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Melinda Tankard Reist.
Michael Miebach.
Ryan McInerney.
Humans > branding and corporation names.
When CVS "used racist AI" I didn't see a single goddamn peep about the CEOs in charge while they had that policy.
We should name the board and the whole leadership system but at least mentioning CEOs would be a great start.
Yes!
This is exactly correct. Thank you.
I mean, it's a nanny organization called Collective Shout that is claiming responsibility for these recent product bans/removals. They just pressured the payment processors instead of the companies who own the stores this time. And it worked.
The nanny group sucks the most here. The payment processors suck for acquiescing to the nanny group, and everyone else sucks for acquiescing to the payment processors.
The payment processors have the final say and have done this multiple times in the past, i wouldnt be surprised of the "nanny" was secretly paid by them to find this shit for them to censor.
Nothing but hypocrisy from Visa and MasterCard - there are far more NSFW content on Xitter than in games and yet I don't see a peep of them banning payment towards that little blue checkmark.
Collective Shout seems to aim for X next, according to their site.
Can you directly pay for porn on Twitter?
Do you need to pay to access Steam and play games? The answer is no - there are free games on Steam and also forum features that allow you to post media content too. From that standpoint they're in the same boat. The difference is the platform's intended use.
I think the real issue isn't about Visa and MasterCard trying to gatekeep/censor this. The talk should be about we as a society haven't matured enough to be willing to talk about our own bodies as humans and human nature with our own kids. If you look at what's shown on mainstream TV around the world, off the top of my head, Europe seems to be a lot more mature about it than many parts elsewhere.
Well if you want to peel the onion another layer, you should really be mad at laywers and our litigious society as a whole, payment processors don't have morality, nothing in capitalism does - they are responding, just like valve, to external pressures.
It's specifically due to a moral panic group, Collective Shout, pressuring credit card companies to do this. Litigation isn't really part of it, just angry organized people on the Internet.
How do they apply pressure though? (they threaten to sue)
Do you know that or are you speculating?
Corporations do not give a single fuck about "angry, organized people", only money.
They care about bad PR. Angry, organized people can create lots of bad PR.
Look, this whole subthread is jumping to conclusions based on speculation. Maybe they are using legal strategies, but that's not obvious.
Maybe we can angrily organize against them?
Nope, there are human beings that make decisions and those human beings have beliefs.
Yes, totally agreed that the people making decisions have beliefs. Hard disagree if you think the head of Visa is consulting his/her/their 'beliefs' when voting on multi-billion dollar decisions.
I don't think we should be giving corporations a pass for caving to challenges from authority whether it's hard or not.
Whether it's valve pulling NSFW content, universities expelling students, or CBS firing people over political speech it's all anti-consumer behavior driven by a financial incentive to cater to a bully with too much power. They're all just rolling over and showing their belly rather than deal with a problem in the short term.
If Valve or Itch had paired that statement with a statement about what other payment processing options they were pursuing that might someday lead them back to a pro-consumer position I'd be on board for granting them some grace on the issue, but to the best of my knowledge from the articles I've seen, their position has been "tell me what to do Daddy". If I'm wrong about that I apologize and I'll start reading different sources.
There's just too much capitulation to anti-free-speech behavior and I'm not ready to give anyone a pass at this point.
And this/that do nothing to defend their customer despite having magnitudes more possibilities. All are guilty. Just the degree of guilt differs.
They could have implented this solution:
If you use payment service X you can only buy games A, B, C
If you use payment service Y you can buy all the games
My understanding is part of it is that payment processor says stop doing it or we drop you all together. Not a we won't be involved but lose them as an avenue.
Their way or highway, no real middle ground posible
The short term strategy would probably be to introduce Y payment processor and make it the preferred method of payment. Encourage it's use industry wide and encourage consumers to adopt that method as widely as possible.
If that takes off... Then they can tell the other processors to get fucked.
Part of the problem is that there are very few payment services and they all seem to be doing the same thing.
If Valve told the card companies to go fuck themselves then they would have never pulled support.
It was always a bluff, Visa and MC would never let go of that money over something so petty.
So yeah, I also blame the billion dollar corporations that rival the card companies bending to their demands.
People always say crypto has no value and is a scam but i don't see how a stablecoin like usdc isn't a much simpler solution vs trying to break the duopoly
What happens when anti-porn organisations like Collective Shout go after the currency exchanges?
Presumably they do what Visa/Mastercard should have done, and tell them to shove it. It’s just a bunch of uppity idiots from Australia, no one HAS to listen to them…
Crypto markets also need payment processors if people are going to buy and sell crypto.
You don't need exchanges.
I get your point, but the stores are still caving. They are still playing ball and banning things. That needs to be remembered too.
Unfortunately, the alternative is that they cease to exist almost instantly. This is what happens when we allow monopolies and trusts.
Payment Providers have been doing this for a longer time.
In 2010 for example they blocked donations towards WikiLeaks.