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I mean, it's a nanny organization called Collective Shout that is claiming responsibility for these recent product bans/removals. They just pressured the payment processors instead of the companies who own the stores this time. And it worked.
The nanny group sucks the most here. The payment processors suck for acquiescing to the nanny group, and everyone else sucks for acquiescing to the payment processors.
The payment processors have the final say and have done this multiple times in the past, i wouldnt be surprised of the "nanny" was secretly paid by them to find this shit for them to censor.
Nothing but hypocrisy from Visa and MasterCard - there are far more NSFW content on Xitter than in games and yet I don't see a peep of them banning payment towards that little blue checkmark.
Collective Shout seems to aim for X next, according to their site.
biting the hand that seig heils
Can you directly pay for porn on Twitter?
Do you need to pay to access Steam and play games? The answer is no - there are free games on Steam and also forum features that allow you to post media content too. From that standpoint they're in the same boat. The difference is the platform's intended use.
I think the real issue isn't about Visa and MasterCard trying to gatekeep/censor this. The talk should be about we as a society haven't matured enough to be willing to talk about our own bodies as humans and human nature with our own kids. If you look at what's shown on mainstream TV around the world, off the top of my head, Europe seems to be a lot more mature about it than many parts elsewhere.
If Valve told the card companies to go fuck themselves then they would have never pulled support.
It was always a bluff, Visa and MC would never let go of that money over something so petty.
So yeah, I also blame the billion dollar corporations that rival the card companies bending to their demands.
Payment Providers have been doing this for a longer time.
In 2010 for example they blocked donations towards WikiLeaks.
I get your point, but the stores are still caving. They are still playing ball and banning things. That needs to be remembered too.
Unfortunately, the alternative is that they cease to exist almost instantly. This is what happens when we allow monopolies and trusts.
While I agree with the spirit of it, those corporations are still beholden to local governments to not be sued out the ass.
So I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the fascist jackboots censoring the world from Australia, bragging about doing all of this:
https://www.collectiveshout.org/
Fuck your censorship Collective Shout. Get fucked while you're at it, might loosen you up a bit
Love how the bottom of the page is like
We are an independent registered charity with no affiliation to religious or political institutions.
Meanwhile, the founder
In 2007, she published Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics[7], to a conservative journal called The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly before being republished by Spinifex press.
The journal is periodically published by a conservative think tank called The National Catholic Bioethics Center.
In 2009, Tankard Reist spoke at a forum called, "Event: Inspiring Christians Series" in the Belconnen Baptist Church on behalf of Sheridan Voysey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist
She’s all about women. As long as they produce children regardless of how they were impregnated and are wives in Catholic marriages.
Melinda Tankard Reist.
Michael Miebach.
Ryan McInerney.
Humans > branding and corporation names.
When CVS "used racist AI" I didn't see a single goddamn peep about the CEOs in charge while they had that policy.
We should name the board and the whole leadership system but at least mentioning CEOs would be a great start.
Yes!
This is exactly correct. Thank you.
Well if you want to peel the onion another layer, you should really be mad at laywers and our litigious society as a whole, payment processors don't have morality, nothing in capitalism does - they are responding, just like valve, to external pressures.
I don't buy that, why would they have to care what these people think? Credit card companies have a history of being hostile to adult content, I think it's because the people who own them have an interest in controlling others.
It's specifically due to a moral panic group, Collective Shout, pressuring credit card companies to do this. Litigation isn't really part of it, just angry organized people on the Internet.
Maybe we can angrily organize against them?
Bro lawyer is just a hired gun, they will do whatever guy paying says. They have no agency.
Executives, BoD and shareholders with controlling stakes make these calls.
Avoid using credit cards as much as possible, deny the parasite profit and network effects.
I don't think we should be giving corporations a pass for caving to challenges from authority whether it's hard or not.
Whether it's valve pulling NSFW content, universities expelling students, or CBS firing people over political speech it's all anti-consumer behavior driven by a financial incentive to cater to a bully with too much power. They're all just rolling over and showing their belly rather than deal with a problem in the short term.
If Valve or Itch had paired that statement with a statement about what other payment processing options they were pursuing that might someday lead them back to a pro-consumer position I'd be on board for granting them some grace on the issue, but to the best of my knowledge from the articles I've seen, their position has been "tell me what to do Daddy". If I'm wrong about that I apologize and I'll start reading different sources.
There's just too much capitulation to anti-free-speech behavior and I'm not ready to give anyone a pass at this point.
And this/that do nothing to defend their customer despite having magnitudes more possibilities. All are guilty. Just the degree of guilt differs.
They could have implented this solution:
If you use payment service X you can only buy games A, B, C
If you use payment service Y you can buy all the games
My understanding is part of it is that payment processor says stop doing it or we drop you all together. Not a we won't be involved but lose them as an avenue.
Their way or highway, no real middle ground posible
The short term strategy would probably be to introduce Y payment processor and make it the preferred method of payment. Encourage it's use industry wide and encourage consumers to adopt that method as widely as possible.
If that takes off... Then they can tell the other processors to get fucked.
Changing payment processors/engaging a new one is anything but a short term thing to implement. Otherwise Mastercard and Visa wouldn't be in this situation to have this level of control to begin with.
If 50 Cent could sell album for crypto from his nothing website a decade ago I feel like Valve has the technical wherewithal to implement one of 1,000 preexisting checkout solutions in the short term.
I think selling steam giftcards (an existing solution they're already using) at a markdown to expand that business would be pretty viable for a company that regularly marks their products down by up to 90%.
They could literally do both of these almost instantly as preferred options while still accepting the big cards.
Some additional context to my previous comment: I work tech in the financial industry. I have some experience with payment processors and the stupid amount of bullshit around all this stuff. "They could do both of these things almost instantly" is a big assumption holding the entirety of the weight for your argument.
Anyway.
50 Cent was doing a one off publicity stunt, not trying to ensure continued existence as a company. How many mainstream artists are still doing that? I shouldn't have to say that this is very much an apples and oranges comparison.
Your other idea has legs, but it's still suggesting that Valve try entering a game of financial chicken with Visa and Mastercard. Effectively infinite money. And in the meantime most users would just be pissed off at Valve for making it harder to buy anything. We're already seeing people attack itch.io for not standing up instead of bei g pissed at the payment processors.
Valve can't make purchasing through a different processor a requirement for some games but not others because Visa and Mastercard said "stop selling games with this content entirely, or we stop processing your transactions entirely". So anything they do will have to effect all transactions.
I'm frustrated Valve didn't do more, and that they've not made any public statements about trying to fight this, but Valve isn't just leaving money on the table because they're lazy or dumb.
So you have a pair of strawmen there.
If that off the cuff, apples to oranges, example is too silly by a third, how about the entire US canibus industry? They've been prohibited from using the federal banking system and seem to be making ends meet alright.
If you work in the space then you know they're going to have more and better solutions down the line. The EU is looking for solutions to circumvent the big US processors. Alipay and WeChat pay can already circumvent US credit card processors, and have made significant inroads in the US.
I AM taking the position that unless they do something... Anything... A first turn out of the driveway to be 10% less dependent on alternative means of payment processing, there will never be a path to being 100% free from coersion.
They could be doing things today and right now it doesn't look like they are.
Valve is estimated to be a multi billion dollar organization with a per head profit of 3.5 million. They have an extremely captive audience that's deeply financially invested in the platform and would jump through a lot of hoops to keep using it. Pretending they're helpless and shouldn't be troubled to start steering in a pro-consumer direction just because they don't have a 100% solution today is defeatist bullshit.
Part of the problem is that there are very few payment services and they all seem to be doing the same thing.