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Over 20K games, book, and other content have been removed with no warning to customers and creators. All because of pressure from Visa and Mastercard, a duopoly

Over 20K games, book, and other content have been removed with no warning to customers and creators. All because of pressure from Visa and Mastercard, a duopoly propped up by puritans and authoritarians.

msgodel 1y ago
Capital one/discover has their own network. So at least in the US it's not a duopoly. Not that it's much of a help here.
- deaddodo 1y ago
  Many nations have their own domestic card networks that exist from the pre-Visa/MC domination period. A few major ones that come to mind are Russia, China, and Germany.
dlcarrier 1y ago
It's not the payment processors applying the pressure, it's coming from regulators, through a strategy called jawboning: https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/six-things-about-jawboning https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/six-things-about-jawboning
- adfasofdjo 1y ago
  Do you have any further reports on this ? All the news are just reporting the action by payment processor, not much on who is pressuring them to do so.
  - thinkingemote 1y ago
    There is a lot of paranoia and conspiracy thinking here. Itch in the article says that the main group is Collective Shout which is against violence against women and girls: https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-processors https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce...
    - leovingi 1y ago
      Collective Shout is just the front and their purpose is to take the heat for this. There is no chance in hell an organization like that wields anything close to the power required to force these kind of decisions. Either it is the payment processors or the regulators, or a combination of both, or some other kind of group behind the scenes. Personally I don't know what the true answer is, but it's clearly not some activist organization.
      - dash2 1y ago
        The last decade has many examples of activist organizations wielding huge power?
      - WorldMaker 1y ago
        It's not power, it's volume. Groups like Collective Shout are "squeaky wheels". They send enough letters/phone calls/emails to a payment processor, often via the company's legal team, often citing the processor's own terms and conditions, until the company caves from essentially peer pressure and takes all the whining and pushes it back onto their customers (vendors like Steam and Itch). It doesn't take a lot of people/very big organization or a lot of money to do, just a willingness to be loud and obnoxious, but in a legal way. It's the same thing with DMCA trolls that send takedown letters to demonetize things like YouTube channels. They don't need a lot of people/power/money, just a willingness to complain in volume and leave the evidence and fact finding to other people and/or automated systems like YouTube's auto-DMCA.
    - skitter 1y ago
      I do not see evidence that they are against violence against women and girls, only that they are claiming to be.
    - roguecoder 1y ago
      * claim to be against This is about power, not preventing violence. It is classic 1970s TERF stuff. Dworkin identified real problems, but her solutions are bad and make the actual problems worse by targeting already-targeted people for greater policing. What they do do is give suburbanite women the rush of power and control, building their own little evangelical theocracies.
  - dlcarrier 1y ago
    It's difficult to track down threats, which is the primary means of jawboning, and courts often okay with them, despite the significant conflict with the first amendment. There are many cases of it becoming public though, showing how prevalent it is. It was the primary concern in the Twitter Files (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files) and in the Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart case, (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/15-3047/15-3047-2015-11-30.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/15...) the Sheriff in Cook County Illinois tried to follow through with the threat, but was overturned by the courts, who tend to have a much stronger response to follow-through than threat itself, despite most of the effectiveness coming from threats. Also, politicians are constantly threatening to revoke section 230 of the communications decency act, without which hosting any kind of user-generated content, from forums to video streaming to social media, would be effectively impossible in the US, because everything posted would need to be censored before ever being displayed.
- Propelloni 1y ago
  Great post, thank you for bringing it to my attention.
- popalchemist 1y ago
  And in turn they are ultimately being pressured by Evangelicals.
  - 0xy 1y ago
    The pressure against Valve came from Collective Shout, a non-religious feminist NGO.
    - cardanome 1y ago
      > feminist The founder of collective shout Melinda Tankard Reist is against abortions. They are also working with a lot of conservative organizations. Sounds more like reactionaries in feminist clothing pretending to care about feminism for tactical reasons. Especially as their actions are hurting LGBTQ+ people. It also the perfect storm to drive more people towards the right by "look those evil feminists are taking our games". Even though these people are not representative for progressive feminism.
      - dekrg 1y ago
        Feminists and the far left have been complaining about attractive women in games and not enough inclusivity for the past 10 years and you think is some grand rightwing conspiracy? Also if you think "real" feminists would be for adult games targeted at men you might be straight up delusional.
        dwb 1y ago
        No-one has complained about “attractive women in games”, that is a mischaracterisation. “Attractive” is a subjective judgement anyway. People have complained about the predominance of women in video games adhering to a particular set of beauty standards, to the near exclusion of anyone else. It should be very uncontroversial to want a representative selection of people in games. And for the production companies, it makes obvious business sense.
        1y ago
WHA8m 1y ago
Sailing is already back. Interestingly for very legit reasons. Maybe it's another case of who they say are the common early adopters...
beefnugs 1y ago
This should spark gradual movement to crypto or other payment processors. Lazyness wins again i guess

msgodel 1y ago

Capital one/discover has their own network. So at least in the US it's not a duopoly. Not that it's much of a help here.

deaddodo 1y ago
Many nations have their own domestic card networks that exist from the pre-Visa/MC domination period. A few major ones that come to mind are Russia, China, and Germany.

dlcarrier 1y ago

It's not the payment processors applying the pressure, it's coming from regulators, through a strategy called jawboning: https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/six-things-about-jawboning https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/six-things-about-jawboning

adfasofdjo 1y ago
Do you have any further reports on this ? All the news are just reporting the action by payment processor, not much on who is pressuring them to do so.
- thinkingemote 1y ago
  There is a lot of paranoia and conspiracy thinking here. Itch in the article says that the main group is Collective Shout which is against violence against women and girls: https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-processors https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce...
  - leovingi 1y ago
    Collective Shout is just the front and their purpose is to take the heat for this. There is no chance in hell an organization like that wields anything close to the power required to force these kind of decisions. Either it is the payment processors or the regulators, or a combination of both, or some other kind of group behind the scenes. Personally I don't know what the true answer is, but it's clearly not some activist organization.
    - dash2 1y ago
      The last decade has many examples of activist organizations wielding huge power?
    - WorldMaker 1y ago
      It's not power, it's volume. Groups like Collective Shout are "squeaky wheels". They send enough letters/phone calls/emails to a payment processor, often via the company's legal team, often citing the processor's own terms and conditions, until the company caves from essentially peer pressure and takes all the whining and pushes it back onto their customers (vendors like Steam and Itch). It doesn't take a lot of people/very big organization or a lot of money to do, just a willingness to be loud and obnoxious, but in a legal way. It's the same thing with DMCA trolls that send takedown letters to demonetize things like YouTube channels. They don't need a lot of people/power/money, just a willingness to complain in volume and leave the evidence and fact finding to other people and/or automated systems like YouTube's auto-DMCA.
  - skitter 1y ago
    I do not see evidence that they are against violence against women and girls, only that they are claiming to be.
  - roguecoder 1y ago
    * claim to be against This is about power, not preventing violence. It is classic 1970s TERF stuff. Dworkin identified real problems, but her solutions are bad and make the actual problems worse by targeting already-targeted people for greater policing. What they do do is give suburbanite women the rush of power and control, building their own little evangelical theocracies.
- dlcarrier 1y ago
  It's difficult to track down threats, which is the primary means of jawboning, and courts often okay with them, despite the significant conflict with the first amendment. There are many cases of it becoming public though, showing how prevalent it is. It was the primary concern in the Twitter Files (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files) and in the Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart case, (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/15-3047/15-3047-2015-11-30.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/15...) the Sheriff in Cook County Illinois tried to follow through with the threat, but was overturned by the courts, who tend to have a much stronger response to follow-through than threat itself, despite most of the effectiveness coming from threats. Also, politicians are constantly threatening to revoke section 230 of the communications decency act, without which hosting any kind of user-generated content, from forums to video streaming to social media, would be effectively impossible in the US, because everything posted would need to be censored before ever being displayed.
Propelloni 1y ago
Great post, thank you for bringing it to my attention.
popalchemist 1y ago
And in turn they are ultimately being pressured by Evangelicals.
- 0xy 1y ago
  The pressure against Valve came from Collective Shout, a non-religious feminist NGO.
  - cardanome 1y ago
    > feminist The founder of collective shout Melinda Tankard Reist is against abortions. They are also working with a lot of conservative organizations. Sounds more like reactionaries in feminist clothing pretending to care about feminism for tactical reasons. Especially as their actions are hurting LGBTQ+ people. It also the perfect storm to drive more people towards the right by "look those evil feminists are taking our games". Even though these people are not representative for progressive feminism.
    - dekrg 1y ago
      Feminists and the far left have been complaining about attractive women in games and not enough inclusivity for the past 10 years and you think is some grand rightwing conspiracy? Also if you think "real" feminists would be for adult games targeted at men you might be straight up delusional.
      - dwb 1y ago
        No-one has complained about “attractive women in games”, that is a mischaracterisation. “Attractive” is a subjective judgement anyway. People have complained about the predominance of women in video games adhering to a particular set of beauty standards, to the near exclusion of anyone else. It should be very uncontroversial to want a representative selection of people in games. And for the production companies, it makes obvious business sense.
        1y ago

WHA8m 1y ago

Sailing is already back. Interestingly for very legit reasons. Maybe it's another case of who they say are the common early adopters...

beefnugs 1y ago

This should spark gradual movement to crypto or other payment processors. Lazyness wins again i guess