[HN Gopher] Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to...
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Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain
adult games
Author : freedomben
Score : 826 points
Date : 2025-07-18 15:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| timpera wrote:
| Considering their volume, I find it hard to believe that Valve
| couldn't find another, more lenient payment processor with
| similar fees.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| My understanding is that it's not just the processor, but
| Visa/Mastercard themselves have rules against certain types of
| merchants/products... they really have a monopoly on credit
| cards in general so you have to play by their rules.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Yep, they are a just a modern day mafia. "Would be a real
| shame if you didn't take down these games. Then we couldn't
| do business with you anymore."
| Ancapistani wrote:
| You're right, but it's slightly more complicated than that.
|
| My understanding is that payment processors are obligated to
| follow the policies of Visa/MasterCard, AmEx, and Discover,
| but that those parties' policies don't _explicitly_ ban these
| specific things for sale. Instead, they "strongly encourage"
| processors to ban them in their user agreements under the
| implicit threat of their risk level being increased, which in
| turn impacts the fees they pay to the credit card companies.
|
| I've not been deep in this world since ~2014, but at that
| time the only processor I could find that wasn't specific to
| the porn industry, offered physical terminals, had reasonable
| (if high) fees, and didn't ban legal transactions in their
| user agreement was PAI ("Payment Alliance International"). A
| quick look at their site today shows that they seem to have
| been acquired by Brinks, so that may no longer be the case.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| MasterCard have a specific restricted list that bans an
| awful lot of things in any adult context.
|
| Some of how to interpret that is left up to the processor,
| but it is broadly under MCs and to a lesser extent Visa's
| control.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| There are no other payment processors.
| slaw wrote:
| There are national issuers like JCB or UnionPay.
| latentsea wrote:
| I'm getting a JCB card. Screw Visa.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| In some countries there are other systems. It's high time the
| modern world adopted something similar like Pix in Brazil.
| raincole wrote:
| There are no other payment processors that can replace
| Visa/Mastercard*.
|
| There are other payment processors in
| India/Japan/China/Brazil/etc. But none of them is
| internationally adopted like Visa/Mastercard.
| jandrese wrote:
| Is it the case the Mastercard/Visa will reject a site that
| has such content even if you can only purchase it using
| ValveBucks or PayPal or something? That seems plausible.
| astura wrote:
| Adult content has a high chargeback rate and high fraud rates
| so payment processing for adult content has higher fees.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Which makes less sense when you consider Steam will refund
| you game if you dont want it.
| david38 wrote:
| I don't think you understand what's being said. He's not
| talking about the ability to refund
| jowea wrote:
| But is there a good reason to do a chargeback if you can
| easily refund it? Yes if someone stole the CC and used it
| buy something on Steam, but is that the concern or that
| someone buys something with a CC on their own account,
| and then chargebacks instead of refunding?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| People say that a lot but I haven't seen actual statistics,
| and sites that have established low chargeback rates face the
| same issues.
|
| Also that's not a reason to ban certain genres/kinks, which
| is what's happening here.
| AIPedant wrote:
| The fact that these were specifically incest games makes me
| think a title was somehow involved in distributing CSAM,
| which is often why Visa/MC crack down on porn websites.
|
| But it is possible that Visa sensibly and correctly said
| "anyone who makes or purchases such a game is a despicable
| scumbag, and we shouldn't assume the financial risk of
| dealing with them."
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's a pretty wild idea for what someone would be putting
| on steam as a visual novel. And why would they need to be
| pressured into removing horrible illegal content?
|
| Or you think one person did that and it made the credit
| cards decide any story with incest would be the same? That
| would be ridiculous on their part.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I think the government should be the one deciding what
| makes someone qualify as a despicable scumbag, not a
| private payment processor that is essentially acting as a
| utility provider. For the same reason, I also don't think
| an electric company should be allowed to shut cancel your
| building's electricity if they don't like your mismatched
| socks.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| You need to be more specific. Conflating "adult content" with
| porn is both problematic is masks the real issue. A large
| majority of games Valve sells are adult content. But as you
| can imagine grand theft auto is not causing a lot of
| political backlash, despite the objectionable content.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| You say that but the same censors behind this also got GTA5
| pulled from retail stores
| gorwell wrote:
| They could support a stablecoin like USDC and start pushing
| people to that. No censorship and lower fees. Valve broke
| ground with Steam, they could do it again.
| edm0nd wrote:
| nah. USDC funds can be frozen by Circle on demand/request.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You wouldn't be buying or holding any USDC in your account.
| It would be invisible to you
| gs17 wrote:
| Would you care to explain the process more? I'd be glad
| to see a useful application of crypto.
| wmf wrote:
| The problem with that is that you usually end up using
| traditional payment rails (e.g. a Visa debit card) to
| "invisibly" buy the stablecoin and then you're subject to
| their rules and fees again.
| wmf wrote:
| It complicates things to have some games that can be purchased
| with credit cards and some games that can only be purchased
| with crypto.
| Hemospectrum wrote:
| If they continued to carry _any_ of the games that were
| singled out for removal by Visa and Mastercard, they would
| not be able to accept credit card payments for _anything else
| in their store_. This same drama has played out the same way
| with countless other online services.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Controversial games being restricted to purchase only with
| Steam Points. The credit card is only ever charged to buy
| points, which can then be used to purchase items on the store.
| Similar to fortnite.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Or similar to DLSite and Fantia, where it didn't work.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| What can be done to loosen card companies' grip on this? It has
| been a constant problem now for decades.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Bitcoin was supposed to solve this.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Exactly. It's really a tragedy that crypto becomes a
| speculator's tool, and the real problem didn't even get
| solved.
| lawn wrote:
| And you could indeed use Bitcoin on Steam for a while!
|
| But then the blocks got full, fees and wait times
| skyrocketed, and in response to the customer backlash Steam
| removed Bitcoin.
|
| Meanwhile Bitcoiners were (and still are) only focused on
| number go up instead of other, more productive, use cases.
|
| Such a waste.
| kingo55 wrote:
| There's now Ethereum, Base and Solana featuring US dollar
| stablecoins and significantly cheaper fees. If you want to
| go a step further and eliminate the stablecoin issuer's
| counterparty risk you could even pay in the base asset of
| ETH. Shopify allows payments from crypto now, so Steam
| should try it again.
|
| Good luck censoring purchases on ETH.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Even stablecoins aren't so great for the environment.
| Proof of stake isn't as bad, but also doesn't offer much
| beyond traditional systems once KYC is needed.
|
| Am I missing something?
| ETH_start wrote:
| Stablecoins are great. The only way to be debanked is if
| the stablecoin issuer explicitly blacklists your address,
| which is a public act which they will be forced to
| justify.
|
| And Ethereum's Proof of Stake algorithm is highly
| censorship resistant. That's why it took seven years to
| design.
| lawn wrote:
| There are plenty of alternatives to Bitcoin payments in
| the crypto space.
|
| The problem isn't technical, the problem is getting
| people to care.
| swinglock wrote:
| They built the lightning network, it's meant for this use
| case.
| lawn wrote:
| Unfortunately it's shit at it. The user experience of
| using another currency or hell even just Bitcoin is far
| superior.
| miohtama wrote:
| You can get Pornhub subscription with Bitcoin, but not credit
| card.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Likely nothing.
|
| The simple fact is, Visa/MC don't want to deal with porn
| because the number of chargebacks and fraud from porn purchases
| is significant and a huge outlier compared to most other
| charges. Their crusade against processing charges for adult
| material isn't about purity, it's simply business.
| blibble wrote:
| I can't imagine people are risking their steam accounts to
| ripoff a $5 adult game
| mnmalst wrote:
| Can you link a reliable source for this claim? I personally
| couldn't find anything with substance.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I doubt it. If that were the case, I think they would only be
| complaining to Valve about the number of chargebacks issued
| from the Steam store. Not about genres-that-are-correlated-
| with-chargebacks-in-other-contexts.
|
| Given Valve's generous refund policies, and the fact that a
| steam store purchase on your credit card statement looks
| quite innocent, and that the credit card companies didn't
| complain to Valve about chargebacks but about content, my
| guess is there are hardly any chargebacks, and this is just
| about moral purity.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Given Valve's generous refund policies,
|
| Their generous refund policy, and more importantly their
| very-non-generous chargeback policy. If you chargeback a
| Steam purchase, your account is locked.
| gs17 wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy the chargeback angle. It's commonly
| trotted out as a reason card companies would enforce
| censorship, but it doesn't make sense with the actions they
| take. Chargeback fees are paid by the merchant regardless of
| the chargeback's success, and are supposed to cover the costs
| of administering it (and then some). The very selective rules
| applied here are pretty odd from that angle too, if adult
| content chargebacks/fraud is the issue, then _all_ of it
| should be the issue, not small niches.
|
| Fraud is likely more realistic of an issue, but that's
| probably an issue with games in general, not just adult
| titles.
|
| There are already high-risk merchant accounts with higher
| fees and cash reserve requirements, but AFAIK companies like
| Valve aren't being given any options other than comply or be
| destroyed.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| That's not true, anti-sex work and anti-porn activists have
| specifically been pressuring payment processors to assume
| these policies. The processors as the critical control point
| of this whole thing was identified decades ago and
| conservative christian think tanks have been pursuing this
| path since then.
|
| This is part of a long-term plan to de facto ban lgbtq
| content without having to deal with first amendment
| protections. First have the payment processors ban explicit
| content, then have queer content categorized as explicit.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Visa charge a fee for processing chargebacks, and this will
| be a tiny fraction of Steam sales. I doubt it's their
| concern.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| in a word, regulation.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Regulation and anti cartel laws.
|
| Adult business is legitimate business in many parts of the
| world and companies using their monopoly to suppress it should
| be a case for an Investigation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Use ACH/Zelle/Paypal/etc.
|
| The permanent solution is a federal government operated
| electronic money system operated as a utility with
| constitutionally protected rights.
| majorchord wrote:
| Those solutions might work for _some_ people in _some_
| countries, but I would argue that it 's not acceptable for
| the vast majority of customers, and they would lose a very
| significant portion of revenue.
| gs17 wrote:
| PayPal has also been involved in this.
| jowea wrote:
| Instant payment systems that go direct from bank to bank,
| assuming the banks, the government or any other intermediaries
| don't also decide to not allow it.
|
| Or cryptocurrency, I guess.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Denmark has seen a trend where their national card network
| (Dankort, operating at the equivalent level to Visa and
| Mastercard) is seeing reduced usage.
|
| They're aiming to reverse that trend.
|
| https://cphpost.dk/2025-06-28/general/new-political-agreemen...
|
| Not all European countries still have these independent
| networks.
| herbstein wrote:
| Seeing reduced use partially because only a few banks support
| using it in Apple Pay. And Google Pay can't support it at all
| currently
| encom wrote:
| Dane here, and I just don't see the point of using Apple or
| Google pay. Aside from not wanting American tech
| interfering in, or data harvesting, my finances, it's not
| any easier to use. I just touch my card to the terminal and
| payment happens. Some times, or if the amount is over some
| limit, I have to enter a pin. I cringe every time I see
| someone contorting their arm to pay with their watch. It's
| tech for the sake of tech.
|
| Sincerely, Ted K.
| amelius wrote:
| Choose a payment system by a company that is not as
| opinionated. Apple pay, for example.
| zanfr wrote:
| AHA AHAHAAH AAHAHAAHA nice one
| Integer wrote:
| In Europe, Wero[1] has a chance to become the de-facto payment
| system, once it's supported by more banks in more countries and
| adds online payments functionality.
|
| [1]https://wero-wallet.eu/
| blibble wrote:
| if I was doing a couple of billion a year in transactions then
| the payment processor would be told where to shove it
| maplant wrote:
| Okay, then you'd go from a billion a year to zero.
| Congratulations.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un4p-6lzIpI
| david38 wrote:
| You clearly think in small terms then. Trillion dollar fish eat
| billion dollar fish
| IshKebab wrote:
| A couple of billion is an insignificant fraction of the
| $10000bn MasterCard processes every year.
| blibble wrote:
| which is relevant how exactly?
|
| merchants don't deal with mastercard, they deal with an
| acquiring bank
|
| of which there are hundreds
|
| no doubt one of which will be happy to take the business
| IshKebab wrote:
| Mastercard appears to be involved in the pressuring. You
| can't avoid them.
| blibble wrote:
| certainly not explicitly mentioned in the article
|
| and I very doubt it's the case, the card networks simply
| don't care, given you can buy adult entertainment from
| millions of websites
|
| the acquirer will care if it pushes up their chargeback
| rate, but this is normally solved by the merchant by
| paying a couple of bps more
|
| it's a negotiating tactic, nothing more
| majorchord wrote:
| https://nationwidepaymentsystems.com/mastercards-policy-
| on-a...
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's interesting that Valve sort of put themselves in this
| situation by opting not to police their store anymore.
|
| I'm personally a fan of fewer restrictions on content in video
| games and fewer "gatekeepers" but it's kind of inevitable that
| people would get upset when you chose to allow people to sell
| games like "Sex With Hitler" and "Pimp Life: Sex Simulator".
| Deciding to allow that content on your store and simultaneously
| not going to bat for it is weird, it's like they decided to just
| get the porn money while they could as a short-term boost to
| revenue.
|
| Itch.io still has fewer restrictions but I assume they'll
| eventually have to clamp down too once payment processors cut
| them off - they don't have the financial resources to fight it
| like Valve or Epic do.
|
| Interestingly Nintendo has as of late relaxed their restrictions
| too, you can find porn-adjacent shovelware on the Switch eShop
| despite their history of being very censorious. I wonder if
| payment processors will successfully push them around too or if
| Nintendo is too big to get pushed around.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > it's kind of inevitable that people would get upset when you
| chose to allow people to sell games like "Sex With Hitler" and
| "Pimp Life: Sex Simulator".
|
| The problem isn't some people being upset, it's that a single
| digit number of companies effectively control the ability for
| anyone else in the world to do business with them. Those
| companies get lobbied as much as politicians but with no
| accountability and any overreach being far less visible. And no
| freedom of speech rules.
| nottorp wrote:
| The question is: has "kill in the name of Hitler" also been
| banned, or is that okay with Visa/MC?
| AraceliHarker wrote:
| I don't need your 'what ifs' and 'could haves.' Indiana Jones
| and the Great Circle is actually available on Steam, and
| that's good enough.
| nottorp wrote:
| Looks to me like you read the opposite of what i wrote
| though.
| raincole wrote:
| Most Japanese adult game publishers had (some of) their games
| rejected from Steam.
|
| Steam does police their store. It's just that Visa/Mastercard
| don't approve of how they police it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What does "police" mean? They don't allow illegal content,
| that's policing no? You want more policing like morality
| police?
| yupyupyups wrote:
| Yes, people have other moral values than yours and will act
| upon them.
| arprocter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist#Collecti...
| raincole wrote:
| > a "pro-life feminist"
|
| What.
|
| Seriously what? I thought pro-choice is a core tenet of
| feminism?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Why would it be?
|
| I live in a red state in the South. I'd say about 2/3 of the
| women I know well enough to be confident of their politics to
| that degree of detail would describe themselves as both
| feminists and anti-abortion/pro-life.
|
| If you want to put a name to it, they're basically second-
| wave feminists with a few third-wave beliefs tacked on.
|
| The real lesson here is that politics are nuanced, and the US
| party dichotomy doesn't come close to covering it.
|
| I consider myself an AnCap (shocking given my username, I
| know), but grew up here surrounded by Republicans. I fit in
| well enough overall because this is where I developed my
| "social mask" in the first place. I lived in a community with
| nearly directly opposite politics (Charlottesville, VA) for a
| few years and found that I fit in pretty well with that crowd
| as well.
|
| I share enough with both parties that I can have
| conversations on things that I agree with them on and connect
| to the point that they assume that I'm "one of them".
| Invariably, once conversation turns to other topics I'm
| accused of being a member of the other party. It's to the
| point that it amuses me when it happens, and I frankly enjoy
| being in a place where I can connect with most everyone and
| serve as a sort of translator: I've spent enough time "in
| enemy territory" from their perspectives that I can explain
| the other side's position fairly and with empathy while
| explicitly not holding that position. It makes for
| stimulating conversation with little risk of offense.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Because "anti-abortion/pro-life" removes a right from
| women. Trading the rights of a developed adult for the
| rights of a hypothetical future person.
|
| What does ancapistanism have to do with it? Is there a non-
| religious reason to be against the right to choose abortion
| up to 24 weeks of pregnancy?
| dmix wrote:
| Well social/religious conservatives often think the child
| has rights even during pregnancy so it's not as simple as
| the mothers rights.
|
| The libertarian view tends to much more favour the
| parents rights to make choices for their children if I
| remember correctly, and obviously favour the option where
| the government isn't deciding for them.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| My personal belief is that life begins at conception. As
| a result, I'm opposed to abortion in all cases.
|
| ... but I'm also an anarchist, and therefore believe it
| is emphatically not the state's role to make these types
| of decisions for people.
|
| I don't think there is a "right answer" here in terms of
| policy. Some large portion of the people will see it as a
| violation of their rights no matter how extreme or
| nuanced the line is drawn.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| There is no unique dna at conception. I know this is fun
| to repeat but it really shows you ignore science. .
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Right, is there a non-religious reason to be against the
| right to choose to abort early during pregnancy?
| userbinator wrote:
| If you want population growth.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| a moral reason
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Is there a non-religious reason to be against the right
| to choose abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy?
|
| Of course there is. It's not hard to construct an
| argument to that effect either. For example: let's agree
| for the sake of argument that a newborn has moral rights,
| and that gametes do not. It doesn't make much sense to
| give the fetus moral rights only based on its physical
| location, therefore at some point between conception and
| birth the fetus gains moral rights. No matter what point
| n we choose, the objection "why is one day earlier any
| better" seems pretty persuasive. Therefore, by induction,
| the only point for assigning rights which can't be argued
| against in that way is at conception. Thus, we should
| disallow abortion so we aren't depriving the fetus of its
| rights.
|
| I'm not saying that's a bulletproof argument. Indeed the
| argument doesn't even need to be correct for my point. My
| point is that nothing about that argument requires any
| religious belief whatsoever. So it is possible. I'm also
| quite certain that a cleverer person than I could
| construct a better argument which still doesn't require
| any religious dogma. This is an _ethical_ topic, not a
| religious one. Obviously religion has a lot to say on
| ethics, but that 's no reason to believe that secular
| arguments against abortion can't exist.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| cool, then sperm and eggs have moral rights
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > No matter what point n we choose, the objection "why is
| one day earlier any better" seems pretty persuasive.
| Therefore, by induction
|
| That's not persuasive at all. It's not just not
| "bulletproof", it's blatantly wrong. Also you can make
| the same argument in the other direction.
|
| > Indeed the argument doesn't even need to be correct for
| my point. My point is that nothing about that argument
| requires any religious belief whatsoever.
|
| They wanted someone to give a _plausible_ argument that
| isn 't religious.
|
| > no reason to believe that secular arguments against
| abortion can't exist
|
| I care about the merits of positions that people actually
| have, not theoretical positions.
|
| And in the general case, if nobody can be found that has
| a simple position, that _is_ a reason to believe it 's
| not a coherent position.
| kaibee wrote:
| > Therefore, by induction,
|
| One grain of sand is a small amount of sand. Two grains
| of sand is a small amount of sand. Therefore, by
| induction, any amount of grains of sand is a small amount
| of sand. The Sahara contains a small amount of sand.
|
| This is fun.
| kbelder wrote:
| "For example: let's agree for the sake of argument that a
| newborn has moral rights, and that gametes do not. It
| doesn't make much sense to give the fetus moral rights
| only based on its physical location, therefore at some
| point between conception and birth the fetus gains moral
| rights. No matter what point n we choose, the objection
| "why is one day earlier any better" seems pretty
| persuasive. Therefore, by induction, the only point for
| assigning rights which can't be argued against in that
| way is at conception. Thus, we should disallow abortion
| so we aren't depriving the fetus of its rights."
|
| That's roughly my position, as an atheist libertarian.
| although I don't back it up all the way to conception,
| just to a point in early pregnancy where it seems
| overwhelmingly clear the fetus has no attributes which
| could reasonably demand respect for rights.
|
| Abortion has been conflated with feminism, like how, say,
| tariffs are conflated with Republicans right now, but
| there's no ideological necessity for that. Just cultural
| trends.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > although I don't back it up all the way to conception,
| just to a point in early pregnancy where it seems
| overwhelmingly clear the fetus has no attributes which
| could reasonably demand respect for rights.
|
| Sounds like you're not actually using that deeply flawed
| argument then. You're making the distinction that not
| every day has the same effect.
|
| And could you estimate how many weeks you put that point
| at?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > Because "anti-abortion/pro-life" removes a right from
| women. Trading the rights of a developed adult for the
| rights of a hypothetical future person.
|
| Their perspective is that abortion is killing a human
| being. Given that, it's entirely consistent.
|
| > What does ancapistanism have to do with it?
|
| Nothing, other than that I was providing some context on
| where I'm coming from.
|
| > Is there a non-religious reason to be against the right
| to choose abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy?
|
| While religion is certainly a factor for a lot of these
| people, this question doesn't make sense to me. Is there
| a non-religious reason to be against killing any person,
| regardless of age?
|
| The base difference in perspective is that the other side
| here believes that the fetus is a human being, with all
| the rights that come with it.
| wavemode wrote:
| You could have clicked the link embedded in the very text
| you're quoting, to read an explanation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_feminism
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Peoples extremely poor understanding of ideology, the
| mapping of it, and power in general is sad and leads to
| radical evil time and time again.
|
| Stuff like this is why Autism is probably the next form of
| human evolution.
| speeder wrote:
| For those thinking is only related to chargebacks and fraud, it
| is not.
|
| VISA and Mastercard have been banning a lot of content that is
| not porn but has political values that are disapproved by certain
| billionaires and investors. There is a bunch of links I wanted to
| post about, such as US billionaires bragging he personally called
| VISA CEO to ban content on PH or japanese politicians mad at the
| censorship of japanese art with certain values because of these
| companies. But I am on phone walking home so if anyone else has
| such links please post.
| raincole wrote:
| Of course it's not. Steam already has a very generous refund
| policy. It's hard to imaging the chargeback rate would be
| _that_ high even for nsfw games when you can simply refund.
| Refund takes about 3~4 clicks on steam website; Chargeback
| takes a phone call with your bank and can get your steam
| account locked.
|
| And people who laundry money out stolen cards won't do that
| with nsfw games. They'll do that with CSGO knifes.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Yep.
|
| They've colluded with the US federal government in the past on
| those issues as well. "Operation Choke Point" was ostensibly
| about fraud, but included transactions related to firearms in
| its scope. As a result, several major banks and payment
| processors dropped legitimate firearms dealers. For a while it
| got to the point that I was helping a couple of local gun
| stores contract with "high risk" payment processors that also
| serve the porn industry and get set up.
|
| To this day if you're on a gun forum and mention that you use
| Bank of America, people will pile on to tell you horror stories
| of both companies and individuals having their accounts closed
| and funds held for weeks or months after completely legal
| transactions. In one case in particular, they claimed it
| happened after buying a backpack at a gun store.
|
| Again, these are 100% legitimate and legal businesses.
| Federally licensed (FFL) gun stores had trouble for years even
| keeping a working business account. It was clearly not about
| fraud, at least not in practice.
|
| Politics completely aside, the financial landscape for gun
| stores today looks a lot like the cannabis industry: a few
| institutions are quietly known in those communities to allow
| them to operate, but many choose to do business only in cash
| and most prefer it if given the option. The porn industry is
| similar from what I can see.
| benjiro wrote:
| Unfortunately, cash is slowly getting phased out.
|
| Try buying a second hand car and you want cash from the bank.
| Used to be very easy, but now you need to declare what your
| spending your money on.
|
| You sold your car. O, its over 7 or 10k, well, this is
| getting reported to the local IRS. Where is that cash coming
| from, questions, questions?
|
| Over here they are even cracking down on stuff like ebay,
| amazon because some people run a business on those sites and
| do not report the taxes. Result: If you make over 3k in the
| year on ebay, you need to provided your tax number, or ebay
| closes your account. And above 3k, it get reported to the
| IRS.
|
| But wait, what happens if your a foreign national from some
| specific Asian countries and want to open a bank account?
| Refused, refused, refused... But you need a bank account for
| a lot of basic things. Well, tough luck. Lets not talk
| account closing issues.
|
| And that is the EU, and just normal people. Nothing tax
| evasion, guns, or whatever. Just everybody putting up
| umbrella's to be sure, not understanding that when everybody
| does it, it really screws with people.
|
| They are going crazy with this over regulation. Yes, i
| understand you want to fight black money but the people who
| get the big amounts will have ways to hide it. Your just
| hurting the normal people wanting to know what everybody is
| doing exactly with every cent.
|
| You see this gradual effort to slowly phase out cash.
| Cashless payment are getting encouraged, cash withdrawals
| cost your money more and more, more questions regarding
| origins (so you say f it, and use bank deposits with release
| approvals).
|
| Its not a surprise that we seen the increase in cryto usage
| (and the efforts of governments to control that also).
| moralestapia wrote:
| >You sold your car. O, its over 7 or 10k, well, this is
| getting reported to the local IRS. Where is that cash
| coming from, questions, questions?
|
| (I'm not in the US)
|
| I'm curious about how does that happen. Do they reach out
| to you? Your bank?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| In the US, it's a "Currency Transaction Report":
| https://www.fdic.gov/news/financial-institution-
| letters/2021...
|
| The bank collects the information necessary to submit
| that form at the time of transaction.
|
| You're also required as an individual to file IRS Form
| 8300 if you accept >$10k in payment:
| https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
| employe...
| zerocrates wrote:
| Your bank will file a report with FinCEN that says that
| you withdrew (or deposited, or transferred, or whatever)
| the money. They can/will also separately report
| suspicious transactions, including patterns of
| transactions that seem designed to evade the reporting
| requirements.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What if you cash your paychecks at the grocery store?
| healsdata wrote:
| What grocery store is cashing checks in the 7-10k range?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Not sure. Apparently walmart you can cash up to 7500 for
| half the year and 5000 other half for tax return purposes
| I guess. Still maybe you can get paid weekly instead of
| biweekly.
| benjiro wrote:
| Also not in the US, i am using the term IRS because
| people are very used to it on the internet.
|
| Banks in the US and EU are legally required to report
| large transactions. I know for a fact that in Europe,
| that cash handeling over 10.000 euro gets reported.
|
| That includes withdrawals and deposits. The later gets
| even more questions asked regarding the "origins" of the
| money.
|
| There are other fun events that we have seen, like
| transferring 15.000 euro from my wife to her brother
| (between countries), that had the money blocked as the
| bank needed to investigate the origin of the money. So
| the bank starts calling you to figure out what the money
| is, what is it used for, where does it come from, bla bla
| bla...
|
| Why are you giving 15.000 to your brother. Is it a
| GIFT!!! Translation: Can we TAX it! I suspect that banks
| in some EU countries get a cut from reported money that
| can be taxed by the tax office (that is just my
| speculation).
|
| No, it was his money that he loaned to us for a house
| buying, and that we returned, but they really tried to
| push the "gift" narrative. Large money transfers (above
| 10k), triggers investigations.
|
| And as you can guess, large cash deposits or withdraws
| get even more questions.
|
| Here is a fun tip: Just transfer or deposited money in
| small amounts, whenever you feel like it. Avoids the
| questioning like your some kind of criminal.
|
| So ironically, you perform actions like a criminal (will
| do to avoid detection), just to avoid getting questioned
| like your a criminal. Hahahaha...
|
| I feel like we have no more privacy in our lives with
| everything being monitored and checked. Your browser
| spies on you, your OS spies on you (W11 Recall even
| worse), your smartphone, you get tracked by Wifi signal
| in the streets, your customer store card (that they push
| and push) is to track your buying habits, the banks track
| your every movement for the tax office, you can not even
| freaking sell stuff on ebay and get reported.
|
| Like 3000 Euro is nothing. You sell a few piece of PC
| hardware and you hit that limit. And Amazon/Ebay/...
| report your behind. And now its about backdoors in
| encryption because you may be hiding something. What, you
| do not want to share your talks on XYZ platform to your
| wife, family. What are you saying, illegal stuff????
|
| We are really moving to a dystopian world and have been
| for a long time.
| burnhamup wrote:
| > Here is a fun tip: Just transfer or deposited money in
| small amounts, whenever you feel like it. Avoids the
| questioning like your some kind of criminal.
|
| Breaking up deposits into smaller amounts is a crime
| called structuring.
|
| I wouldn't recommend doing this as an alternative to
| dealing with the reports and scrutiny on larger
| transactions.
| miohtama wrote:
| Visa/MasterCard porn ban was driven by American extremist
| Christian organisation called Exodus Cry, which is also anti-
| gay, etc.
|
| https://screenshot-media.com/politics/human-rights/pornhub-p...
|
| Exodus Cry leader was later fired for sexual misconduct
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/anti...
|
| Trump changed banking regulations so that "reputation" can no
| longer be a reason for banks to "derisk" customers after crypto
| industry outcry, but the reason to exit customers must be
| factual money laundering or similar reason. But the change does
| concern cards, as payments are not under FDIC surveillance.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I guess Gabe's commitment to freedom of speech on his platform
| extended as far as nazis, but not as far as porn...
| freedomben wrote:
| well, something like this can't be fixed overnight. I think
| Valve have more than earned a benefit of the doubt with this
| kind of stuff. I don't know if they are thinking on ways around
| this issue or not, but I would bet highly that they are.
| Problem is the credit card companies have them (and everyone
| else) by the balls because any attempt to continue hosting
| those gmaes but accept alternative payments for them would be
| retaliated against and MC et al might cut them off entirely,
| which would be devastating. I'm not sure there is a good
| solution to this that doesn't involve change of law/regulation
| i.e. lobbying
| swiftcoder wrote:
| In the early 2000's kink.com put together a coalition and
| told the credit card companies to stick their censorship
| rules where the sun don't shine, and they are still taking
| credit card payments... The video game industry is plenty big
| enough to wield similar influence.
| neogodless wrote:
| Simulated "immoral" activity could be considered a moral gray
| area. If nothing else, morality is subjective.
|
| So I think it's reasonable to argue for private, individual
| consumption of morally subjective material (not least of which is
| the logistical difficulty of preventing such things), as well as
| the right to create and sell such things. (You or I might approve
| of or oppose those things, but that's a different argument from
| what I make below.)
|
| Aside from that, I don't think Valve or a payment processor is
| _obligated_ to be a neutral party. Whether it might come from
| collective consumer backlash or whoever makes decisions for an
| organization deciding what they will or will not allow to flow
| through their system, I think they too should have the right to
| allow or ban things. If publishers and consumers want their
| morally gray content, so be it, but don 't feel entitled to have
| Steam and VISA along for the ride if they don't want to be.
|
| Hypothetically, Valve might prefer Steam be neutral, because
| money. But then they have the option to fight their payment
| processor or look for alternatives, rather than "forcing" their
| payment processor to be a part of something that the payment
| processor opposes.
|
| TL;DR when a morally subjective issue involves a lot of parties,
| every party should have the right to "opt out" if they are
| morally opposed. (in my opinion)
| knome wrote:
| Payment processors banning companies from using them for
| anything other than illegal use or fraud issues seems like
| pretty egregious overreach to me.
|
| They shouldn't be able to leverage their nigh monopoly on
| modern payment processing to choose winners and losers in the
| marketplace.
|
| They are using pornography as a wedge issue to establish that
| they get to dictate what companies are allowed to exist in the
| modern distributed market.
|
| It would be entirely reasonable to legally require them to act
| blindly towards retailers, with restrictions needing to be
| based on universally applied financial criteria.
|
| Card payments have become inseparable from modern life.
|
| Regulate them as a financial utility. The electric company or
| water company can't refuse to hook up a business just because
| the owner doesn't like that business.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| I think the trouble here stems from the lack of alternatives to
| the small group of payment processors. The near-monopoly allows
| their choices to override the choice of all the other involved
| groups, and almost no viable alternatives exist for Valve to
| move to if they disagree.
| throwaway071625 wrote:
| The article calls out "certain adult games" which is vague. It is
| interesting to note that most of the delisted games were themed
| specifically around incest.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/steamdb.info/post/3lu32vdlsmg27
|
| Wondering if this will be a slippery slope towards pulling more
| anodyne stuff.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Specifically incest, rape, and child abuse-themed games.
| superkuh wrote:
| Ah, like a video game version of "Game of Thrones"? None of
| the payment processors had any issues with taking money for
| that series. And that was live action.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Yep, those games were exactly the same thing as Game of
| Thrones.
| ggoo wrote:
| I mean by the content they were yeah. Precisely the
| problem with rules declaring what content is and isn't
| acceptable.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Exactly. By content, here is a book on Amazon[1] where
| the author openly tells stories of rape and incest and
| somehow it's all Ok. Pretty much the same as Game of
| Thrones and those Steam games.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-
| Trauma/dp/01...
| ggoo wrote:
| Seems like we're in agreement - I read your prior comment
| differently
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You are not in agreement. The person you are replying to
| is being sarcastic. They feel that a HBO produced tv show
| with incest is art that needs to be protected while an
| indie dev game with incest is trash that needs to be
| censored.
| mango7283 wrote:
| The fact of the matter is you will find more people
| willing to publicly bat for GOT than you will find people
| willing to bat for an "indie incest non-con game". And
| it's not like GOT has not received criticism for its
| content or that people haven't tried.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| The movements here (the pro-censorship movement & the
| anti-sexuality movement) are mainly driven by religious
| beliefs, and as such, it comes as no surprise that they
| do not want to apply censorship in a fair or even
| logically consistent way; they merely want to ban things
| they personally do not like.
| mango7283 wrote:
| As I pointed out earlier, it's also valid that they are
| savvy enough to pick their battles and divide and conquer
| - you can't take down a critical mainstream success like
| GOT or GTA, but you can go after fringe games with
| content most people would be uncomfortable publicly
| defending.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Sure, I can see that being part of it (I didn't see this
| implication in your earlier post)
| mango7283 wrote:
| Ah sorry I meant elsewhere in the thread
| choo-t wrote:
| The very same group did try to take down GTA V : https://
| www.collectiveshout.org/prostitution_survivors_call_...
| mango7283 wrote:
| Sure, but GTA is still on steam.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| Games/hentai about these topics are not illegal, even if they
| are in bad taste.
|
| And I'm willing to bet some content removed does not fall in
| these categories
| Jolter wrote:
| That's exactly the point: getting Valve to remove illegal
| content would not have caused any headlines. These themes
| go against common moral standards and so Visa et al don't
| want to be seen selling them.
|
| You can find the list of removed titles if you go looking
| for it. Feel free to point out which ones you think are
| collateral damage. I'm not looking at that list with my
| eyeballs though. I need them for later.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Visa and Mastercard generally don't like anything with incest,
| rape, and/or underage participants.
| Diti wrote:
| But they are strangely okay with murder.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| That's american values for you.
| superkuh wrote:
| Unless it's a TV show depicting it with live action. Then
| it's fine.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > The article calls out "certain adult games" which is vague.
|
| A Quick Look at the list has me wishing I hadn't thought to
| look at the list.
|
| I suspect the vague "certain adult games" was chosen because it
| makes it sound more controversial. If the headline was "Valve
| removed incest-themed games under pressure" there would be a
| lesser reaction.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Payment processors should be regulated like utilities.
| Permissionless and agnostic to anything you do.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Nekopara and Sabbat of the Witch are safe... for now.
|
| Hopefully they don't know about the little-sister route in
| Making Lovers.
| healsdata wrote:
| Collective Shout, the group behind this petition, has
| previously gone after more mainstream games, like Detroit
| Becomes Human, for spurious reasons. I have no doubt they'll
| use this win and mealy-mouthed language to push for more
| censorship.
| jokoon wrote:
| Yes, I don't know if selling those games is legal or not.
|
| Thus I can imagine that they don't want to become criminally
| responsible if that's illegal.
| bji9jhff wrote:
| It is sad that in 2025 this needs to be repeated: fiction is not
| real.
|
| This statement imply that:
|
| * Simulated violence is not violence.
|
| * Simulated sex is not sex.
|
| * Simulated sorcery is not sorcery
| nkrisc wrote:
| And yet it is possible to make simulations extreme enough I
| would not opposed to banning them. There are some things that
| should not be normalized in society.
|
| It shouldn't be payment processors doing it unilaterally, I'll
| grant that. But I'm not (and I'm sure a great many more of a
| silent majority) wholly opposed to the outcome.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > There are some things that should not be normalized in
| society.
|
| That attitude has recently become normalized, and I find it
| Concerning(TM).
| miningape wrote:
| Yeah, who gets to decide whats too far?
|
| There's a similar issue with free speech - the moment you
| ban certain speech the door to banning your political
| opposition opens.
| encom wrote:
| From what I can tell, only one country in the world has
| free speech. Actual free speech. USA.
| krapp wrote:
| I don't know what your definition of "actual" free speech
| is but there are certainly limits to free speech even in
| the US[0].
|
| And those are just explicit limits. Try supporting
| Palestine on a college campus or mentioning women or gay
| people in any government funded scientific publication,
| or finding a book portraying pro-LGBT content in a
| library or a school curriculum that portrays slavery in a
| way that "makes white people feel victimized" in the
| South.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speec
| h_exce...
| bdangubic wrote:
| Supporting Palestine would get you deported to El
| Salvador (or worse) :)
| josephcsible wrote:
| Isn't freedom of speech just "you're allowed to say
| whatever you want", and not "you're entitled to the use
| of taxpayer dollars to help distribute your message" or
| "you're entitled to have the government force children to
| read your message"?
| 8note wrote:
| having a green card or visa stripped because you said
| something is not "having the government force children to
| read your message"
| encom wrote:
| The limits to speech (in USA) depends (roughly) on if
| it's intended to incite imminent lawless action and is
| likely to do so.
|
| Actual speech is communicating ideas or opinions, even
| distasteful or unpopular ones. The fact that university
| morons throw a riot if anyone disagrees with them (many
| such cases), does not affect your right to do so.
|
| Denmark passed a law in 2023 that makes public burning,
| tearing, stepping on, or defiling holy texts illegal.
| It's informally called the Quran Law, because everyone
| knows who doesn't tolerate any criticism of their
| religion at all. This is one of _many_ limits on speech
| in Denmark. In my view, speech is either free or it isn
| 't, hence my argument that only USA has free speech.
| 8note wrote:
| thats a historical view, but not the most useful now that
| the second american revolution has happened.
|
| things that lightly annoyed the president is now the
| decider between legal and illegal speech in the US, and
| the punishment is death, because nothing the president
| does that could be part of their regular responsibilities
| like talking to secret service assasins, can be
| considered in court proceedings.
| encom wrote:
| Are the assassins in the room with us right now?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Its dying fast. The Late Show was just cancelled because
| it was a massive thorn to the POTUS.
| bdangubic wrote:
| I love a good "POTUS" conspiracy as much as the next guy
| but The Late Show cancelation is a simple money game, the
| show was bleeeding money. If the show was profitable the
| chance of it being cancelled are same as me dating
| Beyonce
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Technically yes, but the money game was CBS losing a
| massive lawsuit to POTUS.
| bdangubic wrote:
| I would agree with this if this was factual, the money
| cbs paid via 60 minutes nonsense is same if you were
| fined a dime for something you did today. so not
| "massive" but whatever is the exact opposite of massive
|
| The show itself was losing viewership cause who the F
| watches late night TV these days?
| 8note wrote:
| is said late night TV actually expensive though? they
| have a payong audience, and the whole thing is an ad for
| whoever is selling a book or movie release.
|
| whats gonna replace that slot that people are gonna
| watch? a blank screen?
| bdangubic wrote:
| if you have a car that is a money pit you and your family
| keep bleeding money on to make repairs, would you keep
| making repairs or get another car? all of TV is a simple
| money game, shows get canceled, new ones spruce up, they
| get canceled, some are super successful but run their
| course, others stink from the get-go. what is going to
| replace the late show? not sure but whatever it does it
| better make money for cbs or the same faith awaits it
| mulmen wrote:
| Interesting, do you have a source for that claim? Mallen
| Baker [1] says it was gaining viewers.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/KMLZAE4okWs
| ipaddr wrote:
| It's both. A merger is happening in two weeks and this
| helps. It was going off of the air in a year or two
| anyways. Easy way to give Trump a win.
| bdangubic wrote:
| Thanks for this mate, REALLY needed this laugh on this
| fine end-of-grinding-workweek... Fantastic!!
| seanclayton wrote:
| > Yeah, who gets to decide whats too far?
|
| The ruling ethnic group, of course, as is tradition.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| > There's a similar issue with free speech - the moment
| you ban certain speech the door to banning your political
| opposition opens.
|
| There is TONS of speech that is banned, even in America.
| There isn't a single place on the planet that has no
| limits on speech.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's the tricky bit.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| You should make a petition. Maybe we can exclude pro-
| exclusion websites from payment processors.
|
| This is not okay, and we need to take a strong moral stance
| here. Some views should not be acceptable in a society.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Recently? Hasn't society always topics they thought
| shouldn't be normalized?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Recently? Such a sentiment has existed since the dawn of
| human society.
| krustyburger wrote:
| The term "silent majority" has a very specific political
| meaning.
|
| But, in what way do you think those opposing "extreme"
| content being consumed by their fellow citizens are silent?
| State governments across the country are clamoring to censor
| all sorts of things, presumably to satisfy their
| constituents.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| For the people who disagree: would you really be interested
| in seeing Child Grooming Simulator 25 on steam? I think we
| can almost all reasonably agree that at least this sort of
| content should not be sold on there.
| krustyburger wrote:
| Won't somebody _please_ think of the children?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| When we start saying "no content restrictions besides
| illegal stuff", your hyperbolic question becomes
| legitimate in a way that it's not when we're talking
| about Doom.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Correction: Won't somebody _please_ think of the pixels?
| Shekelphile wrote:
| there are already hundreds, if not thousands of anime
| lolicon porn games on steam.
|
| the people making a stink about this know this but are
| pretending that they don't because it would overtly out
| them as pedophiles.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Are you saying the people who are petitioning Steam to
| remove porn games are playing the porn games themselves
| and simultaneously pretending porn games don't exist on
| Steam?
|
| That doesn't make sense.
| mango7283 wrote:
| It's possible he means people saying steam should not
| delist anything due to pressure from activists are
| tacitly condoning sketchy lolicon games.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Nothing you said here is true.
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| I don't have to be "interested" in seeing something on
| steam to disagree with nkrisc. I don't care about 99.9%+ of
| the games on steam, that doesn't mean I want them gone.
| Levitz wrote:
| >would you really be interested in seeing Child Grooming
| Simulator 25 on steam?
|
| If we are going down this path there's a lot of literature
| popular with women about to be banned
| lxgr wrote:
| Personally, I won't miss these games either, but it just
| seems like such a slippery slope to normalize achieving
| societal/political goals through exerting pressure on
| infrastructure companies instead of through democratic means.
|
| I totally support this type of pressure being exerted on
| companies involved in editorializing and providing an
| audience (e.g. I don't think Valve should be required by law
| to carry any form of content, just like a publisher can't be
| forced to print any content it doesn't agree with). But
| infrastructure, due to being both fundamental to doing
| business and generally living in a society and very often
| being at least regionally monopolistic in nature, should be
| open to anybody that's acting within the law.
|
| And conversely, if something seems ethically or morally
| unacceptable to a rule-based society, what ought to change is
| the law.
|
| That's all assuming a functioning democratic and political
| process, of course, but it generally seems to be possible
| even in the US, with its strong protections of speech, to
| limit certain types of speech under obscenity laws, so I
| don't really get the desire to outsource this inherently
| political process to private corporations.
| martin-t wrote:
| > ethically or morally unacceptable
|
| What does that mean?
|
| For example if something can be shown to cause actual harm
| to innocent individuals, i find it morally unacceptable.
|
| But some people will tell you anything banned by their
| favorite fairytale or their upbringing is morally
| unacceptable.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's a complicated question I'd like to see settled via
| legislation and in courts interpreting (and sometimes
| overturning) these laws rather than in a private
| corporation's compliance and/or PR department.
| martin-t wrote:
| It definitely should not be determined by corporations
| because they not elected and almost untouchable by the
| individuals affected.
|
| The state is a less bad alternative but bad
| (unintentionally harmful) and malicious (intentionally
| harmful) decisions are generally not punished either.
|
| When people set rules which affect others, they should
| also be held accountable.
|
| And in general, rules limiting a person's behavior should
| only exist when that behavior can be _proven_ to be
| harmful.
|
| They should be determined by individuals capable of
| critical and logical thinking and without anything
| personal to gain from the rules.
|
| They should not be determined by individuals who have
| antisocial traits or who are indoctrinated into various
| belief systems which are founded on preferential
| treatment (such as religion).
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| There is a _world_ of nuance separating "normalizing" and
| "banning" something though, that's simply a false dichotomy.
|
| I'd wager most "normal" people would recoil at the idea of
| eating excrement and, for all my open-mindedness, it's
| probably not something I'd actively endorse. But banning it
| is on a whole other leaf. Things can and should be allowed to
| exist on the fringe.
|
| Otherwise we're moving towards the subject of the T.S. Eliot
| quote where "everything that is not forbidden will be
| compulsory, and everything not compulsory will be forbidden."
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Normalization is a fake argument that sounds fancy, not a
| real thing.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's a slippery slope. It's not real but can certainly, by
| definition, create a situation that mimics reality to the point
| of assisting someone at committing a real crime that they
| couldn't possibly commit without the simulation.
| voxl wrote:
| The slippery slope is in banning speech. If you want to make
| the claim that simulated sex leads to crimes we have been
| over this a thousand times with violence in games. There is
| no connection, you are without a leg to stand on except your
| own religious indoctrination.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >There is no connection, you are without a leg to stand on
| except your own religious indoctrination.
|
| Flagging my reply is gross (you state that, not me!) and
| grounds for ban. I'll just leave this 2nd rebuttal here as
| I take back both my legs to stand on and yours as well :P
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/take-it-down-act-deepfake-
| revenge...
| layer8 wrote:
| Should also ban GTA then. /s
| dandellion wrote:
| And all Hollywood studios as well.
| mango7283 wrote:
| You say this like they haven't already tried.
| amelius wrote:
| Violence is still considered ok in games, last time I checked.
|
| Which is possibly because violence is not as awkward to watch
| with your family as sex is.
| 8note wrote:
| i think peoppe would probably have much better sex in general
| if it wasnt so taboo, and so people could get outside
| feedback on how theyre doing
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| I could do without Jeff from accounting showing off his
| latest proud performance with the wife to the coworkers
| like it's his golf swing.
| SXX wrote:
| Something tells me Jeff from accounting can still freely
| show photos of him "hunting" with some dead wild animals
| and few will consider it gross.
| const_cast wrote:
| Violence has no religious morality baggage - religions were
| extremely violent. Sex, however, has all the baggage from all
| the angles. Even if we aren't religious, it doesn't matter,
| religion still dictates huge chunks of our lives and our
| mindsets. It has thousands of years of inertia.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Abrahamic religion is prudish about sex none of the pagan
| or Buddhism is prudish.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Buddhism literally teaches celibacy. Mostly for monks but
| if you get serious about your practice the advice is
| always to become celibate in order to make progress. It
| makes sense as you're trying to remove your desires.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Link for the petition and its signers.
|
| https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce...
|
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-V...
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Reverse petition where?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| All eyes on you.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Agree or disagree, it won't matter. When you let gamers
| vote with their wallets, the answer speaks for itself.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| I wonder what else we should just keep to voting on with
| our wallets?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Probably most matters of free speech, here in America.
| maxlin wrote:
| Seconded.
|
| Regards: Game dev who cares about conservation and doesn't
| like chilling effects.
| Jolter wrote:
| Go ahead! I dare you. In your own real name.
| mango7283 wrote:
| From heise
|
| "In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-
| Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that were
| labeled as "adult" and did not have an age rating. To be able
| to offer them, the US company would have to integrate a
| reliable age verification system into Steam in Germany. Because
| Valve has not yet implemented such a system, sex games remain
| blocked in Germany."
|
| So, I hear Europe doesn't have these problems about puritanical
| censorship in games......
| egypturnash wrote:
| Okay so is Steam enough of a money printer for Valve to say "well
| fuck you guys, we'll make our own credit card with hookers and
| bingo"? And hold out Half-Life 3 (only purchasable with the
| ValveCard) as a carrot?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not
| think it is Valve).
|
| Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.
| nipponese wrote:
| Likely Apple currently has the deepest finance industry
| roots.
| xyst wrote:
| If you consider the minutiae of percentage apple shaves off
| transactions with Apple Pay. Sure.
|
| But they have partnered with GS and MC. Far from any sort
| of "finance industry roots".
|
| They essentially offer a fancy UI on top of GS products and
| other traditional banks.
|
| Apple Cash -> Green Dot or some other no name bank
|
| Apple Card -> Goldman Sachs
|
| Apple Pay -> some very small percentage of the bank and
| network fees charged to merchants
| Razengan wrote:
| Honestly, with how prevalent iPhones and Androids are
| today, specially among newer humans, if Apple and Google
| made a payment system that just transferred money between
| iPhone/Android, it could practically replace cash & cards
| for a lot of people.
|
| In some countries the vast majority of payments are done
| via phone apps for national payment systems already,
| bypassing Visa/Mastercard etc. entirely. Even kids pay for
| candy by phone.
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| >> I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I
| do not think it is Valve).
|
| > Likely Apple currently has the deepest finance industry
| roots.
|
| Apple used a very large bank headquartered in the US for
| its credit card processing as of about ten years ago. Given
| that the cost of change is significant once these processes
| are put in place, it is likely this remains the case.
|
| Note that this is not the same as what Apple Pay supports.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Mastercard?
| kabdib wrote:
| IBM was not able to. Story from a friend-who-claimed-to-be-
| there:
|
| In days of yore, Visa did processing on IBM iron. The iron in
| question took a while to boot, and time is very definitely
| money to Visa and they wanted to speed up reboots (e.g.,
| after a crash). Saving seconds = $$$.
|
| Visa to IBM: "Please give us the source code for the <boot
| path stuff>, it's costing us money."
|
| IBM: LOL
|
| Visa to some big banks: "Please tell IBM to give us the
| source code for this, it's costing you money."
|
| IBM, a little later: "Here's a tape. Need any help?"
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| > I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do
| not think it is Valve).
|
| Visa is a clearing house whose members are banks. Think of it
| like a payment router between issuers (banks) and processors
| (banks).
|
| Only sponsored organizations can directly use the "Visa
| rails", where "sponsor" is defined as a bank, a bank
| subsidiary, or an entity previously sponsored by one of the
| other two.
|
| This is also the case for MasterCard and Discover.
| "Traditional" American Express is different though.
|
| > Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.
|
| Those merchants use banks or one of their subsidiaries for
| processing credit card transactions. Most large merchants do
| as well in order to minimize their discount rate as well as
| other transaction fees. Smaller merchants often use ISO's or
| VAR's for business specific reason, knowing both ultimately
| transact with a bank or one of a bank's subsidiaries.
| manwe150 wrote:
| I thought Venmo was trying the most with their card offers,
| as well as PayPal, Cash, Google Pay and several others too
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| > I thought Venmo was trying the most with their card
| offers, as well as PayPal, Cash, Google Pay and several
| others too
|
| I know at least two of the above used to use a specific
| US bank for the credit card transactions backing their
| payment services. For others, if service usage requires a
| verified credit card or debit card backed by a credit
| card network, they too use a processor owned/operated by
| a bank, bank subsidiary, or an entity sponsored by same.
|
| EDIT:
|
| For payment services which do not require a credit card
| or debit card backed by a credit card network, they
| almost certainly use the ACH[0] network. This is a more
| intimate financial relationship and best used with a
| dedicated bank account not linked to any others, as fund
| transfers can be bidirectional.
|
| 0 - https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/ach-vs-check/
| pests wrote:
| Cashapp cards for me, for example, are backed by Sutton
| Bank Ltd out of Chicago.
| manwe150 wrote:
| That seems an overly fine line to draw, when a check is
| basically just a plain piece of paper with your ACH
| number printed on it, and anyone with your ACH number can
| go get checks printed. A credit card is also
| bidirectional, so the question was just if alternatives
| exist to VISA processing, not if you necessarily would
| use them. I meant to mention Zelle and Plaid too, since
| they integrate with many (most?) banks already to allow
| transfers via your online account login authentication
| credentials instead of traditional ACH
| loeg wrote:
| Only the USG.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Though unpopular, I'd say China is able to
| lmz wrote:
| 1) They already have that (Unionpay). 2) I don't think they
| are less prone to censoring things.
| mango7283 wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056nle2drno
|
| China would never! /s
| ijk wrote:
| Other payment processors, mostly. So other credit card
| companies (e.g. JCB [1]), government run payment services
| like Pix in Brazil [2], theoretically crypto, etc.
|
| [1] as a random example:
| https://archive.kyivpost.com/technology/japanese-payment-
| sys...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)
| TkTech wrote:
| Any coalition of banks can. Replacing Visa is a daunting
| task, but rolling out PoS support and the technical
| challenges are peanuts compared to actually getting banks
| onboard. Visa itself was started by a single bank, and
| Mastercard was started by a coalition of banks. They can do
| it again.
|
| Interac[1] is Canada's debit system, originally created as a
| non-profit by our largest banks way back in '84, and these
| days is supported everywhere. The large banks are already
| used to bullying their way through political or bureaucratic
| challenges, and a single Canadian bank typically has
| trillion(s) in managed assets - they _can_ bully Visa.
|
| Zelle[2] (2016) is a limited (etransfer only) clone for the
| American market, UPI (2016) in India, UnionPay (2002) in
| China, carte Bleue (1967) in France, etc etc. What's missing
| is cooperation between national systems like these, as well
| as lending as they typically only do debit instead of credit.
|
| Any cooperation between these systems would likely get spun
| out as a separate entity, which would eventually just turn
| into a new Visa or Mastercard - but 3 choices is better than
| 2.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Zelle won't become that. Zelle was designed to offload
| liability onto consumers using the carrot of instant
| transfers.
| zhivota wrote:
| It will be an ID number based payment service built on top of
| FedNow. In other countries similar services are used with QR
| codes to do easy payments.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Amazon, Walmart, Target
|
| Those are all US companies so subject to the same puritan
| pressures. Their cards would still be good for buying ultra
| violent games but not sex games...
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Walmart was very supportive of fedNow for the express
| purpose of removing MasterCard from cashless purchases. And
| for a long time the only way to pay by phone was to allow
| them to debit via ACH. out of all of them they get it the
| most.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012866
|
| And really, even banking isn't a safe harbor. I am pretty
| sure they were at the forefront of the rise in neobanks and
| products like green dot cards.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| I mean a bank is literally a money printer.
| elcritch wrote:
| On a serious side note, only certain banks get to print
| money.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They don't physically print the notes, but they do
| magically add money to a person's account when they take a
| loan. That kind of thing is where most "money" (in banks,
| anyway) comes from.
|
| It's just like matter and antimatter being created at the
| same time, money and anti-money (debt) are created at the
| same time and when they meet, they cancel each other out.
|
| So borrowing literally creates money (and debt), and
| repaying debts literally deletes money (and debt).
| mulmen wrote:
| How does interest fit in here? Isn't that what creates
| money AKA inflation?
| bfg_9k wrote:
| What the poster you're replying to is talking about is
| called fractional reserve banking. That's how they
| "create" money.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| No, interest is a typical zero-sum transaction where the
| borrower spends and the lender earns. The loan itself
| represents a temporary net increase in the money supply,
| appearing from nothing and then vanishing when it is paid
| back.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'm a bit unsure what happens when a borrower defaults on
| their loan. The money that was borrowed remains out in
| circulation, but what happens to the debt (anti-money)?
|
| Does the bank itself use its own money to pay off the
| debt (deleting some of their own money), or do they
| simply delete the debt?
| kaibee wrote:
| I'm commiting the faux paus of providing a chat-gpt
| answer, but I've worked in fintech (annuities though) and
| I can confirm that this answer is broadly correct. https:
| //chatgpt.com/share/687bbde1-4ba8-800c-92e5-93edd49b01...
|
| In principle, it is 'the bank uses its own money to pay
| off the debt', as long as you accept that the bank's own
| 'credit worthiness reputation' and other assets count as
| 'money'. The hit is _ultimately_ taken by the capital
| shareholders in the bank, which is the important part.
| benoau wrote:
| That's basically what gift cards are isn't it?
|
| > Leaked internal slides peg Steam's net revenue last fiscal
| year at just under $10 billion
|
| https://www.simplymac.com/games/3-5m-per-employee-how-valve-...
| xyst wrote:
| Steam gift cards are funded by traditional banking products
| and partnerships. They can't live without the invisible hand
| of the banking and credit card industry.
| mulmen wrote:
| I like this (ab)use of the invisible hand meme. But in
| economics the "invisible hand" is more of a benevolent
| deity than a predictable mechanism. I propose "hidden hand"
| for what credit (card and rating) companies do.
| 8note wrote:
| it really is the same invisible hand. the economics
| invisible hand is doing whatever the capital owners want
| the economy to do. weighing influence by capital is what
| makes visa have that power
| xyst wrote:
| Nope. Even a company such as valve would be intimidated by the
| regulation of setting up their own company payment network
| outside the traditional banking system.
|
| Maybe crypto is an option but I haven't seen use in retail.
| Only speculation instrument.
|
| Apple tried. Failed. Google tried. Failed. Only thing that
| works is partnering up with existing bank
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| Did Apple try? I don't recall.
|
| > Only thing that works is partnering up with existing bank
|
| Could Visa just reject payments from this bank and kill your
| whole thing?
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| I have seen crypto used for payments, particularly if its
| overseas companies
| soared wrote:
| The problem is if visa/etc say no, valve instantly loses ~70%
| of their sales. So it's a bet they won't win
| echelon wrote:
| Visa needs to be broken up.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| trying: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-
| department-s...
| itsthecourier wrote:
| oh yes
| raincole wrote:
| Practically impossible.
|
| To replace visa/mastercard you need to have thousands of banks
| support ValveCard across the world. It's hard to imagine how
| it's going to happen. Players will not switch to another
| (probably foreign) bank just to buy Half-Life 3. They'll pirate
| it.
|
| By the way, Gabe has a very famous quote:
|
| > Piracy is a service problem.
|
| He knows it very well that if it's hard for players to buy
| something they'll just get it free anyway. You can say he's
| probably the first person in the world who realized this idea
| profoundly enough to turn it into a business. It's very risky
| for Steam to make buying games even slightly harder.
| mulmen wrote:
| Why does ValveCard need to work anywhere other than Steam?
| Privacy.com manages to issue card numbers somehow. How does
| that work?
| bhaney wrote:
| > Privacy.com manages to issue card numbers somehow. How
| does that work?
|
| Through Visa and Mastercard
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| By not working outside the US.
| devmor wrote:
| Privacy.com issues cards from the Visa and Mastercard
| networks.
|
| You can't run your own card network easily because you
| would have to convince all of the merchant banks that take
| card transactions to do business with you.
|
| Digital money movement requires an operating agreement
| between at least two financial entities - but most of the
| time there's a lot more. Depending on the type of
| transaction you may have two or more gateways,
| facilitators, processors, issuers and underlying banks
| involved.
|
| It's a very fragmented system that relies on many, many
| different entities all having agreements and contracts with
| eachother.
| p_l wrote:
| They work with Visa and MasterCard to issue cards in
| systems run by both of them.
| raincole wrote:
| It needs to work with banks in different countries. It
| doesn't need to work everywhere, like being able to pay
| your dinner with it, obviously.
| tmcz26 wrote:
| Visa and Mastercard are called card _networks_ for a
| reason. Wherever you are in the world, or in any site
| anywhere, if your card says Visa and the merchant's POS
| machine (or payment gateway) take Visa, both parties know
| the transaction is good. The merchant gets his money and
| you get the product.
|
| You get your card from your issuing bank, so the consumer's
| last mile is the bank's problem. The merchant get their
| POS/gateway from the acquirers. Your bank and the merchants
| acquirer don't know each other.
|
| Visa and Mastercard are intermediaries. There's no way a
| NatWest card in the UK is connected to whatever POS is in
| Chile or whatever. They all route through the card brands.
|
| This is why it's so tough to break this monopoly.
| numpad0 wrote:
| You have to offset negative ValveCard balances with USD in
| everyone's banks, and there's a convenient middleman called
| Visa who does exactly that by tying store accounts to bank
| accounts through the universally accepted membership card
| they issue.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What if you used your mastercard to buy valvebucks you spend
| on whatever the hell you want in the steam store?
| raincole wrote:
| You can do that currently. Steam already supports the exact
| process you described: top up your steam wallet and buy
| games with steam wallet balance. Actually, there are things
| you can only buy this way (some in-game items, not sure if
| it's to workaround gambling accusation or just coded so for
| no reason).
|
| The issue is Visa/Mastercard/whoever is pressuring Valve
| isn't happy about the very existence of incest games. They
| don't want to be associated with incest/rape even
| indirectly.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| So are they banning erotic fiction books too or what? I
| guess the tradwifes actually secretly read that stuff
| though...
| 0dayz wrote:
| If you read the founder of the "feminist" group she
| thinks that 50 shades is the equivalent of the book of
| Satan but about raping women.
| junon wrote:
| There's a book of Satan?
| 93po wrote:
| if there is, im buying it
| nottorp wrote:
| So she read it? I tried but stopped at 10% or so :)
| Jolter wrote:
| If there was a prominent online marketplace for homegrown
| literature, I would bet there would be corporate pushback
| against selling incest themed porn on it. But I don't
| think there is such a marketplace so it's a very
| hypothetical question.
|
| If a book publisher was selling erotic fiction about
| children online, you could bet your ass they would have a
| hard time with payment processors.
|
| I'm not sure you have a case with this argument.
| fragmede wrote:
| Entirely possible if you're JP Morgan Chase. They're big
| enough to have both merchants and consumers in their
| ecosystem, and they tried it, and Visa put a stop to that.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| My first thought is: obviously not. But if 10 years ago you'd
| asked me if Valve would be able to turn Linux into a serious
| gaming platform, I'd have answered the same.
|
| All that stemmed from an unlikely but existential fear that
| Microsoft could lock-down software distribution on Windows. My
| suspicion is that SteamOS sales and Steam Decks aren't actually
| profitable, they're just too valuable as a bargaining chip not
| to invest in. And Valve _can_ invest in them, because they 're
| rich and private.
|
| While Valve bigwigs probably aren't losing sleep over the
| missed revenue from incest games, having the rest of their
| revenue stream threatened might make them seek another form of
| insurance.
| airstrike wrote:
| I mean, if there's one company that I believe could pull that
| off is Valve. And maybe Amazon. Maybe the two together. It
| would be one hell of a JV for both parties.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'm fairly certain they _could_ but it wouldn't exactly be fun
| right?
| xyst wrote:
| credit card companies (Mc?) did the same with mindgeek. No due
| process. Just revoked their access to CC networks.
|
| mindgeek then wiped all _unconfirmed_ content regardless of
| whether it was revenge porn or not.
| o11c wrote:
| That one must be defended, since it was abuse of _real people_
| happening at scale and with full knowledge thereof, and PornHub
| 's status-quo response was _at best_ "do nothing and hope it
| goes away". Mind, the Justice Department _also_ went after them
| (and won), so we can 't even resort to "CC networks shouldn't
| be the ones enforcing this." At what stage of a court case is
| it appropriate to expect third parties to start breaking their
| business relationships with the defendant?
|
| The weird part about the first-world sexual liberation mindset
| (usually said about feminism, but not limited thereto) is that
| it actively ignores how massively abusive sexual liberties very
| often and easily become.
| itsthecourier wrote:
| Visa and Mastercard are the defacto world judges of the limits of
| porn.
|
| they have their own banned topics lists and if you fuck up you
| lose your income
| xyst wrote:
| yup, the traditional banking system as a whole really
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| Avoiding this was the initial promise of crypto and crypto
| pundits abandoned all their principals because line goes up.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Related to this, here's an ACLU filing with the FTC that lays out
| the content that the credit card companies don't like and how
| they pressure companies to remove it.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/documents/federal-trade-commission-comp...
| maxbond wrote:
| Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some
| regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to
| process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a
| higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge
| them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be
| concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is
| legal and the parties concerned aren't subject to sanctions.
|
| Some of these games seem completely abhorrent, and probably
| illegal in more restrictive jurisdictions, but not the United
| States. And I've not seen any suggestion they're funding
| terrorism or something. So I'm perplexed.
| ls612 wrote:
| This is one of the ways the government can censor people
| despite the first amendment. It's absolutely by design. The
| regulators "express concern" about certain financial activity
| and then the companies remove it.
| fragmede wrote:
| this is such small potatoes compared to the results of
| everything going on right now though
| sneak wrote:
| No institutionalized censorship of harmless content is
| small potatoes.
| fragmede wrote:
| the other potatoes are _really_ big
| AngryData wrote:
| I don't think so, it is death by a thousand cuts which is
| why we are in such a shitty place right now. Out rights
| have been attacked on all side for decades, little by
| little, but all together it is a huge loss.
| fragmede wrote:
| the problem of Visa and Mastercard being against porn
| just seems like a such a small cut next to the US
| President forcing a comedian off the air for making
| critical remarks
| herbst wrote:
| This is a long ongoing issue tho and one of the main
| reasons many European sex stores don't take credit card at
| all. Visa and master do enforce irrational morals
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| At least at one time, part of the answer would have been
| Operation Choke Point:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
|
| However, that's clearly not all that's going on -- it doesn't
| seem like the government is still doing this.
| ijk wrote:
| One factor is the ongoing campaigns from number of moral
| crusading groups who lobby them to cut off payment processing
| for things they don't approve of. NCOSE has been working for
| decades on the project, and targeting credit card companies has
| been a successful tactic for them for a decade or so.
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-
| ar...
|
| [2] https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being-blamed-
| on...
|
| [3]
| https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstreams/761eb6c3-9377-...
| devmor wrote:
| Another factor is the board members and other investors of
| the institutions themselves.
|
| I have been privy to two specific instances where pressure to
| either ban or reject providing support for specific content
| was handed down from beyond the executive level at a major
| financial network player that my client was doing business
| with.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| They tried to do the same to OnlyFans, but lost that battle
| terminalshort wrote:
| Onlyfans actually made financial sense, though, because
| chargeback rates are very high. This move makes no
| financial sense at all.
| morkalork wrote:
| Didn't onlyfans severely limit the type of content creators
| could make and distribute through the platform, just like
| valve here?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Didn't onlyfans severely limit the type of content
| creators could make and distribute through the platform,
| just like valve here?
|
| Well, this coverage identifies two restrictions that
| Valve is enforcing:
|
| (1) No video footage of humans. Animation only.
|
| (2) No incest.
|
| Onlyfans clearly hasn't implemented restriction (1).
|
| If they've implemented (2), that seems like much less of
| a problem as applied to onlyfans than to animated content
| on Steam. But even in the case of Steam, there just isn't
| a constituency for being pro-incest. This is the _last_
| political fight you 'd want to get into.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > But even in the case of Steam, there just isn't a
| constituency for being pro-incest. This is the last
| political fight you'd want to get into.
|
| Of course the constituency that is openly pro-incest is
| small. On the other hand, I believe the constituency for
| a quite encompassing freedom of speech has to be taken
| seriously.
| mango7283 wrote:
| I think the matter here is the activists are being
| strategic now and chipping away by targeting very
| specific content to get delisted. As you rightly said,
| most people are not going to sign their name to defend a
| incest/non-con fringe game specifically, so the counter
| petition is necessarily going to be on a broad ideal and
| therefore diffuse
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah. I find sex games have basically zero appeal to me,
| period. But either show me the victim or leave them
| legal.
| wtfwhateven wrote:
| Yep. Even showing lactation gets you banned now.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Any animal or just human?
| wtfwhateven wrote:
| I would hope using animals in OF content is illegal and
| banned anyway
|
| I was talking about human lactation. OF was forced to ban
| it because these same groups perceived it as "obscene"
| which is truly nonsensical
| barbazoo wrote:
| So as a farmer I wouldn't be allowed to be on OF showing
| how to milk a cow?
| wtfwhateven wrote:
| Haha, dunno, someone will have to find out
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| That's a weird thing to ban.
| mapt wrote:
| Targeting them with what?
|
| What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would
| jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential
| piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every
| dollar of consumer spending?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Threats of exposure and boycotting/blacklisting the card
| making room for competitors.
|
| Plenty of religious groups have the money to be able to
| start the "holy card". And there's plenty of businesses
| that'd be giddy to accept Jesus card.
|
| Consider, for example, companies like hobby lobby or Chick-
| fil-A banning visa and promoting Jesus card.
|
| It also wouldn't take much for such a card to advertise
| itself as kid friendly.
|
| Thinking about it, I'm a little surprised this hasn't
| happened already.
| kwanbix wrote:
| What competitors? You mean a "Jesus Card" issued by Visa
| or Mastercard? At this point, it's basically an
| oligopoly. The only other real player is Amex, and
| they're a very distant third.
| lxgr wrote:
| Amex isn't really a competitor, since they're both card
| issuer and network in one. (I believe they have a few
| third party issued cards these days, but it's not a
| significant part of their business. The same goes for
| Discover.)
| Retric wrote:
| Let's be real, Chick-fil-A banning Visa would likely
| result in its bankruptcy.
|
| Starting a holy card that doesn't work at gas stations
| etc is an extremely uphill battle.
| aetherson wrote:
| Yeah, 30 years ago this might've been able to get off the
| ground. Today? Not a prayer.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > would likely result in its bankruptcy.
|
| Maybe? Depends on how customers are sold on the mission.
| If it's sold as protecting children I could see a number
| of people ditching their cards.
|
| > Starting a holy card that doesn't work at gas stations
| etc is an extremely uphill battle.
|
| True. It'd take a large amount of initial capital and
| would likely need a targeted and regional rollout with
| some nice incentives to the merchants.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Don't know about that. Costco banned Mastercard and
| they're doing fine.
| Retric wrote:
| They wouldn't need to create a new payment processor if
| they could just swap to Mastercard. Thus it was also
| implicitly excluded by Chick-fil-A in their proposal.
| mango7283 wrote:
| I looked this up, they still accept visa. So not quite
| the same
| FpUser wrote:
| I use my debit card at gas stations
| erikerikson wrote:
| Do you mean like Greenlight?
| terminalshort wrote:
| The leverage is that the activists will potentially be able
| to draw the ire of the government. Visa and MC get away
| with absolute murder in terms of the size of the fees that
| they charge in the US. Most developed countries don't allow
| that. The US government could easily regulate them (as they
| already do with debit card fees) or use anti-trust law
| against the obvious duopoly charging exorbitant prices.
| Because of this situation, Visa and MC have a very strong
| incentive to crack down on things the government doesn't
| like.
|
| The unspoken arrangement is that the government allows them
| to keep charging a de facto sales tax on a massive portion
| of the economy as long as they cooperate and de facto ban
| things that the government wants banned but can't ban
| themselves due to that pesky constitution.
| lxgr wrote:
| The Durbin amendment (regulating debit interchange in the
| US) and its EU equivalent aren't regulating Visa and
| Mastercard scheme fees, but rather interchange fees,
| which Visa and Mastercard set, but issuing banks earn.
|
| Of course scheme fees are ultimately at least partially
| paid from interchange, but lower interchange is primarily
| a problem for issuing banks, not the networks.
|
| The Durbin amendment in particular was also supposed to
| foster competition between networks (by mandating each
| debit issuer to support at least two unaffiliated
| networks per card), but given that only very few places
| accept only debit cards, that didn't work out quite as
| well as intended in terms of bringing down both
| interchange and scheme fees via market forces.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Tbh that's quite alarming what you've just said, and I'm
| not saying about government. I'm saying about an
| additional huge sales tax. I understand that wiring money
| or sending them in an envelope is the thing of past, but
| e.g. in my country and in whole EU the digital payment is
| promoted as the only righteous, because "cash is only
| used by gangsters and human traffickers" etc. And this is
| really playing against us and pushing us to the duopoly
| you've mentioned
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| Credit cards are much less heavily relied on in Europe
| than in the USA. Europe basically runs on debit cards
| that every kid can have and where the fees are minuscule.
| There are countless banks providing the service and
| everything is highly regulated. On top of that, Europe
| still curbed Visa and Mastercard several times for
| antitrust behaviour. And the idea that physical money
| primarily aids social fraud, money laundering and other
| illegal activities is pretty well established. They even
| killed the 500EUR bank note, because it was almost
| exclusively used by criminals and most normal people
| never even touched one, much less used one for legit
| transactions.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Where may I read about anything supporting your statement
| "cash is primarily used for illegal activities"? I highly
| doubt that this is the case, unless there are more
| illegal activities out there than legal ones.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| Here for example: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-
| press/newsroom/news/cash...
| 9dev wrote:
| I would assume the metric isn't number of transactions,
| but total transaction value. It's really uncommon to pay
| for really expensive things (e.g., houses, cars, boats)
| in cash, and doing so almost always means that the duffel
| bag of cash came from shady means.
| johnisgood wrote:
| OK, but look at the original statement, that cash is
| mainly used for illegal activities. I do not think that
| is true.
|
| Now, check this out:
|
| > Cash was the most frequently used payment method at the
| POS in the euro area and was used in 52% (59%) of
| transactions, but the share of cash payments has
| declined.
|
| > Cash was the most frequently used payment method for
| small-value payments at the POS, in line with previous
| surveys. For payments over EUR50, cards were the most
| frequently used payment method.
|
| > Cash was the dominant means of payment in P2P
| transactions, accounting for 41% of such payments. Cards
| and mobile apps were used for 33%, credit transfers for
| 9% and instant payments for 6% of P2P transactions.
|
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/ecb_surveys/space/html/ec
| b.s...
|
| This is to be expected though:
|
| > The most frequently used instrument for online payments
| was cards, representing 48% (51%) of transactions. The
| share of e-payment solutions, i.e. payment wallets and
| mobile apps, was 29% (26%).
|
| > The large majority of recurring payments were made
| using direct debit, with credit transfers ranking in
| second place.
|
| Regarding privacy:
|
| > A majority of euro area consumers (58%) said they were
| concerned about their privacy when performing digital
| payments or other banking activities.
|
| I think they genuinely care about privacy and are not
| thugs.
| vladms wrote:
| Not sure if "mainly" means in terms of total value,
| number of transactions or people using it. If I would be
| to guess it would be total value.
|
| Now, these guys might be biased, but to quote: "The EUR
| 500 note alone accounts for over 30% of the value of all
| banknotes in circulation (1)."
| (https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-
| press/newsroom/news/cash...).
|
| That would suggest to me that at least 30% of the value
| of cash is used for "shady" stuff (I mean I don't know
| anybody that would use 500 eur bills).
|
| The fact that cash would be used mostly for illegal
| activities by value (I don't know if it is really the
| case), does not imply that "people that use cash use if
| for illegal activities".
| johnisgood wrote:
| I do not pretend that I know either, to be honest.
|
| That said, there is "For payments over EUR50, cards were
| the most frequently used payment method.", which means
| they primarily use cash below 50 EUR, and you cannot do
| much illegal purchases with 50 EUR, it is such a small
| amount.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Technically they said,
|
| > And _the idea_ that physical money primarily aids
| social fraud, money laundering and other illegal
| activities is pretty well established.
|
| Another plausible reading could be that this is just a
| widely believed incorrect thing (or most exactly, they
| are just saying it is widely believed, and not anything
| about the underlying truthfulness of the belief). This
| seems easy for somebody to observe about the society
| around them (although I bet it is a regional thing, or
| something like that) and less likely for there to be hard
| data on. Perception is also more likely than actual facts
| to drive behavior, right?
|
| > They even killed the 500EUR bank note, because it was
| almost exclusively used by criminals and most normal
| people never even touched one, much less used one for
| legit transactions.
|
| This, on the other hand, seems like a specific action
| taken by the government to solve a specific problem, so
| I'd expect it to be well documented...
| williamdclt wrote:
| > the idea that physical money primarily aids social
| fraud, money washing and other illegal activities is
| pretty well established
|
| I think that's very hyperbolic. In france most people I
| know carry cash and use it regularly (not as much as
| cards), the gen X and older tend to find it strange to
| pay for small sums (eg bread) with card. Germany is
| infamously almost cash-only. In many Central Europe
| countries, shops taking card is not a given (Bulgaria,
| Hungary).
| Tainnor wrote:
| > Germany is infamously almost cash-only.
|
| Let's not exaggerate. While I am often enough exasperated
| at how often certain restaurants or bars will still only
| accept cash (or sometimes EC card), I'm still able to do
| about 90% of my transactions by card.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In the US, cash-only businesses usually attract auditors
| from the IRS (or did, until they gutted the agency).
| williamdclt wrote:
| Interesting! As a tourist, almost all my transactions had
| to be cash: but ofc a tourist and a resident don't have
| the same spending patterns (mostly bars and restaurant
| for me)
| Tainnor wrote:
| Supermarkets and most stores where you'd buy everyday
| stuff (clothes, electronics, books, ...), especially if
| they're chains, will take card. It's really mostly
| independently owned kiosks, bars and restaurants that are
| holdouts, and even there the card acceptance rate is
| increasing.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > Germany is infamously almost cash-only.
|
| COVID caused a major boost in shops adding card payments.
| Most shops now accept them even for small payments.
|
| There are places which don't take cards, many of them
| also don't print receipts without asking, which might
| indicate than an tax audit might give interesting results
| ...
|
| Some shops try to go towards "card only"
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > And the idea that physical money primarily aids social
| fraud, money washing and other illegal activities is
| pretty well established. They even killed the 500EUR bank
| note, because it was almost exclusively used by criminals
| and most normal people never even touched one, much less
| used one for legit transactions.
|
| At least in Germany in particular older people prefer to
| pay cash if possible - this gives the banks also less
| leverage with respect to abhorent fees. Since many people
| in Germany neither trust the banks nor the government
| anymore, acting this way is very rational.
|
| Also the arguments concerning cash restrictions are seen
| very differently by the population: since there existed
| two oppressive regimes on German soil in the 20th
| century, a lot of people realize that the restrictions on
| cash are just another step towards restrictions of the
| citizen's freedoms (thus I am honestly surprised all the
| time that a lot of US-Americans who are so freedom-loving
| and distrust the government concerning the restrictions
| of civil rights are not in love of cash).
|
| Thus, in Germany there exists the saying "Bargeld ist
| gelebte Freiheit" [cash is lived freedom].
| 9dev wrote:
| > Since many people in Germany neither trust the banks
| nor the government anymore, acting this way is very
| rational.
|
| Speak for yourself, this is either heavily overstated or
| a fringe opinion, luckily. Most people definitely do
| trust both government and banks to a sensible degree,
| even if they don't like some decisions.
|
| Some people like you apparently also don't appreciate the
| immense freedom of SEPA transactions. Sure it's good to
| have cash as an escape hatch for the occasional
| transaction off the record, but for almost everything
| else bank transfers are safe, inaccessible to third
| parties, free from fees, and easy to use. And above all
| else, we have a working democracy and not an oppressive
| regime? This whole debate often feels very disconnected
| and overblown in Germany.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Croatian banks didn't get the memo about SEPA; I get
| charged to _receive_ a SEPA transfer!
| mrkramer wrote:
| I'm from Croatia but I don't send money abroad, I only
| use credit cards and banks locally. As far as I can see
| from our local banks' websites, they implement SEPA
| standards. There must be some sort of misunderstanding or
| error.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Perhaps is because it's a payment to an OBRT account?
|
| Banking in Croatia is like UK banking 40 years ago, or at
| least it is with Erste. Charged even just to have the
| account.
|
| They even charge me to send me an email to tell me I
| logged in to the online banking.
| mrkramer wrote:
| They charge for pretty much everything, even for running
| your bank account. But now they will not be allowed by
| law to charge you "bank account operating cost fees" for
| bank accounts that are used for receiving salary and/or
| pension.
| legacynl wrote:
| > And above all else, we have a working democracy and not
| an oppressive regime? This whole debate often feels very
| disconnected and overblown in Germany.
|
| Well as you can see from the US currently, a country that
| is now free and democratic, might not continue to do so
| in the future. But once you've given up the ability to
| use cash because you didn't need it then, how are you
| going to get it back when you do need it?
| 9dev wrote:
| Not a single western democracy has really turned yet, so
| I'm not convinced this is imminent danger.
|
| Besides, I'm not advocating for the abolishment of cash,
| but against dramatic claims of an evil scheme to control
| and spy on citizens. That's a right-wing narrative in
| Germany, but nonsense nonetheless.
| achierius wrote:
| Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Argentina --
| most within living memory.
|
| Hell even France, everyone's just lucky that de Gaulle
| wasn't much into dictatorship.
| 9dev wrote:
| Germany, Spain, and Italy were no western democracies in
| any sense of the word before the rise of fascism, Japan,
| Brazil, and Chile are no western democracies per
| definition.
|
| I'm talking about the post-WW2 order, which has been
| remarkably solid. Until Trump showed up, that is. But
| even the USA are still a working democracy, despite all
| the fear of an authoritarian regime. So I would at least
| argue for a bit of calm and reason before proclaiming the
| end of freedom due to discontinued 500EUR notes.
| fwn wrote:
| > Most people [in Germany] definitely do trust both
| government and banks to a sensible degree, even if they
| don't like some decisions.
|
| The major far-right fundamentalist opposition party has
| built its unprecedented success on a narrative of low
| government trust, and has been gaining ground in both
| polls and elections for years and years now.
|
| So perhaps we shouldn't dismiss the parents' perspective
| entirely.
|
| > Some people like you apparently also don't appreciate
| the immense freedom of SEPA transactions.
|
| If you include the wrong words in the transaction
| description, your account will almost certainly be
| cancelled. In a truly free payment system that safeguards
| democratic freedoms, these descriptions would be
| encrypted from end to end. (Just in the same way all
| personal communication should be protected.) This will,
| of course, never happen.
|
| > And above all else, we have a working democracy and not
| an oppressive regime? This whole debate often feels very
| disconnected and overblown in Germany.
|
| Any data we collect will probably be misused at some
| point in the future. Why take a risk with German
| institutions if we don't have to?
|
| Germany recently experimented with greater financial
| control over some parts of the population, and it wasn't
| a total disaster in terms of control. In terms of
| freedom, however, it is a disaster.
|
| Unfortunately, the source is German-language:
| https://netzpolitik.org/2024/faq-was-bezahlkarten-fuer-
| geflu...
|
| Despite cash being a pillar of freedom and democracy in
| an open society, there is still no good anonymous
| alternative to it that is usable by normal people on a
| daily basis.
| 9dev wrote:
| > The major far-right fundamentalist opposition party has
| built its unprecedented success on a narrative of low
| government trust, and has been gaining ground in both
| polls and elections for years and years now.
|
| And yet, that is very far from the majority.
|
| > If you include the wrong words in the transaction
| description, your account will almost certainly be
| cancelled.
|
| That isn't true. If you put "murder contract + 2kg
| heroin" in the description, at most a bank clerk will
| call to ask you to avoid that. The description is
| reviewed to detect fraud, and protects a lot of people
| from illicit transactions. We have that for the same
| reason we have KYC regulations; you may disagree with it,
| but it protects a lot of people, right now. If you need
| to obfuscate the description, you're free to use an
| encrypted string or a numeric reference without any
| trouble.
|
| > Any data we collect will probably be misused at some
| point in the future. Why take a risk with German
| institutions if we don't have to?
|
| There are valid arguments against widespread cash usage;
| money handling is one of the top expenses in retail, for
| example. There also is fraud potential actively being
| used for sure. Yet, I don't hear anyone working on
| completely abolishing cash, which is just not going to
| happen. Still, even Germans could benefit from
| questioning our ways from time to time.
| yorwba wrote:
| > At least in Germany in particular older people prefer
| to pay cash if possible
|
| Sure, but that's for small, everyday amounts. For values
| upwards of 500EUR, I think the familiarity of paying cash
| would be swamped by the nervousness of carrying way too
| much money with you, what if it gets stolen?
|
| > this gives the banks also less leverage with respect to
| abhorent fees
|
| The only time my bank has ever charged me a per-
| transaction fee was, ironically, when I withdrew cash
| abroad using my credit card.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| When I bought a piece of furniture in Germany, I had to
| pay 1/3 right there in the store. They accepted various
| cards. When it was delivered, I had to pay the remaining
| balance (four digits) in cash. No other option.
|
| Also, I believe when buying used cars and such, most
| people still prefer cash transactions.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's pretty common in the US too though the cash
| balance is usually in the form of a check. Historically
| you'd often get a cashier's check from your bank but I
| was surprised the dealership accepted a regular personal
| check a couple years ago. I guess there are control
| systems in place these days that provide assurances for
| places like dealerships.
| kelnos wrote:
| For a dealership I feel like there's less risk; they can
| do a quick background/credit check on you before
| accepting the personal check, and it's probably easier
| for them to track down someone who gives them a bad
| check. They also have better ability to absorb the loss,
| in the worst case. I'm sure they've modeled everything
| and have decided that taking personal checks is worth it
| financially to them.
|
| (I remember reading long ago that if if a potential
| customer has to leave the dealership to go secure the
| proper form of payment, a significant percent just don't
| come back at all. They want to keep you there until you
| buy something, fairly standard sales tactic.)
|
| But for a regular person just trying to sell their own
| car directly to someone else, they're absolutely going to
| want a cashier's check or cash. (Even the cashier's check
| can be risky; I doubt your average person is an expert in
| detecting a fraudulent one.)
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| and even if you do want to carry that much cash, surely
| you'd want a fatter wad with smaller bills, right?
| nix0n wrote:
| The Euro uses larger bills for larger amounts, so if
| showing off the cash is actually something you want, a
| single EUR500 note would have worked well.
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| there's a psychological bonus for heftier things
|
| maybe if it was larger, thicker, and a more dense
| material. most of those matter more to the person holding
| it, rather than an observer, though
| atq2119 wrote:
| > I am honestly surprised all the time that a lot of US-
| Americans who are so freedom-loving and distrust the
| government concerning the restrictions of civil rights
| are not in love of cash
|
| I suspect it's a combination of factors, one of them
| being that US cash has absolutely awful usability
| compared to the Euro.
| devilbunny wrote:
| > absolutely awful usability compared to the Euro
|
| In what way? One unpleasant discovery I made in Portugal
| (and also saw to some extent in Spain) was that ATM's -
| every one I could find, including those that were bank-
| owned at physical branches - had a limit of EUR200 per
| transaction regardless of my own bank limit (at
| USD1000/day, that should have been at least EUR800).
|
| And while convenience stores, fast food, etc., won't take
| a bill over $20 (which is understandable but really a
| trifling sum when you consider inflation - it's a fast-
| food breakfast for three people), many other businesses
| are happy to do so. Nothing above $100 is in circulation
| anymore, and inflation means that $100 in 1980 is worth
| over $400 in today's money even by government figures. A
| $20 bill 45 years ago was worth almost $100 in today's
| money. And, of course, cash declaration rules have not
| updated the amounts to reflect this.
| rodrigodlu wrote:
| I went last year to Lisbon and Barcelona, from Brazil
| with 0 cash in any currency.
|
| I had a debit card with some hundreds of EUR already
| charged, but I ended up using it with an NFC enabled
| smartphone.
|
| No issues at all, even going in far places outside
| Barcelona. Everyone very receptive in BCN.
|
| I looked at ATM terminals and they seemed full of rules
| and complications. I tried to get some cash just to
| collect the notes as a souvenir, but I gave up.
|
| Again, everyone accepted my NFC enabled smartphone, I
| tested my debit NFC card and my local bank CC NFC card as
| well
|
| So I think ATMs present a lot of friction for sure.
| vladgur wrote:
| Same this year - I went through Spain, France, and
| Portugal last month and did not have to take money out of
| ATM for anything including eating, shopping for
| groceries, paying for gas or sightseeing.
|
| ApplePay connected to my no forex transaction credit card
| earning 3% cashback covered 95% of these transactions and
| a few times I had to use that credit card directly.
| Oreb wrote:
| How did you manage without cash in France? Many places
| here don't accept anything but cash for amounts less than
| 5 or 10 Euros. If I just want to buy a coffee or a
| baguette, I often need cash.
| vladgur wrote:
| I spent a few days in French Basque Country and
| restaurants and fresh markets all accepted credit cards
| and Apple Pay.
|
| I was traveling with family so spending limits were
| higher than 5 euros
| devilbunny wrote:
| Okay, but OP specifically said that USD are inferior to
| EUR for cash. Never had issues spending with card in PT
| or ES.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > that US cash has absolutely awful usability compared to
| the Euro.
|
| Euro bills differ clearly in color and size, which means
| they are quickly identified.
|
| Also the Euro coins differ in shape and size quite a lot,
| which is easy to identify blind even when handled
| individually. More than U.S. coins which are more
| similar.
|
| I don't know about an objective difference caused by the
| fact that 1EUR and 2EUR are coins and bills start only at
| 5EUR whereas the one dollar coin isn't much used in favor
| of the one dollar bill.
| natbobc wrote:
| A vocal minority are freedom loving. A significant number
| are hooked on consumer debt. I feel like any sweeping
| generalization is going to be wrong... especially when
| referencing the USA which is basically 50 countries and
| has a population exceeding all of Western Europe.
| generic92034 wrote:
| > especially when referencing the USA which is basically
| 50 countries and has a population exceeding all of
| Western Europe.
|
| So, you compare the whole USA to only a part of Europe?
| Why is that?
| hansvm wrote:
| And they counted an even lower percentage of Eurasia. It
| might matter for a given conversation. It might not.
| What's your point (i.e., what are you actually trying to
| ask)?
| seth123456 wrote:
| The Bafin (german banking regulator) seems to want to
| restrict that freedom. I have worked for a company where
| the business model is related to cash and the Bafin tries
| to find reasons to make it harder every couple of years,
| stating that the money could come from anywhere and
| because people are not fully KYCed (as it is only legally
| required for payments of 1000 EUR or more within 24h)
| there is no way to know. The business model is legal, but
| they can also make it harder to operate by putting more
| pressure and scrutiny to banks the company worked with.
| hnbad wrote:
| It's not so much that only criminals use cash, it's more
| that crash makes it incredibly easy to evade taxes. The
| archetype is a cash-only restaurant: it's trivial to both
| launder money by claiming more sales than you actually
| made and to evade taxes by reporting fewer sales. This is
| why many countries have strict laws about paper trails
| for cash sales.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _thus I am honestly surprised all the time that a lot
| of US-Americans who are so freedom-loving and distrust
| the government concerning the restrictions of civil
| rights are not in love of cash_
|
| I think there _are_ a lot of Americans who distrust
| government /banks and try to deal in cash as much as they
| can. And there are a lot of people here who have bad
| credit and can't get a credit card, and quite a few
| unbanked lower-income folks who don't have bank accounts
| or debit cards.
|
| But I think maybe as someone from another country you're
| misinterpreting the whole "individual freedom" thing that
| a lot of Americans push. I don't think cash vs. credit
| cards is really a big part of that, for whatever reason.
| While it is more common in some places in the US these
| days for some businesses to not take cash at all, still
| the vast majority of businesses _do_ take cash, and
| everyone has a choice in how they 'll pay.
|
| There's also a financial engineering component, as most
| credit cards in the US offer some kind of rewards program
| or cash back for purchases made. For example, a credit
| card I have, when used for Lyft rides, gives me the
| equivalent of 7.5% off (I have to use the savings for
| travel costs through the credit card's travel site, but
| that's fine and worth it for me). Some cards are simple
| and just offer 1% or 2% back and that's it, but some have
| categories (like "3% cash back for gasoline purchases"),
| and some people get into the "game" of trying to match a
| credit card with a purchase to get the most cash back.
|
| And even for people who don't get into the "game", they
| certainly won't mind a "free" 1% or 2% discount on
| everything just for using a credit card. Some businesses
| offer a discount for paying cash, or a surcharge for
| using a credit card, but many do not, so if you pay with
| cash, you're essentially overpaying, since the cost of
| credit card fees is built into the prices. (This is of
| course another way that poor people who can't get credit
| cards get screwed.)
|
| I guess often enough, convenience and saving money wins
| over the whole "freedom" thing for people here.
|
| Finally, I think there's also a bit of separation. Many
| credit cards don't even feel like they're associated with
| a bank. Many larger retail stores offer a branded credit
| card that of course has a Visa or MasterCard logo on it,
| but you have to dig to find mention of an actual bank. So
| even Americans who might distrust government and banks
| just don't see a strong association there when it comes
| to credit cards.
|
| I also just don't think there's _that_ much bank distrust
| going on in the US. Sure, people are still sore about the
| financial crisis of 2008, but also consider that was 17
| years ago. We haven 't had big bank issues in the US
| where banks devalue currency, or follow government orders
| to across-the-board steal money from citizens, at least
| not in widespread ways. People generally love to rag on
| banks when it comes to fees and penalties and hidden
| costs and crap like that, but many of those things have
| been made illegal, and, again, even for a bank-issued
| credit card, I think many people just don't make that
| association. It's just an easier way to make payments,
| without the risk of carrying cash around (and with
| protection if the card gets stolen and used), and
| sometimes you get discounts and cash back... what's not
| to like?
| Asraelite wrote:
| > And the idea that physical money primarily aids social
| fraud, money laundering and other illegal activities is
| pretty well established.
|
| I'd rather have that than a complete loss of privacy.
| altairprime wrote:
| The U.S. consumer economy functions primarily on debt
| from start to end these days, complete with debt
| collectors who buy it pennies on the dollar and then con
| grieving relatives into voluntarily accepting duty
| towards those debts that would otherwise have been
| discharged by death. So there are quite a lot of people
| these days who couldn't use the European debit methods
| because they don't have the cash and likely never will,
| what with one quarter of the country's households unable
| to afford housing on effectively poverty wages. The
| federal government can't crack down on this because
| they'd have to replace that consumer debt with public
| assistance. The puritanical / religious orgs control
| majority voting blocs that haven't aged out as they used
| to and so are a continued threat to elected officials. So
| the threat those groups are holding over Visa/MC is
| triple-pronged: not only will they boycott (they can
| afford to), they can also leverage politicians (enforce
| our will or get ejected from office) and threaten
| capitalism (better economic armageddon than unpalatable
| sexual expressions). Valve can't hold a candle to that
| kind of leverage, not without giving up the neutral-
| apolitical stance that most tech corporations prefer.
| They would essentially have to promote a counter-bloc of
| voters to counter-pressure the U.S. House and Senate into
| passing payment provider neutrality laws through
| elections. Valve is vanishingly unlikely to do this, and
| so their only choice is to prostrate to Visa/MC (or stop
| accepting USD) until the puritan bloc ages out in two or
| three decades. They can certainly afford to wait,
| especially given that these incremental religious bans
| advance slower than their revenues.
| redeeman wrote:
| > because it was almost exclusively used by criminals and
| most normal people never even touched one, much less used
| one for legit transactions.
|
| thats BS. most people have indeed had such, and while not
| frequent, it was fully legit.
|
| The real reason they want to do away with cash is so they
| can monitor everything you buy, and in time, perhaps more
| eloisant wrote:
| I'm not sure which European country you're talking about,
| but in France most transaction are now done by card. Yes
| it's mostly debit cards, but they're still handled almost
| exclusively by Visa and Mastercard.
|
| Many banks have tried to start other electronic payments
| independent from those 2 (for example Wero) but it
| doesn't really get any traction.
|
| So I don't see how the duopoly is any less powerful here.
| nebul wrote:
| I think France is a bit of an exception because there's
| the CB network[1]. Most cards here are either
| CB/Mastercard or CB/Visa and a lot of stuff uses CB by
| default if I understand it correctly. According to their
| website the network accounts for 65% percent of national
| transactions[2] but I'm not sure of how to interpret
| their wording.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_Bank_Card_Group
|
| [2] https://www.cartes-bancaires.com/cb/chiffres/
| vladms wrote:
| Cards and transfers are different things though. What I
| have seen from Wero (released to the public) are Peer to
| Peer transfers, so if you don't need to transfer money to
| a person, Wero will not help you for now.
|
| Some card fees are capped by the EU:
| https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-
| and-in..., quoting "From 9 December 2015, European
| regulation on interchange fees (Regulation (EU) 2015/751
| of the European Parliament and of the European Council of
| 29 April 2015 on interchange fees for card-based
| transactions, "the IFR") imposes interchange fee caps on
| most product types within the European Economic Area
| (EEA).".
|
| It is true though that French banks have huge fees even
| for debit (0.20%) compared to, for example The
| Netherlands (0.02 eur).
|
| So the doupoly is not as powerful everywhere, but I have
| no clue why the difference.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| In Poland there is Blik which got huge traction
| wat10000 wrote:
| Debit cards are really common in the US as well. Pretty
| much every bank gives you one with a checking account and
| they're accepted everywhere. You'll have no problem never
| getting a credit card, aside from a couple of very
| specific cases such as renting a car where they'll
| require a substantial deposit if you don't use a credit
| card.
|
| But it's irrelevant to this issue, because the debit
| cards are still handled by Visa or Mastercard.
| denkmoon wrote:
| sounds like the fix is counter activism to remove the
| leverage these interest groups have
| tavavex wrote:
| The fix is legislation that ensures that payment
| processors aren't allowed to extra-legally moderate
| transactions based on "I don't like it". They need to be
| forced to process all legal transactions. Because these
| entities are nearly irreplaceable and are the cornerstone
| of many consumer industries, it seems like a reasonable
| compromise to me.
|
| Just pushing back is neither guaranteed to succeed nor
| last for any serious amount of time. The ideological
| crazies can throw their entire existence at ensuring the
| fact that the "impure, corrupting filth" is squashed.
| People who oppose it might like the things that get
| censored, but none are religiously attached to the cause,
| not to an extent that would lead to a serious amount of
| organizing, anyway.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem comes from "legal transactions".
|
| The Pornhub problem came from going after the payment
| processors for facilitating supposedly illegal
| transactions--namely, underage porn. The crusaders (in
| every direction) keep looking for ways to undermine the
| protections (Section 230 in this case) and all too often
| the government doesn't fight back.
|
| As for keeping it in the family games--we still have
| "obscenity" on the books and such games fall afoul of it.
| I find the concept of "obscenity" bonkers amongst
| consenting adults.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yes - and Japanese gay porn games are an easy soft target
| before they go on to ban things they _really_ want to
| ban. We 've been through this before in the 70s-90s.
| staunton wrote:
| > We've been through this before in the 70s-90s.
|
| What do you mean?
| hakfoo wrote:
| I always found this principle odd because it offends
| across the political spectrum.
|
| Every hassle the porn industry gets, the gun industry
| gets too, and that obviously has a very different
| political footprint. I'd also expect some industries with
| politically powerful friends (supplements, MLMs in
| general) to be offended by policies that put some
| merchants into higher risk/higher cost/higher rejection
| categories.
|
| I had hoped something like FedNow would take off-- a
| government-backed payment rail with a formal mandate to
| service any legal business, so neither side could
| complain about being deplatformed.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| Because Visa's revenue is not dependent upon ideological
| neutrality.
|
| They're half of a duopoly.
| ijk wrote:
| > Targeting them with what?
|
| > What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would
| jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral,
| essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2%
| off of every dollar of consumer spending?
|
| The US courts.
|
| Visa was specifically pulled into the lawsuit against
| PornHub; here's Visa's official statement on the matter:
| https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-
| perspectives/compan...
|
| The lawsuit is still ongoing.
| rtpg wrote:
| Pressure campaigns could lead to laws regulating the card
| industry, self regulation prevents some of that (see movies
| and games ratings agencies, which avoid government ratings
| coming in and potentially connecting an 18+ rating with
| outright bans like we've seen in the UK and Australia in
| the past)
| fragmede wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/01/visa-
| mind...
|
| Visa being responsible for CSAM isn't a theoretical lawsuit
| they're afraid about. (2022)
| cornholio wrote:
| It's easy to dismiss all such campaigns as religious prudes
| and moral crusaders, especially on a site with the
| demographics and political leanings of YC News.
|
| But often time such campaigns are waged by former victims of
| trafficking. It's well documented that trafficking,
| prostitution and pornography are closely interlinked - this
| modern notion of a fully liberated "sexual worker"
| controlling their careers, choices and finance is
| substantially a fiction of the pornographic industry. So
| there is real merit in the anti porn stance.
|
| Of course, once the camping is set in motion, it takes a life
| of its own, that has nothing to do with the concerns of the
| victims and more with prudishness; the religious circus will
| join hands and demand the removal of synthetic pornography
| etc.
| fn-mote wrote:
| I'm willing to listen if you're willing to provide sources.
|
| Otherwise, your claims run counter to more credible sources
| I have read. (Which I am not willing to search up for this
| post.)
| atemerev wrote:
| The US obsession with sex (both positive and negative) is
| something else.
|
| Here in Europe, sex is a normal part of human life. Not a
| center of everything, nor a sin to be avoided. Sex art is
| normal. Sex games are fine. There are no moral crusaders
| here, because sex is moral. We tell sex jokes at work and
| nobody faints. We are constantly perplexed why American
| culture is so different from other Western cultures in that
| regard.
|
| People keep saying "Puritans" like it answers all questions,
| but Puritans were hundreds of years ago. We had our own share
| of people with peculiar attitudes back then. Today is 2025,
| not 1785.
| Jimerty wrote:
| >Here in Europe
|
| No, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, stop treating it as
| such, stop saying here in Europe or European here. You'd
| get annoyed if a yank generalised all of europe with a not
| take so don't do it yourself. State what country/countries
| you're talking about because social attitudes and norms
| vary massively across this continent!
| atemerev wrote:
| They sure do, just like there are different states in the
| US with vastly different attitudes to life and
| everything.
|
| And yet, you can take an averaged vector of all US states
| and all European countries and meaningfully compare
| those. Or extract some things that are common through all
| Europe as compared through all US.
|
| I had a privilege of living for some time in Italy,
| Denmark, Spain and Switzerland (I still live in
| Switzerland). They are all really different, and yet
| there is something common compared to the US.
| louthy wrote:
| Of course, it doesn't help anyone to generalise. Europe
| has a wide demographic. But, one thing that doesn't
| happen is its attitude to sex affecting worldwide
| commerce or other worldwide issues.
|
| Here in the UK religion and sex are not part of the
| national conversation. A politician mentioning their love
| of god would seem weird to us. The only way it enters the
| national conversation are when right-wing religious
| zealots, from the US, try to affect our laws: I'm
| thinking of abortion laws and trans rights. These are
| entirely imported issues from US religious hangups. It's
| quite tedious, because mostly we were on a path of
| reasonable discourse with relation to sex, sexuality,
| relationships (marriage), etc. but with the advent of
| social media you see pockets of society being dragged
| into it.
|
| I have friends in much of Europe (Sweden, Norway, France,
| Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Croatia,
| Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Greece) and have travelled to
| those destinations extensively. I still can't speak for
| all of Europe, but I think when it comes to sex and
| religion we're kinda similar. The only one that stands
| out to me was the Greek Orthodox church used to have an
| out-sized role, but even that doesn't seem to be the case
| any more (I just came back from visiting friends in
| Greece a few weeks back and we discussed this).
|
| So whilst we can't say all of Europe is the same, we can
| say that it's not causing global problems due to its
| sexual and religious hangups.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Religion is a factor in Polish politics.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Absolutely. Italy too. I think a better way to phrase it:
| There are _many_ countries in Europe where a right wing
| party uses the rise of Islam due to immigrants as a
| political issue.
| ChickeNES wrote:
| Yeah when I went to the UK and tried to view adult
| content using a prepaid SIM, it was blocked and required
| verifying that I was an adult, and this was done at the
| ISP level. And I know for a fact that the UK has much
| stricter limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as
| well. What gives with people claiming it's just the US?
| louthy wrote:
| > required verifying that I was an adult
|
| Log in to your account and toggle the "I want porn"
| option? It's annoying, but not onerous.
|
| > And I know for a fact that the UK has much stricter
| limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as well.
|
| I know what you're referring to, but don't know the full
| details. I believe it's around violent porn (rape, etc).
| We certainly have a "think of the children" brigade. I
| still think the discourse is significantly more civilised
| than that of the US, which feels like it's approaching
| virtual civil war levels. When these subjects are
| debated, it's usually in parliament and doesn't turn into
| some societal ideological divide.
|
| I think some of the policies you mention are more
| artefacts of the politicians not understanding the
| technological future we're in, rather than ideology. Many
| of them think they can make the internet a safe space for
| kids through policy. It's naive, for sure, but usually
| not dogmatic.
|
| > What gives with people claiming it's just the US?
|
| It's not just the US, but when the people standing
| outside of UK abortion clinics harassing women are funded
| by US 'pro life' religious groups then you know there's a
| problem. Puritanism is a US export.
|
| The vitriolic political divisions in the US, which leads
| to all sorts of fringe issues becoming mainstream (trans
| rights, for example), is leaking out into the rest of the
| western democracies, poisoning the debate everywhere.
|
| The Visa issue is just one more of these puritanical US
| exports.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > It's annoying, but not onerous.
|
| So government regulating stuff like that does go against
| much of the thing you said in the comment above?
|
| > doesn't turn into some societal ideological divide.
|
| When governments try to introduce mass surveillance of
| personal communications to "protect the children" liek
| ChatControl maybe it should turn into one. Instead of
| everyone just handwaving and ignoring it...
| louthy wrote:
| >> It's annoying, but not onerous.
|
| > So government regulating stuff like that does go
| against much of the thing you said in the comment above?
|
| It isn't law. But even if it was, that doesn't contradict
| what I am talking about. I'm talking about the export of
| puritanism. If you think having to turn the porn button
| from 'off' to 'on' in your phone contract's options is
| the same, then I don't know what to say.
|
| > When governments try to introduce mass surveillance of
| personal communications to "protect the children" liek
| ChatControl maybe it should turn into one.
|
| Yeah maybe, but that's not the topic of conversation
| here. The topic was about puritanical beliefs in the US
| and how its export affects the world (like the Visa
| issue).
| pqtyw wrote:
| > I'm talking about the export of puritanism
|
| Sure, technically its government imposed domestic
| puritanism which isn't exported. I agree its a completely
| different thing.
|
| > The topic was about puritanical beliefs in the US and
| how its export affects the world
|
| Yes, US has its quirks but it's not that exceptional as
| you are implying. e.g. when it comes to banning/regulated
| video games Australia is inarguable much more
| restrictive.
|
| Germany also has a history of banning violent video games
| and its again much worse than the US e.g. https://old.red
| dit.com/r/Steam/comments/ki12if/steam_now_reg...
|
| Post "Online Safety Act" UK is not that much better
| either.
|
| US is very tame and less "puritanical" by your definition
| than those countries. The core difference being that the
| government can't really regulate it directly so credit
| card companies might be acting as some sort of a proxy.
|
| Or are you implying that US somehow turned Germany and
| Australia more "puritanical" than itself and there would
| be no domestic support for censorship there otherwise?
| vladms wrote:
| So how does the US deal with age restricted games? I find
| this much more related to actually willing to implement a
| rule, rather than having rules for the sake of it (like
| the US buying alcohol rule - it is forbidden for people
| under 21 to drink but 40% of the people between 18 and 21
| drink ?! source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_co
| nsumption_by_youth_i...).
| pqtyw wrote:
| Not sure I get it. And it's different in Europe?
|
| e.g. 20% of all 15 year old in the UK have at least one
| drink each week:
|
| https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-
| information/publications/sta...
|
| Despite the legal age being 18.
|
| Also what does this have to do with anything? e.g. adult-
| only games are simply unavailable on Steam in Germany. It
| doesn't matter at all how old you are.
| aaaja wrote:
| > trans rights. These are entirely imported issues from
| US religious hangups.
|
| No, in the UK it was left-wing feminists who led the
| opposition to gender identity policies long before any
| conservatives got involved, on the basis of this being
| harmful to women's rights.
|
| Just look at the recent For Women Scotland win in the
| Supreme Court, it's nothing to do with US religious
| groups at all, and everything to do with protecting sex-
| based rights and sexual orientation in law.
| louthy wrote:
| That was waaaay after it had become an 'issue' in the US
| and exported. I also doubt they would describe themselves
| as "left-wing feminists". That language is incorrect at
| best and inflammatory at worst.
|
| In 2014, Time magazine declared trans rights as
| "America's next civil rights frontier" [1]. For Women
| Scotland was formed in 2018 [2].
|
| (Just looked at your comment history. Just, wow... is the
| trans issue the only one you care about?)
|
| [1] https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/
|
| [2] https://forwomen.scot/about/
| aaaja wrote:
| For Women Scotland wasn't the start of the opposition to
| gender identity policy in the UK. It was founded, by four
| women who met on Mumsnet, specifically to address policy
| in Scotland.
|
| Feminist women opposed to the Tory government's plans to
| introduce "gender self-id" law and similar policy had
| already started organising by this point. Groups like
| Woman's Place UK and Fair Play For Women. This had
| nothing whatsoever to do with religious arguments from
| the US.
|
| There's also significant liberal opposition to all this
| in the US, again not linked to religion but, like the UK,
| on the basis of women's rights.
| louthy wrote:
| Keep moving those goalposts!
|
| Look, you have the right to believe whatever you want,
| but making every single discussion you have on here about
| how much you hate trans people is not really something I
| want to get involved with. Good day.
| aaaja wrote:
| You really don't like having your misinformation
| corrected, do you.
|
| I recommend you go look up the feminist groups I
| mentioned and educate yourself on what's actually been
| happening in the UK on this.
|
| Here's an article to get you started:
| https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/hundreds-women-
| gat...
| coffee_am wrote:
| Of course one can generalize using the colloquial "Here
| in Europe". And generalization is useful -- one cannot go
| into all the complexity and details all the time, at some
| point one has to summarize/generalize an argument.
|
| Yes, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, but there is a
| large fraction that is less sex focused, it's a fair
| generalization and comment to express that.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Eh? Not really. There's a gradient between North and
| South and East and West, and then there's UK, but some
| things are more or less in-common. What GP is saying is
| one of those things.
| 0dayz wrote:
| It's due to the difference in Christian values, the US has
| a hard on for believing that ignorance is a virtue when it
| comes to sin or adult topics.
|
| Like for instance the outrage if you have a sign on your
| lawn stating that x president is a rapist to the economy,
| people will say that children should not be "exposed" to
| such words.
| louthy wrote:
| > People keep saying "Puritans" like it answers all
| questions, but Puritans were hundreds of years ago. We had
| our own share of people with peculiar attitudes back then.
|
| We literally had Puritans in Europe [1]
|
| _" The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and
| 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of
| what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices,
| maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully
| reformed and should become more Protestant.[1] Puritanism
| played a significant role in English and early American
| history, especially in the Protectorate in Great Britain,
| and the earlier settlement of New England."_
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
| saghm wrote:
| Yeah, and then most of them left and came here, which the
| article cites as having caused a "radical" divergence:
|
| > Almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England
| after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the Act
| of Uniformity 1662. Many continued to practise their
| faith in nonconformist denominations, especially in
| Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches.[2] The
| nature of the Puritan movement in England changed
| radically. In New England, it retained its character for
| a longer period.
|
| It's not crazy to think that this could have had an
| outsized influence on the US given how influential New
| England was in the early days. Even 120-130 years after
| the point that the quoted section mentions, when the
| colonies were transitioning into what's now the United
| States, close to a third of them were part of New
| England.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > Church of England
|
| Doesn't mean that continental Europe wasn't full of
| puritanical nutjobs.
|
| Calvin himself ran a dystopian theocratic state\hellhole
| in Geneva yet hardly anyone references that when talking
| about conservativism in Switzerland.
|
| > Even 120-130 years after the point
|
| There was a significant generational backlash towards
| puritanism and a push towards pluralism/secularism by the
| late 1700s. IMHO Second/Third "Great Awakenings" had a
| much bigger impact than a handful of Puritans inhabiting
| New England in the 1600s.
| louthy wrote:
| > Doesn't mean that continental Europe wasn't full of
| puritanical nutjobs.
|
| I believe English puritans were also in Holland and
| France for a while.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Yes the Pilgrims for instance emigrated from Holland and
| not England. Of course the Plymouth Colony was quite
| "progressive" compared to the oppressive theocracy in
| Massachusetts. At least they weren't hanging quakers,
| dissenters and didn't burn a single witch during the
| panic..
|
| Anyway I don't think that the English Puritans/etc. were
| somehow particularly exceptional (besides the fact that
| they emigrated to North America) compared to other
| similar groups in Europe.
| saghm wrote:
| > Calvin himself ran a dystopian theocratic
| state\hellhole in Geneva yet hardly anyone references
| that when talking about conservativism in Switzerland.
|
| I'm not familiar with Swiss politics, but if there's a
| significant Christian element to it, it seems like it
| would be pretty reasonable to wonder about whether the
| historical basis for this is related to Calvinism. If
| it's not significantly Christian, then it's not
| surprising it doesn't get mentioned.
|
| > There was a significant generational backlash towards
| puritanism and a push towards pluralism/secularism by the
| late 1700s. IMHO Second/Third "Great Awakenings" had a
| much bigger impact than a handful of Puritans inhabiting
| New England in the 1600s.
|
| Sure, but those those were backlashes themselves to the
| backlash to the secularism that you mentioned happened
| beforehand. I'm not saying that there weren't Puritan-
| like influences elsewhere, or that there were no other
| developments in between the Puritans and modern Christian
| conservatism in the US, but there's a clear historical
| tradition of Christian conservatism in US politics, so I
| don't know why you don't think it's unreasonable to
| recognize how that has influenced what we see today.
|
| To explain at a higher level where I'm coming from: I
| don't see historical analysis as making claims about the
| state we're in today as being a deterministic outcome
| based on the events that happen in the past because
| that's not any more possible than predicting exactly what
| will happen in the future based on the knowledge we have
| today. The most we can do to explain why things are the
| way they are now is to look at what things in the past
| have influenced where we are today.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Not inherently disagreeing with you at all. I'm not just
| sure whether we should look as far back as the 1600s. Yes
| some American colonies were founded by religious
| extremists.
|
| But the divergence between US and Europe didn't happen
| until the late 1800s if not the early 1900s.
|
| e.g. according to the census of 1851 ~40% of people in
| Britain were regularly attending religious services. No
| hard figures for the US from the time but from what I can
| find the proportion in the US was comparable. Except
| while mid 1800s was pretty much the peak in Britain in US
| it kept rising and reached its highest point in the 1950s
| while in UK religious participation had almost reached
| current levels by then.
|
| IMHO the rise of political secularism, socialiam and the
| near societal collapse across much of Europe during and
| after WW1 and WW2 had a much bigger impact than whatever
| happened 400 years ago.
| parpfish wrote:
| If you're looking at the geographical distribution of
| their influence, isn't it weird that the place where the
| puritans settled ("New England") is arguably the _least_
| puritanical region of the US?
| saghm wrote:
| Nowadays, sure, but keep in mind that the "US" didn't
| extend beyond the east coast when the Puritans first
| settled here. You might be able to make an argument that
| there's no cultural influence from the colonial days that
| lasted until today (although I'd disagree with that
| sentiment), but otherwise, where would you expect any
| cultural influence in the rest of the US to have come
| from?
|
| (To be clear, I'm not saying that there weren't existing
| cultures there before the US expanded out further west,
| but I imagine most people would agree that the US today
| isn't culturally as influenced by them as much as from
| the the colonies and pre-expansion US.)
| hollerith wrote:
| New England is perceived as less religious than the
| South, but one reason for that is that New England's
| moral perceptions had a strong influence on US political
| beliefs. In other words, the Puritans morphed into the
| Congregationalists who morphed into the Unitarians, who
| basically took over (in the 19th Century) US political
| thinking (or at least the Left side of it), giving the
| appearance that New England does not having any
| particular or special moral or religious beliefs (at
| least to those on the Left half of the US political
| divide).
|
| I grew up in New England and have lived in the South and
| in California, and IMHO morality is a bigger determinant
| of the behavior of the average person in New England than
| it is in the other places I've lived (all in the US). The
| South and California are more pragmatic, less moralistic.
| saghm wrote:
| That's a good point. When something is within the usual
| for someone's experience, it's not going to be as
| obvious, so it becomes the baseline that's used to
| compare other things to. For stuff like religion, it's
| easy to assume that your amount is normal, and having
| more (if you don't feel like you have much) or less (if
| you do feel like you have a lot) is unusual.
|
| I don't have any experience living outside of the
| northeast (although not New England specifically since
| high school), but I definitely agree that there's
| certainly more religion in New England than might be
| obvious from the outside (more Catholic than the rest of
| the country, which also might explain some of the
| differences).
| jibe wrote:
| This boycott was run by Collective Shout, an Australian
| non-profit.
|
| They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were
| targeting rape, incest, and child abuse.
| actualwitch wrote:
| Its ridiculous that your comment that has factual
| information is downvoted while on top of you there's a
| bunch of comments going on random tangents not based at
| all on reality.
| hegstal wrote:
| One of the games they are also going after is Detroit:
| Become Human, and they have gone after things like GTA in
| the past. Just because they claim they are going after
| things for those reasons doesn't mean that's actually an
| accurate claim as to what they are trying to go after.
| Though it's good to point out who is actually
| (supposedly) responsible.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were
| targeting rape, incest, and child abuse.
|
| https://www.collectiveshout.org/campaigns includes a
| number of campaigns against porn in general, so yes, they
| absolutely are targeting all sex games - simulated rape,
| incest, and child abuse are merely their first victory.
| cess11 wrote:
| The US is largely theocratic and has in part because of
| this managed to resist socialism and other forms of
| scientific governance to a much larger degree.
|
| Using religious leaders as power brokers is a clever
| strategy, they'll never budge due to the better argument or
| scientific reason, hence making it almost impossible for
| non-violent progressive movements to having an effect at
| the macro level.
| 9dev wrote:
| Are you sure it's a good thing to be so small minded that
| reason won't reach you, just because you happened to
| avoid those big ideas that turned out to not work?
| Geee wrote:
| Lmao. Socialism is pseudo-scientific bollocks, like flat
| earth theory.
| alphager wrote:
| My healthcare, pension and workers protection proves you
| wrong.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Any not just pull off the bandaid and tell us you don't
| really understand what socialism is.
| mango7283 wrote:
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-
| force-V...
|
| Please explain.
|
| "In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-
| Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that
| were labeled as "adult" and did not have an age rating. To
| be able to offer them, the US company would have to
| integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam in
| Germany. Because Valve has not yet implemented such a
| system, sex games remain blocked in Germany. "
| atemerev wrote:
| Hm. Okay, you are right. Worse than I thought.
| irusensei wrote:
| One thing to notice is the group that claims responsibility
| for this is some kind of funky radfem puritan mixture from
| Australia. They campaigned against titles like GTA V, Detroit
| Become Human _AND_ abortion pills.
|
| Since they ran a campaign to ban GTA V from stores I can say
| for sure they are not stopping on fringe content like eroge
| porn shovelware.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| As usual, the actual "cancel culture" comes from the
| conservatives.
| docmars wrote:
| Collective Shout (who pushed for this) is not a
| conservative group, but rather a feminist activist group
| based in Australia.
|
| They're responsible for numerous other calls for bans
| against games like Detroit: Become Human, GTA, etc.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| This ban has nothing to do with the call to ban incestual
| rape games (which is what you refer to), but comes from
| MasterCard, which has a long story of puritan censorship.
|
| (It's clear in the article, btw).
| docmars wrote:
| Collective Shout is the activist group that put pressure
| on MasterCard to make this decision. They're claiming and
| celebrating the work they did to make this happen on
| their own X account.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| To be clear, these campaigns seem to be grounded in fear, not
| any sense of morality.
| krick wrote:
| I wonder how this type of pressuring can be made illegal. To
| be clear: I certainly think this has to be made illegal, and
| even attempt to coerce a payment network to force a business
| to do something should be a serious crime. If the product is
| not illegal, you can sell it, either on your platform, or on
| a third party platform (Steam), if the platfrom is ok with
| selling your product. It's arguable, but perfectly reasonable
| to say that Steam can also choose to not sell it if it
| doesn't want to. But then, of course, it doesn't seem like a
| huge leap to say that a payment network can choose to not
| handle transactions for some type of business if it doesn't
| want to. Sure, you can appeal to it being a de-facto
| monopoly, but isn't Steam a de-facto monopoly as well? I
| mean, I have some trouble formally drawing a line here, yet
| it clearly seems not right to me, that a payment network can
| choose at all if they want to handle this or not.
|
| And, as I said, attempt to apply pressure on a payment
| network, in order to apply pressure on its customer, in order
| to apply pressure on their customers... well, I think it's
| pretty obvious why this is a problem, and that things are not
| supposed to work this way.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't think it should be made illegal, it should be made
| impractical.
|
| One way would be to ensure proper competition in the
| payments space. If there were dozens of options then some
| of them would decide that it's a competitive advantage to
| ignore the busybodies and cater to people who want to buy
| this stuff. We see this at work with hosting. There's a
| multitude of options and it doesn't seem like adult sites
| have much trouble finding a host that will allow them, even
| if others might reject them.
|
| Another would be to regulate payment processors like common
| carriers and require them to serve everyone equally
| regardless. We see this model with the Post Office. As long
| as you're not sending something that will compromise the
| safety of the workers, they'll ship it.
| slt2021 wrote:
| VISA/MC duopoly have like 60% margins, they are
| essentially a rent seeking feudal lord on the entirety
| global commerce.
|
| Pure leeches, that are now engaged in censorship
| bgnn wrote:
| It shouldn't ve hard to replace them but any other new
| service (like Wise) end up issuing a Visa/MC card. Why
| can't we have an open protocol which works between any
| machine with NFC?
| wat10000 wrote:
| The trouble is that you either need cryptocurrency or you
| need some prearranged entity that both parties trust.
| With current credit cards, that prearranged entity is
| Visa/MC/Amex/Discover. I don't see cryptocurrency being
| practical for this use, or ever widely accepted even if
| somehow practical. Maybe the new FedNow could serve as
| that foundation with card processing built on top.
|
| But then you have issues like, what about disputes and
| fraud? With existing credit cards, buyer and seller have
| both agreed in advance to abide by certain rules. With an
| open standard, I as a buyer could stand up my own service
| that makes the payment and then retracts it, or if FedNow
| doesn't allow retracting payments then I as a seller
| could make one that refuses to refund the money and I can
| just not give the buyer their item. (And yeah, this is
| already illegal, but we see plenty of nefarious activity
| like this online anyway.)
| krick wrote:
| It would be great if it was impractical, but I still
| think it _has_ to be made illegal. I think it is not only
| "bad" because it's bad for Valve of whoever wants to sell
| or buy these games, this is "bad" on its own, because it
| is simply another elaborate form of blackmail. It is as
| close as it gets to violence without actually beating one
| up: you are forced to do something not because you are
| required by law or by nature, but because I want you do
| that, and I have power over you. This isn't a unique
| situation in that sense, of course, this pattern appears
| a lot in life. This one is unique only in that sense that
| it targets a very narrow bottleneck. If you have power to
| influence a payment system, and it has legal right to
| choose to write regulations like that, then you have
| power over virtually anyone and everyone. Lobbying a
| policy clause for Mastercard is basically as good (or
| maybe even better) than lobbying a law. Which, yes, is a
| problem on its own, but this problem is rather "an
| unfortunate situation" than a malicious act.
|
| Also, on the matter of the latter problem -- fixing that
| is much easier said than done. Cryptocurrencies in a way
| were an attempt to fix that, but governments around the
| world do not want _this_ problem to be fixed. And of
| course they don 't. The field is highly regulated,
| because, as I've said, having control over the payment
| network is not that very much different from having a
| physical army to physically beat you up.
|
| As an aside, I was especially surprised by:
|
| > We see this at work with hosting.
|
| Do we, though? It's another topic of course, but I
| actually share the sentiment that the current trend is
| the opposite one: good old days of the Free Web are gone,
| and the reality is that in the days of Gmail (and other
| major mail providers), Cloudflare (and other major CDNs)
| the Internet is inherently not a decentralized structure
| anymore. It takes a few powerful friends to reach an
| agreement with each other, and everyone else has to
| follow.
|
| So, anyway, what I had in mind was exactly that:
|
| > to regulate payment processors like common carriers and
| require them to serve everyone equally regardless
|
| But, as I've said, I don't quite see how to draw the line
| here. After all, it _would_ be somewhat unfair to payment
| networks to trip them from making any choices. Both
| because formally they _are_ just a business, not a
| commodity (which may actually be the root of the problem,
| I think), and they should have some right to choose how
| they want to operate; and also because different
| customers and products objectively carry different risks.
| So they _have_ to be able to produce some policies, these
| policies just have to... to be restricted to what 's
| necessary somehow.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Hosting is a very different landscape. Cloudflare and AWS
| and such are enormous and can exert a lot of control. But
| you can still ignore them and just do your own thing and
| it works fine. There are plenty of smaller cloud
| providers you can use instead. You can still colocate
| your own hardware in a data center. If nobody in your
| country wants your money, you can host your service in
| some other country that doesn't care so much about
| whatever morality is at issue.
|
| This demonstrably works. There are plenty of porn sites
| out there, plenty of pirate sites, plenty of places
| selling illegal stuff, even Wikileaks is still up.
|
| To your last paragraph, I think we can draw the line at
| "allow any transaction that you reasonably believe is
| actually authorized by the people who own the accounts."
| I don't care about being fair to payment networks. If
| we're going the regulatory route then we've decided that
| this stuff is critical infrastructure and the needs of
| the many etc. If individual people at the company don't
| like handling transaction for porn or whatever, they're
| free to find a new job. Different risks do make it
| trickier, but I think we can add some language to allow
| holding on to money for a certain period before paying it
| out, or requiring deposits, with some limits on what
| criteria they can use to make those determinations and
| how long/large the period/deposit can be.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Unfairness would be something to care about if it was a
| rich market with several small companies competing in it.
| It's not something to care about corporate monopolies.
|
| No, they should not have the right to choose how they
| want to operate. All those risks you mention only exist
| because they choose to keep them around as an excuse to
| why they are necessary. They refuse to modernize their
| systems so it works, and they should not be allowed to
| keep that option.
|
| (Honestly, IMO they should just be terminated and
| replaced by some public service. But if you want to keep
| them, they shouldn't have that kind of freedom.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| The pressure all counts under free speech. I don't think
| making it illegal to criticize a company for its customers
| is a good idea.
| markdown wrote:
| It's not just games.
|
| Payment processors ban many things that are completely legal,
| even foods and dietary supplements. It's ridiculous. They have
| too much power.
| tptacek wrote:
| I have no trouble seeing why a payment processor would want
| to avoid doing business with dietary supplement companies.
| maxbond wrote:
| I mean I wouldn't do business with them, I think the
| supplements industry is infrastructure for grifters,
| quacks, and pyramid schemes to fleece the desperate, but
| what's the problem for Visa? Is it a brand safety thing? My
| presumption would be that payment processors are amoral and
| have no problem processing payments for Consolidated Baby
| Kickers if it were legal to do so, is that a misconception?
| cperciva wrote:
| "Not as advertised" chargebacks. That industry is also
| full of subscription scams (e.g. someone thinks they're
| ordering a supplement for $5.99, but they're actually
| getting signed up for $39.99/month...).
| tptacek wrote:
| Also the products don't work!
| cperciva wrote:
| I don't think the credit card networks would care about
| that if it weren't for the risk of chargebacks. Credit
| card networks have no problem with processing payments
| for churches!
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, no, I'm just saying: that drives a lot of
| chargebacks.
| SXX wrote:
| > That industry is also full of subscription scams
|
| Visa / MC are the ones who enable subscription scams and
| benefit from them. They implemented "convinience" option
| of "updating" your credit card data with replacement
| card. So even if you cancel and replace card charges
| continue to pass.
|
| They also totally able to see all the places where your
| card been tokenised, but they dont push banks to expose
| this to you.
| cperciva wrote:
| In Canada at least, you can opt out of having your new
| card number shared when you replace a card.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| No issues buying Marlboro reds with the credit card of
| course.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Cigarette purchasers aren't filing chargebacks when their
| partner checks the billing history, claiming their card
| got stolen.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Are dietary supplement purchasers doing so?
| tptacek wrote:
| Extremely, infamously, yes.
| tptacek wrote:
| Have you ever returned a pack of cigarettes? They
| basically do what you expect them to do.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I figured the reason was not wanting to support something
| harmful to the customer like a fake diet pill. Call me
| naive for letting that assumption of even a glimmer of
| empathy affect my guestimation. I should have known it
| was pure greed all the way down and due to something like
| this instead.
| spauldo wrote:
| I would take pure greed over a company imposing its
| morals on me.
| herbst wrote:
| There are or have been rules about which colours a dildo can
| have.
|
| It definitely sounds like Christian morals being forced on
| us.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| If I remember correct from the hot money podcast
| https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...
| part of the problem for the credit card companies is figuring
| what are the boundaries of legality. Countries have very
| different laws. Things like representing homosexuality or age
| of consent are very different and credit cards feel that it is
| a risky business because of that.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| This makes little sense with even the tiniest amount of
| probing.
|
| This is a solvable geo regulation issue, solvable like many
| other geo regulatory issues
| noduerme wrote:
| My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason
| casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card
| processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under
| the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is
| operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it
| allows.
|
| Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose
| spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statement will
| lie and run chargebacks too.
|
| In the case of Valve, a lot of chargebacks would drastically
| increase the processing rates demanded by the payment providers
| for all transactions across the board, not just those related
| to adult games.
|
| There's probably a great market opportunity here for a game
| store focused on adult games and willing to take on that risk.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| That's the problem though. The risk means the market for
| those riskier credit transactions is literally categorically
| not a great market. You think JP Morgan gives a shit about
| Japanese titty games? Hah. No. They care that these games get
| charged back way more often.
|
| If there is a market opportunity, it's probably in a
| processor for debit-based transactions that are harder to
| reverse. But then that makes fraud harder to combat, and one
| of the reasons everyone loves credit cards so much is because
| consumers are far more confident to buy from random shops if
| they know they can always get their money back if the shop
| scams them.
|
| So - this whole system's lucratively is entirely predicated
| on easy credit and low risk meaning low fees. Anyone who
| wants to play in the mud that's leftover by these companies
| taking the good business are inherently playing a low margin
| risky game.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| With the CFPB under threat, there may be room for payment
| processors which don't protect consumers from fraud.
| (Regulation is only as strong as its enforcement)
| mafuy wrote:
| Might be a good idea. This is so curious.
|
| The US has a weird fetish with privatizing things that
| the government should handle, like consumer protection.
| If there were a reasonably robust infrastructure for this
| outside of payment processors in the US, there would be
| far less pressure on porn providers to comply with fucked
| up morals about porn. What we have here is an instance of
| late stage capitalism, and half the people are too
| narrowminded to see how it hurts their freedom.
| noduerme wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. Late stage capitalism would
| involve the government bailing out credit card companies
| if there were fraud. I kind of prefer for them to deal
| with it themselves. And whether they deal with fraud
| themselves _or_ the government does, they 're going to
| classify certain types of transactions as riskier than
| others. My point was that this is probably not a "moral"
| decision, just a business decision. It would be a lot
| worse if it were the government mandating it, and worse
| still if they were mandating it because it conflicted
| with the moral code of some plurality of voters. That's
| not the case here, and I'm glad it's not. I wouldn't want
| the government to control consumer protection to the
| degree that voters in Texas could decide whether to
| protect certain consumers or not.
| root_axis wrote:
| Not a wise business model. Enforcement can return at any
| time if the political winds shift.
| noduerme wrote:
| Yes, and it's been tried before. LibertyCoin, I think.
|
| Write a Steam knockoff platform that's trustworthy enough
| for people to download, and load it up with dirty games.
| Put the premium on the customers if they want to use
| credit card transactions, otherwise push them towards
| crypto payments. Maybe you won't be an oligarch, but
| you'll probably end up with a reasonably sized yacht.
|
| [edit] hell, in a few years if the winds shift you might
| be DraftKings.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Write a Steam knockoff platform that's trustworthy
| enough for people to download, and load it up with dirty
| games. Put the premium on the customers if they want to
| use credit card transactions, otherwise push them towards
| crypto payments.
|
| Easier said than done. It is hard to earn trust....you
| would probably need to jumpstart the platform with quite
| a few indie devs so people start trusting the site and
| using it.
| noduerme wrote:
| I remember having to redo all the art for a game because
| Apple's store rejected it. Six months. It would have been
| more fun with the original art. I'm sure there's many an
| indie dev in the same position who'd love a gray market
| for putting up games like that.
| noduerme wrote:
| I wouldn't scoff at the leftovers. You're talking about
| maybe a trillion dollar industry that struggles to find
| payment solutions. This is why I gave up on credit card
| processing for my startup casino in 2010 and just went to
| taking Bitcoin and other crypto. I originally planned to
| just take Visa. I wasn't looking to skirt the law. Card
| companies are looking out for themselves, and they don't
| really even need regulatory capture to shaft anyone running
| a business that the public could consider shady or immoral.
| There's plenty of demand out there, and in my opinion
| they're leaving money on the table. But their business
| model makes it difficult to take on the risk, _especially_
| in the case of something like Valve where they can 't pick
| each transaction apart and evaluate the risk separately. So
| yeah... a globally accepted porn and gambling card? That
| would be a home run if the bills showed up never to
| someone's spouse, and it won't happen. Using a combination
| of crypto and higher CC fees to sell the content, though,
| there's a lot of pent-up demand.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >This is why I gave up on credit card processing for my
| startup casino in 2010 and just went to taking Bitcoin
| and other crypto.
|
| And how many customers you lost in 2010 because of that?
| Probably more than 90%. Even now people are reluctant to
| use crypto but tbh crypto crowd is so big that you can
| perhaps succeed in opening crypto only business.
| noduerme wrote:
| Yes, about 90%. I would have had maybe the 6th or 7th
| biggest online casino in the world - let's say that my
| software was about 5th (somewhere between Galewind and
| Microgaming) - but I ended up being one which catered
| only to early adopters of cryptocurrency, who were not
| necessarily gamblers on roulette or blackjack but had
| nothing better to do with their coins. It was an
| interesting experience, and it didn't leave me as wealthy
| as I could have been if the barriers to entering the
| larger market hadn't already been negotiated between CC
| companies and governments. That said, at least I'm not in
| prison like a lot of people who followed and tried to do
| what I did.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Does Valve actually have a high risk of chargebacks? I was
| under the impression that moreso than other platforms, most
| Valve customers would rather go through Valve's own refund
| system. I understand that chargebacks is supposedly the
| reason for adult-only platforms.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The owner of a stolen number is going to use a chargeback.
| Arrowmaster wrote:
| Chargebacks of legitimate purchases on most large platforms
| are extremely rare. Most will be from stolen cards. On most
| large platforms, if you start a chargeback you can expect
| your account to get locked. Do you want to give up your
| entire account just for a refund on one purchase? Luckily
| these large platforms typically have their own refund
| process.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Chargebacks of legitimate purchases on most large
| platforms are extremely rare. Most will be from stolen
| cards.
|
| I never used ecommerce back in the day on the internet
| but I can imagine that ecommerce fraud was widespread.
| And that's why excluding other reasons Satoshi invented
| Bitcoin[0].
|
| I wonder if cryptocurrencies didn't exist would someone
| nowadays burn the midnight oil to figure out P2P crypto
| coin since modern payment solutions are fairly good.
|
| Tbh I think Satoshi invented technology around which he
| wanted to build products unlike Steve Jobs who said that
| you first need to figure out the product then build
| technology.
|
| [0] "Completely non-reversible transactions are not
| really possible, since financial institutions cannot
| avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases
| transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical
| transaction size and cutting off the possibility for
| small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in
| the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for
| nonreversible services. With the possibility of reversal,
| the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of
| their customers, hassling them for more information than
| they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud
| is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment
| uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical
| currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a
| communications channel without a trusted party"
| https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
| Levitz wrote:
| I don't see how this makes any sense. A reason _for_ the
| creation of Bitcoin was offering _less_ service than
| traditional methods?
|
| "Financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes"
| is nonsense, they "can't" because it's constantly
| demanded by their clients, attempting to sell that as a
| bug rather than a feature is preposterous.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Satoshi wanted to bypass banks and make P2P direct
| payments with no trusted party besides Bitcoin protocol
| hence >no mechanism exists to make payments over a
| communications channel without a trusted party
|
| And crypto community speculated that Satoshi or team
| behind Bitcoin worked at the internet gambling industry
| and what use to happen is that angry customers would
| chargeback the money they lost at the internet casino and
| cause numerous problems for "merchants" or in this case
| internet entrepreneurs.
| supertrope wrote:
| Yes. Steam used to have card declines if your address did
| not match exactly.
|
| Card not present was and still is higher risk than in
| person shopping. Now that most US customers have chip cards
| in their wallets fraud has shifted from in person to CNP.
| Digital goods are high risk because a customer could
| theoretically download and enjoy the digital good or save a
| copy and then chargeback. There's no shipping tracking
| number to prove delivery. Or a fraudster could go on a
| spending spree from the comfort of their home in another
| country. Adult-only games are even higher risk because a
| customer might have to explain to a spouse what the Steam
| charges were for.
|
| Of course copy protection and the prospect of a ban of
| their whole Steam account blunts the most obvious customer
| cheating of keeping a copy and charging back. Steam games
| cannot be resold. Digital goods that can be easily resold
| are magnets for fraud. Such as cloud GPUs or international
| long distance calls.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Sorry, I should clarify my question: does Valve actually
| face a significantly increased risk of chargebacks if it
| should be more liberal in its adult game rules.
|
| I suppose that if consumer behavior is to have their adult
| game purchases and conventional game purchases on separate
| accounts, and the Steam platform allows for that, then that
| may be so.
| Hamuko wrote:
| These days Steam allows hiding games from your public
| profile by marking them as "private", meaning that people
| can't see that you own the game and can't see that you
| are playing the game (which is presumably what you would
| want if you were a fan of "Sex Adventures - Incest Family
| - Episode 9"). I imagine this is good enough for people
| so that they won't bother having a separate Steam account
| just for porn games, as having a single account is more
| convenient. There's a reason why people hate having
| multiple game launchers on PC.
|
| https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1150-C06F-4D62
| -49...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Often it's because of secret government requirements.
|
| Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point .
|
| Somehow, it's forbidden for the government to oppress
| pornographers directly, but it's perfectly fine to impose
| legal sanctions on banks who maintain business relationships
| with them.
| thallium205 wrote:
| This is the correct answer. There are many merchant
| categories, adult being just one of them, that are
| susceptible to high chargeback rates which result in payment
| processors banning them.
| kergonath wrote:
| This is nonsense. If you want us to believe this you need
| to show that Steam with erotic games is more of a risk than
| Steam without them. Comparing Steam with things like "adult
| merchants" like Onlyfans or a porn streaming service does
| not sound very appropriate.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's not nonsense. I've hosted, moderated and managed
| sites that were only obliquely related to porn or
| gambling, and you wouldn't believe the level of rejection
| for running ads or getting payment processing that they
| are faced with. And I _ran a casino_ for 4 years. I coded
| it and I ran it 24 /7, and believe me, I did everything
| by the book. The CC companies do not give a shit as long
| as they make money. Chargebacks cost them a lot in time
| more than in actual cash, and they have categories of
| risk for every merchant who may expose them to that risk.
| The highest categories of risk are porn and gambling.
|
| _Any_ entity that uses a CC gateway and has _any_
| exposure to either of those risks is exposing itself to
| _all_ the risk. The CC companies almost certainly told
| Valve that they would be considered a porn site and face
| a 1.5%-2% higher processing fee for every transaction.
|
| No nonsense involved, that's how it works.
| fn-mote wrote:
| 1. Thank you for the first hand experience post.
|
| 2. I think the argument being made is that the credit
| card companies are not actually experiencing higher risk
| (from Steam). Not that they have any qualms about putting
| a business into a "high risk" classification.
|
| In this case, I suppose the argument is that Steam is a
| large enough entity that they should be able to "self-
| insure". If the US had a relatively open way to become a
| payment processor, the free market would take care of
| this. Unfortunately that isn't the case and also is very
| unlikely to change.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > that's how it works. On Steam specifically? But nothing
| you said shows proves that.
|
| Valve already has a very generous refund policy and a
| chargeback would likely result in your account being
| banned.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I've hosted, moderated and managed sites that were only
| obliquely related to porn or gambling, and you wouldn't
| believe the level of rejection for running ads or getting
| payment processing that they are faced with. And I ran a
| casino for 4 years. I coded it and I ran it 24/7, and
| believe me, I did everything by the book. The CC
| companies do not give a shit as long as they make money.
|
| It is not really comparable. Steam is not a casino, and
| it is largely the same platform with or without perfectly
| legal porn. The presence of a few (not even that popular)
| adult games does not change the overall demographics that
| much, or the risk profile. I am not even ready to accept
| without proof that the risks are higher than with all the
| other, non-porn shovelware.
|
| Sure, if Steam turned into an adult-only platform, then
| the risk profile could change significantly. But that is
| not what happened.
|
| Also, as many people pointed out, Steam really does not
| incentive customers to ask for chargebacks. All the
| available information points to Valve managing its
| platform quite well for everyone involved.
| delusional wrote:
| Isn't it a little odd that Visa/Master isn't out there making
| that argument? Why would we assume them having the best of
| intentions of they aren't even willing to argue those
| intentions themselves?
| noduerme wrote:
| They don't need to make an argument for anything. They tell
| Valve: "Hey, if 1% of your transactions are for smut and
| incur smut-level-chargebacks, we're going to just treat all
| your transactions as smut", and Valve says, "no problem,
| we'll pull those games." It's not like Valve stands to
| profit by holding the line for free speech here or
| something. Valve gives as little a shit about an indie porn
| game as it does about anything else. Honestly, why should
| they pay the extra percentage across the board to defend it
| anyway? This is why I'm saying a separate X-rated platform
| would get a lot of traction.
| soysaucy wrote:
| But can't they just block buying those games with visa/mc
| and only allow using steam wallet credit? Some Japanese
| sites have been having these issues for a while and
| that's what they ended up doing (or just closing shop
| entirely).
| alexp2021 wrote:
| That would be a nice solution.
| noduerme wrote:
| I guess that would be the logical thing to do. There's
| probably some synergy at work. If these games could be
| widely promoted, maybe their average value to Valve would
| be $10k each or something. Instead, they probably net
| 1/10th of that before they drop off the radar completely.
| Building in a sub-system that guarantees that certain
| games can only be bought with certain methods of payment
| seems like a pain in the ass. However, they could do it.
| And that sort of argues against the idea that you'd be
| building yourself any kind of moat by setting up a game
| platform for just the XXX stuff.
| delusional wrote:
| How would Visa/Master know? Steam doesn't include
| information about which games are purchased in the
| receipt (at least as far as I know). Unless they have
| some sort of back-channel they wouldn't know what's being
| charged back.
|
| If Valve was getting a complaint from Visa/Master about
| charge back rates of certain games, I believe they'd be
| more forthcoming with that information. What we're seeing
| here is more consistent with Visa/Master taking offense
| with what the platform offers.
|
| In either case, I find the lack of communication from
| Visa/Master deafening. If Visa/Master was seeing high
| chargeback rates from incest games on steam. Why would
| they not eagerly offer that data?
| bloqs wrote:
| itch.io already serves this purpose no?
| noduerme wrote:
| I guess so. I haven't spent that much time checking out the
| darker corners of it. I wonder what their situation is with
| the credit card companies.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Visa/MC still make a decent amount of money on chargebacks -
| the fee is $15 or so, of which the platform keeps a big
| chunk.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I suspect Valve is blaming the credit card companies for
| something they really wanted for themselves. Steam is a big
| store open to everyone and you're going to scare away a big
| chunk of seniors, Christians, etc with stuff like incest,
| ageplay, and rape just so that a small minority uses you
| instead of...itch.io? Better to keep the big safe names like
| Being a Dik and Eternum on Steam and flush the rest so that you
| can have the best of both worlds.
| maxbond wrote:
| I think that for better or worse Valve is genuinely committed
| to lassies faire moderation, they have historically been very
| hesitant to remove really heinous games. I don't think
| they're using this as cover.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| That changed with Hatred in 2015. There have been a number
| of them since. It seems that anything that gives Valve bad
| press is on its shit list, even if the premise theme has
| been done before by a bigger or more well-known company
| stateside. If the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game has full
| frontal nudity and realistically depicted sex scenes, I
| doubt Valve would give it a second look.
| maxbond wrote:
| That was ten years ago, there have been tons of really
| objectionable games on Steam in recent years. Eg I just
| checked and the game where you roleplay as Kyle
| Rittenhouse shooting protestors is still on Steam.
|
| Per Wikipedia:
|
| > [ _Hatred_ ] was shortly removed by Valve from their
| Steam Greenlight service due to its extremely violent
| content but was later brought back with a personal
| apology from [Valve's co-founder] Gabe Newell.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Valve made the conscious choice to allow porn games in the
| first place, they knew what they were getting into imo
| theshackleford wrote:
| > I suspect
|
| Based upon what evidence?
| presentation wrote:
| The USA is extremely litigious, rules are decided not by the
| legislature usually but instead by people suing each other to
| establish case law, and anyone with a bone to pick could sink
| you in legal fees and proceedings at a whim. So probably people
| who don't like the idea of adult content can use the courts to
| make payment processors' lives painful and they decide to just
| forgo that business.
|
| US courts are too easy to use as a tool of abuse.
| dahart wrote:
| This is an oft-repeated misconception. Germany is almost
| twice as litigious as the US. Sweden and Austria are also
| more litigious than the US.
|
| > anyone with a bone to pick could sink you in legal fees and
| proceedings at a whim
|
| This is FUD, not reality. While it's "possible" for anyone in
| any country to try to sue, it simply doesn't happen in the US
| more often than elsewhere. The relatively high number of US
| lawsuits are filled with corporate litigation, contract
| disputes, bankruptcy filings, car accidents, and appeals,
| among many other things, and not people suing each other for
| minor grievances.
|
| "Coffee spills, Pokemon class actions, tobacco settlements.
| American courts have made a name for themselves as a wild
| lottery and a money machine for lucky few lawyers. At least
| in part, however, the reputation is unfounded. American
| courts seem to handle routine contract and tort disputes as
| well as their peers in other wealthy democracies.
|
| "More generally, Americans do not file an unusually high
| number of law suits. They do not employ large numbers of
| judges or lawyers. They do not pay more than people in
| comparable countries to enforce contracts. And they do not
| pay unusually high prices for insurance against routine
| torts.
|
| "Instead, American courts have made the bad name for
| themselves by mishandling a few peculiar categories of law
| suits. In this article, we use securities class actions and
| mass torts to illustrate the phenomenon, but anyone who reads
| a newspaper could suggest alternatives.
|
| "The implications for reform are straightforward: focus not
| on the litigation as a whole; focus on the specifically
| mishandled types of suits."
|
| http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/R.
| ..
| guidedlight wrote:
| Another factor is that credit providers (i.e. banks) are
| increasingly using customer transaction data to assess customer
| behaviour as part of its risk scoring.
|
| If a customer is regularly purchasing adult material that would
| be definitely be a red flag.
| chao- wrote:
| A red flag of what?
| supertrope wrote:
| Defaulting on their credit card bill. Or the account ends
| up having been started by an identity fraudster. Which also
| ends in default.
| jrflowers wrote:
| That seems backward. The people I've known that spend a
| lot of money on adult entertainment are _exactly_ the
| group that pays their bills.
| SXX wrote:
| This. I dont know who do you need to be in order to pay
| for the porn that you can pirate for free. In case of
| games or music or movies there is collecting and
| convinience, but porn is pretty much opposite.
|
| But at the same time chance of "oops it's not mine"
| charbacks likely much higher compared to other spending.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Then why would they want to stop getting these red flags?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Red flag for what?
|
| A regular purchaser of adult entertainment almost certainly
| has enough cash flow to pay their bills. And they'll have a
| hard time claiming it's not them when it matches their
| previous activity. Having an interest in sex doesn't in the
| slightest suggest a person is bad--if anything, the apparent
| lack of interest would be more worrisome. (Not that purchase
| history can be used to discern this.) Some of the ones who
| don't are asexuals, but some are those who are repressing
| their sexuality--and that's more likely to show up in
| unacceptable ways.
|
| A first time purchaser of adult entertainment is another
| matter--that's going to have a lot of spouse-found-out
| chargebacks.
| bitwize wrote:
| It could be a holdover from Operation Choke Point, an Obama-
| administration arm-twisting initiative that would subject banks
| to more regulatory scrutiny and possible disciplinary action if
| they did business with certain "high-risk businesses" including
| firearm and pornography sellers. Ostensibly the initiative was
| ended in 2017, but banks are probably still afraid to be handed
| the black spot for doing business with the "wrong" sorts of
| people.
| nullc wrote:
| > Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some
| regulation that requires them to?
|
| Generally no, but they exist in a regulatory morass where it's
| impossible to do what they do without arguably or perhaps
| technically being in violation of hundreds of regulations at
| any given time.
|
| The US government then uses their power to selectively enforce
| the voluminous mess of bad regulations to coerce parties to
| undertake actions which it would be flatly illegal for the
| government to perform directly such as cutting off sexually
| explicit content from payment rails.
|
| e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
|
| The practice isn't limited to payment processors but they're a
| particularly good vector given the level of regulation they're
| subjected to. Choke Point (and Choke point 2) are just specific
| examples of a general tactic to end run around the public's
| rights that has been used by the US government for decades. In
| most cases the abuse isn't so well organized that it has a
| project name you can point at.
|
| Congress and the whitehouse leaning on social media companies
| to suppress lawful opinions on covid policy is another example
| of that kind of abuse that has received some public scrutiny.
| Most cases, however, go without notice particularly since the
| ultimate victims of the actions generally have no way to know
| the cause.
| kwar13 wrote:
| See Bill Ackman and his crusade against PornHub.
| herbst wrote:
| Just one of the ways the US forces it's weird morals onto the
| world.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Sexual self-denial always was the driving force behind the
| western cultural success. You can not have hyper-
| specialization and rule of law, without some members of
| society sacrificing a "normal" life.
|
| From the monk in the monastry to Turing hyper-focused on an
| enigma there is clear line. Its a ugly recipe, but its
| working, unlike all those other societies out there, who are
| currently eating themselves. A judge doesn't dress like a
| priest for no reason.
|
| Sexual caste slavery or anarchy- thats the choices.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| > You can not have hyper-specialization and rule of law,
| without some members of society sacrificing a "normal"
| life.
|
| Sex freaks hyper specialize in things all the time. Monks
| and priests also had reputations as horny perverts in
| Medieval literature. Also, there are plenty of non-Western
| countries that have been functional. This is such an out of
| touch, ahistorical take.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Also, there are plenty of non-Western countries that
| have been functional.
|
| And there are plenty of western countries that do not
| work like that, as well.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Sexual self-denial always was the driving force behind
| the western cultural success.
|
| It is a feature of a subset of the culture in some
| countries. It is far less universal as you say.
|
| > You can not have hyper-specialization and rule of law,
| without some members of society sacrificing a "normal"
| life.
|
| This really does not follow. How does the existence of laws
| prevent someone to live a normal life? In a liberal
| democracy, laws fundamentally guarantee that we can do so,
| as long as someone's fundamental individual freedom does
| not cause unacceptable harm to someone else. In that
| framework, what we do in private with consenting adults is
| absolutely nobody's business. Rule of law does not change
| this.
|
| > From the monk in the monastry to Turing hyper-focused on
| an enigma there is clear line.
|
| What line is this? In which way was Turing's persecution a
| requirement for him being a genius? How do we benefit from
| him killing himself instead of leaving him be and make
| other contributions to our intellectual development?
|
| > It's an ugly recipe, but it's working, unlike all those
| other societies out there, who are currently eating
| themselves.
|
| It is not. What you are advocating is a theocracy and there
| are many examples in History and around the world that show
| that it is a terrible idea.
|
| > A judge doesn't dress like a priest for no reason.
|
| All I can say is LOL. Ceremonial clothing is more nuanced
| than that.
|
| > Sexual caste slavery or anarchy- thats the choices.
|
| The fact that you only see these possibilities says a lot
| more about you than the way human beings work.
| rendall wrote:
| It's fun when posters inadvertently reveal far more about
| themselves than whatever they are discussing, such as
| "Western cultural success" as here.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| > Turing hyper-focused on an enigma
|
| I don't know if he had major active relationships
| specifically while working on Enigma (other than the short
| engagement to Joan Clarke in 1941), but Turing famously
| _did_ have sexual relationships since the discovery of one
| eventually led to criminal prosecution of both him and his
| partner, his chemical castration and eventually possibly
| suicide.
|
| Paul Erdos might be a better example, though I don't think
| he was deliberately self-denying and more just a huge
| oddball. Newton also never showed much interest,
| apparently, though an engagement was rumoured.
|
| Many of the biggest and best-known brains in maths,
| engineering, physics and computing did marry: as a quick
| random survey: Euler, Chandrasekhar, Faraday, Maxwell,
| Watt, Babbage, Einstein, Dijkstra, Wiles, Hopper, Hamilton,
| Knuth, even Ramanujan and the Woz (4 times, even).
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This BTW is 100% the reason why americans still perform
| circumcison and still radically cling to it.
|
| Men must have their sexuality attacked and stymed from the
| very beginning of birth, or else they will waste their
| brain power on promiscuity. That's the only thinking anyway
| that explains why over half this country still circumcises.
|
| Kant and I think Newton were famously virgins and a whole
| lot of moral crusaders in this world get extremely angry at
| the idea that people in this world have enjoyable sexual
| relations. A lot of people want a lot more sexual
| frustration to exist in this world, as it's good for
| capitalist exploitation.
| spauldo wrote:
| That's absolutely not the reason. It started out that
| way, sure, but it's not why it's done now.
|
| It's done now out of basic tradition (father is
| circumcised, so son is too), conformity (his peers are
| all circumcised, we don't want him made fun of), doctor
| advice (fewer infections, easier to keep clean), and
| plain old cultural inertia. It's slowly dying out but I
| expect it to stick around another several decades.
| docmars wrote:
| This originated from an Australian-based feminist activist
| group called "Collective Shout", who put pressure on the
| payment processors to censor digital content.
|
| They claimed it as their own victory on X this week.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Control. People get a kick out of controlling others and
| stopping them doing things that don't effect them in any way.
| It's like how being a practising gay was illegal or how using
| certain drugs still is.
| johnisgood wrote:
| So true. People love meddling into other people's lives,
| control their actions, etc.
| irusensei wrote:
| I think the biggest issue here is that somewhere down the line
| we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for
| crime and terrorism. Our governments and regulators punish
| those institutions for "not doing enough" to prevent such
| things from happening.
|
| You might think I'm defending the multibillion company but here
| comes the catch: all of this is expensive so when you are doing
| something funky even though not illegal they just cut you out.
| You are a small dev or merchant and it's not worth running a
| whole monitoring apparatus over your activities.
|
| Then we get into this situation where borderline cartel
| activity like this happens and we have a sort of shadow
| government enacting their own regulations. This raises some
| eyebrows dont you think? It will probably continue until
| governments realize this is happening.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| The responsibility ended up with payment processors and other
| financial institutions because otherwise they would be forced
| to give access to all their customer / transaction data to
| governments and law enforcement.
|
| I really wish we had a push for payment neutrality. Financial
| transactions are infrastructure and infrastructure should be
| dumb and neutral. Why does everyone have to suffer slow and
| expensive transfers just to maybe occasionally catch some bad
| guys (and they're not actually caught, just mildly
| inconvenienced)? And of course once you're already doing it,
| there's inevitably overreach, as evidenced by Visa here.
|
| And before someone chimes in about how crypto will solve
| this: yes, crypto has already solved this for the criminal
| class. But most of the rest of people still have to suffer
| all the fincrime policing every time they move money or pay
| for something.
| irusensei wrote:
| > and they're not actually caught, just mildly
| inconvenienced
|
| I read somewhere that criminal organizations and
| individuals love KYC and AML because they have the
| resources to go around it and it makes their operations
| look legit.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| As a generalisation it seems sensible that it should be
| illegal to knowingly handle illegal things and the proceeds
| of illegal things.
|
| It's hard to say that it's ok to profit from someone else's
| crime.
|
| If I sell you a bike cheap, no questions asked, then you
| ought be as culpable as me as you don't have reasonable doubt
| that it's stolen. Etc.
|
| This can be weaponised. The lobbies go after visa and
| Mastercard etc by giving the company "proof" that same
| transactions are very illegal, eg leaks or underage or duress
| etc. This forces them in the position of being complicit
| which means they have to step back.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, but there should be a concept of what level of
| scrutiny is warranted. Pornhub had a legitimate problem in
| that in permitting user content they made it extremely hard
| to keep their system from being used for improper purposes
| (underage, revenge.) But neither would I expect any system
| to be 100%. Should you have known? If so, you're wrong.
| Things look reasonable? No fault.
| irusensei wrote:
| Pornhub issue involved real exploitation of real people.
| Gaming characters are not real. I would think this is as
| reasonable as it can be.
|
| The content might be illegal in some countries and thats
| fair if we can assume the people who pushed for these
| rules were voted for. No one voted for Visa and
| Mastercard.
| schappim wrote:
| > we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing
| for crime and terrorism
|
| Mirrors what Marc Andreessen said on Lex's podcast.
|
| The problem isn't just regulatory overreach, it's delegated
| enforcement w/out accountability.
|
| Financial institutions are now playing judge and jury, not
| because they want to, but because the cost of scrutiny or
| punishment is too high.
|
| It's soft censorship by infrastructure...
| xcf_seetan wrote:
| >we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing
| for crime and terrorism
|
| Maybe is time to do a reboot of the economy, what about
| everyone goes to the bank and withdraw all their money, and
| when everybody has his money, we put the money back in the
| bank? Would be funny to see how banks would react :)
| jgilias wrote:
| That's literally impossible. There's not enough cash in the
| system for that.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Who runs Mastercard, are they linked to some American prudes?
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > Is there some regulation that requires them to?
|
| There isn't. Even worse, there's no legislation prohibited them
| from doing so.
|
| Payment processors (eg: Mastercard, Visa) are the ultimate
| deciders of whether you can sell something online or not,
| regardless of whether it is legal.
|
| They haven't just blocked adult content, they've also blocked
| non-profits with which they disagree in the past.
|
| We need much stronger legislation around this. Private entities
| shouldn't be capable of deciding that a given organisation
| can't charge online. Only institutions which represent the
| public's interests should have this level of influence.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| > Some of these games seem completely abhorrent
|
| Why would you consider those abhorrent while games where you
| can slaughter people, or commit all kinds of crimes like any
| random GTA, are widely considered normal?
|
| I'll never understand American morals. What's clear is that we
| need non-US payment processors so that the values of a given
| culture aren't imposed worldwide.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Say what you want about crypto, but it does solve this
| problem at least.
| munksbeer wrote:
| Yes, stable-coins do. But if you have a crypto where the
| entire point seems to be "it should be worth more tomorrow
| than today", then it is stupid to use it to transact in
| rather than to hoard.
|
| On the other hand, stable-coins suffer the same problems as
| visa. They're centralised, and subject to zealous
| regulations.
| mritterhoff wrote:
| I expect my index funds to be worth more tomorrow than
| today (on average), but still manage to pay for things
| with USD.
|
| If buying, selling and transacting fees are low enough, I
| don't see why bitcoin's (to pick one) value changes would
| matter much.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| > They're centralised, and subject to zealous
| regulations.
|
| The currency wouldn't have to meet any particular
| definition of a stablecoin as long as it is inflationary.
| It could be exactly like Bitcoin but with a different
| mining algorithm.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It doesn't "solve" the problem, it's just not regulated the
| same way. If governments decided to extend the same
| regulations to crypto transactions, what recourse would a
| person have?
| tavavex wrote:
| I'm not some crypto evangelist, but as far as I know,
| crypto at its foundation is a lot less "watertight" in
| terms of ascertaining who is who. Your government could
| pass laws to pressure your local money-to-crypto exchange
| service into complying with whatever regulation is
| needed. But they can't force the entire network of crpyto
| transactions to have real names tied to accounts, demand
| reasons for payment, discriminate based on what's being
| paid for, etc. So, circumventing payment processors'
| "grassroots" self-moderation requires finding a way to
| bypass basically the entire payment pipeline.
| Circumventing a hypothetical highly-regulated crypto
| environment just requires finding a way to sneak your
| money into the system. And there will probably be foreign
| or grey market services that don't care about what your
| specific country thinks.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| Europeans thought they had finally gotten rid of the Puritans
| when the Mayflower set sail. But four centuries later their
| overzealous character still haunts them.
| docmars wrote:
| Get this - they power the payments infrastructure for OnlyFans,
| which to many people is arguably more degenerate than a few
| adult-themed games.
|
| People can also buy TV shows and movies in which their content
| is far more grusome and disturbing than the video-games
| targeted by the activist groups putting pressure on payment
| processors.
|
| I noticed someone else posted a list of other groups, but
| another one is called "Collective Shout", who censors their own
| ads because their subject matter is considered harmful.
| canibal wrote:
| Aside from the moral clamor, if something has a higher
| likelihood of fraud, there's a direct relationship with the
| increase of its cost. Both legal fees and labor cost to deal
| with these claims could add up more than we outsiders may
| realize. It's very possible that some risk-averse analyst "ran
| the numbers", and decided this wasn't worth it. I would also
| speculate that there may be a certain hidden coat of false
| fraud claims. Certain folks buying something in the moment,
| then shamefully claiming they didn't after the fact, which in
| turn could carry the costs associated with processing a new
| card & number or conversely fighting false claims.
|
| As for the morality angle though, while I definitely agree that
| these companies' main motivation has to be increasing revenue
| and profit, and that their only reason for doing anything is
| cost-driven; you never know what middle-manager who is swayed
| by what belief is actually making these decisions. So as much
| as the monolithic goal of the organization is more money, there
| are still emotional (and financially fallible) people pulling
| the levers.
| nemomarx wrote:
| The fraud thing explains why they might avoid an entirely
| adult storefront for it, but for steam? who has their own
| refund policies and support system that presumably shields
| the payment processor from charge backs most of the time?
|
| There are also large anti porn lobbying groups applying
| pressure to the payment processors, so that angle creates
| costs in a different way.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Steam's refund policy and support system doesn't eliminate
| the possibility of someone buying on steam with their CC
| and then calling their CC and claiming fraud.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I think they'd rather overcorrect than risk reputational damage
| Krasnol wrote:
| The Thielesque climate in the US will grow even more of those
| scams while simultaneously destroying the justice apparatus.
|
| Cyberpunk is coming for us.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The US government has deputized payment processors to impose
| restrictions on commerce when it suits them.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| "Completely abhorrent" is subjective. If you want it banned,
| show me the victims that would be saved. Otherwise, what
| happens behind closed doors is none of our business.
|
| And the legality of them--we still have obscenity statutes on
| the books. Garbage as far as I'm concerned, but they're still
| there.
| t0lo wrote:
| How can you not see the pattern yet? They've been putting the
| industry into deliberate managed decline for the last 2 years.
| Simply because it made people happy and that is a threat to the
| valueless deeducated world that they are trying to impose.
| Covingtastic wrote:
| Honestly, this whole Visa/Mastercard control thing feels a lot
| like realizing you've been following rules that don't really fit
| you. It's tough to break out of it. But FedNow is an interesting
| option. It lets banks move money instantly, 24/7, with no card
| networks involved, so less hassle with the content policing. It's
| not a magic fix (still early days, only works in the US), but it
| shows there's another way if you're willing to step outside the
| old patterns. Sometimes that's what you need to actually move
| forward. And no I'm not a Fednow shill. Has anyone tried Kagi
| btw? ;)
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Look. Ignore the content. Why the fuck do we allow credit card
| companies have a say in how we spend our money?
|
| Fraud? Abuse? Fine, let me put cash onto a card and if that card
| gets stolen, oh well, my loss. Mastercard should have no say in
| what what speech is considered acceptable outside of their
| offices. We don't care what execs at a water company think? Why
| do we care about the people at Mastercard?
| hungmung wrote:
| It's because Visa got sued, lost, and it was found out they
| knowingly processed payments for illegal adult content, so they
| basically avoid the sector entirely now. _Economist_ had an
| article about it maybe two years ago and came to much the same
| conclusion you did. IIRC, the failure in their mind was
| government not stepping in to make a law so things are less
| ambiguous in the future. Now payment processing cos get to gate
| keep people 's speech, which means everything is basically a
| civil suit away from getting blacklisted.
| braiamp wrote:
| > It's because Visa got sued, lost, and it was found out they
| knowingly processed payments for illegal adult content
|
| Got any source for that? What they got sued for? Aiding human
| trafficking?
| driscoll42 wrote:
| It's not quite that specific, but close enough:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/business/dealbook/pornhu
| b...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/08/california-
| court...
|
| >This week, US District Judge Cormac Carney of the US
| District Court of the Central District of California
| decided that there's reason to believe that Visa knowingly
| processed payments that allowed MindGeek to monetize "a
| substantial amount of child porn." To decide, the court
| wants to know much more about Visa's involvement, calling
| for more evidence of legal harms caused during a
| jurisdictional discovery process extended through December
| 30, 2022.
|
| According to Court Listener, the case is still ongoing -
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59992265/serena-
| fleites...
| aranelsurion wrote:
| I wonder what are the odds of Visa being succesfully sued for
| processing payments to such a huge brand like Steam.
|
| Steam has its virtual wallet and marketplace as well, so Visa
| is twice removed from where the money will actually go once
| it enters Steam ecosystem.
|
| Even as an abundance of caution, this doesn't make sense to
| me.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Seems rather weird that Visa out of all the parties involved
| got hit by this, that's like suing the national bank for
| printing cash currency that gets used in illegal ways? Or
| suing the pavement for allowing a heist getaway car to drive
| away. Or the gas station where they last filled it up.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Because they are on the hook for fraudulent transactions, until
| they get to merchant to refund. Otherwise they wouldn't care.
|
| Which is why some merchants get effectively blacklisted if they
| have too many fraudulent transactions
| jjeaff wrote:
| that wouldn't apply in this case, because the vendor, Valve,
| would be on the hook for fraudulent purchases and they would
| definitely have the deep pockets to pay out. The cc companies
| only have to worry about the small, fly by night companies
| that might disappear after a bunch of fraud.
| lxgr wrote:
| The card networks are never on the hook for fraudulent
| transactions (nor for any other type of chargeback for that
| matter). If anything, it's the merchant's payment service
| provider/card acquirer that absorbs the loss if the merchant
| can't pay.
| zhivota wrote:
| True until the acquiring (merchant side) bank is insolvent.
| Then the network pays. Source: worked at Visa for years.
|
| It's why it's so hard to become an acquiring bank on the
| network.
| lxgr wrote:
| True - I was debating whether I should mention that edge
| case :)
|
| I think the general idea is that acquiring banks are
| hopefully large enough to absorb any single merchant
| insolvency, but there are obviously limits to that.
| Airlines and event tickets are notorious example of that,
| since they usually take payment weeks or months ahead of
| providing the underlying service but want to get paid
| immediately.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| No, I get it. Give me a "Freedom Card" or whatever that
| generates a one-time use number/cvv combo, backed by cash,
| that I'm fully responsible for. If I give a guy on the corner
| $5 cash and he walks off with it, that's between me and him.
| We don't need to resort to crypto. I don't care if there's a
| paper trail, I don't need to be anonymous. I just don't want
| money people to have any say in how people choose to spend
| their money.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a
| credit card, you're explicitly _not_ spending _your_ money.
|
| Though i agree with the idea of a debit card that doesn't
| allow chargebacks, but without so many annoying
| restrictions.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Yeah, a "Freedom Card". Our money, they move it, no
| moralizing. We don't need crypto to fix this, just common
| sense legislation.
|
| No company or individual should be denied the right to
| receive funds digitally without due process.
|
| Companies should be free to transact with or exclude
| anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that
| facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each
| with differing rules and risk profiles setup to help
| people and companies access it.
|
| No one financial institution should be able to dictate
| the speech allowed on a platform.
|
| What's the status of FedNow?
| healsjnr1 wrote:
| The problem that seems to be being missed here is that
| while fraud is one reason Visa has say over what they
| accept, the much much much bigger issue is ATF, Money
| laundering and Sanctions.
|
| Cards like the Freedom card will never fly with either
| the Networks or the Issuing Banks as these kinds of
| payment instruments are immediately used to wash illicit
| funds.
|
| Visa's stance with Steam is bollocks, and it is another
| example of the monopoly they hold over payment
| processing. They shouldn't have the ability to impact a
| legit merchants catalogue.
|
| But the idea that we can have a Freedom card also doesn't
| checkout. The less known about what the money is spent on
| the higher the risk. And cost of complying with
| Suspicious Activity Reports regulations is really high
| (as the costs of you breach the requirements), so any
| attempts to create / run this kind of thing often don't
| stack up.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| You can still look for suspicious activity without having
| any leverage over what legitimate merchants offer.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| You think that common sense legislation is a more
| realistic solution than crypto?
|
| You can never rely on governments or corporations to have
| reasonable policies. Any payment system that is centrally
| controlled will inevitably be corrupted.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| That's really at this point that's back to where I am
| with crypto. Through all the speculation and cruft, there
| is still a shot at owning our own payments, or rather no
| one owning them.
|
| The payment networks have power, and if you can twist the
| arm of the gatekeepers, people subvert that power.
|
| The only thing I don't know about these days is with the
| stablecoins, how do you avoid the government sinking
| their claws into you if you intrinsically (esp. if
| successful) have to hold that much in cash or short-term
| instruments? Or you have something like tether, which
| leaving aside anything else, you can definitely say is
| comically opaque for an entity that is nominally running
| $160B.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with
| a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money.
|
| That point is not the problem though. They could just
| pressure Valve to refuse credit cards for all or some
| games. The financial aspect simply does not make sense,
| regardless of how you look at it (and many people had
| different takes in this thread).
|
| The only angles that make sense are an ideological
| crusade and the risk of being sued. The first is
| unacceptable and the second is an utter failure on the
| part of the legal system.
| nulbyte wrote:
| No they aren't. Fraudulent card not present transactions are
| fully on the backs of merchants. The networks and banks don't
| lose a dime of them. In fact, they make more money now,
| charging additional fees when disputes are filed, and
| additional fees when they are challenged.
| nullc wrote:
| Well your comment tells us why-- as is the law in the US is
| that credit card companies are almost entirely responsible for
| fraud. It's part of why they and their dubiously usurious
| practices are allowed to exist in the US at all.
|
| If it were the case that the payment rail censorship were
| limited just to cases where there was an obvious elevated fraud
| risk-- then that would be the whole of the story. -- and there
| would be an obvious answer: use a payment mechanism where the
| fraud responsibility is entirely on the user, such as Bitcoin.
|
| But their censorship exists where no such elevated fraud risk
| exists too, due to abusive conduct by the government to
| indirectly suppress activity that would be plainly unlawful for
| them to directly suppress. And the governments out of control
| abuse of its regulatory power is not limited to fraud-
| responsible payment rails, and get applied just as or even more
| extensively on Bitcoin payment processors.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| No, I get it. Give me a "Freedom Card" or whatever that
| generates a one-time use number/cvv combo, backed by cash,
| that I'm fully responsible for. If I give a guy on the corner
| $5 cash and he walks off with it, that's between me and him.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Well, credit is not really "your money". The danger of course
| is if this gets extended to debit cards and they become the
| only option (ie. no cash). Every time you use your card you are
| giving them the power to do this.
| abcd_f wrote:
| > credit is not really "your money"
|
| Unless it's a prepaid credit card or a debit card, both of
| which are serviced by MC and Visa and fairly common in
| Europe.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yes, I mentioned debit cards in the second of the three
| sentences in my comment.
|
| It's an important distinction to make. Credit is very much
| not something you should feel entitled to and issuer can
| and should be selective about who and what they issue
| credit for. Or course the credit industry itself is
| disgusting, but that's another issue (this was covered
| almost 20 years ago in a documentary _Maxed Out_ ).
|
| This shouldn't be conflated with payments in general which
| is (imo) a much bigger problem. You should be entitled to
| spend the money you earn on exactly what you want, and to
| do it anonymously.
|
| You can fight back: don't spend on credit and refuse to use
| a card when cash would suffice. We are losing, though. For
| stuff like Steam you have no other option (as far as I
| know).
| amelius wrote:
| > Why the fuck do we allow credit card companies have a say in
| how we spend our money?
|
| Because sadly 80% of people are sheep. Same reason we allow a
| company to decide what we can and cannot install on our
| smartphones.
| 9dev wrote:
| No, don't follow the underdog fallacy. What are _you_ doing
| against it? How are you different from the other sheep?
| Merely complaining doesn't make you any better.
| 93po wrote:
| youre allowed to be critical of things while still using
| said things. i have 8 million things going on in my life
| and the hill i die on isnt going to be the working
| conditions of humans that make iphones
| 9dev wrote:
| Sure you are, but don't call others out for being
| complacent then.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Why not? Being hypocritical doesn't mean you're wrong...
| kergonath wrote:
| When I buy an iPhone I am dealing with Apple. I know what I
| am buying and what I can or cannot do with the device. And if
| I am not happy there are alternatives.
|
| When I buy stuff on Steam I am in no way making a contract
| with Visa. When Visa strong arms Valve to delist games I lose
| even if I never had any relation with Visa ever.
|
| It really is not comparable.
| amelius wrote:
| Following your argument ... then don't choose Steam, there
| are plenty of alternatives! /s
|
| https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Traito
| r...
| kergonath wrote:
| No, you misread. I have a commercial relation with Steam
| and I am happy for them to chose what game they sell and
| what game they don't (and as a matter of fact I buy more
| games on gog than on Steam). I don't have a relation with
| Visa and I object to them exercising any control over
| what I can or cannot buy.
| amelius wrote:
| When I buy an Apple phone, it is my phone and Apple
| should not be able to exercise any control over who I do
| business with on said phone.
|
| However, I get the eerie feeling that I didn't buy a
| product even though I paid for it and I subscribed to
| some service instead.
| kergonath wrote:
| Again, that is not the point I am making. I am not even
| necessarily disagreeing with you on that point. I am
| merely pointing out that I am perfectly able to make a
| rational compromise and that it does not mean that I
| accept a random company interfering with my life. If you
| have something to say on that, fine. Otherwise, what is
| the point?
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Nobody voted for them, there's no accountability, and yet here
| we are
| smittywerben wrote:
| Valve should also delete its chat app. You can send a game if
| it's that important.
| abetancort wrote:
| It should be unlawful in every developed country, it's an assault
| on the freedom of speech and freedom of information by Visa.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > It's not a great precedent, that's for sure.
|
| It's not a precedent, its been the status quo for half a century
| j_timberlake wrote:
| They went after no-name games instead of Summer Memories or
| Treasure Hunter Claire? Weak.
|
| They should have at least aimed at Living With Sister: Monochrome
| Fantasy.
| Jackson__ wrote:
| Hey, Summer Memories got an official shout out on their twitter
| once, someone must have a real weak spot for that one at valve.
| raincole wrote:
| They went after incest and non-con (for now).
|
| But I don't know about the last game you mentioned... the
| "sister" part sounds sus.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| It looks like the affected games are all rated "Adult Only" on
| Steam.
|
| The games you mention are all sold without adult content on
| Steam, and the customer has to visit the publisher's website to
| download a patch restoring said content
| Shekelphile wrote:
| It is a shame that it takes payment processors to get Valve to do
| even the bare minimum curation of their store. IMO the thousands
| of outright bad games and ai slop asset flips and weirdo porn
| that verges on outright illegal content in many countries should
| have never been allowed in the first place. All of this leads
| back to various executives at Valve essentially doing no actual
| work and refusing to hire anybody because a huge part of their
| corporate culture is to keep headcount low while chasing constant
| growth.
| strangescript wrote:
| Does valve even leak the game titles you purchase to card
| processors? Don't they have some plausible deniability here?
| lxgr wrote:
| Doesn't matter if anyone actually buys content or products the
| networks object to per their policies. If it's being offered
| and payment is accepted on a checkout that shows the networks'
| logos, merchants and their payment service providers can get
| into trouble.
| willjp wrote:
| Without a horse in this race, this precedent makes me deeply
| uncomfortable.
| urda wrote:
| Honestly glad to see this has sparked larger talks about this
| again. Surprised to see Valve is just now getting impacted by
| this.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think it's hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of
| Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going
| crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people.
|
| But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that's
| ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!
| deadbabe wrote:
| I think this is a bit of a strawman. The market for people who
| get addicted to gruesome gore and are willing to pay money to
| see it is several orders of magnitude smaller than people
| willing to pay to see porn or OnlyFans. There is simply far
| more risk with adult content as a result and a lot more
| chargebacks from disatisfied customers with a post nut clarity.
| edoceo wrote:
| Are you saying porn buyers regret and that gore buyers do
| not? (As a broad generalization). Are you also asserting
| that's built in to risk-profole that payment gateways have?
| johnebgd wrote:
| I don't have time for o look at the stats and provide
| quotes / cite sources but it does seem from what I've read
| on the topic that the more people play gore games the less
| violence there is in society.
|
| If that's true, maybe it's also true that the more people
| have access to adult content the less babies we create as a
| society.
|
| A society shrinking causes a number of issues.
| Nevermark wrote:
| So grotesque violence appeals to fewer people, but banning
| gets focused on material more people find acceptable, even
| desirable?
|
| This really is a culture/posture driven issue.
|
| It is not as if many people think (emphasis on "think", as in
| being honest, reasoning carefully and being scientific about
| evidence) that banning sexy curves in a video game is going
| to impact the prevalence of sexy curve imagery, or "save"
| anyone from anything.
|
| Imagine if financial companies required their employees to
| sign a legal statement committing to not "use porn, escorts,
| blow ... or spicy video games!" So strange that they don't do
| that!!
|
| Financial companies like to make a show of having "high
| standards" when it comes to "controversial" segments of the
| market, or unfortunate individuals who don't fit the mold,
| when that gets them a lot of showy theatre for being hard
| asses to their audience of regulators.
|
| While keeping very quiet, and not looking into things too
| hard, when it comes to tens of billions of sketchy dollars
| going through their systems associated with very high net
| worth criminal actors, organizations and corrupt governments.
|
| Epstein did not lack for financial services.
| deadbabe wrote:
| What a gross endorsement of Jeffery Epstein.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| The GP highlights a classic observation: America's nearly
| unique cultural contradiction, where nudity and sex are
| considered highly offensive, while gore and violence are
| widely accepted.
| winchester6788 wrote:
| This holds true in most other countries as well. Gore/
| chopping of appendages is happily accepted and enjoyed (in
| movies, games etc) by all of India, whilst a simple kiss
| can be a taboo/ issue.
| Jach wrote:
| Japan has some of the weirdest/inconsistent rules around
| this stuff. Black lines or mozaic partial censorship of
| genitals, incest/stuff with minors widely available, and
| then you have some pretty violent uncensored movies,
| manga/anime, and games (though while it's mostly a China
| thing, sometimes the blood gets censored to be white
| instead of red which doesn't actually make it better
| (also sometimes done for urine)), GTA5 is as popular
| there as anywhere, but game franchises like Mortal Kombat
| are banned.
|
| And of course, even in America, we tend to like our
| violence and gore more over-the-top and simulated. Most
| people didn't care for liveleak type content, even fewer
| for not so hard to find footage from ongoing wars.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Japan runs custom scratch-built implementation of ethics
| reverse engineered from Western cultures. That's all.
| Consistence is key, but it's consistent only with itself,
| and nothing else, and explicitly not aligned to Christian
| religious scripts. Nothing Japanese is compatible with
| anything unless and until it is the sole dominant
| standard, like Sony storage media or Apple hardware.
| Always has been.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| This really isn't unique to America.
| legacynl wrote:
| In the "western" world it is.
| zulban wrote:
| You must be American if you think very violent games are not
| extremely popular.
| thfuran wrote:
| They're extremely popular in America.
| hervature wrote:
| I think they are referring to actual gore. For example,
| bull fighting.
| the_af wrote:
| > _There is simply far more risk with adult content as a
| result and a lot more chargebacks from disatisfied customers
| with a post nut clarity._
|
| Do you have any evidence to back this wild claim? I've never
| heard this argument about chargebacks made before.
|
| I don't think it's about this at all. I think it's about
| policing content, but then the observation of GP's comment
| applies: why is violence ok, but sex is not?
| tptacek wrote:
| You could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure content
| vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're starting
| from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing
| happening, but there's really nothing puritan about American
| business culture. There are other explanations!
|
| You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people
| involved in these transactions are _utterly amoral_.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| If by "people involved" you mean folks who consume this kind
| of content then id totally agree. As soon as you offer crypto
| or even mildly sexual content your cc abuse rate goes through
| the roof. Which i suspect is the sole reason for processors
| getting upset in this case
| Ayesh wrote:
| Is that not a similar or higher percentage for games with
| loot boxes or other sorts of gambling?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I bet it has higher chargeback percentage too and they
| probably pay higher fees. iirc if merchant is getting
| close to 2% fraud to sales ratio, they can get banned for
| life. It's probably different rules when you're the size
| of Valve though...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| OK well this is interesting information, what are the
| connections between crypto or even mildly sexual content
| exactly that create this phenomenon? I mean they do not
| seem to be related - if you said crypto or drawings of
| currency I would say huh, well they are sort of related,
| but the graph connection between crypto and even mildly
| sexual content would seem to me to be about as tenuous as
| that between crypto and meat eating.
|
| So why do these two things cause credit card abuse to go
| through the roof?
|
| Furthermore if it caused the credit card abuse to go
| through the roof wouldn't Valve just remove it of their own
| accord - at some point the abuse would mean money was taken
| away from Valve right?
|
| Finally the article doesn't give this as a reason why it
| was removed - it said "violate the rules and standards set
| forth by our payment processors" - which sure, that may
| mean "high rates of credit card abuse were reported", but I
| doubt it.
|
| Anyway, a link to studies of this phenomenon?
|
| ps: I would probably believe credit card abuse increase
| under crypto, due no doubt to my innate prejudices.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > You're starting from the premise that there's some weird
| puritan thing happening
|
| Credit card processors don't have to be puritanical. Instead,
| puritanical people simply have to be smart enough to figure
| out that the best way to deplatform content that they
| disagree with is by putting pressure on their payment
| processor monopolistic vendors.
|
| Giving in to a pressure campaign by ideological people can be
| a completely amoral and smart business decision.
| chii wrote:
| > puritanical people ... deplatform content that they
| disagree
|
| so that begs the question - what if the non-puritanical
| people also pressure the credit payment processors to stop
| curtailing to those puritanicals? Why is it effective one
| way, but not the other?
| mango7283 wrote:
| Probably because people are willing to put their real
| names on the "We're against incest/rape simulators"
| petition while most people are not going to be quite so
| fortright on the "Valve should reinstate the incest/rape
| simulators" petition.
| creer wrote:
| See cryptocurrency payments. So the good news in this
| direction is that bitcoin et al are very much making
| progress at these businesses. As far as I can see, many -
| perhaps even most - such businesses now accept 2-5 forms
| of cryptocurrencies as payment. That took long enough but
| we are finally getting there.
|
| The bad news is that essentially ALL such businesses
| still believe that it is essential for them to accept
| credit card payments - and that means they must still
| implement whatever agenda these are pushing. On their
| entire customer base, even if paying by crypto. For now.
|
| Hopefully this progress continues.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people
| involved in these transactions are utterly amoral.
|
| Which begs the question. Why would amoral people decline
| cash?
| tptacek wrote:
| Because, in expectation, they're going to _lose_ money.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Sure, but why?
| wglb wrote:
| Disputed charges by the user. I know of one payment
| processor that specifically seeks out these high-risk
| businesses. Consider one of many possible scenarios would
| be that of a spouse who is alarmed at a charge to a
| clearly risque service and says "What the heck is that??"
| and the offender says "What the heck I don't know. Cancel
| the charge!"
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Or I suspect in this case there are Puritans with a lot of
| money who will sue the payment providers if the providers
| don't block things they think are bad.
|
| Yes the payment provider is making a simple money based
| business decision, or possibly there is a threat of sanctions
| against the directors so a personal decision as well.
| lmm wrote:
| > You could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure
| content vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're
| starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan
| thing happening, but there's really nothing puritan about
| American business culture. There are other explanations!
|
| Someone, somewhere is making a choice to pressure content
| vendors to not offer this kind of content, and _not_ to
| pressure them to not offer other kinds of content. It may be
| upstream of the payment processors but there is absolutely a
| weird puritan American thing going on somewhere, and it 's
| much more interesting to get to the bottom of that since
| that's the point where change could happen. If everyone
| involved was amoral, these profitable games would continue
| being sold.
| tptacek wrote:
| Your premise is that they are, for the payment processors,
| profitable. They very probably are not.
| creer wrote:
| > there's really nothing puritan about American business
| culture. [...] utterly amoral.
|
| What? Puritanism is not about some kind of blanket purity to
| be recognized or expressed from any angle, perspective or
| religion. And in American business is both extreme and
| extremely selective.
|
| It's also very much about appearances and image projected.
| You have to accept a difference between anybody's personal
| values (in so far as these can show through the mess of
| corporate decisions), and the image that businesses believe
| they much display.
| tptacek wrote:
| You're talking about a culture that freely and
| enthusiastically sold opiates for decades. If they're
| cracking down on porn, it's because porn is costing them
| money, probably because people are disputing charges.
| creer wrote:
| The history of the US and "adult materials" goes so much
| further than potential disputed credit card charges.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Adult content is considered a high risk merchant category -
| meaning it is susceptible to high chargeback and fraud rates.
| This is because after someone pays for and consumes adult
| content, a certain level of "clarity" overcomes them resulting
| in the execution of chargebacks against the merchant.
|
| It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.
| boredatoms wrote:
| They should instead charge a higher transaction fee on those
| items to cover that risk
| delusional wrote:
| That sounds like a reasonable argument. We should force them
| to make it publicly with data. Maybe even force them to
| release aggregate statistics every quarter going forward.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| I don't think that can explain why they're only targeting
| certain sub-categories of porn, and it's also contradictory
| to the public statements by Valve:
|
| > We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may
| violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment
| processors and their related card networks and banks
|
| Individual games violating "rules and standards" doesn't
| really fit with prohibiting a category because of high rates
| of fraud.
| creer wrote:
| That seems disingenuous. (1) in this case, this is a not a
| tiny fly-by-night wannabe game company. (2) which is good for
| paying back (or never seeing) the money of chargebacks.
|
| For a new company, the risk of chargebacks might rest on a
| credit card company (for a little while anyway). But not for
| a long established one.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > That seems disingenuous.
|
| Why are you assuming bad faith? There's no indication
| parent is being insincere at all.
| creer wrote:
| > Adult content is considered a high risk merchant
| category
|
| > It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical
| premise.
|
| But I have no problem with the parent poster. I'm here
| hoping for conversation. The argument though is one we
| hear now and then and like I point out, how can it make
| sense? Like many things, it looks more like a vaguely
| possible, plausible explanation or chain of arguments...
| which on closer look doesn't fly. How can Valve, a long
| established, apparently solid merchant, be a serious risk
| for the credit card infrastructure? Should there be
| chargebacks, they can handle chargebacks. This is not
| limited to Valve. Many of us have run into the issue. The
| credit card infrastructure goes out of its way to refuse
| solid business.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Do you think this happened because Valve was getting lots of
| chargebacks? I don't.
| _345 wrote:
| Just plain wrong and a puritanical group already claimed
| responsibility for this
| tempodox wrote:
| Same with movies. Piles of dead bodies are OK for children to
| watch but naked skin would be highly damaging.
| scott_w wrote:
| I mean, these films usually get rated 15 or 18 in the UK, so
| I'd not say it's "OK for children to watch."
| k1t wrote:
| I think that's the classic US/UK culture split though.
|
| US is strict on language and nudity, but comparatively lax
| on violence (except blood).
|
| UK is lax on nudity and language (comparatively), but very
| strict on violence.
|
| UK being the country that considered the word "ninja" too
| violent for children, for example.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Violence is pretty okay in the middle east, which makes
| it socially acceptable by inheritance in the uk.
| scott_w wrote:
| I'm pretty sure GTA has never been rated below M which,
| as I recall, is 17+. Not a massive difference between
| that and BBFC's 18 rating...
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Mastercard and Visa needs some serious competition. How come a
| payment company decides who to partner with and dictates what
| people use their system for. Ridiculous bullshite.
|
| At the same time those "games" that were affected, well, who on
| earth pays for that seriously fucked up crap? People need to
| get a grip. I'd rather send a psycho team to evaluate people
| who pay for these games...
|
| note: PCGAMER the epitome of games journalism. They didn't even
| checked which were the affected banned games.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Gender of who is murdered has a lot to do with it too. I don't
| think you'll find a video game where you predominantly kill
| women. The most infamous scene of murder in video games is the
| Call of Duty mission "No Russian" where you optionally commit
| terrorism at an airport. If you pay attention you'll notice
| they kill much more men than women, and made sure that despite
| pleasant weather none of the women were wearing dresses or
| skirts. Murder of men is a lot more digestible.
| bfg_9k wrote:
| This genuinely baffles me. Who cares! It's a video game. It's
| pixels on a screen. True crime podcasts and movies are a-okay
| but when its a video game that's where the line is drawn?
| josephg wrote:
| I suspect all new frontiers are like this. There was
| probably a similar outcry over violence in films. And maybe
| violence in fictional books too. Both long lost from living
| memory.
|
| It does feel different in a video game, because you're the
| one pulling the trigger. I played that CoD mission when the
| game came out, and I felt a bit sick in my stomach playing
| that mission out. But I'd probably have exactly the same
| feeling from violence in films if I wasn't so desensitised
| to it after growing up watching american movies and tv
| shows.
|
| Its just new.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Now i imagine control concerned mothers rallying against
| papyrus which ruins the youth for healthy outdoor
| activities like warfare, sieges and murder.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| There are still taboos even for pixels on a screen, even
| for video games. It's a good thing. There should be.
|
| Perhaps you're just saying that you're mostly comfortable
| with the depiction of some forms of violence in some
| contexts. But what about other scenarios though? Would you
| feel the same about a game where the player runs around
| raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves?
| It's just pixels!
| roenxi wrote:
| > Would you feel the same about a game where the player
| runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching
| escaped slaves? It's just pixels!
|
| Yeah. Same thing. Should be ignored. If someone feels an
| urge to run around raping women and lynching slaves, I'd
| much rather they were sitting around at home playing
| videogames than doing anything else in their spare time.
| What do you want them to be doing, the traditional creep
| move of figuring out how to get into positions of power
| and influence?
|
| In addition taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill in
| the war on pixels; if the banks are taking a firm moral
| stand then clearly the government is involved and that
| means they're probably spending money on expunging
| victimless non-crimes which is a low.
| vunderba wrote:
| What if it's a story but with very detailed descriptions?
| What if that short story is adapted into a video game but
| it's only a text adventure? What if we add artwork to it,
| but it's just pixel art? etc etc.
|
| The ability and the freedom to explore the darkest parts
| of our psyche in a safe, controlled, and fictitious
| environment _IS_ important. Even if we find certain
| aspects or fetishes repugnant and distasteful.
|
| I find the idea that payment processors have enough power
| to dictate the morality of a game market concerning.
| Given the number of other NSFW fetishistic stuff that is
| still being permitted on Steam I don't buy the
| "chargeback" rational _AT ALL_.
| ErrorNoBrain wrote:
| I disagree. there shouldnt be any taboos for pixels on a
| screen
|
| i mean, i can understand a child porn game would be
| disallowed but we already have anime games where
| characters that look like children are nearly naked
| Levitz wrote:
| >But what about other scenarios though? Would you feel
| the same about a game where the player runs around raping
| women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves?
|
| Yes and yes. We have worse stuff in literature already.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| What do you think is occurring when a player defeats one
| of the other cultures in Civilization by conquering their
| last city or conducts orbital bombardment on a enemy
| planet in Master of Orion until the population is zero?
| That's genocide as gameplay.
|
| It _is_ just pixels.
| ronjakoi wrote:
| I think it's about the simulation and agency that video
| games afford the consumer.
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| But your heart is not pixels.
| whycome wrote:
| You're risking potential revenue.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The people who care signed their names[1]. It's not a
| secret or anything.
|
| Most of the signatories are associated with Australian anti
| sex trafficking and exploitation groups, although there are
| several UK signatories and a couple Americans.
|
| A publication[2] by one of the signatories connects the
| dots. It's driven by the core idea:
|
| "Pornography Use Shapes and Changes Sexual Tastes"[3] which
| is supported by "In a survey of men involved in online
| sexual activities, 47% reported being involved in practice
| or seeing pornography which previously was not interesting
| to or even disgusted them."[4]
|
| I'm trying to steelman when I say I believe that the
| authors would agree that this also applies to games with
| sexual content.
|
| To address your comment specifically, while I see the
| appeal of consistent moral framework. I personally believe
| that moral frameworks trade consistency for completeness
| and rarely accomplish either. You have to assume the value-
| perspective of the other in order to understand why
| consistency might take a back seat to some other value we
| could only speculate on.
|
| 1. https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-
| proce...
|
| 2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391732869_Not_A
| _Fan...
|
| 3. ibid. pg 30
|
| 4. ibid
| mango7283 wrote:
| It really should be obvious that the natural objection to
| "if they banned this then why not X" is "they haven't
| gotten around to it yet" and that the reason they can be
| more successful is also that they have put their money
| where their mouth is and also named themselves, something
| a counter petition will probably struggle with.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Trying to connect the dots here. GP mentioned also
| banning true-crime podcasts and you comment to that was
| "they haven't gotten around to it yet"?
|
| How defensible do you feel this position is?
| hulitu wrote:
| > 47% reported being involved in practice or seeing
| pornography which previously was not interesting to or
| even disgusted them
|
| Yeah, right.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The source[1] for the statistic is referenced. Was there
| a particular part of it that you found incorrect?
|
| 1. https://www.academia.edu/27521992/Online_sexual_activi
| ties_A...
| jojobas wrote:
| Then you have an open world game where you can do all sorts
| of insane stuff, but everyone loses their shit specifically
| over feeding suffragettes to alligators.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| GTA, Elder Scrolls and Fallout series all allow for violence
| against women and not just the mutual violence of combat or
| whatever. One small example in one game from a long-ass time
| ago isn't really a broader trend (not to say that society at
| large doesn't view violence against men and women differently
| in different contexts)
| ErrorNoBrain wrote:
| and never children.
| northhnbesthn wrote:
| To be fair, Postal and SOF haven't been relevant in almost 20
| years, though your point stands.
|
| I wonder how a modern implementation of these two games would
| look given the vast visual improvements since then. I assume
| UE5 or 6 already comes with a Ghoul-esque framework ready to
| go. Though I hope they would feature a curmudgeon caricature of
| Jack Thompson.
| masklinn wrote:
| TBF that's US media culture going back several decades.
| philwelch wrote:
| This isn't about "trying to show a sensual human body", it
| seems to be about incest porn specifically. There are still
| plenty of pornographic games available on Steam, even absurdly
| offensive ones such as the multi-part "Sex with Hitler" series.
| pipes wrote:
| The difference I see is that the player is getting sexual
| pleasure from what is being simulated in porn type games. I.e.
| they are trying to simulate the feeling of doing that in real
| life.
|
| Where as in violent games like soldier of fortune I doubt most
| players are trying to achieve the feeling of brutally killing
| another human being.
| aaaja wrote:
| Yes and often with pornography it involves the abuse of women
| and girls, and depicting this as a positive action. It's
| probably not the main reason why payment processors are
| banning and restricting purchases, but it should be.
| hulitu wrote:
| I also find it hilarious. Killing people in movies and video
| games get a lower age rating than sex.
|
| And religious groups talking about protecting children (while
| raping them) is hypocrisy at its finest.
| martin-t wrote:
| I agree with the fact there is hypocricy. I disagree that
| either should be banned. (Maybe you didn't mean it that way but
| somebody with us the argument that way)
|
| If group A wants to control group or person B, they should
| prove with very high certainty that group B's behavior is
| harmful to someone who is not B.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| It's like we've collectively decided that digital gore is fine
| for teens, but a boob requires a Senate hearing. The irony is,
| one actually mirrors real-world trauma a lot more closely than
| the other
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Bring back crypto payments Valve.
|
| I'm not sure why the payment processors can't just be excluded
| for the offending games during checkout instead.
| warabe wrote:
| Just get JCB cards. Done.
| lxgr wrote:
| Does Steam offer different types of content to customers
| depending on their payment card brand?
| raincole wrote:
| No.
| yunesj wrote:
| If Valve limited credit card purchases to PG games, but let
| customers purchase other games via crypto, then payment
| processors couldn't complain about alleged high chargeback rates
| or association with adult content.
|
| I imagine payment processors wouldn't love this solution, but at
| that point they're just asking for full editorial control, and we
| should resist.
| maxlin wrote:
| Not necessary. They could just keep almost everything as-is
| with normal credit card processors, but for adult stuff, just
| use the same kind of processors other adult sites use. Those
| have a lot worse rates from what I hear, but still way more
| accessible than crypto
| AraceliHarker wrote:
| The games that got banned this time, even before considering
| their depiction of incest, are often of such poor quality that
| it's difficult to even call them 'games.' Valve itself should
| have removed them from Steam long before payment processors had
| to step in. Defending these kinds of games is like equating Blue
| is the Warmest Color with a random PornHub video, simply because
| they both contain sexual acts. If Baldur's Gate 3 ever gets
| banned, then you can truly make a fuss.
| maxlin wrote:
| Removing and having something exist with the whatever amount of
| visibility it is able to earn with its quality are entirely
| different.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I can't tell what your argument is here.
|
| BG3 does feature an incest sex scene. You can fuck the drow
| twins.
|
| Are you saying that BG3 should be ok because it's a good game?
| Or BG3 is only ok because it doesn't show much of the incest
| sex?
| kwar13 wrote:
| The good old USA, when you can show someone bashing someone
| else's head with brain spilling out and it might get an R rating.
| But show a nipple and holy shit we have crossed the line.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Payment processors(Visa, Master) , payment gateways(Stripe,
| Paypal...) and payment hosts (Patreon, Gumroad...) are a huge
| pain to deal with even when you're selling something which is
| legal and risk free just because their algorithm or employees are
| often overcautious, anything out of mundane they'll ban first and
| then ask questions(if you're lucky).
|
| I have a FOSS project called Open Payment Host[1] which removes
| the payment hosts from the equation and removes the technical
| hassle of integrating multiple payment gateways but it does not
| solve the pain of having to deal with the payment gateways and by
| extension payment processors and banks.
|
| My long term plan is to integrate direct banking API where ever
| it's available.
|
| Is there any bank from any country which provides direct banking
| API to end customers for plain savings bank account (I've seen
| some provide for current accounts).
|
| [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host
| flimflamm wrote:
| Have you looked in to "PSD2 and Open Banking regulation in
| Europe" ?
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I haven't, I will definitely explore it. Quick read on it
| seems very promising.
|
| Have you or anyone here any API in EU for getting payments
| directly to your bank account? I have started a discussion on
| this on OPH[1], I welcome any information on direct banking
| API in Europe in that discussion.
|
| [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-
| host/discussi...
| Msurrow wrote:
| Lunar Bank.
|
| I don't have any experience integrating to their API myself
| but Lunar is a relatively new Danish (so EU) 100% digital
| bank. See https://www.lunar.app/en/personal/what-is-lunar
|
| They have an Open API:
| https://developer.openbanking.prod.lunar.app/home
|
| Edit: "new" in finance terms - started 2015.
| asmor wrote:
| It sounds like you're about to reinvent Sofort, a (now
| defunct, or sold off at least) payment system that first
| worked on reverse engineered online banking and then PSD2
| to mutually verify direct bank transfers.
| herbst wrote:
| I built a cool tool the last week's. I spent more time on
| evaluating payment processor than the code itself.
|
| I have ~5 projects in my shelf I did never launch because I
| didn't find a payment solution.
|
| Got instantly banned with all of them, had to write them an
| email wait for days to get some response.
|
| I usually just use crypto whenever it makes sense. And still
| have a hard time to believe that I can move as much as crypto
| as I want but a single payment from a Dubai account can get my
| bank account frozen for days ...
| jimjimwii wrote:
| This is what i settled on as well. I maintain a side project
| that is completely legal and above board but i refuse to go
| through the nonsense i was forced to go through the last time
| i had to integrate with a credit card payment gateway
| (another side project that went belly up).
|
| If someone wants to buy something from me badly enough,
| they'll figure out how to get some bitcoin.
|
| I don't have the time and energy to deal with their arbitrary
| bullshit anymore.
| herbst wrote:
| Exactly. Same boat here, fully legal normal business. My
| main issue is literally having customers from middle east.
| I've had bank accounts frozen, PayPal reverting my business
| account to personal without notice, fees, crazy amount of
| fees everywhere ... So much pain for no benefit compared to
| crypto.
| brikym wrote:
| I use Ko-fi but 95% of the fees go to Stripe and their
| processors (Visa etc).
| johnb231 wrote:
| They blacklisted games that feature incest. Good riddance. This
| trash should never have been allowed on Steam.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Clearly Steam disagreed. I don't see any publishers who were
| angry.
| ETH_start wrote:
| The monetary layer is not the one where bad behavior should be
| policed. Being able to send and receive money is a basic utility
| that no government or bank should be able to deprive someone of.
| That's why I support cryptocurrency.
| throw7 wrote:
| If I'm going to be gracious to payment processors, what they need
| to do is lobby congress for a "DMCA-like safe harbor" for
| themselves.
| phyphy wrote:
| Does anyone know if UPI solves this problem?
| lrvick wrote:
| If there was ever an argument for the need of cryptocurrency, it
| is this.
|
| Dethrone the payment processors or they get to decide what is and
| is not allowed to be sold.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Seems like this could be easily solved with legislation without
| having to invent new currencies. Just make it a law that
| payment processors are not allowed to discriminate between
| legitimate goods and services. If the government thinks that
| sugary water or porn magazines are fine to buy and sell, why
| should MasterCard have anything to say about it? Payment
| processors are basically natural monopolies, so they should be
| able to be regulated.
| donatj wrote:
| If the last decade is proof of anything, legislation is far
| too fluid to be a reliable source of any sort of protection
| for anything.
|
| We need _real protections_ , that don't and can't change with
| the winds of political power.
| tiku wrote:
| So why don't they make a second company, SteamyAdult? There is a
| market for it, so it seems.
| sammy2255 wrote:
| This is why crypto needs to rule the world
| Culonavirus wrote:
| Over 15 years from the Bitcoin Pizza Day, yet we're still dealing
| with this shit. What was the point.
| dostick wrote:
| Is it really a fact that porn transactions attract higher amount
| of fraud?
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| you can start to gamble NFTs on Steam starting from age 13
|
| but they'll tell you that they got pressured to ban "adult
| content" from steam
|
| HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
|
| Who's kid is obsessed with microtransactions and cs:go cases
| gamba on steam?
|
| Psyop and propaganda, calling them out gets you a ban
| irusensei wrote:
| You can track the list of banned games here:
| https://bannedgames.netlify.app
| ninalanyon wrote:
| It's about time that credit cards were treated like money and
| this kind of behaviour forbidden. When you pay with cash the
| notes and coins don't refuse to be handed over because the
| issuing bank has an opinion about what you are buying, it should
| be the same for all payment methods.
| Affric wrote:
| Payments companies successfully got valve to stop purveying
| weapons grade incest/child-porn/rape themed smut that is barely a
| game?
|
| Nabokov was a great author and Lolita was the work of a great
| author who turned his pen/typewriter to a detestable subject
| leading to innumerable questions about art.
|
| These guys are just z-graders who get off on non-consensual
| sexual interactions involving children.
|
| Valve absolutely should not be publishing this stuff.
| 9dev wrote:
| Even if I agree that this stuff shouldn't be sold, it's wrong
| that Visa has the power to force Valve to. The end _does never_
| justify the means.
| bluescrn wrote:
| I don't know how bad these specific games were, but meanwhile,
| OnlyFans pornographers continue to use sites like Twitch to
| advertise their work to teens, and Pornhub continues to
| operate, despite claims that they profit from sex trafficking
| amongst other things (https://traffickinghubpetition.com/)
|
| Seems strange to go after obscure videogames (which presumably
| don't feature real human beings) in this way. Unless they
| really are unusually extreme?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Tangent, but each of those events should be a reminder of why we
| must fight to never, ever live in a cashless society.
|
| Because once big entities control the pipeline of what you can
| buy and you have no alternative, they basically can dictate what
| you can and can't do.
|
| We saw that during the wikileak story when visa prevented
| Europeans to give to the org despite the fact it was perfectly
| legal to do so on their soil.
|
| Just like data handled by an Apple device is not really your data
| since they can prevent you from doing what you want with it,
| money handled by Visa is only your money until they don't like
| what you do with it.
| gethly wrote:
| This is not an issue oof payment processors. It is an issue of
| Visa and Mastercard duopoly, whom use payment processors as
| middlemen in order to be able to push their own "rules" onto
| businesses and get away clean.
| Neil44 wrote:
| The discussion seems to be mostly about the moral issues, but it
| seems likely that the titles being a 'magnet for scams and
| chargebacks' is more likely the cause.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Nice excuse but we can see who censors behind this are and how
| they are gloating. https://xcancel.com/CollectiveShout
| ACCount36 wrote:
| No. That's an often-repeated bullshit excuse.
|
| Payment processors have ways of passing some of the chargeback
| risks onto the stores, and it's not like Steam itself is
| chargeback central. If you just want free games, pirating them
| is extremely easy, and trying to abuse chargebacks gets you
| banned.
| Neil44 wrote:
| It's not as straightforward as that. It's more like scammers
| getting other people to buy gift cards which are redeemed in
| steam and other games then the value getting moved around as
| in-game currency between game accounts (game-bucks, special
| items) before being cashed out again to make tracing very
| hard. Essentially laundering. I assume certain titles attract
| scammers because people will not want to pursue the claims
| due to embarrassment. Why would Mastercard give a hoot that a
| game has boobs in it? They care about loosing money.
| raincole wrote:
| The obscure porn games Valve delisted have no in-game items
| or currencies, and have zero second market value.
|
| People launder money in the way you describe do that via
| extremely popular titles (so they can sell the whole
| account later) or rare items in online games like CSGO or
| Dota. Not "Incest Simulator 2023".
| mrkramer wrote:
| Maybe now is the time to rethink accepting crypto again? But this
| time stablecoins not volatile coins like BTC and ETH.
| greatgib wrote:
| Just a reminder that when still using cash, you are allowed to
| buy whatever you want that is legal without asshole bankers or
| institutions deciding for you!
| pmarreck wrote:
| So, just to review the hypocrisy here:
|
| Full-on murder simulators: OK.
|
| Exchanging consensual pleasure with the wrong person: NOT OK.
| globalnode wrote:
| the global game industry is mostly corrupt, they could close
| valve down and we'd likely be better off.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Sorry but ancaps are not allowed to complain - it's a 'free
| market' and the credit card companies are bigger than gabe newell
| - end of story, cry is free.
|
| In ancap logic I think the fault here is all on gabe for not
| lobbying the government enough and/or for not having been able to
| gather enough force to fight against those companies somehow.
| can16358p wrote:
| I'll never understand what is these payment processors' problem
| with adult content.
|
| If someone wants to sell something and someone else wants to buy
| something, it should be nobody else's business to police it as
| long as two parties are settled.
|
| That's why I want to see crypto take over and get rid of the
| middleman and regulators.
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| i think it's a mix of conservative/religious lobbying (getting
| them ire from the government), and chargebacks by embarrassed
| customers with post-nut clarity being common
| nicce wrote:
| The only viable end-game in scale for crypto is what happens in
| China. I am not sure if I want that.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Part of the coalition directing ESG which direct BlackRock and
| Vanguard which then threaten Visa/Mastercard... has been
| extremely successful in making people believe this is a crusade
| only by Visa/Mastercard.
|
| It's the S. And so very few people have any idea. Visa/MC doesn't
| actually hate money.
|
| They have better argument fiduciary defense accept porn money
| than deny it - unless they don't and no one asks or thinks about
| it.
| gmd63 wrote:
| If you don't like it, start another payment processor that
| doesn't cave to pressure. Where are all the free market
| proselytizers at?
|
| I expect all of you complaining about this to never once complain
| on legal grounds about Apple's 30% tax in the app store or when a
| bakery refuses to sell a cake to a gay person.
|
| This is what unrestricted freedom for every entity looks like.
|
| And this is why we need laws and regulations that are actually
| enforced. Because companies and larger organisms do not
| necessarily operate on timescales that are able to be reasonably
| responded to within a human lifespan.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Okay. I walk into a Jewish bakery and want a red cake with a
| Nazi flag on it.
| motorest wrote:
| > Okay. I walk into a Jewish bakery and want a red cake with
| a Nazi flag on it.
|
| This isn't a very good comparison, as this involves a payment
| processing company. An apt comparison would be the payment
| processor company demanding that you stop doing business with
| a Jewish store because that goes against their Nazi values.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It's a perfectly good comparison. Nazi wants cake. Store
| owner is refusing to transact based on his own personal
| moral code. Just like any other business.
|
| Contrary wise, consider a Jewish payment processor who
| wants to knock off a Nazi store. You can't have it both
| ways.
| aranelsurion wrote:
| Payment processor is the infrastructure, not the merchant
| itself. They neither make cakes nor eat them.
|
| Bigger problem is that for most real world problems who
| is Nazi and who is Jewish depends on who you ask. Sucks
| to be Jewish in a Nazi world where even payment
| processors hate you.
| gmd63 wrote:
| We can, via laws. In the US, there are anti
| discrimination laws for protected classes in some areas.
| You won't find that Nazis are a protected class, but if
| you would like them to be you can run for office and try
| to pass a bill and see how the free market plays that one
| out for you.
| motorest wrote:
| > It's a perfectly good comparison. Nazi wants cake.
| Store owner is refusing to transact based on his own
| personal moral code.
|
| It's clearly not the case at all. Valve wants to sell
| third party games. Third party game developers want to
| sell their games. Customers want to buy third party games
| through Valve. Do you understand this bit?
|
| A payment processor company is far excluded from the
| process. Users want to pay Valve money. Valve wants to
| receive the user's money. All fine, right? Except a
| payment company somehow feels entitled to tell Valve
| which products in their product line they can sell. WTF?
|
| Going back to your far-fetched example, it would be like
| a supermarket selling all sorts of products their
| customers want to buy, but the Nazi bank somehow feels
| entitled to tell the supermarket they should not sell any
| product related with Jews. Does that make sense to you?
| azangru wrote:
| At least in your example there are some bakers to empathize
| with. They would have to manually bake the cake.
|
| Now imagine your phone refuses to take a picture of the Nazi
| flag, because the owners of the phone manufacturing company
| have a certain moral code.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| In that case, I don't buy a phone from that manufacturing
| company. Maybe I want that on purpose in a different way,
| to prevent my kids from taking nudes.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Exactly. With the bakers we have competing interests of the
| guy who wants the Nazi cake and the baker who doesn't want
| to make one. Personally, I come down on the side of whether
| it requires any creative effort on the part of the baker.
| "Print this .jpeg on a cake"--content doesn't matter. "Draw
| me a Nazi flag on the cake"--content matters.
|
| There's no human looking at each transaction, there's
| nobody to be bothered about the content of the game, and no
| justification for not processing offensive stuff.
| martin-t wrote:
| IME people who propose absolute freedom in any regard (speech,
| use of power, use of money,...) fundamentally don't understand
| the difference of power between individuals, let alone
| individuals and organizations.
|
| This is why anarcho- anything can't work. Some people
| specialize in building thing, since in providing a service,
| some specialize in making money and grabbing power. When the
| builders and providers don't unite to hold them back (like...
| forming a government) those people end up forming a mafia. Of
| course the state is a mafia too. You gotta pick your evils.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > fundamentally don't understand the difference of power
| between individuals,
|
| Or they really do understand and are of the opinion that they
| will be the beneficiaries. That they are in a position to
| exploit this difference.
| martin-t wrote:
| Absolutely. Some are really just sympathizers. I've known
| people who weren't rich by any means but acted and
| pretended to be and they supported greater inequality, less
| consumer protections, etc.
|
| Same goes with abusive individuals and flying monkeys. Some
| people wanna be like those strong successful abusers so
| they take their side.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Absolute freedom can be achieved - as long as you're the one
| holding the gun. Other than that, it's social contracts all
| the way down (which are more or less letting someone else
| hold the gun)
| vips7L wrote:
| > proselytizers
|
| Off topic: I heard this word for the first time last night and
| now I'm seeing it here. Funny how that works sometimes.
| jjice wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof if you want to find more about this
| phenomenon.
|
| Off topic, but when I was looking at cars when my old one
| died, I started noticing way more of the models I had been
| considering on the road. Funny how the mind works.
| throwaway494932 wrote:
| > If you don't like it, start another payment processor that
| doesn't cave to pressure.
|
| Or, gosh, use bitcoin et al.
|
| It's interesting that when people ask "what's the use case for
| cryptos?", "being an alternative to Visa and Mastercard" is not
| often mentioned. That alone is a good enough reason to support
| it.
|
| Civitai has been recently forced by payment processors to crack
| down on AI-generated porn. Since then, given that the
| processors told them that they may want do restrict them even
| more, they have added ability to use cryptos to pay for their
| services.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I have been a crypto evangelist since it was a weird nerd
| hobby nobody knew about for this exact reason. It should be
| nobody's business who I transfer value to or why. The corpo-
| state has had control of the levers and dials of currency for
| way too long. They can still enforce laws, and if I'm causing
| some illegal event to occur by paying money to someone, that
| event is still illegal. Arrest me for that. But get rid of
| the rent seeking and monetary policy that seems to just make
| the whole problem worse.
| gmd63 wrote:
| I don't understand this assumption that crypto transactions
| are nobody's business. That's a feature of cash payments,
| which from what I understand can only be emulated in crypto
| by transferring control over a non-custodial wallet, which
| is cumbersome to the average person.
|
| If you're crypto banking with a third party that muddles
| your wallet's transactions you've already added one of the
| institutions you claim to be against.
|
| If you transact on the blockchain, you're broadcasting who
| your wallet transacts with on levels that are far more
| publicly transparent than how fiat is traded via
| institutions.
| boldlybold wrote:
| We need to change this perception. Setting up a hot
| wallet on a phone only takes a few minutes and is perfect
| for holding a small amount of crypto.
|
| Projects like monero (https://www.getmonero.org/) ensure
| privacy and fungibility of the crypto you hold.
|
| It should still be easier, but let's not pretend this is
| technology only available to those with deep tech
| experience.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The Monero download page requires me to choose my system
| architecture to get an installer, and insists that I
| absolutely must "verify the hashes" of the "archive".
| When I ran the installer, it first identified as "monero-
| gui-install-win-x64-v0.18.4.0" published by "Unknown",
| then as "Monero Fluorine Fermi GUI Wallet", and about 3/4
| of the way through the setup my antivirus popped up to
| block it.
|
| I don't think this is effectively available to anyone
| without deep tech experience, and any non-technical user
| who's willing to click through this kind of thing is
| definitely drowning in malware that will steal their
| crypto.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Payment processors aren't some plucky startups
| raincole wrote:
| > I expect all of you complaining about this to never once
| complain on legal grounds about Apple's 30% tax in the app
| store
|
| People complain that 24/7. The absolute majority of HN comments
| sided with Epic when they challenged that.
|
| > or when a bakery refuses to sell a cake to a gay person.
|
| It didn't happen. What happened was the bakery refused to
| _make_ a cake for gay wedding. It 's established that you can't
| refuse to sell something existing to someone just because of
| their sexuality.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Valve clearly doesn't want to play content cop, but when the
| payment processors start squeezing, they have no real choice.
| What's wild is how much unaccountable power Visa and Mastercard
| wield over digital expression
| rabid-zubat wrote:
| The day I will be informed that Valve delisted anything after
| being pressured by a credit card company is the last day I buy a
| game on it. Personally I pay with my own country's payment system
| that's unrelated to these companies.
| yapyap wrote:
| so.. today?
| raincole wrote:
| You mean yesterday? Valve already did that.
| zanfr wrote:
| well well well
|
| there are 2 solutions to this: 1. steam accepts eth and other
| cryptos; most people associate btc with crypto because it is the
| original but it is now technically vastly inferior. 2. the seven
| seas (nobody ever turns your free transaction down and you get to
| keep whatever it is forever with no fancy license/tos/eulas
| attached)
| j_m_b wrote:
| So funny how people think this is a moral crusade. You should
| read articles around the tech stack for payment processing at any
| adult site. People try to do chargebacks all of the time on these
| kind of services. "Hunny what is this transaction on our account
| for BigBussomsCom?" .. "Oh must be some kind of fraud" "then
| let's call the bank and straighten it out". It's variations of
| this, over and over that lead to the high chargeback rates. I
| seem to recall that chargebacks are an order of magnitude higher
| for adult-oriented transactions. Unless you have a system of
| countering this with a team devoted to it, you will have a lot of
| successful chargebacks. I doubt Valve has the specialized team
| needed to deal with the amount of chargebacks, this the CC
| companies trying to avoid the headache.
| raincole wrote:
| It's so funny that people think it's about chargeback.
|
| If you buy smut game on Steam, your bank statement won't show
| the name of the game. It looks exactly like any other
| transaction you make on Steam.
|
| > "Hunny what is this transaction on our account for
| BigBussomsCom?" .. "Oh must be some kind of fraud" "then let's
| call the bank and straighten it out"
|
| This is a scenario that literally can't happen in the Steam
| case. It could happen with Pornhub but not with Steam.
|
| And Steam has a very generous refund policy. If your playtime
| is less than 2hr you can ask for a refund with a few mouse
| clicks. No phone call or email needed. Actually in my
| experience if your playtime is just over 2hr for a bit they'll
| still refund you.
|
| If you chargeback you can get your whole steam account
| suspended.
| Arch485 wrote:
| To add: AFAIK most adult content websites bill under a
| different, innocuous name as well. You don't get a charge on
| your credit card from BigBussomsCom, you get a charge from
| SuperCard or something like that. (uh... I know because of a
| friend...)
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah. Never dealt with an adult content website, but in my
| admittedly limited experience adult products always come in
| innocent packaging and generally bill under innocuous
| names.
| martini333 wrote:
| You actually believe this yourself?
| nodja wrote:
| If what you said were true then they would ban all porn and not
| just rape/incest/bestiality porn. They're banning specific
| genres of porn which makes it an obvious morality issue.
|
| I can't back this up with facts but the chargeback myth smells
| of an old astroturfing campaign to justify the moral policing
| on porn in general. But nowadays porn is more commonly accepted
| so they're shifting to more specific genres.
|
| The new myth seems to be that payment processors can he held
| legally liable for facilitating illegal transactions, but the
| only lawsuits vs payment processors I can find is about child
| pornography, which has always been banned on steam.
|
| When added that there was an advocacy group that sent an open
| letter to payment processors a week ago for this same exact
| issue[1], then the chargeback excuse has zero merit.
|
| So yeah, it's 100% a moral crusade. Which side you sit on the
| crusade it up to you.
|
| [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-
| proce...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| So the outlast trials latest villain is a pair of incestuous
| elderly conjoined twins. The game features intense violence, lots
| of genitals, kills via explicit mutilation of those genitals,
| lots of rape threats. One guy in particular gets turned into a
| human sex toy via mutilation and wax.
|
| Why is that above the bar then?
| gitt67887yt7bg wrote:
| The ISPs, web services, payment services, and advertisers are all
| in a Mexican standoff right now - with every small move for
| domination throwing a volley of bullets at the customer from all
| sides.
|
| The card companies are cutting off all the low hanging fruit to
| establish precedence (steam is not the only one affected). One
| it's established that they can ban certain things, then they've
| established they get to control the purchase of literally any
| idea, cause, or product they want. The card companies want to
| control and starve anything or anybody they don't like -
| especially their competition and regulators. They'll control the
| spice.
|
| Net neutrality regulation would have prevented this and forced
| them to play nice with each other, with the side effect of a net
| benefit to society instead of tearing it apart.
|
| We all warned you the free and open Internet, and by extension
| irl, as we knew it would unravel. Fundamental property rights are
| now dead; we just watched it happen.
|
| You gave up the fight. You voted for it. Twice.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Let's just remember that this is a ballot-box issue, not a
| payment-type issue.
|
| A lot of folks I'm sure will say this is what crypto is for, but
| if that ever gained enough traction then (the US) congress would
| clamp down on it. They'd probably call it "money laundering" or
| something like that. Remember the guy that went to jail for
| exchanging crypto for fiat?
|
| Are you mad at Visa/Mastercard? They don't care about porn, they
| care about not having congress smash them.
|
| You want regulations that would prevent MC/Visa from doing this?
| You've got it backwards. Regulation is on the side of
| surveillance and morality police.
| pipes wrote:
| Given the pc gamer article mentions "keep it in the family", I
| think they mean incest. Why on earth did valve have this on their
| platform on in the first place?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > I think they mean incest.
|
| Oh god they delisted Crusader Kings???!
| entropyneur wrote:
| Can someone please explain why we still have chargebacks in 2025?
| Don't accept cards without 3DS, problem solved. If not, why not?
| Are some important consumer segments still stuck with cards that
| don't have it?
| TheDong wrote:
| Chargebacks aren't just for stolen credit cards, but also
| fraudulent merchants.
|
| If I buy a physical good with a credit card, and the merchant
| either never sends me anything, or sends me an empty box and
| ignores my emails, well, that's a use-case for chargebacks. 3DS
| doesn't help with that.
| eurleif wrote:
| Also for merchants that are just too dysfunctional to do the
| right thing. A while back, I ordered a phone online from Best
| Buy, and they shipped me a different model from what I
| ordered. I contacted their customer service, who told me to
| mail the phone back for a refund. I did so, and then they
| mailed it right back to me with a note saying they couldn't
| accept the return because I'd sent them a different item from
| the one I ordered. (No shit: that's why I needed to return
| it!) They didn't have fraudulent intent, I'm sure; one hand
| just didn't know what the other was doing. A chargeback
| resolved that situation, and I'm very glad I had the option.
| HeavenFox wrote:
| Chargeback is not just for when your card is stolen. It's also
| for e.g. when you never received your order, or your order is
| substantially different from what's promised. It's basically a
| last resort customer service option.
| johndhi wrote:
| Similar pressures are placed on: porn, cannabis, and gun
| industries. Not only by payment processors but also, for example,
| by text message carriers.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This is the kind of thing that crypto gets around. Surely the CC
| companies will allow folks to use their cards to buy crypto then
| in the same 1 minute that newly bought crypto could be used to
| buy the game and valve if they converted the btc to usd at the
| same day or very quick could mitigate the volatility of the asset
| chmod775 wrote:
| Why not just make it not purchasable with that payment
| option/store credit?
|
| In many countries Steam supports plenty of alternative payment
| options that do not use VISA or mastercard.
|
| Thinking about it, if a platform as enormous as Steam just
| completely stopped accepting VISA and mastercard, they'd a)
| probably still be fine b) VISA and mastercard would probably cave
| - few companies will prioritize outworn politics over literally
| billions of revenue. In fact I'd expect these two to be the last
| to do that. Valve would be more the type to put principles first.
| Too bad they didn't this time.
| namuol wrote:
| The puritanical elites in America have been ruining everyone's
| fun for decades. So tired of their double standards and
| overreach.
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