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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

#281

Post by shagie »

braiamp wrote: post #200
infecto wrote: post #150

[flagged]

They should be allowing all lawful transactions, and if they can't, they should get broken up.

That would be a change from preventing illegal transactions.

As it stands currently, the risk associated to the company for allowing illegal transactions is what drives their policy since they get brought into lawsuits for allowing monetization of illegal content in some jurisdiction.

Changing it (world wide) so that payment processors are not subject to money laundering laws and cannot be held liable when a merchant sells something illegal would allow them to change their model to allow all lawful transactions and not have false negatives.

Until false positives (allowing an illegal transaction) is not a risk for them, their policies are unlikely to change.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#282

Post by immibis »

charcircuit wrote: post #213
infecto wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Competition doesn't matter if entities have to simultaneously follow all of the payment processors' rules. It means in order to compete you have to find people willing to give up everything else. Which is an impossible proposition. It's like if a tier 1 ISP only peered with networks that peer with networks that censor XYZ. Allowing for these kind of agreements leads to censorship and is why net neutrality is importan…

FWIW, "tier 1 ISP" is less prestigious than you'd think. Many tier 2's are bigger than many tier 1's. Being a tier 1 is kind of a self-exclusionary, nose-snubbing policy and in some ways it's surprising they manage to hang onto existence at all, though not in all ways.

This typically comes up when someone thinks they're getting better transit service from a tier-1 than a tier-2. They're not. A tier-2 ISP can have better routes, since a tier-1 will refuse to deliver your traffic anywhere that requires them to pay money. Some places are just unreachable from tier-1 ISPs.

Famously, for over a decade Cogent has refused to receive packets from Hurricane Electric without payment because idk profits, and Hurricane Electric has refused to pay them because it's a tier-1-ish, so you just can't talk to Cogent customers if you're an HE customer and vice versa. (I think HE eventually relented by paying a third-party to forward packets to specifically Cogent, even though they have tier-1 status to everywhere else)

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#283

Post by dpoloncsak »

Freak_NL wrote: post #113
nottorp wrote: post #102

By the way: https://www.amazon.com/Streetcar-Named-Desire-Blu-ray/dp/B07... Why is Mastercard processing money for this movie that contains a rape scene?

It's not targetted by pressure groups at the moment. MasterCard isn't acting out of its own moral convictions here, so don't expect these rules to be enforced wherever they might apply.

...So their quote "we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content." is just a lie?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#284

Post by danaris »

ginko wrote: post #159
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…

I don't even think this is a problem of competition (although more is welcome). This is just Visa+Mastercard abusing their market position and the EU should come down on them like a ton of bricks. Incur heavy fines or break them up if necessary.

How is "abusing their market position" not a "problem of competition"?

The only reason they have that market position is because there is insufficient competition.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#285

Post by hollerith »

immibis wrote: post #282
charcircuit wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition doesn't matter if entities have to simultaneously follow all of the payment processors' rules. It means in order to compete you have to find people willing to give up everything else. Which is an impossible proposition. It's like if a tier 1 ISP only peered with networks that peer with networks that censor XYZ. Allowing for these kind of agreements leads to censorship and is why net neutrality is importan…

FWIW, "tier 1 ISP" is less prestigious than you'd think. Many tier 2's are bigger than many tier 1's. Being a tier 1 is kind of a self-exclusionary, nose-snubbing policy and in some ways it's surprising they manage to hang onto existence at all, though not in all ways. This typically comes up when someone thinks they're getting better transit service from a tier-1 than a tier-2. They're not. A tier-2 ISP can have bet…

What prevents any old ISP from claiming it is tier 1?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#286

Post by dlgeek »

roblabla wrote: post #96
CoastalCoder wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the larger point here is that the government is suppressing protected speech by using private sector actors as intermediaries.

Is there proof the government actually uses this apparatus? I don't think there's any government involvement necessary here - Mastercard has some censorship apparatus (which they claim to be necessary for their brand's reputation), and they used it (apparently through pressure from an Australian group) towards video games. This is really bad but I don't think it makes sense to believe a government was ever involved h…

In this case? Not that I know of, but I'm not following closely.

In general? Absolutely - search 'Operation Chokepoint'.

There's a great summary in the middle of this (very long) article under that header: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#287

Post by shagie »

v5v3 wrote: post #101
giantg2 wrote: post #27

Lots of outrage at the card companies, but strangely, no outrage at the laws that actually caused this. One is the Australian law to remove that type of content and the other is the US law that says the payment processor can't participate in illegal transactions.

But it wasn't illegal to put up a NSFW game if sold to a adult. Were Steam selling it to kids?

How would Steam know?

And yes, that's a problem that they're dealing with right now. Bellular News : Steam Faces Financial Obliteration: Others Are Already Dead https://youtu.be/AlDkL3DndtM

The law being talked about in the video is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 / https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act...

That said, not all NSFW content is allowed in all jurisdictions. Australia and Japan (for example) have laws about particular content that differs from US laws.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#288

Post by immibis »

krapp wrote: post #48
turtlebro wrote: post #19

[flagged]

To paraphrase HN regarding hate speech back when banning Nazis was the affront du jour - free speech includes speech you disagree with.

No, no, banning Nazis is taking things too far. They are fine upstanding people even if you just personally don't agree with some of their political opinions.

Porn, on the other hand. Two adults consensually touching their bits together. That's a crime of the highest order.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#289

Post by dpoloncsak »

master-lincoln wrote: post #235
harvie wrote: post #140

There already was a time when Steam managed to free people from need to use funny pieces of plastic in their lifes... They've done that with CDs, they can do it again with Cards.

Yeah, that was when Steam freed the users from actually owning any game and instead gave the users limited licenses for using games. I am looking forward to the day when they shutdown and everybody realizes this.

Can't I still just run the .exe of the game? Or DRM nightmares?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#290

Post by jksflkjl3jk3 »

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”.

Unless there is actual real-word harm to someone (which is hard to imagine happening from a video game), no, I don't agree with you.

What your kids are exposed to is your responsibility. Don't burden the rest of society because you can't be bothered to set your own boundaries.

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