Need to petition Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and American Express. I don’t think trying to get Steam itself to reverse these recent changes will necessarily be effective, since they are being pressured by the payment processors and they definitely aren’t going to risk not being able to effectively do business at all.
Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition
Submitted 1 day ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://gamerant.com/steam-anti-censorship-petition-blows-up/
Comments
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
Aussieiuszko@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Yeah, nah.
Petition these people:
www.collectiveshout.org/partners
Collective Shout is sustained by a small number of Australian partners. These are not big groups, and would quickly pull funding under any sort of pressure.
Collective Shout has a deep history with Christofascism and TERFs, so highlighting those angles is the way to go to get them pariahed. Once CS is out of the picture, we can work on undoing the damage they did.
Pamasich@kbin.earth 4 hours ago
This is incredibly shortsighted.
If you get Collective Shout to stop, another group might pick up where they left off.
The problem needs to be fixed, what you're suggesting is just making the people currently abusing it stop doing so. That's not a long term solution.
artyom@piefed.social 1 day ago
Petitioning people to do something that is against their entire purpose doesn't seem like it would be effective.
seralth@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s the height of stupidity to try to pressure collective shout.
You don’t tell the child to stop drawing on the wall for the 20th time and expect it to work.
You take it’s crayons away so it can’t anymore.
You fix the tool of abuse so it can’t be abused.
DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Archived page: archive.ph/Ttyr5
Just in case.
dan@upvote.au 1 day ago
The petition is directed at Visa and MasterCard. I’m not sure why the article says it’s a petition directed at Steam, because it’s not.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 1 day ago
i would expect the multi billionaire owners of the largest gaming platform on PC to have the ability to not fold like paper mache. I can also be mad at payment processors and valve at the same time
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
Kinda hard to stay at the top if you literally get blacklisted from doing financial transactions. Big as they are, they’re nowhere near the same level as the payment processors.
seralth@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Valve is basically a small business one bad Monday from going bankrupt compares to payment processors.
Banks and payment processors are the single largest most powerful forces in a capitalist market.
You literally do NOT get bigger. Full stop.
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Under what arguments would we be able to push back on something like this? Most people would agree that these games where distasteful so arguing for them to be put back to not start a slippery slope isn’t that easy it seems.
0x0@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Most people would agree that these games where distasteful
Regardless, tasteless people have the right to pay for them and play, so… no?
This is about payment processors censoring shit just 'cos they can. They stick to handling money instead of dictating how that money is used.Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
Mainly that the companies controlling nearly all digital financial transactions should not be the arbiters of what is morally acceptable. If they must exist at all, they should just be handling the transfer of funds regardless of what is being bought and sold*.
*illegal shit would not be protected.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 1 day ago
See, THAT is not the slippery slope. STARTING to ban ANYTHING at all from legal transactions is the slippery slope. What happens when they decide R-rated films are distasteful? Or birth control?
Payment processors should have ABSOLUTELY no role in making ANY decisions about what legal transactions they process. Period.
Aussieiuszko@aussie.zone 1 day ago
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1r5VtCUwPw
Show people that game that was delisted because of them. The idea that they only took down pornographic games is wrong, they went after things that didn’t fit their christofash narrative.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Exactly, petitioning steam doesn’t help, their hands are tied. It’s the behavior of the payment processors that needs to change. If they wimp out over every complaint, then we all live at the whims of the whiniest prudes in the world.
SpaceScotsman@startrek.website 1 day ago
The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn’t mention steam or valve. I don’t know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they’ve explained it very badly.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
As of July 16, Steam’s new guidelines state that game publishers should avoid releasing titles that may violate the terms and conditions of its payment processors. In other words, the storefront is asking creators to not only follow the platform’s rules but also submit to potential oversight from companies like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.
and from the petition
MasterCard and Visa have increasingly used their financial control to pressure platforms into censoring legal fictional content
Steam is enforcing MasterCard’s, Visa’s, and PayPal’s policies. From Steam’s Rules and Policies:
What you shouldn’t publish on Steam: … 15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
Point number 15 was not there in a Snapshot from February on the wayback machine. If anything, the solution should just be to remove the payment method for those games (which would still hurt the creators substantially).
There is a line that is confusing:
In response to this censorship, some fans have launched a petition on Change.org urging Valve to revert its policies
There may be petitions about reverting Valve’s policy, but it’s not the main petition against Visa and MasterCard (which is the one they linked).
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
So yeah, being mad at Valve makes this whole petition stupid, people need to be mad st MC and Visa and probably also PayPal.
But also…
If MC and Visa won’t budge on their positions, well, if Valve then makes an alt payment system fod adult only games…
MC and Visa go, oh, hey, you’re violating our guidelines, we no longer support Valve/Steam, now no one can buy any game.
This is a MAD situation, Valve would have to come up with a comprehensive payment processing system for everything, in secret, and then deploy it all at once.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Petitions like this are meaningless unless they come with a viable solution to the duopoly in payment processing that is Visa and Mastercard.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 12 hours ago
You’re missing the point. This is not aimed at Valve, but at Visa and MasterCard. They are businesses. They primarily care about profit, not censorship. Especially when that pisses people off. They made the mistake of listening to the vocal minority of Collective Shout, so we have to let them know that. This isn’t the 80’s anymore, gaming is mainstream and there are far, far more gamers than puritanical Quakers that get the vapors at the sight of anything mature or complicated. And worst-case scenario, they are not the only payment processors, just your most convenient ones for customers and businesses. For now…
Gladaed@feddit.org 5 hours ago
Are you calling them Quakers as a derogatory slur or are they actually Quakers/Religious Society of Friends people.
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Valve is a big enough company that they could conceivably start their own payment provider to bypass this.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
For example they could sell adult games under credits only and take CC or PayPal for credits.
This way you’re not buying adult titles with CC at all. Same way AAA deal with gambling with lootboxes.
DNS@discuss.online 17 hours ago
Consumers punting the accountability and responsibility of their demise to the next generation of consumers. I hate how feeble and weak willed we are all as a species.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
we have been like this lately, but humans are definitely not weak willed or feeble at all.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Make your own payment processor, Gaben. It’s the way.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 21 hours ago
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Then people would have to get specific cards or crypto or whatever that aren’t Visa/MasterCard in order to buy Steam games. That, of course, is if you can get banks to agree to carry “Steam cards”. Either that, or everyone would need to buy Steam gift cards as an exclusive form of payment.
All of these are much less convenient than keeping your existing debit/credit card to pay for Steam games, and less convenience means less sales.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
They would have to roughly make their own form of PayPal, alongside their own bank.
If you didn’t know, PayPal technically isn’t a bank, it and Venmo use Synchrony Bank… which is an actual bank.
If they did something like that, it could work, but it would have to be at a similar scale as PayPal, that is to say, massive…
Because doing this would/could basically be the nuclear option:
MC and Visa and PayPal would/could drop them.
So, they’d have to basically develop a massive project, in total secrecy.
… Which is something Valve has arguably done a number of times, they are notoriously opaque as a company.
…
Sort of as you mention, they already have a barebones backend framework to scale up from the steam gift card / user gift card balance system.
I am… uncertain if their backend for that already does or does not include an actual legally defined bank though.
…
Problem is that this would necessitate a massively costly undertaking, as well as ongoing maintenance costs, and Valve is also notorious for basically running on what most other firms would consider a skeleton crew for the size and scope of what they do.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Or you could just transfer funds to a steam card, then with that, but all you want.
sep@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Steam does not have to only accept steampay. Tho? You fear visa and mastercard will blaclist steam?
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, but SteamPay is the future
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Is that kinda what PayPal is, or was intended to be?
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Yeah but PayPal’s awful. They literally arbitrarily deny you access to your own funds. At least the banks have rules.
If someone wants to pay me something they can use it literally anything other than PayPal. I don’t trust them they’ve stolen money from me before.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
PayPal is almost as pornphobic as MastercardVisa
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Yes
vane@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Just open bank in every country should do.
HelterSkeletor@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
IANAL - Can credit card companies coordinate like this? This seems like price fixing but the other way around. Like one company wouldn’t do this alone cause it would drive customers away so they agree to do it together. Is that coordinated monopolistic behavior have president?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
Yeah it seems to fit the description of a cartel… Not that it matters.
MITM0@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But we have to oppose CollectiveShout as well, as in destroy them. They’re way worse than I thought
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
We knew in the aughts that this was going to be an issue when the charging companies defunded Wikileaks and Julian Assange¹ and were allowed to do so, defying public accommodations laws.
1. Yes, Assange is a git and a Russian asset (or at least has been before) but he did serve as a whistleblower against evil shit done by Bush and Obama administrations and the general aristocratic corruption at play in US federal politics. As with Chelsea Manning, he embarrassed politicians using their positions of power inappropriately, revealing that the state was not serving the public. Incidentally, ACLU in its early years was funded by USSR to cause trouble against the US state (which it was doing anyway and still does), which makes it historically (and debatably) a Soviet asset. Strange bedfellows and all that.
This is a tale that keeps repeating itself, and is why protections by the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments of the Constitution of the United States have been carved out like a holiday turkey by the US Supreme Court. We found it easy to deny unreasonable search and seizure protections from major crimes suspects, only to find that every black citizen with a gram of cannabis now no longer has those protections.
So it is with monopolies that decide they can be selective with their accommodations.
If we can’t pressure the transaction services to obey public accommodation rules since they have monopolistic power, it may be time to circumvent the issue, and support black market tactics ( Archie comic and bag of sawdust, $20, comes with free incest porn! )
These days, when discussing the usenet alt.* heirarchy, its acronym ( Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists ) is now considered a backronym, a joke. I was there, and it belied a serious point: The worst of us deserve free speech, as per Larry Flynt, knowing that Hustler magazine is legally published in all its (raunchy) glory means that whatever you’re releasing to the public is safe from moral guardians and critics because they have worse stuff to shout at.
But we’re in an era of book burning, which means those would-be moral guardians are emboldened to try to reshape society in their image, in contrast to the principles of liberty and free thought. And soon ICE will expand its POI list to include liberals and wrongthinkers.
It may be time for bricks in windows and direct action against high-ranking company officials, but such behaviors carry high risks of consequences. So be careful and thorough.
In the meantime, write petitions of your grievances and sign those others have written. And remind them at this moment the public presumes petitioning them for redress of grievances will be acknowledged and acted upon. And if that turns out not to be the case, the outraged public will not simply disappear and keep to its place.
Grass@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I wish it was feasible to hve a large scale boycott of visa and mastercard. american express is already useless so it wouldn’t help much…
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Or a decentralized alternative that isn’t just used to scam people and that doesn’t eat up insane amounts of electrocity to process.
ctrl_alt_esc@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Money is not printed by the local government at all. Money is created by private banks through extending credit. And it shouldn’t be controlled by the government either, that’s a terrible idea.
I agree with the rest though.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Alternatives are not so hard, if you allow everyone to exchange and use every currency. Then, well, you need to pay someone selling in currency A - you pay your B’s to buy some A’s and you pay with them.
But there are lots of limitations on banking, some in good faith, and some to prevent mobility and make everything tracked. Possibility to track means possibility to decide who gets to do what.
I think that’s why gold standard was dropped in the first place. When all money is guaranteed with gold, and gold (still does) buy money, you do have a universal currency hard to track.
With decentralized electronic currencies the problem is - you need consensus. There’s no way around it at all. You can devise something to separate one consensus into a tree of subspaces, to make it more efficient in case an operation with a coin “123456” depends only on operations with coins from “123*” subspace, or something like that. Partitioned system. So then you don’t need consensus on subspaces untouched by your operation. But you still can’t have such an offline currency, because that depends on the finite amount of gold, while with electronic currencies double spending exists.
And I don’t know if it’s possible to make such an electronic currency anonymous for outside spectators. Zero-knowledge and other buzzwords are good, but I don’t know how one can do this.
Pandantic@midwest.social 1 day ago
Cyv_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Signed, thanks for the link <3
thatradomguy@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
We want our pron and we want it now!
Iceman@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
What is a gooner that cannot goon? This is murder.
potato_wallrus@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Give me the whole tiddy or give me death
heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net 20 hours ago
So, I wanted to see if I could find a list of games that were removed. I found this steam-tracker.com which is not specific to this event, but useful to keep track.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Valve please fix
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 day ago
*Develops an open online payment system that isn’t a scam.
shads@lemy.lol 21 hours ago
I keep seeing this suggested and while I think that would be amazing I really don’t think its likely. These incumbents are set up to make things difficult for new entrants to their market. With political will and engagement it would be possible, but in the current world political environment these payment processors would simply buy the right politicians & court officials to ensure that any legislative challenges would be killed in the nest.
In the world we are in right now we need to instead focus on making the payment processors bend to the will of the majority not a vocal minority.
We also need to start finding strategies to fight back against paedophilia as an accepted permission slip to let the worst people in the world get away with whatever they want. If its not a disqualifying status for the office of president of the US, then why does the existence of paedophiles mean we (vast majority not paedophiles I hope) have to sacrifice our rights, our privacy, and our free speech?
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
“Hi there, would you like to sign the petition?”
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
I completely understand wanting to fight Visa and MasterCards position in the market. That’s fine.
But for the love of God. Do not involve Steam and various porn games into it. That is not going to help your case.
I get the whole. “Just because I’m killing someone in a game, doesn’t mean I’ll kill someone in real life”.
But that’s not going to hold up as an argument here. Depictions of CP, even if it’s a drawing with crayons, is still highly illegal in so many places. Same logic can be applied regarding other depictions of illegal behavior in the same category (pornogrophy). Such as incest. I’m not saying that depictions of incest is illegal in many places. Because I honestly don’t know. But there would be a precedence for it.
Personally, I find it utterly disgusting that Steam even allowed such titles to begin with. I welcome their removal of them. But I wish it was because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
They removed Detroit: Become Human, dude…
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 9 minutes ago
That’s great, not great that they removed it but a great example of something you can bring up that doesn’t hurt the case.
I just really wish people would leave actual porn games out of it. Because that is not going to be helpful to their case.
TeddE@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
That’s the problem.
Valve already had a process to flag titles as illegal in specific jurisdictions, and as far as anyone can tell, was doing an okay job at that (not perfect, obviously), but they were forced to add an extra clause of, ‘oh, plus anything visa et al. don’t like’ the extra layer is adding minimal protection and is rife for abuse.
Additionally, let’s talk about what makes porn. Does “yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby” of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it’s a large publisher?
What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn’t prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding? Couldn’t we - have therapists or other behavioral health development experts make this call?
Most importantly is the recorded history of how these systems are routinely shown to be used against smaller publishers, and assorted minorities (including LGBT people) have a woman show a boob, it’s polite adult fun, but if their twin brother shows a pre-op trans boob, now it’s magically porn.
dudesss@lemmy.ca 21 hours ago
How to use Debit or e-transfer to pay for Steam games?
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
Hell, you can buy with cash. Walk to a local big box store and buy a steam wallet/gift card. That is assuming you live somewhere that has that option, of course.
ChaoAmber@feddit.uk 20 hours ago
Unless I’m mistaken, I thought Debit is usually through visa or MasterCard, for security.
Unless you mean like… A direct line to your bank account. Which is extremely risky.
Vroomfondel@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
After reading the article on gamerant.com and looking at the petition, I really wonder if actually so many people are delusional and/or are just missing the core point here?! (Or it is just a small crowd with much noise?) IMHO, there are better places in the world to engage and petition for. (Local communities and regional politics, for example.) But if banning that little “funny” child incest game on Steam puts you up the tree, well, …
Are you really that offended? And why, on point? How in the world can you defend publishing (and selling) games - mostly targeted at young folks - which are quite disturbing, derangend and morally wrong in the name of “freedom” or “independence”? And call that blatantly censorship, when there are instead public guidelines by Steam and their partners? Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values instead of becoming delusional with child pornography, incest, violence, gore and such? What are your values here?
cosmo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It isn’t about the actual games being targeted. It’s everything about the implications of having a private company dictate what content I can buy with my own money. If they cave to lobby group once, they will do it again. Next time it might be something you care about instead.
callouscomic@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values…
Sounds like a fucking dog whistle for sure. Get off lemmy.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 21 hours ago
CC companies have a really easy retort in that they operate in jurisdictions where these things are illegal
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 4 hours ago
Everybody needs to also stop using Mastercard/Visa/Paypal.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 hour ago
And use what instead? Swollen off PayPal is pretty easy because frankly it’s an awful service and businesses are better off not using it anyway so they tend to offer other options.
But MasterCard and visa are the only payment options. Everything requires MasterCard or Visa
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 hour ago
Businesses are better of not using Paypal or Creditcards, both of the are a hassle and cost more time to process than a digital pin transaction or an old school bank transfer.
You have to use what is available in your country, a lot of countries have their own payment platform and they are being consolidated into one Wero.
As long as people keep using Mastercard or Visa they will have this power.
Routhinator@startrek.website 2 hours ago
How else are you supposed to buy something on Steam? You just listed every available option.
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Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 hours ago
Did I though?
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Draegur@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
anti-censorship international credit union owned by members that can conduct transactions internally without having to ask for visa or mastercard’s FUCKING permission when???
I’m saying we should build Dual Power and go around them.
Novice_Idiot@lemmy.wtf 4 hours ago
Sure. But they are pretty much the only options in a lot of places. Yes they are shitty companies, but I personally can’t think of a good way to get away from them.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 4 hours ago
Local/national banks with their bankcards and payment platforms? Buying steam gift cards using cash or by pinning? Even if your bank cards are halfway towards visa or mastercard using it through another party is still better.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 3 hours ago
i wish gnu taler was widespread
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 hours ago
Something like that will kinda work, but using it will flag your transactions if you use it as a business. That’s the issue with a lot of these things is that we need to have some kind of balance between privacy and authorities being able to do anything against terrorism etc. And yes you can find terrorists based on transactions.