The control of card processors over what we're allowed to see and buy is absolute bullshit. And this is coming from someone who spent $0 on porn in my life.

This is why we need digital cash systems outside the control of those companies. I'm not specifically talking about cryptocurrency. Even a central bank digital currency is better than this. Benjamin Franklin in your wallet doesn't care what you spend him on. Neither should your digital money.

I’ve never seen a news outlet disguised as a meme before

It was never about the morality. Who cares if someone makes something out of the ordinary? all it matters is the sweet control of the internet.

Can someone explain what this is about in a way that I can understand ? I know nothing about this situation, in fact I don’t even know much about animé in general which this seems to be about.

Germany is even worse and it's not even CC companies' fault. You can't buy h vns on steam (or gog) in germany, with the reasoning being "the user's age can't be verified". Thankfully jast works.

Which I could accept if other 18+ games, like... gta v, weren't perfectly purchasable. I've kinda been thinking about complaining to the youth protection agency responsible, maybe if they also make steam ban sales of hugely profitable games they'll care, or the legal debate about verifying age there being a privacy violation would kick off. But I also don't want it to get worse.

I recoginze pixiv from them hosting one the largest mastodon instance, pawoo. Which is widely blocked for child porn.

Wasn't surprised reading the article on pixiv's policy change:

The prohibited content includes (but is not limited to): "Sexual exploitation of a minor, incest, bestiality, rape (or any other non-consensual sexual behavior)," and "non-consensual mutilation of a person or body part."

Oh the horror.

This post was kind of a pain to read, with all the reddit links. I had to convert them to old.reddit.com to get them to display properly.

I think Steam was in the right to remove that one game. "Looks = age" is true for cartoon characters, since they have no biological age. It seems the character was described as 19 in lore, but in Steam's opinion, they looked like a prepubescent child. Since cartoon child pornography is illegal, they were right to remove it.

But that other stuff seems to be legal. Cartoon rape porn games are appalling to me, but are probably legal, and should be legal. I agree that people being unable to pay for legal (even if appalling) content is a form of undesirable censorship.

It's probably Visa's fault. They seem like a complete monopoly. I rarely see anyone with a non-Visa credit card. I myself have a Discover card, but I have to have a Visa card too because some merchants don't accept Discover. Every merchant accepts Visa, and every customer has to have a Visa card. Merchants today are more likely to refuse cash than to refuse Visa.

Possible solutions:

1. The libertarian approach: The government needs to remove barriers to entry in making new payment systems. Loosen BSA requirements for smaller payment systems. Require existing banks to interoperate with the design of new payment systems, if their customer requests it.

2. The socialist approach: The US government could create a payment system. It would be protected by constitutional free speech rules, so legal content couldn't be blocked.

3. The moderate approach: Treat Visa like the monopoly that it is. Treat it as a defacto commons, where people are forced to go even if they don't want to be there. As long as it remains a monopoly, it should be required to carry all legal customers. Even customers selling appalling content, like cartoon rape porn games.

It happened again with Fantia 😭