this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
869 points (99.4% liked)

Technology

73245 readers
3933 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 hour 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.

[–] HelterSkeletor@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 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. Does that coordinated monopolistic behavior have president?

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 25 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

Petitions like this are meaningless unless they come with a viable solution to the duopoly in payment processing that is Visa and Mastercard.

It doesn't matter what Valve agrees with, if they want to survive as a business they have to ultimately do what the only 2 companies that handle the payment processing tells them to do.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Valve is a big enough company that they could conceivably start their own payment provider to bypass this.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 1 points 22 minutes ago

Come on, Gabe. You know you wanna.

[–] DNS@discuss.online 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

we have been like this lately, but humans are definitely not weak willed or feeble at all.

shit, the right wing nuts are killing themselves over their beliefs rn.

[–] heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net 6 points 5 hours ago

So, I wanted to see if I could find a list of games that were removed. I found this https://steam-tracker.com/ which is not specific to this event, but useful to keep track.

[–] SpaceScotsman@startrek.website 61 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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 12 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

So yeah, being mad at Valve is stupid, people need to be mad st MC and Visa and probably also PayPal.

Being mad at Valve is shooting the messenger.

Fortunately the petition is at least correctly aimed at the payment processors.

But also...

If MC and Visa won't budge on their positions, well, if Valve then makes an alt payment system for 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

We want our pron and we want it now!

[–] Iceman@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

What is a gooner that cannot goon? This is murder.

[–] potato_wallrus@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Give me the whole tiddy or give me death

[–] dudesss@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

How to use Debit or e-transfer to pay for Steam games?

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 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 4 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

Online, usually. Though you can technically use debit in some places.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

In Canada, it can be done through Interac.

load more comments
view more: next ›