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.
A) Honest mistake. I appreciated people pointing out the country of origin.
B) While the specifics of my comment were off the mark, even with this group being Australian, this group affects world commerce, and American politics has strong influence on that world in turn. Just like how president of the USA would have a big effect on the levels of violence and cruelty in Gaza. Visa is an American corporation, and they’re clearly quite on board with this censorship influence.
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?
So how do we go about suing these guys? They’re erasing art. And no, I’m not just some gooner who wants more jackoff material, Itch apparently removed anything with nudity in it.
I am a guy who wants more jackoff material, and I am an adult, and I am allowed to have sources for that material that is not some piecemeal ad hoc storefront where I subscribe to individual developers who drip feed content as it gets developed.
I am all for supporting artists and have subscribed to a few Patreons when my wallet allows, but I like having a place where I can play some demos or games that an artist puts up for free because why not? I am so sick of storefronts being targeted like this. All of the porn on Steam is behind an age gate, and sure, Itch could use such a gate, but it doesn’t need to delist an entire form of art.
Some of the actual reasons people hate crypto are:
extreme volatility
many coins’ value can be easily manipulated by whales
most stablecoins are probably one step away of crashing down like Terra Luna
resource intensive - you can shout about proof of stake all you want, there are still gigawatts of energy being burned to “mint” bitcoin
no protections because “code is law”, even when the code is flawed
forking risk nearly every year
the coins that aren’t as resource intensive, have fast transaction times and negligible fees, are unlikely to gain traction or receive widespread adoption
you still have to go through the hoops of a heavily regulated exchange to get actual money from any crypto you have
You’re free to avoid those coins then… volatility doesn’t mean bad
many coins’ value can be easily manipulated by whales
Yes, just like for stocks and pretty much every product on the market
most stablecoins are probably one step away of crashing down like Terra Luna
Stablecoins are often centralized so they’re not what the goal of crypto was, but sure. Why not hate the coins instead of the technology instead? Stablecoins are a small part of crypto.
resource intensive - you can shout about proof of stake all you want, there are still gigawatts of energy being burned to “mint” bitcoin
If you know this is incorrect, why lie and say crypto is resource intensive when it’s only a few that are like that? PoW has its flaws indeed.
no protections because “code is law”, even when the code is flawed
Every software you use is not liable for any problems that occurs with it. Incidents will always happen. All recent incidents involved someone getting hacked by other means, being menaced into sending them crypto (so it could happen to anyone with a lot of cash as well for example, or through offshore bank accounts), or a company stealing people. I’m not aware of any code fail.
Pretty much all CEX are regulated currently. And with AML and KYC coming more and more (which is bad for crypto), the “no protections” claim is really false.
forking risk nearly every year
So? In case of a fork, you keep both coins… so you should still keep the value of both?
the coins that aren’t as resource intensive, have fast transaction times and negligible fees, are unlikely to gain traction or receive widespread adoption
Isn’t that the case of Solana? But yea currently there are problems with too many coins relying on PoW, but some just can’t do without it, like Monero. It’s the cost of having this system.
you still have to go through the hoops of a heavily regulated exchange to get actual money from any crypto you have
That’s because of regulation and the banking system, not the fault of crypto? It’s because people called crypto a scam that it became like that. You can still use the crypto to purchase stuff with it instead of getting fiat. Receiving money from P2P bank transfers is also similar to this, you’ll get asked questions as soon as you go out of the normal way.
People calling crypto a scam don’t think this much through. It’s just more hard and complex than there is to the eye. Most people interface with crypto solely for trading, and people want quick profit through shitcoins, which is a very bad idea, then complain on the system. You should think twice before investing in stuff you don’t understand: whether it’s crypto, stocks, NFTs, in game items…
No one pays in shares because no one accepts this and it’s annoying to do?
Sounds like crypto
volatility with crypto is annoying, but it will happen with a currency that works in every country, even fiat is volatile
True, but countries have means to keep money more or less stable. Most countries also have laws that are supposed to ensure big money owners don’t collude to play insider trading and pump’n dump every other week
Yea, it is a bit of a pain as well, but it has some benefits compared to traditional payment methods, unlike paying in shares
Pretty sure crypto pump and dump criminalization is still a thing. In the end, you’re asking for someone to invest in something you benefit from, which is illegal in some places
The bitcoin boom turned any crypto currency into just a volatile means of investment. None of them are seen as currencies to buy things anymore, and I don’t think that’s changing.
Not to mention the many other issues with crypto currency as a concept. But those don’t really matter in the face of, well, not being viewed as a currency anymore.
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.
Why not just call visa and matercard just like that stupid lobbying company. Obviously it is harder to change company’s minds, but maybe might accomplish something.
I hear shout has 1000 people on staff calling businesses, regular people could easily quadruple that.
Those people (Mastercard et al) do not listen to people, they listen to money.
Show them guillotines and molotovs so they understand they might not live to use their money, and they’ll pay (regardless of if you pardon my pun) attention.
as you may or may not be aware, indie video game and ttrpg marketplace itch.io has recently been pressured by payment processors like Visa Mastercard to remove and delist “explicit content” from their site. this has resulted in, effectively, the mass erasure of works published by lgbtqia+ artists. this is the stated end goal of targeted action against payment processors by the group Collective Shout which angles itself to be “protecting children” by erasing adult content from existence.
obviously that’s bullshit. but there’s some stuff we can do as a community to try and fix this!
payment processors do not give a single shit about the content their products are being used to buy. they only care about liability and shareholders. Collective Shout was able to get Visa Mastercard to act with barely over 1,000 calls that’s less than half of the people in this discord. i know it’s a lot to ask every single person to make a call to their card holder, but if you have the energy i highly highly recommend doing so at either of these numbers
Visa Headquarters: (650) 432-3200 Mastercard Headquarters: (914) 249-2000
here’s a little script to follow if you’d like!
“Hello, my name is _____, and I would like to file a complaint. I find it troubling that Mastercard is blocking content on (the platforms you use) and making it difficult for me to make legal purchases. I am going to stop using Mastercard if this isn’t rescinded and fixed."
if you don’t have a call in you, you can send an email to the addresses below and add your signature to this petition from the ACLU
Visa Support: askvisa@visa.com Mastercard Support: b2b.mastercard.com/contact-us/
this quote has been rattling around my head all morning: “They’re not worth your fear, but they are worthy targets for your rage.” - Chase Carter, Rascal.news
Payment processors should not get to police what kind of legal transactions people use their services for. No matter how much you dislike the particular product. And especially since they have an effective monopoly. If we let them go through with this, it would open the gateway for them to enact the kind of control over our consumption that should be exclusive to elected officials.
While i agree the notion its not that black and white.
Payment processors are companies. Where you would draw the line when company can and cant decite how they want to manage their product? In the end its their decition.
We already do it for utilities. A financial company should not be deciding what its users are allowed to spend their own money on except within the confines of law.
This has been happening forever in the adult video space. Certain kinks are verboten and disallowed by payment processors, which leads to a kind of underground gray market where you have to use certain euphemisms to avoid getting flagged.
Tbf it should be banned for being ridiculous but not from a morality standpoint from the payment processors, just bc it’s cringe and has nothing to do with that social media format. That being said, Twitter is getting worse and worse
Hell, if extwitter gets banned, it’d be hilarious because then there would probably be laws changed to ensure only the government can select what gets banned. Though, not so hilarious in the current state of the world.
Steam has no power. They are beholden to a very particular monopoly that can get away with anything it wants and is currently being manipulated by unethical evangelical fascists.
The amount of money Valve rakes in with Steam is insane. If itch had even 0.1% of that it would be a much bigger website. Itch had to limit dynamic filtering (like searching for Arcade + Fantasy) to just a few preset tags because of the server load. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number compared to Steam is less than 0.01%. People who want DRM free games generally go to GOG. Hell a lot of DRM free indie/AAA/retro games don’t even get listed on itch, so they get only the tiniest portion of the pie.
That’s why they’re first going after such cases. In Hungary we named this tactic the “goose liver method”. Goose liver is often created by overfeeding geese, which is abuse. A lot of smaller political party, instead of regulating farming, decided to campaign on banning goose liver entirely, while bashing the food item as a “luxury only the rich can afford”.
Funko partners with every Youtuber and semi-public figure under the sun to make figurines of them so they can then sell them to their (usually underage) audiences. That’s the comparison I was making.
I mean, the real culprit is the shitty service they used to help manage DMCA/Copyright claims for them. Granted, it was a dumbass move to use that service in the first place, but I doubt they knew it would wind up doing this kind of thing.
Fun fact: Funko’s current CEO is the ex-president of Wizards of the Coast!
Why is this relevant? Well, under her leadership, WotC sent pinkerton agents to someone’s home to threaten them because they got some Magic the Gathering cards early. She said things like Dungeons & Dragons players were under-monetised, pushing to make the Table Top game more like a microtransaction-filled video game, and helped with the OGL scandal.
The OGL, for anyone unfamiliar, was an Open Gaming License WotC had for years with D&D 3rd party creators. It allowed certain things to be created using D&D mechanics and lore by anyone that followed its guidelines and allowances. A couple years ago, WotC tried to change that so they would make more money off of people trying to create things for D&D - to profit off of indie creators passionate about the game. There was a huge backlash, and they eventually went back on this decision.
All this to say, you can see what kind of leader the current Funko CEO is, and what’s happening with itch isn’t surprising to me.
itch.io
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