Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not even a duopoly, look at the majority shareholders of both Visa and Mastercard, Vanguard and Black-rock in both. So it’s effectively a monopoly.
Vanguard and Blackrock are just asset managers. Public companies are owned by everyone with mutual funds, like pension funds and individual retirement accounts. https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.34N76K4
Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
581–590 of 621 posts
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t mean that I agree with the concept of corporate power abuse or the hypothesized source of the pressure. But I’m not spending one second of my life protecting this kind of content, and the fact that it’s being euphemistically called “Adult Content”, a very approximate description, shows that the source of the current outcry _knows_ it’s very bad looks to be defending any of the games that have been confirmed b…
I don't think most comments here or in the general discourse are protecting the content ? I'm trying to find a good analogy. Perhaps if someone in your town built a giant meat grinder in their backyard, and as a test run they requested the vilest and most heinous criminals to be sent to them, you'd still see a private entity getting to grind the people they want as a serious issue. Not wanting to spend a second on th…
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
> What is more likely is the processors made the decision themselves If you think that, please explain how the payment processors didn't say anything since Valve started selling adult games in 2018... and only a few days after Collective Shout specifically started targeting MasterCard and Visa (not PayPal or Paysafe)... the payment processors used by Valve cited MasterCard's rules to Valve? It's also MasterCard that…
Payment processors that handle adult material exist but they charge a premium rate. These companies could switch to CCBill as quick as they could code it up. Exactly the same as what OnlyFans did. They would have to explain to their entire customer base across the board why they have to charge more though.
Also, look at https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce...
They absolutely targeted paysafe and paypall. Paypall was the very first on their list, I wonder why that is. They knew the processor is the weak link.
After 10 years in the POS industry, I can assure you it came from their processor. The only card network I have ever seen take action like this is AMEX and they have have separate processing. Processors involve themselves in their customers' business constantly for risk assessment. Collective action like this is enough to make them ask, "Should we treat this as a video game vendor or as adult industry?" It's that simple to tip the scale.
Also, it doesn't make sense that Itch did it themselves. Why would they throw their vendors under the bus instead of just pulling the titles? Or are we supposed to believe they facilitated collective shout just to pull a couple of low value titles? I can't see any angle here that doesn't border on conspiracy.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re shifting from a First Amendment claim to a broader “potential for abuse” argument. That’s fine, but let’s be precise. 1. Government pressure only triggers a First Amendment issue when it’s actual, not hypothetical. Courts require clear state action or coercion. 2. Mastercard acting on its own isn’t censorship in the legal sense, it’s a private company making content-moderation decisions. You may not like that…
The amendment is about laws, not execution. As long as we're not interpreting the amendment literally and trying to infer its spirit at all, the equivalent in this case is that the executive branch should not have the power to legally censor people or companies at all, as opposed to merely not using that power.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good. I understand your point, but I see no reason to invest time defending the EU's positive aspects. What's the point? > Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like Unite…
> I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you. Because the "less regulation" is in response to the EU saying you can't have algorithms making life or death decisions if they can't be explained and can't be escalated to a human. People are literally asking for companies to be able to shrug behind "computer says no" with no recourse. We have the UK Post Office scandal for a closer to home example on why t…
Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting. This is a bubble.
> I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
We've reached the point where if there's a risk of something happening, no matter the probability neither the magnitude, something must be done. Even if the solution is totally destructive, inappropriate for the problem, etc. Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI. This is what you are proposing. This is what I criticize.
Slowing down or stopping everything because MAYBE it's the right thing to do, MAYBE something we don't like might happen. This comes at a cost, especially if you apply this principle to everything around you in small doses. It's poison for productivity and efficiency.
I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy. China and South Korea are able to build reactors quickly and at low cost. The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
In the name of some ideology, we are destroying our productivity and efficency. Again. Why?
And I know very well that the answer is always the same. Safety. But it's just an excuse to sell you the services of yet another bureaucrat. There are very precise risk analyses that show nuclear reactors to be orders of magnitude safer than all other energy sources. So why this ideological obsession? Safety has nothing to do with it.
No one cares about risk analyses. Because the answer will always be “it's never enough.” But at what cost? Again, no one cares.
And thanks to this choices, in the name of safety, building reactors in Europe is difficult and expensive. But in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to build gas or coal-fired power plants.
Europe is full of this kind of hypocrisy.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure child pornography is actually illegal in all jurisdictions valve operates in, and they would be charged with real crimes for selling it. Maybe you mean anime characters or something? And is there any law about roleplaying rape? It's common in romance novels and online videos so I don't see how it could be illegal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_v._Texas Lest we forget. Sure in the end people rallied to him but it sure must have sucked. But yeah. Texas.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
All (most?) Steam games have a very simple DRM that is extremely easy to bypass, and you can find examples on github. However, a lot of games add their own DRM and/or protection scheme that complicates things. EDIT: technically there are two distinct component: the actual DRM, called steamstub, and the steamwork library, that does not work without steam but it is not considered drm. Both can be easily bypassed/emulat…
I see, but there is Steam DRM there. So, I guess as the other commenter was alluding to, if Steam goes belly up so does your collection, regardless of the dev studio's intention (Or atleast, locked behind a DRM bypass). I understood this in terms of Live Service games, but did not consider Steam's ability to shut down their own platform and kill my locally installed single player games with it (Again, I'm seeing its…
None of the games I have in my library work like that, but online some people suggest that some games work even without Steam, once installed.
Your point, however, still stands.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
All (most?) Steam games have a very simple DRM that is extremely easy to bypass, and you can find examples on github. However, a lot of games add their own DRM and/or protection scheme that complicates things. EDIT: technically there are two distinct component: the actual DRM, called steamstub, and the steamwork library, that does not work without steam but it is not considered drm. Both can be easily bypassed/emulat…
Definitely not all games, and for games that do have it cracking it is in most cases as simple as swapping out a Steam .dll (so very easy). It's primarily there as appeasement for devs who would be reluctant to engage with a platform with no copy protection, or in otherwords is mostly theater.
I would like to test it for myself to confirm it.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have them reversed. Are the far right the ones wanting to censor Musk, Trump and everyone else they don't like?
No, the far right are the ones dismantling federal agencies like the EPA, the FDA, USAID etc., sending the army to police states they don't like, firing the person responsible for jobs statistics because they don't like the numbers, slapping 50% tarrifs on countries because they dared to prosecute one of Trump's buddies etc. (just some of the latest examples). The "far left" (as the far right likes to call anyone who…