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man these canaries keep dropping dead for some reason, I'm not sure why we had them
Not "pressure group". Radical religious groups trying to control everything everywhere.

Transcript
nickyflowers: It would be cool if websites let you be an adult on them. The advertisers and payment processors need everything to be Family Friendly though their definitions of family and friendly are absolutely fucked. But since they're in charge of the Internet now, no one is allowed to be an adult. TikTokers say things like "unalive" and "seggs" because they know death and sex are too adult for online. Online is for idiot babies only now because they're easier to market to.
nickyflowers: Oh I'm sorry you're a trans adult? Super ban. You are super banned for life. You have upset Visa's feelings. Mastercard is throwing up in the corner. How could you do this to Google Ads?
This is so dumb. . I bet those guys actually watch the most porn.
Whether it is this or tracking/disallowing firearms purchases, the payment processors should not be making editorial decisions on legal commerce.
If the item or service is legal in the jurisdiction, the payment processors should be on the hook for agnostically allowing the transactions. Period.
How do I start a payment processor?
And "how" did they pressure the payment processors? Pressure on central deciders or what? Spicy data on them?
And couldn't they influence elections that way?
Go listen to the first season of the Hot Money podcast, it'll explain it in much better detail than I'll remember. Essentially VISA and MasterCard don't like the reputational damage of being associated with certain types of porn. It's not a hill they're willing to die on. If you want your app to accept online payment you've got to be in line with what they find acceptable.
Its the only thing I go to itch.io for.
This law sounds good in theory, but there's a lot of lawful content that is really undesirable (scams, spam, deepfakes, hate speech, etc.) and platforms need to be able to deal with that. The law isn't fast or flexible enough to keep up, and every country has different (or laughable) definitions of some of these things.
The YouTube community guidelines are a pretty good overview of whatever shady shit people are trying to pull these days: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9288567?hl=en
I don't disagree with you, but you've put some thought into this so maybe you can help us understand your logic and rationale more.
as soon as they deem profitable
What's profitable about losing sales of adult games?
Also, what leverage do these groups have over banks and payment processors? If you have leverage over Visa and MasterCard, some of the most profitable companies in the world, I could imagine doing way more nefarious things than this. I just don't get it. Some random group in Australia has leverage over Visa and MasterCard - American companies - is that what we're saying here?
Those are things that should be handled by a government in defence of the public interest of everyone
I think you might have too much faith in government. Facebook and YouTube shouldn't be hyper-polarizing brainwashing machines either, but here we are 20 years later and governments have done jack shit to address that. If anything, we're going the wrong direction - Governments are seeing that and the TikTok model as tools they can have at their disposal to suppress dissent. But ironically, I think YouTube and many other platforms quietly accept that if we want to live in a somewhat harmonious society, we can't leave it to the government to make all the rules. (eg. YouTube banning vaccine misinformation and disinformation during a public health emergency.)
On a tangent here, maybe the only potential upside from this situation with Steam is that horrifically misogynistic waifu simulators aren't going to be 1 click away from the new Call of Duty. Seriously, Steam is just full of super gross anime shit that kids shouldn't see, but the main audience of the platform is kids. The way Steam puts that content beside everything else is really gross and they really should get called out for that.
I don't like the precedent that Collective Shout set, but this is a VERY positive side effect. Love to see it.
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