It's crazy that we live in a world where maybe a few dozen people's weird ideas about what shouldn't be allowed can cause payment processors to pressure the storefronts to delist the titles. It is censorship of something they personally find distasteful. guess what: nobody is forcing you to play weird art games about trauma.
obviously we must keep the pressure up on payment processors to reverse course, but we also need to push back against people in society who think they can decide what other adults are allowed to do on their own time. If folks IRL have weird ideas pushed back on IRL we wouldn't get to crisis points like this.
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.
Honestly though, Visa and MC would take porn in a heartbeat if the dispute rates weren't so high. Like, they were definitely burned by the Mindgeek stuff a few years back, but at it's heart this is a commercial decision because disputes cost them lots and lots of money.
> 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.
Freedom of speech goes both ways, even people we disagree with are free to express their opinions.
The real problem is how can it be legal for payment provider to forbid stuff that isn't illegal, no matter what it is.
Had Steam decided to deplatform some content, it's up to them (although centralization through steam of other platform causes an unwarranted concentration of power) but that third parties can intervene an have a say in what is allowed and what isn't anywhere on the internet is a very serious trouble.
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).
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.
I read a long interview about porn regulation and the star-chamber-esque process whereby visa and mastercard determine what porn is allowed.
Fundamentally, it's a failure of government. The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules. But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
Alternatively, the failure of government here is not in their failure to regulate porn but in their failure to regulate Visa and Mastercard properly and thus deprive the payment processors of the opportunity or excuse to run "star-chamber-esque" processes. If non-cash payment rails are now a necessity to run a business, then access to them has to be a right. The payment processors need to be required to allow every business to accept money through their service, for the same fee as any other business is charged. Otherwise payment rails become a de-facto government in that they gain the power to license or prohibit businesses at their caprice.
The reason the government has failed here is religion.
Politicians don't want to wade into porn regulation because saying anything other than "we will outright ban it" will be construed as condoning something a large population chunk sees as immoral in all circumstances. And, obviously, an outright ban will upset the other large set of the population who has no moral qualms with porn.
Prostitution has exactly the same problem. Legislation that regulates sex work would be seen as condoning sex work. So instead, it's outright banned, which pushes sex work into a black market which endangers the sex workers and their patrons.
>The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules
They may not want to make the rules, but they do want the rules. They just don't want the blame. Otherwise they would just, not have the rules around who they'll work with. They would just work with anyone and tell anyone that complains about it to complain to the government, that it's company policy to work with any legal company.
DNS doesn't stop to check if you're okay to have a name. Water company and electric don't refuse to hook up your building because they don't like your business.
They have chosen to become content arbitrators. It was not foist upon them.
>But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
That is somewhat intentional. Governments haven't, usually because they believe they will lose in court (at least in the US), but they still want restrictions so there is pressure put on payment processors to make the determination. That way, it is a private entity doing the banning and not the government. Or at least that is the appearance.
Governments have made a variety of rules on what acceptable for their individual country. The issue is that some groups don't like that governments (often, governments other than their own) aren't as restrictive as they want.
Like here, the driving group is Australian. Similar groups have been quite successful in getting the Australian government to ban the sale of video games with content they find objectionable, but is very arguably non-pornographic, like Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact. To the point that they're far more restrictive than Nintendo.
>Fundamentally, it's a failure of government. The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules. But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
Politicians fallacy. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it. It completely glazes over the fact that it's an equally valid course of action to not do something.
My understanding is that for banks, governments regulators don’t want to make rules either, so sometimes they just require banks to have rules that achieve certain goals.
To me this is also a stark warning over silicon valley companies instilling their morals and assumptions on other parts of the world. It's not a popular take because it's got many touch points into our spheres of working.
If only there was some kind of decentralized technology that allowed us to move value between two independent entities in a trustless manner, at very low cost and very very fast.
No, I'm not talking about the POC that the pseudonimus guy proposed. Maybe something later that actually scales... a man can only wish that such technology will be invented sometime in the future.
I imagine this currently would be deflationary and be a superb store of value to keep inflation from eating away your life savings and possibly become the best performing asset of this generation.
Bro it's not a "weird art game about trauma" its a rape simulator. Should payment processors be involved here? Probably not. But the game is definitely a bad thing that should not exist and whoever made it is 100% a bad person.
Given that at this point the games that have been delisted include IGF award winners and art games that have been shown in museums, I think we're pretty far past pointing at any individual games as a reason to justify this.
They're probably talking about Mouthwashing which was announced to be delisted from itch (not steam though) today [^1]. Not played the game, only read synopsis, but it's a horror game instigated by a rape. As far as I know, the rapist is not meant to be a sympathetic character.
brother i don't even know what specific thing you're talking about. hundreds, thousands? of games have been delisted on storefronts for the sin of including themes that the lobbiers found objectionable.
So do what 99.9999% of us already do: don't play these games. You deciding to make it a moral issue that you get to determine for everyone else is where you turn a personal opinion (really just an understandable sense of disgust) into a policy.
If we still decided what was allowed based on the sense of disgust it engenders in some people, we'd still be living like Medieval peasants. Adults should be free to make informed choices, that includes purchasing and consuming things that you and I find repellent.
The problem here is how opaque and arbitrary the entire process is. Because someone could sue Visa/Mastercard over certain games' content in an arbitrary jurisdiction, they have imposed a ban worldwide in every game storefront in existence.
I guess we're also going to have to ban movies like A Clockwork Orange then. Stanley Kubrick and all the other people involved in production? 100% bad people.
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
The targeting here is very broad. As a reminder, Collective Shout has tried to get GTA blocked. And Detroit: Become Human for having you play as an abused woman and child as they escape the abuse.
I really disagree. I think hentai is a flimsy wrapper around child fetishization and needs to be heavily regulated. I think having rape or torture simulators are extremely harmful in multiple ways.
Really would prefer the government outlaw these things but I don’t mind companies protecting themselves from liability.
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.
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.
I looked up the word 'hentai', and the way you used it is incorrect. It's like using the word 'porn' to mean 'child pornography.'
There is also a problem with your argument itself. Child pornography is illegal because it involves harm to children, not to suppress people with certain preferences. If there are no victims and it’s just a fictional depiction, there’s no reason to ban it.
Personally I don’t really like people who are into that but that doesn’t give anyone the right to oppress them.
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.
I suspect a lot of people are rather comforted by the fact that it was pornographies that were removed at first. Now the waterline has moved up to horror games[1]. Mouthwashing(2024) is a horror adventure game available on all 3 major game consoles as well as Steam, and now it's hidden on itch.io. Think about that.
The current discussion included games like Detroit: Become Human, which AFAICT does not include the kind of content being objected to here[^1].
[^1]: I think there is a sexual assault scene against a robot — but the game isn't glorifying SA; if anything, exactly the opposite, since the entire point of the story is focused on questions of sentience and moral grey to outright morally horrendous areas around the rights of robots who are gaining sentience but exist in a society that does not see them as beings deserving of rights, but rather as objects, and the conflict/problems that creates.
To classify it as "rape content" or "porn" would require stripping it of literary & artistic value. Which seems to be the endgame of most of these book-burning groups.
Unfortunately, many people will support a law provided that the first order consequences align with them ideologically - irrespective of the potential PRECEDENT aforementioned law results in.
Porn wasn't the first by a long shot. It was just the first that people felt comfortable speaking up against. Up to that point everyone seemed mighty fine that these companies rule the world
> “We raised our objection to rape and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months,” reads a blog post from Collective Shout. “We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.”
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
The problem is that in the current environment all it takes is one right wing grifter to go “visa protects rapists and pedophiles and their sick twisted games/fantasies” for conservative “boycotts” and negative PR campaigns to go in to full swing. And if they survive that, there’s always a chance the current White House will catch wind and use it themselves as a cudgel.
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?
I just don't believe those boycotts have the power they think. How many people are going to give up their Visa card because some do-gooder pearl-clutching MAGAtastic group is crying about it on tik-tok and facebook
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.
> 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?
Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an issue where they couldn't take credit cards. No warning, they weren't even told, they were just added to a list and couldn't take payment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They still haven't completely resolved the issue / don't know how they ended up on a bad list.
The idea that someone somewhere else complains inside an opaque system, and your ability to do business ends without warning is absurd. You can't appeal, you can't talk to anyone, you're just hosed. In some cases you AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on.
> Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
Yes... but if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal, then they have an interest in not being in that situation.
> Jan 24 (Reuters) - Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
> The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
> On Friday, July 29, a federal court issued a decision in ongoing litigation involving MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and other websites. In this pre-trial decision, the court denied Visa’s motion to be removed from the case on a theory that Visa was complicit in MindGeek’s actions because Visa payment cards were used to pay for advertising on MindGeek sites, among other claims. We strongly disagree with this decision and are confident in our position.
Given this, it is a completely reasonable position for payment processors to decide not to touch anything that they can be brought into legal liability.
They'd likely prefer not being gatekeepers of money, but if they're going to be brought into a court and sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal, they're going to take steps to not be brought into court.
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.
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.
I've seen this happen to a lot of businesses around all kinds of arms, even if not directly selling weapons, but doing training, etc. I've also seen social media figures who are prominently politically oriented face similar issues with donation platforms due to pressure from payment processors/cc companies.
It's really icky to say the least. There's plenty of groups I'd love to see debanked on a personal level... that said, I think it's entirely wrong for anyone not breaking domestic laws where they are.
> Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
This is what the end-game of unspooling government functions into the private sector looks like. The decision still has to be made, but rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars where optics and boycott pressure are the levers of change for our collective rights.
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.
> 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.
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.
Paypal blocked our entire account because we sold a product called "La Aroma De Cuba", a cigar manufactured in nicaragua. No discussion would resolve it. We regexed the product name on the payload to replace it with LADC and we were reinstated.
I had a similar experience with a payment processor for a client that sold manufacturing accessories for a completely benign industry - but one morning they were suddenly cut off and forbidden from processing all transactions. The payment gateway would not tell us why, just that the account was permanently suspended for “service violations”.
We had to quickly onboard them onto a new gateway, and while testing in their sandbox environment a rep saw the issue. Turned out one of their products ended up with an auto-generated part code that had the four-letter term for sexual assault in it. That was it.
Is there any chance that "La aroma de Cuba" brand is associated to tobacco, while LDAC sounds more like a sound codec? Tobacco might be the issue in that case.
I am in no way implying there is no Cuban embargo, nor Cuban censorship.
By the way, why is the name "La aroma de Cuba" and not "El aroma de Cuba"?
Having gatekeepers isn’t so much the problem — there’s stuff almost everyone agrees should be gatekept (and other things that maybe should be even when not everyone agrees).
The problem is that we build these systems where no one seems to want to or have incentive to thin about responsible administration, reasonable feedback, appeal, and accountability. Everybody who can just gets lawyers that work to insulate themselves, sometimes because they don’t give a damn and sometimes because that’s what the incentives of exposure sometimes abused are.
I prefer to pay in cash when I can do so. I think payment by cash and by barter will be better, in situations where that works.
However, for computer payment, I had another idea is to make a "computer payment file" that contains the order division and payment division, and with encryption and signature, and send that to them. You will first receive the file telling what payments are acceptable and can use that to make the file to send to them. Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it, too; after you figure out the price, you can receive the payment code and include that in the payment file. Other methods of payment would be possible (e.g. store credit), so the payment file can work independently of what kind of payment.
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.
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.
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.
I hate to say it, but one more reason for crypto or any other alternatives. Those companies became too central and crucial. And with power always comes pressure from various sides and corruption.
There's a ton of other payment methods that don't go through CC processors. Wire transfers, ACH, digital checks, payment apps (which are an abstraction over these), or direct payment platforms (like Paypal).
Game retailers could get together to form their own payment company, let's call it GamerPay, which deducts purchases directly from a bank account, just like most other bills we pay. They could probably get a lot of non-gaming related companies on board if they offered lower fees and/or more transparency.
People seem to forget that banks have been transferring funds between accounts for much longer than credit cards have been around. The infrastructure exists for bypassing credit cards, they just aren't what the majority use.
Are we surprised at this outcome? Most of HN encourages forming companies to find a niche in the world, build an arbitrage over it and charge rent. Payment processors and banks do that. Just like startup founders they then listen to the stakeholders with the biggest wallets. It turns out prude Christians have fucking money and apparently more than horny gamer bros.
The leadership at Visa, Mastercard, etc. know damned well that consumers and businesses have no other realistic options than them and that a consumer campaign is unlikely to sustain itself for more than a few weeks. What we need is pressure on politicians, particularly Democratic legislators and candidates who are desperate for an issue that will garner them support and votes.
> Democratic legislators and candidates who are desperate for an issue that will garner them support and votes
"gamer fury" over not being able to buy porno video games with their credit cards is not exact something that is going to garner the Dems any new support or votes.
If 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.
Is AmEx any better? I’m planning to cancel my Mastercard with this gatekeeping as a reference to why. It seems to be the most effective lever most of us have.
The question I have about most conspiracies including this one is: Why? What’s the motive?
You can do everything with a debit card, it probably already happened that Visa was used to facilitate buying a weapon for a school shooting: Were they annoyed?
You can buy a dildo with a Mastercard on Amazon: Are they annoyed?
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.
This is just a peek into a possible future. With the trend of eliminating cash, the powers that be can prevent people from buying anything deemed harmful. Or a large company can close down a small but innovative competitor with a flick of the wrist.
Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.
The problem with that is there are a number of ways to prevent you from holding cash as well. Bank regulations around how much money you can withdraw/access, scrutiny around how much money you can carry to an airport, asset forfeiture without due process etc. all allow governments to coerce you into whatever they want. Cash is not necessarily a solution either.
Sure, cash is far from ideal. But it's something we already have (zero implementation resistance/delay/cost). And it still works fine (at least at small scales) when the power fails, or internet is down, or server gets hacked, or whatever.
Currently at an airport right now. Nobody will even TAKE cash. I could be holding a million dollars right now but I cant use any of it to buy a coke. Availability is not the bottleneck.
>"But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards."
The Bitcoin crowd is adamant that no government can regulate Bitcoin. They are correct in the sense that Congress is unable to pass a law dictating what the Bitcoin protocol must do, and that as a decentralized network people are free to follow whichever fork of Bitcoin they choose.
However, they have not given much consideration to the fact that governments have full authority to regulate those that use Bitcoin. In other words, no government needs to change Bitcoin. All they need to do is dictate what the lawful use of Bitcoin looks like in their jurisdiction. There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities. In the context of this article, I doubt that a government would prohibit the sale of these games, but I agree with your assertion that the government is likely to start locking down cryptocurrencies in some way that impedes privacy.
> There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities.
This would likely drive capital and the fintech companies and financial institutions behind it to friendlier countries and more welcoming markets.
Each bill of American paper currency has a unique serial number. In practical terms, this means that paper money is not guaranteed to be untraceable for transactions; particularly when engaging in the sort of transactions where large stacks of cash are moved between banks.
Is there a reason steam hasn't just changed policy so that adult games can only be purchased with store credit? They already have systems in place to load a steam balance, which isnt refundable, and then buy games with it. Just lock these games to only use that payment type...
Visa/Mastercard can, conceivably, just tell Steam "if X content is available on the platform at all, regardless of payment method, we will no longer process your payments."
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.
It's a consequence of concentration of power. People and organizations do what they have the power to do. Which is why the democracy is built on splitting power between as many people as possible.
Private, consolidated mega-corporations largely sidestep the democratic process, and these kind of things are the consequence of that.
It's nothing new, just the newest wave of credit card attacks based on ideaology.
But what's going on: lots of unrest in the world mixed with a dying generation with the most wealth trying to secure a legacy. Awful combination for freedom and livelihood.
Readit News
obviously we must keep the pressure up on payment processors to reverse course, but we also need to push back against people in society who think they can decide what other adults are allowed to do on their own time. If folks IRL have weird ideas pushed back on IRL we wouldn't get to crisis points like this.
I want to underline the absurdity of a foreign feminist organisation [1], in this political environment, dictating what Americans can and cannot see.
[1] https://www.collectiveshout.org
Supposedly you can still hear the last of the V8 interceptors roar in the wild there...
Maybe this time it was triggered by this specific group, but it comes in a line of events that all went into that direction for years and years.
American puritanism is neither a flash in the pan nor a fringe movement of people that just need to be told how it is, IMHO.
Dead Comment
Yeah, because they got sued for processing payments on some porn sites that weren't taking down revenge porn. They're not puritans, they're concerned about their bottom line, and the lawsuits threatened them with losing lots of money.
The real problem is how can it be legal for payment provider to forbid stuff that isn't illegal, no matter what it is.
Had Steam decided to deplatform some content, it's up to them (although centralization through steam of other platform causes an unwarranted concentration of power) but that third parties can intervene an have a say in what is allowed and what isn't anywhere on the internet is a very serious trouble.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Most of these groups buckle to well-funded lobby groups.
Collective Shout isn't this. They're closer to outrage entrepreneurs.
They identified a non-issue that one could generate outrage around, fundraised on that manufactured outrage, and then launched an attack nobody was defending against because the issue was made up.
They're absolutely ignoring a bunch of other well funded lobby groups. This idea just appealed to them, for whatever reason.
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Fundamentally, it's a failure of government. The people / companies involved made it really clear that they don't want to be making the rules. But governments haven't, so they're the last ones left standing because someone must determine what is permissible.
Politicians don't want to wade into porn regulation because saying anything other than "we will outright ban it" will be construed as condoning something a large population chunk sees as immoral in all circumstances. And, obviously, an outright ban will upset the other large set of the population who has no moral qualms with porn.
Prostitution has exactly the same problem. Legislation that regulates sex work would be seen as condoning sex work. So instead, it's outright banned, which pushes sex work into a black market which endangers the sex workers and their patrons.
They may not want to make the rules, but they do want the rules. They just don't want the blame. Otherwise they would just, not have the rules around who they'll work with. They would just work with anyone and tell anyone that complains about it to complain to the government, that it's company policy to work with any legal company.
DNS doesn't stop to check if you're okay to have a name. Water company and electric don't refuse to hook up your building because they don't like your business.
They have chosen to become content arbitrators. It was not foist upon them.
If something isn't illegal it is legal, and therefore they should be allowing payment for it.
That is somewhat intentional. Governments haven't, usually because they believe they will lose in court (at least in the US), but they still want restrictions so there is pressure put on payment processors to make the determination. That way, it is a private entity doing the banning and not the government. Or at least that is the appearance.
Like here, the driving group is Australian. Similar groups have been quite successful in getting the Australian government to ban the sale of video games with content they find objectionable, but is very arguably non-pornographic, like Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact. To the point that they're far more restrictive than Nintendo.
Politicians fallacy. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it. It completely glazes over the fact that it's an equally valid course of action to not do something.
Yes they have. Porn is absolutely, unequivocally, legal. The problem is people don't like that rule.
But, what is permissible and what is not is well established.
A similar thing might end up happening here?
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No, I'm not talking about the POC that the pseudonimus guy proposed. Maybe something later that actually scales... a man can only wish that such technology will be invented sometime in the future.
Magical thinking of course.
Make a list of the most popular films and games. You'll find a lot of violence and sexual assault. You'd have to ban _most_ media to get rid of it.
[^1]: https://bsky.app/profile/siarate.bsky.social/post/3luz4cz6wx...
If we still decided what was allowed based on the sense of disgust it engenders in some people, we'd still be living like Medieval peasants. Adults should be free to make informed choices, that includes purchasing and consuming things that you and I find repellent.
You don't like the game? Is there a gun to your head making you play it? No. The conversation should be over then.
But hey they're all bad people I guess, victims included.
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
What game are you talking about?
Really would prefer the government outlaw these things but I don’t mind companies protecting themselves from liability.
While of course I cannot approve those activities, we cannot ignore the fact that there exists people who are sexually attracted and aroused by children, torture, rape and many other things. And we know that you don't get to choose your sexual orientation, it just happens.
As a parent, I find it reassuring to live in a country where those people can relief their pulsions through fictional content. Stripping them from this option would only make them suffer through this pain and shame until a point where they cannot endure it anymore and end-up harming real people.
We know that harassing and witch-hunting minorities doesn't work and actually makes the situation worse. As uncomfortable as this specific case is, I believe that it's much better to help them find a way to live peacefully in society.
If it's illegal then the government should pursue it directly. It's better tested in court than behind closed doors.
Movies can be used for that purpose, and certainly Hollywood knows that. Books. TV. Any form of media.
Not to mention, rape and torture "simulators" (do you by change mean media?) are integral to our understanding of those things. What if rape survivors could not speak it, for it is too shameful?
And, the elephant in the room, sex is alone on this pedestal. Sex, alone, is uniquely stigmatized to a degree that nothing even comes close. Violence, no matter how gruesome and vile, does not reach even 1/1000th the scorn of even modest sex.
This is a purity game, plain and simple. The shame around sex and the extreme desire to control it comes from the patriarchy and religious ideals. These should not be humored.
There is also a problem with your argument itself. Child pornography is illegal because it involves harm to children, not to suppress people with certain preferences. If there are no victims and it’s just a fictional depiction, there’s no reason to ban it.
Personally I don’t really like people who are into that but that doesn’t give anyone the right to oppress them.
And if we allow it at all I don't think it makes sense to pick and choose what artistic mediums it's allowed to take no matter how abhorrent I might personally find it.
1: https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=mouthwashing&classificat...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthwashing_(video_game)
> This game hasn’t been indexed since October 2024 since it doesn’t meet our indexing criteria: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#why-isnt-my-pr...
> The developers are using a “Download” button as a link to Steam. The developer took down any playable files form this page in 2024.
[0]: https://itch.io/post/13496611
[^1]: I think there is a sexual assault scene against a robot — but the game isn't glorifying SA; if anything, exactly the opposite, since the entire point of the story is focused on questions of sentience and moral grey to outright morally horrendous areas around the rights of robots who are gaining sentience but exist in a society that does not see them as beings deserving of rights, but rather as objects, and the conflict/problems that creates.
To classify it as "rape content" or "porn" would require stripping it of literary & artistic value. Which seems to be the endgame of most of these book-burning groups.
Many of the books we read in school would be banned if these people had their way.
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
Why should they? They have a global duopoly, there's not going to be any long term impact here.
In 2018 and 2019 these campaigns and their ramifications (be they positive or negative) were consistently present in in-person conversations I was having at the time.
In 2025, these campaigns strike me as outdated and significantly less popular compared to 5-7 years ago. The people I know in real life talk about other things.
It is plainly clear to me that with a decent botnet one can easily manufacture the illusion of social outrage on Twitter/X.
With that in mind, I find it hard to believe that there is even a critical mass of people supporting this takedown campaign.
Has anyone with any sort of reputation backed this takedown campaign?
Is that what "right-wing grifters" look like nowadays?
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A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an issue where they couldn't take credit cards. No warning, they weren't even told, they were just added to a list and couldn't take payment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They still haven't completely resolved the issue / don't know how they ended up on a bad list.
The idea that someone somewhere else complains inside an opaque system, and your ability to do business ends without warning is absurd. You can't appeal, you can't talk to anyone, you're just hosed. In some cases you AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on.
Yes... but if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal, then they have an interest in not being in that situation.
From earlier this year:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-whistleblower-says-maste...
> Jan 24 (Reuters) - Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
> The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
And from 2022:
https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/compan...
> On Friday, July 29, a federal court issued a decision in ongoing litigation involving MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and other websites. In this pre-trial decision, the court denied Visa’s motion to be removed from the case on a theory that Visa was complicit in MindGeek’s actions because Visa payment cards were used to pay for advertising on MindGeek sites, among other claims. We strongly disagree with this decision and are confident in our position.
Given this, it is a completely reasonable position for payment processors to decide not to touch anything that they can be brought into legal liability.
They'd likely prefer not being gatekeepers of money, but if they're going to be brought into a court and sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal, they're going to take steps to not be brought into court.
It’s a choke point on the entire economy for any sufficiently motivated interest group that wants to ban something that would otherwise be legal…lobbying a few executives at Visa/Mastercard to shut off the taps is much easier than lobbying government to pass a law.
With no mandated open protocol for (legal) payments or legal protections like the internet has, this will continue to be a problem and will only get worse.
Ultimately I think digital payments should be facilitated on government rails just like cash is. Where any decision to block a payment should be determined by law, and require actual skin in the game from elected representatives who are fireable by their constituents.
>sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal
The removed content was gross, but it was legal content. That's the heart of the issue.
In other cases multi-nationals (e.g. AWS) are perfectly willing to claim that they're operating a local company under local laws and you can totally trust them to protect local customers from extraterritorial government reach.
Additionally, if this were only about legal risk to the payment processors themselves there would be no reason for them to demand that those games are delisted. They'd only have to refuse supporting the transaction. The game stores could continue to list them and require different payment methods.
It's really icky to say the least. There's plenty of groups I'd love to see debanked on a personal level... that said, I think it's entirely wrong for anyone not breaking domestic laws where they are.
This is what the end-game of unspooling government functions into the private sector looks like. The decision still has to be made, but rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars where optics and boycott pressure are the levers of change for our collective rights.
This sums up my experience with my representatives in recent years. You only get a meeting with my reps if you're a large donor or you cause enough public outrage.
Otherwise they feel no obligation to their constituents and hope that the automated form letter (in varying font sizes and colors between paragraphs) they send you in response is enough to appease you.
Well, not really. Right now we're making two separate decisions. One for what is legal to sell, and one for what you can meaningfully sell. Those shouldn't be different, so the latter decision shouldn't be happening.
We had to quickly onboard them onto a new gateway, and while testing in their sandbox environment a rep saw the issue. Turned out one of their products ended up with an auto-generated part code that had the four-letter term for sexual assault in it. That was it.
I am in no way implying there is no Cuban embargo, nor Cuban censorship.
By the way, why is the name "La aroma de Cuba" and not "El aroma de Cuba"?
The problem is that we build these systems where no one seems to want to or have incentive to thin about responsible administration, reasonable feedback, appeal, and accountability. Everybody who can just gets lawyers that work to insulate themselves, sometimes because they don’t give a damn and sometimes because that’s what the incentives of exposure sometimes abused are.
Let’s just think why it would not be feasible to build proper system.
Maybe because bunch of angry assholes would take it down instantly filing bogus claims.
However, for computer payment, I had another idea is to make a "computer payment file" that contains the order division and payment division, and with encryption and signature, and send that to them. You will first receive the file telling what payments are acceptable and can use that to make the file to send to them. Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it, too; after you figure out the price, you can receive the payment code and include that in the payment file. Other methods of payment would be possible (e.g. store credit), so the payment file can work independently of what kind of payment.
I haven't seen a working payphone since the 90s lol.
Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
Why would Visacard care about complaints? You need them more than they need you...
Ah, priorities.
But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.
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Game retailers could get together to form their own payment company, let's call it GamerPay, which deducts purchases directly from a bank account, just like most other bills we pay. They could probably get a lot of non-gaming related companies on board if they offered lower fees and/or more transparency.
People seem to forget that banks have been transferring funds between accounts for much longer than credit cards have been around. The infrastructure exists for bypassing credit cards, they just aren't what the majority use.
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that's a weird thing to say about simply banning payments to people who profit from rape and incest content.
> AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on
it is very clear what is going on, they are making content profiting from rape and incest and they are getting punished for it.
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"gamer fury" over not being able to buy porno video games with their credit cards is not exact something that is going to garner the Dems any new support or votes.
If, instead, you frame it as "Duopoly of payment processors are deciding which legal content you are allowed to purchase.", surprise, you'll get more support.
They don't allow their cards to be accepted by pornography sites.
You can do everything with a debit card, it probably already happened that Visa was used to facilitate buying a weapon for a school shooting: Were they annoyed?
You can buy a dildo with a Mastercard on Amazon: Are they annoyed?
But games? Why?
Loud, wealthy people with extremist beliefs are behind most of the actions that restrict our ability to exercise our rights.
This one in particular is an attack on art. It’s not just games, but traditional types of art as well that are currently affected by this issue. There is a certain ideology that views non-mainstream art - particularly art that tells a story about uncomfortable subjects - as something “degenerate” to be eradicated.
Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.
So we need to ensure we keep cash available.
The problem with that is there are a number of ways to prevent you from holding cash as well. Bank regulations around how much money you can withdraw/access, scrutiny around how much money you can carry to an airport, asset forfeiture without due process etc. all allow governments to coerce you into whatever they want. Cash is not necessarily a solution either.
The Bitcoin crowd is adamant that no government can regulate Bitcoin. They are correct in the sense that Congress is unable to pass a law dictating what the Bitcoin protocol must do, and that as a decentralized network people are free to follow whichever fork of Bitcoin they choose.
However, they have not given much consideration to the fact that governments have full authority to regulate those that use Bitcoin. In other words, no government needs to change Bitcoin. All they need to do is dictate what the lawful use of Bitcoin looks like in their jurisdiction. There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities. In the context of this article, I doubt that a government would prohibit the sale of these games, but I agree with your assertion that the government is likely to start locking down cryptocurrencies in some way that impedes privacy.
This would likely drive capital and the fintech companies and financial institutions behind it to friendlier countries and more welcoming markets.
Cash is unfortunately a liability for small businesses.
In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.
Private, consolidated mega-corporations largely sidestep the democratic process, and these kind of things are the consequence of that.
But what's going on: lots of unrest in the world mixed with a dying generation with the most wealth trying to secure a legacy. Awful combination for freedom and livelihood.