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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

#491

Post by krunck »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #465
efitz wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I won't trust the Congress. Far left and far right are both pushing for more censorship

Far left not needed. The center left will gladly do it.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#492

Post by chimeracoder »

pembrook wrote: post #485
chimeracoder wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They may not be in the zeitgeist anymore but they would still love to ruin your life & career for not doing a land acknowledgement before you step into every public space. Complaining about land acknowledgements as an example of the "far left" tells me that you don't actually have a handle on what the left actually looks like, as opposed to how it's portrayed through right-wing outlets. First, there is literally no…

No true scotsman fallacy. Just because you consider yourself left and never cared about those things doesn't mean there aren't leftists who do. There's about 50 different far left interest groups who care about different pet issues to varying degrees of insanity, just as there are on the far right.

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Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#493

Post by simion314 »

IanCal wrote: post #463
simion314 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Read the whole comment because that statement is not an excuse, it is simply a nod to how it differs from other payments. The rest of the comment explains why I think the situation arises like this. It really isn’t hard to read so try and if you think your understanding clashes with my explanation of my comment feel free to assume I’m bad at making a point and read it in good faith. I clearly don’t understand your is…

I will respectfully disagree, I can't see your comment on topic. you said "The only thing that impacts this really is chargebacks, which iiuc are much more common with adult stuff." and this is something claimed about porn sites but explain how this applies to Steam or GOG, please explain clarly or admit it does not apply.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#494

Post by pembrook »

chimeracoder wrote: post #492
pembrook wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No true scotsman fallacy. Just because you consider yourself left and never cared about those things doesn't mean there aren't leftists who do. There's about 50 different far left interest groups who care about different pet issues to varying degrees of insanity, just as there are on the far right.

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[flagged]

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#495

Post by notatoad »

btown wrote: post #489
weberer wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant part is section 5b. >(b) Prohibition.—No payment card network, including a subsidiary of a payment card network, may, directly or through any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, by contract, requirement, condition, penalty, or otherwise, prohibit or inhibit the ability of any person who is in compliance with the law, including section 8 of this Act, to obtain access to services or produc…

Then the goalposts shift to: “This isn’t for reputational risk, it’s because we consider fraud more likely for this type of industry, and we are within our rights to take a proactive approach to fraud.” And there is no requirement that they disclose the reasons for that decision. Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.

i think that sounds like a perfectly fine compromise - choosing not to provide services that are an especially high risk of fraud should be within their rights.

it just means that they could be forced to defend those decisions in court, which is good and exactly the sort of thing that courts are supposed to decide.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#496

Post by shagie »

altairprime wrote: post #473
shagie wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and risk adverse international companies (like Visa and Mastercard) need to follow the laws everywhere despite what various jurisdictions shield them from in those jurisdictions.

No: it’s cheaper for them to follow the minimum common compliance across all countries, but Mastercard-sized firms absolutely can and often do vary compliance per country ( gestures at Google, Facebook ) when it’s profitable to do so. Mastercard could have simply enforced Australia-specific rules on Itch if they’d wanted to, but they’re anxious about being labeled as smutty due to domestic U.S., and apparently export…

Mastercard and Visa have rather corse information about the transactions.

They've got the credit card number, the merchant name, the time, and the total amount of the transaction.

They do not have line item level filtering of a transaction. Remember those old carbon paper credit card thingies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter - that's all that's needed and all they get. Similarly, the credit card terminals where the merchant enters the amount, swipes the card (or reads the chip) and that's it is sufficient.

Mastercard and Visa would only be able to say "that merchant" not "that product." Filtering based on products and if it's legal there needs to be done by the merchant. Mastercard cannot check to see if someone is selling liquor to an underage customer... but if a merchant is doing that, Mastercard may drop that merchant as one of their clients.

If Itch and Valve are unable to enforce Australia specific laws on their own storefront, Mastercard and Visa can only enforce it at the "this merchant isn't allowed to transact with our network."

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#498

Post by revlolz »

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.

I believe the issue is Visa PayPal, and Mastercard are capitualating to interest groups bombarding them with complaints and then celebrating censorship on social media posts. I agree with your sentiment, it's ridiculous.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#499

Post by shagie »

aranelsurion wrote: post #436
shagie wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... and if Valve and Itch had blocked content that was illegal in Australia before Collective Shout weaponized the Australian laws, we wouldn't have heard about it beyond it showing up in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_in_...

From the Valve rules:

    6. Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#500

Post by [deleted] »

pembrook wrote: post #488
micromacrofoot wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I worked in Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I'm not "buying" anything. I'm speaking from lived experience from sitting in actual meetings with these people. Also, it appears I made a massive mistake trying to support a centrist "both far left and far right are bad" comment from OP, as this is now a flame war. We're kinda proving my point.

[deleted]
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