2d ago

Puritanical rule

90 comments

Yeah, I know leftists hate crypto but this shit legit is making me want some.
I know crypto sucks in a lot of functional ways but those issues can probably be sorted out eventually. I don't want to let puritanical authoritarian dipshits dictate what I can buy with my fucking money, or even see if they start also fuck with hosting of free content as well.
I don't even buy porn games, doesn't matter. Its the principle of the thing. And this shit can easily get worse if we let them.
- Crypto without capitalists is pretty cool
  
  Yeah, crypto as an "investment asset" is a load of steaming hot shit that feeds environmental collapse.
  Trustable decentralised finance? That's rad as hell.
  I mean not as rad as mutual aid and battering but why let perfection be the enemy of the good?
  
  Everything improves when you get rid of capitalism.
  Crypto without capitalism would still be dictated by market economy though and a lot of anti-capitalists are anti-currency or anti-market. Not just anti-private-property anti-absentee-ownership.
  But yes, I agree. A mutualist (or a "Libertarian" Market Socialist economy) would be pretty cool.
  
  Yeah which is basically the idea of
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative
- Here's the issue: How do you put money into crypto or take it out? A payment processor is how.
  Crypto mostly just reinvents the same things. Its also usually not actually anonymous, as has been proved many times.
  
  And not even truly de-centralized, as most services that support it actually do it through a few centralized third parties instead of implementing it directly.
  
  Some cryptocoins explicitly address privacy and anonymity issues, for example Monero (XMR).
  
  Also, in the US at least, every single transaction needs to be reported on your tax return. There are tools to help you do this, but goddamn! imagine compiling all of that each year if you used it regularly. I used it at one point and it was such a pain in the ass come tax season, that I just sold all my crypto the following year and never touched it again.
  
  I traded it in person when I was just testing it out and didn't want any accounts. In theory if things get even more cyberpunk, we could use dead drops.
  
  You just need to know where to look for shady people in alleyways where you can buy them with cash. It's harder to find shady porn artists in alleyways.
  
  I take money in and out via bank transfers with my exchange company.
  
  Crypto also single-handedly invented ransomware. Like without Crypto, random Russian and North Korean hackers aren’t financially incentivized to target towns, hospitals, small businesses etc. There are legitimate payment processors other than just Visa.
- Personally, I hate crypto, but I like the idea of crypto. Like decentralized currency, useable anywhere by anyone, independent of locale/government, is an awesome ideal. What drives me away from it is the fact that it’s not reliable (it fluctuates all over the place, and there’s no guarantee what you have one day will be there tomorrow), it eats more power than a country just to track transactions, there’s tons of different ones, and it’s generally used for scams and illicit purchases. Which I suppose is part of its reason it be, but no legit storefront I use takes it.. probably for the first reason.
  It also doesn’t help that it’s got a bad rap from all the crazy crypto-bro/fly-by-night scams and NFT stuff.
  
  independent of locale/government, is an awesome ideal.
  it’s got a bad rap from all the crazy crypto-bro/fly-by-night scams
  One is an inevitable consequence of the other.
- The problem is not so much "paying for stuff without payment processors". On an individual level, that can fairly easily be achieved.
  The problem is the chilling effect that the puritanical positions of these payment processors have on the creation of art. What are you going to do with your crypto if the game or art you wanted to buy gets self-censored for "compliance" or simply isn't created anymore?
  
  That's already happening for the sake of gaining access to console markets. I find it depressing TBH. However, I think its arguably worth trying to at least put a dent into the issue in any way possible.
- I fully admit in advance I know very little about crypto, so please someone correct me if I’m wrong.
  Isn’t part of crypto a detailed log of transactions?
  
  Monero obfuscates transactions. Parties and amount are private.
  
  It depends on the project. Many cryptocurrencies (Like Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin) have a public ledger. So every transaction (participants + amount) is visible.
  \ Other Projects (where Monero is the most well known) use special cryptographic systems to hide all that. So the only thing which can be observed by 3th parties is that some transaction was successful somewhere. There are also projects which are private but prioritize efficiency (all the cryptographic hiding has a notable computation-cost) by sacrificing hidden amount or hidden participants.
  
  Crypts currencies like Monero even hide that
  
  Yes.
  But also, how can you make digital payment work without one? Not a rhetorical question by the way, legitimately don't know. llmost seems impossible.
  My thought process:
  You need to verify transactions aren't fraudulent
  source of trust on this can't be centralized, thats what visa/mastercard are
  You need to be able to calculate a balance
  traditional currency does this by physically possessing things
  you can't "own" data; it's fungible i.e. it can be copied trivially. If I copy my wallet onto your computer, who owns it?
  digital currency gets around this with a ledger
  that's the detailed log of transactions
  ???
  
  Actually, you can think of all crypto as a log of transactions plus the infrastructure to create, manage, and provide information about those transactions. It is public, but the "accounts" are basically just blobs of numbers, so they can be hard to trace, depending on the platform.
  
  My understanding is that even if that is the case purchases are still not easily trackable/traceable if that is your concern. I myself don't know specifically why though.
  
  Arguably it's all crypto is physically speaking. A log that details this money it's referencing.
  
  It is, but there is little or no detail of who exactly it was that made the transaction. Some cryptocurrencies are better than others about keeping that information hidden.
- Payment processors should have no authority whatsoever to monitor or police the transactions they facilitate. This would be true even if these two companies weren’t an illegal trust. Between the two of them, they effectively have a global monopoly on digital commerce.
- https://www.merchantmaverick.com/adult-payment-processing-merchant-account/
  Or, use one of these, and make your own wholly NSFW version of itch.io
  You could try to tie it to a crypto, but uh, if you don't want to just be paying creators directly in WhateverCoin, you basically now have to run a foreign currency exchange operation.
  Theres a good deal of cost and risk to that, and... the alternative use of crypto would imply you are actually regularly holding a large crypto balance as an operating budget, which can be rather bad, as even the least bullshit of cryptocoins are way, way more volatile than almost any real currency.
  ...
  Also, Nutaku still exists, though they've seemingly also completely axxed all paid games that actually have explicit sex in them.
  Free ones are still there, but yeah.
  Nutaku is in the position of being known for mostly adult android games... they could switch to an adult payment processor, and also expand to other platforms.
  Itch io is... in arguably a less good position, as they sell / distribute adult and non adult games, so they basically have to pick one or the other.
- Transactions should be autonomous push transactions, which crypto does. To send money with crypto, you actually send it, as opposed to a merchant pulling money like with credit cards. The additional part is crypto is autonomous. No card company acting as arbiter of all transactions
  In that way crypto is objectively a superior method of transaction
  Where it fails is throughput, use as a speculative investment, and lack of stable backing. Throughput can be solved, but I don't have a solution for the other two. Bitcoin was honestly great to use for transactions (where you could) until the value exploded. Ethereum is okay, but not great, even with other transaction technologies stacked on top
  
  lack of stable backing
  The US recently passed legislation regarding stablecoins. If I understand correctly, they now need to be backed 1:1 by the US dollar or a "low-risk asset". The latter seems dubious to me, but I'm curious to see what will come of 1:1 dollar pegged coins if the US government is throwing its weight around to support the concept...
  I can't believe I'm seriously entertaining the idea of using cryptocurrency, but here we are in 2025... -.-
  
  2: It's gradually stabilizing, with the % change of bubbles/crashes getting smaller over time.
  3: In the sense that gold is backed by its usability for jewelry, bitcoin is backed by its usability for secure time stamps.
- Monero is rad AF
- I feel the same way. Monero is the best contender for that philosophy, and governments/corporations hate it because they know it's a threat to their financial chokehold. Whoever controlls the money controlls the power, so if the money is decentralized and private, no entity can ever hold that power over everyone
- The problem has been solved to some extent, at least. Unregulated casinos and Polymarket are entirely banned in the US, but citizens here regularly bypass it with VPNs and transferring stablecoin. In the case of obscene games, it's not illegal (yet at least) so the only thing needed would be the infrastructure for accepting and distributing crypto payments.
  None of it is without flaws, but many small websites managed to make it work without issues. The main issue would probably be convincing enough people to move to crypto to create a stable user base. I'd imagine some would be "driven" enough to jump through all these hoops though. Personally I'd like to see a platform that is free of this anti-democratic fuckery going on.
- Maybe also throw them a curveball by buying 1000 hits of acid on the black market, and feeding it all to Carpenter Ants.
- I don't see why people hate on crypto. It's an amazing technology, fully decentralized, with mathematical proof that no one can cheat or abuse it.
  
  Crypto 100% can be abused.
  
  I don't have any issues with crypto, but it's more so the people who promote it. They tend to be techno-billionaires Who want to make something needlessly complicated and expensive or else creating a currency that has no real value. The other issue is that it's computationally expensive and not as good for the environment as other payment methods.
  I myself, am a proponent of cbdc, but the government has outlawed any creation of a consumer cbdc
- Selling bitcoin requires actually bribing miners to commit the sale.
  They call it "paying gas" ... but it is a bribe. How is a bribe in an unregulated market better ?
  
  That sounds more like paying them rent. Bribes pertain to paying an authority to do something illegal.
  Its parasitic behavior and bad. Submitting to it is a lesser evil compared to letting puritanical authoritarians dictate and censor however IMO.

this has been around for decades and it's funny people are only just picking up on it now due to videogames.
I used to work in the adult entertainment industry way back in the early 00s as a web developer and yeah visa and mc's rules were stupid. like an actual list of rules. no fisting was a major one. 4 fingers? fine. slip in a thumb? yup visa and mc can dig it. ball your hand into a fist? THAT'S TOO FAR FOR VISA AND MASTERCARD!
- I'm wondering if this is Visa and MasterCard covering their arses legally.
  When you buy on credit card you get extra protections like chargebacks and section 75 so if a company goes bust or doesn't do what you paid then for then the credit card company gives you your money back and the company owes them money rather than you.
  But is that a double edged sword so if you buy something technically illegal where you live (and there's a lot of odd local porn laws), then they're somehow on the hook for that too?
  I suspect a lot of stores are just pulling what is probably a tiny percent of their revenue because they don't have a good way to prevent you buying just that on CC or working out which territory it's legal in, under threat of having all their credit card charging facilities taken away...
  
  fisting
  covering their arses
  hehe
- I worked for a self publishing company long, long ago. It turns out, most of our best selling authors made NSFW stuff. Eventually our payment processor complained. So our CFO called around to a bunch of big porn companies and asked them which payment processors they used. Those companies were fine.
  A guide book to female domination. Some sissy stuff with mature cover art. Right next to history books and Earthbound fan art. I felt good about it. Serving a real need.
  A shame we never got Chuck.
- Maybe it was a violence thing? Like they don't want to advocate for punching someone in the cervix? 🤔
  
  If they objected to violence in general this would be a fair thought, but they don't.
  
  it really wasn't though. I don't recall all of the rules they handed down but some of them were just...they didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like a couple of examples. first being piss videos. if the content was filmed in Europe with European talent then Visa and MC were fine with it. IF you wanted to do the SAME content but it was filmed in the US with US talent then no, you couldn't sell it. Maybe laws in Europe for peeing on people are different than the US? I don't know.
  Next was stuff like gang bang or orgy vids. I remember this one specifically cause one of the editors would ALWAYS complain about it. If a woman was getting nailed every which way by multiple guys at the end of the video she HAD to be interviewed to show that she really enjoyed what just happened to her. IF there was no post jizz party ted talk then Visa and MC would lose their collective minds. No one watched that shit but it had to be in there. so if you're ever watching one of these videos and you wonder 'why the hell is she giving an interview at the end of this thing?' it's cause Visa and MC need it.
- I'm laughing, man. Made my day

Collective Shout is responsible for this shit for those of you wondering. They're an Australian alt-right group who harass people for porn, LGBT stuff, and whatnot.
- It took just over a thousand of these shitheads badgering these companies to make this happen.
  
  Makes one wonder how many could collectively shout back to fix this.
- Didn't they get that really fun single dev Indy game "Schedule 1" blocked in Australia because you make and sell drugs?
  Also shout out to the dev, very fun game! Hope they get the game unblocked.
  
  Australia has been censoring an incredible amount for a long time, for what it's worth. It is one of the worst offenders of this out of all the Western countries. There aren't many restrictions on the government to ban things.
- And also pretend to be feminists.

They did the same to the BetaMax format, back in the day, so we all got stuck with the shittier VHS format. Fuck these assholes.
- Could you provide the source? I can only see the mismatch in frequencies, which, well, seems like bs
  
  Beta Max was superior in every way except being cheap to manufacture. It didn't really go away though, it basically evolved into ADAT used in professional music recording. Or I could be full of shit, but that's how I remember it.

Let’s start a new payment processor. How high could the barrier to entry be. =\
- May I suggest adopting Brazil's pix system, which has been the latest target of these companies and the reason why Trump is now trying to bully the country? Would be quite funny if Visa ended up losing even more ground to the very same system it is trying to sabotage.
- Very. I've looked into it when trump did something stupid at the beginning of his term - felt like newcomers are simply outregulated.
- CashApp will free us lmao

So, I just wanted to play a VN, which has 0 porn in it, 0 nudity, 0 gore, and less sexual appeal than an average B rated christmas themed romantic comedy. It portrays negative feelings, and shows depression, and plays with deadth and suicide. This game is targeted for adults, it is not suitable for children, and it is now shadow banned.
Many many games like this has no platform, hardcore porn games has alternative platforms, normal games for kids has platforms, but games with actual meaningful deep content, which are targeted for adults are not.
I don't care if someone wants to jerk off to a fictional character. I don't care if someone wants to see fictional characters abused. They can and will find it on the internet, or god forbid us, if they manage to ban all, they will find it in real life. Its a hard topic if it is moral, or it better or worse to the overall population if these contents are existing, and widely available. It makes it harder that censoreship, freespeech and the oldnew "protect the children" argument is brought into the conversation.
Censorship is not inherently bad (EG a lemmy moderator basically a censorship enforcer)
"Protect the children" is, in my opinion is the responsibility of their guardian. Parental controll is so easy to set up nowadays. I don't think this is the job of the goverment. And fictional children are not real, they do not exist. I find it personally disgusting to portray harm to fictional children, but they are not real to be protected, protect the real ones, we have many abused, trafficed, or even starved to death.
So I accidentaly put too many words into my fustration, that I cannot play the adult targeted game I wanted, because some alt-right femminist from the other side of the globe are scared of pixelart nipples...

I mean..
I'll take Monero, BTC, weed, mushrooms, LSD (contingent on test), cocaine (contingent on test, and resale value), 9mm JHP, 5.56x45mm, gold, silver, platinum, ca$h money, €uros, or glock/ar parts or comic books (contingent on approval).

Crypto could fix this

90 comments