More than a request, I think it’s a deserving clarification. We’re getting mob outrage against Valve, Itch.io etc… while it’s just Visa/MasterCard/Paypal laughing on everyone back.
Thanks reading my TEDx
If Valve told the card companies to go fuck themselves then they would have never pulled support.
It was always a bluff, Visa and MC would never let go of that money over something so petty.
So yeah, I also blame the billion dollar corporations that rival the card companies bending to their demands.
I mean, it’s a nanny organization called Collective Shout that is claiming responsibility for these recent product bans/removals. They just pressured the payment processors instead of the companies who own the stores this time. And it worked.
The nanny group sucks the most here. The payment processors suck for acquiescing to the nanny group, and everyone else sucks for acquiescing to the payment processors.
The payment processors have the final say and have done this multiple times in the past, i wouldnt be surprised of the “nanny” was secretly paid by them to find this shit for them to censor.
While I agree with the spirit of it, those corporations are still beholden to local governments to not be sued out the ass.
So I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to the fascist jackboots censoring the world from Australia, bragging about doing all of this:
https://www.collectiveshout.org/
Fuck your censorship Collective Shout. Get fucked while you’re at it, might loosen you up a bit
Love how the bottom of the page is like
We are an independent registered charity with no affiliation to religious or political institutions.
Meanwhile, the founder
In 2007, she published Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics[7], to a conservative journal called The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly before being republished by Spinifex press.
The journal is periodically published by a conservative think tank called The National Catholic Bioethics Center.
In 2009, Tankard Reist spoke at a forum called, “Event: Inspiring Christians Series” in the Belconnen Baptist Church on behalf of Sheridan Voysey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist
She’s all about women. As long as they produce children regardless of how they were impregnated and are wives in Catholic marriages.
Payment Providers have been doing this for a longer time.
In 2010 for example they blocked donations towards WikiLeaks.
Melinda Tankard Reist.
Michael Miebach.
Ryan McInerney.
Humans > branding and corporation names.
When CVS “used racist AI” I didn’t see a single goddamn peep about the CEOs in charge while they had that policy.
We should name the board and the whole leadership system but at least mentioning CEOs would be a great start.
Yes!
This is exactly correct. Thank you.
God damn chad… You ain’t wrong, naming the perp is first step in any proprr discourse.
USians are allergic to naming the parasite it seems tho
Nothing but hypocrisy from Visa and MasterCard - there are far more NSFW content on Xitter than in games and yet I don’t see a peep of them banning payment towards that little blue checkmark.
Collective Shout seems to aim for X next, according to their site.
biting the hand that seig heils
Can you directly pay for porn on Twitter?
Do you need to pay to access Steam and play games? The answer is no - there are free games on Steam and also forum features that allow you to post media content too. From that standpoint they’re in the same boat. The difference is the platform’s intended use.
I think the real issue isn’t about Visa and MasterCard trying to gatekeep/censor this. The talk should be about we as a society haven’t matured enough to be willing to talk about our own bodies as humans and human nature with our own kids. If you look at what’s shown on mainstream TV around the world, off the top of my head, Europe seems to be a lot more mature about it than many parts elsewhere.
I don’t think we should be giving corporations a pass for caving to challenges from authority whether it’s hard or not.
Whether it’s valve pulling NSFW content, universities expelling students, or CBS firing people over political speech it’s all anti-consumer behavior driven by a financial incentive to cater to a bully with too much power. They’re all just rolling over and showing their belly rather than deal with a problem in the short term.
If Valve or Itch had paired that statement with a statement about what other payment processing options they were pursuing that might someday lead them back to a pro-consumer position I’d be on board for granting them some grace on the issue, but to the best of my knowledge from the articles I’ve seen, their position has been “tell me what to do Daddy”. If I’m wrong about that I apologize and I’ll start reading different sources.
There’s just too much capitulation to anti-free-speech behavior and I’m not ready to give anyone a pass at this point.
Well if you want to peel the onion another layer, you should really be mad at laywers and our litigious society as a whole, payment processors don’t have morality, nothing in capitalism does - they are responding, just like valve, to external pressures.
It’s specifically due to a moral panic group, Collective Shout, pressuring credit card companies to do this. Litigation isn’t really part of it, just angry organized people on the Internet.
How do they apply pressure though? (they threaten to sue)
Do you know that or are you speculating?
Corporations do not give a single fuck about “angry, organized people”, only money.
They care about bad PR. Angry, organized people can create lots of bad PR.
Look, this whole subthread is jumping to conclusions based on speculation. Maybe they are using legal strategies, but that’s not obvious.
Don’t believe that either.
I’m not jumping to conclusions, I’m asking questions.
Where did you ask a question in this reply chain?
Maybe we can angrily organize against them?
Bro lawyer is just a hired gun, they will do whatever guy paying says. They have no agency.
Executives, BoD and shareholders with controlling stakes make these calls.
Avoid using credit cards as much as possible, deny the parasite profit and network effects.
That was my point, that pressure is always external and they are not making moral decisions.
Executives, BoD and shareholders with controlling stakes make these calls.
Yeah with the external driver of the bottom line, no one is making these ‘calls’ for any sort of purpose other than the profit driver.
Avoid using credit cards as much as possible
Sure, and my paper straws are saving the environment too, right? Individual action changes nothing, changes in law/enforcement is the only proven path to change.
You can do individual action yourself today and right now. It doesn’t hurt shilling online for systematic change. This trope is getting tiring. God forbid a pleb does a thing
Sure you can, you can do whatever you want. My point is it will have zero effect on anything.
My point is it will have zero effect on anything.
Actually every dollar spent away from credit card proxessors denies them 3 cents of revenue and something like .75% in profit per dollar spent
But you do you, keep consuming how daddy told you to do it. Never adjust your behaviour to save money ✊
mmmm yes America Daddy, hurt me so good, I love it! Trillion dollar industry is DEF hurting by me denying them pennies. You have awoken me, thank you!
Nope, there are human beings that make decisions and those human beings have beliefs.
Yes, totally agreed that the people making decisions have beliefs. Hard disagree if you think the head of Visa is consulting his/her/their ‘beliefs’ when voting on multi-billion dollar decisions.
What if they believe that being associated with adult games will hurt the bottom line?
They basically have mon/du/triopolies in their field. Deciding to take less money is the only thing that hurts their bottom line. What’s a noisy group of a dozen assholes going to do, use a different processor? The very thing that allowed them to pressure the other companies is what makes them immune from these stupid threats
Okay, you’re allowed to be wrong
Thank you kindly 😘
I don’t buy that, why would they have to care what these people think? Credit card companies have a history of being hostile to adult content, I think it’s because the people who own them have an interest in controlling others.
I get your point, but the stores are still caving. They are still playing ball and banning things. That needs to be remembered too.
Unfortunately, the alternative is that they cease to exist almost instantly. This is what happens when we allow monopolies and trusts.
They could have implented this solution:
If you use payment service X you can only buy games A, B, C
If you use payment service Y you can buy all the games
My understanding is part of it is that payment processor says stop doing it or we drop you all together. Not a we won’t be involved but lose them as an avenue.
Their way or highway, no real middle ground posible
The short term strategy would probably be to introduce Y payment processor and make it the preferred method of payment. Encourage it’s use industry wide and encourage consumers to adopt that method as widely as possible.
If that takes off… Then they can tell the other processors to get fucked.
Changing payment processors/engaging a new one is anything but a short term thing to implement. Otherwise Mastercard and Visa wouldn’t be in this situation to have this level of control to begin with.
If 50 Cent could sell album for crypto from his nothing website a decade ago I feel like Valve has the technical wherewithal to implement one of 1,000 preexisting checkout solutions in the short term.
I think selling steam giftcards (an existing solution they’re already using) at a markdown to expand that business would be pretty viable for a company that regularly marks their products down by up to 90%.
They could literally do both of these almost instantly as preferred options while still accepting the big cards.
Some additional context to my previous comment: I work tech in the financial industry. I have some experience with payment processors and the stupid amount of bullshit around all this stuff. “They could do both of these things almost instantly” is a big assumption holding the entirety of the weight for your argument.
Anyway.
50 Cent was doing a one off publicity stunt, not trying to ensure continued existence as a company. How many mainstream artists are still doing that? I shouldn’t have to say that this is very much an apples and oranges comparison.
Your other idea has legs, but it’s still suggesting that Valve try entering a game of financial chicken with Visa and Mastercard. Effectively infinite money. And in the meantime most users would just be pissed off at Valve for making it harder to buy anything. We’re already seeing people attack itch.io for not standing up instead of bei g pissed at the payment processors.
Valve can’t make purchasing through a different processor a requirement for some games but not others because Visa and Mastercard said “stop selling games with this content entirely, or we stop processing your transactions entirely”. So anything they do will have to effect all transactions.
I’m frustrated Valve didn’t do more, and that they’ve not made any public statements about trying to fight this, but Valve isn’t just leaving money on the table because they’re lazy or dumb.
So you have a pair of strawmen there.
- I’m not advocating for a single solution today to ensure the continued existance of the company. A supplementary strategy is completely viable and could be implemented in the short term. They have the all the resources they could possibly need from a technical and legal framework already. They may need to tinker with the financial backend, but it’s hardly an insurmountable challenge. If they can figure out proton, they can figure out plugging one of 1000 existing solutions into their checkout (Before we have another strawman I’m not saying those are the same thing, I’m saying they have a history of being smart, resourceful, problem solvers).
If that off the cuff, apples to oranges, example is too silly by a third, how about the entire US canibus industry? They’ve been prohibited from using the federal banking system and seem to be making ends meet alright.
If you work in the space then you know they’re going to have more and better solutions down the line. The EU is looking for solutions to circumvent the big US processors. Alipay and WeChat pay can already circumvent US credit card processors, and have made significant inroads in the US.
- I’m not advocating for trying to split content by payment processor. Though I know others have. Right now they probably have to comply and they will need to continue using the major payment processors for the foreseeable future, but while those payment processors can prohibit “immoral” content, they can not prohibit Valve from including, and promoting competing payment solutions. They probably can’t even stop them from giving other processors preferential treatment.
I AM taking the position that unless they do something… Anything… A first turn out of the driveway to be 10% less dependent on alternative means of payment processing, there will never be a path to being 100% free from coersion.
They could be doing things today and right now it doesn’t look like they are.
Valve is estimated to be a multi billion dollar organization with a per head profit of 3.5 million. They have an extremely captive audience that’s deeply financially invested in the platform and would jump through a lot of hoops to keep using it. Pretending they’re helpless and shouldn’t be troubled to start steering in a pro-consumer direction just because they don’t have a 100% solution today is defeatist bullshit.
Part of the problem is that there are very few payment services and they all seem to be doing the same thing.
And this/that do nothing to defend their customer despite having magnitudes more possibilities. All are guilty. Just the degree of guilt differs.
People always say crypto has no value and is a scam but i don’t see how a stablecoin like usdc isn’t a much simpler solution vs trying to break the duopoly
What happens when anti-porn organisations like Collective Shout go after the currency exchanges?
You don’t need exchanges.
Presumably they do what Visa/Mastercard should have done, and tell them to shove it. It’s just a bunch of uppity idiots from Australia, no one HAS to listen to them…
Crypto markets also need payment processors if people are going to buy and sell crypto.
What exactly would they demand from them? A cryptocurrency exchange is not like a credit card company which has a direct relationship with every customer and vendor and is in direct control of transactions, instead they just handle buying and selling of decentralized currencies which are transacted permissionlessly on their own networks.
It’s a lot more like cash, especially the ones designed for privacy.
That said, stablecoins might also be a target, since they have freeze functions, I could see that becoming a problem.
Removed by mod
Look, I don’t know how the average Lemme user feels about crypto, but if NSFW game creators created a platform where purchases happen only in crypto then MasterCard/Visa/Paypal would be irrelevant
And they’d lose a huge number of potential sales.
If only the Internet hadn’t spent the last decade collectively shitting on crypto instead of maybe learning a bit about how it works and what it could be used for.
If only crypto hadn’t turned out to be the 21st-century version of fine art for money laundering and/or a Ponzi scheme designed to separate fools from their money…
It turned out to be exactly what it was designed to be, a tool for making financial transactions online without needing anyone’s permission.
Yeah it wasn’t the internet’s fault that it became a ponzi scheme for techbros. Bitcoin got co-opted from its original use first, then became a laughingstock.
There’s a lot more to cryptocurrency than Bitcoin.
