> "This was first reported by Waypoint, which has since pulled its two articles on the subject without explanation. The articles' author, Ana Valens, has alleged that Vice's parent company, Savage Ventures, removed the articles due to concerns over their controversial content rather than any error in the reporting."
"Vice" shut down last year[0]; its brand was recently purchased and is now run by a hedge fund based in Nashville. I think this incident very clearly sums up the difference between what's news journalism, and what's a vapid content farm operated by financebros.
One would argue, are there any "news" organizations left? Or are they all operating from a content farm operated by financebros position? Can you name me one news organization that isn't owned by a parent company that has vested interests in specific stories and outcomes?
Christian Science Monitor (nonprofit run, the religion really is siloed to the "Christian Science Perspective" section and the reporting is good and as independent as it comes)
There are lots of news organisations not owned by parent companies with vested interests. RNZ in New Zealand, ABC in Australia, CBC in Canada and BBC in UK to name just a handful.
Ana Valens, also of "cis woman breeding farm" fame, is really not one who should be complaining about censorship. Far as she's concerned, when they go after her gooner games it's just a matter of the wrong people being censored. No bad tactics, only bad targets, amirite?
An interesting article I saw today in Portuguese language, is speculating that the real reason USA is threatening to tariff Brazil in 50% is because the invention of "Pix Parcelado" that is supposed to go online soon, will reduce the popularity of Mastercard and Visa, and thus remove an important tool of censorship from US government hands.
Lula also himself accused the USA of putting tariffs because of credit card companies.
Ironically, incidents like these further underscore the necessity of independence from Mastercard and Visa, as it seems anyone can influence these companies to serve their own interests.
It's not speculation, Mr. Trump started an investigation against Brazil and one of the items is the Pix system which he considers it's going against US interests.
People often don't consider that the US wants to be a super power, which means it needs at least soft power over other countries - which this indeed undermines, albeit slightly.
given how the Brazilian state itself is notorious for censorship and turning into a judge-aucracy i guess not really about censorship bit rather who censors?
This is usually how it seems to go, the nations that are first and most interested in home-shoring (nationalizing? I don't recall what the right term here is) are those most interested in performing their own censorship activities.
Really, it kind-of is. Governments are supposed to answer to their electorate, while corporations answer to their shareholders. While I’d prefer no censorship, one of these is less likely to turn into a tyrant than the other.
Is there anything that can be done with the weaponization of the payment system? Cryptocurrency as obviously failed, but is there really no possible recourse when every traditional payment method seemingly colludes to not take the business for whatever reason?
I tend to be extremely critical of government regulation, but I think it really could be a tool here. It's important to preserve the ability of payment processors to block fraudulent purchases and they are legally required to block illegal purchases, but surely there is some way to write "you can't block purchases based on perceived reputational risks" into law, right?
It would be very easy to write a law that banned payment processors from refusing service without showing financial justification (e.g. high chargeback rate). But why would the government do that? They like to have power to lean on companies to hurt people where they can't do it directly due to the constitution.
I think a 'purchase' ie a bank transfer like Zelle or even a paypal non-refundable 'gift' isn't likely to be blocked, it's just Visa and Mastercard that don't want to deal with offering fraud protection for vendors that see an extremely high number of chargebacks. So if you want to pay, pay by some method that doesn't offer money back in case of fraud.
I've also been prevented from sending money by e-check because my bank was concerned the form of payment was too suspicious, so I ETF'd money from another account instead. I don't think the law can force a 3rd party to facilitate a purchase.
The problem more so is capturing customers on the other end. Every time a site that relies on online payment tries to switch to crypto they say that the majority of potential customers are not willing to use it.
The biggest issue, for me, is that it is really annoying and hard work to use. The easiest way to use it is through something like MetaMask, but imagine trying to get grandma to buy something that way. It's tiring, and she'll probably get her wallet drained at some point.
Cryptocurrency is on the way being managed by govt. So it's correct to say cryptocurrency did not fail, but certainly the original libertarian vision behind it is dead.
Removing the middlemen is the most obvious solution, but they’re also amongst the most powerful players in the world, so it’s going to be challenging (to put it mildly).
In some places it’s already more than viable. In Europe it’s baked into the banking system, SCT (SEPA Credit Transfer) lets you move money between any two European accounts with only as much hassle as your bank wants in your way. And EPC QR lets you initiate transfers from QR codes.
The biggest annoyance with it is that uptake is quite variable from country to country.
Part of the problem is that you have to make a clean break from these middlemen. Steam can't say "for these games, we only take this form of payment", it's either only sell games Visa and MasterCard say you can, or no one can pay with their credit cards.
In what way failed? Because it's like saying P2P failed because the big corps don't like it and try their best to stop it, while still existing for quite a while.
You can say cryptocurrency is failed, but adult entertainers heavily rely on it because they have been censored by payment processors basically forever.
Censorship has a way of pushing people to learn inconvenient technology, just like how most Chinese citizens know how to use VPNs.
* Legal changes. Web platforms have section 230 protection to host user content. For payment processing this might be something like the proposed Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) that requires banks to offer additional (non-Visa/Mastercard) payment providers. Or a more explicit payment neutrality law the requires credit card companies to be more even-handed in non-financial issues. Or anti-debanking laws that ensure everyone has some minimal access to sending and receiving payments.
* Lawsuit results. Part of the issue with Visa was that they got dragged into lawsuits against sites that were using them to process payments; the lawsuits and appeals around that are still unresolved but if Visa's lack of legal liability goes away then it will be harder for random outside groups to harass them, for good or ill.
* Introducing an independent payment processor. While JCB in Japan has had some similar pressure applied to them, when there were national sovereignty concerns over Visa being able to dictate that American laws and norms should apply to their country Japan had many other payment processors to fall back on. Similarly, PIX in Brazil makes it much harder for non-government private actors to dictate what people can and cannot buy.
Yes its a very easy problem to solve, would take about 3 states to pass a law mandating "must-process" payments rather than the current framework of "may-process" (under threat of revocation of money transfer authority). Then the only method for them to not process a payment is those prohibited under existing law (ie: terrorist financing).
I could see CA and FL easily passing such a law given the right push from constituents.
Why can't governments do it? Have a digital cash. Something that works like cash that the government runs. They already handle physical currency, so why not digital?
Add in some really heavy handed rules that government can't use it to spy and maybe it will work.
Also, these people really should be shamed for their censorship.
Because governments always follow rules and never change them?
Private spending and communication are the beating heart of a healthy democracy and must be run directly by the public and decentralized or aspiring tyrants will co-opt them.
The people will never actually be in charge until we stop letting currency be controlled by governments and corporations.
Not really. You can insist on retail vendors accepting legal tender by law, but these things are online, and online it means every payment can and _will_ be tracked. As with everything you do in public, online payments can and _will_ be used against you (in the labor marketplace, in court, in... everything, to control you and your habits). More people will accept or insist on policing of your and their habits than people who will resist it.
People like to give America shit for anti-porn activism and laws but it really seems like America is just trailing behind the rest of the anglosphere. This case for instance, of Australians imposing their prudish values on American companies that were content to tolerate these naughty games. And those porn ID laws that Texas/etc get flack for are just on the path already trail blazed by the UK.
I remember having to download the Australian version of Fahrenheit because the US release (renamed as Indigo Prophecy) was censored. In my experience the US loves violence while the rest of the world is more likely to censor it, but the US hates sex, alcohol, and anything else that might possibly offend Christians (including religious references and iconography like how Final Fantasy was censored to rename the spell "Holy" and the Tower of Prayers). Germans censor anything nazi related in the same way, banning swastikas like the US removes crosses. Japan seems the least likely to censor artistic works, and when they do it's often for violence.
>The Puritans were a group of English Protestants who originated in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. They sought to purify the Church of England by removing Catholic practices and beliefs. Driven by their religious convictions and facing persecution, they eventually migrated to North America in the 17th century, establishing colonies in New England.
I can say as an Australia our governments have always been very enthusiastic about controlling what we can read, see, and hear. It was true 60 years ago with our movie rating scheme ("not given a rating" was the newspeak for "banned"), 30 years ago with games, and lots of books.
The internet has more or less rendered these efforts moot in recent times. This was highlighted when they tried to impose a rating system on games a couple of decades ago. I asked a school kid about the effect on him. He said it didn't effect him, as he downloaded his games from the internet. It all fell apart about then. Consequently we had the opportunity to see seen the flood of porn would do to society, and noticed nothing of consequence. The flood of conspiracy theories for life hacks on the other hand was completely unanticipated and it's impact badly underestimated.
Collective Shout is an excellent illustration of the effect. It's effectively a one girl band, yet her shouting on the internet about her desire to force her Baptist pro-life maternal morals down everyones throats has now been heard across the world.
One of the reasons that credit card companies have an incentive to keep this stuff off people's statements is that they sell your credit card histories on the data market, and would not want you to have a strong reason to want to stop them.
That's an interesting effect but I really don't think that's a significant driver here. It really seems to me like they're just being threatened by activists, journalists, and activist investors.
> That's an interesting effect but I really don't think that's a significant driver here. It really seems to me like they're just being threatened by activists, journalists, and activist investors.
Right-wing groups like Exodus Cry and Morality in Media (the groups behind the shutdown of Xtube, and the all-but-shutdown of Pornhub[0], as well as the short-lived ban of pornography on OnlyFans) are definitely the driving force behind these bans, but fundamentally the card networks are ambivalent at best when it comes to anything that could be remotely considered pornographic.
[0] Pornhub still operates, but they removed all "non-verified" content, so it mostly serves as an marketing outlet for studios and OnlyFans creators, and all of the older content that was never verified was removed entirely.
just kidding. this is the first i've heard of that, though.
i don't think it totally makes sense. your card transaction will still say "STEAMGAMES.COM 7264823" or similar, regardless of the content purchased.
on top of that, all sorts of shady porn & dating websites that you would NOT want leaked use the credit card companies.
Data enrichment brokers cross index purchase times with other data from legal factory installed spyware found in cash registers, analytics tools in proprietary software you already have on your computer, etc etc.
Every time you buy an over the counter medication at the pharmacy with a credit card, the data brokers know by combining information sources, and sell it to insurance companies.
And this is really bad, like I forgot the number of times I give in to get that pack of candy near the register at a shop then after a couple days exactly as the pack is empty I get shown a commercial of the same brand of the same pack/size etc.
Where are you? In the United States, there are displays of candy at every cash register, but they're individual servings that you're expected to eat in full immediately after leaving the store. A big bag with several days' worth of candy would have to come from the candy aisle.
And... are you really being served internet ads for candy?
Hey that's a pretty interesting thought actually. I hadn't considered that, but "follow the incentives and assume rationality" is generally (in my experience) the best way to try and understand why people do what they do. This theory definitely makes a lot of sense from that lens.
It seems like we need two things. First, some type of universal standard to id the country of legal residence of a user. Second, some type of way to know what laws a company needs to comply with to operate in a jurisdiction.
There are too many laws across different jurisdictions that makes it really challenging for companies to offer goods and services.
We need exactly the opposite: it should be impossible to determine the location of an Internet user. The fact that a user's IP address generally reveals their country is a massive flaw in the design of the Internet.
The only way to circumvent jurisdiction-specific laws is to make them impossible to enforce.
I'm not sure if this solves it exactly? If MasterCard says they'll cut you off unless you adopt their requirements it doesn't really help to say you'll apply that policy in X country and keep selling the stuff in another country, they could still cut you off unless you do it globally.
How would that apply to this? It's not about a law. They aren't even demanding better age verification, they want to be able to force arbitrary things to be removed entirely (starting with more objectionable topics, but I'm sure it will expand).
> This is likely far from over: Collective Shout is no doubt feeling emboldened by a second public success in its efforts to police content on Steam specifically. The games I saw removed from Steam in this wave all featured risible content and suspect quality, but Collective Shout has a broader anti-pornography, even anti-expression remit that it has demonstrated in the past.
Yes indeed, a huge success like this will give them a big boost in motivation and funding for many, many years to come. IMHO we need to regulate away the credit card processing companies ability to discriminate like this, and while we're at it we should stop letting them heavily tax the entire economy
How does these types of Australian anti-vice groups have so much global sway, and yet Australia leads the world in gambling addiction and accessibility? Presumably they'd be interested in both vices, but seem to only wield power over one. *edited for clarity of question
They don't. Valve got their profit from the incest/ageplay/noncon crowd and now they want to revert to their family-friendly image with that money drying up. This is just a convenient excuse to do so.
Valve was forced by credit card processors to do this, its not Valve that is trying to keep a family friendly image here, if they could they would keep those games they said so themselves.
Readit News
"Vice" shut down last year[0]; its brand was recently purchased and is now run by a hedge fund based in Nashville. I think this incident very clearly sums up the difference between what's news journalism, and what's a vapid content farm operated by financebros.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39476074 ("Vice website is shutting down (writing.exchange)"—459 comments)
Lula also himself accused the USA of putting tariffs because of credit card companies.
I've also been prevented from sending money by e-check because my bank was concerned the form of payment was too suspicious, so I ETF'd money from another account instead. I don't think the law can force a 3rd party to facilitate a purchase.
I don't think cryptocurrency has failed. Yesterday I successfully payed with crypto when the payment with multiple credit cards failed.
* PornHub has been only taking cryptocurrency for payment for a while, and they seem to be doing ok
* The US just passed GENIUS Act with somewhat bipartisan support -- probably not even imaginable one year ago
See: https://www.taler.net/en/index.html
The biggest annoyance with it is that uptake is quite variable from country to country.
-also introduce new middleman
I don't think that works honestly, its just move a new money into new player everyone want to take a cut
Censorship has a way of pushing people to learn inconvenient technology, just like how most Chinese citizens know how to use VPNs.
* Legal changes. Web platforms have section 230 protection to host user content. For payment processing this might be something like the proposed Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) that requires banks to offer additional (non-Visa/Mastercard) payment providers. Or a more explicit payment neutrality law the requires credit card companies to be more even-handed in non-financial issues. Or anti-debanking laws that ensure everyone has some minimal access to sending and receiving payments.
* Lawsuit results. Part of the issue with Visa was that they got dragged into lawsuits against sites that were using them to process payments; the lawsuits and appeals around that are still unresolved but if Visa's lack of legal liability goes away then it will be harder for random outside groups to harass them, for good or ill.
* Introducing an independent payment processor. While JCB in Japan has had some similar pressure applied to them, when there were national sovereignty concerns over Visa being able to dictate that American laws and norms should apply to their country Japan had many other payment processors to fall back on. Similarly, PIX in Brazil makes it much harder for non-government private actors to dictate what people can and cannot buy.
I could see CA and FL easily passing such a law given the right push from constituents.
Deleted Comment
Add in some really heavy handed rules that government can't use it to spy and maybe it will work.
Also, these people really should be shamed for their censorship.
Private spending and communication are the beating heart of a healthy democracy and must be run directly by the public and decentralized or aspiring tyrants will co-opt them.
The people will never actually be in charge until we stop letting currency be controlled by governments and corporations.
That's a common misconception. In most jurisdictions retailers can set their own payment policies.
>The Puritans were a group of English Protestants who originated in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. They sought to purify the Church of England by removing Catholic practices and beliefs. Driven by their religious convictions and facing persecution, they eventually migrated to North America in the 17th century, establishing colonies in New England.
The internet has more or less rendered these efforts moot in recent times. This was highlighted when they tried to impose a rating system on games a couple of decades ago. I asked a school kid about the effect on him. He said it didn't effect him, as he downloaded his games from the internet. It all fell apart about then. Consequently we had the opportunity to see seen the flood of porn would do to society, and noticed nothing of consequence. The flood of conspiracy theories for life hacks on the other hand was completely unanticipated and it's impact badly underestimated.
Collective Shout is an excellent illustration of the effect. It's effectively a one girl band, yet her shouting on the internet about her desire to force her Baptist pro-life maternal morals down everyones throats has now been heard across the world.
Dead Comment
Right-wing groups like Exodus Cry and Morality in Media (the groups behind the shutdown of Xtube, and the all-but-shutdown of Pornhub[0], as well as the short-lived ban of pornography on OnlyFans) are definitely the driving force behind these bans, but fundamentally the card networks are ambivalent at best when it comes to anything that could be remotely considered pornographic.
[0] Pornhub still operates, but they removed all "non-verified" content, so it mostly serves as an marketing outlet for studios and OnlyFans creators, and all of the older content that was never verified was removed entirely.
just kidding. this is the first i've heard of that, though.
i don't think it totally makes sense. your card transaction will still say "STEAMGAMES.COM 7264823" or similar, regardless of the content purchased. on top of that, all sorts of shady porn & dating websites that you would NOT want leaked use the credit card companies.
Every time you buy an over the counter medication at the pharmacy with a credit card, the data brokers know by combining information sources, and sell it to insurance companies.
And... are you really being served internet ads for candy?
Dead Comment
There are too many laws across different jurisdictions that makes it really challenging for companies to offer goods and services.
The only way to circumvent jurisdiction-specific laws is to make them impossible to enforce.
Yes indeed, a huge success like this will give them a big boost in motivation and funding for many, many years to come. IMHO we need to regulate away the credit card processing companies ability to discriminate like this, and while we're at it we should stop letting them heavily tax the entire economy