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Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

(www.pcgamer.com)
713 points freedomben | 4 comments | 18 Jul 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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miiiiiike ◴[19 Jul 25 01:02 UTC] No.44611570[source]▶
Look. Ignore the content. Why the fuck do we allow credit card companies have a say in how we spend our money?

Fraud? Abuse? Fine, let me put cash onto a card and if that card gets stolen, oh well, my loss. Mastercard should have no say in what what speech is considered acceptable outside of their offices. We don't care what execs at a water company think? Why do we care about the people at Mastercard?

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1. hungmung ◴[19 Jul 25 01:08 UTC] No.44611601[source]▶
It's because Visa got sued, lost, and it was found out they knowingly processed payments for illegal adult content, so they basically avoid the sector entirely now. Economist had an article about it maybe two years ago and came to much the same conclusion you did. IIRC, the failure in their mind was government not stepping in to make a law so things are less ambiguous in the future. Now payment processing cos get to gate keep people's speech, which means everything is basically a civil suit away from getting blacklisted.
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2. braiamp ◴[19 Jul 25 12:11 UTC] No.44614859[source]▶
> It's because Visa got sued, lost, and it was found out they knowingly processed payments for illegal adult content

Got any source for that? What they got sued for? Aiding human trafficking?

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3. driscoll42 ◴[19 Jul 25 13:41 UTC] No.44615407[source]▶
It's not quite that specific, but close enough:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/business/dealbook/pornhub...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/08/california-court...

>This week, US District Judge Cormac Carney of the US District Court of the Central District of California decided that there's reason to believe that Visa knowingly processed payments that allowed MindGeek to monetize "a substantial amount of child porn." To decide, the court wants to know much more about Visa's involvement, calling for more evidence of legal harms caused during a jurisdictional discovery process extended through December 30, 2022.

According to Court Listener, the case is still ongoing - https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59992265/serena-fleites...

4. aranelsurion ◴[19 Jul 25 15:13 UTC] No.44616171[source]▶
I wonder what are the odds of Visa being succesfully sued for processing payments to such a huge brand like Steam.

Steam has its virtual wallet and marketplace as well, so Visa is twice removed from where the money will actually go once it enters Steam ecosystem.

Even as an abundance of caution, this doesn’t make sense to me.