from kid2908@slrpnk.net to games@lemmy.world on 03 Aug 03:13
https://slrpnk.net/post/25564266
Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam, citing Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7.
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution. Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”
Rule 5.12.7 states, “A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.”
It goes on, “The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.”
Violations of rule 5.12.7 can result in fines, audits, or companies being dropped by the payment processors.
threaded - newest
so it was about potential brand damage that doesn’t exist? and/or has this actually brand damaged visa and mastercard more than ignoring collective shout?
What I see is Mastercard hiding behind their generic rules for processors and being fine with the processors taking unilateral action that could damage their brand.
Mastercard should demand they rescind the decision based on a flawed interpretation of their rules since the content IS NOT ILLEGAL where Steam provides it, or drop those processors entirely due to the brand damage their unilateral decision has caused. If Mastercard lets this sit, that signals that they agree with this decision, regardless of what they say, and they should be treated as such.
Read mastercard’s actual rule that is literally in the OP. The processor’s interpretation isn’t flawed and in no way does Mastercard limit their rule to what is illegal.
The rule is so open ended and vague that it’s entirely on Mastercard (and Visa) that this shit happened.
It is intentionally vague, because companies want to be able to weasel out of any and all accountability whenever possible.
But Mastercard isn’t off the hook either way even if we accept the rules as they are currently. Before this incident, Mastercard has been starting to censor adult content in general with rules changes. To the point where there was already a petition on the ACLU site about this exact type of censorship.
…aclu.org/…/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unj…
Mastercard is trying to weasel their way out of this particular instance because they didn’t directly have a hand in this video game situation, even though they clearly would agree with it based on other recent changes. They’re trying to play both sides by assuming that people didn’t know they were already doing these things.
What I read is that it is not about illegal content. It is about the measures taken to prevent illegal content from being sold. It’s much more devious than simple censorship.
Ok furry artists, you know what to do, I wanna see the filthiest Visa x MasterCard art you can dream off. Payment process me baby
not furry but someone already made mastercard-chan and visa-kun
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/f1bacfe8-6ec4-4718-90ed-e2193555fa35.webp">
Thats hot. And I am going to assume this is canon from now on.
Is this Merryweathery? I swear he’s always the one doing these gijinkas (Internet Explorer-chan, Twitter-chan, Switch-chan, etc.)
Edit: Just me or does Mastercard-chan have a bulge? Cause like… yes please…
it is!
Figured lol, he’s the usual culprit for any cute gijinka of a current trend.
no don’t do it
No, seriously, why don’t we bombard every customer service line with payment processor themed smut?
Phone sex,
Sex gifs,
Those geeek sculptures,
Etc
Fuckers are just propagating the fury without providing a fix. Are the censored games back or not? Because right now they aren’t. Put them back and make Mastercard do something about it now that they have staged their position. Collective Shout is playing both sides.
“Nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part” includes just about every fighter or shooter game. They really want to have COD delisted over this?
you’re missing some context in that.
“The sale of a product… which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value… (such as… images of… Nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part”
insert joke about COD lacking artistic value, but clearly there is more to COD than just body mutilation.
“Patently offensive” and “lacks serious artistic value” are entirely subjective classifications. With those restrictions, any game with country music should be delisted.
Wagner and Mahler: Listen, we have some really badass tracks. Use them! And nobody would dare to call this music “not art enough”.
Man, if i could get a patent on offending people . . . money, money money, win win win.
Artistic value is subjective.
That clause shouldn’t hold up in a court.
To be fair, that would be fucking hilarious.
Some kid on COD said he fucked my mom and then he called me a faggot.
A ‘removed’?
Unironically, COD getting delisted would probably get mainstream media coverage and legitimate outrage from people who “don’t play video games” but actually do.
Also most movies, tv shows, books, every single religious text
I don’t think they realize how much worse their brands look now, after starting all this shit…
Does it really matter when you’re a duopoly and equally bad as one another?
Until they’re not, and any competition now has the NSFW and LGBT markets to themselves
Politics_IRL
I want to cancel ally visa and mastercard cards and never give them my business ever again after this
Amex is still reasonably good.
Amex charges up to 14% of every transaction. If a place takes it, they are almost always ripping you off.
Amex typically charges between 1.7 and 3.3%.
As someone who does not take amex they want to charge me between 7% and 14%. Maybe if I did more sales they would not charge as much, but the reason amex is not taken in as many places as mastercard or visa is the 7% to 14%.
Weird. All the info I can find shows a maximum merchant fee of 3.3% + $0.10 per transaction.
Even this article about the topic says the reason is because amex charges .5% - 1% more. Not 6-13% more.
Maybe it varies by country? Are you in NoAm or somewhere else?
I am in Canada, and amex is famous for charging way too much in merchant fees. They also charge it under a silly system based on the type of card used (the more “elite” the more the merchant pays).
This might just be my insomnia talking, but I thought a reasonable idea might be to call and reduce the available credit by however much is comfortable. For me, it would be fairly reasonable to reduce it by 50%. I assume they use some kind of magicians handshake to value their company based on how much potential credit is out there… Maybe it’d do nothing though. Anyone know?
I am not a financial guru so hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong about this, but your credit score is affected positively the more available credit you have. So by voluntarily lowering your available credit, you’re actually hurting yourself way more than the card companies. At least I think that’s how it works, or rather one of many factors.
This will do nothing except hurt your own credit score as your credit utilization will be higher
You guys use them for actual credit? To me it seems that in Europe they are mostly used as a debit card directly charging your account, but compatible with the global payment processing of them.
I thought credit was the main selling point.
You have an account that earns interest?
Last time I saw that was as a child.
But then again I was able to get a loan for my house at ridiculously low interest, so I’m not complaining too much.
HYSA exist. My checking account earns a pittance.
You can occasionally find high interest checking accounts too, but they tend to have weird strings attached
Well think of it like this. I keep an amount in my checking account (basically no interest) to cover the credit card bills. Extra I move out to an online savings account that does have a ddcent interest rate. By having a date when the CC bill comes due, I can check once a month (7 days before due) and move money if needed to cover the bill. So while the checking has practically no interest, I was getting close to 5% on the savings for a while. Still a far stretch from the 12% cds I got as a kid, but it’s something.
Yep, like this one, though it could earn more in bonds or investments.
Low-interest loans are great, too: if they don’t need to be repaid right away, they can be leveraged to earn back more than their cost.
That will also destroy your credit rating
Brilliant, just make your rules vague and force everyone else down the chain to self-censor. Surely this will result in the best outcome.
Fucking mastercard
.
which could be just anything.
NugganMastercard has decided the following things are abominations, and are therefore unacceptable to sell:A few of those even have actual real live victims, unlike video game porn. This whole debacle is truly absurd.
These comments are what is absurd ngl.
Get a grip.
wat
Whoat?
Obviously our solution here is to send a pissed off bard to beat up Mastercard, then.
Up to the third comma, yes, but all the rest seems to go beyond that pretty arbitrarily.
When they say anything that “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”, and qualify that with “in the sole discretion of the Corporation” that just means “anything we don’t want to be associated with, and we will be the judge of that”.
That’s what makes it so vague, how is a Merchant or an Acquirer supposed to know what Mastercard might find damaging to the goodwill? They have to guess, or use trial and error*. Most will just err on the side of caution, which means customers get blocked from even more purchases, just to be safe.
* Or talk to Mastercard, which Valve apparently tried, but they wouldn’t respond.
Looks like MasterCard is going to have to ban MasterCard because of all the damage they’ve done to MasterCard’s goodwill.
Whose law? The US? UK? Netherlands? Japan? Or Singapore?
That’s why it’s vague.
It’s much worse than that. How they word it is “if it may damage the public image of mastercard”. And they don’t review the content, they review the means used to prevent the damage to their brand.
So valve doesn’t even need to have anything that actually damage mastercard brand, it just need to be that mastercard is not comfortable enough with the measures used to prevent it.
Like buying anything would actually damage the brand of Mastercard. It’s such a nonsensical excuse that I’m surprised nobody laughed in their face.
Yeah, right up until assholes start posting “MASTERCARD SELLS SMUT INCEST HENTAI GAMES” on TikTok. Then it’s a problem, and MasterCard considers that damaging to the brand.
There’s really nothing stopping anyone from posting that right now. That’s the quality level of most of the online content nowadays.
That’s my point. They are posting it, and MasterCard does consider it harmful to the brand, so now we’re here.
Except that’s entirely false. Even now they are pretending they do nothing, it’s the intermediaries who force things.
Mastercard sells absolutely nothing. And they have no responsibility for anything sold. And no one ever thought it was mastercard selling or even allowing to sell illegal things.
In fact, most people will believe no one sound of mind will buy something illegal with a credit card because mastercard and the likes will give your identity to the police.
So it’s not about illegal things, and it’s not about their image.
If they just wanted to follow the law, they could have left it at “don’t sell anything illegal” without all the extra “brand damage” nonsense.
No, the rules don’t (that’s why it’s been fine for 7 years), and you used a derogatory term so cry harder about your downvotes.
please sir may I have another
It’s not even that vague.
Valve basically said: “we are not doing anything illegal”.
To which mastercard responded: “yeah but you’re making us look bad, so tough”.
I don’t think you read this properly. Mastercard didn’t respond at all.
Of course they did.
They just did so from behind a veil of plausible deniability.
You think a citatation of a specific mastercard contract clause came from a concerned partner?
So you think Valve is lying?
What?
.
Did you not read literally the first line?
Yes.
Plausible deniability.
“Oh so sorry that wasn’t us, one of our partners just overzealously applied our policies”
You seem to have forgotten what we were discussing, which was that Mastercard didn’t say anything.
You really buy that?
Valve asked mastercard directly.
A lack of a response is also a response, in this case essentially an endorsement of whatever their partner was telling Valve.
Even moreso when that partner is citing mastercard terms.
May not have been mastercards mouth, but it was LITERALLY their words.
If they had something to add, they had their chance. They’re only officially saying anything now that they have to.
I see we’re going with the insanity approach.
Valve asked mastercard for direct communication.
“Hey, your partner is citing your terms and pushing us to pull certain titles, you ok with this?”
Not responding to that is a response.
Spoken like someone that doesn’t understand language or communication.
There is literally a name for this type of response, and yet you’re out here accusing people who are apparently more knowledgeable than you of insanity.
Oh well if there’s a name for it, it must be real! Just like Unicorns and Griffins!
A lawyer for a processor like PayPal or Stripe could easily have gone "uh, the Mastercard contract clause prohibits this".
And PayPal is well known for doing shitty things, so it wouldn't surprise me.
Maybe.
But Valve asked mastercard directly.
A lack of a response is a also a response, in this case essentially an endorsement of whatever their partner was telling Valve.
Tl;dr: Mastercard says they didn’t “force” Valve to remove nsfw games. Tery just told them that if they didn’t remove the games that were complained about by Collective Shout, they’ll block them.
Couldn’t they just block collective shout thus probably losing far less business?
Mastercard? Yes, but then they’d have to admit that they were in the wrong, so it seems unlikely.
Unless MC and Visa are run by people who already agree with Collective Shout and are just using them as an excuse to enforce this policy.
Don’t they have shareholders though?
If they do, that includes them. Decision makers at all levels, nobody gets to say "hey I didn't make Mastercard act this way." Because the status quo would have been to carry on processing video game payments, even in the face of a minority faction like Collective Shout.
You’d expect them to put profits above this kind of petty consideration. That would only be valid if the company was owned by a fairly small group.
I love how this has damaged Mastercards brand much more than anything Valve sells. MC would rather pressure Valve for selling NSFW games, than clean up billionaires buying and trafficking children.
.
Hey, Mastercard don’t deal with those transactions. Too traceable! Diplomatic narcotics and crypto have less of a paper trail…
Mastercard is living the corporate dream. They’ve colluded their way to a near monopoly and don’t have to care about the value of their brand. They just have to be invisible enough that they don’t pull heat for something or other from various governments.
<img alt="1000001839" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/12999ff8-e7db-4754-b32d-145611f7de30.jpeg">
Oh shit, that’s an old school reference. Poor Mr. Cheeseface.
For those unfamiliar, this is from an old National Lampoons magazine.
A few years later, someone actually shot that dog.
I can’t imagine, that the delisted games lacked “serious artistic value“.
Proof me wrong!
(Joke is, you can’t proof that in any way)
This whole thing reads like a telephone game where nobody wants to take any responsibility.
At work when no one wants to pick up a task, I issue the "slopey shoulders" award.
<img alt="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mrmen/images/1/15/Mr_cheeky1.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20170519093913" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mrmen/images/1/15/Mr_cheeky1.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20170519093913">
they did the exact same thing in the porn industry. naturally Visa and MC didn’t communicate directly with the individual porn companies. So thats’ how places like CCBill and what have you took off. and then Visa and MC laid out their weird rules to CCBill who then passed it along to the individual companies.
CollectiveShout did take responsibility & they’re Confirmed to be pedos, so what are we waiting for ?
Honestly, I don’t care if MasterCard doesn’t want to take responsibility. It was their rule and their intermediaries that caused the situation and they did not intervene when valve tried to reach out directly.
They are responsible through action or inaction, no matter how they try to deny it.
It seems like, if they’re publicly denying responsibility, Steam and Itch now have legal cover to restore everything.
I’m not a lawyer, etc. etc., but don’t public statements from these kinds of entities inform how these clauses can be enforced?
Isn’t every game NSFW? Funny how language works.
Are you suggesting "professional gamer" is not a real/worthwhile job?
It’s like being a miner, the job isn’t safe for work
Don’t dig straight down
I only have about 20ish hours of work weekly and I’m on a hybrid schedule. My two days at home I’m essentially paid to game since I need to be available but don’t have anything to do. Am I a pro gamer now?
My first work from home job was a lot like that. My next two after that were only like that sometimes.
This same position in another company was a 60 hour job. They required all information to be shared in PowerPoint with images so I’d effectively spend 30 hours a week making presentations that lasted an hour or two at most, but could’ve been a chart in an email.
This spot started as 40 hours a week, but I automated most tasks and just don’t share the files and bi templates. They spend ten hours a week on a task I’ve automated to 30 minutes because their excel guru can’t figure out a formula I googled. They’re promoting me to a Sr. position with glowing reviews and I’ve never worked less in my life.
I think I did a whole 4 hours of work last week. Really pushing myself lately.
Dang, be sure not to overdo it. Don’t wanna burn out, y’know?
Unless your work has been gamified. I play several games at work, one called Jira, another called GIT they aren’t super exciting but it’s a job.
Ironic though that gamification refers to features added to games to make them feel more like jobs (quotas, deadlines, milestones, certification etc).
I need to know from which game that screenshot is.
For research.
Jennifer Lawrence Nude Leak Simulator? That’s what it looks like to me. Haha
Caption in the article says EroticGamesClub which appears to be a developer or publisher with a lot of sex shovelware (list of their supposed games).
.
Maybe the payment processors lied?
I feel like a strict reading of this rule would also put a lot of fighting games, shooters, horror games etc in the not approved category
I think some christian items could also be affected, like the bible. Cane and Able, crucifixion, etc are all in that book
Also incest
And circumcision of children.
Good vibes all around
No cell phone, no internet. Just people being people. Really living in the moment. Really knowing what its like to be human.
The good old days.
Also encouraging your neighbors to rape your own daughters instead of the visiting angels.
Lmao I really need to read the bible in full on day
Mutilation seems to imply more than just violence or killing. For example, Days Gone has a scene very early that involves flaying someone’s skin off, I would imagine that type of stuff would qualify.
Wouldn’t that have artistic value? Since that adds to the story.
That’s true but anyone agaimt its inclusion would just say it doesn’t add to the story. “Clearly it detracts from the story, as the player would be distracted by the horrific event instead of enjoying the game” -some hypothetical mastercard Exec, right before fining Valve.
It’s not a court, so there’s no appeal from that, unless there’s an appeal granted by the contract itself.
They didnt have to show it so explicitly, although I’m not sure simply implying mutilation would qualify too.
Its hard to say what the right level of shock for that kind of thing is, it probably should just be restricted to adults only.
That’s the thing, who defines what artistic value is? I’ve seen some pretty creative pornography over the years. Is that artistic value? I’ve seen very creative depictions of violence and uses of profanity too. What about on the other end of the spectrum, Is Tetris have artistic value?
Tetris is artsy as shit, especially with that kickass score, Korobeiniki.
For a better example, maybe contrast it against the more generic marvel movies.
I was trying to keep it limited to gaming and Tetris was the most basic one that came to mind. How about Pong?
Also not knocking these games at all. Just trying to make a point.
I think pornography is an “art” the same way gastronomy is an “art”. Both serve a simple function: one to arouse you, the other to be enjoyable food to eat.
I think the more general definition of art is something that generates more complex emotions and thoughts.
All action movies should removed from streaming.
Diablo 2, corpse explosion!
Rust, just rust in general.
Oh did you not read the years and years of actions religious groups did to snuff games and movies?
Right now in Rimworld I am sending child soldiers to bring more ammo to the mortars that are busy pounding away at some primitive tribesmen that are angry at me for dumping a few tons of toxic waste on their home or something.
Those that survive the mortar bombardment will be lobotomised and enslaved. If they have enough limbs remaining to be useful to me I will probably use a few of them as slaves and the rest will be sold to the empire. Any that the empire don’t want will be harvested for organs and dumped in a corpse pit.
I didn’t ask if the tribesmen consented to any of this.
I keep trying to learn rimworld. I drop out of most tutorials some time after building a refrigerator. Any recommendations on how to get further along? This is a game I’ll love once I know it but I’m not there yet.
Do the relaxed scenario girl and a lower difficulty for an easier time. Drop in a year round grow area, and mountainous area to mine a base into the mountain.
Thanks for the tips. I have been using that storyteller and easy mode but picking a random temperate forest.
Lower difficulty, in all present difficulty options the raid strength is determined largely based on your colony wealth. If you have massive towers of gold then expect big raids.
Even flooring adds up to wealth, massive rooms with carpets can become a non insignificant value. This isn’t to say don’t build them, but you should make sure a reasonable amount of your total wealth is invested into warfare. It can be quite easy to hoard things that are useless to you but have a fair bit of value to them.
I didn’t know that. Thank you!
Honestly, that’s pretty tame for Rimworld.
Is there really a game that allows you to do all that??!!
Absolutely and more! We also have psychic powers, murder robots, friendly murder robots, vampires, genetic engineering, organized religion, semi-sentient plants, space ships, cannibals, space drugs, drugs in space, rabid woodland critters, eldritch horrors beyond comprehension, giant bugs, orbital bombardments, and also the looming threat of starvation as you watch all that you built burn. That’s all before we talk about things that the modding community has brought to the game.
To be clear, the RimWorld doesn’t force you into any one play style, and most of the things listed above can be disabled or avoided if that’s not your jam. At its core the game is trying to tell a story, it’s up to the player to help shape that story. It’s absolutely fantastic; quite literally the best $30 I’ve ever spent on a game (if we’re talking hours played, I’m just about to turn the corner on 2,000 hours (in the spirit of disclosure, a chunk of that is also spent making mods for the game)).
Mortal Kombat is gone.
it would put circumcision too, but the USA doesn’t care
Thanks to this mess, I ended up installing Wero.
Now I just have to find somewhere to use it… 😐
Collective Shout says it wasn’t their fault, MC and Visa say it wasn’t their fault, Steam and Itch say it wasn’t their fault. Conclusion? No one is to blame! No one did it! What’s more, it didn’t even happen!! it was all a figment of our imagination!
Gee golly I accidentally dropped internet privacy into the garbage and almost threw it out with the trash. Oops didnt mean to! Silly me.
I mean, PayPal has not denied responsibility so far. Which is pretty interesting
They must be like the guy who is involved in the mischief but since he is not as visible as the others, he pretends that the issue is not with him to see if he gets away with it.
Which sounds to me like Steam and Itch could restore everything. Unless MC/Visa wants to publicly say they can’t?
I guess turn the boobs butts and dicks up to 10,000 then. In every game.
Its time for Gordon freeman to do unholy things with a headcrab!
Lamar IS fully debeaked, after all… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
<img alt="" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/half-life/images/7/7a/Headcrab_fence_idle.gif/revision/latest?cb=20201122023232&path-prefix=en">
Oh god why did you have to put that image in my head. No wonder it hides in the vents
Like this?
youtu.be/pCyvgcyj6Ak
Direct link: Mastercard rule 5.12.7 Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions
As much as we hate x, airing negative publicity over their attempt to deny responsibility by directly citing back their policy & asking questions might be good.
Well now how did you make that request?
Gotta love it when companies put something in their legal agreements that just says “we can do whatever the fuck we want.” Is the rest of the wall of text just there to hide that somewhere someone won’t read?
If nobody takes responsibility, then they should all just agree that this was a big misunderstanding and reinstate the titty games.
So obviously somebody is lying. I really don’t understand why Valve or Itch would be the ones lying about this. My money is on the group of self righteous censorship soldiers with too much time on their hands, and the payment companies. I could always be wrong I though.
Not necessarily. Valve says they haven’t heard from Mastercard directly. Is there evidence of Itch.io having been approached at all? It seems to me that they just made the move to delist and investigate to be safe in the wake of Valve’s rule changes.
MasterCard is so big they don’t even know what all their departments are doing. The PR department probably asked a couple of the top level execs if they were pushing for this and they said no so they claimed it didn’t happen.
MasterCard knows exactly what they’re doing.
executive leadership is varying degrees of Christian nationalist and trump supporters.
source: me, I know people.
they’re blaming it on the middle men
Pirate’s life for me then
Why are they lying? I don’t understand what it’s accomplishing. We all know they’re lying. That’s obvious from their statement here.
We have seen the same behavior out of the credit card companies before. Its pretty clear that they do pressure companies to remove content they don’t approve of. Its censorship and its legal since the companies are not the government. They are just tied in at a high level to the banking industry. Its a good example of how lack of regulation harms both creators and consumers.
It lets a bunch of poorly adjusted individuals force their personal mental problems on us all.
Taking away our freedom of speech is something to go to war over.
If this trend of giving all the government power to companies continues, well, let’s just say I’m glad we have the 2nd amendment to fight back against tyranny.
I’m not going to live in a reddit cuck-world without a fight.
“Cryptocurrency is only a pyramid scheme and has no real utility!”
Its used like one.
afaik the least pyramid scheme crypto coin is monero, bitcoin is used almost purely as a speculative asset which is just sad
Bitcoin does have some more utility based proposals but for the foreseeable future, I agree. Most cryptos are like that too.
It’s mostly used like that, but doesn’t mean it has no utility whatsoever.
The other 5% are used for drugs and other illegal stuff. So Yeah it is used for trading but 90% is just scam or investment
Source?
Cryptocurrency is a pyramid scheme and has no real utility.
Monero, a decentralized censorship proof cryptocurrency, has no real utility with regard to solving MasterCard’s censorship and only depends on a pyramid of investors to function at all? That is not my understanding.
Yes, most cryptos are treated like pump and dump scams. 99% of usage is like that. Absolutely does not change the underlying utility nor would I recommend “investing” in them.
Monero - the digital token with no real world value, yes. You don’t need crypto to fix this issue. Brazilians can use Pix and would not depend on MasterCard and Visa, and this includes everything from physical purchases to digital storefronts to paying in installments and more. All attached to currency that actually means something and zero crypto bros trying to pump the value up or down on their delusional subreddits.
Pix sounds trivially easy to censor, freeze, or control from the government’s perspective. Unless I’m missing something that makes it easier for the government to censor innocuous NSFW content. And we don’t have anything like it in the US so it’s useless to me.
Monero can be used immediately without storing a balance for longer than a few minutes, although a correlation attack would be trivial like that. But at best it is not subject to market whims any longer than you decide is necessary for your anonymity needs. It’s the perfect case for purchasing NSFW software, where you want the purchase private and uncensored even when it’s perfectly legal. That sounds like an incredible real world value, even after the crypto bros are long gone and the value dumps (imo) 99%. But it’s a tool that needs no real world value.
If the Brazilian government decided to go against the constitution to censor my online purchases like that, buying hentai games would be the least of my concerns. And then it wouldn’t matter if I’m using your fake crypto bro tokens or not.
Of course not. You live in a weird techno feudalism where the government can’t do anything because that’s socialism and the only solutions you trust are some random tech bro dependent crap like CashApp.
Yes, so you agree that Monero has value then, especially in countries like the US?
Nope, I’d rather use seashells than something like Monero. Crypto is got negative value, the time wasted hearing people like you preach about it is never going to be returned to my life.
Seashells would be an upgrade in a country like the US, but failures of your payment systems do not change anything for the inherent value of random online tokens.
Seashells require face to face interaction, they weigh a lot and they are not convenient to obtain. Nor are they fungible or even anonymous. I am not convinced they are better than Monero, or that Monero has no value.
That’s all true, which is why seashells are terrible. But even being terrible, they beat the imaginary crypto bro token. That’s how bad the crypto bro token is.
Again Monero is immediately useful to many people, and so are other cryptos. You don’t have to use them and they may not be useful to you. But they are useful to others.
As Valve correctly points out, this is a blatant & outright lie. They have cut off any number of legal entities over pressure from politicians or groups. Now they have to own it.
I mean, their own Rule 5.12.7 has that “or” in it, which includes transactions that are fully lawful but “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”.
You will find such language pretty much everywhere. And there are reasons for it. A good example are certain drugs that are technically not illegal. Because they have not been officially classified yet.
That used to be a thing here in Sweden some time ago, where they’d just change some little compound and could technically, legally sell it online until it was deemed otherwise. Because it’s now technically a new formula. Once it was classified, they just repeated the proceas.
MasterCard might not want to be seen as an enabler in the drug trade. So while it’s technically legal. They don’t want anything to do with it. And would like the option to take action.
And according to the articles. It’s not MasterCard pointing to that regulation, but the processors. As MasterCard notes. They’re not a bank, they’re not processing your payment. They just provide the technology to do so.
Furthermore. I’m quite amazed that people seem to think Valve is this really good company that we can all trust and take their word on. Valve says one thing. MasterCard says another. I wouldn’t take either one of them on just their word. Better to take a step back, and see how it develops so you don’t make yourself a useful idiot.
So much fucking censorship and agenda-pushing on the internet.
It makes me sick how many useful idiots are being herded like sheep just to satisfy those with more money than them.
I’m voting for Donald Trump because of Collective Shout.
Since neither candidate represents the working class and all we have is a culture war, I’m going to fight back against censorship wherever I can.
All of the people on the left pushing censorship and attacking freedom of speech are directly responsible for driving me further to the right.
Upset about conservatives and their puritanical practices. Votes for puritanical conservatives. What, do you think because he fucks kids he will allow your gooner game?
.
But the people on the right are also pushing for censorship. You’re just choosing what flavour of censorship.
In America you don’t have any other parties with more moderate idealogies either. It’s either the one or the other.
So before you go voting for a literal criminal as the opposition, why not first burn down your shitty system and rebuild something better.
The people on the right aren’t censoring me for disagreeing with them.
You’re really not paying attention, then. Because that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Where? I can say whatever I want on 4chan, but I come to any of the liberal social media sites and get banned for disagreeing with the crowd.
Sure buddy. Let’s just ignore Twatter and Facebook like that.
Freedom of speech is not the same thing as "freedom from consequences for saying something idiotic’
You aren’t being banned. You’re are being fact checked, cuck.
Collective Shout is a conservative organization you numbskull.
So that means the left isn’t censoring me as much as the right?
Tbh liberals love censorship as much as conservatives (see the proscription of Palestine Action in the UK).
But it’s a bit silly saying you are going to vote for a conservative because a conservative group is censoring you.
These are Australian conservatives, they don’t value freedom of speech as much as American conservatives.
They are willing to abuse censorship to push their agendas, just like American liberals.
You know that American conservatives have been banning books from libraries, and banning topics like racism and homophobia from being talked about in schools, right? American conservatives love censoring anything they don’t agree with. They are the original snowflakes.
I suspect your butt is just chapped because you can’t drop a hard “r” on BlueSky.
You’re a good example of the average dumbass American.
Hi. Texas conservatives in Houston took over the city schools and removed libraries to create a prison inside the school itself. Fuck you and your talks of censorship. You don’t know censorship and think the conservacucks don’t do it because they ain’t targeting your white cis heterosexual ass. You have no opinion worth censoring because your just that white bread bland.
I guess only in a country that is so far leaning on the right thinks that liberals are “on the left”.
Well that’s why I didn’t say “leftists.” But if we’re continuing to be honest, leftist governments also censor. I don’t think you can find any ideology that doesn’t censor, actually.
Collective Shout is a conservative, forced-birth anti-trans sex-nagative women-patronizing christian organization masquerading as feminist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist
They call themselves “feminist” but they are as “feminist” as the guys who finally allowed women to drive in Saudia Arabia.
This is what we call ragebait! There’s too much going on in the news to even bother with this type of ‘person’.
Not really. You don’t like what I have to say, so you’re trying to get me censored by crying ‘ragebait.’
You’re another example of why censorship on the left drives people further to the right.
I’m going to block you now since I can tell you need the last reply.
That’s some strong protection. You’ve spent the last hour getting the last word in on everyone replying to you.
That’s not censorship. That’s just social consequences.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Voting for Donald Trump in which election?
He’s on his last legal term
I’m sorry. Did you just say you want to vote Trump because you think they’re against censorship? The guy that threatens journalists, and politicians that report or say bad things about them. Do you not think that’s censorship?
I don’t even have a bone in this fight. I just want to understand the thought process.
Censorship means different things to different people. For those on the left censorship means suppression of liberal ideas, suppression of journalism exposing corruption and brutality, suppression of peoples history. For those on the right censorship means they can’t say the n word anymore.
Would you care to guess what censorship means to haloduder?
No don’t want to guess. I’d rather ask him directly instead of making assumptions.
You mean the guy that is president right now, while this is happening, that is doing nothing about it because he’s too busy dealing with his pedophile rape escapades becoming public knowledge?
Not to mention: the guy that can’t run for president again (yet)
reddthat please please add a downvote option
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6d64332f-5dee-4fff-8602-b1a97afc5389.jpeg">
since they deny it, then everyone should just revert whatever was done to censor stuff.
We totally didn’t do that! Valve and other merchants obviously kept receipts.
I almost love how normalized flagrant lying has become in the corpo-political sphere. They’ve become so emboldened by just telling whatever unbelievable lie they want and expecting to get away with it. If it’s not catastrophically illegal to do so, they just lie. I don’t take anything not said under oath seriously anymore, and even then, I take it with a grain of salt.