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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
If something isn't illegal it is legal, and therefore they should be allowing payment for it.
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.
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.
A similar thing might end up happening here?
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.
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.
[^1]: https://bsky.app/profile/siarate.bsky.social/post/3luz4cz6wx...
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.
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!
What game are you talking about?
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.
If it's illegal then the government should pursue it directly. It's better tested in court than behind closed doors.
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.
There is also a problem with your argument itself. Child pornography is illegal because it involves harm to children, not to suppress people with certain preferences. If there are no victims and it’s just a fictional depiction, there’s no reason to ban it.
Personally I don’t really like people who are into that but that doesn’t give anyone the right to oppress them.
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.
1: https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=mouthwashing&classificat...
> 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.
[^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.
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?
Is that what "right-wing grifters" look like nowadays?
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Why would Visacard care about complaints? You need them more than they need you...
Ah, priorities.
But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.
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.
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.
"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.
They don't allow their cards to be accepted by pornography sites.
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.
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.
In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
US credit unions need to band together to launch a nonprofit, co-op P2P cash, credit card, and debit payment app with:
- a Stripe-/Shopify-easy payment processing backend
- low-cost, open source NFC terminals that integrate with conventional brick-and-mortar registers
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
Or even better: why cash should work on the internet, too.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Leave it to Polygon to frame things this way....
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Then consider how that applies to the current situation.
