On the one hand, oh noz, the incest games. Who will live without the low effort AI goon crap?
On the other hand, why do the payment companies get to dictate what sales are made? It’s my fucking money, or my fucking store. It’s not the job of the payment processors to determine if I’m buying illegal goods, just that the money goes from me to the store.
The payments can become a legal liability for the processors. I believe there are federal laws that have penalties for anyone who facilitates transactions for certain prohibited goods or services. It’s the same reason cannabis shops have such a hard time getting payment and banking services.
The payment processors have very little incentive to take risks here. As others have noted, there isn’t much competition pressure.
EDIT: I went to find a source, and found the cannabis analogy isn’t right. Seems that Visa and MasterCard really are the primary censors of the porn industry. This archived FT article went in depth. https://archive.ph/zXKuD
There’s a difference with cannabis shops because that’s actually still federally illegal. As such, the required business accounts and tax documents required to use a national payment processor are often not forthcoming. It’s a low level regulation that you can’t generally tell a federal bank you’d like an account to store the proceeds of a federal crime.
With porn, the legal standards and protections are pretty well established. As long as the company is in possession of the required tax documents and business accounts, there’s no legal risk beyond the standard due diligence they need to do for every customer. Visa isn’t generally liable if a tire shop is discovered to be breaking a non-financial law. What processors don’t want is to have their brand attached to something that they worry could make them look bad.
Not really. In the US, the first amendment protects a lot. Just like with YouTube censorship, capitalism has created a more restrictive regime through financial pressure than the government does. This has affected the porn industry, as well (see another comment in this subthread on that).
It’s been like this for a while in the porn industry. In an interview a while back, Bree Mills says she gets more limited by payment processors than the government (though that might be switching).
Ever wonder why every faux-incest video goes out of the way to say everyone is a step family? Step father, step daughter, step mother, step brother, all somehow living in the same house, over 18, and no blood relation? The first amendment protects them from the US government, so that’s not why. Credit card companies are why. The old Taboo series was distributed differently back in the day. Can’t make that anymore.
This also applies to some of the more extreme BDSM stuff, like blood play or scat. Won’t find them on kink.com.
I was surprised to see that you are correct. 173 StGB only mentions “Beischlaf” and that is indeed only vaginal intercourse. You learn something new every day.
They are just testing their power, make you get used to it. Someday they will make pressure for some ideology. Whenever there’s a morality argument in place prepare to get fucked.
I mean isn’t this effectively the problem bitcoin aimed to solve originally? Don’t get me wrong, crypto is fucked and I’m not advocating for it here per se. But a locally processed, secure, digital version of cash bypasses the need for any of this. Granted it bypasses the need for some of the most powerful institutions on the planet too, and so will never happen in a truly egalitarian sense.
Also just cause it’s bugging me, you understand that a credit card, or even a debit card or PayPal/venmo account, does not equate to ‘your money’ the way physical cash does, right?
Im not saying you shouldn’t have the right to privacy when making a purchase. But mandating the processors of that purchase ignore what that money is doing is a fools errand as that’s basically a core mechanism in their operation and generation of profit.
Why shouldn’t the payment processors get a say in the payments they process? Illegal or not, why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?
Steam could pursue other payment processing possibilities instead of acquiescing to their demands.
Steam could pursue other payment processing possibilities
Imagine you can’t use visa or mastercard. What other fucking payment card acceptance system are you going to use for payment processing in under 30 seconds?
Why shouldn’t the payment processors get a say in the payments they process
Because it’s none of their business what I buy. If a store is a reputable business that isn’t defrauding me, and are a legal entity, then whatever they sell to me or I buy from them should only matter to me and the seller.
Illegal or not, why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?
So half the market can get nuked once the CEO decides whatever faith du jour they have disallows whatever?
Imagine you can’t use visa or mastercard. What other fucking payment card acceptance system are you going to use for payment processing in under 30 seconds?
This is one of the few places where I think cryptocurrency could be useful. It ain’t much, but there it is.
And literally not a single one of them is useful for the purpose of quick, efficient, and secure transactions.
Blockchains are slow and inefficient by design, since they need to build consensus. On any sufficiently popular blockchain, transactions are either fast or secure, never both.
The “fix” that the crypto industry has come up with is to re-invent banks, except with even more crime and virtually no regulations. Now you’re just entrusting FTX with your coins to enjoy “immediate” transfers, how could that possibly go wrong?
getmonero.org 1 minute average confirmation time, private by default. Eth average confirmation time is 6 seconds and right now it’s doing 16 transactions per second, not counting L2s. Blockchains are way more secure than a centralized database controlled by a financial institution that can freeze or deny you the right to use your money or fat-finger your life savings away with no recourse.
Lightning Labs launched the Lightning Network in 2018 with the goal of reducing the cost and time required for cryptocurrency transaction. Specifically, the bitcoin blockchain can only process around 7 transactions per second (compared to Visa Inc., which can process around 24,000 transactions per second). Despite initial enthusiasm for the Lightning Network, reports on social media of failed transactions, security vulnerabilities, and over-complication lead to a decline in interest.
I’m not really that familiar with LN, to be honest. It looks like there’s almost $500 million in the network available for transactions (source), and according to this report, there were about 6.6 million transactions in August of 2023.
Not MasterCard or Visa levels, for sure, but also not a 10 minute wait for a transaction to complete either.
Imagine you can’t use visa or mastercard. What other fucking payment card acceptance system are you going to use for payment processing in under 30 seconds?
I don’t know. Visa and MasterCard did for 20 years, so maybe. I don’t really care either way. I’m not going to judge people who play “Interactive Sex - Daddy Daughter Incest Volume 4” but I’m not going to go to bat for them either. I can think of way better hills to die on.
Imagine you can’t use visa or mastercard. What other fucking payment card acceptance system are you going to use for payment processing in under 30 seconds?
These payment processors are businesses. They provide a service. Like valve does. It seems to me like you’re making an argument for valve, but not for these other businesses which only differ in the service they provide.
If your point is “our society is too dependant on a small selection of payment processors and we need better options,” that’s a separate discussion and one I don’t think I’d disagree with.
Yes, Valve and Visa/MasterCard differ massively in their service. Valve operates a store within a specific industry, Visa/MasterCard process payments across our whole society.
It should be clear to anyone that payment providers must be held to a much stricter standard and have certain requirements of neutrality imposed on them. If not then in the best case you risk destroying the “free market” part of free market capitalism, worst case you’re weakening democracy by letting unelected, unaccountable people decide what is and what isn’t legal.
There’s also no choice. Which payment processor and credit card do I choose so that I can buy any legal pornography I want? How do you even get a card that’s not.visa or MasterCard for.l general use? I’ve only ever had one of those
Well I find it a bit ironic to invoke the “free market” while simultaneously asserting they should not be free to choose who they go to market with. Isn’t the point of the “free market” that if Visa or Mastercard won’t facilitate the needs of the market, someone else will?
Payment processors should be following the most free speech laws there are, because they have de facto monopolies. If they do have a choice though, if they don’t want to support porn, then they could choose not to be a payment processor.
Ideally they should be nationalised, or perhaps internationalised.
Well I think bottom line is that’s the rub, the burden to become a payment provider is high… which it should be, but that’s because we need pretty damn good regulations on them (as obviously if their security goes to crap, the consiquences are insanely high).
In addition it kind of is a small group by design because, we can’t have it as a large group. If we have a nice even spread across 50 payment processors, then either everyone needs 50 credit cards, or every service that needs to be paid needs contracts with 50 payment services.
Because it’s not their fucking money! If someone is selling a thing, offers to sell it to me for money, and I give them money, I get the fucking thing! The processors can fuck right off with their Victorian bullshit.
Because they’re a financial institution, not an individual. They don’t have beliefs.
Arguing that corporate “beliefs” (image management) and interests take priority over societal order is ridiculous.
We regulate banks and financial institutions all the time. We regulate businesses all the time.
They should suck it up and treat businesses with legal activities and proper tax documents as just another business. Kinda like how we have laws that say that public shipping companies need to generally treat all customers the same. It’s why they don’t typically ask what’s in the box aside from questions related to operational characteristics. Porn doesn’t spontaneously ignite and threaten an aircraft, but lithium batteries can.
why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?
You’ll excuse me for thinking this means you think corporate beliefs are more important than the social benefits of neutral financial institutions.
To answer your question again without assuming anything about your opinion: they should be forced to process payments because they don’t have beliefs, it’s better for society if financial institutions only look at the business relevant portions of a business, and a legal obligation is perfectly sufficient to protect their business interests in reputation management. All the same reasons we don’t let shipping companies refuse customers for morality reasons.
🙄 On what grounds would doing so operationally impair the platform? Is it illegal? Does it prevent them from servicing other businesses in a timely fashion? Does it cost more money in a way that can’t be reflected in the service fee structure?
Explain to me what reason they would have for objecting that isn’t just a different way of phrasing “morality judgment” or “image management”.
Do you also think that a shipping company should be able to refuse to ship products from businesses they don’t approve of, even if it’s functionally identical to something else they would ship?
What about either of those companies refusing service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity?
People used to say it’s bad business to service gays, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics and the Irish. At some point we decided that businesses need to shut the fuck up and just do business without judging, or else their service has no place in society.
The free market that businesses love so much exists entirely through the grace and in the service of society at large. If they fail to at least not harm society, why should society extend that courtesy to them?
shipping company should be able to refuse to ship products from businesses they don’t approve of
Sure, I don’t have a problem with that. I would use another shipping company.
What about either of those companies refusing service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity?
That is not remotely the same thing and a gross false equivalence.
We’re talking about platforming incest hentai games and you’re making a comparison to serving Black and queer people. I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye on this, have a good one.
Things of questionable moral value have been available for sale for as long as money has existed. It’s not like this is new. Payment processors got into this business knowing perfectly well that some purchases may not align with their moral values. In fact, they’ve been profiting off it for decades. They don’t get to suddenly clutch their pearls now.
To be clear, I won’t miss the incest games. I just don’t like the precedent this is setting.
Processors don’t even deserve the right to even learn what morals even are. They are business entities, and shouldn’t have any rights at all, honestly. They’re just there to move money and shouldn’t get any say at all in what that means. None.
Honestly, (to your last point) fuck anyone who is into that shit in any kind of practical way.(if they wanna goon about it, that’s another discussion. But even with adding “step”, it’s kinda close to that vanta black color on the sunniest day.
But if having erotic software keeps them out of their siblings and parents and kids’ beds, then more power to em.
Why shouldn’t the payment processors get a say in the payments they process? Illegal or not, why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?
Because they hold an effective monopoly over the payment process.
But they don’t hold a monopoly. And at least for now, they are private businesses. If your argument is that they should be nationalized, that’s a different conversation and I think we’d agree on more.
Because corporate religions are obviously more important than individual religions and beliefs. It goes against my beliefs to pay overdraft fees. Do you think that shit would hold up? They are constantly changing the rules that you have to follow and enforcing their will on everyone whether they use their service or not.
I’m genuinely confused about what point you are trying to make.
Edited to add, why doesn’t someone who understands the point better than I do try to elucidate? Instead of just downvoting me for stating that I didn’t understand. Like what does corporate religion mean? I’m so confused.
The banks have their own “ethical code” or “operating principle”’ which invariably are just carbon copies of the board of directors or owners religious disposition. So you get shit where capitalism is enforcing the morals of a deeply depraved peoples onto the entirety of the country and world.
I know incest is gross. But it doesn’t hurt anyone. And for them to come in and say “spending money on that filthy sin is ILLEGAL!!!” because they control the only methods by which that content can be accessed, is literally corporate fascism. It’s “rule by corporation” not cooperation as a democracy should be.
The very idea that ANYONE who supports a free state would support those who control the most wealth also controlling ALL OTHER WEALTH ON THE PLANET by virtue of limiting what it may be spent on, is so egregiously, heinously evil that I wish to personally skull fuck anyone who espouses it.
In a world without regulation etc… maybe. Bottom line we’ve given payment processors power. Bottom line we need to buy things in the digital world, unless crypto can actually be stabilized or designed in a way that doesn’t require an unsustainable massive energy waste and polution to use.
There either needs to be a universal good as cash payment processor that anyone can easily use… or we need to force ones that exist to transfer payments without bias.
I’m in a similar boat. I actively dislike incest/fauxcest porn and porn games. I don’t find it “naughty taboo” but gross and often fetishizing straight-up abuse. I’m not sad to see such games and videos, that I can never quite filter out because they are never consistently tagged, go. I am worried that they will try pulling the same shit as Tumblr and OF.
in some previous times something like this happened (I forgot specifically which), visa/mastercard would deny all payments with a platform until whatever offended them was removed (don’t know if they only threatened that or actually followed through)
The problem is that they are a cartel, so we get in a place where a group of private businesses can dictate who can make money.
I think it’s a great idea in theory that as a payment processor you can have influence on social changes. I think businesses should have clear ethics so that I can support those that match my own. If there were 50 processors to choose from that all had niches and different ethics, fine. But we have in reality one processor with finger puppets on asking us which puppet we like best.
Steam used to accept Bitcoin, they stopped when the transaction fees made it unusable. Every time I remember that I get really pissed off, had the block size been increased back then Bitcoin would still be accepted in the many places it was (Steam wasn’t the only one, lots of stores online used to accept it), but because they kept promising a magic solution that never manifested people lost hope and jumped ship (which did solved the problem as nowadays only investors use Bitcoin, so a lot less transactions, a lot more value in them, and higher fees matter less)
This is actually a really good idea. The people that want these kinda games are either underage horndogs on their parents computer, or able to use crypto.
JAST, Kagura, DlSite, Itch, Patreon, and GOG are some vendors. I recommend JAST and Kagura, since they are dedicated to perverse games. DlSite is good if you want to buy Japanese exclusive games, and then pirate the unofficially translated versions.
Note that from some countries (germany at least) you might need a vpn to access the 18+ parts of DLsite (on that note, both steam and gog have a few porn games delisted if you’re in germany, thanks to some “think of the children” people, but JAST sells them anyway if they have it)
If the US used something like pix, MasterCard, visa, etc, wouldn’t have any power to do this, but they want to make Brazil delete pix from existence. Interesting.
The central bank facilitating electronic cash flow makes so much more sense than letting random foreign corporations siphon billions in profit they clearly don’t deserve in the slightest from your economy.
Good on Brazil for breaking free. There’s finally been some push here in the EU for EPI/Wero, but progress has been frigid and online payment processing remains extremely fragmented to the point that if I buy something online outside the Benelux with a small vendor, chances are very high I will have to fall back to an American payment processor, which is insane.
Ohh look i did want to to argue either. I just think it is a bad idea to throw those two together because most people are too ignorant/emotional to make a difference and thats bad.
And a thought is not a crime imo so whatever fantasy rocks your boat idc.
nickyflowers: It would be cool if websites let you be an adult on them. The advertisers and payment processors need everything to be Family Friendly though their definitions of family and friendly are fucked. But since they’re in charge of the Internet now, no one is allowed to be an adult. TikTokers say things like “unalive” and “seggs” because they know death and sex are too adult for online. Online is for idiot babies only now because they’re easier to market to.
nickyflowers: Oh I’m sorry you’re a trans adult? Super ban. You are super banned for life. You have upset Visa’s feelings. Mastercard is throwing up in the corner. How could you do this to Google Ads?
Absolutely spot on. It reminds me of a comment I saw somewhere on here a few months ago where some clown used “seggs” and someone else responded to them and said they can just say sex because there aren’t any algorithms here that would cause problems for them. The clown has a complete meltdown and ranted and raved in response about how they’ve been using “seggs” long before the internet or some wild shit like that and how dare anyone tell them that they don’t have to use it here. The really fucked up thing was that he got a bunch of up votes and the person they lost their minds on was down voted to hell. I felt like I was losing my mind reading that interaction.
Hey if you want to goon and not pay might I suggest F95zone a wonderful porn game forum with a very good search system. I think it’s the dot to that’s the proper site, but it’s hard to think right now because everything hurts for no fucking reason.
Not originally, but they became the very evil they sought to fight against. Some are still holding onto the good fight, most just see it as a virtual online casino.
Cool, I’ll keep transacting privately and uncensored with minimal fees, no middle man and predictable inflation with my pyramid scheme and you’re free to stick to your surveilled, censored, ever inflating FIAT.
My VPN, VPS, phone bill, bunch of games and license keys, steam points, sms verification services all directly for crypto. I also buy gift cards to grocery stores, takeout delivery apps and the local equivalent of Amazon all for crypto and use them to do most of my shopping. Other things I used it for is donating to foss projects I use and some just for fun penny gambling/predictions. Once I even got paid in crypto for some freelance work I did. If you count the gift cards most of my spending is done in crypto, usually monero.
“Gambling/predictions” I bet most of your crypto goes there, eh?
No, I’m not rich enough to be wasting money and don’t really enjoy feeling like my heart is going to jump out of my chest, gambling with literal pennies once in a blue moon is more of my style.
And no, I’m not clicking a link that says “money america” or “bazaar”
Obviously I’d prefer to pay in crypto directly but some of the stores I shop in don’t accept it yet. In person I can pay in cash but shopping privately online is a different story. Gift cards are the next best option, and thanks to them I can use the self checkout scanner and online stores without my purchasing history being tracked. It also allows me to store my savings in a hard asset that can’t be easily confiscated, frozen, inflated or stolen, that I can permissionlessly spend whenever I need to, that no one knows how much of or if I have, that if needs be I can flee the country with in an instant without worry that it will be sized or lost. And it gives me the freedom to not be at the mercy of the banking system and just take their debit card fee, debit card issuance fee, debit card replacement fee, transfer fee, deposit fee, overdraft fee, underdraft fee, too little money fee, account having fee, fuck you what you gonna do fee…
Hate to be a party pooper, but unless you’re going thru self checkout (and the store for that matter) fully masked, you’ve given up way more information than by using Visa.
God forbid anything be due to a loss of consumer rights due to deregulation caused by conservatives. No, instead it must be capitalism. Everything bad is capitalism. The reason China is a dictatorship is because Capitalism. Israeli ethnic cleansing as well as the prior milleniums of holy war? Believe it or not, Capitalism.
Gamers on Lemmy think Steam is THEIR corporation and Gabe is THEIR billionaire. You get downvoted for criticizing steam for anything, or even pointing out that they’re a corporation run by a billionaire and they don’t actually care about you.
Or imagine the worst case. Gabe is the world’s greatest prankster. He’s a true internet troll for the ages. He’s spent decades getting millions and millions of people dependent on his game hosting. He’s got hardware. He stands astride the game industry like a colossus. But the key is that Valve is still a private corporation. In theory, Gabe could do whatever he wants with it. Including, finally committing the last stage of his ultimate prank. One day…he just flips the off switch. Steam never enshittifies. It just shuts off forever without warning.
And thus, with one stroke, his master chess move concluded (to reasons comprehensible only to Gabe), he just shuts it off and walks away. His last words in public are, “it turns out, I was the greatest gamer of all the whole time…”
It’s not about porn, It’s about corporations dictating what type of content can be sold. You may not care about porn but what if they were to start going after LGBT stuff or something like that?
That’s the entire point of this. They want to control everything in your life, including the pervy things that affect literally nobody. The entire point is to restrict happiness to things they control. Anything they don’t control is bad.
I think the porn games are stupid but they don’t harm people at all so there is no reason for them not to exist.
In other news, I have a similar form of financial censorship. For years, I have refused to accept or send money through PayPal and its sister products.
Exactly. Have people forgotten how Project 2025 explicitly wants to classify trans people and queer people more generally as inherently pornographic? Like, ultimately they fundamentally do not accept that trans folks just want to live as we are. They believe that people transition as some sort of public act of sex exhibitionism. They believe it is akin to child abuse for a child to be exposed to the concept of gay people existing. That is what they truly in their hearts believe. They believe that any LGBT content is inherently pornographic. If the theocrats can pressure Mastercard to shut down porn, they can do the same for any content produced about or by queer people of any sort. If they can pressure Steam, they can pressure YouTube or Nebula. As the smaller player, Nebula would be a lot more vulnerable to pressure. What would happen if Nebula had to choose between accepting credit card payments or hosting queer content creators?
Sweet summer child. Porn is the reason we have VHS, porn is the reason we have the internet, porn was doing video streaming before Netflix and YouTube. Porn is one of the greatest motivating forces in this world.
They don’t care about me but they care about the service they provide. And that differs them from other corps. I also don’t care about them, just of the service they provide. They provide better than most.
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On the one hand, oh noz, the incest games. Who will live without the low effort AI goon crap?
On the other hand, why do the payment companies get to dictate what sales are made? It’s my fucking money, or my fucking store. It’s not the job of the payment processors to determine if I’m buying illegal goods, just that the money goes from me to the store.
The payments can become a legal liability for the processors. I believe there are federal laws that have penalties for anyone who facilitates transactions for certain prohibited goods or services. It’s the same reason cannabis shops have such a hard time getting payment and banking services.
The payment processors have very little incentive to take risks here. As others have noted, there isn’t much competition pressure.
EDIT: I went to find a source, and found the cannabis analogy isn’t right. Seems that Visa and MasterCard really are the primary censors of the porn industry. This archived FT article went in depth. https://archive.ph/zXKuD
It’s not even legal risk. It’s brand risk.
There’s a difference with cannabis shops because that’s actually still federally illegal. As such, the required business accounts and tax documents required to use a national payment processor are often not forthcoming. It’s a low level regulation that you can’t generally tell a federal bank you’d like an account to store the proceeds of a federal crime.
With porn, the legal standards and protections are pretty well established. As long as the company is in possession of the required tax documents and business accounts, there’s no legal risk beyond the standard due diligence they need to do for every customer. Visa isn’t generally liable if a tire shop is discovered to be breaking a non-financial law. What processors don’t want is to have their brand attached to something that they worry could make them look bad.
Not really. In the US, the first amendment protects a lot. Just like with YouTube censorship, capitalism has created a more restrictive regime through financial pressure than the government does. This has affected the porn industry, as well (see another comment in this subthread on that).
It’s been like this for a while in the porn industry. In an interview a while back, Bree Mills says she gets more limited by payment processors than the government (though that might be switching).
Ever wonder why every faux-incest video goes out of the way to say everyone is a step family? Step father, step daughter, step mother, step brother, all somehow living in the same house, over 18, and no blood relation? The first amendment protects them from the US government, so that’s not why. Credit card companies are why. The old Taboo series was distributed differently back in the day. Can’t make that anymore.
This also applies to some of the more extreme BDSM stuff, like blood play or scat. Won’t find them on kink.com.
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Well in germany doing porn that implies incest or csam even if the actors are not related or over 18 can still get you jail time
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CSAM sure, but is incest porn really mentioned in the StGB? There’s 173 StGB, but that is for the actual act and not pretending.
Well after a bit of research it seems i was wrong with incest porn. Even the act is not punishable as long as it is not vaginal sex
I was surprised to see that you are correct. 173 StGB only mentions “Beischlaf” and that is indeed only vaginal intercourse. You learn something new every day.
They are just testing their power, make you get used to it. Someday they will make pressure for some ideology. Whenever there’s a morality argument in place prepare to get fucked.
I mean isn’t this effectively the problem bitcoin aimed to solve originally? Don’t get me wrong, crypto is fucked and I’m not advocating for it here per se. But a locally processed, secure, digital version of cash bypasses the need for any of this. Granted it bypasses the need for some of the most powerful institutions on the planet too, and so will never happen in a truly egalitarian sense.
Also just cause it’s bugging me, you understand that a credit card, or even a debit card or PayPal/venmo account, does not equate to ‘your money’ the way physical cash does, right?
Im not saying you shouldn’t have the right to privacy when making a purchase. But mandating the processors of that purchase ignore what that money is doing is a fools errand as that’s basically a core mechanism in their operation and generation of profit.
As a form of protest, we should all start scooping up incest porn games.
Found Jamie Lannister’s account.
Why shouldn’t the payment processors get a say in the payments they process? Illegal or not, why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?
Steam could pursue other payment processing possibilities instead of acquiescing to their demands.
Imagine you can’t use visa or mastercard. What other fucking payment card acceptance system are you going to use for payment processing in under 30 seconds?
Because it’s none of their business what I buy. If a store is a reputable business that isn’t defrauding me, and are a legal entity, then whatever they sell to me or I buy from them should only matter to me and the seller.
So half the market can get nuked once the CEO decides whatever faith du jour they have disallows whatever?
This is one of the few places where I think cryptocurrency could be useful. It ain’t much, but there it is.
Incorrect! Bitcoin transactions take 10 FUCKING MINUTES.
The costs are much worse than the time imo.
There are countless other cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin
And literally not a single one of them is useful for the purpose of quick, efficient, and secure transactions.
Blockchains are slow and inefficient by design, since they need to build consensus. On any sufficiently popular blockchain, transactions are either fast or secure, never both.
The “fix” that the crypto industry has come up with is to re-invent banks, except with even more crime and virtually no regulations. Now you’re just entrusting FTX with your coins to enjoy “immediate” transfers, how could that possibly go wrong?
getmonero.org 1 minute average confirmation time, private by default. Eth average confirmation time is 6 seconds and right now it’s doing 16 transactions per second, not counting L2s. Blockchains are way more secure than a centralized database controlled by a financial institution that can freeze or deny you the right to use your money or fat-finger your life savings away with no recourse.
How many fingering minutes is that?
Bitcoin has lightning or you could use a chain with faster blocks.
I’m not really that familiar with LN, to be honest. It looks like there’s almost $500 million in the network available for transactions (source), and according to this report, there were about 6.6 million transactions in August of 2023.
Not MasterCard or Visa levels, for sure, but also not a 10 minute wait for a transaction to complete either.
Amex. Discover. Diners Club. Venmo.
and will they accept me selling incredibly controversial pervert games that disgust even the most perverse?
I don’t know. Visa and MasterCard did for 20 years, so maybe. I don’t really care either way. I’m not going to judge people who play “Interactive Sex - Daddy Daughter Incest Volume 4” but I’m not going to go to bat for them either. I can think of way better hills to die on.
sure, we’re both on the same page, but pointing out non-alternative alternatives isn’t exactly a contribution to a discussion.
I feel it was a good answer to the question posed
These payment processors are businesses. They provide a service. Like valve does. It seems to me like you’re making an argument for valve, but not for these other businesses which only differ in the service they provide.
If your point is “our society is too dependant on a small selection of payment processors and we need better options,” that’s a separate discussion and one I don’t think I’d disagree with.
Yes, Valve and Visa/MasterCard differ massively in their service. Valve operates a store within a specific industry, Visa/MasterCard process payments across our whole society.
It should be clear to anyone that payment providers must be held to a much stricter standard and have certain requirements of neutrality imposed on them. If not then in the best case you risk destroying the “free market” part of free market capitalism, worst case you’re weakening democracy by letting unelected, unaccountable people decide what is and what isn’t legal.
There’s also no choice. Which payment processor and credit card do I choose so that I can buy any legal pornography I want? How do you even get a card that’s not.visa or MasterCard for.l general use? I’ve only ever had one of those
Well I find it a bit ironic to invoke the “free market” while simultaneously asserting they should not be free to choose who they go to market with. Isn’t the point of the “free market” that if Visa or Mastercard won’t facilitate the needs of the market, someone else will?
Payment processors should be following the most free speech laws there are, because they have de facto monopolies. If they do have a choice though, if they don’t want to support porn, then they could choose not to be a payment processor.
Ideally they should be nationalised, or perhaps internationalised.
Well I think bottom line is that’s the rub, the burden to become a payment provider is high… which it should be, but that’s because we need pretty damn good regulations on them (as obviously if their security goes to crap, the consiquences are insanely high).
In addition it kind of is a small group by design because, we can’t have it as a large group. If we have a nice even spread across 50 payment processors, then either everyone needs 50 credit cards, or every service that needs to be paid needs contracts with 50 payment services.
Because it’s not their fucking money! If someone is selling a thing, offers to sell it to me for money, and I give them money, I get the fucking thing! The processors can fuck right off with their Victorian bullshit.
Because they’re a financial institution, not an individual. They don’t have beliefs.
Arguing that corporate “beliefs” (image management) and interests take priority over societal order is ridiculous.
We regulate banks and financial institutions all the time. We regulate businesses all the time.
They should suck it up and treat businesses with legal activities and proper tax documents as just another business. Kinda like how we have laws that say that public shipping companies need to generally treat all customers the same. It’s why they don’t typically ask what’s in the box aside from questions related to operational characteristics. Porn doesn’t spontaneously ignite and threaten an aircraft, but lithium batteries can.
Good thing I’m not arguing that.
You’ll excuse me for thinking this means you think corporate beliefs are more important than the social benefits of neutral financial institutions.
To answer your question again without assuming anything about your opinion: they should be forced to process payments because they don’t have beliefs, it’s better for society if financial institutions only look at the business relevant portions of a business, and a legal obligation is perfectly sufficient to protect their business interests in reputation management. All the same reasons we don’t let shipping companies refuse customers for morality reasons.
What if these payment processors have decided it’s bad business for them to process payments for incest porn games?
🙄 On what grounds would doing so operationally impair the platform? Is it illegal? Does it prevent them from servicing other businesses in a timely fashion? Does it cost more money in a way that can’t be reflected in the service fee structure?
Explain to me what reason they would have for objecting that isn’t just a different way of phrasing “morality judgment” or “image management”.
Do you also think that a shipping company should be able to refuse to ship products from businesses they don’t approve of, even if it’s functionally identical to something else they would ship?
What about either of those companies refusing service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity?
People used to say it’s bad business to service gays, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics and the Irish. At some point we decided that businesses need to shut the fuck up and just do business without judging, or else their service has no place in society.
The free market that businesses love so much exists entirely through the grace and in the service of society at large. If they fail to at least not harm society, why should society extend that courtesy to them?
Sure, I don’t have a problem with that. I would use another shipping company.
That is not remotely the same thing and a gross false equivalence.
We’re talking about platforming incest hentai games and you’re making a comparison to serving Black and queer people. I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye on this, have a good one.
financial institutions are just like any other company, the only issue the feds try to protect them
Things of questionable moral value have been available for sale for as long as money has existed. It’s not like this is new. Payment processors got into this business knowing perfectly well that some purchases may not align with their moral values. In fact, they’ve been profiting off it for decades. They don’t get to suddenly clutch their pearls now.
To be clear, I won’t miss the incest games. I just don’t like the precedent this is setting.
Processors don’t even deserve the right to even learn what morals even are. They are business entities, and shouldn’t have any rights at all, honestly. They’re just there to move money and shouldn’t get any say at all in what that means. None.
Honestly, (to your last point) fuck anyone who is into that shit in any kind of practical way.(if they wanna goon about it, that’s another discussion. But even with adding “step”, it’s kinda close to that vanta black color on the sunniest day.
But if having erotic software keeps them out of their siblings and parents and kids’ beds, then more power to em.
Because they hold an effective monopoly over the payment process.
But they don’t hold a monopoly. And at least for now, they are private businesses. If your argument is that they should be nationalized, that’s a different conversation and I think we’d agree on more.
A duopoly or any oligopoly is effectively the same as a monopoly.
Because corporate religions are obviously more important than individual religions and beliefs. It goes against my beliefs to pay overdraft fees. Do you think that shit would hold up? They are constantly changing the rules that you have to follow and enforcing their will on everyone whether they use their service or not.
Religion is vile.
I’m genuinely confused about what point you are trying to make.
Edited to add, why doesn’t someone who understands the point better than I do try to elucidate? Instead of just downvoting me for stating that I didn’t understand. Like what does corporate religion mean? I’m so confused.
The banks have their own “ethical code” or “operating principle”’ which invariably are just carbon copies of the board of directors or owners religious disposition. So you get shit where capitalism is enforcing the morals of a deeply depraved peoples onto the entirety of the country and world.
I know incest is gross. But it doesn’t hurt anyone. And for them to come in and say “spending money on that filthy sin is ILLEGAL!!!” because they control the only methods by which that content can be accessed, is literally corporate fascism. It’s “rule by corporation” not cooperation as a democracy should be.
The very idea that ANYONE who supports a free state would support those who control the most wealth also controlling ALL OTHER WEALTH ON THE PLANET by virtue of limiting what it may be spent on, is so egregiously, heinously evil that I wish to personally skull fuck anyone who espouses it.
Because I’m not a right-libertarian who ignores how corporations setup coercive structures all their own in a perversion of free association.
In a world without regulation etc… maybe. Bottom line we’ve given payment processors power. Bottom line we need to buy things in the digital world, unless crypto can actually be stabilized or designed in a way that doesn’t require an unsustainable massive energy waste and polution to use.
There either needs to be a universal good as cash payment processor that anyone can easily use… or we need to force ones that exist to transfer payments without bias.
why is valve obligated to serve up this garbage? simply not being party to it is the best answer.
still nothing explaining why valve should be serving up this garbage. just downvotes. weak.
If you mean the games in question, well they aren’t obligated and they’ve clearly chosen they don’t care to bother anymore.
Because they’re functionally a utility. If they want to throw their weight around they should be forced to compete with a public option
I’m in a similar boat. I actively dislike incest/fauxcest porn and porn games. I don’t find it “naughty taboo” but gross and often fetishizing straight-up abuse. I’m not sad to see such games and videos, that I can never quite filter out because they are never consistently tagged, go. I am worried that they will try pulling the same shit as Tumblr and OF.
So… why tell payment processors exactly what was purchased? Why not call it “Steam store transaction” and that’s it?
Ironically, when you look at the receipts that is all it says.
I think they’re just blanket saying “follow our morals or die” rather than “this particular title offends us”.
Oh, okay. Still sucks, but at least I understand now. Thanks!
in some previous times something like this happened (I forgot specifically which), visa/mastercard would deny all payments with a platform until whatever offended them was removed (don’t know if they only threatened that or actually followed through)
They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. They should be required to process any legal payment. Even the icky ones.
i agree. However, they’ll continue to get away with it because it aligns with republican psuedo-christian ideals of oppression.
The problem is that they are a cartel, so we get in a place where a group of private businesses can dictate who can make money.
I think it’s a great idea in theory that as a payment processor you can have influence on social changes. I think businesses should have clear ethics so that I can support those that match my own. If there were 50 processors to choose from that all had niches and different ethics, fine. But we have in reality one processor with finger puppets on asking us which puppet we like best.
Steam should accept bitcoin or some other crypto as default for all titles and only use card for “safe” titles
Steam users are mostly tech savvy enough to do it
Steam used to accept Bitcoin, they stopped when the transaction fees made it unusable. Every time I remember that I get really pissed off, had the block size been increased back then Bitcoin would still be accepted in the many places it was (Steam wasn’t the only one, lots of stores online used to accept it), but because they kept promising a magic solution that never manifested people lost hope and jumped ship (which did solved the problem as nowadays only investors use Bitcoin, so a lot less transactions, a lot more value in them, and higher fees matter less)
well now we have lightning maybe the time has come to try again.
Having already had an implementation working should hopefully help
Still waiting for NANO to become widespread 💀
Can I send them an unmarked envelope with enough money to buy the games I want, with only my username in the envelope?
That would be cool.
But agreed, I think steam should accept crypto.
This is actually a really good idea. The people that want these kinda games are either underage horndogs on their parents computer, or able to use crypto.
They had Bitcoin integration for quite a while. It was removed during a system change, probably because very few people used it
i had no idea and i’ve held crypto in some form or another since 2014. Maybe it wasnt marketed well
If you can’t buy these games on Steam anymore, where can you buy them?
JAST, Kagura, DlSite, Itch, Patreon, and GOG are some vendors. I recommend JAST and Kagura, since they are dedicated to perverse games. DlSite is good if you want to buy Japanese exclusive games, and then pirate the unofficially translated versions.
Note that from some countries (germany at least) you might need a vpn to access the 18+ parts of DLsite (on that note, both steam and gog have a few porn games delisted if you’re in germany, thanks to some “think of the children” people, but JAST sells them anyway if they have it)
Yeah that even applies to some games that aren’t porn games but just feature nudity like the Fear & Hunger series.
These at least show up when logged in but are there ones that you can’t see at all without VPN?
Piratebay.
either patreon or itch-io. But it does depend on the creator. You’ll find many Japanese games on dl-site for example.
Wait a minute, PayPal is pulling puritanical bullshit again? Did they learn nothing from the last time they tried that?
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You know what? I’m going to buy some yaoi on steam out of spite. Spite yaoi.
First they came for the incestuous porn
Then they came for the furries
Then they came for games with violence
Then…
Then…
Then…
Nah they love violence. It keeps the gravy seals as hapless betas.
The violent video games though, those are the latest satanic panic I’ve been aware of thanks to that idiot Jack Thompson
Kept cumming?
If the US used something like pix, MasterCard, visa, etc, wouldn’t have any power to do this, but they want to make Brazil delete pix from existence. Interesting.
Edit: grammar
The central bank facilitating electronic cash flow makes so much more sense than letting random foreign corporations siphon billions in profit they clearly don’t deserve in the slightest from your economy.
Good on Brazil for breaking free. There’s finally been some push here in the EU for EPI/Wero, but progress has been frigid and online payment processing remains extremely fragmented to the point that if I buy something online outside the Benelux with a small vendor, chances are very high I will have to fall back to an American payment processor, which is insane.
But how could the poor little multi billon dollar multinational companies keep thier bully monopolies if they have competent competition /sarcasm/
I wish I could use that as an American. I trust Brazil more than I trust America
Payment processors and financial institutions sure do seem to hold disproportionate amounts of power.
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Drawn and CSAM don’t go together
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Ohh look i did want to to argue either. I just think it is a bad idea to throw those two together because most people are too ignorant/emotional to make a difference and thats bad.
And a thought is not a crime imo so whatever fantasy rocks your boat idc.
Transcript
nickyflowers: It would be cool if websites let you be an adult on them. The advertisers and payment processors need everything to be Family Friendly though their definitions of family and friendly are fucked. But since they’re in charge of the Internet now, no one is allowed to be an adult. TikTokers say things like “unalive” and “seggs” because they know death and sex are too adult for online. Online is for idiot babies only now because they’re easier to market to.
nickyflowers: Oh I’m sorry you’re a trans adult? Super ban. You are super banned for life. You have upset Visa’s feelings. Mastercard is throwing up in the corner. How could you do this to Google Ads?
Absolutely spot on. It reminds me of a comment I saw somewhere on here a few months ago where some clown used “seggs” and someone else responded to them and said they can just say sex because there aren’t any algorithms here that would cause problems for them. The clown has a complete meltdown and ranted and raved in response about how they’ve been using “seggs” long before the internet or some wild shit like that and how dare anyone tell them that they don’t have to use it here. The really fucked up thing was that he got a bunch of up votes and the person they lost their minds on was down voted to hell. I felt like I was losing my mind reading that interaction.
Hey if you want to goon and not pay might I suggest F95zone a wonderful porn game forum with a very good search system. I think it’s the dot to that’s the proper site, but it’s hard to think right now because everything hurts for no fucking reason.
This is why cryptocurrencies were created. getmonero.org
No, they were created to facilitate pyramid schemes and scams.
Not originally, but they became the very evil they sought to fight against. Some are still holding onto the good fight, most just see it as a virtual online casino.
Cool, I’ll keep transacting privately and uncensored with minimal fees, no middle man and predictable inflation with my pyramid scheme and you’re free to stick to your surveilled, censored, ever inflating FIAT.
What actual items or services are you buying with crypto? Trading and buying other crypto doesn’t count, neither does selling the crypto
My VPN, VPS, phone bill, bunch of games and license keys, steam points, sms verification services all directly for crypto. I also buy gift cards to grocery stores, takeout delivery apps and the local equivalent of Amazon all for crypto and use them to do most of my shopping. Other things I used it for is donating to foss projects I use and some just for fun penny gambling/predictions. Once I even got paid in crypto for some freelance work I did. If you count the gift cards most of my spending is done in crypto, usually monero.
Have a look at monerica.com and xmrbazaar.com if you’re looking for places to spend your crypto.
“Gambling/predictions” I bet most of your crypto goes there, eh? And no, I’m not clicking a link that says “money america” or “bazaar”
No, I’m not rich enough to be wasting money and don’t really enjoy feeling like my heart is going to jump out of my chest, gambling with literal pennies once in a blue moon is more of my style.
No worries, I’ll post some screenshots for you.
Screenshots
Those literally look like scam sites. How fucking dumb can cryptobros be???
Buying gift cards, which are in fiat currency, defeats the whole point lol
Obviously I’d prefer to pay in crypto directly but some of the stores I shop in don’t accept it yet. In person I can pay in cash but shopping privately online is a different story. Gift cards are the next best option, and thanks to them I can use the self checkout scanner and online stores without my purchasing history being tracked. It also allows me to store my savings in a hard asset that can’t be easily confiscated, frozen, inflated or stolen, that I can permissionlessly spend whenever I need to, that no one knows how much of or if I have, that if needs be I can flee the country with in an instant without worry that it will be sized or lost. And it gives me the freedom to not be at the mercy of the banking system and just take their debit card fee, debit card issuance fee, debit card replacement fee, transfer fee, deposit fee, overdraft fee, underdraft fee, too little money fee, account having fee, fuck you what you gonna do fee…
Hate to be a party pooper, but unless you’re going thru self checkout (and the store for that matter) fully masked, you’ve given up way more information than by using Visa.
I’ll give you the access benefit.
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It’s not unrelated to the puritanical thing. Otherwise they wouldn’t be afraid of losing money facilitating payments for porn.
You’re like the negative photo of a boomer. “Everything I don’t like is capitalism!”
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God forbid anything be due to a loss of consumer rights due to deregulation caused by conservatives. No, instead it must be capitalism. Everything bad is capitalism. The reason China is a dictatorship is because Capitalism. Israeli ethnic cleansing as well as the prior milleniums of holy war? Believe it or not, Capitalism.
Gamers on Lemmy think Steam is THEIR corporation and Gabe is THEIR billionaire. You get downvoted for criticizing steam for anything, or even pointing out that they’re a corporation run by a billionaire and they don’t actually care about you.
This is why I’ve been buying games on GOG that I have on Steam.
Backups in case Gabe or a successor goes off the deep end
I don’t have any fear that Gabe will tank steam.
But I will fear what happens after him
Or imagine the worst case. Gabe is the world’s greatest prankster. He’s a true internet troll for the ages. He’s spent decades getting millions and millions of people dependent on his game hosting. He’s got hardware. He stands astride the game industry like a colossus. But the key is that Valve is still a private corporation. In theory, Gabe could do whatever he wants with it. Including, finally committing the last stage of his ultimate prank. One day…he just flips the off switch. Steam never enshittifies. It just shuts off forever without warning.
And thus, with one stroke, his master chess move concluded (to reasons comprehensible only to Gabe), he just shuts it off and walks away. His last words in public are, “it turns out, I was the greatest gamer of all the whole time…”
Same
It’s porn. We can focus on more important things billionaires are ruining.
It’s not about porn, It’s about corporations dictating what type of content can be sold. You may not care about porn but what if they were to start going after LGBT stuff or something like that?
That’s the entire point of this. They want to control everything in your life, including the pervy things that affect literally nobody. The entire point is to restrict happiness to things they control. Anything they don’t control is bad.
I think the porn games are stupid but they don’t harm people at all so there is no reason for them not to exist.
In other news, I have a similar form of financial censorship. For years, I have refused to accept or send money through PayPal and its sister products.
Exactly. Have people forgotten how Project 2025 explicitly wants to classify trans people and queer people more generally as inherently pornographic? Like, ultimately they fundamentally do not accept that trans folks just want to live as we are. They believe that people transition as some sort of public act of sex exhibitionism. They believe it is akin to child abuse for a child to be exposed to the concept of gay people existing. That is what they truly in their hearts believe. They believe that any LGBT content is inherently pornographic. If the theocrats can pressure Mastercard to shut down porn, they can do the same for any content produced about or by queer people of any sort. If they can pressure Steam, they can pressure YouTube or Nebula. As the smaller player, Nebula would be a lot more vulnerable to pressure. What would happen if Nebula had to choose between accepting credit card payments or hosting queer content creators?
Sweet summer child. Porn is the reason we have VHS, porn is the reason we have the internet, porn was doing video streaming before Netflix and YouTube. Porn is one of the greatest motivating forces in this world.
They don’t care about me but they care about the service they provide. And that differs them from other corps. I also don’t care about them, just of the service they provide. They provide better than most.
What happens when someone bought these games. Do they get deleted from their computers and/or from their accounts? Do they get reimbursed?
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Even after comment removal, their message lives on…
was replying to a different comment, doesn’t show preview of what I am replying to until after its posted so…yeah just cut paste and delete