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Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

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Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#791

Post by choo-t »

mango7283 wrote: post #633
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movements here (the pro-censorship movement & the anti-sexuality movement) are mainly driven by religious beliefs, and as such, it comes as no surprise that they do not want to apply censorship in a fair or even logically consistent way; they merely want to ban things they personally do not like.

As I pointed out earlier, it's also valid that they are savvy enough to pick their battles and divide and conquer - you can't take down a critical mainstream success like GOT or GTA, but you can go after fringe games with content most people would be uncomfortable publicly defending.

The very same group did try to take down GTA V : https://www.collectiveshout.org/prostitution_survivors_call_...

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#792

Post by creer »

tptacek wrote: post #333
Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

You could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure content vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening, but there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. There are other explanations! You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral .

> there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. [...] utterly amoral.

What? Puritanism is not about some kind of blanket purity to be recognized or expressed from any angle, perspective or religion. And in American business is both extreme and extremely selective.

It's also very much about appearances and image projected. You have to accept a difference between anybody's personal values (in so far as these can show through the mess of corporate decisions), and the image that businesses believe they much display.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#793

Post by [deleted] »

atemerev wrote: post #450
ijk wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One factor is the ongoing campaigns from number of moral crusading groups who lobby them to cut off payment processing for things they don't approve of. NCOSE has been working for decades on the project, and targeting credit card companies has been a successful tactic for them for a decade or so. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being…

The US obsession with sex (both positive and negative) is something else. Here in Europe, sex is a normal part of human life. Not a center of everything, nor a sin to be avoided. Sex art is normal. Sex games are fine. There are no moral crusaders here, because sex is moral. We tell sex jokes at work and nobody faints. We are constantly perplexed why American culture is so different from other Western cultures in that…

[deleted]

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#794

Post by pixl97 »

9dev wrote: post #713
93po wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

youre allowed to be critical of things while still using said things. i have 8 million things going on in my life and the hill i die on isnt going to be the working conditions of humans that make iphones

Sure you are, but don’t call others out for being complacent then.

Why not? Being hypocritical doesn't mean you're wrong...

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#795

Post by creer »

chii wrote: post #402
stale2002 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening Credit card processors don't have to be puritanical. Instead, puritanical people simply have to be smart enough to figure out that the best way to deplatform content that they disagree with is by putting pressure on their payment processor monopolistic vendors. Giving in to a pressure campaign by ideological people can be a completely…

> puritanical people ... deplatform content that they disagree so that begs the question - what if the non-puritanical people also pressure the credit payment processors to stop curtailing to those puritanicals? Why is it effective one way, but not the other?

See cryptocurrency payments. So the good news in this direction is that bitcoin et al are very much making progress at these businesses. As far as I can see, many - perhaps even most - such businesses now accept 2-5 forms of cryptocurrencies as payment. That took long enough but we are finally getting there.

The bad news is that essentially ALL such businesses still believe that it is essential for them to accept credit card payments - and that means they must still implement whatever agenda these are pushing. On their entire customer base, even if paying by crypto. For now.

Hopefully this progress continues.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#796

Post by moffkalast »

hungmung wrote: post #194
miiiiiike wrote: post #191

Look. Ignore the content. Why the fuck do we allow credit card companies have a say in how we spend our money? Fraud? Abuse? Fine, let me put cash onto a card and if that card gets stolen, oh well, my loss. Mastercard should have no say in what what speech is considered acceptable outside of their offices. We don't care what execs at a water company think? Why do we care about the people at Mastercard?

It's because Visa got sued, lost, and it was found out they knowingly processed payments for illegal adult content, so they basically avoid the sector entirely now. Economist had an article about it maybe two years ago and came to much the same conclusion you did. IIRC, the failure in their mind was government not stepping in to make a law so things are less ambiguous in the future. Now payment processing cos get to…

Seems rather weird that Visa out of all the parties involved got hit by this, that's like suing the national bank for printing cash currency that gets used in illegal ways? Or suing the pavement for allowing a heist getaway car to drive away. Or the gas station where they last filled it up.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#797

Post by Oreb »

vladgur wrote: post #722
rodrigodlu wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went last year to Lisbon and Barcelona, from Brazil with 0 cash in any currency. I had a debit card with some hundreds of EUR already charged, but I ended up using it with an NFC enabled smartphone. No issues at all, even going in far places outside Barcelona. Everyone very receptive in BCN. I looked at ATM terminals and they seemed full of rules and complications. I tried to get some cash just to collect the notes…

Same this year - I went through Spain, France, and Portugal last month and did not have to take money out of ATM for anything including eating, shopping for groceries, paying for gas or sightseeing. ApplePay connected to my no forex transaction credit card earning 3% cashback covered 95% of these transactions and a few times I had to use that credit card directly.

How did you manage without cash in France? Many places here don’t accept anything but cash for amounts less than 5 or 10 Euros. If I just want to buy a coffee or a baguette, I often need cash.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#798

Post by johnb231 »

bell-cot wrote: post #499
johnb231 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You could have opined that allowing certain extreme content was not a politically savvy business decision for US-based Valve. Or that healthy societies have incest taboos for very good reasons, and Valve "having standards" would have had more social (plus lobbying/marketing) value. Angrily insulting HN's user base, on HN, is not an effective method of persuasion.

[flagged]

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#799

Post by tptacek »

creer wrote: post #792
tptacek wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure content vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening, but there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. There are other explanations! You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral .

> there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. [...] utterly amoral. What? Puritanism is not about some kind of blanket purity to be recognized or expressed from any angle, perspective or religion. And in American business is both extreme and extremely selective. It's also very much about appearances and image projected. You have to accept a difference between anybody's personal values (in so far a…

You're talking about a culture that freely and enthusiastically sold opiates for decades. If they're cracking down on porn, it's because porn is costing them money, probably because people are disputing charges.
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