubtful. This article is pandering to the game audience, with absolutely no substance. The "overwhelming" is pure lies. Do not believe the hype.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
So what's your counter evidence? Did you call Visa and have empty lines on the phone? did you not receive the email shown in the article?
nemomarx · 9h ago
in case anyone is interested - collective shout claims they made a thousand phone calls to get the Credit card companies attention on this, so the bar is apparently pretty low. (I assume lower when it's something they already want to do, or think looks good optics wise.)
so there's various lists of numbers to call going around online with a target of keeping up that volume for a few weeks. I'm sure it'll fall off eventually but it might be possible to at least match collective shout here.
fsckboy · 6h ago
>the [hanging on the line] tactic is motivated by the knowledge that most customer service systems will put people who opt for call-backs in a lower priority queue
Are large brand names that are assuring callers that opting for callback will not push you down in the queue lying? I'm not looking for an outpouring of cynicism, I can provide that myself, I'm curious about people who actually know how call centers operate, are they set up to lie as a general practice?
Affric · 6h ago
You’d be brave to do it as surely it’s a verbal contract enforceable by law.
I've come to the conclusion that these are worse than useless.
Their lack of impact makes them useless. What makes them worse is there may be people who might have done something useful, e.g. call their elected, who now think they've done their bit by "signing" an online petition.
EasyMark · 1h ago
The CC companies really need to tell the Debbie Downers and pearl clutchers to go pound sand. The CC companies hold all the power here, but are too cautious to push back, in the meanwhile they're losing out on all the commission money on Legal Sales. I personally find most conventional porn these days kind of sick and demeaning to women, and thoroughly dislike it, but they have a right to exist to as consenting adults. I completely fail to understand why they'd ever ban gaming comissions. No reason that CC companies should have to play arbiter of morals.
zahlman · 7h ago
>getting overwhelmed by gamer fury
Leave it to Polygon to frame things this way....
jmclnx · 10h ago
This is just a peek into a possible future. With the trend of eliminating cash, the powers that be can prevent people from buying anything deemed harmful. Or a large company can close down a small but innovative competitor with a flick of the wrist.
Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.
So we need to ensure we keep cash available.
darth_avocado · 9h ago
> So we need to ensure we keep cash available
The problem with that is there are a number of ways to prevent you from holding cash as well. Bank regulations around how much money you can withdraw/access, scrutiny around how much money you can carry to an airport, asset forfeiture without due process etc. all allow governments to coerce you into whatever they want. Cash is not necessarily a solution either.
bell-cot · 9h ago
Sure, cash is far from ideal. But it's something we already have (zero implementation resistance/delay/cost). And it still works fine (at least at small scales) when the power fails, or internet is down, or server gets hacked, or whatever.
darth_avocado · 9h ago
Correct. But I’m mostly addressing the GP’s comments around the need for preserving cash as a mechanism against government/private entity overreach, which it isn’t.
clown_strike · 9h ago
Currently at an airport right now. Nobody will even TAKE cash. I could be holding a million dollars right now but I cant use any of it to buy a coke. Availability is not the bottleneck.
catlikesshrimp · 9h ago
Which airport?
(My third world country airport stablishments accept cash payments. There are vending machines which do, too)
>"But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards."
The Bitcoin crowd is adamant that no government can regulate Bitcoin. They are correct in the sense that Congress is unable to pass a law dictating what the Bitcoin protocol must do, and that as a decentralized network people are free to follow whichever fork of Bitcoin they choose.
However, they have not given much consideration to the fact that governments have full authority to regulate those that use Bitcoin. In other words, no government needs to change Bitcoin. All they need to do is dictate what the lawful use of Bitcoin looks like in their jurisdiction. There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities. In the context of this article, I doubt that a government would prohibit the sale of these games, but I agree with your assertion that the government is likely to start locking down cryptocurrencies in some way that impedes privacy.
wbnns · 9h ago
> There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities.
This would likely drive capital and the fintech companies and financial institutions behind it to friendlier countries and more welcoming markets.
spongebobstoes · 1h ago
In Seattle, many small businesses refuse to accept cash because of repeated break ins.
Cash is unfortunately a liability for small businesses.
DJBunnies · 10h ago
Actually with today’s levels of chain analysis, Monero would be a better coin pick from a privacy perspective.
efnx · 9h ago
And zcash would be better than Monero for privacy reasons.
DJBunnies · 9h ago
How’s that? Zcash is opt in privacy, Monero is by default.
madars · 7h ago
All modern Zcash wallets are shielded-only.
lesuorac · 9h ago
I assume a merchant would want a stablecoin more than Monero/zcash so that there's more assurance that the coins will sell for the same price.
4gotunameagain · 9h ago
citation ? (not doubting, just out of the loop)
dleslie · 9h ago
Each bill of American paper currency has a unique serial number. In practical terms, this means that paper money is not guaranteed to be untraceable for transactions; particularly when engaging in the sort of transactions where large stacks of cash are moved between banks.
wtallis · 9h ago
Traceability of transactions doesn't seem at all related to the issue at hand.
numpad0 · 9h ago
I think it's wherever bank notes are inserted to counting machines, including modern grocery store cash registers.
blahyawnblah · 9h ago
I don't keep track of my serial numbers. No one does except banks. Banks don't know who gets what serial number when you withdraw cash.
jmb99 · 8h ago
> Banks don't know who gets what serial number when you withdraw cash.
Do you have evidence to back this up?
In Canada, many bank branches don't carry cash except at ATMs, which means 100% of the cash transactions at those branches go through ATMs. Bills are inserted without an envelope, and are counted one by one, which means they're already being optically scanned (read: photographed) to determine the denomination. It's not a stretch that the serial number could be captured at this phase. When bills are withdrawn, they're withdrawn off the top (or bottom) of a stack of bills, so it is known which elements are removed from the stack. Again, it would not be infeasible to track all of the serial numbers in the stack, in order, and associate those numbers with withdrawals.
I do not have evidence that this occurs, but I've always assumed it was at least possible. It's technically trivial. But if you're claiming that it's either impossible or it doesn't happen, I'd need some convincing evidence that that's the case.
according to a german report ATMs can scan the serial numbers when the money is dispensed, logging them to the account from which the money is withdrawn. it's generally not done now, but it is technically possible. in china it apparently is already enforced. elsewhere at a minimum they track which notes are sent to which ATM in order to resolve ATM robberies. likewise when money is deposited, it is being scanned for fakes. counting and sorting machines can track the serial number too:
I'd say it'll become more and more relevant to enact such changes. Unlike in the 90s/2000s where gaming was a somewhat 'niche' thing, it's definitely in the mainstream nowadays.
qualeed · 9h ago
The "Stop Killing Games" movement is a lot more palatable to the general public. (It can be boiled down to "I should be able to play the thing I bought and paid for")
As soon as you mention to someone uninvolved what started this conversation (incest games and such), you're climbing an uphill battle.
It's the same reason why "protect the children" arguments often work, no matter how flawed.
__loam · 9h ago
The video game industry takes in more money than movies. It's absolutely huge.
hofrogs · 9h ago
Isn't that mostly from mobile game microtransactions?
__loam · 8h ago
Based on my 5 seconds of Googling, games made about $190b in revenue, 55% from mobile. Movies made $32b, so even ignoring mobile, games are about double what movies do. Games also have massive projects like Call of Duty that now cost $700 million to develop.
teamonkey · 7h ago
Steam as a platform accounts for about $5bn. A good chunk of it is Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite. Then a handful of really big hitters like GTA and CoD. Excluding those enormous titles, the games industry is smaller than the numbers suggest.
Which is to say, the big fish are the ones with the most influence and least likely to be affected by this.
scirob · 8h ago
Any call to action to help reduce their power?
nemomarx · 8h ago
Slightly different framing but https://yellat.money/ has all the contact information for this. I've seen a few different lists but this should cover it.
Technically stripe is the intermediary for itch but they're gesturing at Visa and MasterCard, so those two seem like the important ones right now.
darkhorn · 6h ago
Which one is more dangerous? Killing people (like in Call of Duty and Age of Empires II) or nudity? Why one is more normalized than the other one?
yieldcrv · 8h ago
Payment processors should be like power and water companies - completely agnostic - by law
If you asked a poll about whether an undesirable person should have their power and water cut off, as if it was actually up for debate, many people would treat power and water as a reward to be removed and say yes
Its been determined that is a problem, and financial access should be at the same standard
3acctforcom · 8h ago
Hilarious that redditors think calling a call center will do anything, they've clearly never worked at one. Call center employees are nothing to Visa/Mastercard executives. And those same executives are nothing to the billionaire pushing this, he's going straight through the board.
People at the bottom really don't know how power works.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
The claim is that 1000 calls caused Visa/Mastercard to react. This works in reverse too.
And yeah, the call center isn't the point, the loss of productivity (and thus, money) dealing with this issue will make them react. The call centers don't care, but the people up top will see the impact.
DangitBobby · 7h ago
TFA talks about how the goal is to gum up the works so real customers are impacted, causing them to lose money.
kstrauser · 7h ago
Execs do care when the call center is so swamped with dealing with external BS that more common complaint calls can't get through, costs per customer skyrocket, and customer support satisfaction nosedives.
Don't think of it as some complaint calls. Think of it more like a mass protest. Mayors don't care if 5 people jaywalk. They start caring a whole lot when entire streets are blocked and their residents are demanding a response. Except in the call center case, callers are following the exact documented policy of contacting their bank to complain about bad service. What's Visa going to do, crack down on callers? That would be even worse for customer satisfaction and would probably get the board involved.
But a reminder: if you call, be unfailingly polite to the support person. Keep them on the phone as long as possible, but be kind to them. They don't set the policy. This isn't their fault. Visa and Mastercard should be dealing with the pain, not the regular employee who gets paid to help customers with their credit card issues.
Razengan · 8h ago
How is it that Apple/Google/Microsoft are bad and abusing their monopoly/xpoly etc. if they disallow certain things on their platform
meanwhile Visa & Mastercard can get away with dictating EVERYTHING in EVERY economy and on EVERY store in EVERY country for DECADES???
amelius · 7h ago
I think it is funny how people were totally okay with Apple nannying and dictating them, even defending the company, and only became rebellious when Visa/Mastercard started doing similar things.
Tells you something about principles and how far they go.
Razengan · 1m ago
I mean Apple did not censor shit on MULTIPLE stores that they did not even own.
MangoToupe · 8h ago
Why we even have private payment processors is a mystery. This is a great example of something that should have been nationalized 50 years ago. Privatization provides zero value to society; fees are high and accountability is low across all providers. Discover is the best (maybe Amex too) but it barely works anywhere outside america.
GuB-42 · 8h ago
Which nation?
Nationalizing means every country will have its own payment processor, how are you going to coordinate all this? Will each platform have to deal with dozens of payment processors that depend on the whims of their respective governments?
Gormo · 7h ago
Is this a joke? You're suggesting that to avoid censorship, multiple competing processors should be instead consolidated into a politically-controlled monopoly? Are you serious?
myko · 9h ago
Good. This is and has always been ridiculous.
AlienRobot · 9h ago
I feel like it should be a law that you can't provide information to someone about what their their customers/employees are doing out of your own accord. Credit card companies have no business in knowing what their customers are buying. They should just process the payment with the minimum amount of information possible.
Turning private entities into investigator and judge isn't good for anyone. It ends up in a game of who can annoy them the most, and the entity will be wasting time trying to appease both sides.
Leave these things to the government. At least then you need evidence and have due process.
nemomarx · 9h ago
As far as I know steam doesn't share what you bought on the transaction - it just says you spent it on steam.
What's happened here is that someone has complained it's visible on the store at all.
AlienRobot · 9h ago
I mean that they told Visa/Mastercard that the client Steam/Steam customers are selling/buying certain types of products. Now that they are aware of it, they can be pressed to do something about it. Conversely, if they weren't made aware about it, they could just go on with their business as usual.
Personally I think it's better for private entities to stay neutral and leave political decisions to the government. It's hard to stay neutral about things when you know things are happening, so when you inform a private entity about what people are doing with their services, you are turning that private entity into a political entity.
nemomarx · 9h ago
Fair, although it would be better if the banks had some equivalent of section 230 protection from having to do anything about what they're processing, maybe.
spathi_fwiffo · 9h ago
Or do something to make it so that payment processors must process payments for anything legal, without any say in the matter.
Probably get sued up to the Supreme Court like pharmacists that don't want to accept birth control prescriptions. Which may not work out that great with how much the current court hates freedom.
but, really, if the product or service is legal, payment processors should have to accept the payment. Same for all the other categories of product they are blocking with similar methodos.
bluGill · 9h ago
What if it is unclear. I cannot tell 100% if a girl between 12 and 32 is over 18. maybe I can be right 75% of the time but I can think of two girls at the extreems that I was way off (that is a girl I guessed was 12 turned out to be 27 and a different girl I guessed at 32 won an under 16 race). Fake ids are all over (because 18-20 year olds want to drink at college).
ontil we legally give payment processors a pass for enabling money for crime they will be very careful about grey areas.
Eavolution · 7h ago
Why would it be on the payment processor at all to determine if something is legal or not? I think that is a massive issue on it's own as I don't want Visa/MC deciding whether they think what I'm doing with my money is legal, that's for a legal system to do, not a private company.
AlienRobot · 9h ago
The worst thing about this situation is that it's legitimizing cryptocurrencies.
So many gamers are going to get scammed in the next months... all because a payment processor couldn't just do its job.
parliament32 · 8h ago
> Credit card companies have no business in knowing what their customers are buying.
The US Treasury says otherwise: this seems to all have started from them trying to blame Visa/MC for "directly handling the proceeds of these illicit transactions", despite the payment processors not having any idea what was actually being purchased.
Everyone is doing their job as private entities with their own standards... except the government who are supposed to break up monopolies.
I blame elizabeth warren.
dmitrygr · 10h ago
Good. Payment processors need to either be regulated or voluntarily self-commit themselves to processing all legal payments. Nobody asked them to act as censors.
Also: this is why cash should not die
abtinf · 9h ago
> Payment processors need to either be regulated or voluntarily self-commit themselves to processing all legal payments. Nobody asked them to act as censors.
Finance is the single most heavily regulated sector of the economy. Almost certainly someone in government coerced them to stop taking these payments, exactly the same as has been done to unbank other disfavored industries.
LordDragonfang · 7h ago
This is one of the rare times that it's probably not that. I know a couple of devs who have built/worked on sites that have "adult" content, and they say that payment processors are always pretty hostile because the chargeback rates for adult content are an order of magnitude higher than most other areas[1].
This has resulted in payment processor execs historically being very prejudiced about against any site that provides that sort of content.
Combine this with the dual facts that no one of good standing is very motivated to stick their neck out to defend porn publicly, while many people define their politics by being very publicly against it, and you get a system that routinely discriminates against sex workers.
[1] Historically, this was from angry spouses/parents seeing it on the CC bill and the person who ordered it lying that "someone else must have stolen the card and ordered it"; nowadays actual identity fraud is so common that it's a real concern
dmitrygr · 9h ago
Then perhaps it is time for guillotines
abtinf · 9h ago
People get the government they demand and deserve.
You imagine that the guns of government regulation will always be in your favor, and are totally surprised when they are pointed at your head instead.
dmitrygr · 9h ago
100% with you on both points, which is why i asked for laws that says "no censorship by processors, no exceptions"
commandlinefan · 9h ago
> this is why cash should not die
Or even better: why cash should work on the internet, too.
stavros · 9h ago
Yep, they're infrastructure now, they should be regulated like infrastructure. Better yet, replace them with some other system like SEPA.
dleslie · 9h ago
Americans ought to adopt the Canadian Interac system.
toast0 · 9h ago
The US already has several debit card networks; debit cards are also required to be usable on at least two unaffiliated networks, so there's a requirement for options while charging a card. [1] However, debit card transactions are unpopular. Users would rather pay later than now, especially when dealing with fraud or returns; rewards credit cards are popular and merchants typically don't charge more for credit than debit, so the user gets a nominal dollar discount and a time value of money discount when using credit (otoh, the merchant also gets paid with a discount and paid in arrears).
Many of the interbank networks were formed by a consortium of banks, as was Interac; Mastercard was also formed this way (as Interbank).
I think Americans are better off with annoying blocks on porn than the alternative.
stavros · 9h ago
I don't see why you're assuming that Americans won't get both bans and unbanking.
barelysapient · 9h ago
That would require a court order against VC and MC, that they in turn might contest, and possibly get suspended--even if temporarily.
But in Canada, bureaucrat Foo talked to bureaucrat Baz, and presto--you're unbanked!
toyg · 9h ago
The WikiLeaks experience kinda demolishes your argument.
dleslie · 9h ago
The Government was unhappy with them because they were occupying the capital, blocking border crossings, and their MOU demanded that Parliament be dissolved, and that Senators and Bureaucrats who disagreed with the MOU resign; under the threat of the Governor General not allowing Parliament to sit again.
It was entirely warranted to freeze their accounts and make arrests.
logicchains · 8h ago
And when other protests like BLM caused huge public disruption during a pandemic the government did nothing. It was entirely a political response.
In a free society people should be able to protest whatever in public without getting arrested and debanked. Otherwise you might as well be one of those authoritarian countries where protesting requires a permit.
dleslie · 6h ago
Different country, different Government, different protests.
BLM was a nothingburger in Canada. The most similar protests to that would have been the Wet'suwet'en solidarity protests. Those lasted a few weeks and were ultimately resolved peacefully, for the most part. An important thing to consider is that the protestors weren't interested in toppling the Government; they simply wanted the Government to hear them.
Briefly reading about it Iterac for the first time, it looks basically just like a Canadian version of Visa.
Tangentially, Canada has a much saner banking system than the US, in that it has a handful of very large banks which are inherently much more stable than the many thousands of banks/credit unions in the US.
throawaywpg · 9h ago
as a Canadian its bizarre that the USA of all places is behind us in card-payment technology. I went to LA in 2016 and they had never heard of a chip in a credit card, only swipe.
Insanity · 9h ago
As a European living in Canada, Canadian banking is already lagging behind on the EU banking I had.
Paying online with Debit Cards is possible (at least in Belgium), alongside 2FA, not just entering 3 digits on the back of a card. And when dealing with RBC, their mobile app is.. not great.
toast0 · 9h ago
That's just fallout from the US's first mover advantage.
bluGill · 9h ago
Chip vs swipe is meaningless to people. They both work. The us had good protection for swipe fraud so nobody cares. The EU went to chip+pin because historically their consumer laws were inferior.
throawaywpg · 8h ago
chips last longer!
limagnolia · 9h ago
Care to elaborate? Based on the Interac Wikipedia page, I see nothing that would indicate that their monopoly in Canada is any better than the MasterCard/Visa Duopoly in the USA.
aiiane · 8h ago
Interac doesn't have a monopoly in Canada; Visa / MC obviously have a presence as well.
limagnolia · 8h ago
Are there Visa and MasterCard Debitcards there? From what I saw, and again only a basic look, Interac is the only major player for Debit Cards. Of course, I welcome more competition if Interac were to enter the USA market.
The problem is, lobby groups have asked them to act as censors. There has been exhaustive effort over decades.
spwa4 · 6h ago
Overwhelming 2 companies entire customer support departments? I wonder how many people that takes these days ...
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Not as many as you think. Especially with a medium as slow as telephones. even if every call is 2 minutes, 100 calls within a region can gum up a phone work for multiple hours. and with companies trying to operate on ghost crews, they don't exactly have the throughput for this at the moment either.
Zealotux · 9h ago
I'm always surprised at how "easy" it is to pressure litteral billion-dollars companies like Visa and Mastercard, don't they make "fuck you money"? How are you even going to cancel them? They're hegemonic.
flumpcakes · 8h ago
People assume it's pressure and not the payment processors looking at what people are complaining about and independently deciding it is too risky.
These are the same payment processors that stopped allowing payments to porn sites due to the epidemic of 'revenge porn'. I would argue that was a net benefit to society as now these sites only allow 'verified' uploads.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
When you tell them something they want to do anyway, you only need a few calls to confirm their bias. When it's something they hate, they will throw millions to resist the change.
It can't be cancelled, but it can be inconvinienced. Emails can be ignored, but snail mail is overwhelming, and call centers can be gummed up. For some reasons, these businesses respond more to these old medium, so gotta make use of it.
GaggiX · 9h ago
Even Mouthwashing got delisted by itch io, it's pretty insane how censorship is escalating in these last few days.
"And ofc Mouthwashing got yoinked from itch search results lol"
dewey · 7h ago
I kinda trust the admin of itch.io more that posted that reply I quoted above 20 minutes ago: https://itch.io/post/13496611
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
I don't. I'd rather have a proper rep than a potentially powertripping moderator.
heelix · 6h ago
Honestly, wonder if that might work. There were not that many folks involved in the original push against on steam and others. The game publishers really don't want this. The gamers don't. I don't think visa wants the sort of legislation that will be pushed for next if they play that role. The 'think of the children' play .. not sure that is going to work here. Way to many groups have been on the 'wrong side' of a cultural normal to want visa to be the judge here.
EcommerceFlow · 9h ago
I'm disappointed by the GOP for not attacking this point, considering the censorship conservatives faced from the processors.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
Shocker, right wing personalities are hypocrites who don't mind when corruption works in their favor. A shocking development in 2025.
50208 · 6h ago
Imagine if they put this type of effort towards something that matters.
renewiltord · 9h ago
Progressive rhetoric is that any negative depiction involving women is misogyny and should result in cancelation. Progressive rhetoric is also that this is viral. If you converse with a misogynist (as defined above) you are also a misogynist.
Consequently it is merely normal to exclude all who are misogynists lest you also be a misogynist.
The organization asking Mastercard and Visa to deplatform these people is quite clear
> We are a grassroots campaigns movement - a Collective Shout against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture
So it is simply logical to go along. Gamers will ultimately kick up a hue and cry and then go back to playing games. It’s not like they’re going to stop.
hofrogs · 9h ago
Collective Shout is by no means a "progressive" organization. Unless anti-trans, anti-choice fundamentalist christians are now counted as progressives.
tflinton · 7h ago
Before anyone goes with pitchforks at Mastercard or Visa it's worth remembering that just because something isn't criminal it can still be quite a civil issue.
Visa and Mastercard take on quite a bit of risk by allowing payment transactions to companies who wade into murky businesses that while not illegal may have a lot of risk.
The amount of lawsuits that these processors get co-named in for providing payment rails is probably enormous and without laws protecting them I don't see how they don't have a choice in actively censoring.
johnnyanmac · 4h ago
So we're supposed to capitulate to censors because it's hard to do business? If it's too hard, don't do it. I think Visa/Mastercard get more than enough business to justify the inevitbale costs/abuse of the system.
>The amount of lawsuits that these processors get co-named in for providing payment rails is probably enormous
yes, that's called being a billion dollar business. Literally any billion dollar business is facing dozens of lawsuits on the daily. They have dedicated lawyers on hand for this ineviability.
tflinton · 3h ago
It’s still a very large considerably risk. They don’t have the equivalent of a net neutrality law to shield them. Money transferred on their network is their liability.
johnnyanmac · 1h ago
If so many other cases didn't end the other way in the US, there may have been a point. Websites aren't accountable for user content published on their servers. Gun manufacturers aren't accountable for school shootings, fast food isn't accountable for the obesity crisis. Police aren't accountable for shooting black people.
There's a lot that needs to change, but I don't see these businesses bothering. So forgive my lack of sympathy.
infecto · 9h ago
I have a slightly different opinion. Businesses can decide who they want to do business with unless it’s a protected class. I don’t think Visa is doing anything wrong here. They are in a difficult position as they need to be mindful of the government coming at them as well as chargebacks. Ideally there would be a new entrant here to fill the need.
gameman144 · 9h ago
I think this is one of those "works, but not at scale" situations. The law around protected classes is proof of this: if there's a racist business that won't serve you, startups could gain an advantage by serving you. But if every business around you is racist such that a startup couldn't gain a foothold, there's a market failure that regulation was added to address.
If you don't like what telephone companies do, making your own phone company that doesn't inter-operate with the current ones would clearly not go very well.
Likewise, if you don't like the current banks or payment processors, you have a steep hill to climb in that all the operative tissue is built around the current model.
sdrinf · 9h ago
This absolutely works... until, and when network effects kick in.
Payment processors have major network effects in that infra setup is expensive, banks need to be onboarded one-by-one, and whichever network has the most consumers, businesses will gravitate towards it. Iterate this over 20 years, and this always results in natural monopolies / duopolies. This creates a natural chokepoint/linchpin over which millions of people's mutually exclusive needs are getting banged at; including consumers at large, govs at large, and special-interest groups at large.
Absent crystal clear legislation -and porn is anything, but- this will always be arbitrary, and leave one side in the dust.
infecto · 6h ago
I suspect if there was clear rules for the government this would be cut and dry. The fact of the matter is it’s not and that’s why companies like Visa may restrict certain things. There is chargeback risk, risk from the underwriting bank, risk from a state government and risk from the federal government. This is not some free speech problem but rather an issue where a company is having to balance issues from many different parties and weigh the risk.
const_cast · 3h ago
Great, then what we should do is just nationalize these companies like we should've done 30 years ago. Now it is a free speech problem, and we can solve it.
We'll all probably save a little bit of money too when we don't have to forfeit a portion of every transaction ever to someone's profit margins.
infecto · 2h ago
Thanks for invalidating any point you may have had that was valid. Why do conversations degrade into such rubbish so quickly?
const_cast · 2h ago
It's not rubbish, it's a real solution.
The only reason this isn't a free speech problem is because it's monopolized in the private sector. Well, if it's already centrally planned and controlled, then we can just put it in the public sector.
Now, we have some guarantee of rights. We can even use our voting powers to influence the payment processor. Because, right now, we essentially have this same exact scenario - except, it's opaque, we can't vote, and they're allowed to completely trample over the US constitution, because it doesn't apply to them.
What's the actual drawback here? I mean, it's not like things can get more consolidated. I understand not wanting to disturb a market, but there's no market to disturb.
We can also go the other direction and split Visa up. But that's bad in different ways.
I don't want 50 payment processors, you don't want that, and certainly Visa doesn't want that. So who wins? Nobody, it's all losers. If you think it's expensive now, just wait until you're paying for the integration and complexity costs of all those payment processors.
IMO, payment processors are public infrastructure. That's an opinion of course, but it's really hard to argue otherwise. It is to the benefit of everyone that we have good payment processors. We already pay for Visa via taxes - that's what that 2% charge on all transactions is.
Given that, we should treat it like a public asset.
infecto · 1h ago
It’s not. It’s a fairy tale solution that sounds good to you but has no shot in the real world. I like discussing real solutions even if I don’t agree with them.
This is simply an underwriting risk problem. Get the government to draw boundaries of what’s ok or not and it’s less of a problem.
const_cast · 1h ago
Okay. But this isn't an argument.
They're already acting as a public good - so why can't we just make them a public good? That's not a rhetorical question.
We're already paying taxes for this public good. So why can't we pay actual taxes for this public good? Again, not rhetorical.
> Get the government to draw boundaries of what’s ok or not and it’s less of a problem.
Yes, we can do this. But we have already done this. It's our common laws and the US constitution.
If we want free speech, we don't need to go out here and write a super special law to target Visa. If they were just part of the public sector that would already apply to them - no new laws required.
You can't just say something is a fairy-tale because you're ideologically opposed to it. We already run many, many public services and do it successfully. It's not a fairy-tale, it's real life and we've been doing it for hundreds of years. Yes, even in the US.
Not to mention, we'd get a lot of extra benefits for free. Don't want your payment history leaked? Great, now the police require a search warrant to invade your privacy. Don't want to be debanked? Great, now we have more stringent discrimination protections. Want to pay less? Great, we don't have to turn a profit anymore.
blackoil · 9h ago
Works if Businesses don't have monopoly/duopoly. Also, some sectors are utilities, they should have stronger regulations.
nurumaik · 8h ago
>They are in a difficult position as they need to be mindful of the government coming at them as well as chargebacks
Poor visa, I feel so bad about them :'( Maybe pressure from the another side will give them motivation to push back against government lobbying
infecto · 8h ago
Why do you feel so sorry for Visa? They are in a very lucrative position. That said I think there is a risk assessment on what types of content they are allowing and the possibility of government oversight and chargebacks.
zahlman · 4h ago
Think about why protected classes need to exist in the first place, given free market reasoning about how discrimination logically ought to affect the bottom line.
Then consider how that applies to the current situation.
infecto · 1h ago
Yeah nothing alike. This is an underwriting problem. The risk to underwrite these businesses are too great sometimes.
zzo38computer · 9h ago
I think this is valid, but the wrong part is preventing the use of doing business in another way. In this case it is not necessarily the issue of the credit card company (it is a different issue, although the credit card company does affect it because they are currently how the payment is handled), although sometimes credit card companies do such things too, such as requiring the price that the customer pays to be the same if you pay by cash or by credit cards, which they also should not do since it can interfere with other ways of accepting payment.
AdmiralAsshat · 9h ago
One might argue, however, that a payment processor should be treated more like a medical or utilities company, rather than a private business. It's one thing for a coffee shop to tell people "We don't want to serve you."--it's quite a different thing for a hospital to tell someone, "We don't want to serve you."
Being able to take credit cards is not exactly life-and-death, but it certainly can be for a business. Especially since the average Joe can't exactly go start their own Credit Card company to make a pornography-friendly payment processor. The CC oligarchy is firmly entrenched.
infecto · 1h ago
I don’t agree. They are underwriting risk and unfortunately adult is one of the hardest categories.
commandlinefan · 9h ago
That's the best-case scenario here - Visa and Mastercard take on a much smaller percentage of the world's commerce and some actual competition comes in and picks up the pieces.
_Algernon_ · 9h ago
Someone owns the electricity wire going to your house. Would you feel the same if they cut it because you watched porn?
It's not a problem when there is true and healthy competition. It is a problem when there is not and what they provide is critical infrastructure.
Either antitrust the shit out of them so there is healthy competition or regulate them so they have to allow payment for legal goods and services.
Finnucane · 9h ago
Except that government is not coming at them for this. The government places very little constraint on their business unless it's for demonstrably illegal purposes: CSAM, money laundering, etc.
infecto · 8h ago
It’s a fine line with more extreme forms of content if you go and lookup past issues.
obviously we must keep the pressure up on payment processors to reverse course, but we also need to push back against people in society who think they can decide what other adults are allowed to do on their own time. If folks IRL have weird ideas pushed back on IRL we wouldn't get to crisis points like this.
I want to underline the absurdity of a foreign feminist organisation [1], in this political environment, dictating what Americans can and cannot see.
[1] https://www.collectiveshout.org
Supposedly you can still hear the last of the V8 interceptors roar in the wild there...
Philosophically, sure. Practically, no.
America is an economic and military superpower. Washington having influence over its trading partners and military allies isn't unusual. To the extent I can think of something that mirrors the absurdity of this situation, it's American evangelicals running off to Uganda to stone gays.
Maybe this time it was triggered by this specific group, but it comes in a line of events that all went into that direction for years and years.
American puritanism is neither a flash in the pan nor a fringe movement of people that just need to be told how it is, IMHO.
Yeah, because they got sued for processing payments on some porn sites that weren't taking down revenge porn. They're not puritans, they're concerned about their bottom line, and the lawsuits threatened them with losing lots of money.
They don't need to. I'm saying that we've seen the same pattern for a while now, and puritan groups have enough money/influence to dictate a lot of how the online world looks like now.
I'd argue Visa/Mastercard could deal with the issue if they really wanted to, but as you point out they're following the money, and I wouldn't expect them to do otherwise either. I still think they share the blame (being opportunistic doesn't mean being above criticism), but you're right that more or it lays on other shoulders.
I'm grateful my parents, who were life long conservatives, haven't lived to see the tragedy of what passes for Republicans these days.
He's a very good defense against politicians with stronger ideologies, especially those more aligned with international values which tend to smooth out specific cultural gripes.
It's too bad that puritanism is often co-opted by the largest hypocrites. SO perhaps they would vote him in in practice.
Most of these groups buckle to well-funded lobby groups.
Collective Shout isn't this. They're closer to outrage entrepreneurs.
They identified a non-issue that one could generate outrage around, fundraised on that manufactured outrage, and then launched an attack nobody was defending against because the issue was made up.
They're absolutely ignoring a bunch of other well funded lobby groups. This idea just appealed to them, for whatever reason.
Really would prefer the government outlaw these things but I don’t mind companies protecting themselves from liability.
While of course I cannot approve those activities, we cannot ignore the fact that there exists people who are sexually attracted and aroused by children, torture, rape and many other things. And we know that you don't get to choose your sexual orientation, it just happens.
As a parent, I find it reassuring to live in a country where those people can relief their pulsions through fictional content. Stripping them from this option would only make them suffer through this pain and shame until a point where they cannot endure it anymore and end-up harming real people.
We know that harassing and witch-hunting minorities doesn't work and actually makes the situation worse. As uncomfortable as this specific case is, I believe that it's much better to help them find a way to live peacefully in society.
Movies can be used for that purpose, and certainly Hollywood knows that. Books. TV. Any form of media.
Not to mention, rape and torture "simulators" (do you by change mean media?) are integral to our understanding of those things. What if rape survivors could not speak it, for it is too shameful?
And, the elephant in the room, sex is alone on this pedestal. Sex, alone, is uniquely stigmatized to a degree that nothing even comes close. Violence, no matter how gruesome and vile, does not reach even 1/1000th the scorn of even modest sex.
This is a purity game, plain and simple. The shame around sex and the extreme desire to control it comes from the patriarchy and religious ideals. These should not be humored.
Ehh in the US yes. In most of Europe not so much (the UK and maybe Hungary as the most notable exceptions)
If it's illegal then the government should pursue it directly. It's better tested in court than behind closed doors.
And if we allow it at all I don't think it makes sense to pick and choose what artistic mediums it's allowed to take no matter how abhorrent I might personally find it.
The real problem is how can it be legal for payment provider to forbid stuff that isn't illegal, no matter what it is.
Had Steam decided to deplatform some content, it's up to them (although centralization through steam of other platform causes an unwarranted concentration of power) but that third parties can intervene an have a say in what is allowed and what isn't anywhere on the internet is a very serious trouble.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
>We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers. Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction.
So they are trying to outright lie or they are so disconnected they are ignorant of what other parts of their company are doing. Neither are a good luck.
- that doing business is akin to speech.
- that corporations are entitled human rights (freedom of speech).
Also, freedom of speech means nothing for humans if corporations can force their customers not to discuss certain topics in the name of “I don't want to do business with someone who says that”.
If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism, you would probably find this objectionable. Why? Because if you walked into a bookstore and there's a bunch of books there full of Nazi propaganda, you would probably wonder if the owner of the store was a Nazi. You don't want to be associated with or seen as promoting it.
This is why it's akin to speech.
Taleb's examples are a variant of this, where the majority is passive instead of static
That's something I'd like to understand better... Why would they TRY to divide evenly? Where's the party that takes the majority position for each topic? It seems foolish to play for a draw or tie, so something else must be happening.
From what I've seen in my life, people are more likely conform to their party than vice versa. But I've got a very small sample size.
It reminds me of WWI attrition tactics..
(I'm trying to analyze the data on this ATM- please tolerate 8my current read. If you've got a better way to say it don't hold back!)
You brought up a "silent minority" effect that I've to think/find out more about. Your friends that disagree with their party line usually stays out of the vote. However,that seems to make (the impact of) the actual swing voter even stronger, according to my very preliminary analysis
No, I'm not talking about the POC that the pseudonimus guy proposed. Maybe something later that actually scales... a man can only wish that such technology will be invented sometime in the future.
Magical thinking of course.
Fundamentally, it's a failure of government. The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules. But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
The solution cannot be to turn Visa/Mastercard into the morality police. Or any payment processor, really. That is not their job, and they are ill equipped to perform it. Hard agree that access to payment processing should be based on legality of the sale and nothing else. If Visa/Mastercard want to then *measure* a business's overall fraud level as it happens in reality, and then adjust their rates accordingly, they can still do that in a fair manner. In other words, the riskier businesses deal with higher fees or something, but we aren't trying to define whether furry art is somehow porn or some other nonsense in the crossfire. Separate the streams please.
It's probably fear of such regulation that motivates Visa and Mastercard to bow to such pressure.
"Nothing stops this, except this things that stops it."
Cause I don't think there is any kind of way to buy things with Zelle and possibly it would be a TOS issue.
Politicians don't want to wade into porn regulation because saying anything other than "we will outright ban it" will be construed as condoning something a large population chunk sees as immoral in all circumstances. And, obviously, an outright ban will upset the other large set of the population who has no moral qualms with porn.
Prostitution has exactly the same problem. Legislation that regulates sex work would be seen as condoning sex work. So instead, it's outright banned, which pushes sex work into a black market which endangers the sex workers and their patrons.
They may not want to make the rules, but they do want the rules. They just don't want the blame. Otherwise they would just, not have the rules around who they'll work with. They would just work with anyone and tell anyone that complains about it to complain to the government, that it's company policy to work with any legal company.
DNS doesn't stop to check if you're okay to have a name. Water company and electric don't refuse to hook up your building because they don't like your business.
They have chosen to become content arbitrators. It was not foist upon them.
This isn't about fear of handling illegal payments; it's purely morality enforcement.
If something isn't illegal it is legal, and therefore they should be allowing payment for it.
It's indeed ridiculous that you need to get a loan just to be able to pay with your own money. At least here in Europe most "credit cards" are actually debit cards. Because we really frown on loans (the best credit rating is for the person who has never even needed to take out a loan)
Otherwise, they are under no obligation (or protection!).
We just had a demonstration that the two biggest payment processors, together controlling the vast majority of credit card payments, made the same policy change at the same time and in the process completely suppressed many people's businesses.
Treat them as an anti-consumer oligopoly and regulate accordingly.
A bank can't merely process any transaction that comes its way. You need to know who the parties are, you need to check they aren't on a prohibited list, or in a prohibited country/region. You need to know the purpose of the transaction (to pick up money laundering, or drug/terrorism financing).
What they can't do is create a monopoly situation and continue to be that selective---because there is no other game in town, due to their own actions.
All credit card companies collectively have made themselves “the way” to do it; and they all moralize.
That is somewhat intentional. Governments haven't, usually because they believe they will lose in court (at least in the US), but they still want restrictions so there is pressure put on payment processors to make the determination. That way, it is a private entity doing the banning and not the government. Or at least that is the appearance.
Like here, the driving group is Australian. Similar groups have been quite successful in getting the Australian government to ban the sale of video games with content they find objectionable, but is very arguably non-pornographic, like Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact. To the point that they're far more restrictive than Nintendo.
Yes they have. Porn is absolutely, unequivocally, legal. The problem is people don't like that rule.
But, what is permissible and what is not is well established.
A similar thing might end up happening here?
Politicians fallacy. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it. It completely glazes over the fact that it's an equally valid course of action to not do something.
[^1]: https://bsky.app/profile/siarate.bsky.social/post/3luz4cz6wx...
Tbh it's a pretty impressive narrative experience, it really leverages the difference between watching a story and experiencing it.
Make a list of the most popular films and games. You'll find a lot of violence and sexual assault. You'd have to ban _most_ media to get rid of it.
You don't like the game? Is there a gun to your head making you play it? No. The conversation should be over then.
But hey they're all bad people I guess, victims included.
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
If we still decided what was allowed based on the sense of disgust it engenders in some people, we'd still be living like Medieval peasants. Adults should be free to make informed choices, that includes purchasing and consuming things that you and I find repellent.
If not, where do you draw the line? And why there?
No, because that's illegal.
Slippery slope morality arguments are stupid and deserve to be treated as such. I've already heard this a thousand times with homosexuals. Men fucking men? What's next, men fucking kids? Men fucking dogs???
No, it's a stupid line of reasoning and, in fact, it's so stupid that even just a few seconds of inspection is enough to have it crumble and fall between the cracks of your hands.
> As in, some people want to watch it, and most people find it repulsive
You have a very fundamental misunderstanding here.
Okay, people find murder repulsive too. But is the reason that we outlawed murder because it's repulsive? Think about it. Throwing up is repulsive. Do we throw people in jail if they feel sick?
No. Whether or not ANYONE thinks something is repulsive is completely unrelated to if it should be allowed.
We did not, have not, and will never ban child pornography on the grounds it's "repulsive". It is, but that doesn't matter. We ban it because children are unable to consent, and subjecting unconsenting people to sexual acts is rape. Distributing the material is equally bad because it creates a market for it - meaning, more rape.
> If not, where do you draw the line? And why there?
When it comes to sex, consent. That's the only place you can draw the line. Otherwise I can easily weaponize your arguments against you. There are many sexual things you personally do which I find repulsive - please, tread carefully. This line of reasoning is dangerous.
What game are you talking about?
1: https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=mouthwashing&classificat...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthwashing_(video_game)
> This game hasn’t been indexed since October 2024 since it doesn’t meet our indexing criteria: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#why-isnt-my-pr...
> The developers are using a “Download” button as a link to Steam. The developer took down any playable files form this page in 2024.
[0]: https://itch.io/post/13496611
[^1]: I think there is a sexual assault scene against a robot — but the game isn't glorifying SA; if anything, exactly the opposite, since the entire point of the story is focused on questions of sentience and moral grey to outright morally horrendous areas around the rights of robots who are gaining sentience but exist in a society that does not see them as beings deserving of rights, but rather as objects, and the conflict/problems that creates.
To classify it as "rape content" or "porn" would require stripping it of literary & artistic value. Which seems to be the endgame of most of these book-burning groups.
Many of the books we read in school would be banned if these people had their way.
And they've always been being banned for these things. And these are just from the <100 Newbery winners.
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
Why should they? They have a global duopoly, there's not going to be any long term impact here.
In 2018 and 2019 these campaigns and their ramifications (be they positive or negative) were consistently present in in-person conversations I was having at the time.
In 2025, these campaigns strike me as outdated and significantly less popular compared to 5-7 years ago. The people I know in real life talk about other things.
It is plainly clear to me that with a decent botnet one can easily manufacture the illusion of social outrage on Twitter/X.
With that in mind, I find it hard to believe that there is even a critical mass of people supporting this takedown campaign.
Has anyone with any sort of reputation backed this takedown campaign?
Once the payment processors are on board, it doesn’t matter who else is involved. That’s all the rep you need.
Even if this was entirely the result of manufactured outrage (and I think this is your point?), you need a way forward.
I believe it is not getting rolled back even if someone were to discover the instigators are (say) Russian sock puppets.
I mean look what happened to Budweiser for sponsoring one person identifying as trans and making like 2 cans for it. Doesn’t matter if it’s popular or not, if the outrage is loud enough you can dominate these businesses.
Is that what "right-wing grifters" look like nowadays?
You have to go back 17 years to make a modern cultural argument? 2008 is as far from 2025 as it was 1991, for reference. Instagram came out 2 years after your reference.
I am not "going back" 17 years; I am pointing out that they have been doing this continuously for 17 years, which is an awful lot of effort for a "grift".
Two different people might both want $100 from you, but that isn't enough for an equivalence: I'm sure you'll agree there's an enormous practical difference between the one that does/doesn't think "knife stabs" are a valid tactic. Or even just between two where only one owns a knife.
You don't even have to express misogynistic ideas to attract that kind of attention; you only need to question the current mode of politically correct thought.
They tried to prevent the distribution of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatred_(video_game) , and were temporarily successful.
For that matter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversial_video_ga...
> [Super Seducer] came under fire by a number of video game critics; one described it as the "world's sleaziest game",[37] and another criticized the game for "normalizing rape culture"[38] Prior to its release, the game had its crowdfunding campaign suspended by Kickstarter. According to its press release, this was due to "inappropriate content, including but not limited to offensive or pornographic material", and "spamming or abusive behavior, offering rewards in violation of Kickstarter's rules."[39][40]
This is absurd characterization of the gameplay, but the entire concept of "pick-up artistry" causes strong prejudice.
Literal debanking etc., I wouldn't know. I haven't kept tabs on these kinds of stories for many years.
That said, Collective Shout is explicitly arguing that the porn content they're trying to censor via these tactics is inherently misogynistic.
And it wasn't, as far as I can tell, right-wing groups complaining about the Senran Kagura series several years back, either the games or the anime. Just look at the domain names that come up in searches if you try to look that one up; you don't get conservative forums, but you do get ResetEra and VICE, along with the usual "gaming news" rags.
The politics are just a costume that ingratiates the grifter with their target market.
"Grifter" seems like the new shorthand for "person I don't like".
I understand "grift" to mean more or less what the dictionary says (e.g. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/grift). I fail to see how that connects to the behaviour you describe.
Citation needed. The 'extreme' feminism & LGBT tends to revolve around identical pay, being able to walk down the street without getting assaulted or being able to work without being harassed or discriminated against.
> Women in Games CEO Dr Marie-Claire Isaaman has called on Valve to “act urgently” and remove the game from Steam, saying the game’s content “is not only vile and dangerous, but also actively promotes the dehumanisation of women and girls.”
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/women-in-games-call...
There are countless statements from feminist authority figures that are impossible to reconcile with this claim. But HN is not the place to have this argument, or even to attempt to turn it into a discussion; and elsewhere on the Internet, I have repeatedly seen people persecuted as misogynists simply for collating such evidence.
A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an issue where they couldn't take credit cards. No warning, they weren't even told, they were just added to a list and couldn't take payment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They still haven't completely resolved the issue / don't know how they ended up on a bad list.
The idea that someone somewhere else complains inside an opaque system, and your ability to do business ends without warning is absurd. You can't appeal, you can't talk to anyone, you're just hosed. In some cases you AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on.
Yes... but if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal, then they have an interest in not being in that situation.
From earlier this year:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-whistleblower-says-maste...
> Jan 24 (Reuters) - Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
> The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
And from 2022:
https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/compan...
> On Friday, July 29, a federal court issued a decision in ongoing litigation involving MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and other websites. In this pre-trial decision, the court denied Visa’s motion to be removed from the case on a theory that Visa was complicit in MindGeek’s actions because Visa payment cards were used to pay for advertising on MindGeek sites, among other claims. We strongly disagree with this decision and are confident in our position.
Given this, it is a completely reasonable position for payment processors to decide not to touch anything that they can be brought into legal liability.
They'd likely prefer not being gatekeepers of money, but if they're going to be brought into a court and sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal, they're going to take steps to not be brought into court.
It’s a choke point on the entire economy for any sufficiently motivated interest group that wants to ban something that would otherwise be legal…lobbying a few executives at Visa/Mastercard to shut off the taps is much easier than lobbying government to pass a law.
With no mandated open protocol for (legal) payments or legal protections like the internet has, this will continue to be a problem and will only get worse.
Ultimately I think digital payments should be facilitated on government rails just like cash is. Where any decision to block a payment should be determined by law, and require actual skin in the game from elected representatives who are fireable by their constituents.
But the start-up costs are mind-bogglingly insane, and the organizations best equipped to help you with capital and/or navigation are the very organizations you would be rug pulling in some way or another.
Is it? Assuming nobody opposed you, you'd need to convince merchants to have a different payment terminal and train staff on it. You'd need to convince POS providers to provide an integration. You'd need to convince banks to allow your card to be accessible in their systems (or find an alternative way for your customers to pay their card). Once this is done you have to convince people to become your customers for a card that only works in some scenarios.
Assuming absolutely everyone felt neutral about this, what's the incentive for any of the above parties to say yes? For everyone involved it seems to be a lot of work for little benefit.
>sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal
The removed content was gross, but it was legal content. That's the heart of the issue.
With the surge in anti-gay 'groomer' conspiracy theories now retargeted towards trans people comprising much of the electoral campaign of the incumbent president, it is hard to imagine a less appropriate climate for a US government to create anything to fill that gap.
You assume it is legal until shown to be illegal
> “If Visa was aware that there was a substantial amount of child porn on MindGeek’s sites, which the Court must accept as true at this stage of the proceedings, then it was aware that it was processing the monetization of child porn, moving money from advertisers to MindGeek for advertisements playing alongside child porn like Plaintiff’s videos,” Judge Carney wrote.
> Judge Carney: “When the Court couples MindGeek’s expansive content removal with allegations that former MindGeek employees have reported a general anxiety at the company that Visa might pull the plug, it does not strike the Court as fatally speculative to say that Visa — with knowledge of what was being monetized and authority to withhold the means of monetization — bears direct responsibility (along with MindGeek) for MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, and in turn the monetization of Plaintiff’s videos.”
No one is arguing that Visa/MC should be forced into processing illegal transactions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg...
Part of the issue is that Steam wasn't properly enforcing rule 6.
Some of that content was violating the laws for what was available in Australia.And since they weren't doing that, the payment processors were getting pressure and in turn putting pressure on Steam.
So now we've got rule 15.
Wherever a good or service is legal, a global duopoly of payment processors should be forced to process payments for it.
So why wouldn't the Australian government go after Steam? If you're a legitimate company legally operating in a locale, then it would be reasonable to assume they are following the law if the local authorities are not taking action.
It would be reasonable for anyone to believe that a registered business that is a major operator is following the law. If they are not, then why hadn't the government intervened? As a user when you go to pornhub or any other site with the legal footnote about age, you have the reasonable expectation that you aren't going to get child porn.
Was anyone ever arguing that child porn is not illegal? And from the Judge's statement, Visa and Mastercard were aware it was there and also aware it was illegal
So.. what are you even trying to say here?
Make an argument, don't just blindly post paragraphs like that is supposed to discredit what I'm saying
And just to clarify for certain: what I am saying is that when Visa and MasterCard became aware of the child porn they should have taken action at that time
This is clearly about them failing to do so
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg...
While some of that content may be legal in the US, it isn't everywhere else in the world. As such, they're going to be in the situation of Collective Shout saying "when we sue {company} for hosting that content, we're going to sue you too for allowing {company} to monetize it through your system."
Payment processors have lost that court case before and are likely rather risk adverse to be brought into another one.
>While some of that content may be legal in the US, it isn't everywhere else in the world.
Okay, then they deal with it in the other parts of the world. We wouldn't have much of the internet available if companies had to comply worldwide with every local law.
They can follow their regional laws and whatever
If we're not going to have a global law we shouldn't have global companies and global payment processing
Itch.io, in the US? I'm 99.9% certain. I don't believe any game there has the presentation to do any live action stuff to begin with.
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In other cases multi-nationals (e.g. AWS) are perfectly willing to claim that they're operating a local company under local laws and you can totally trust them to protect local customers from extraterritorial government reach.
Additionally, if this were only about legal risk to the payment processors themselves there would be no reason for them to demand that those games are delisted. They'd only have to refuse supporting the transaction. The game stores could continue to list them and require different payment methods.
https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/when-does-...
It's really icky to say the least. There's plenty of groups I'd love to see debanked on a personal level... that said, I think it's entirely wrong for anyone not breaking domestic laws where they are.
This is what the end-game of unspooling government functions into the private sector looks like. The decision still has to be made, but rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars where optics and boycott pressure are the levers of change for our collective rights.
Do you, as a developer, want to wrangle together 20 different payment processors so you can sell shitty 100% polyester T-shirts? No.
Do I, as a customer, want to have to carry around 20 different cards just so I have a chance at being able to pay at an arbitrary merchant? No.
And do I, as a business, want to pay for the additional complexity of managing fees across so many processors? No.
So everyone actually wants the same thing: very, very few payment processors.
Well, not really. Right now we're making two separate decisions. One for what is legal to sell, and one for what you can meaningfully sell. Those shouldn't be different, so the latter decision shouldn't be happening.
This sums up my experience with my representatives in recent years. You only get a meeting with my reps if you're a large donor or you cause enough public outrage.
Otherwise they feel no obligation to their constituents and hope that the automated form letter (in varying font sizes and colors between paragraphs) they send you in response is enough to appease you.
The problem is that we build these systems where no one seems to want to or have incentive to thin about responsible administration, reasonable feedback, appeal, and accountability. Everybody who can just gets lawyers that work to insulate themselves, sometimes because they don’t give a damn and sometimes because that’s what the incentives of exposure sometimes abused are.
Let’s just think why it would not be feasible to build proper system.
Maybe because bunch of angry assholes would take it down instantly filing bogus claims.
However, for computer payment, I had another idea is to make a "computer payment file" that contains the order division and payment division, and with encryption and signature, and send that to them. You will first receive the file telling what payments are acceptable and can use that to make the file to send to them. Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it, too; after you figure out the price, you can receive the payment code and include that in the payment file. Other methods of payment would be possible (e.g. store credit), so the payment file can work independently of what kind of payment.
I haven't seen a working payphone since the 90s lol.
Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
If paid sites started accepting bitcoin, it would definitely spur wider adoption.
I also know a guy who recently installed a dummy load in a thermal power plant which they switch on when they can’t give the power to the network due to overcapacity, as they can’t just switch off the plant willy nilly.
The point is, in a grid with lots of renewables in it not only there’s a lot of stray energy that can be captured, but a flexible load that can be switched on/off in milliseconds is actually hugely valuable if we’re to have stable grids.
How much energy is the "right" amount?
How does that compare to the amount of energy used for paper and coin?
Can any amount be more than the "right" amount as long as the cost of the energy is willing borne by the entities conducting the transaction?
The proof of stake idea is like a ponzi scheme
(Because this is a textual medium, I need to state explicitly that I don’t ask that in an adversial way, just want to have a conversation!)
2. stability. Crypto is basically a meme stock and it's a mess trying to store currency within it. It's a full time job tracking its worth.
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong." - Scott Alexander [0]
I don't have an answer on how to address that, though. You need to have a very strong stance early on to prevent witchery so your communtiy adjusts accordingly. But decentralization, by its nature, has no way to moderate behavior outside of the core design of the tech.
Banking is sadly one of those few aspects where you need some centralization, in my eyes. That's why finance is regulated the hardest in any given society. You need trust above all else to keep and use a digital currency.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
This is a feature for most crypto enthusiasts and a nightmare for anyone who is not capable of properly maintaining software systems or basic security
> What problems does Bitcoin bring along?
Not “is this tradeoff worth it?”
For a class of non technical people having the bank or credit card company in this case help them reverse charges when they’ve been scammed, and they are at risk of being scammed for a significant chunk of their resources.
I get why crypto enthusiasts like the irreversibility but the inability to understand why someone would want a protected system with an arbiter over it feels like the same energy I get from engineers who can’t fathom why anyone would choose the walled garden that comes with Apple products despite ample evidence for their popularity with the average joe
This is also not entirely true, to a minor extent law enforcement and the legal system can provide redress for scams. It helps to only do business with registered entities so you can at least take them to court/small claims.
Of course it is, since credit cards are a recent innovation if you are analyzing across historical time frames.
And even so, do you see most people preferring to pay in cash nowadays? Or debit card even? I’m not sure on debit vs cc usage rates but I’d for sure be surprised if cash was in use at a higher rate than cc
You could reimplement the traditional censorable banking system on top of bitcoin, where users never touch the asset, and instead interact with tokens/promises of money and transactions were reversible. Reversibility is not an inherent property of the medium of value it’s the property of the trustful model we’ve layered on top.
The difference is that normal people have access to uncensorable digital payment rails if they are motivated and accept the associated risks (the same they accept when performing cash transactions)
They can be opened peer to peer, or hop between other channels, similar to dns routing
They are prefunded with a certain quantity of bitcoin that dictates the size of bitcoin that can move in that route at once - although smaller denominations can go through in rapid succession this just means more fees levied
All of this incentivizes a larger channel to be created by a well funded party, which can be coaxed into censoring transactions because they are a payment processor or institutional service. Likely an incumbent such as Visa joining the lightning network as a victim of LN’s own success.
There are some mitigations built in and actively developed. We are 8 years deep into Lightning.
lighting channels are expensive to open and close
as it stands, there already isn't enough block space for “mass adoption” users to all have their own single lightning channel
let alone several
lightning in its ultimate form will always be a hosted solution
and those with the acumen and willingness to pay to open and close channels (or perhaps use the L1 bitcoin) will be a separate class of people
Hell the whole reason why Steam got big is how FRICTIONLESS it made buying videogames.
Still people will go a long way for their porn fix so who knows?
Ah, priorities.
But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.
We had to quickly onboard them onto a new gateway, and while testing in their sandbox environment a rep saw the issue. Turned out one of their products ended up with an auto-generated part code that had the four-letter term for sexual assault in it. That was it.
And people wonder why many are anxious about AI. Garbage in, garbage out. Automating the process amplifies that.
The amount of times we got paged because we coudlnt take cards was ridiculous, because we couldn't ever do anything about it.
I am in no way implying there is no Cuban embargo, nor Cuban censorship.
By the way, why is the name "La aroma de Cuba" and not "El aroma de Cuba"?
Source: had the exact same problem with PayPal about ten years ago, except the trigger word was the name of another sanctioned country.
The post you are replying to mentions it is a cigar.
Why would Visacard care about complaints? You need them more than they need you...
Game retailers could get together to form their own payment company, let's call it GamerPay, which deducts purchases directly from a bank account, just like most other bills we pay. They could probably get a lot of non-gaming related companies on board if they offered lower fees and/or more transparency.
People seem to forget that banks have been transferring funds between accounts for much longer than credit cards have been around. The infrastructure exists for bypassing credit cards, they just aren't what the majority use.
Where you set that dial is the kind of fraud you will get.
that's a weird thing to say about simply banning payments to people who profit from rape and incest content.
> AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on
it is very clear what is going on, they are making content profiting from rape and incest and they are getting punished for it.
Because, no offense, nobody cares what you find objectionable. You could've replaced "rape and incest content" in your comment with "silly content" and it would've had the same impact.
Not that I don't think rape or incest are objectionable, of course I do. I just don't think I or you get to make that determination. I'm self-absorbed, but not that self-absorbed. That's a collective decision that should be made.
They don't allow their cards to be accepted by pornography sites.
"gamer fury" over not being able to buy porno video games with their credit cards is not exact something that is going to garner the Dems any new support or votes.
If, instead, you frame it as "Duopoly of payment processors are deciding which legal content you are allowed to purchase.", surprise, you'll get more support.
Censorship has lots of popular support most places. The reason it's less successful in the US isn't because people in the US are broadly opposed to it; it's because the courts have traditionally upheld strong rights to freedom of expression under the 1st Amendment.
From whom?
There are better free-speech hills to die on. Unless gamers start organising themselves civically, this issue has too many weaknesses to base on.
There's comments here talking about other industries and goods that have been affected by similar decisions as well.
I'm also sure that people can rally around more than one free speech issue at a time.
It's not. But framing matters. Gamers are a terrible political beachhead for anything.
Needs to be specific. Visa and Mastercard, to their credit, are picking their battles carefully.
However, someone smarter than me will have to come up with what that looks like. I don't have the perfect framing to present to you, or I would be heading up the political movement myself.
>There are better free-speech hills to die on.
And that attitude is why the Left has gotten so weak. The Right died on the hill of some emails and a laptop. Maybe we should start with some smaller battles first.
Conspiracy and cover-up by the leader of the opposition is a great hill to die on. It comes with a built-in constituency who will actually show up.
The problem the American left has had is it keeps picking niche issues that appeal to folks who only show up in deep-blue cities.
Until you become the leaders covering it up, I suppose. It's a great thing Trump doesn't think that far in advance. A proper personality conman would be truly terrifying.
Maybe it's a good hill to climb. A stupid one to die on if you don't deliver. Conspiracy theorists only have allegiance to justifying themselves, not a personality.
>appeal to folks who only show up in deep-blue cities.
So, half the population? Seems like a large base to appeal to. Oh well, nothing a little gerrymandering won't fix.
Sure, covering up your own messes is survival. That said, it’s not like Trump being a rapist and liking them young was concealed from the electorate ex ante…
> Maybe it's a good hill to climb. A stupid one to die on if you don't deliver
It’s a lucrative hill to climb. I wouldn’t say it’s a good one.
The funny thing about Trump is he’s been done in, in part, by his authoritarianism. He can’t credibly claim an external force is holding him back (as he did with his tax returns) because he’s eviscerated all such forces.
> half the population?
Oh man no, maybe 5% of the population in Manhattan shows up. So maybe half of that. (Which is a lot of people. But not a lot of districts.)
You can do everything with a debit card, it probably already happened that Visa was used to facilitate buying a weapon for a school shooting: Were they annoyed?
You can buy a dildo with a Mastercard on Amazon: Are they annoyed?
But games? Why?
Loud, wealthy people with extremist beliefs are behind most of the actions that restrict our ability to exercise our rights.
This one in particular is an attack on art. It’s not just games, but traditional types of art as well that are currently affected by this issue. There is a certain ideology that views non-mainstream art - particularly art that tells a story about uncomfortable subjects - as something “degenerate” to be eradicated.
> as in corrupt > having or showing lowered moral character or standards > a movie about a gang of degenerate drug dealers
> as in pervert > a person who has sunk below the normal moral standard > a degenerate who is uninterested in anything but his own gratification
Seems to fit perfectly to describe a video game that is pro sexual assault and rape.
You are using that term when talking about an issue that disproportionately targets marginalized groups and victims of traumatic assault.
There is one very specific, well known group in history who would take your side on this issue and use the same terminology. You know who they are.
As long as VISA and MasterCard are only targetting adult content they are pretty much free to do whatever they want because no politician is going to go out and defend pornography.
Steam has a large and dedicated user base. They are one of the companies that has access to enough users to conceivably build their own payment processor with enough volume to be profitable from the start.
Industry giants are often toppled by companies who started out in some niche the giant is ignoring/avoiding.
Valve also have an extremely loyal customer base. If they have to open an account at the Bank of Gaben to get their fix of smutty games, they just might.
the topic up chain was " if they block whole Steam, it will create way larger outrage. I am sure they will dare not.". But it seems Valve doesn't want to take the gamble there.
I'm quite sure it would cause a massive amount of people to start paying using bank transfer.
The Proton / Steam deck play was a decade long strategic play that has clearly paid dividends and made Steam much less dependent on Microsoft. It would not be surprising to me if Valve in 10 years time has positioned itself to be much more independent of Visa and Mastercard than it is today.
If I were Steam, I would not call that bluff.
I think Visa/MC very much would dare.
Valve isn't ready for this battle ... yet.
I imagine they are girding for it, though. It simply wasn't a feasible battle until probably this year. FedNow and other things are just coming online. I suspect that Valve will begin incentivizing using that system rather than Visa/MC extremely strongly.
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In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.
In any case, as it stands right now, Steam losing Visa/MC processing entirely would be catastrophic to their business.
(payments are adjacent to my day gig, and I have to talk to FiServ and other FIs occasionally on the topic of moving money at a fintech)
That will vary by country, and the Federal Reserve is also US-specific. There are gamers in more countries than just the US :).
But yes, I certainly agree that the duopoly of Visa/MC needs to go.
But this is getting a bit into the weeds, I think. The point is that as it stands right now, today, Visa/MC is what Steam runs on. It would take a long time (months, if not years) for Steam to roll out support for every country that has their own system (Interac, Pix, etc.). We also can't forget that not every country has systems like that.
The most reasonable course of action today is to hope that Visa/MC can be forced into providing payment processing for all legal goods and services. Meanwhile, Steam will hopefully roll out other payment methods, other countries will adopt non-Visa/MC systems, and the duopoly can slowly be broken.
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If I were Visa/Mastercard leadership I think at least part of me would be happy to see this blow up, long term wise. Hey it's not me pushing back now, it's prigs versus the people, with a much higher chance of legislation change come out of it. Which IMO is just in this case, common carrier status as it should have, open to judicial requested blockages based on laws that are draft by folks elected by the population.
We've a buncha RFCs specifying the architecture with three branches to deal with these problems in the most agreeable way to most people, as good as we could come up with as a species. Rather than drafting new RFCs without understanding the why those three branches needed to exist, how about patching them. Complete rewrite works too but that should incorporate all the crystalized knowledge in the legacy version, which we all know is hard.
But what's going on: lots of unrest in the world mixed with a dying generation with the most wealth trying to secure a legacy. Awful combination for freedom and livelihood.
Private, consolidated mega-corporations largely sidestep the democratic process, and these kind of things are the consequence of that.
Japan has Suica, Hong Kong has Octopus. But I wonder why a lot of these never made their way to online payment. Something I thought Apple Cash would do. But somewhat never materialise.
There's a lot of wasted discussion talking about an intentional design decision because they're arguing from consumers' perspectives, ignoring the huge benefit to political organizations (e.g. freezing Russian assets).
0: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
so there's various lists of numbers to call going around online with a target of keeping up that volume for a few weeks. I'm sure it'll fall off eventually but it might be possible to at least match collective shout here.
Are large brand names that are assuring callers that opting for callback will not push you down in the queue lying? I'm not looking for an outpouring of cynicism, I can provide that myself, I'm curious about people who actually know how call centers operate, are they set up to lie as a general practice?
https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-group...
Their lack of impact makes them useless. What makes them worse is there may be people who might have done something useful, e.g. call their elected, who now think they've done their bit by "signing" an online petition.
Leave it to Polygon to frame things this way....
Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.
So we need to ensure we keep cash available.
The problem with that is there are a number of ways to prevent you from holding cash as well. Bank regulations around how much money you can withdraw/access, scrutiny around how much money you can carry to an airport, asset forfeiture without due process etc. all allow governments to coerce you into whatever they want. Cash is not necessarily a solution either.
The Bitcoin crowd is adamant that no government can regulate Bitcoin. They are correct in the sense that Congress is unable to pass a law dictating what the Bitcoin protocol must do, and that as a decentralized network people are free to follow whichever fork of Bitcoin they choose.
However, they have not given much consideration to the fact that governments have full authority to regulate those that use Bitcoin. In other words, no government needs to change Bitcoin. All they need to do is dictate what the lawful use of Bitcoin looks like in their jurisdiction. There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities. In the context of this article, I doubt that a government would prohibit the sale of these games, but I agree with your assertion that the government is likely to start locking down cryptocurrencies in some way that impedes privacy.
This would likely drive capital and the fintech companies and financial institutions behind it to friendlier countries and more welcoming markets.
Cash is unfortunately a liability for small businesses.
Do you have evidence to back this up?
In Canada, many bank branches don't carry cash except at ATMs, which means 100% of the cash transactions at those branches go through ATMs. Bills are inserted without an envelope, and are counted one by one, which means they're already being optically scanned (read: photographed) to determine the denomination. It's not a stretch that the serial number could be captured at this phase. When bills are withdrawn, they're withdrawn off the top (or bottom) of a stack of bills, so it is known which elements are removed from the stack. Again, it would not be infeasible to track all of the serial numbers in the stack, in order, and associate those numbers with withdrawals.
I do not have evidence that this occurs, but I've always assumed it was at least possible. It's technically trivial. But if you're claiming that it's either impossible or it doesn't happen, I'd need some convincing evidence that that's the case.
Enjoy! ;)
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/bargeld-tracking-du-hast-ueberw...
https://www.citechsensors.com/en/technology.html
Then again, things are looking good for the Stop Killing Games campaign so maybe the "gamer" demographic is big enough now to have real influence.
I'd say it'll become more and more relevant to enact such changes. Unlike in the 90s/2000s where gaming was a somewhat 'niche' thing, it's definitely in the mainstream nowadays.
As soon as you mention to someone uninvolved what started this conversation (incest games and such), you're climbing an uphill battle.
It's the same reason why "protect the children" arguments often work, no matter how flawed.
Which is to say, the big fish are the ones with the most influence and least likely to be affected by this.
Technically stripe is the intermediary for itch but they're gesturing at Visa and MasterCard, so those two seem like the important ones right now.
If you asked a poll about whether an undesirable person should have their power and water cut off, as if it was actually up for debate, many people would treat power and water as a reward to be removed and say yes
Its been determined that is a problem, and financial access should be at the same standard
People at the bottom really don't know how power works.
And yeah, the call center isn't the point, the loss of productivity (and thus, money) dealing with this issue will make them react. The call centers don't care, but the people up top will see the impact.
Don't think of it as some complaint calls. Think of it more like a mass protest. Mayors don't care if 5 people jaywalk. They start caring a whole lot when entire streets are blocked and their residents are demanding a response. Except in the call center case, callers are following the exact documented policy of contacting their bank to complain about bad service. What's Visa going to do, crack down on callers? That would be even worse for customer satisfaction and would probably get the board involved.
But a reminder: if you call, be unfailingly polite to the support person. Keep them on the phone as long as possible, but be kind to them. They don't set the policy. This isn't their fault. Visa and Mastercard should be dealing with the pain, not the regular employee who gets paid to help customers with their credit card issues.
meanwhile Visa & Mastercard can get away with dictating EVERYTHING in EVERY economy and on EVERY store in EVERY country for DECADES???
Tells you something about principles and how far they go.
Nationalizing means every country will have its own payment processor, how are you going to coordinate all this? Will each platform have to deal with dozens of payment processors that depend on the whims of their respective governments?
Turning private entities into investigator and judge isn't good for anyone. It ends up in a game of who can annoy them the most, and the entity will be wasting time trying to appease both sides.
Leave these things to the government. At least then you need evidence and have due process.
What's happened here is that someone has complained it's visible on the store at all.
Personally I think it's better for private entities to stay neutral and leave political decisions to the government. It's hard to stay neutral about things when you know things are happening, so when you inform a private entity about what people are doing with their services, you are turning that private entity into a political entity.
Probably get sued up to the Supreme Court like pharmacists that don't want to accept birth control prescriptions. Which may not work out that great with how much the current court hates freedom.
but, really, if the product or service is legal, payment processors should have to accept the payment. Same for all the other categories of product they are blocking with similar methodos.
ontil we legally give payment processors a pass for enabling money for crime they will be very careful about grey areas.
So many gamers are going to get scammed in the next months... all because a payment processor couldn't just do its job.
The US Treasury says otherwise: this seems to all have started from them trying to blame Visa/MC for "directly handling the proceeds of these illicit transactions", despite the payment processors not having any idea what was actually being purchased.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-whistleblower-says-maste...
I blame elizabeth warren.
Also: this is why cash should not die
Finance is the single most heavily regulated sector of the economy. Almost certainly someone in government coerced them to stop taking these payments, exactly the same as has been done to unbank other disfavored industries.
This has resulted in payment processor execs historically being very prejudiced about against any site that provides that sort of content.
Combine this with the dual facts that no one of good standing is very motivated to stick their neck out to defend porn publicly, while many people define their politics by being very publicly against it, and you get a system that routinely discriminates against sex workers.
[1] Historically, this was from angry spouses/parents seeing it on the CC bill and the person who ordered it lying that "someone else must have stolen the card and ordered it"; nowadays actual identity fraud is so common that it's a real concern
You imagine that the guns of government regulation will always be in your favor, and are totally surprised when they are pointed at your head instead.
Or even better: why cash should work on the internet, too.
Many of the interbank networks were formed by a consortium of banks, as was Interac; Mastercard was also formed this way (as Interbank).
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-12/chapter-II/subchapter-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-pro...
I think Americans are better off with annoying blocks on porn than the alternative.
But in Canada, bureaucrat Foo talked to bureaucrat Baz, and presto--you're unbanked!
It was entirely warranted to freeze their accounts and make arrests.
In a free society people should be able to protest whatever in public without getting arrested and debanked. Otherwise you might as well be one of those authoritarian countries where protesting requires a permit.
BLM was a nothingburger in Canada. The most similar protests to that would have been the Wet'suwet'en solidarity protests. Those lasted a few weeks and were ultimately resolved peacefully, for the most part. An important thing to consider is that the protestors weren't interested in toppling the Government; they simply wanted the Government to hear them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Canadian_pipeline_and_rai...
Tangentially, Canada has a much saner banking system than the US, in that it has a handful of very large banks which are inherently much more stable than the many thousands of banks/credit unions in the US.
Paying online with Debit Cards is possible (at least in Belgium), alongside 2FA, not just entering 3 digits on the back of a card. And when dealing with RBC, their mobile app is.. not great.
It’s outrageous that private duopolies control > 95% of transactions in the country.
https://www.newsweek.com/banks-have-begun-freezing-accounts-...
These are the same payment processors that stopped allowing payments to porn sites due to the epidemic of 'revenge porn'. I would argue that was a net benefit to society as now these sites only allow 'verified' uploads.
It can't be cancelled, but it can be inconvinienced. Emails can be ignored, but snail mail is overwhelming, and call centers can be gummed up. For some reasons, these businesses respond more to these old medium, so gotta make use of it.
> This game hasn’t been indexed since October 2024 since it doesn’t meet our indexing criteria: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#why-isnt-my-pr...
> The developers are using a “Download” button as a link to Steam. The developer took down any playable files form this page in 2024.
"And ofc Mouthwashing got yoinked from itch search results lol"
Consequently it is merely normal to exclude all who are misogynists lest you also be a misogynist.
The organization asking Mastercard and Visa to deplatform these people is quite clear
> We are a grassroots campaigns movement - a Collective Shout against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture
So it is simply logical to go along. Gamers will ultimately kick up a hue and cry and then go back to playing games. It’s not like they’re going to stop.
Visa and Mastercard take on quite a bit of risk by allowing payment transactions to companies who wade into murky businesses that while not illegal may have a lot of risk.
The amount of lawsuits that these processors get co-named in for providing payment rails is probably enormous and without laws protecting them I don't see how they don't have a choice in actively censoring.
>The amount of lawsuits that these processors get co-named in for providing payment rails is probably enormous
yes, that's called being a billion dollar business. Literally any billion dollar business is facing dozens of lawsuits on the daily. They have dedicated lawyers on hand for this ineviability.
There's a lot that needs to change, but I don't see these businesses bothering. So forgive my lack of sympathy.
If you don't like what telephone companies do, making your own phone company that doesn't inter-operate with the current ones would clearly not go very well.
Likewise, if you don't like the current banks or payment processors, you have a steep hill to climb in that all the operative tissue is built around the current model.
Payment processors have major network effects in that infra setup is expensive, banks need to be onboarded one-by-one, and whichever network has the most consumers, businesses will gravitate towards it. Iterate this over 20 years, and this always results in natural monopolies / duopolies. This creates a natural chokepoint/linchpin over which millions of people's mutually exclusive needs are getting banged at; including consumers at large, govs at large, and special-interest groups at large.
Absent crystal clear legislation -and porn is anything, but- this will always be arbitrary, and leave one side in the dust.
We'll all probably save a little bit of money too when we don't have to forfeit a portion of every transaction ever to someone's profit margins.
The only reason this isn't a free speech problem is because it's monopolized in the private sector. Well, if it's already centrally planned and controlled, then we can just put it in the public sector.
Now, we have some guarantee of rights. We can even use our voting powers to influence the payment processor. Because, right now, we essentially have this same exact scenario - except, it's opaque, we can't vote, and they're allowed to completely trample over the US constitution, because it doesn't apply to them.
What's the actual drawback here? I mean, it's not like things can get more consolidated. I understand not wanting to disturb a market, but there's no market to disturb.
We can also go the other direction and split Visa up. But that's bad in different ways.
I don't want 50 payment processors, you don't want that, and certainly Visa doesn't want that. So who wins? Nobody, it's all losers. If you think it's expensive now, just wait until you're paying for the integration and complexity costs of all those payment processors.
IMO, payment processors are public infrastructure. That's an opinion of course, but it's really hard to argue otherwise. It is to the benefit of everyone that we have good payment processors. We already pay for Visa via taxes - that's what that 2% charge on all transactions is.
Given that, we should treat it like a public asset.
This is simply an underwriting risk problem. Get the government to draw boundaries of what’s ok or not and it’s less of a problem.
They're already acting as a public good - so why can't we just make them a public good? That's not a rhetorical question.
We're already paying taxes for this public good. So why can't we pay actual taxes for this public good? Again, not rhetorical.
> Get the government to draw boundaries of what’s ok or not and it’s less of a problem.
Yes, we can do this. But we have already done this. It's our common laws and the US constitution.
If we want free speech, we don't need to go out here and write a super special law to target Visa. If they were just part of the public sector that would already apply to them - no new laws required.
You can't just say something is a fairy-tale because you're ideologically opposed to it. We already run many, many public services and do it successfully. It's not a fairy-tale, it's real life and we've been doing it for hundreds of years. Yes, even in the US.
Not to mention, we'd get a lot of extra benefits for free. Don't want your payment history leaked? Great, now the police require a search warrant to invade your privacy. Don't want to be debanked? Great, now we have more stringent discrimination protections. Want to pay less? Great, we don't have to turn a profit anymore.
Poor visa, I feel so bad about them :'( Maybe pressure from the another side will give them motivation to push back against government lobbying
Then consider how that applies to the current situation.
Being able to take credit cards is not exactly life-and-death, but it certainly can be for a business. Especially since the average Joe can't exactly go start their own Credit Card company to make a pornography-friendly payment processor. The CC oligarchy is firmly entrenched.
It's not a problem when there is true and healthy competition. It is a problem when there is not and what they provide is critical infrastructure.
Either antitrust the shit out of them so there is healthy competition or regulate them so they have to allow payment for legal goods and services.