This group in particular (Collective Shout) is Australian, and they’re anti-gun, it’s just not a key part of their advocacy. They have claimed that GTA is responsible for mass shootings.
Unless they make that completely seamless behind the scenes, I can’t see that working. Most people don’t use crypto and don’t want to learn how. It also requires users to sign up for a crypto exchange, which requires people to register with a photo ID. Additionally, it is difficult to exchange exactly the amount you need to purchase something, because of how volatile the currencies are. You end up spending more than the cost of the thing you are buying, just to be sure that you have enough. And then you’re in the digital currency problem of “I want the $3 skin but the smallest package I can buy is $5 worth of V Bucks”, which always feels like a ripoff.
I’ve seen this a lot, and there are problems with it. People are not going to want to go through setting up a crypto wallet just to buy a game. People are not going to be happy with Itch.io doing it transparently behind the scenes (who knows where they are sending it to). Creators are not going to be happy with having to pay higher transaction fees. And all this would apply to all games sold on Itch, not just the spicy ones, since Mastercard and Visa would absolutely block them if they tried it.
Why not just use something like Wero (or a hypothetical global equivalent) and use direct bank to bank transfers with no payment processor acting as an intermediary?
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be realistic to say “we accept crypto now and also are refusing to comply with credit card content policies” right away anyways, because that would just lose them all their business. The better plan would be to do what they seem to be doing; comply in the short term as best they can, while simultaneously looking to branch out with the payment options they accept, so that at some point in the future credit card companies might have less leverage.
I don’t think that someone is talking about using BTC or ETH. They’re literally unusable to make purchases (multiple minute settling times and the high costs you mentioned) but any other functional L1 would work. Algorand for examply has ~3second block times with instant finality and costs a fraction of a fraction of a cent to use the network. Those fees couple be subsidised they’re so low. They’re significantly lower than a rail like Visa or MasterCard. But you’re right, implementing it so anyone can easily use and access it is key.
On the one hand, yes, it’s a solid alternative because it’s decentralized and can even be untraceable (see Monero), but on the other hand, it’s been under attack for the past years. I would disagree it’s censorship-resistant, because if you make it illegal or hard to buy and sell crypto, few would be dedicated enough to go around that. Moreover, your proposed solution would still rely on some gateway between crypto and fiat, which would be vulnerable to pressure.
Dan Olson’s documentary is as true as ever. Stop recommending an environment-destroying investment scam to people. You aren’t helping, and I’m not going to be left holding your bag.
Edit: lmao they edited their crypto hawking out of their post
Previously, any cosmetic player skins could be matched with any perk, or class. But now each Sharpshooter, Medic and so on is a hero shooter-style named character
HAH. BYE. If I can’t play Mr Foster at all times I don’t give a fuuuuuck.
Also lifting hero shooter elements for killing floor…? Eesh.
This was done specifically for money. Paid cosmetics have already been confirmed.
Apparently they didn’t get the fucking 2042 memo that hero shooter limited cosmetics are dead
Guess they will fuck around and find out once the player base drops since players aren’t tolerating that shit anymore. I know they claimed that perks locked up characters would be unlinked after launch but why wait? They’re probably testing the waters to see the players push back (or they have no intention to and hope we forget)
I put a ton of hours into KF1 but never got quite that far into KF2. I could blame it on the progression but I can’t really remember if it was all that different from the first game, so I’d probably chalk it up to not having the free time of a college student anymore.
That being said, 3rd entries are rough. You could tell that the first game was made on a limited budget, so 2 offered the opportunity to expand on graphics and gameplay in ways there just couldn’t afford before. But once you’ve done that, how do you expand further? Seems like the answer for this one is “chasing hero shooter trends” which I don’t think they needed
We can blame the religious organisation as much as we want, but the fundamental problem here is payment processors. They should be common carriers. Content-neutral middlemen who facilitate payment to anything that isn’t literally unlawful. This is no different to an ISP throttling access to Netflix because they operate their own streaming platform. If the storefront, the developer, and the buyer are all ok with a transaction, there’s no good reason for a fourth party to stand in the way of that.
The only way that would help is if they ONLY used crypto and nothing else, because the payment processors for currencies people actually use will continue threaten them as long as NSFW content is anywhere on the platform.
That's not the point. The point is that 99.99% of their customer base is not using crypto, so they need to use payment processors that accept currency people actually use. And as long as they do, the payment processors will force this on them.
Yeah, payment processing is among the many many many industries that ought to be nationalized so they can be administered in a transparent and democratic manner (see also, healthcare education housing electricity internet etc.)
There’s just too much opportunity to use it to manipulate markets and oppress minority viewpoints for it to remain in private hands imo
I think it is possible to have a government that functions in this way on a long term basis. I don’t think the same can be said of for profit companies.
A for profit company can be replaced with another and is more easily affected by boycotts. A goverment is neither easily replaced or influenced by people from other countries.
Until they monopolize their industry, which is something they’re always going to be trying to do by their very nature as for profits and which has already essentially happened here
A government can be influenced if it is transparent and democratic, which can be ensured if they’ve got good bylaws that are being scrupulously enforced. Like, if you have decisionmakers a) accountable to free and fair elections (whether they’re elected directly or appointed by elected people) holding b) regular and public meetings where c) outside organizations can raise disputes and get them decided under d) neutral procedures that are published in advance and that every party has equal opportunity to understand and take advantage of, and e) if those decisions and the reasoning behind them are also published and cited as precedent to be reinforced or overturned in subsequent decisions, then I really think the rest takes care of itself.
And I think we had a lot of this figured out when we got done fighting totalitarian regimes in the 1940s and turned around and passed the Administrative Procedure Act, but conservatives keep adding loopholes and trying to drag all of us back to feudalism and monarchies.
So you admitted that people have succeeded in adding loopholes to the US government that makes all your argument no longer true, and you think they still should be allowed handle payment processing? To me it just sounds like you're arguing for transferring the power from one corruptible party (for-profit payment company) to another one (the government).
It would be easier for the government to actually regulate payment processors so they don't become so big that they can influence online stores that use them than preventing people in governments from turning corrupt and misusing the control over payment processes. Even then, the US government has failed to do the former, so how do we expect them to do the latter?
They can do a really shit job of administering payment processes in a transparent and democratic manner before they end up being worse than the status quo where it’s entirely untransparent and undemocratic. Also, governments already have the power to make things they don’t like illegal, so there’s no reason to expect they’d block payments for things they’ve left legal, whereas payment processors currently block plenty of legal things.
So you expect governments like the Trump administration or Saudi Arabia will less likely block porn games than for profit companies?
You do realise this happened because thousands of people called the payment processors to complain about it, which means with thousands of people, you can pressure these companies to change their mind again. Try doing that to your own government, let alone a foreign government.
Your government representative only has a voice in the government, but they don't control it. Calling for profit companies en masse pushes your message directly to the people in charge who are scared of losing profits over this.
Tell me, when has calling your representatives ever resulted in a change in government policy within a reasonable time span? How often does a government do a major change in policy without you needing to vote someone out first?
That sounds wonderful to me, I just want that mass of righteous people to write down all of their ideas so future generations can continue their work even after the fervor has died down. I call those ideas laws and regulations and the ongoing spirit of that mass of righteous people a government, but I’m not too attached to semantics.
Well then, I guess you actually don't care that porn games are being removed from the stores right now because having the government be in charge will require you guys decades before such decisions can be overturned, just like how long the fight for free healthcare and sane gun control is taking in the US.
Maybe some governments are more receptive to their citizens plea than the US government, but most governments are definitely still in the pocket of people with big money.
I agree with your statement, but we are currently seeing politicians actively ignore their constituents wishes on policy.
Since people don’t like hearing what I’m saying I’ll reference the situation
Mitch McConnell is actively going against his former constituents and telling Repub reps to go against their constituents over Medicare/Medicaid. Saying “They’ll get over it.”
Several states voted to uphold abortion rights only to have their elected officials ignore them and ban those rights.
If a human is involved in any capacity, fallibility is built in. We may not like it, but it’s a fact.
At the moment, they’re already at risk of being removed by the government, who can make them illegal, and simultaneously at risk of being removed by payment processors, who can prevent the stores from operating. It makes no difference to the government whether they’re also the payment processor. They could remove them anyway. Having two entities with unilateral power to remove something can’t be worse than just having one of them.
The US goverment can't make porn illegal in another country. A US owned payment processor can force other stores in other countries that uses their service to save money to ban porn as well. You're just advocating for giving governments of wealthier countries more control over smaller ones. I say no thanks to that nightmare scenario.
Why don't you prove your government can do their job and prevent payment processors from being such massive monopolies and maybe I'd trust that they won't immediately abuse their power.
Why should it be easy? Do you only do things that are easy? Was World War II easy?
Your forefathers spent months, years, working on projects some of them didn’t even live to see completed. You want your activism to be easy? This is pathetic.
Of what use are you to humanity if the only victories you’ll reach for are ones doable over a saturday? Whose grandchildren should even bother to remember your name?
When we win this one back, I think VISA should restrict you specifically from buying any porn games.
We're talking about the difference between government owned payment processors and for-profit ones when it comes to solving the issue of them giving undue influence to online stores.
Your argument for supporting goverment owned payment processors is that it shouldn't be solved within this lifetime because that's better? Wtf are you talking about?
When we win this one back, I think VISA should restrict you specifically from buying any porn games.
Here comes the American way of doing things. And you wonder why I don't trust the US government to not immediately misuse their power if they actually own payment processors. Thanks for proving my point.
Yes, you said it shouldn't be easy and glamorising the fact that things had to be fought over more than a lifetime. Your words, not mine.
It is better.
Sure, it's better for you that your country can misuse its power longer. Not for people in other countries.
Sounds like you should be involved, then.
Sure Jan, tell me how I, a non-US person, is supposed to be involved in the mess that is your political system?
It sure is easy to keep the US government in check compared to a bunch of for-profit payment processors, isn't it? I can just call the US government support number to voice my disapproval, can't I?
and glamorising the fact that things had to be fought over more than a lifetime.
Those people are stronger than you, so sure, yeah.
I can just call the US government support number to voice my disapproval, can’t I?
Let me lay out a strategy for you:
VISA has decided conservative authoritarianism is cool.
We bully them into rescinding this.
Later, VISA decides again that conservative authoritarianism is cool.
We bully them into rescinding this.
Later, when we have the means, we take their processor from them.
Now, we don’t need to bully them. We own the processor. We decide what it does.
The above plan is, literally, all I’m arguing for. You’re with everything until that final step. Why are you so against taking power?
If you don’t trust the people in government, you should be in government then. Join your own country’s, pressure the US.
If you would like “we” to be International, by all means. Go for it. I won’t stop you. I don’t need our PayPal to be owned by the US. Maybe all countries have their own PayPal. Maybe the UN governs one.
None of these problems get solved whatsoever, though, if you refuse to be in power. One day, VISA will just stop taking your calls. You’ll get an answering machine that says, “We won the game for control of the world. Eat shit.”
Why would a government just block payments for something it doesn’t like instead of, you know, making it illegal, which it already can do. I doesn’t need to block my payment to the heroin store, because the heroin store isn’t legally allowed to operate.
Because they can't make it illegal in another country. I'm sure plenty of countries would just use US or China owned payment processors rather than spending money to set up their own. This would just give them more control over other countries than they already have now.
Yes, because without one government that was helping them out, punishing their competition and funding them, also making regulations convenient for them, Alphabet, Meta and others would be even more powerful. /s
I think it’s the other way around. See, hosting a service on the Internet carries some obligations.
The state treats them so that those are much easier to fulfill for these platforms.
The state gives them very expensive projects.
The state kills Aaron Schwartz, purely coincidentally also the author of the RSS standard. That thing that comes the closest to a uniform way of aggregating the Web, which would kill a lot of what platforms provide.
The state makes some of their products standard for the state, making those commercial things necessary to interact with the state.
So, the state does a lot to give them that monopoly in the first place.
yes that’s precisely what i implied, because they control it in the first place. companies like amazon are more powerful than nation states, and they exercise that power.
And I’m trying to say that the state helping them was first.
this has been the capitalist state’s modus operandi for more than 100-200 years. and the oligarch’s power precede it, they shaped it that way back then.
Not really. Every month, year, decade is different.
aaron schwartz was literally just a dude, not remotely comparable to oligarchs.
He had the right ideas of how to solve one particular industry which is the spearhead of barbarism. And he somehow committed suicide in jail.
the oligarchy as it currently stands precedes the capitalist state as we know it today. some of them even come from the very same families, like they are fucking kings (they are)
I mean, these are terms with vague borders - oligarchy, feudalism, capitalism …
About same families - I guess in France/Italy/Germany or in Japan maybe.
and that’s nothing, if you consider feudalism lasted even longer
Same problem. Arguably in Britain a lot of it still lasts, and in Germany.
OK. So my point was specifically about modern regress and tech corporations. Not all of history.
...those are all corporations. Nationalization would make it a public service, rather than a corporate profit-driven service like how it is now.
You can bet that if libraries, for example, became privatized, we'd quickly see several different library companies pop up, each with their own paid book subscription service with exclusive partnerships with various popular authors, much like we have today with streaming platforms. Conversely, if we were to nationalize those streaming platforms, we'd likely see the service transformed to be more akin to our current library service.
It's why the rightmost parties generally want to defund many public services and move them to the private sector - it transforms services that we spend money on to benefit the people into services that the people spend money on to benefit corporations.
I don’t believe in nationalization. I only believe in a simple, small and very firmly enforced set of laws.
It’s not about for-profit or not for-profit, it’s about laws being used to force you to pay to a certain kind of businesses. And not to whoever you like.
Because a paid library is kinda fine as a concept. A library has to function, repair chairs, change lightbulbs, pay security guards and, ahem, librarians, pay for new books and electricity and so on.
So - laws forcing you to predictably pay to someone involved in making laws. Copyright laws, surveillance laws, other laws. And the state having its secrets, and doing a lot of that funding and pressure and what not in secret.
And the more complex your set of rules is, the more it turns into “money buys right”, because it turns into a game where the side with more money on lawyers and technical solutions to loopholes wins.
The rightmost parties which want to defund public services are perfectly complemented by the left-center parties which generally want to have unaccountable funding of some public service. It’s not a left\right\yellow\blue issue. It’s an issue of a political system where only those representing some power interest are able to act. Just there are some power interests in replacing a public service with a private monopoly\oligopoly, and some power interests in feeding from the public service itself. I’m pretty certain that, similar to hedge funds, these ultimately end on the same groups of people.
One can even say that this is a market dynamic.
So - the political system is intended to ideally function like a centerpoint, not the milking mechanism described.
The problem is
in a too complex set of laws (honestly I’d suggest a limit on the total amount and a limit on the length of one law, and a referendum week once in 5 years on every law from the list suggested for the next 5 years, dropping all that was before ; when the laws are so complex that you can be right or wrong in any situation depending on being poor or Bezos, it means that the idea of having a specific law for every situation has just failed),
in too many levels of representation allowing power to affect representatives,
in there being no process to at any moment initiate recall of a representative,
in not wide enough participation, it would be best if the majority of population would participate a few times as a representative in various organs, this can be made with making those organs more function-separated and parallel, with bigger amount of places and mandatory rotation, so that one person could become a politician on one subject once for a year or so,
in there being too much professional bureaucratic entities inside the government,
in no nationwide horizontal organizations allowing to 2A through any situation,
in trade unions and consumer associations (there was such a thing too, ye-es) being almost dead.
So just have to fix these 7 points, and life will be better.
LOL, this is something averaging the classical (as in ideal, never really existing) American Republican ideas and the classical (as in functioning for a few years in early 1920s and late 1980s) Soviet system. Why do they mix so well, LOL.
Because a paid library is kinda fine as a concept. A library has to function, repair chairs, change lightbulbs, pay security guards and, ahem, librarians, pay for new books and electricity and so on.
Yeah, but taxes can pay for all of that. And being able to read, to access the Internet, to do the many other things provided by library services are fundamental to the human experience or to modern society. You shouldn’t be prevented from these because you cannot afford to pay. A paid library is fine as a concept, but only if it doesn’t decrease the availability of free libraries.
And the more complex your set of rules is, the more it turns into “money buys right”
Well, no. Things being at the whim of who has the most money is what turns it into “money buys right”. It doesn’t matter how complicated the rules are, if the rules don’t permit money to play into it. If libraries were paid, that would certainly turn access to reading into a “money buys right” situation.
Simple laws are great, and you should avoid laws that allow loopholes. But sometimes a more complicated law is required because the situation is more complicated.
in too many levels of representation allowing power to affect representatives
Quite the opposite. Give too much power into one central authority and that allows power to affect representatives. More distributed power at the local level, with restrictions on the abuse of that power coming from a higher level, is a much more equitable solution.
in not wide enough participation
This thread is not about any one particular country. In fact, it’s specifically about multinational companies bowing to the pressure of one minor lobbyist. That said, compulsory voting works wonders. We’ve seen it quite clearly here in Australia. Make everyone vote, and surprise surprise, the impact of a loud minority gets drowned out! Combine that with a voting system other than FPTP and you’re well set for a much better democracy.
Politics should not end at the ballot box, however, and getting people more involved in political life in general would be a great thing. Through communicating regularly with representatives. Through joining a union. Through attending protests. Etc. I’m also quite a fan of sortition.
in there being too much professional bureaucratic entities inside the government
We’ve seen first-hand how terrible it is when someone who thinks the government is “too much professional bureaucratic entities” comes into power, in the US. This is absolutely terrible anti-intellectual rubbish.
I don’t much care one way or the other about 3, it’s an insignificant irrelevance. I have no idea what 6 is even supposed to mean. 7 might be the only genuinely fantastic point.
For prices set by whom? A moneymaking machine, see? Unless libraries are nationalized.
But if you intend to nationalize everything, then there should be a damn good plan at basically building a commonly-owned corporation to maintain nationalized services.
A paid library is fine as a concept, but only if it doesn’t decrease the availability of free libraries.
Yeah, except there’s one country where subsidizing paid services with taxes instead of fixing laws has both turned into a moneymaking machine for cronies and didn’t make the services more accessible. The country of origin, well, of all those tech companies.
It doesn’t matter how complicated the rules are, if the rules don’t permit money to play into it.
This is self-contradictory. Unless you forbid lawyers to work for money.
But sometimes a more complicated law is required because the situation is more complicated.
The situation always changes, so laws become more and more complex rapidly with a long tail of legacy that doesn’t solve its initial goals anymore.
So no, this can be solved with starting anew too. Just start anew every 5-10 years. If life requires something specific and the real world situation changes, I think one can wait that long. And this keeps the process simple enough.
And the most important part is that this doesn’t allow malicious parties to carefully build up legal traps over many decades to subvert democracy.
Just clean the house completely once a few years, leaving only the constitutional law. Accumulate political knowledge, not rituals and procedures most people don’t understand, with surprises hidden by crooks.
Like mowing the grass.
Quite the opposite. Give too much power into one central authority and that allows power to affect representatives. More distributed power at the local level, with restrictions on the abuse of that power coming from a higher level, is a much more equitable solution.
This is not exactly what I said. “Too many levels” is when representatives of one level elect other representatives, hierarchically. That shouldn’t happen (the first level might reminisce the buildup of opinions in the society, the following ones degrade to be comprised of the members of the most uniform plurality, not even the majority). I meant exactly more distributed horizontally as an alternative. Functionality-wise too.
That said, compulsory voting works wonders. We’ve seen it quite clearly here in Australia. Make everyone vote, and surprise surprise, the impact of a loud minority gets drowned out! Combine that with a voting system other than FPTP and you’re well set for a much better democracy.
Agreed.
Politics should not end at the ballot box, however, and getting people more involved in political life in general would be a great thing. Through communicating regularly with representatives. Through joining a union. Through attending protests. Etc. I’m also quite a fan of sortition.
Actually necessary. Ballot box is almost a scam by now, since you are offered a limited choice based on limited information and can’t just, say, press “+” and write in your own candidate. Almost the first time I see the word “sortition” used by somebody else on Lemmy.
At some point I thought that it’s good that people not interested can avoid participating, but then realized that this is the simplest way to hijack anything.
We’ve seen first-hand how terrible it is when someone who thinks the government is “too much professional bureaucratic entities” comes into power, in the US. This is absolutely terrible anti-intellectual rubbish.
No. One can have constraints on from whom such organs are formed. Just no bureaucratic institution should be allowed to self-reproduce all by itself and have its secrets. Only that.
I don’t much care one way or the other about 3, it’s an insignificant irrelevance.
Couldn’t be further from truth. So, your representative is supposed to represent you, right? If they don’t do that, what’s better, wait another N years until another vote, or, if they failed notably enough already, call a vote with enough signatures and elect someone better immediately?
This also makes lobbying a far less certain thing, since the person paid might be recalled a few days after. Which is good.
Except there should be some practical limitations to prevent what Stalin did in 20s (pressuring the specific small initial constituency of his key opponents to disrupt their groups ; this was in the Soviet system with a hierarchy of councils electing members to upper councils and so on, so - with not as many levels this isn’t really a vulnerability even).
7 might be the only genuinely fantastic point.
At some point it was normal in western countries, even more than unions. There’s a risk, of course, since, well, customer associations and unions might sometimes press in the opposite directions.
But when actual violence and half-legal pressure are denied by the law and the enforcers, these work just fine.
Putting the ridicoulous idea that governments are fair and transparent aside, payment processors need to be international. Otherwise, most countries will not be able to access services because their local payment processor is not supported by smaller websites.
However, the payment processors should be regulated with something similar to net neutrality so they can’t discriminate payments. And EU could probably launch a government run competitor to dilute their duopoly.
Basically nothing works if no one cares about their community. One of the reasons Trump is in power right now is because of a deep seated American apathy for, like… everything.
Trump, et. al., are dismantling USPS, but I like USPS. It’s bad that they’re doing that.
It’s easier to start a competing company than it is to start a competing government.
Not when Trump’s government refuses to do anything about all the slapp suits PayPal levies against you for treading on their financial turf.
You need a powerful standing army for the latter,
Corporations, without oversight, just become warlords with their own standing armies. You’re not getting out of this one through the low effort of simply buying a different brand of latte, man, I’m sorry.
The problem is that government even has the power to do those things.
How would you stop them from doing this?
you can’t solve government problems with more government,
Not when you aren’t in power. This is your fundamental flaw: You complain about the world, oh how you have complaints, but you have no will to power, no vision.
Plant a fig tree; it will benefit your grandchildren.
Oppression isn’t inevitable, even in the US, and you’ll never have the equitable anarchism you’re advocating for if the state doesn’t put a stop to these oligopolies.
How naive can you be? You think your vote matters here?
When every single district has been gerrymandered to death for 100 years, nobody’s vote really matters anymore.
This is a very Russian mindset and exactly the kind of beliefs that created Putin. I’m not saying you support him, but I’m saying you are giving him your support either way.
The reason for a “fourth party” is because so many of these are fully international.
The dream of cryptocurrency as actual currency (rather than just reinventing stocks) was the idea that you could use your bitcoin wallet to pay for a pizza in Kansas, London, other London, Shanghai, or Timbuktu with no perceived difference. That IS what visa/mastercard provide.
Get rid of that “fourth party” and now every single online service needs to have office space in every single country so that they can accept and convert purchases on their own. And the end result will just be dropping the majority of the world.
The regressive asked the payment processors to do this. The payment processors themselves are the ones that actually did it. The regressive barely had any actual leverage. The payment processors chose to cave.
😂😂 So one cannot speculate that they might’ve infiltrated Payment Processors via taking advantage of affirmative action & falsely accused men to replace them ‽
Infiltrated? Who said anything about infiltrated? Are you just making shit up now?
What happened is incredibly simple.
Some regressive organisations with no power other than persuasive power told payment processors to stop supporting NSFW content.
Payment processors caved in to this pressure and told Steam and Itch that their current NSFW content is not allowed and to remove it.
Steam and Itch, wanting to be able to keep making revenue at all, responded to this demand by removing NSFW content.
Anyone can do 1. I could go to Visa and say “stop promoting cats, tell Steam to stop selling Stray and Little Kitty, Big City.” It’s up to Visa whether or not they consider my pressure worth responding to. If they do, Steam has to stop selling Stray and LKBC if they want to stay in business. The blame here lies with Visa for choosing to listen to me even though, in this scenario, I’m being a total fuckwit. In reality, Visa would turn around to me and say “lol no, fuck off”. (Or, more likely, ignore me entirely.)
3 is an inevitable result if 2 occurs. If they can’t take in any money, they can’t continue selling any games. They can’t afford to pay the bills for their servers, or pay their employees, or anything. The only option is to give in.
That leaves 2 as the variable. They decide whether to respond to the pressure or not. And they deserve the blame any time they do.
They already wanted to do it, but didn’t want to take the blame for it. With a vocal minority now voicing concerns, they jumped on the occasion.
So why now rather than when that group started voicing their oppoaition ? Well, if they did earlier they had to deal with a liberal federal government that probably would have intervened in the name of free market, but now with a conservative fed government, they have free reign to impose regressive view on about anyone.
JFC 🤦♂️🤦♀️That’s a convenient excuse. Then what were they doing all these years, sleeping ?? There were other groups similar to CollectiveShout & could’ve tried during Covid when their influence was at peak
Well regardless, now we can kill 2 birds with 1 stone, the fascists & the payment processors
GNU Taller is a good alternative, and I hope to use it in real life some day. Crypto, in their current form, is far too volatile and unregulated for me to be interested in.
Maybe the idea of BTC was fine. What wasn’t fine is the idea of mining.
And maybe payments over the Internet or over PSTN are fundamentally different from messaging, conferencing, downloading files, all that stuff.
But what’s important is the ability to pay for a service with something resembling cash IRL in the sense that an ATM machine from which you took that cash can’t take it back because you are paying for an adult journal with it.
But at the same time how can there be so few payment processors that they can affect a platform’s decision to do a kind of business?
That’s where we should look. Why is it hard to be a payment processor.
That’s where we should look. Why is it hard to be a payment processor.
Because you essentially need a global presence to at all be worth using. That is why it is a joke that NOBODY accepts American Express and only the shadiest of international ATMs accept Discover (saved my ass in Germany back in the 10s though)
You are literally saying that we need to look at why there aren’t more global mega corporations.
I am not particularly familiar with that but it will have an uphill battle. Replacing online transactions is a challenge but is feasible. And while I will always clown on cryptocurrency, I do wish at least one had actually taken off to fulfill that role without focusing on To Da Moon scamming.
Getting to the point that you can pay for food on holiday is a much less feasible one for a purely software project run without the backing of Special Interests.
I am an artist in OtherCountry. You want to buy art from me. How do you do it?
Physical money? Okay. You now need a way to track that YOU sent 40 bucks in the mail and that I received 40 bucks in the mail and that is (at least) two different national postal services involved. And now I need a way to convert 40 YourLandia dollars into OtherCountry pounds. AND we need to make sure all of that happened quickly enough that exchange rates didn’t meaningfully change
Digital money? Who is running the site? How many different sites do I need to have accounts on to accept payment from all the countries I want to sell to?
At the end of the day: For any transaction that is not face to face transfer of hard currency (and even then but…), you need an intermediary that both parties trust. Payment processors are that intermediary. Sometimes they are the person taking my IOU and turning it into money so that you can give me a hamburger. Sometimes that is effectively a courier making sure your money gets to me no matter where on the planet we are.
It is what lets us have transactions that aren’t “Okay, you drop your armor and I’ll drop my money and then we’ll slowly change places and… who the fuck just ran out of the bushes to steal the money I put down while waiting for you to put down your armor? And why are you now both doing the Carlton?”
You seem to know a lot of this, in order for your point to click for me, could you explain why some extra payment processor is needed? Would a simple bank transfer not work? If you give me your IBAN, we could let our banks take care of it, right?
You DO realize your banks are the payment processors in that case, right? And they are also working through an intermediary to facilitate said transfer (which has almost all the same problems as above). The money still has to get from Bank A to Bank B which gets even harder if they are in different countries.
And just to preempt "then why not just do everything with bank transfers?"
Credit card companies provide a LOT more fraud protection.
We basically do. You transfer money from your bank to your card (either as debit or credit). Your card then uses Visa/Mastercard to transfer money across whatever barriers to the destination card which then is transferred to the destination account
As a daily AMEX user, I think I have only run into 1 place that doesn’t take it here in the states. I do remember England being hit or miss at times, but that was over a decade ago. I don’t remember it being much of an issue in Germany either, but I didn’t use AMEX as often at that time.
That “treated like a utility” approach involves reliance upon the state, which is sometimes controlled by the hostile parties. This is what I don’t like in Internet political discussions, such solutions feel as if they assumed that you make it good once and it remains good.
Haven’t tried the demo yet. I will probably try it out before deciding whether to get the release version.
But it feels like my kind of game (I love restaurant management sims and I like sci-fi). I just hope the management and business sim elements aren’t too simplistic
There is indeed! My kid played it on the switch and loved it. Well, right up to the point where they couldn’t proceed due to a level being completely broken. They ended up having to finish the last few stages on my PC instead.
At this point I would only try something untraceable like Monero. I don’t want the moral police to come knocking to my house saying that I bought something against the glory of the Lord.
Wow, I might actually have to stop using itch.io, is nowhere safe from the craziest anymore? I dont even make NSFW games, but bending the knee to dickheads over some overtly religious bullshit isnt gonna work for me.
It wasn’t Itch.io’s fault, but the fact that payment processing has been globally monopolized and can force it’s own arbitrary will on anyone without recourse.
Blame Visa and MasterCard and the christofascist scum from Collective Shout, who is responsible for pressuring the processors into harming the stores and artists.
Damn guess we’ll need to move to the alternative- ah wait- no- itch was the alternative.
I wonder if a federated game platform would work as an idea or if that’s just an inherently bad idea due to the nature of trusting strangers with your money.
This but unironically. I was going to try and use monero recently just to dip my toes in the proverbial crypto water, until I found out that I can’t buy anything with monero other than drugs.
Someone’s gonna process the payment between the two banks, adding an intermediary between both banks won’t help much when it will be denied processing as well.
unless you’re fine with crypto, sending cheques by mail or having everything be free, your new platform is gonna get the same problems once it’s big enough to be noticed
rockpapershotgun.com
Aktywne