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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

#431

Post by fwip »

carlosjobim wrote: post #416
digitalsushi wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why cant we? are you self-censoring because there's some policy forbidding us to talk about something clandestine here? i dont have access to the joke, or inside club, or inner sanctum, and maybe theres other people like me that want to know more and if the mystery is self-imposed then i might respectfully push back that we cant talk about it

It's a meta discussion, but comments who go against popular opinion amongst HN commenters get increasingly down voted, flagged, [dead]. And it's rarely any extreme or rule-breaking comments. I wrote "against popular opinion", but that might not even be it. It could be that there's a minority of very active users who see it as their job to prune this message board of undesirable opinions. Probably a bunch of them have…

In this case, the popular opinion that would get them down voted is "The conspiracy theory that the world is secretly run by evil Jewish people is both false and racist."

Comments that vague-post about "I would say something but people would down vote it" should be expected to be down voted. Either it is too vague to add anything useful, or it expresses the same belief that they believe will be objectionable.

Worrying about your internet score is a sucker's game. Post what you believe, or don't bother.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#432

Post by digitalPhonix »

guywithahat wrote: post #298
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.

I cannot think of anything worse than an official post office email I have to maintain. Do you not remember how many government sites would simply shut down after business hours because they couldn't figure out how to do on-call? Have you ever used US-treasury direct? This site would be slow, the code base would be unmaintained, it'd get enormous amounts of spam you have to sort through to get some important tax docu…

> Don't forget the USPS bans competitors from being cheaper than itself

That’s a disingenuous take. USPS legally cannot be undercut on certain types of postal services but in exchange they must serve EVERY permanent address without price discrimination.

No private company has to do that, nor would any sane profit maximising company want to.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#433

Post by hexyl_C_gut »

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…

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

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#434

Post by shagie »

nemomarx wrote: post #407
shagie wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg... > Some types of pornography (both real and fictitious) are technically illegal in Australia and if classified would be rated RC and therefore banned in Australia. This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (such as golden showers) and/or indicators of youth (such as wearing a school unif…

Fair enough for the Australian market, but I'm not sure why the rest of the world should have to line up with that. Just block it for Australian accounts or such?

And that is what should have been done. Steam and Itch should have blocked content that is illegal in Australia from being seen or sold in Australia.

The problem is that they didn't properly identify which content it is. "Does it involve a school girl outfit giving the indication of youth?" isn't something that they can filter on.

I could see something in the future where when someone puts up phonographic, they can't select all for the countries it can be sold in and instead need to specifically affirm that it is content that is legal in each of the checked countries.

However, Steam and Itch don't currently do that. So when pressure by Collective Shout was moved from Steam and Itch to Mastercard and Visa, Mastercard and Visa almost immediately put pressure on their downstream processors which in turn put pressure Steam and Itch. Since Steam and Itch couldn't filter the "just illegal in Australia stuff needs to be removed from being available in Australia" they appear to have removed all NSFW content until it could be reviewed.

I believe the key thing in this chain is that Visa and Mastercard are very risk adverse. While they do make a lot of money, on a per transaction basis any merchant that is a problem is a very small drop in the bucket compared to the legal consequences they could (and have) face.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#435

Post by jfyi »

amiga386 wrote: post #225
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This text is also consistent with Valve making a determination, checking with payment processors and not being told no. (Versus the payment processors reaching out to Valve first.) Like yes, there is a problem with Mastercard. But I want to know this isn’t Valve having complied with some activists trying to cover their tracks.

If this is just evil old Valve, why did itch.io - a site founded on openness and the right to sell adult-only games, especially if they cover LGBT themes, tell everyone that their payment processors also want them not to offer adult-only games? Which is more likely: 1. Porn-hating, sex-hating, LGBT-hating activist group from Australia bombards Mastercard with complaints that Valve and Itch are selling adult games. Ma…

What is more likely is the processors made the decision themselves and cited Mastercard's rule without interacting with Mastercard.

If Mastercard cared about this stuff then processors like CCBill wouldn't exist. The absurd amount of money that porn brings in on the internet would dry up over night.

This was a decision made by paysafe and paypall and so far they are the only ones not getting the blame pinned on them.

Itch: Our processors told us to do it.

Mastercard: That is correct, we weren't involved.

Half of Hacker News: MASTERCARD AND VISA!!!!!!

The other half: VALVE AND ITCH!!!!!!

Paysafe and Paypall: Lol

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#436

Post by aranelsurion »

shagie wrote: post #348
Maken wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means Collective Shout didn't have any legal weight behind their demands.

They're based out of Australia and so have the Australian porn laws behind them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg... > Some types of pornography (both real and fictitious) are technically illegal in Australia and if classified would be rated RC and therefore banned in Australia. This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (…

Steam already has the ability to block certain countries and regions from buying specific products. IIRC many of the adult games were already banned in the German region for example.

If it was about the laws, at worst Valve could block Australian users from buying adult content and that would be it.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#437

Post by philistine »

wongarsu wrote: post #121
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?

Still waiting for Game of Thrones to be removed from all streaming services for gratuitous sexual depictions and on-screen depictions of rape

Don't forget the beheading! Mastercard specifically mentions beheadings. I guess Ned Stark shouldn't have complained to every lord of Westeros that King's Landing didn't accept American Express.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#438

Post by matthewdgreen »

throwaway6977 wrote: post #373
matthewdgreen wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

The retail payment companies I've seen all use the same structure: they provide a retail interface and then handle monetary transfers within their own proprietary network (effectively a centralized database). To interface with the financial system, they provide a mechanism to occasionally wire funds to/from a traditional bank account. If FedNow has any role in these systems, it's just to speed up the occasional funds-wiring process by a few hours. I have yet to see anyone actually directly using FedNow in any meaningful sense for retail payments.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#439

Post by Symbiote »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #273
Damogran6 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

€0.25 is much less than the cost of printing and posting a letter, and presumably this service comes with proof of delivery.

(There's a similar system in Denmark.)

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#440

Post by simion314 »

IanCal wrote: post #414
simion314 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only thing that impacts this really is chargebacks, which iiuc are much more common with adult stuff. I think this makes no sense, like "we makes less profits from adult stuff because of charge back, so let\s give up on this profits". Anyway this companies did not use this excuse so why do this old excuse is resufecing now if they did not use it.

I didn’t say it was an excuse given here, have you tried reading the whole comment? It’s not very long and shouldn’t be hard to understand. If it is I can help explain it.

We are not on reddit here, have you paid attention?

Now seriously, you brought some old excuse here for some very inteligent reason, explain please? Do spouses will read that the guy bought something from Steam and she will then conclude the dude is playing very adult games? The excuse does not work as far as I can see, so explain your thoughts or explain why you are just pasting random excuses and then act like a redditor

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