This is one of the big use cases I could see for a crypto like Monero. If someone made a Patreon-style site that used XMR, I’d be all over it.
It’s one of those network effect catch-22s though. There’s probably not enough people using Monero to justify creating a site like that - but we’ll never hit a “critical mass” of Monero users if there aren’t ecosystems that encourage its use.
I have the impression that the American government is doing all it can to delegitimize the American Dollar. Between that and the cultural impetus of sexuality, there is going to be a huge opening for Monero and friends to establish themselves as genuine currency.
The various groups trying to ban payments for NSFW products and whatever else they don’t like would just target the ECB and member states to restrict transactions they don’t like
Practically the whole world has been having an authoritarian/conservative shift. I would not expect the EU and ECB to be a progressive force for sex work. The EU has been pushing to break encryption for a solid decade now. Visa and Mastercard process 90% of transactions outside of China. They’re huge. I don’t see why ECB leadership would be particularly less conservative and risk averse than Visa and Mastercard. Bankers are usually on the conservative side of politics
@network_switch@Jackhammer_Joe even authoritarian states doesn't like dependencies which can tell them what they have to do. So those companies are a risk for their independence... my personal feeling europe's right people might not like porn but they probably would rather fight for porn then let a none european company tell them how they have to handle business ;)
To me it’s an inevitability that if the EU weans itself off Mastercard/Visa, then EU based payment processors whether credit based or something like SEPA payments for a digital EURO would be censored. The EU would be happy to handle their own business and that may just end up no different than American companies and the American government. The European right can fight against porn while fighting for independent finance infrastructure
The issue with the systems being proposed and already in place in Europe is that the money flows directly between accounts. Banks don’t have a way to know what is being payed for.
And there is even another system, where blocks of payment references can be bough from a slew of independent entities (all must be registered as financial entities at central banks) and used to transfer money that way. The issuer either charges a token value for each reference, a % on the payment value or both. Money flows directly between accounts, instantly.
The all-mighty PayPal uses a third party payment reference provider for people who want to use their service but don’t want to put their card into it.
The Nederlands, Germany, Spain, if I’m not wrong, France and Italy have prostitution as legal. My own country abstains from legislating on it, instead opting to criminalizing procuring and the facilitation of prostitution, as well as human traffic for such end.
Europe has a well established culture of sex work, with a good number of organizations lobbying - openly, through open public debate - in the way of making sex workers being recognized as any other worker and increasing their social relevance and recognition.
If you inform yourself a bit, in my country, you can legally establish yourself as an escort, under a very specific tax code, and pay taxes according to the money you make and have tax deductions and social benefits.
Currently, we already have a direct payment and transfer system, called MBWay, that through your phone number, allows for transfering, paying and collecting money, from one account to another.
No fintech, no middle agents, no shit: direct transfers from one account to another.
The Digital Euro takes this a step further. And even if the eEuro never takes place, this system is to be widened to all EU and abroad, to run against AliPay, Visa, MasterCard and others.
Bankers want money.
American bankers should spit out the “holy” book they have stuck up their arses.
At least Germany, Spain, and Italy have resurgent far right political movements. I am not about to trust government payment systems to not eventually be abused as technology makes control and surveillance easier. A holy book can be replaced with whatever new age self-help, health movement, anti-<ethnicity/sexuality/religion> movement. All it takes is some instability and desperation and people will support whatever or turn a blind eye to whatever they may think is not their problem or they may potentially benefit from. Good for the EU to run their own payment systems. When a conservative wave takes a large enough majority in governance someday, it’ll be the same problem as Visa/Mastercard/etc
The governance powers we give with results being leftist in mind will someday be in the hands of conservative who will use them with a kind of zeal that leftist don’t
Now allow me too share a conviniently forgotten fact about most far right governments of the last century: they all were very at ease with having sex workers.
My own very catholic and repressive country had a very detailed law on prostitutes, which mandatory registration, regular medical exams and visits, etc. It’s a good way too pacify populations.
The current hunt on independent adult themed art/entertainment/etc is more about good old fashioned religious zealotry than anything else. Pornography gets some flak but it’s a lot harder to successfully target.
This isabout forcing people into conventional set roles and definitions and closing minds and shutting down free independent thinking. And stopping people from being or becoming humane.
Time for Brazil’s PIX to be exported around the world. That’s likely to be hard, as here it is a direct, bank agnostic account-to-account transfer without middlemen and without any tax, so it’d need cooperation between the involved countries.
You’re describing the same system behind Wero and MBWay. We can just use cellphone numbers to move money from account to account, regardless of the banks at each end of the transaction.
I’m completely fine with certain content being delisted because it is considered essentially on par with hate speech or something like that.
However, I really do not like that it is payment processors making that call. If someone makes that call, it should be the store in question (itch.io, Steam, whatever) or it should be the government.
Local slang word that derives from “their brains are fried/not working” which also implies stupidity and fanatical adherence to things like religion, anti abortion, anti vax, and the like.
To be clear - “Collective Shout” both is and isn’t responsible. It’s the payment processors who actually enacted policies and are using them as the scapegoat for negative feedback.
How many times have people reported Twitter after Elon Musk took over for showing Nazi propaganda alongside their ads - with no response. An ‘open letter’ in July about a game already banned in April? DELIST EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY.
How the fuck did we get to the point where a company which literally only takes your money and gives it to someone else (and also gets paid for that) can decide what kind of content people consume?
Guys hi, just looking for some support share, a Fantasy Adventure Story, for all ages and just some entertain with some storyes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mVIvQ1wsgg - maybe you are curious
Considering how long payment processing as a business has been a thing, I’m amazed its not more regulated in terms of being forced to be neutral or being unable to decline processing payments that are related to completely legal transactions.
I just check a place that I have bought adult games from and they have not had this issue. But fhey use paypal to take payments, so maybe they will be fine. At least I hope so.
Honestly I’m really happy with how itch.io is handling it. Making sure they still get their money, but quickly reintroducing the games, and telling us the exact reason why they had to disable those games in the first place. Great management.
Agreed, I am genuinely impressed by this, this is unironically a better run, better organized response to a situation like this than most billion dollar + companies that trade on the stock market would pull off.
I think itch is doing a much better job now. I think they still completely removed things from people’s accounts (sort of. It is still there, we just can’t access it. Maybe) and cut off a LOT of developers’ entire income source with absolutely zero warning outside of some whinging in a discord. I want to say it was almost a full day later before any official statements were released?
They are course correcting and hopefully this goes somewhere. But the trust thermocline is breached and no developers are there by choice anymore. Similarly, as (primarily) a consumer, I genuinely don’t feel comfortable buying games on itch that I am not planning to fully back up myself.
Its a lot like with the Unity shitshow a few years back. Game dev can’t pivot overnight but mastodon was lit up with “so… what else is out there” from the more vocal devs and bsky is the same for storefronts.
I empathize with the developers because unannounced interruptions to their revenue streams are not good. I don’t know why itch made the initial decision to implement their changes the way they did, but my guess is they got a series of strongly worded letters out of the blue from payment processors and were given a timeline of “IMMEDIATELY OR ELSE” and had to shut off the tap and adjust or risk their own ability to receive ANY payments.
Even if they handled it badly, which maybe they did, it’s a better measure of a company/person in how they address mistakes or bad moves. They aren’t perfect but they seem to be trying to address concerns and be transparent, at least as transparent as they feel they can be in an uncertain situation where they have to protect themselves legally and operate from a position where every official statement they make will be blown up by media. So they need to be very, very careful how they communicate to risk further damage.
Remember, itch IS NOT the bad guy here, it’s the payment processors. Do not lose sight of that.
I can absolutely understand why people who have had their livelihoods disrupted are unhappy but I empathize with the position that itch is in and I care a lot more about how they course correct and manage fallout, even if they make bad decisions when faced with requirement to take immediate action (and I can’t even say whether they did or not, nobody can, because nobody but them has the facts), than I care about whether they made a bad decision in the moment.
People, good people, fuck up all the time. How they manage the mistake matters more than the mistake itself.
If they keep doing the same shit over and over it’s a different story.
PS: I have no dog in this fight except I think what the payment processors are doing is wrong, but it doesn’t explicitly affect me at all. I’m also not particularly educated on this except for what I read in the news, I’ve never used itch at all. I just don’t think payment processors should be in the business of casting moral judgments on legal transactions. IMO it should be ILLEGAL for them to deny services for LEGAL goods and services.
I empathize with the developers because unannounced interruptions to their revenue streams are not good.
You can emphasize with suddenly telling companies to get fucked and figure it out themselves during a time of REALLY big economic certainty (seriously, game dev is a wasteland) and think it is “not good”? Good for you!
given a timeline of “IMMEDIATELY OR ELSE” and had to shut off the tap and adjust or risk their own ability to receive ANY payments.
That REALLY isn’t how things work and that still doesn’t excuse silence outside of whinging on discord.
Remember, itch IS NOT the bad guy here, it’s the payment processors. Do not lose sight of that.
There are multiple “bad guys” here.
People, good people, fuck up all the time. How they manage the mistake matters more than the mistake itself.
Say it with me: Corporations are not people.
Good, itch fucked up. Really great that absolutely nobody else has been impacted except for John Itch. Oh… wait…
Like, seriously, read what you fucking posted. “I can understand how companies might have been afraid that they would be forced to fire everyone they work with and go bankrupt but, really, isn’t the important thing that itch learned a lesson?”. Like… the only thing missing was a ukelele.
It definitely can be. I haven’t dealt with payment processors in this way, but I’ve had (spurious) DCMA takedowns that required my service providers to act immediately, or else they’d get sued. They did notify me, but gave me about 2h to figure something else out.
A payment processor is in full control of payments across your entire site (unless you have multiple, I guess). They can pull the rug with no notice if they want. Doesn’t seem nice, but nice isn’t part of the business model.
Pretty much this. Back when this went down the good people of Bluesky, who are totally not like Twitter users, called for itch.ios blood. Calling them sellouts, betrayers and whatnot. Big brain move right there.
itch.io
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