Mastercard and Visa face backlash after hundreds of adult games removed from online stores Steam and Itch.io

Keep the pressure on.

Collective Shout got them to change their position and they're a small group. We are legion, as the kids say

And we're the ones spending the money
- That's really what I don't get. Why make it impossible for people to give you money. That doesn't seem to be the way capitalism is supposed to operate if something is popular then you should allow it.
- They're the ones at risk of losing money if they get sued by reintroducing said content. You're not going to stop using the payment processors because there's literally no other option. This is performative.
We are legion, as the kids say
God I'm old lmao
That's something we all have to remember. We have to be just as vocal as these idiots or they take over. They are not the majority, they are only the most vocal.

Maybe it’s just because I’m so focused on my own issues as a US citizen… But how the hell did some Australian Christofascist group get this powerful? Like, the RIAA and MPAA combined couldn’t get the United States government to make this much movement on “objectionable content” (piracy at the time, and also now, and all of the time between then and now), but even the crypto fascists of yesterday year couldn’t get this much traction. Probably because people like Frank Zappa and Fred Rogers came forth to criticize the ridiculousness and the consequences of such a position and search policies.

May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications

And 16 years later:

Frank Zappa at PMRC Senate Hearing on Rock Lyrics

STAND UP!!! FIGHT BACK!! Citizen complacency is the most powerful weapon the fascist have – – relying on that you will be paralyzed with fear and do nothing to stop them.

RISE UP! RESIST! REVOLT!!

And show us the fucking Epstein files already, you fucking rapist, con man, felon, pedo, traitor!

They got together enough people to mass email, that is all it took.
Companies tend to multiply received responses to represent the total number of people who were to lazy to complain, so Visa and MasterCard saw 1,000 emails as 10,000,000 in their risk averse actions.
Now 4chan is pissed and have started their own mass email and phonecall campaign, so we shall see where this goes...
- Visa also have a fairly well documented history of kowtowing to Christian groups. The CEO of their Asian division is a right-wing religious fanatic who hates, well he's a religious fanatic so you know what he hates, but it's basically everything and everybody.
  They don't like Japanese anime very much as well, probably because they think it's all pornography (anime does tend to have that bent, but it's not all pornography).
  The thing is on their website they claim not to make moral judgements about purchasers, they claim to authorise anything that isn't actually illegal, so they should be totally fine with pornography and anime. If they are going to be right-wing religious fundamentalists at least they could be honest about it on their website.
- Who do you even email for that? mastercard@gmail.com?
- Sounds like we're fighting back with the same technique! Good enough for me!
- Mass emailed didn’t exist in 1969 nor in 1985.
  Wherever you went to school, those teachers should be shot.
Probably because they didnt go throught the government, which takes a long time to move on anything, and just put pressure on some profit seeking corporations that just want to get a bother to go away, but which also unfortunately have been put in a position of practical power equal to some types of legislation.
But how the hell did some Australian Christofascist group get this powerful?
It's Australia, we only laugh when China does it, otherwise it must be good if we're doing it.
Want to have backdoors to chat apps, done, allow the siezure and forced unlocking of computers and phones at the border, done. Inter refigees in our own offshore concentrarion camps for decades until they suicide and make it illegal to report on, done. Regularly kill our first nations peoples amd have the jailed ? Done. We're a fucken' embarrassment!

What's even the argument here? Steam already has parental control options, age gates, and content filters... if you don't want your kids seeing that shit on steam, then, like, don't let em?

...meanwhile, let's just continue shoving blatant gambling down minors' throats in the form of lootboxes.

The argument is control. Religious zealots are all about controlling society and subduing people to follow their rules (that they themselves tend to break all the time)
- That's their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
  There's usually some on-paper benevolent veneer to wrap their hateful bullshit up with.
  For example, they hate trans people, but they don't campaign on that out loud - they justify that hated under the guise of shit like protecting bathrooms.
  But this is fucking Steam - access to that bathroom is already under lock and key behind an armed guard. They can't just pull the "think of the children!" card when the children already have a myriad of protections.
  ...or maybe they can, considering what just happened. We live in stupid times.
This group isn't interested in protecting children they're just interested in pushing their own beliefs on everybody else. The easiest way they can do that is to pretend that they're interested in children. Which I'm sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
It's a classic right-wing tactic. Because nobody wants to be against a law that protects children.
- People like them used to go after books, now games.
  https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/aldous-huxley-brave-new-world/
- Which I'm sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
  I laughed, then I cried :_(
And the reason sexual things had to be filtered was that they are harmful and skew kids' perception of healthy sexuality.
Gambling wasn't considered healthy even where and when marrying a toddler was normal. After all, a traumatized person with unhealthy sexuality does generally understand they are traumatized, a person taught that addiction is normal - not.

Feels like we're going back to the 90s/00s "Christian parents against video games" moral panic era. But this time, they're being appeased more heavily.

I despise conservatism. It destroys everything it touches.

It's another Satanic Panic.
And there's way fewer Christians nowadays
- But more fascists
- But the ones who remain get worse and worse.
Just as long as they get rid of dungeons and dragons. Everyone knows that's the real danger in our society.
- Pathfinder is clearly the answer
Rockstar paid for part of that as PR stunt

While Collective Shout solely targeted games it said violated policies held by payment platforms, Itch.io's move to temporarily remove all NSFW content resulted in games with LGBTQ+ themes being removed.
One petition signer who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community said they were concerned that banning sexual-based games would be the start of cracking down on LGBTQ+ content.

There it is.

if the LGBTQ+ games were not sexual in nature (why does it not say?), then that is quite damning and I approve of this conspiracy theory.
- If you google Tankard-Reist you'll find it's not a conspiracy theory - she has actively tried to block queer representation at every level in every way for decades
- It's not all that much of a conspiracy theory as those pushing this line at the payment processoers openly advocate that since LGBTQ+ references sex by way of sexuality and gender, then that is sexual content, and is therefore inappropriate for children. This, of course, completely ignores heterosexuality and cisgender because they consider queer people existing to be harmful to children. And trying to get through to them about how important age-appropriate sexual education is in combating child abuse is an exercise in frustration.
- politicians have literally said that the reason for censorship bills about the internet are specifically to go after lgbtq spaces.
- How can you know a game is LGBTQ+ if they don't talk about sex/gender? They look like normal humans to me, which differ in sexual preferences only? Example: How can you say this guy is gay without knowing his sexual preferences?
- I assume it doesn't say because there are games with LGBTQ+ content that is sexual and ones where it is not.

So sick of conservatives forcing their beliefs on others. Filter your own content, use parents controls, don’t ban everything you don’t like because of your arrogant belief in made up morality. Morality is relative and religion does not give your opinions weight.

Yeah but Jesus definitely preached love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and also, ew gay people not in my back yard.
I'm pretty confident on two of those anyway
everything you don’t like
On issues like these, conservatives will discover the magic of actual reasons. It's only "things you don't like" when we're talking about banning hate speech or something.

Somebody should check their PCs and internet history; after all, name a better duo than Conservatives and Projection.

I’d bet real money that the CEO of Collective Shout has CSAM on one or more of their computers.
- I would put ten dollars on it.
- The bookies wouldn't even give you numbers on that. You can't bet on a sure thing.
Batman and Robin are a way better duo.
I mean, they actually try to do good and oppose nazis instead of be them.

Don't be fooled, that's not the real reason. Parents that shove iPads in front of their children are not even remotely worried about what their kids are watching online. This is purely about control, has nothing to do with children.
Governments and some religious nutjobs.
They only pretend to care about children. It is about power and control. Always has been, always will.

"[Elon Musk] said he wanted to get his own X payments platform «going soon»".

Surely that's going to solve the problem. There's absolutely no censorship on Twitter. /s

Oh it'll be interesting to see how he manages to make a worse payment processor than PayPal. I wouldn't have thought it was possible.
- Elon was fired as CEO of PayPal, so he already has the credentials
When there are enough competing parties, the argument of "I live in country A and I don't care about B's special services reading my messages", where A and B are in a state of adversity, starts working.
By competing parties I mean not just A and B, but a plethora of snakes in that pit.
So - do it Elon. It's fine.
Didn't he invest in Dogecoin?

The Mastercard/Visa monopoly (or duopoly) is bad for consumers. It should be broken up.

And hypothetically if it won't get broken up because the government works for them and not for us, then we can break the monopoly ourselves.
We should hope digital euro breaks this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro
Discover was just acquired by Capital One, so one less viable competitor too.

"Face backlash" = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.

They don't care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.

I switched all my master and visa cards to amex, canceled a visa card and the only have my debit as visa now because my credit union ONLY offers visa for debit
Exactly. We need thousands of people calling them non stop disturbing them for hours on end, not just signing petitions.
- You mean like exactly what's been happening over the past few days?

Fuck Collective Shout, or anyone spreading censorship!

“The internet has no borders. Women and girls everywhere are impacted by male violence against women and misogyny in general which we believed these games perpetuated,” she said.

Yet the fictional violence against men and boys is A-Ok!

As long as it is legal CC companies should be barred from dictating what products and services their systems cover.

When is the European alternative to these coming?

An alternative to PayPal, called WERO is currently in it's rollout process in Germany, Belgium and France. In October the next step will be activated, allowing payments in e-commerce. Later down the road, you'll be able to pay in real shops. Luxembourg and Netherlands are to join in next. More and more banks start to adopt WERO.
I urge everyone to use WERO as much as you can. It's flying a bit under the radar at the moment and this must be a success. Hopefully more EU members will join soon.
- I would prefer if the EU/Swiss backed project based on GNU Taler makes it instead: https://www.taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html
an eu alternative would be just as susceptible to hate campaigns by bigots censoring content... look at the uk and the terfs (i know technically the uk isn't the eu but they're still europe)
shiiiit I wouldn't count on that anymore. With the age verification and ID stuff they would honestly at this point probably make it worse.
I used to be an advocate for European alternatives for US based tech companies but now? no way, started self hosting everything. it sucks.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/15826/european-card-schemes-form-payments-alliance
Do you mean digital euro? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro
This would be the only thing that could break visa mastercard duopol. Hopefully 2028

Tired of this story. The fucking prudes need to give up and stop already. Shit

Yet 1000 weirdos in Australia will have more sway, curiously.

What are the alternatives to Visa/Mastercard?

Discover, American Express, Diner’s Club, and the one that still rules them all, Cash. There are probably others, but Visa and Mastercard are the two largest.
- Diners club hasn't been available to normal people and small businesses for years now. It's basically a large business company card only thing nowadays.
- Diners Club is Discover, and they got bought up by Capital One a couple months ago. So you'll only really have Amex left.
- How do I transfer my cash to online stores?
- Visa and MasterCard really are the only two you see in Europe
- There are a lot of places going cashless these days. Heck some of my kids friend went to target and couldn't buy anything because target didn't have the staff to run anything but the self checkout, which at this place didn't accept cash. They had to leave empty-handed.
- Discover and Diners Club merged a few years ago btw. Discover also has an alliance with JCB.
  So Discover network is actually really, really big.
In Canada, I'd like to see Interac develop into one. Hopefully more prominence wouldn't ruin it
Edit:
Following several aborted merger attempts which were either blocked by the Competition Bureau or by some of the co-owners between 2008 and 2013, Interac and Acxsys were combined into a single for-profit organization, Interac Corporation, on 1 February 2018.
Never mind. It would be inevitable.
In Italy, there's a debit card circuit called PagoBancomat.
Italy also has a digital-only payment system called Satispay. Denmark and Finland have MobilePay (which is way better than Satispay). Sweden has Swish.
Your country may have something similar, look it up. And then you can always pay with PayPal by connecting your bank account directly, with no cards involved (at least in Europe).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionPay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(credit_card_company)
At the cost of a less stable value, you can convert your currency to BTC, store it on a physical wallet like those made by Ledger and self-host BTCPay Server to make receiving money easier (alt cryptocurrency available via integrations). As for spending, that depends entirely on the recipient cooperating and accepting BTC. There are also 'payment gateways' that should help, including self-hosting a verifiable debit card. I'm still looking into it.
- No thanks. It's not for me.
- How is an even more niche process that involves having to go to an exchange to buy crypto then safe guard it and it being a taxable event when buying goods with it in some countries a solution?
  People are wanting a mainstream alternative that the companies that they buy from use, and if the companies don't care to use it then it doesn't matter for the average person.
  Even people actually into crypto are less interested in spending it because it exposes their balance if they aren't using coin mixers or monero which can make them a target. Not to mention most just see it as stock they hope goes to the moon as opposed to going through the cumbersome process of buying for the purpose of spending it like a depreciating asset.
- Unfortunately crypto is already complicated as is. And as the other user said bitcoin isn't the best choice. Monero would be as close to the overall goal as it is possible.
  Now using monero would be more anonymous than credit/debit cards making it a better option - but not many vendors support it, and cash is just simpler than any other option.

I’d love to boycott them, but literally everything I do uses one of those 2.

Yeah there doesn't seem to be any alternatives in my country other than cash which doesn't work for online purchases.
Apparently there is a complicated thing I can do where I have to go to the post office and then I can send money directly to a company. But that's really inconvenient (it's like a 30-second walk from my house, I'm not doing that) and I don't think steam accepts that payment method anyway. In fact I've never heard of anyone except that payment method so I don't really understand why it exists.

100's ??? no no,no,no last I checked it was in the tens of thousands of nsfw games on itch.io

While the pressure on the credit card companies should still work due to conversations behind closed doors, my understanding is that those companies are not actually payment processors. Payment processors are a bunch of companies/banks, some you likely haven't heard of (one is PayPal though, feel free to make your voice heard to them), and they are taking legal responsibility for the transactions themselves, and thus actually have incentive to police transactions. Credit card companies themselves, not having those legal liabilities, would much rather people just spent their money everywhere as long as there was low risk of cards being stolen or misused.

Let's say it like it is: after the world of hundreds of developers is undermined, and the property of thousands of customers is compromised.

Good on her parents for putting Tankard in her name since you need at least one to deal with her bullshit. Bad on them for releasing her into the world instead of into a rectum where she belongs.

Let's keep up the pressure

Bring back Chargex! Where is Diner's Club when you need them?

Diner card is fortune 500 company cards only at this point they don't do normal consumer or even small business cards anymore.
Discover replaced thoses with the mergers.

I feel like a dipshit for not participating.

I too am a bit speechless that two companies get to censor what all stores are allowed to sell.
What?

Wow, people start caring when they come for their porn. These duopolies should be broken up, people should adopt crypto payments.

Nhaa fuck crypto. At least the crypto that are actually popular. Shit like bitcoin and ethereum are deflationary. And why the fuck would you spend money if there's a good chance your money is worth more tomorrow?
- I believe monero has protections to prevent this. All transactions are secret.
- So basically it could help combat our blatant consumerism as well? Seems like a win to me
- if we're talking one-off transactions, this is no problem. You simply get enough crypto for your purchase and spend it. You don't invest all of your money in it and you can circumvent the Visa/Mastercard garbage.
Which one. Is there a valid one? BTC is not has high fees slow and to volatile.
- I would be for a state owned chain, does not have to be completely decentralized, it's just good tech that can make the payment processors of today obselete.
  Basically require each bank to run nodes, while letting the central bank of the country hold the keys to mint new coins.
  I mean one could also have verifying nodes run independent.
  The tech is there, doesn't have to mean use anarchy moneys, it just means an overhaul of our ways of transferring value around.
- Monero. No question.
- Lightning

To clarify against what many people jump to assume: Collective Shout is not a religious organization. Its stated goal is protecting children against content they believe may help form dangerous and abusive behaviors in real life. (Needless to say, science does not seem to back these claims)

This doesn't make them right by any means at all, but we need to understand our enemy if we want to be productive in fighting it.

Um, the founder of Collective Shout, Melinda Tankard Reist, absolutely identifies as a pro-life Christian who has said that her faith 100% influences her activism.
So it's absolutely hilarious that you believe we need to "understand our enemy", when you've failed to identify the faith and influence of the founder and primary force behind it.
I don't think this is entirely true. They're not overtly religious, but there's a lot of ostensibly "feminist" groups in many countries that are being funded by US religious groups. Someone posted their financials the other day, and they are simply not plausible for a random "we don't like porn" activist group. There's a lot of astroterfing going on, and the worst part is that everyone seems to just be accepting it.
I wonder what % of employees and volunteers are religious?
- Exactly.
Melinda Tankard Reist is conservative, religious and anti-abortion. Collective Shout has not made any statements leaning either right (such as anti-lgbtq or anti-abortion) or left (such as pro-lgbtq or pro non exploitative porn). It is a small charity yet and they are likely playing for the center to maximize its donations. If it ever becomes self-sustaining, it has a much higher chance of shifting right then left.
- This small charity is making a global impact.