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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

#371

Post by efitz »

rob74 wrote: post #351

So... Mastercard's statement is very clear: > Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. But their "Rule 5.12.7" is... not so clear: > A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks. Well, whic…

We need Congress to make a law here in the US that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order.

We can write language to allow booting people for fraud, hacking, etc if “legal” + “court order” are insufficient.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#372

Post by nullc »

TJTorola wrote: post #264
xbar wrote: post #248

MC/Visa wield a great deal of market power, which is bad because they become directly controllable entities. I can't believe I am about to say this: Bitcoin fixes this.

Some other cryptocurrency fixes this, maybe (big maybe). But as long as _Bitcoin_ is seen primarily as an investment opportunity it can't really function as a means of exchange. For the same reason that we expect and need USD to lose value over time, people need to be encouraged to exchange their currency, not sit on it forever.

Something doesn't need to be perfect to be an escape valve.

So for example, when backpage's speech was unlawfully suppressed by the US government via payment processors cutting them off in Operation Chokepoint, they successfully adopted Bitcoin.

... and then Kamala Harris aggressively prosecuted them for 'money laundering' for the evading the payment processor blockade, even though her own internal staff report said they were guilty of no crime and were a treasured asset of law enforcement in the fight against human trafficking ( https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-governme... ). So aggressive was the prosecution that they caused a mistrial by flagrantly disregard of the court's orders, then prosecuted again leading the the suicide of one of the founders following a decade of vicious harassment by the state.

uh ... so maybe not the best example.

Or maybe it is the best example: The root cause in the abuse by payment processors is the US government leaning on them to abuse their subjective discretion to suppress lawful activity that the government is constitutionally prohibited in interfering with. This is both what underlies the schizophrenic response by mastercard, which likes money and would generally just prefer to process everything profitable, and is also why Steam would be taking a huge risk to route around them with alternate payment means.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#373

Post by throwaway6977 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #318
egypturnash wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a payment processor operated by the Federal Reserve good enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow Well, it probably would be, except guess who killed it in favor of a crypto scheme? https://www.jitumaster.com/2025/06/us-president-signs-execut... I agree about the PO though. Social media shouldn't be a for-profit enterprise either.

Every time we have this discussion someone brings up FedNow, and I will repeat the same question I always ask: when I visit the farmer's market this weekend, will anyone there be able to practically accept payment in FedNow? What would that even look like? (FYI the vendors take most cards, Apple/Google Pay, Venmo, paper cash, Square Cash, Apple Cash, etc.) If the answer is "no for these reasons", then this probably s…

What is preventing any of those mentioned card vendors from integrating with FedNow either directly or via some abstractive layer through another entity? I don't understand why the answer would be 'no for these reasons'.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#374

Post by [deleted] »

mapt wrote: post #278
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.

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. Someth…

[deleted]

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#375

Post by pixxel »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #311
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I regularly buy products and services online with crypto and it works quite well, usually a better experience than with a credit card. There are plenty of chains that can confirm transactions in a couple seconds, and if you're concerned with volatility, just use USDC/USDT. There are crypto payment processors that handle all of this and allow payment across a range of chains and handle the volatility so that…

I think I trust Stripe and Steam, probably two of the biggest money movers online by volume, to know when something doesn't work over just you.

[dead]

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#376

Post by shoxidizer »

lesuorac wrote: post #326

Do people think USD being accepted at kink stores gives the USA a reputation risk? I just don't see the argument that a payment processor being able to process payments legitimately gives them reputation risk. I don't doubt that people write in to MasterCard to claim it does but people write about everything.

While I don't think MC's or Visa's reputation is at all close to being fragile enough to be harmed by use on any Steam game, the idea that these companies are almost like public utilities that shouldn't have a say in their deals is their reputation.

And carrying large amounts of USD cash does have a negative reputation, even to the US government. Nevermind the reputation of cryptocurrency.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#377

Post by [deleted] »

efitz wrote: post #371
rob74 wrote: post #351

So... Mastercard's statement is very clear: > Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. But their "Rule 5.12.7" is... not so clear: > A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks. Well, whic…

We need Congress to make a law here in the US that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order. We can write language to allow booting people for fraud, hacking, etc if “legal” + “court order” are insufficient.

[deleted]

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#378

Post by tdb7893 »

hahn-kev wrote: post #265
tdb7893 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Bitcoin impractical for these sorts of transactions (slow, high fees, no privacy, etc)? People always say Bitcoin was designed to solve this sort of thing but whenever I've looked into it it's been fairly impractical for use in most day-to-day transactions.

Honestly buying a digital game is perfect. Steam can just give it to you right away, and if the transaction doesn't clear they can just revoke the game later.

That's only addressing one issue with Bitcoin but the issues abound. I don't know all the issues that would happen but even my rudimentary understanding of payments can see that the high transaction costs are a problem when most of the games I buy are less than 5$.

There are ways to design around these glaring issues but Bitcoin is just a worse product for many transactions (and it's not like payment processors are a particularly good product to begin with).

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#379

Post by shagie »

efitz wrote: post #371
rob74 wrote: post #351

So... Mastercard's statement is very clear: > Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. But their "Rule 5.12.7" is... not so clear: > A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks. Well, whic…

We need Congress to make a law here in the US that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order. We can write language to allow booting people for fraud, hacking, etc if “legal” + “court order” are insufficient.

How would that work with international money laundering regulations?

Would that apply to Australian courts?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#380

Post by FatalLogic »

reginald78 wrote: post #93
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?

IIRC the rule Mastercard cited was so vague that trying to workaround it almost seemed potentially pointless. It was basically a blanket "we think it makes MasterCard look bad so we end our relationship". Anyway, debit cards are still Visa/mastercard so using them as cash has the same problem. I was thinking they could just use Steam gift cards but since those are often themselves purchased in stores or with credit c…

>Steam did support bitcoin at one point but decided to end usage because the price fluctuations made it to unpredictable on their end.

Valve knew that there would be price fluctuations. Everyone knew that, and knew how to deal with it. They just priced the games in dollars, with a conversion to the Bitcoin value at the moment of sale.

But what Valve did NOT expect was that the Bitcoin blockchain would suddenly grow so popular and congested (which was a result of massive publicity from events such as Steam accepting Bitcoin). So suddenly, to Valve's surprise, the average fees to be sure that a payment would soon be processed on the blockchain fluctuated wildly upwards during that period, up to tens of dollars. The Blockchain congestion and high fees were exacerbated by technical and ideological arguments about how the Bitcoin network should function. The "small block" faction won, but Bitcoin quickly became a laughing stock as a method of payment, because second layer solutions to the network congestion weren't ready.

The high fees were a huge problem in themselves for Steam customers, and there were other support issues caused by Steam customer difficulty understanding how to use Bitcoin (and who can blame them?). Customers were angry because they had paid for a game, but their payments were delayed for days unless they paid an indeterminate Blockchain transaction fee which might be more than cost of the game they were trying to buy.

After a few months of that chaos, Steam dropped Bitcoin. So did many other retailers.

Ironic, Bitcoin payments work much better now and fees are lower, but it lost of a lot of goodwill from retailers like Steam during that period, and most of them have not come back.

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