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Mastercard and Visa face backlash after hundreds of adult games removed from online stores Steam and Itch.io

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  • "Face backlash" = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.

    They don't care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.

    Exactly. We need thousands of people calling them non stop disturbing them for hours on end, not just signing petitions.

  • The Mastercard/Visa monopoly (or duopoly) is bad for consumers. It should be broken up.

    Discover was just acquired by Capital One, so one less viable competitor too.

  • Exactly. We need thousands of people calling them non stop disturbing them for hours on end, not just signing petitions.

    You mean like exactly what's been happening over the past few days?

  • They're the ones at risk of losing money if they get sued by reintroducing said content. You're not going to stop using the payment processors because there's literally no other option. This is performative.

    Sued for what? They aren't stopping illegal content from being sold. That, as is implied by the word "illegal", was already not allowed on these stores. They're stopping legal, but potentially (not my opinion) objectionable, content from being sold. There's no legal risk for allowing it.

  • I would prefer if the EU/Swiss backed project based on GNU Taler makes it instead: https://www.taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html

    Sounds great, but as with so many of these projects, they sound overly complicated for the masses. Wero is already a thing and it's straight forward. Even that is too complicated for many people, but it's gaining traction at least.

    Anywho, I'm rooting for both!

  • What's wrong with Capital One? I feel like Discover/Capital One / Diner's Club network is a good thing for Discover customers.

    What benefits would Discover customers get from Capital One's acquisition? Discover acceptance in the US has been almost on-par with Visa/MC for many many years.

  • What benefits would Discover customers get from Capital One's acquisition? Discover acceptance in the US has been almost on-par with Visa/MC for many many years.

    Remember that Discover is self-banked (unlike Visa/Mastercard that banks sign up with). This means that every credit line needs to be backed by... well ... A bank.

    Bigger banks mean more credit opportunities, better interest rates (etc. etc). Deeper credit lines.

  • How would secret transactions make a the coin not deflate? The issue is control of the production of the currency. If you can't control it, it's a cointoss wether it'll be infaltionary or deflationary. A lot of inflation is bad, and any deflation is catastrophic, so I'd really rather not leave the economy up to random chance and private entities' willingness to control the production of their shitcoins.

    It wouldn't help much with inflation, but it wouldn't fluctuate as much as bitcoin due to all transactions being secret It is relatively stable. With monero you wouldn't have to worry about the value changing a lot in the span of a couple of hours.

  • Sued for what? They aren't stopping illegal content from being sold. That, as is implied by the word "illegal", was already not allowed on these stores. They're stopping legal, but potentially (not my opinion) objectionable, content from being sold. There's no legal risk for allowing it.

    I'm not saying there is illegal content. Read my comment.

    I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles. They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.

    And it would be an absolutely stupid business decision for them.

    I am NOT condoning what they did, nor what they are doing. I am explaining, from their business perspective, why allowing potentially illegal content back on the platform is a non-argument and you cannot convince them otherwise.

  • I'm not saying there is illegal content. Read my comment.

    I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles. They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.

    And it would be an absolutely stupid business decision for them.

    I am NOT condoning what they did, nor what they are doing. I am explaining, from their business perspective, why allowing potentially illegal content back on the platform is a non-argument and you cannot convince them otherwise.

    I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles.

    Again, no. If there were illegal content before then it's already breaking the rules. If you're breaking rules once, why would adding more rules change anything?

    They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.

    What? Yeah, the store moderators have to enforce the rules. I don't know what this has to do with anything. Illegal or just banned, they have to be removed by the moderators. What difference does it make? This doesn't make any sense. Adding more rules doesn't magically remove the content. Moderators still have to do it. If they weren't doing it for illegal content, why would they do it for only banned but legal content?

    The reason they did it is because they were pressured by a weird group who has a lot of influence. It wasn't because they were worried about illegal content, which is obvious because that's not the rule they applied. If the rule was "you're not allowed to sell illegal content" (which is obviously always true) then it'd be fine. Instead they made a rule for not allowing specific types of legal content.

  • I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles.

    Again, no. If there were illegal content before then it's already breaking the rules. If you're breaking rules once, why would adding more rules change anything?

    They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.

    What? Yeah, the store moderators have to enforce the rules. I don't know what this has to do with anything. Illegal or just banned, they have to be removed by the moderators. What difference does it make? This doesn't make any sense. Adding more rules doesn't magically remove the content. Moderators still have to do it. If they weren't doing it for illegal content, why would they do it for only banned but legal content?

    The reason they did it is because they were pressured by a weird group who has a lot of influence. It wasn't because they were worried about illegal content, which is obvious because that's not the rule they applied. If the rule was "you're not allowed to sell illegal content" (which is obviously always true) then it'd be fine. Instead they made a rule for not allowing specific types of legal content.

    You're not great at risk assessment, are you?

    They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.

    And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.

    If the expected risk is positive in case 1, they will opt for case 2.

    You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? If not, then I'm afraid this conversation is over because you're not even remotely trying to understand their logic, and you're just looking for a reason to be mad. Your irrationality makes me nauseous.

  • Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.

    Let's say it like it is: after the world of hundreds of developers is undermined, and the property of thousands of customers is compromised.

  • You mean like exactly what's been happening over the past few days?

    Right, the actual solution is everyone taking their money out of the bank on the same day

  • You're not great at risk assessment, are you?

    They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.

    And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.

    If the expected risk is positive in case 1, they will opt for case 2.

    You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? If not, then I'm afraid this conversation is over because you're not even remotely trying to understand their logic, and you're just looking for a reason to be mad. Your irrationality makes me nauseous.

    They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.

    And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.

    You're not getting it. They're the exact same risk. If it was illegal, it wasn't allowed before. If you're breaking the rules, you don't care. Especially if you were breaking the law and the rule before, you don't care that there's a new rule that also applies. This doesn't change risk at all. It doesn't make it any more unlikely, and certainly not "literally never happens."

    The opposite could be true, if it were just against the rules but then is also made to be against the law. It might dissuade some people who were skirting the rules to reconsider. If they were breaking the law already, they don't care that they're breaking a new rule because they already were breaking the rules. It doesn't make it any worse for them. It's the exact same. If they're discovered, they're removed from the platform, exactly the same as before.

    You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? Once you're breaking the rules enough to be removed from the platform, why do you care if there are more rules that will remove you from the platform? You're either stopped or you're not, and the platform either stops them or it doesn't. The risk to the payment processors is the same. You trust the moderation or you don't. They aren't going to do a better job because the illegal content is doubly not allowed. They're either stopping content that isn't allowed or they aren't.

  • Who's behind this sudden wave of age verification bullshit, Schrödinger's parents? The ones who shove an iPad in front of their 2 year old and berate school teachers for not being poorly paid babysitters who raise their kids for them? And yet they claim to care SO MUCH about the well being of children that they push these obscene and draconian policies on the rest of us? What a bunch of fucking hypocrites, but that's typical for conservatives.

    Don't be fooled, that's not the real reason. Parents that shove iPads in front of their children are not even remotely worried about what their kids are watching online. This is purely about control, has nothing to do with children.

  • How can you know a game is LGBTQ+ if they don't talk about sex/gender? They look like normal humans to me, which differ in sexual preferences only? Example: How can you say this guy is gay without knowing his sexual preferences?

    LGBTQ games love to tag themselves as such even when there's no talk of gender sexuality or relationship.

    The number of times iv seen the LGBTQ tag on a game just because the dev is gay or trans or something is absolutely fucking absurdly high.

    Honestly it's a huge pet peeve of mine. I don't give a single flying fuck what you are as a dev. I care what's in the god damn game. The tags ARE FOR THE GAME NOT YOU. stop making tags fucking useless by adding worthless tags.

    Joke tags can ALSO fuck off.

  • "Face backlash" = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.

    They don't care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.

    I switched all my master and visa cards to amex, canceled a visa card and the only have my debit as visa now because my credit union ONLY offers visa for debit

  • I think you should take your own advice. Just because you lack the intelligence to understand my comment doesn’t mean I’m the one to blame.

    Blocked for having shit for brains

    Mate you didn't read the comment right. You might want to check yourself while you reck yourself.

  • Amex is expensive as fuck for shop owners. I'd boycott them too.

    It's more visa and MasterCard are cheaper by abusing their duopoly and connections. While amex is the normal costs.

  • Discover, American Express, Diner’s Club, and the one that still rules them all, Cash. There are probably others, but Visa and Mastercard are the two largest.

    Diners club hasn't been available to normal people and small businesses for years now. It's basically a large business company card only thing nowadays.

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    Or the terrifyingly-random bullshit that happens when someone chooses to depend on a free service such as Hotmail as their primary mission-critical address. (This article is about the developer getting locked out of their Hotmail, and the generally-broken state of Hotmail’s account recovery process.) That could be it. What is certain is that these big corps really don't want to pay human beings to sort out issues so if you get caught in the middle of some BS you may have no recourse out of it.
  • ByteDance AI IDE Trae telemetry continues even after opt-out

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    I can think of a third red flag but it's kinda just the first red flag again.
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    Under the regulations, which are set to take effect on Oct. 10, platforms will have to label political ads, disclosing who paid for them, and what campaign, referendum or legislative process they’re connected to Oh yeah they sound really unworkable, who could possibly expect meta to take this very basic information from their advertisers and then display it in a small text box. Of course not seeing the ads is even better so I don't think anyone will complain.
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    What if everyone started talking about how “woke” Apple, Amazon, and Google are? Maybe it would pass, then. Remember, we don’t need to define woke, we just need to point and say the magic word and GOP politicians will vote against it.
  • Do you remember Windows 95? How about Windows 96?

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    Ha, thanks for searching!
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    If AI gave you an accurate correct answer 99% of the time would you use it to find the answer to questions quickly? I would. I absolutely would, the natural language search of ai feels amazing for finding the answer to a question you have. The current problem is that its not accurate and not correct at a high enough percentage. As soon as that reaches a certain point we're cooked and AI becomes undeniable.
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    I spent way too long researching the morning. That industry implies a much greater population that is attracted to children. Things get more nuanced. People are attracted to different stages, like prebubesant, early adolescence, and mid to late adolescence. It seems like an important distinction because this is a common mental disorder. I was ready to write this comment about my fear that there's a bunch of evil pedophiles living among us who are simply deterred by legal or social pressures. It seems more like the extreme stigma of pedophilia has prevented individuals from seeking assistance and has resulted in more child sexual abuse. This sort of disorder can be caused by experiencing this abuse at a younger age. When I was religious, we worked closely with an organization to help victims of trafficking. We had their stories. They entered our lives. I took care of some of these kids. As a victim of sexual abuse when I was kid, I had a hatred for these kinds of people. I feel like my brain is melting seeing how there is a high chance of people in my life being attracted to children. This isn't really to justify the industry. I'm just realizing that general harassing people openly about it might not be helping the situation.
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    Why call it AI? Is it learning and said-modifying? If not then is it not just regular programming but "AI" sounds better for investors?