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Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

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Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#271

Post by Maken »

pchangr wrote: post #231
p_ing wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.

Germany actually uses their own card system .. or cash. They are very much against visa/mastercard due to their “high commission fees” and “privacy concerns” Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3% See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard

Germany also sold Eurocard to MasterCard.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#272

Post by root_axis »

rs186 wrote: post #64

Dumb question: what if Steam only takes cash or crypto payment for these games, and leave them on the market? Cash is loaded from debit card and can be used for buying any games, while crypto apparently always works for everything. Would they still be on the hook?

Debit cards use the same network. Either way, it's a non-starter from a business perspective, even if they accepted cryptocurrency, majority of the economy does not use it.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#273

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Damogran6 wrote: post #249
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

What's the profit in that? /s

You say /s, but a government issued and USPS operated e-mail service may be very profitable. In the Netherlands we have a government message system where the tax office, local counties, water companies, etc can send you 'official' messages. Thing is though, each message costs €0.25 to send. I think this is ridiculously expensive for a glorified email, but I suppose they have a lot of certifications and audits and the like. I hope, anyway.

Anyway, email itself is broken, but this system works because if it costs money to send a message, it discourages any spambot and/or misuse.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#275

Post by immibis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #143
weberer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Mastercard's rule, but any one of the companies in the payment network could have brought it up to Valve. The whole system is set up so one transaction has to go through up to 6 different companies, and they all have to abide by each other's rules. The US Internet Preservation Society explained it recently: >Each of these companies maintains its own terms of service and each of them can block a transaction by…

> was Mastercard's rule, but any one of the companies in the payment network could have brought it up to Valve Did Mastercard threaten Valve? Or did Valve precomply?

As I understand it, Valve was threatened by a middleman because the middleman precomplied with Mastercard.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#276

Post by f6v »

khalic wrote: post #130

Before getting all worked up, I would advise people to look at what games exactly were banned, and see if it’s a case of power abuse or simply a case of “we can all agree that rape and incest games are disgusting and have no place in an entertainment web site visited by kids”.

> we can all agree that rape and incest games are disgusting and have no place in an entertainment web site visited by kids

We can then also agree that a game where you beat someone into a bloody pulp with a bat is equally disgusting. Why do we treat rape and murder differently?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#277

Post by throw10920 »

belval wrote: post #261
throw10920 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence? For the sake of reducing complexity in an already very complex world, I'd rather that it be illegal to require an email address to sign up for an account (or, alternatively, make it illegal to require an account for things like making a reservation at a restaurant) then being provided with an email by the USPS. Doubly s…

> Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence? No because these things are genuinely useful. As much as people lament that we are going cashless, it's very convenient to be able to just carry one card and it's genuinely useful to just give my email as an identifier when registering for stuff. Regulating their necessity means forcing people to accept cash and then…

I completely agree with a lot of what you said! I'm not against technology in general or think that things like email aren't useful.

I think my argument is harder to make for payment processors, but in the case of email, it is preferable to not need an email address to create an account (even if it's convenient to have the option), and have other identifiers that can be used, like OAuth using an existing account or phone number, for instance.

Or, like I said, even better if you don't even need to create an account to participate in a one-time transaction (instead of a service relationship) with an entity.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#278

Post by mapt »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #241
cedws wrote: post #50

I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.

I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

The USPS and state DMVs should also collaborate on the novel role of identity management. Right now if you lose your phone, half of your life disappears because Google won't even log you into the email address that contains every "lost my password" redirect without 2FA on a new device. This is a bad scene. We need boring old meatspace ways to establish, re-establish, and federate our identity as a real person. Something that demands that I wait in line, that I show them a utility bill or drivers' license, that I confirm with a retina scan or fingerprint printed out on a sheet of paper that nobody else has access to. Something that is only trackable in one direction, from which you can generate a new identity if one is compromised. This is so close to the functional role of the "Credit card number" that you may as well tack bank transfer verification on there.

The One Digital Identity Service To Rule Them All is always vulnerable to mass hacking. We need to connect it with something slower, something more private, and the interface to that slow identity needs to be something that already has a branch open in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#279

Post by Herz »

sofixa wrote: post #239
Herz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is already working on an alternative: Wero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU. Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsessio…

> Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything. Like with DMA/DSA that force gatekeepers to open up? SEPA that mandates free immediate bank transfers? Caps on credit/debit card transaction fees? The million infrastructure projects? Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if it's decision making can't be explained (which the AI act boils down to)?…

I stated quite clearly that not every regulation is bad. But it seems that you want to hear that every decision made by the EU is right. I'm sorry, but I'm not a religious person. And I think self-criticism is a great privilege of democratic (not dictatorial) countries, so let's use it.

> Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if its decision-making can't be explained (which the AI Act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on, for example, railway operations?

It's such a naive question that I can't understand how you can take it seriously.

Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot

I would like to see the data, not the social or individual biases. It's only a matter of "when" AI will prove to be safer than humans at performing task X. I find it absurd to deprive ourselves of such an advantage, supported by data, just because our understanding isn't absolute.

Can we prove the safety or determinism of what we use or do on a daily basis? I doubt. Shouldn't we experiment with physics because our understanding is limited, and we might accidentally create a black hole? I doubt.

Also, I find it such a generic definition... Google Maps implements AI, and accidentally sends you into a ditch. What do you do? Ban AI from Google Maps? What doesn't put people's lives at risk?

I totally understand the skepticism and fear. The risks, etc. But I'll leave it to the fortune tellers to pass judgment before it's even "a thing".

> It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.

Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#280

Post by welshwelsh »

infecto wrote: post #148
roenxi wrote: post #13

The US has some clear laws against government controlling speech and, in the abstract, that makes it pretty much impossible to censor games. Various factions - exactly who it is difficult to pin down - have been working hard to set up a system where they can shut things down without ever explicitly instructing anyone to do anything. This appears to be the system engaging by accident because some crazy from Australia…

I am quite surprised how wrong opinions like yours are. There is no argument of free speech here, they are a private business and as such can decide what they allow and don’t allow on their network. It’s no different than if cloudflare had a click through that said no adult material. You can hand wave around well they are a monopoly or some related argument but the government does not see it that way. Visa and Master…

You're confusing the concept of free speech with the First Amendment. Any time a person is prevented from expressing themselves is a violation of their freedom of speech, even if they have no legal right to speak.

But even in the context of the First Amendment, freedom of speech does not only apply to the government. For example, net neutrality laws prevent ISPs, which are generally private companies, from restricting Internet traffic on free speech grounds.

To the extent that it is legal for a payment processor to censor speech, the only reasonable conclusion is that the law is wrong and must be amended. Large corporations are much more similar to governments than they are to private so individuals, and should be treated as such.

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