Without a horse in this race, this precedent makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
271–280 of 967 posts
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#272Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject…
My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it allows. Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statem…
Does Valve actually have a high risk of chargebacks? I was under the impression that moreso than other platforms, most Valve customers would rather go through Valve's own refund system. I understand that chargebacks is supposedly the reason for adult-only platforms.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not think it is Valve). Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.
Though unpopular, I'd say China is able to
1) They already have that (Unionpay). 2) I don't think they are less prone to censoring things.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#274Earlier 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…
They tried to do the same to OnlyFans, but lost that battle
Didn't onlyfans severely limit the type of content creators could make and distribute through the platform, just like valve here?
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it allows. Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statem…
Does Valve actually have a high risk of chargebacks? I was under the impression that moreso than other platforms, most Valve customers would rather go through Valve's own refund system. I understand that chargebacks is supposedly the reason for adult-only platforms.
The owner of a stolen number is going to use a chargeback.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#276Honestly glad to see this has sparked larger talks about this again. Surprised to see Valve is just now getting impacted by this.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Threats of exposure and boycotting/blacklisting the card making room for competitors. Plenty of religious groups have the money to be able to start the "holy card". And there's plenty of businesses that'd be giddy to accept Jesus card. Consider, for example, companies like hobby lobby or Chick-fil-A banning visa and promoting Jesus card. It also wouldn't take much for such a card to advertise itself as kid friendly.…
Let’s be real, Chick-fil-A banning Visa would likely result in its bankruptcy. Starting a holy card that doesn’t work at gas stations etc is an extremely uphill battle.
Yeah, 30 years ago this might've been able to get off the ground. Today? Not a prayer.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well social/religious conservatives often think the child has rights even during pregnancy so it's not as simple as the mothers rights. The libertarian view tends to much more favour the parents rights to make choices for their children if I remember correctly, and obviously favour the option where the government isn't deciding for them.
Right, is there a non-religious reason to be against the right to choose to abort early during pregnancy?
If you want population growth.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#279Look. 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?
Well your comment tells us why-- as is the law in the US is that credit card companies are almost entirely responsible for fraud. It's part of why they and their dubiously usurious practices are allowed to exist in the US at all.
If it were the case that the payment rail censorship were limited just to cases where there was an obvious elevated fraud risk-- then that would be the whole of the story. -- and there would be an obvious answer: use a payment mechanism where the fraud responsibility is entirely on the user, such as Bitcoin.
But their censorship exists where no such elevated fraud risk exists too, due to abusive conduct by the government to indirectly suppress activity that would be plainly unlawful for them to directly suppress. And the governments out of control abuse of its regulatory power is not limited to fraud-responsible payment rails, and get applied just as or even more extensively on Bitcoin payment processors.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#280Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject…
Another factor is that credit providers (i.e. banks) are increasingly using customer transaction data to assess customer behaviour as part of its risk scoring. If a customer is regularly purchasing adult material that would be definitely be a red flag.
A red flag of what?