Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship

I was under the impression that Australia was more America than America in a lot of ways.

Supposedly you can still hear the last of the V8 interceptors roar in the wild there...

Good. The rest of the world is used to rolling our eyes at Americans who can't handle the word cunt or show a dick on TV and the impact it has on us. It's not a bad thing to get a reality check for you.

No more absurd than US card schemes dictating what I can and can't buy in another country.

Worth pointing out that this group that pushed this, Collective Shout, is Australian.

> Visa/Mastercard banning porn has been a consistent and steady policy for years now.

Yeah, because they got sued for processing payments on some porn sites that weren't taking down revenge porn. They're not puritans, they're concerned about their bottom line, and the lawsuits threatened them with losing lots of money.

I will say one thing for Puritanism they would have exiled Trump not vote him mayor.

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> well-funded lobby groups

Collective Shout isn't this. They're closer to outrage entrepreneurs.

They identified a non-issue that one could generate outrage around, fundraised on that manufactured outrage, and then launched an attack nobody was defending against because the issue was made up.

It's still people. There's a small group of decision makers that matter.

They're absolutely ignoring a bunch of other well funded lobby groups. This idea just appealed to them, for whatever reason.

The payment provider has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason, being forced to do business with someone is the same thing as compelling someone to speak (or not speak).

Two wrongs don't make a right.

In my opinion, this content has a net positive effect on society.

While of course I cannot approve those activities, we cannot ignore the fact that there exists people who are sexually attracted and aroused by children, torture, rape and many other things. And we know that you don't get to choose your sexual orientation, it just happens.

As a parent, I find it reassuring to live in a country where those people can relief their pulsions through fictional content. Stripping them from this option would only make them suffer through this pain and shame until a point where they cannot endure it anymore and end-up harming real people.

We know that harassing and witch-hunting minorities doesn't work and actually makes the situation worse. As uncomfortable as this specific case is, I believe that it's much better to help them find a way to live peacefully in society.

I don't think it's a good idea to deputize payment processors. They are practicially natural monopolies due to network effects.

If it's illegal then the government should pursue it directly. It's better tested in court than behind closed doors.

We can't go banning things just because they can, potentially, be used for "child fetishization".

Movies can be used for that purpose, and certainly Hollywood knows that. Books. TV. Any form of media.

Not to mention, rape and torture "simulators" (do you by change mean media?) are integral to our understanding of those things. What if rape survivors could not speak it, for it is too shameful?

And, the elephant in the room, sex is alone on this pedestal. Sex, alone, is uniquely stigmatized to a degree that nothing even comes close. Violence, no matter how gruesome and vile, does not reach even 1/1000th the scorn of even modest sex.

This is a purity game, plain and simple. The shame around sex and the extreme desire to control it comes from the patriarchy and religious ideals. These should not be humored.

Well, at least in the US, it's legal to draw, sell, and purchase those drawings—no wrapper needed it can be explicitly cp. And while I have negative infinity desire to consume or encounter this kind of content I nonetheless think it should exist as a 'methadone' for folks whose sexual frustration might otherwise drive them to do something horrible.

And if we allow it at all I don't think it makes sense to pick and choose what artistic mediums it's allowed to take no matter how abhorrent I might personally find it.

Funny when at the same time people call democracy "the tyranny of the majority".

No worries, this pearl clutching is getting many books that we read in school banned as well.

Are these "cancel culture" takedown campaigns at all reflective of popular sentiment?

In 2018 and 2019 these campaigns and their ramifications (be they positive or negative) were consistently present in in-person conversations I was having at the time.

In 2025, these campaigns strike me as outdated and significantly less popular compared to 5-7 years ago. The people I know in real life talk about other things.

It is plainly clear to me that with a decent botnet one can easily manufacture the illusion of social outrage on Twitter/X.

With that in mind, I find it hard to believe that there is even a critical mass of people supporting this takedown campaign.

Has anyone with any sort of reputation backed this takedown campaign?

> In 2008,[4]: 84 [Melinda Tankard Reist] co-founded Collective Shout for a World Free of Sexploitation (or simply Collective Shout), which self-describes as "a grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture."[14]

Is that what "right-wing grifters" look like nowadays?

It is not specific to right wing grifters. Left wing grifters use the same talking points but with a different reason behind. Yet they want to censor the same products: one group based on puritanism & moralism while the other based on feminism & LGBT rights. Both extremes want the same thing.

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The fundamental issue is the existence of an iron clad monopoly of 2 payment providers.

It’s a choke point on the entire economy for any sufficiently motivated interest group that wants to ban something that would otherwise be legal…lobbying a few executives at Visa/Mastercard to shut off the taps is much easier than lobbying government to pass a law.

With no mandated open protocol for (legal) payments or legal protections like the internet has, this will continue to be a problem and will only get worse.

Ultimately I think digital payments should be facilitated on government rails just like cash is. Where any decision to block a payment should be determined by law, and require actual skin in the game from elected representatives who are fireable by their constituents.

>if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal

>sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal

The removed content was gross, but it was legal content. That's the heart of the issue.

But why should the payment processors be in court? They are just a 'road for money'. Normal roads nor toll road operators aren't going to be charged with a felony if a criminal uses their roads, why should that be different for payments processors?

Well, then stop doing those transactions in <country>, not globally. Why am I not allowed to buy something just because some organization in <country> threatens lawsuits there or whatever?

In other cases multi-nationals (e.g. AWS) are perfectly willing to claim that they're operating a local company under local laws and you can totally trust them to protect local customers from extraterritorial government reach.

Additionally, if this were only about legal risk to the payment processors themselves there would be no reason for them to demand that those games are delisted. They'd only have to refuse supporting the transaction. The game stores could continue to list them and require different payment methods.

Why should they be responsible for what is hosted on OF? It’s like blaming an ISP for letting you use internet because you accessed illegal stuff.

A payment processor, by definition, does not know what is being bought, it merely mediates payment, And as such is not a party in crime.

Can you buy a gun with a credit card in the US? I presume yes. Why would other weapons be different?

Thankfully, politics is now a arm of corporate policies so theres really no real concerns about fascism.

Not quite, the payment processor monopoly is maintained in part due to regulation, so the government has a hand in this private-public scheme, and this would not happen if there were competition, which is why porn sites and such often accept crypto now.

> The decision still has to be made

Well, not really. Right now we're making two separate decisions. One for what is legal to sell, and one for what you can meaningfully sell. Those shouldn't be different, so the latter decision shouldn't be happening.

> rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars

This sums up my experience with my representatives in recent years. You only get a meeting with my reps if you're a large donor or you cause enough public outrage.

Otherwise they feel no obligation to their constituents and hope that the automated form letter (in varying font sizes and colors between paragraphs) they send you in response is enough to appease you.

Article is about how angry crowd just overwhelmed support lines for those companies.

Let’s just think why it would not be feasible to build proper system.

Maybe because bunch of angry assholes would take it down instantly filing bogus claims.

>Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it

I haven't seen a working payphone since the 90s lol.

Overcomplicated and unnecessary considering that Bitcoin and lightning exist and are growing exponentially every month.

Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.

It's always funny to me how may of the local small business folks align themselves with what they think are business friendly politicians. Those politicians don't care about them ... they care about big business and big business doesn't care about small / happy to push them out of the way.

Consumers don't necessarily care about businesses, they care about products. And even then they will feel like bad products getting screwed "deserved it".

But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.

That's not really surprising. The size of the audience for the latter >> the size of the audience for the former. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to sit on the phone for hours because a small business in another country is being treated unfairly.

American Express has always had stricter policies about adult content than Visa or MasterCard.

They don't allow their cards to be accepted by pornography sites.

If that's how you choose to frame it, you're absolutely right.

If, instead, you frame it as "Duopoly of payment processors are deciding which legal content you are allowed to purchase.", surprise, you'll get more support.

Ideology. Some religious, some not.

Loud, wealthy people with extremist beliefs are behind most of the actions that restrict our ability to exercise our rights.

This one in particular is an attack on art. It’s not just games, but traditional types of art as well that are currently affected by this issue. There is a certain ideology that views non-mainstream art - particularly art that tells a story about uncomfortable subjects - as something “degenerate” to be eradicated.

It is always about money. Visa was sued for facilitating child porn, and I am guessing they don’t want to wander into another one.

Well, if they block whole Steam, it will create way larger outrage. I am sure they will dare not.

The problem of Visa/Mastercard blocking Steam is not the loss of revenue per se, but a potential viable alternative could capture this niche market and use it as a base to displace them entirely. To buy games, we have to set up GamerPay, then why not use it for the next online shopping?

In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.

Stablecoins and FedNow instant payments are options. Walmart is about to offer Pay by Bank using FedNow instant payments rails to avoid credit card interchange fees, for example. Does Coinbase offer payment processing yet? Could be the next Superapp competing against PayPal’s global digital wallet.