Also: this is why cash should not die
It’s outrageous that private duopolies control > 95% of transactions in the country.
https://www.newsweek.com/banks-have-begun-freezing-accounts-...
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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.
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
Or even better: why cash should work on the internet, too.
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.
If I were Steam, I would not call that bluff.
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.
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.
I'm quite sure it would cause a massive amount of people to start paying using bank transfer.
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 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.
In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
They don't allow their cards to be accepted by pornography sites.
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
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.
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.
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".
Why should they? They have a global duopoly, there's not going to be any long term impact here.
> 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"
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.
I blame elizabeth warren.
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.
So many gamers are going to get scammed in the next months... all because a payment processor couldn't just do its job.
ontil we legally give payment processors a pass for enabling money for crime they will be very careful about grey areas.
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...
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.
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.
- 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.
>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.
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.
If something isn't illegal it is legal, and therefore they should be allowing payment for it.
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.
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.
A similar thing might end up happening here?
Cause I don't think there is any kind of way to buy things with Zelle and possibly it would be a TOS issue.
"Nothing stops this, except this things that stops it."
It's probably fear of such regulation that motivates Visa and Mastercard to bow to such pressure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most of these groups buckle to well-funded lobby groups.
They're absolutely ignoring a bunch of other well funded lobby groups. This idea just appealed to them, for whatever reason.
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.
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.
But hey they're all bad people I guess, victims included.
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.
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.
[^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.
What game are you talking about?
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
You don't like the game? Is there a gun to your head making you play it? No. The conversation should be over then.
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
I want to underline the absurdity of a foreign feminist organisation [1], in this political environment, dictating what Americans can and cannot see.
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.
Supposedly you can still hear the last of the V8 interceptors roar in the wild there...
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.
I'm grateful my parents, who were life long conservatives, haven't lived to see the tragedy of what passes for Republicans these days.
It's too bad that puritanism is often co-opted by the largest hypocrites. SO perhaps they would vote him in in practice.
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.
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.
Really would prefer the government outlaw these things but I don’t mind companies protecting themselves from liability.
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.
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.
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.
Private, consolidated mega-corporations largely sidestep the democratic process, and these kind of things are the consequence of that.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
The post you are replying to mentions it is a cigar.
Source: had the exact same problem with PayPal about ten years ago, except the trigger word was the name of another sanctioned country.
The amount of times we got paged because we coudlnt take cards was ridiculous, because we couldn't ever do anything about it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.”
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.
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
>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.
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.
6. Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/when-does-...
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.
Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
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
(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!)
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
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)
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
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...
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?
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
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.
If paid sites started accepting bitcoin, it would definitely spur wider adoption.
I haven't seen a working payphone since the 90s lol.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ah, priorities.
But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.
Why would Visacard care about complaints? You need them more than they need you...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
1: https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=mouthwashing&classificat...
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.
[^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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
People at the bottom really don't know how power works.
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.
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.
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.
Leave it to Polygon to frame things this way....
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?
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).
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.
jmclnx•8h ago
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.
DJBunnies•8h ago
efnx•8h ago
4gotunameagain•8h ago
DJBunnies•8h ago
madars•6h ago
lesuorac•8h ago
darth_avocado•8h ago
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.
clown_strike•7h ago
catlikesshrimp•7h ago
_Algernon_•6h ago
bell-cot•7h ago
darth_avocado•7h ago
dleslie•8h ago
wtallis•8h ago
blahyawnblah•8h ago
ghssds•7h ago
Enjoy! ;)
em-bee•7h ago
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/bargeld-tracking-du-hast-ueberw...
https://www.citechsensors.com/en/technology.html
jmb99•6h ago
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.
numpad0•7h ago
BitwiseFool•8h ago
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•7h ago
This would likely drive capital and the fintech companies and financial institutions behind it to friendlier countries and more welcoming markets.
praptak•7h ago