Visa says they weren't the ones who blocked Fantia, DLsite, etc.

Nov 9, 2022
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Edit 1: Trimmed some stuff out to better summarize tweets

A Japanese politician recently had a meeting with some executives at Visa over in San Francisco and they say that it wasn't them who blocked off Pixiv and everything else.
They stated that they can make judgements on the legality of transactions but not the content so long as it isn't CP, SA, etc. They did give an example with how they won't do anything if you buy a gun legally in America even if there's a strong opinion against it. Decisions that would affect Pixiv, Patreon and the like are relegated to the middle men like merchant contract companies and payment processing companies.

Source:


 
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Nov 9, 2022
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Not surprising they escape responsibility and obfuscate who is doing what like that.
"its not me its that guy, that I hired and wrote contract for lmao also I'm literally powerless to do anything about it"
I take what they said with a grain of salt and believe that another party may have been more proactive than Visa or Mastercard, the other half about their involvement not so much but will assume its true until something comes up later and I'd rather leave it to other people better than me at researching to sift through their documents and history. I did hear rumors a while ago about Japan making their own payment processor so that might have something to do with their response in some part.
 

morphnet

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A Japanese politician recently had a meeting with some executives at Visa over in San Francisco and they say that it wasn't them who blocked off Pixiv and everything else.
They stated that they can make judgements on the legality of transactions but not the content so long as it isn't actual CP, SA, or rape, so for example, they won't do anything if you buy a gun legally in America even if the majority opinion at VISA's against it, but they will step in if al-Qaeda or other terrorists are trying to buy guns from you with their card from what I gather so correct me if I am wrong. Decisions that would affect Pixiv, Patreon and the like are relegated to the middle men like merchant contract companies and payment processing companies as Visa and Mastercard are Card associations and only provide the means for transactions whereas payments are outsourced to the middlemen to handle.

Source:

There seems to be some confusion in your post so just to clear things up, visa and mastercard are the middleman, they are worldwide payment networks. So it goes, bank -> visa / mastercard -> user, neither visa nor mastercard have their own cards, the banks associated with them join the network and then issue their own cards.



Even though they are the middleman they hold most of the power because banks want to use their network and industries want to use their services. So visa and mastercard can and sometimes do (and in the case of porn do all the time) set rules for banks as well as industries.



" Mastercard on Wednesday said it will be requiring banks to certify that sellers of adult material online have tools in place to monitor, block and remove illegal content. "



Not sure why you jumped from porn to guns and then back to porn and your example is very inaccurate. Both visa and mastercard set their own rules and standards and have been targeting the porn industry for decades.

It's not just patreon, it's been a number of platforms and companies over the years and the banks are being influenced by visa and mastercard. Mindgeek, onlyfans, cam sites and more have been targeted.



" In April MasterCard announced a change to their policy, which requires "the banks that connect merchants to our network... to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content." "

" This landscape, combined with the fact OnlyFans has also battled with higher processing costs from Visa and Mastercard because they charge more for those in the adult industry, has led to a ban on explicit content. "




The fact is visa and mastercard make rules and if companies do not follow them, they pull their services. They claim it is in order to help fight illegal content but they have been targeting even the legal porn industry. Higher costs, freezing assets, blocking / refusing accounts etc.





So when they say it's not their fault, they're lying....
 
Nov 9, 2022
85
166
There seems to be some confusion in your post so just to clear things up, visa and mastercard are the middleman, they are worldwide payment networks. So it goes, bank -> visa / mastercard -> user, neither visa nor mastercard have their own cards, the banks associated with them join the network and then issue their own cards.



Even though they are the middleman they hold most of the power because banks want to use their network and industries want to use their services. So visa and mastercard can and sometimes do (and in the case of porn do all the time) set rules for banks as well as industries.



" Mastercard on Wednesday said it will be requiring banks to certify that sellers of adult material online have tools in place to monitor, block and remove illegal content. "



Not sure why you jumped from porn to guns and then back to porn and your example is very inaccurate. Both visa and mastercard set their own rules and standards and have been targeting the porn industry for decades.

It's not just patreon, it's been a number of platforms and companies over the years and the banks are being influenced by visa and mastercard. Mindgeek, onlyfans, cam sites and more have been targeted.



" In April MasterCard announced a change to their policy, which requires "the banks that connect merchants to our network... to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content." "

" This landscape, combined with the fact OnlyFans has also battled with higher processing costs from Visa and Mastercard because they charge more for those in the adult industry, has led to a ban on explicit content. "




The fact is visa and mastercard make rules and if companies do not follow them, they pull their services. They claim it is in order to help fight illegal content but they have been targeting even the legal porn industry. Higher costs, freezing assets, blocking / refusing accounts etc.





So when they say it's not their fault, they're lying....
I was compounding what they said in the 2 tweets from the politician so almost everything came from them aside from the example and the part after payment processing companies (I googled it and found it on Quora but forgot to include that in the sources), that was just me trying to fill in blanks and rationalize what their excuse was, I found out about it a few minutes before OP so I should've looked over it a bit more and stuck to compounding things instead of making assumptions and making it more sloppy than it already is.
Should've done my research too, someone or some agenda they have is definitely pushing them to do it if they are cutting out an entire industry to do business with, but I'm not surprised a multi-billion dollar corperation is lying through their teeth.
 

anne O'nymous

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So when they say it's not their fault, they're lying....
Oh, but they didn't lied, they just twisted reality to match their narrative:

We agree with everything except CP, and it's the site fault if they've CP-like content, not ours. So, it's them who, by not removing that content, asked to be kept out, not us who blocked them.


It's a politician talking about a discussion he had with someone hired to talk with politicians. This must be kept in mind when decoding what was said.
 
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desmosome

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There seems to be some confusion in your post so just to clear things up, visa and mastercard are the middleman, they are worldwide payment networks. So it goes, bank -> visa / mastercard -> user, neither visa nor mastercard have their own cards, the banks associated with them join the network and then issue their own cards.



Even though they are the middleman they hold most of the power because banks want to use their network and industries want to use their services. So visa and mastercard can and sometimes do (and in the case of porn do all the time) set rules for banks as well as industries.



" Mastercard on Wednesday said it will be requiring banks to certify that sellers of adult material online have tools in place to monitor, block and remove illegal content. "



Not sure why you jumped from porn to guns and then back to porn and your example is very inaccurate. Both visa and mastercard set their own rules and standards and have been targeting the porn industry for decades.

It's not just patreon, it's been a number of platforms and companies over the years and the banks are being influenced by visa and mastercard. Mindgeek, onlyfans, cam sites and more have been targeted.



" In April MasterCard announced a change to their policy, which requires "the banks that connect merchants to our network... to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content." "

" This landscape, combined with the fact OnlyFans has also battled with higher processing costs from Visa and Mastercard because they charge more for those in the adult industry, has led to a ban on explicit content. "




The fact is visa and mastercard make rules and if companies do not follow them, they pull their services. They claim it is in order to help fight illegal content but they have been targeting even the legal porn industry. Higher costs, freezing assets, blocking / refusing accounts etc.





So when they say it's not their fault, they're lying....
Since corporations are soulless money making entities, I refuse to believe some asshole at the top of Visa and Mastercard are anti-porn Christian nutjobs. So what could be the motivation for this fight against porn?

Some guesses.
  1. Financial motivation.
    1. Porn has the highest charge back rates. Could it be that it's not even a profitable endeavor?
      1. Even considering decreased margins due to whatever inefficiency is there due to charge back, I can't imagine it being unprofitable. But maybe the cost of processing a charge back and the frequency in which it happens results in a net negative.
    2. Could the potential negative press from "supporting" underage or whatever deviant shit hurt their bottom line?
      1. Seems unlikely. Who is gonna make the leap and hold these card companies accountable for stuff some other entities are doing? News of that loli Aussie dev hits. The public outrage is directed at the dev, not really patreon, and even less so Visa who processes those payments.
  2. Legal motivation.
    1. Maybe the payment processors have legal liabilities if their services are used for illegal transactions?
      1. Seems within the realm of possibilities, but I dunno enough to be sure.
 

morphnet

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Oh, but they didn't lied, they just twisted reality to match their narrative:

We agree with everything except CP, and it's the site fault if they've CP-like content, not ours. So, it's them who, by not removing that content, asked to be kept out, not us who blocked them.


It's a politician talking about a discussion he had with someone hired to talk with politicians. This must be kept in mind when decoding what was said.
This is true but they didn't stop with CP, they threw in almost everything else in too, like sex trafficking and exploitation. With pornhub it was CP but that was just one of the sites mindgeek owned and they still hit the others like brazzers etc. they also targeted their ads by refusing service to trafficJunky. It should be noted that visa agreed to continue support of the studio sites like brazzers with requirements.



Since corporations are soulless money making entities, I refuse to believe some asshole at the top of Visa and Mastercard are anti-porn Christian nutjobs. So what could be the motivation for this fight against porn?
You are partly correct, it is not solely the anti-porn nutjobs but they are a factor. At the moment because to the texas ruling i'm having a hard time finding a source that doesn't require login or an account but lookup united states versus playboy entertainment. Also as reference, the onlyfans issue.



" Mastercard's decision was lobbied for by Conservative groups such as National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), formerly known as Morality in Media, and Exodus Cry. "

Some guesses.
  1. Financial motivation.
    1. Porn has the highest charge back rates. Could it be that it's not even a profitable endeavor?
      1. Even considering decreased margins due to whatever inefficiency is there due to charge back, I can't imagine it being unprofitable. But maybe the cost of processing a charge back and the frequency in which it happens results in a net negative.
I don't think this one is the case because history clearly shows that they make up for it with higher fees and more charges. Plus with the evolution of technology the chances for increased charges has risen dramatically.

i.e. talkdirty number charge per minute -> cam shows charge for tokens, charge for site, charge for performer.

Could the potential negative press from "supporting" underage or whatever deviant shit hurt their bottom line?
  1. Seems unlikely. Who is gonna make the leap and hold these card companies accountable for stuff some other entities are doing? News of that loli Aussie dev hits. The public outrage is directed at the dev, not really patreon, and even less so Visa who processes those payments.
This could have a some impact but only because there is a clear double standard out there. You are 100% right in the case of the dev but in the case of pornhub they did take a PR hit, although not as large as they claim because many places (forums / boards / chats) had no idea what was happening or why, only that some of their favorite clips were missing.

Legal motivation.
  1. Maybe the payment processors have legal liabilities if their services are used for illegal transactions?
    1. Seems within the realm of possibilities, but I dunno enough to be sure.
This to a lesser degree does have an impact but there have not been enough lawsuits to cause the type of reactions they are showing across the board to the porn industry.

Also none of those explain why legal aged, none trafficked, professional porn stars, amateur performers (cams / photos / videos) are being targeted. So it is probably a combination of conservatives, what you mentioned above and probably a few other influences we haven't thought of.

Some other sources and extra material




sorry this one is behind a login but the heading explains the topic
 
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peterppp

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Also none of those explain why legal aged, none trafficked, professional porn stars, amateur performers (cams / photos / videos) are being targeted. So it is probably a combination of conservatives, what you mentioned above and probably a few other influences we haven't thought of.
since, as you say, these explanations arent enough, i think the "moral crusade" reason is more important than many people give it credit for. we know that groups like exodus cry fight against porn. we know that the heritage foundation with project 2025 wants to ban porn. these are powerful christian conservative groups, and it's 100% about moral crusading
 

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With pornhub it was CP but that was just one of the sites mindgeek owned and they still hit the others like brazzers etc. they also targeted their ads by refusing service to trafficJunky. It should be noted that visa agreed to continue support of the studio sites like brazzers with requirements.
The problem with mindgeek lie somewhere else.

We know who's expected to be the big boss, but who actually give the orders and own the company is a big unknown. And when you put this in parallel with their aggressive acquisition practices, it looks even more like a mafia.
There's a lot of investigation, some really serious, about this, but drown in between a tons of morality fighting. And I don't feel like starting to filter right now, sorry.

That VISA try its best to distance itself from their sites make them almost looks like a payment provider finally acting with a bit of sanity. Especially since, as you said, when it come to the studios that have been bought by mindgeek, and not created by them, they still keep the gate opened, as long as there's a cooperation from the studio.




" Mastercard's decision was lobbied for by Conservative groups such as National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), formerly known as Morality in Media, and Exodus Cry. "
They just act like any other terrorist organization, claiming that it's them who did it, especially when it's not. But if you look at , you strangely still find VISA and MasterCard as accepted payment methods.

NCOSE surely lobbied a lot, but the truth is that what made VISA/MasterCard move was the EU working on a regulation regarding porn platforms; among other things, mandatory proof that the models are of legal age and fully consenting.
Patreon, and any platform dealing with adult content, faced the same situation. But, while Patreon and the others changed their moderation process as asked by the payment processors, we only heard about OnlyFans... And we heard about it just the month they needed to change their mind and finally invest in their moderation.
Once they did, unsurprisingly VISA and MasterCard said "okay, we will continue to works with you". But this, no news reported it.


I don't think this one is the case because history clearly shows that they make up for it with higher fees and more charges.
You are forgetting something:

The charge back is the responsibility of the payment processor, and the fees cover all the processing expenses, plus the risk. If they pass their fees from 10% to 15% because it's adult content, the additional 5% will have to cover the charge back and its human processing.

Now, this being said, it's a false issue. Nowadays you can't process adult content without having a frozen deposit (from memory for Patreon it's 40 millions) that will precisely serve to cover the charge back. The amount is high because it's the interests that are expected to cover the expenses, in order for the deposit to never dry out.


[...] in the case of pornhub they did take a PR hit, although not as large as they claim because many places (forums / boards / chats) had no idea what was happening or why, only that some of their favorite clips were missing.
Pornhub have a long history of bad press, and obviously at some time it starts to spread on the payment processors.
regarding, a 30yo man abusing runaway girls between 12 and 16, then putting the videos online on pornhub. There's also investigations, made by the BBC, or made by other newspaper (the NewYork Times did one too if I remember correctly), showing a relatively easy access to CP and probable CP (starting around 15/16yo hard to tell without knowing the girl), and more than suspicious "it's consenting BDSM" movies.
I remember a movie that I watched, but ended turning me totally off. It was supposed to be a straight soft maledom, but ended being a girl, of an undetermined age between 15 and 25, suffering from obvious down syndrome, and time to time hardly articulating things like "please dad, stop"... If it was a play, the girl deserve an Oscar.


But the issue for the payment processors isn't the public reaction, it's the banking regulations. Since the 80's/90's, they are accomplice if they benefit from transactions that they know as being criminal or resulting from illegal activities. And like they benefit from all transactions through the functioning fees...
And here, it's something more serious. Even if they achieve to avoid a lawsuit, they'll not escape the penalties, that would starts at US$ hundreds of millions.



Also none of those explain why legal aged, none trafficked, professional porn stars, amateur performers (cams / photos / videos) are being targeted.
The explanation is simple: When it can cost you Millions, in case of doubt, abort.

Not that I'm defending payment processors, especially not against sex workers, but there's a reality that even such powerful entities like them can't escape from.
 

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[Sorry for the double post]

[...] i think the "moral crusade" reason is more important than many people give it credit for.
But also less than you think, because that crusade importance is massively country depending, while Internet is a cross country entity. Therefore, locally the crusade can surely have an impact, and that impact can possibly be felt locally, but globally it lead them nowhere.
 

peterppp

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But also less than you think, because that crusade importance is massively country depending, while Internet is a cross country entity. Therefore, locally the crusade can surely have an impact, and that impact can possibly be felt locally, but globally it lead them nowhere.
i think it's more than 0 which is what some people think
 
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morphnet

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since, as you say, these explanations arent enough, i think the "moral crusade" reason is more important than many people give it credit for. we know that groups like exodus cry fight against porn. we know that the heritage foundation with project 2025 wants to ban porn. these are powerful christian conservative groups, and it's 100% about moral crusading
Well the moral crusade was there before the financial crusade and it has a lot of money backing it so they are definitely a driving force.

They just act like any other terrorist organization, claiming that it's them who did it, especially when it's not. But if you look at , you strangely still find VISA and MasterCard as accepted payment methods.

NCOSE surely lobbied a lot, but the truth is that what made VISA/MasterCard move was the EU working on a regulation regarding porn platforms; among other things, mandatory proof that the models are of legal age and fully consenting.
Patreon, and any platform dealing with adult content, faced the same situation. But, while Patreon and the others changed their moderation process as asked by the payment processors, we only heard about OnlyFans... And we heard about it just the month they needed to change their mind and finally invest in their moderation.
Once they did, unsurprisingly VISA and MasterCard said "okay, we will continue to works with you". But this, no news reported it.
It was reported by the news, in one of the patreon threads I linked articles about onlyfans having access to visa and mastercard again and I'll link another one under this section. The thing with the EU regulation is it is enforced in the EU and differently by different countries but because visa and mastercard are global networks they have the reach to cut off access to their service even if sites are not breaking rules in the country they are being used in.

e.g. if a guy in sweden wants to use his mastercard to buy pay per view of bikini women 3 and mastercard has an issue with the company that makes bikini women 3 they can bloke them on their service even if it's totally legal in sweden.

the link


You are forgetting something:

The charge back is the responsibility of the payment processor, and the fees cover all the processing expenses, plus the risk. If they pass their fees from 10% to 15% because it's adult content, the additional 5% will have to cover the charge back and its human processing.

Now, this being said, it's a false issue. Nowadays you can't process adult content without having a frozen deposit (from memory for Patreon it's 40 millions) that will precisely serve to cover the charge back. The amount is high because it's the interests that are expected to cover the expenses, in order for the deposit to never dry out.
I was going to mention the deposit but you covered that part so like you said it's a false issue.

Pornhub have a long history of bad press, and obviously at some time it starts to spread on the payment processors.
regarding, a 30yo man abusing runaway girls between 12 and 16, then putting the videos online on pornhub. There's also investigations, made by the BBC, or made by other newspaper (the NewYork Times did one too if I remember correctly), showing a relatively easy access to CP and probable CP (starting around 15/16yo hard to tell without knowing the girl), and more than suspicious "it's consenting BDSM" movies.
I remember a movie that I watched, but ended turning me totally off. It was supposed to be a straight soft maledom, but ended being a girl, of an undetermined age between 15 and 25, suffering from obvious down syndrome, and time to time hardly articulating things like "please dad, stop"... If it was a play, the girl deserve an Oscar.
Agreed but none of that is reason to ban fictional incest, rape, beasty etc.

But the issue for the payment processors isn't the public reaction, it's the banking regulations. Since the 80's/90's, they are accomplice if they benefit from transactions that they know as being criminal or resulting from illegal activities. And like they benefit from all transactions through the functioning fees...
And here, it's something more serious. Even if they achieve to avoid a lawsuit, they'll not escape the penalties, that would starts at US$ hundreds of millions.
But again, these are all to do with real people and real crimes, none of which covers their reasons for forcing bans on fictional content. Forcing the removal of content focused on real victims of cp, sex trafficking, exploitation, revenge porn is a great thing and should be more than encouraged but they turn around and focused on fictional content and then went after it.

Financial services, governments, conservatives and religious groups have been going after porn long before the internet, this is just the new ground they are fighting over and while they should and must go after those creating victims they should not be allowed to use that as an excuse to go after none related and legal industries.

But also less than you think, because that crusade importance is massively country depending, while Internet is a cross country entity. Therefore, locally the crusade can surely have an impact, and that impact can possibly be felt locally, but globally it lead them nowhere.
I have to disagree here, the reach of the financial services and the US as a whole is global and they often leverage services for adopting or at least complying to "their" moral standards. As you said the internet is a cross country entity but so are visa and mastercard. It doesn't matter if you are in new york, cairo or rome, if they say they expect you to abide by their rules you have to or they pull their service.
 

anne O'nymous

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The thing with the EU regulation is it is enforced in the EU and differently by different countries but because visa and mastercard are global networks they have the reach to cut off access to their service even if sites are not breaking rules in the country they are being used in.
What is precisely what I was implying.

Both VISA and MasterCard aligned to the most plausible draft of the regulations that would be, at this time, the most strict for adults sites. And they did this in advance because they know that adapting would need time. And as the OnlyFans situation shown, they immediately don't cut off all links, leaving time to the platform to mature its decision, or change its mind.

Incidentally, must be noted that the draft they chose as base for their own regulation isn't the more strict, but the most realistically efficient. Among the stupid ideas that crossed the EU commission, there things as stupid as the obligation for all users, so viewers included, to be registered and to provide a copy of their ID.
So, it's to wonder to what extend they haven't also done this as indirect lobbying. Being obvious that, whatever they say about morality, and whatever the constraint them and the international banking regulations impose, they don't want to loose the sweet money that come with adult content. And for this, they need the control over both the access and the content publication, to be strict but realistic. Else, platforms would just close, not as protest against the regulation, but due to their impossibility to comply to those regulations.


the link
That globally say the same than me. Payment processors make the rules, but are also bounds by rules and, what I forgot to mention, their institutional customers, banks.

And honestly, I tried to understand the regulations, and time to time try again, but it's a big mess.
VISA and MasterCard are entities on their own rights, but also a partnership between banks. As payment processors, they have rules to follow, that come from international treaties. While as partnership between banks, they've other rules to follow, that also come from international treaties, but that also come from local law, and from all around the world since the partner banks come from all around the world. And as both, they have to ensure, to some extend, that their customers, both sellers and buyers, seem to comply to the law they depend on.

20 years ago, to simplify, it wasn't really an issue. Either you were a private individual, and then you were spending your money precisely where you were located, what mean only one set of rules to apply. Or you were a company, and then signed a long and strict contract before buying something to another company whatever if both were or not in the same country; contract that was covering the payment processor ass in the same time.
But now... I'll take an practical example: I don't like mouses and use a trackball, and use it with my left hand. There's only one company I found that make interesting and usable trackballs for left handed, it's located in Japan, and they sell through an US based company that you perhaps know, Amazon. How many set of regulations apply when a French citizen use the service of an US company, to buy a product from a Japanese company ?
Yet in this particular case, Amazon do a part of the control, ensuring, among other things, that you can't buy something illegal in your country. I can't find it back (apparently Amazon hired neo-nazi guard, and it parasite the results), but in the 10's Amazon had serious issues with Germany, for selling authentic nazi items to German citizens; they changed a lot of things since then, precisely due to this.
The same can be said for Patreon, that enforce the legality of their service for things like taxes by example. This is reassuring for payment processors, if there's a case of taxes fraud, they'll not be involved. When you process what is probably billions of transaction every day, I'm sure that you are happy each time you know that you'll not have to do some post processing about some of them.


Agreed but none of that is reason to ban fictional incest, rape, beasty etc.
As I said a lot of time, it's a bad timing, or more precisely the consequence of the collision between two reports.

I posted the link in a thread regarding Patreon ban, probably in 2019, but haven't been able to find it back since; I found it totally by hazard :( All come from an UK local politician that, since a long time was trying hard to become a big name and, for this, was crusading in the same way than NCOSE.
On his official blog he explained how he contacted VISA after discovering that some of the adult models were using their Patreon account as showcase for prostitution. This included , that was the top 1 Patreon account at this time, and through the fees were giving something that should be around US$ 50,000/month to Patreon. It's not much in regard of Patreon profits, but enormous when it's a share of the profits coming from prostitution.
And here lie the problem. Patreon was providing hosting services, served as point of contact, and was taking a share of the money, for prostitution. They were falling in a grey area being, or not being, a pimp, depending how justice would interpret all this.
On that side of the problem, they had no other choices than to comply. This while VISA had also no other choices that to force them to comply or stop their collaboration. As I said, as payment processors they are legally accomplice if they benefit from a known criminal or illegal activity, and now they were aware about that activity.
Then, around one week later the same politician added another entry on his blog, because he just discovered adult games. And obviously, this entry was to explain that he contacted VISA a second time, this time to report numerous case of incest and all on Patreon.

Did VISA understood or not that it was two different cases, I don't know, and I'm not sure that it really matters. What matters is that Patreon was back to the wall; "remove all prostitution and remove incest and co, or you can't anymore use our services". Difficult to answer to this with, "we will remove prostitution, but for incest and co, we keep it when fictional".
Even more difficult that two months before, Patreon just finished another round with their investors, . They weren't in position to risk loosing VISA support by starting to negotiate what would be banned and what would be kept.


Financial services, governments, conservatives and religious groups have been going after porn long before the internet, [...]
In some parts of the world, a difference that matters when it come to Internet.
I live in an utopia when it come to this, in France we don't really care about porn. We have a Law that can be strict; any depiction of a lookalike minor will be qualified as CP even if the girl is of legal age, and bestiality is a animal abuse. But this put aside, do whatever you want.
Of course, one country isn't enough to stop them, but globally it set the tendency in EU. Be more open minded when it come to pornography and sex workers, while still protecting the person vulnerable (children and animals). It's not necessarily sensible, but the change is slow in progress. In fact, the more those groups are active and loud in the US, the more EU countries tend to response by doing the opposite.


I have to disagree here, the reach of the financial services and the US as a whole is global and they often leverage services for adopting or at least complying to "their" moral standards.
See above.

Plus, internet is global, and Europe is far to be a bad place to move your infrastructure and head office. Companies would be taxed a bit more, but it's still better that closing the doors. And at terms in the US it will lead to a conflict between two interests: morality or economy.
If they choose morality, they'll loose all the companies that make profits, in a way or another, with adult content. And they'll loose them in profit of places like Europe, South Korea, Japan or South America. Europe being in first place, because currently the most likely to accept their content.

And, of course, financial services care about money before anything else. The US represent around ~300 Millions potential customers, it's nothing compared to the 7.7 Billions none US customers; ~5 Billions is you remove countries where Porn is purely illegal. All this for how many hundreds of Billions of transaction (and so fees) due to the sole adult content.
(link in French, sorry), estimate a total turnover around US$ 140 Billion, just for the online porn videos. Against around US$ 25 Billions for Netflix at the same time. And if you want a confirmation that adult content is profitable, just remember that there's 30 servers behind this forum; servers big enough to serve the ~20,000 users logged in at anytime of the day. And all this is almost entirely funded through the ads.
Do you really believe that payment processors are ready to lets go their share on this ? And to do it just to please a minority lobbying in a country that in the end is just a minority of their customers ? I can be wrong, but I really doubt.
 
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Diconica

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Edit 1: Trimmed some stuff out to better summarize tweets

A Japanese politician recently had a meeting with some executives at Visa over in San Francisco and they say that it wasn't them who blocked off Pixiv and everything else.
They stated that they can make judgements on the legality of transactions but not the content so long as it isn't CP, SA, etc. They did give an example with how they won't do anything if you buy a gun legally in America even if there's a strong opinion against it. Decisions that would affect Pixiv, Patreon and the like are relegated to the middle men like merchant contract companies and payment processing companies.

Source:


Back in 2005 I was running a number of websites. Some of which were adult ... I also ran a social media network.
It wasn't the credit card companies that were an issue when it came to such stuff but the banks issuing cards.
It had to do with banking laws by the US government. I had to prove the various sites were separate and there was no other activities going on at the premise. That include physical and financial audits.
Visa and MC just provide a service to the banks. The banks can set additional restrictions especially when it comes to the part tied to their banking system.
Different countries do the similar. If I remember correctly there are several treaties that are in effect responsible for it.
 

morphnet

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What is precisely what I was implying.

Both VISA and MasterCard aligned to the most plausible draft of the regulations that would be, at this time, the most strict for adults sites. And they did this in advance because they know that adapting would need time. And as the OnlyFans situation shown, they immediately don't cut off all links, leaving time to the platform to mature its decision, or change its mind.

Incidentally, must be noted that the draft they chose as base for their own regulation isn't the more strict, but the most realistically efficient. Among the stupid ideas that crossed the EU commission, there things as stupid as the obligation for all users, so viewers included, to be registered and to provide a copy of their ID.
So, it's to wonder to what extend they haven't also done this as indirect lobbying. Being obvious that, whatever they say about morality, and whatever the constraint them and the international banking regulations impose, they don't want to loose the sweet money that come with adult content. And for this, they need the control over both the access and the content publication, to be strict but realistic. Else, platforms would just close, not as protest against the regulation, but due to their impossibility to comply to those regulations.
You are 100% correct but this just goes to further highlight the war on porn. The regulations, laws, rules and policies being passed in the US and EU and other countries are all under the banner of protecting people, stopping illegal activities like CP, sex trafficking, exploitation etc. and yet they all target the adult industry. On any given day you can find thousands of posts / ads on twitter, facebook advertising porn, sharing porn and linking to direct communications through facebook itself or private shows, yet strangely enough all these sites and most like them are ignored. It's not like there isn't a well known history with these kinds of sites, it's been known for a long time that they are used for adult content and also illegal adult content and yet there is no talk about needing to provide photo ID to use them.

Strangely enough there is a post in facebook help about ID and it's not to help protect against illegal adult content or activities, it's to protect against scams, phishing and foreign political influence.

Untitled.png

So if the goal is to protect then it should apply to all adult content on all sites, yet they only target the adult industry. When those vulnerable are being targeted for meet ups or to take their clothes off on cam, it's not happening on pornhub and yet the focus remains on adult sites and the adult industry.

That globally say the same than me. Payment processors make the rules, but are also bounds by rules and, what I forgot to mention, their institutional customers, banks.

And honestly, I tried to understand the regulations, and time to time try again, but it's a big mess.
VISA and MasterCard are entities on their own rights, but also a partnership between banks. As payment processors, they have rules to follow, that come from international treaties. While as partnership between banks, they've other rules to follow, that also come from international treaties, but that also come from local law, and from all around the world since the partner banks come from all around the world. And as both, they have to ensure, to some extend, that their customers, both sellers and buyers, seem to comply to the law they depend on.
Again 100% true but many of the policies have nothing to do with the law or treaties and many not just from the financial service are just punitive on grounds outside the law i.e. moral stand. For example, it is not illegal to be a cam model, yet many have reported being denied bank accounts, there are also reports of models / performers being refused access to the US. Some are even weirder than that, there was a virtual reality sex worker, yup someone who had the avatar engage in sex, that was denied a tourist visa for prostitution....



So they do need to adhere to laws and treaties but they often go beyond those and if they are not doing it because there is a law then there must be some other driving force at work and one influential enough to affect policies outside the law.

20 years ago, to simplify, it wasn't really an issue. Either you were a private individual, and then you were spending your money precisely where you were located, what mean only one set of rules to apply. Or you were a company, and then signed a long and strict contract before buying something to another company whatever if both were or not in the same country; contract that was covering the payment processor ass in the same time.
But now... I'll take an practical example: I don't like mouses and use a trackball, and use it with my left hand. There's only one company I found that make interesting and usable trackballs for left handed, it's located in Japan, and they sell through an US based company that you perhaps know, Amazon. How many set of regulations apply when a French citizen use the service of an US company, to buy a product from a Japanese company ?
And yet when I search "amazon hentai books" and click the link i get taken straight to the page, in fact if I click any of the links I'm taken straight to the pages, no age verification, to request to ask am i allowed to view adult material, i go straight to

hen2.png
hen 1.png

This is why I say there is a double standard and that they are clearly targeting the adult industry. Talk of ID's for porn sites, Patreon needing age verification and amazon, facebook, twitter opens to tit's and pet play without even checking.

I posted the link in a thread regarding Patreon ban, probably in 2019, but haven't been able to find it back since; I found it totally by hazard :( All come from an UK local politician that, since a long time was trying hard to become a big name and, for this, was crusading in the same way than NCOSE.
On his official blog he explained how he contacted VISA after discovering that some of the adult models were using their Patreon account as showcase for prostitution. This included , that was the top 1 Patreon account at this time, and through the fees were giving something that should be around US$ 50,000/month to Patreon. It's not much in regard of Patreon profits, but enormous when it's a share of the profits coming from prostitution.
And here lie the problem. Patreon was providing hosting services, served as point of contact, and was taking a share of the money, for prostitution. They were falling in a grey area being, or not being, a pimp, depending how justice would interpret all this.
This part confuses me a bit, how can a local UK politician have influence but you also said in earlier posts

But also less than you think, because that crusade importance is massively country depending, while Internet is a cross country entity. Therefore, locally the crusade can surely have an impact, and that impact can possibly be felt locally, but globally it lead them nowhere.
While the UK politician is local and his would fall under a local crusade, the moral crusade is back by religious groups around the world as well as charities and other organizations. So wouldn't one politician have less impact?

On that side of the problem, they had no other choices than to comply. This while VISA had also no other choices that to force them to comply or stop their collaboration. As I said, as payment processors they are legally accomplice if they benefit from a known criminal or illegal activity, and now they were aware about that activity.
But this applies to amazon, facebook, twitter etc. so if it is just the influence of legal troubles they would surely make demands of the others as well but they haven't so there must be more at play here.

In some parts of the world, a difference that matters when it come to Internet.
I live in an utopia when it come to this, in France we don't really care about porn. We have a Law that can be strict; any depiction of a lookalike minor will be qualified as CP even if the girl is of legal age, and bestiality is a animal abuse. But this put aside, do whatever you want.
Of course, one country isn't enough to stop them, but globally it set the tendency in EU. Be more open minded when it come to pornography and sex workers, while still protecting the person vulnerable (children and animals). It's not necessarily sensible, but the change is slow in progress. In fact, the more those groups are active and loud in the US, the more EU countries tend to response by doing the opposite.
This is very true the main problem here though is that while the EU does have many progressive ideas (and some very regressive) it is stagnating in terms of access. US you have amazon, steam, facebook, twitter etc. Japan you have dlsite, Pixiv etc. China you have tiktok but nothing from the EU. The main financial services visa, mastercard are US as well. So while the EU can accept or bloke sites in the EU, the US can bloke sites around the world.

i.e. The german government can bloke germans from accessing a service in a polish game, the US can bloke everyone from that service except local polish accounts and even then I'm sure they would place pressure on the local banks to refuse access.

Plus most EU companies and corporations deal with or through the US so even if the US can't / won't cut them off entirely they do have the better bargaining position when it comes to dictating policies.

Plus, internet is global, and Europe is far to be a bad place to move your infrastructure and head office. Companies would be taxed a bit more, but it's still better that closing the doors.
The issue here is even if they do open in or move to the EU they are still forced to deal with US based companies, services, financial services and policies, so while they might receive some protection from and in the EU their scope and range would be drastically limited.

I.e. if patreon moved to brussels, they would still have the same demands waiting for them in their new offices and if they declined they would still loose visa / mastercard and loose access to many potential creators and subscribers.

And at terms in the US it will lead to a conflict between two interests: morality or economy.
If they choose morality, they'll loose all the companies that make profits, in a way or another, with adult content. And they'll loose them in profit of places like Europe, South Korea, Japan or South America. Europe being in first place, because currently the most likely to accept their content.
This could be one of the reasons for the war on porn, the US chose economy long ago and have been fighting moral issues on a small stage to keep people happy while companies and corporations run havoc. Now they need some thing to target with a long term campaign. Immigration can do in a pinch but there is not real money behind it because as bad as people claim it is, it is still cheap labor and that is like gold in a capitalist country. Sex and porn seem to do the trick. They've managed to make porn the bad guy for decades.

Why have a huge march because the same company poisoned a river making children sick for the 10th time when you can march about how awful it is to teach sex in schools and that the kids are watching penthouse on cable (of course no one bothers asking why the parents let the kids have access to that channel with todays technology but that is another story)

So maybe the war on porn is partly throwing moral crumbs to the masses so they don't complain that economy was picked?

And, of course, financial services care about money before anything else. The US represent around ~300 Millions potential customers, it's nothing compared to the 7.7 Billions none US customers; ~5 Billions is you remove countries where Porn is purely illegal. All this for how many hundreds of Billions of transaction (and so fees) due to the sole adult content.
(link in French, sorry), estimate a total turnover around US$ 140 Billion, just for the online porn videos. Against around US$ 25 Billions for Netflix at the same time. And if you want a confirmation that adult content is profitable, just remember that there's 30 servers behind this forum; servers big enough to serve the ~20,000 users logged in at anytime of the day. And all this is almost entirely funded through the ads.
This part is the part that stumps me the most, sex sells, it's an old but true saying and yet there is no denying there is a war on porn. That being said, prostitution could pull in billions too if it was legalized and regulated and that is still illegal in most places so there are somethings where the bottom line does not seem to matter.

And to do it just to please a minority lobbying in a country that in the end is just a minority of their customers ? I can be wrong, but I really doubt.
Well it's not just a minority lobbying though, when you have groups around the world supporting the cause and add to that the religious groups, you end up with a very large backing for them.

The roman catholic archdiocese of washington


At the end of the day though all we can do is speculate and try read into events as to the how and why but we can all agree that it is a mess and in regards to most adult gaming, completely unfair.

We can also all agree i think, that while the number of people who enjoy porn in all it's forms is ridiculously high, the number of those people willing to contact their government representatives, banks etc. and try get things changed is ridiculously low.
 

anne O'nymous

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Strangely enough there is a post in facebook help about ID [...]
EU rules. I don't remember the name of the text, but as "big platform", Facebook have stronger obligation in terms of moderation if it want to be available to EU users. But how they handle it is their decision, EU only ask them what they do, on plan to do, and say if it's enough or not. So, "ensure that your users take responsibility for their content" can perfectly be answered by "we ban VPN and known TOR exit nodes", as well as, "you need to present three valid ID and a recommendation letter from 10 persons to register".
The last one is excessive, but by being "more than enough", it's also "enough". And, of course, the less a platform will want to spend on moderation, the stricter will be its rules.


So if the goal is to protect then it should apply to all adult content on all sites, yet they only target the adult industry.
Because it's where the issue currently is. Or, perhaps more accurately, it's where the issue can be fought.

Previously I gave one of the reason why PornHub was hit so hardly. Force incest, real sexual abuse, and videos involving real underage girls. This need to be addressed and need to be fought, I know that you agree.

After, yes, there's other sites...
You say that one can see NSFW content on facebook, please, tell me where, I only get softcore AI generated bikini girls ;) More seriously, it's an issue, yes, but it's an issue addressed by the EU; slowly, too slowly probably, but addressed. There's also porn, and CP, on twitter. It was previously addressed, not sure that it's still addressed now that Elmo is on command.
But the issue here is that it's a site responsibility, and Elmo case demonstrate it. But it doesn't mean that there's nothing that can be done, nor nothing that is done. In 2023, Facebook was fined for more than 2 Billions euro by the EU, and they face a 13 Billions fine this year (10% of the year turnover). Both not for porn/adult content, but still.
The Law can say whatever you want it to say, as long as the companies are ready to pay, they'll not care. But all this need time, because you can't fine someone without a trial, even if it's not the same kind of trial than you and me can face. And, of course, you need to reach the threshold where the company find it more profitable to comply than to pay the fine.

And, of course, there's the more delicate case of the "other adult sites".
But here, it's both a question of visibility and capabilities. Those sites are way bellow all radars, and facing a procedure, they would simply disappear... to be created under a new identity two days later.
This being said, the reason why they aren't targeted is mostly their low visibility. Simply because it apply to the public as well as the legislator. A site like F95Zone is the biggest adult gaming community, yet there's only 7.6 millions members... Sites that are bellow the radar present few risk when it come to minor being exposed to adult content, because only few of them know about those sites. Targeting the biggest ones cover 95% of the minors, even if, yes, it impact the adult industry.
Rest the protection against abuse... But those sites share illegal, knowing perfectly that the content is illegal, and it's not with a Law that you fight them, it's with police investigations.


For example, it is not illegal to be a cam model, yet many have reported being denied bank accounts, there are also reports of models / performers being refused access to the US.
You're wrong. Anywhere where strip clubs are illegal, so a big part of the world, being a nude cam model is also illegal. It's not because the strip club is your house, and the clients are behind their computer, that it isn't a strip club.

But here, the issue isn't the Law or, more precisely, it's not the protection laws. The issue lie in the labour code. If "sex worker" was recognized as a profession, it would provide to the payment processors and banks the needed guaranties, and they would have no reasons, and even less legal space, to terminate the accounts.
It's the same issue than with NOPY when they were hit. Would it have been an official company, and not an individual offering a service, it would have been more difficult to terminate the account. Companies have rights, and you can't hinder their operation without good and purely legal reasons; in fact, in most of the world you can't do it without a court ruling. And the same would apply to sex workers if they had a legal status.
This would also solve a big part of the issue with adult/porn sites. As content creator, you would just need provide the legal document proving that you are a professional. Yet, when I say "document", it's a big word, you would have a registration ID, and this would already be enough in most case. Payment processors and banks would just need to have a professional platform where sites can validate that the registration ID and the bank account correspond, no need to even provide your ID.

But for this to become a reality, society need to break an around 100yo moral taboo.


And yet when I search "amazon hentai books" and click the link i get taken straight to the page, in fact if I click any of the links I'm taken straight to the pages, no age verification, to request to ask am i allowed to view adult material, i go straight to
While I also aren't asked anything, personally I only got SFW covers (there's nipples in one of your cover) and only hentai, unlike you who's to stories or photo novels, I don't know.
Different countries imply different regulations, what lead to different results.


This part confuses me a bit, how can a local UK politician have influence but you also said in earlier posts
He surely had no influence over the decision. But he wasn't a pure nobody, and he also known where to find all the information, in order to not say "hey, there's prostitution", but point to all the laws and regulations violated by VISA because they were offering their payment processing services.
So, the letter/mail was transferred to the legal department, that said "he's right, if it's true we face all this", then transferred it to whatever department in charge of the investigation. Department that couldn't conclude otherwise than, "he's right, there's prostitution".
Then, when he came back one week later, this time to talk about incest and all, he benefited from a positive bias. And, who know what content was hidden behind obscure Patreon accounts with a tenth patrons ? It suffice of a single account with real bestiality, apparent incest or apparent none consensual sex, to make the whole claim true and turn "drawn/rendered fiction" into "incentive to".


i.e. The german government can bloke germans from accessing a service in a polish game, the US can bloke everyone from that service except local polish accounts and even then I'm sure they would place pressure on the local banks to refuse access.
No, the US can't do that, at least not for big entities. It's been a really long time that major websites aren't located in one place, they have servers all around the world; By example, Netflix have servers hosted directly on site by the major ISP (for information, ). As for smaller entities, they tend to be hosted locally, because it's generally cheaper for their needs, so only US based ones would be impacted.

As for , most are US based, but a blockage at that level wouldn't works. By example, Verisign once tried to use its root servers to redirect unassigned domains to their registar service. They faced the anger from all the internet actors, from Microsoft or Google to more local ISPs, and returned to a normal service in less than a week. If the US tried to enforce a blockage at DNS root level, those root servers would quickly be removed from the loop, and new entities, none US based, would replace them.
While it's unprecedented for , there's no real doubt that the same would apply. It would just apply differently, with sites switching to another service provider because US based ones wouldn't be reliable anymore. It would need more time, but there's enough powerful peoples and entities who care about Net Neutrality, for alternative to quickly raise.

Internet is something really magic.

To simplify, everything is between the hands of the . It's an US based association, but the keyword here is "association", they can relocate in less than a week, just moving to their Geneva office, while registering the association in Switzerland. And while there's members of the association that live for profit, the vast majority is for the Net Neutrality, and have proved more than once that it's not just words, and that they have the power to enforce it.
They wouldn't be powerful enough to make the USA change its mind (yet so far their lobbying worked), but the result of any stupid decision made by the USA would be for the country to be cut off internet, not for internet to be cut off the world.
And for everything that isn't physical (backbones and their routers by example), nothing is owned. Verisign, to keep my previous example, have the authorization to operate DNS root servers. F95 pay for the right to use F95zone.to domain name, and so on. This while the physical part is so spread around the world now. By example, here's the situation that happened . the lowest resilience score was 26%, what mean that, for this country, internet was working at only 26% of its capability, with four backbones off....


Plus most EU companies and corporations deal with or through the US so even if the US can't / won't cut them off entirely they do have the better bargaining position when it comes to dictating policies.
All the above imply that there's no real bargaining possibility on internet.
"Globally strong, locally vulnerable", this apply both physically (the cables) and logically (the traffic). You can block the content on your territory, and you can forbid the servers to be hosted in your country, but you can't block the content outside of your territory, nor prevent the servers to be hosted outside of your country. And while the US have the biggest hosting companies, EU ones are far to be bad and, like I said above, already host servers from all the biggest sites.

Of course, the effectiveness will also depend on the entity size. The smaller the site is, the more vulnerable it is, because he don't necessarily have the possibility to survive during the time needed for the transfer, nor the fund for the said transfer.


The issue here is even if they do open in or move to the EU they are still forced to deal with US based companies, services, financial services and policies, so while they might receive some protection from and in the EU their scope and range would be drastically limited.
The only US based entities they would have to deal with would be the payment processors. PayPal would tell them to fuck off, VISA/MasterCard would continue to deal with them due to their nature.


I.e. if patreon moved to brussels, they would still have the same demands waiting for them in their new offices and if they declined they would still loose visa / mastercard and loose access to many potential creators and subscribers.
And how do you achieve to make VISA/MasterCard enforce the new policy ?

A country can only regulate its own banking system but, while being US based, VISA and MasterCard do not depend on the US banking system, they works with it, what is different. They would have to follow the US regulation for all transaction from and/or to an US based bank, but not for any transaction that wouldn't implicate an US based bank. And if they decided to apply those regulation world wide, they would loose the support from a, more or less big, part of their partners; what would increase the cost, and therefore reduce their benefits.


This part is the part that stumps me the most, sex sells, it's an old but true saying and yet there is no denying there is a war on porn.
In the USA, and mostly only in the USA. But in the rest of the world, either they stand on their illegality stance, or they start to open up. It's obviously a short summary, and it regard only the law, not the society, but if , the tendency is for a laxer regulation, not for a stricter one.
After, of course there's the internet thing you pointed above. It's the door in which Morality crusaders put their foot, with hope to enter the debate. But so far globally they only achieved to get facade measures; the law say that, but we know that the law can't be fully applied.


That being said, prostitution could pull in billions too if it was legalized and regulated and that is still illegal in most places so there are somethings where the bottom line does not seem to matter.
It's the 100yo moral taboo I talked about above. During the 20th century first half, prostitution was massively banned all around the world. And since then, it's simply became a taboo. Not in the way that people refuse to talk about prostitution, but they refuse to acknowledge that it's something real that touch more than a handful of girls forced into it.
I remember, in the mid 80's, with AIDS concern some associations tried to make brothels be legal again, arguing, with reason, that it would permit to screen prostitutes for AIDS and other STDs, while protecting them from clients that would refuse to use condoms. It was badly receive by the public and the politics, because (to summarize) "those girls need to be helped out of prostitution, not encouraged to continue".
It felt morally acceptable for them to endanger prostitutes' life, because otherwise they would have to admit that prostitution exist and that, while generally starting out of necessity, a big part of the prostitutes do it on their own will.

And it's the same all around the world. There's, more or less, as many association promoting a legalization of sex jobs, than there's association crusading against pornography. But starting to listen what they have to say would mean admitting that sex can be a job, and a job that one choose deliberately...
 

morphnet

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EU rules. I don't remember the name of the text, but as "big platform", Facebook have stronger obligation in terms of moderation if it want to be available to EU users. But how they handle it is their decision, EU only ask them what they do, on plan to do, and say if it's enough or not. So, "ensure that your users take responsibility for their content" can perfectly be answered by "we ban VPN and known TOR exit nodes", as well as, "you need to present three valid ID and a recommendation letter from 10 persons to register".
The last one is excessive, but by being "more than enough", it's also "enough". And, of course, the less a platform will want to spend on moderation, the stricter will be its rules.
This is why I say there is a double standard, facebook host many porn and adult groups and allows the linking / sharing of porn from other sites to it's site / groups and yet no age check or verification and visa and mastercard work with them. The risks to them from people selling porn on facebook are there yet they do not make the same demands on facebook.



Because it's where the issue currently is. Or, perhaps more accurately, it's where the issue can be fought.
That implies targeting. People are more at risk on facebook than on pornhub but they target pornhub because that is who they can fight. That also means though that laws, treaties and policies are not the driving force behind these measures.

Previously I gave one of the reason why PornHub was hit so hardly. Force incest, real sexual abuse, and videos involving real underage girls. This need to be addressed and need to be fought, I know that you agree.
I do agree 110% that shit should be scrubbed from the internet and real life BUT those same things can and have been found on myspace, twitter, facebook, whatsapp, telegram etc. etc. etc. and those sites are the real danger. They are the places where people convince minors to meet up or send nudes, where people send revenge porn to those in the victims contacts but pornhub is the one that get targeted.

After, yes, there's other sites...
You say that one can see NSFW content on facebook, please, tell me where, I only get softcore AI generated bikini girls ;)
lol

More seriously, it's an issue, yes, but it's an issue addressed by the EU; slowly, too slowly probably, but addressed.
Not sure why the EU, facebook is US based and before that was myspace and both had and facebook has a history of porn problems, from revenge porn to private groups sharing beasty etc. not to mention they have been used to contact minors as i mentioned above. So why is pornhub, onlyfans, patreon all having harsh terms dictated to them all in the name of evil porn and protecting society and the sites with the most danger being told to govern themselves?

If the law states that access to porn must be monitored and restricted through systems like age verification then they are saying porn, meaning all porn but they only target adult sites with demands. Shouldn't amazon and facebook also have age verification and if they don't shouldn't mastercard and visa make the same threats against them that they made against onlyfans and patreon?

There's also porn, and CP, on twitter. It was previously addressed, not sure that it's still addressed now that Elmo is on command. But the issue here is that it's a site responsibility, and Elmo case demonstrate it.
There still is unfortunately and it's growing with ads to telegrams groups and previews being posted every day.
Why is it the sites responsibility when it comes to twitter and the others but not when it comes to patreon or onlyfans?

But it doesn't mean that there's nothing that can be done, nor nothing that is done. In 2023, Facebook was fined for more than 2 Billions euro by the EU, and they face a 13 Billions fine this year (10% of the year turnover). Both not for porn/adult content, but still.
The important part of that is not for adult content or porn. The are a lot of stories about revenge porn and people being caught trying to meet up with minor through facebook and yet the only thing I can find about mastercard and visa and facebook is them turning facebook down when it tried to make it's own currency.



The Law can say whatever you want it to say, as long as the companies are ready to pay, they'll not care. But all this need time, because you can't fine someone without a trial, even if it's not the same kind of trial than you and me can face. And, of course, you need to reach the threshold where the company find it more profitable to comply than to pay the fine.
This again shows the double standard

You're wrong. Anywhere where strip clubs are illegal, so a big part of the world, being a nude cam model is also illegal. It's not because the strip club is your house, and the clients are behind their computer, that it isn't a strip club.
Except we aren't talking about those parts of the world because those parts of the world are not trying to force patreon to ban certain types of porn, those parts of the world do not have a voice in mastercard or visa policy making.




We are talking mostly western countries with a few exceptions like Japan that has also been affected by the policies of financial services like mastercard and visa.

But here, the issue isn't the Law or, more precisely, it's not the protection laws. The issue lie in the labour code. If "sex worker" was recognized as a profession, it would provide to the payment processors and banks the needed guaranties, and they would have no reasons, and even less legal space, to terminate the accounts.
We aren't talking about terminating accounts, they were told they were not allowed to open an account, although cancelling / closing accounts does happen too. Also we are talking about camming which is legal in the US and the "sex worker" link was for a UK citizen that did not engage in sex but use an avatar in a program and wanted to visit friends in the US on a tourist visa.

While I also aren't asked anything, personally I only got SFW covers (there's nipples in one of your cover) and only hentai, unlike you who's to stories or photo novels, I don't know.
Different countries imply different regulations, what lead to different results.
Yet none of that matter when we are taking about chasing sunsets, mastercard and visa want to follow the law and ban incest etc. from patreon but I can buy it from amazon with no age check or problems, that makes no sense at all.
How can amazon sell incest manga etc. but patreon has to ban it or loose mastercard and visa?

He surely had no influence over the decision. But he wasn't a pure nobody, and he also known where to find all the information, in order to not say "hey, there's prostitution", but point to all the laws and regulations violated by VISA because they were offering their payment processing services.
But that would not have been an issue, if the UK did go after anyone it might have been the dev of the game / dev's of the games. They would not have opened lawsuits against visa or mastercard.
This can clearly been seen with the example from the other thread there the charges were worse than incest in a game and yet no legal action was mentioned or taken against mastercard or visa.

Also if that were the case why would incest games / stories etc. on patreon be a problem but amazon can sell them freely? wouldn't going after amazon with it's deeper pocket make more sense?

To add to that, if one little UK politician can find all that info then conservatives with more backing and financial support could find much more than him and push the issue more.

So, the letter/mail was transferred to the legal department, that said "he's right, if it's true we face all this", then transferred it to whatever department in charge of the investigation. Department that couldn't conclude otherwise than, "he's right, there's prostitution".
But that's not the case, camming is legal in the UK too.

Then, when he came back one week later, this time to talk about incest and all, he benefited from a positive bias. And, who know what content was hidden behind obscure Patreon accounts with a tenth patrons ? It suffice of a single account with real bestiality, apparent incest or apparent none consensual sex, to make the whole claim true and turn "drawn/rendered fiction" into "incentive to".
Except that there is real beasty on facebook and amazon does sell incest manga so it still makes no sense to target patreon.

No, the US can't do that, at least not for big entities. It's been a really long time that major websites aren't located in one place, they have servers all around the world; By example, Netflix have servers hosted directly on site by the major ISP (for information, ). As for smaller entities, they tend to be hosted locally, because it's generally cheaper for their needs, so only US based ones would be impacted.
Remember we are not talking about netflix though, the EU can ban access to Pixiv BUT some countries in the EU might block the site completely while others restrict access to it BUT when mastercard / visa (i.e. the US) pull there service all people around the world who use those cards loose access to Pixiv. So essentially yes they can.

In a more context friendly example

If the bank of england refuses service to patreon then all the people with that card loose the ability to subscribe
If mastercard and visa refuse service to patreon people around the world loose the ability to subscribe.

All the above imply that there's no real bargaining possibility on internet.
"Globally strong, locally vulnerable", this apply both physically (the cables) and logically (the traffic). You can block the content on your territory, and you can forbid the servers to be hosted in your country, but you can't block the content outside of your territory, nor prevent the servers to be hosted outside of your country. And while the US have the biggest hosting companies, EU ones are far to be bad and, like I said above, already host servers from all the biggest sites.
This is exactly what mastercard and visa have done, they said no X content or we pull our service.

The only US based entities they would have to deal with would be the payment processors. PayPal would tell them to fuck off, VISA/MasterCard would continue to deal with them due to their nature.
No because it's doesn't matter if they are headquartered in the EU, mastercard and visa would still insist on them banning incest, beasty, non con etc.

And how do you achieve to make VISA/MasterCard enforce the new policy ?

A country can only regulate its own banking system but, while being US based, VISA and MasterCard do not depend on the US banking system, they works with it, what is different. They would have to follow the US regulation for all transaction from and/or to an US based bank, but not for any transaction that wouldn't implicate an US based bank. And if they decided to apply those regulation world wide, they would loose the support from a, more or less big, part of their partners; what would increase the cost, and therefore reduce their benefits.
That should be the case but it's not, if it were then mastercard and visa would say that the ban on content would be region based.

e.g. regions where incest is illegal, patreon has to ban dev's from making that content but where it is legal they can offer their service.

But that is not the case and it can be done because there are strict gambling laws now that have been enforced for games offering loot boxes and in the regions where the law is the games don't offer them but in regions where it's not illegal you can still get loot boxes. So it is possible IF the reasons you gave were the problem.

In the USA, and mostly only in the USA. But in the rest of the world, either they stand on their illegality stance, or they start to open up. It's obviously a short summary, and it regard only the law, not the society, but if , the tendency is for a laxer regulation, not for a stricter one.
After, of course there's the internet thing you pointed above. It's the door in which Morality crusaders put their foot, with hope to enter the debate. But so far globally they only achieved to get facade measures; the law say that, but we know that the law can't be fully applied.
Which is why IF the EU had a company like mastercard or visa and it had the same reach, it would probably not force sites like patreon to ban content (apart from the obvious...real beasty etc.) and patreon would have an alternative to those two BUT the EU doesn't and so here we are....

And it's the same all around the world. There's, more or less, as many association promoting a legalization of sex jobs, than there's association crusading against pornography. But starting to listen what they have to say would mean admitting that sex can be a job, and a job that one choose deliberately...
That is all true but there is a lot more to it as well, a lack of education and accurate information about it, the fact that the groups asking for it to be legalized are poorly funded while the anti-groups are well funded and back by many religious groups and the fact that many people around the world live by the "it doesn't affect me so it's not my problem" creed.

Also it's important not to forget the context of all this...

The adult industry is being targeted and there is a clear double standard at work and the context of this thread is that our porn games are being targeted and those responsible are claiming they are not to blame.

The changes to Pixiv, Fantai, patreon and the rest are all in response to demands made on them by mastercard, visa, paypal etc.

In mainstream

People can watch a bear cub get raped by a hillbilly in brickleberry, people can watch steve makeout with his sister hailey or a fish ask to look up francine's skirt in american dad, people can watching a guy have sex with an octopus in the boys etc. etc. etc.

In porn

People can order incest hentai from amazon or people can swap real life beasty pics on facebook or place ads for underage model on twitter

BUT No one is allowed to subscribe to games like chasing sunsets or man of the house.

There is a clear double standard.
 

anne O'nymous

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That implies targeting. People are more at risk on facebook than on pornhub but they target pornhub because that is who they can fight. That also means though that laws, treaties and policies are not the driving force behind these measures.
Once again, my answer here is the 2 Billions fine against Facebook for 2023, and the 13 Billions one they face for this year. Not only the EU can perfectly fight against Facebook, but they also succeed at doing it.
If Pornhub seem to be the main target while Facebook seem to be leaved in peace, it's because the news talk about the not cooperative MindGeek way more than the cooperative Meta. By example, .

But Pornhub, it's shaddy owned, it's porn, it had been caught more than once with CP and content shared against the "models" will, and it have a long history being anything but cooperative. Just that year they , with the intent to prevent the publication of an investigation report; Investigation launched after a woman started a lawsuit against PornHub because videos of her were available on PornHub without her consent ( ).
Be noted that, face to all the lawsuits and investigations against it, MindGeek changed... Its sole investor (now Ethical Capital Partners, created the year prior to their acquisition of MindGeek, and that ), then it's name, , and moved its headquarter from Canada . But not its practice since the lawsuit to block the report happened after they tried to reset their image.

To stay in your comparison, Meta too have a long history of borderline, when not purely abusive, practices. But every time they were caught they responded with contrition while, for PornHub, they almost systematically denied all accusations, when not fighting back.
Perhaps that Meta had it easy with the consequences of their actions. But isn't it logical to focus on the one that never assumed its responsibilities, and tried to evade them by changing everything in hope it will create loopholes helping them to end at least some of the lawsuits they are facing ?

To this must be added one thing, MindGeek aggressive commercial attitude. There's surely hundreds of investigation about this, some more serious than others, some just copying others, and all. I don't feel like searching the most accurate ones right now, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find it if you want. To summarize, since their creation, either they bought their competitors, or they broke them.
This lead to a situation where around 75% of the porn market is owned by them. They own most studios and most online distributors, they are pornography more surely that Microsoft is computers.
In the case of Microsoft, they lead, but face strong and serious competitors. Apple, Adobe, Sun, the Open Source community, to only name few, while having a small part of the cake, they are all really big entities in their own way. But for Aylo, it's different. What is left of the porn market is small sites that get near to no traffic or get their videos from a partnership with Aylo owner platforms, and small studios that rarely works on a bigger size than their own country. Put together they represent around a quarter of the production, but what ? 5% of the consumers ? Perhaps 10%, but I doubt that it's most.

So, yes, it looks like lawmakers are strongly targeting sex workers, but it's because there's this giant actor that deserve the fight and that looks like it represent them all.
An actor that isn't aggressively shitty only in its commercial practice. I don't remember where it come from, it was a reliable source, but where I got it, mystery... Well, MindGeek main practice, whatever the owned studio is the following:
  1. Find a girl;
  2. Make her do a casting video;
  3. If the video do not reach a threshold number of view, forget her forever;
  4. Else, book a week end session;
  5. Give her an advance on salary;
  6. Film three/four regular straight movies, progressively increasing the roughness;
  7. Spice her drinks with analgesic, and use analgesic gel as lubricant;
  8. Film two rough anal movies;
  9. Film a DP anal movie;
  10. During all the process, treat her like shit, she'll not quit, she surely spent the advance already;
  11. Forget about her forever;
  12. Profit.
The girl will don't feel much during the filming, but once the analgesic will wore off, it will be something else. She'll goes back home totally broken, both by the whole days past filming, and her cunt and ass hurting as hell. She'll never ever will want to do that again, what is the goal because you can now put a big "exclusive" in top of all her content, and then raise the price because of this.
The actual number of films surely vary from a girl to another and from a studio to another, but globally it's the same schema whatever the studio, as long as it's owned by Aylo; break the girl so you can earn more by selling her content.

I'll not link it because it's boring (a total over 10 hours of talk), but in 2022 the French Senate had a series of audition regarding sex workers. And the most significant information one can get from this, it's how amazed politicians were each time they were put face to the reality. They, let's say out of naivety, believed that Aylo's owned studios practices apply to the whole profession.
One of the speaker was a former porn actress, and all politicians were whole "wow!" when she explained that Rocco Siffredi (who now own a small studio) called her agent to apologize because she slightly sprained her ankle while doing one of his movies, asking for an address to send flowers. Then "wow!" again, when she said that her agent asked her how was the said ankle when she called (again "wow!" there's girl who aren't actress) her for another movie, not wanting for her to perform if she was still hurt; because of her health, not because it would looks bad on the movie.
In their mind, they were really convinced that the pornography industry is just a bunch of males abusing women in all possible way and not caring about them more than one would care about an object. This solely because it's how the giant that dominate the industry is working. And therefore it's the feedback that is heard the more often; who care to report about porn actress being treated well, outside of sex workers themselves ?.

So, in short, no, lawmakers aren't currently targeting sex workers, they are targeting a kind of practice that apply to the biggest part of the sector, but come from only one entity. Remove Aylo from the equation, and they would be in position to have a different view on the profession, making then more accurate, and less repressive, laws. But can Aylo be removed from the equation, I don't know.
Still, must be noted that this apply to lawmakers. The motive is different for moral lobbying entities and for payment processors.


Not sure why the EU, facebook is US based [...]
Because they must comply to the Law that apply to their users.
Meta can do whatever they want with the personal data of their US based users, but they can't do much with the personal data of their EU based users. Reason why they needed five months before they were able to open Threads to the latter.
So, it's the EU because the US care way less about individuals.


So why is pornhub, onlyfans, patreon all having harsh terms dictated to them all in the name of evil porn and protecting society and the sites with the most danger being told to govern themselves?
Once again, I put pornhub aside, because it really not have it's place here.
None site is told to govern themselves, and all are facing the same queries, all coming from the same regulations. The difference isn't on what is asked, but on how they answer.

Patreon and OnlyFans got queries coming from the EU, they read them, then they though about them. And at the end of their reflection, they came to the conclusion that it's logical, rational, and good ideas. Therefore, not only they applied the change to their EU based users, but they also applied them to all their users, because to their eyes it's an improvement.
This while other entities, like Meta by example, conclude that it interfere with their business model; Threads was forbidden in EU because its initial Terms of Service (that surely continue to apply outside of EU) explicitly say that all personal data and everything you publish can, and will, be sold. Therefore, they comply with the EU regulations, but only for the EU based users, because they still need to earn money, and it's by not following those regulation that they earn a big part of that money.
The same can be said for Apple. EU regulations forced them to accept third party stores. This is a big cut in their profits, but they have no choice than to comply. But like they don't want to earn less, they though about it for a long period, and found a way to compensate that loss. And now, Patreon had to warn its users that Apple raised its share for all subscriptions made through the app.

It's not that some sites are left in peace, it's that some care way less than others.

One thing that EU citizens can do, is to try to access to highly US Republican (the further to the right they are, the higher are the chances) websites. EU regulation force any sites to offer a way to not have none purely site mandatory cookies. And, instead of complying, there's many highly US Republican website that just direct you to a page saying that due to that regulation you can not access their website.
Imagine that an US citizen travel in Europe, access their site, and discover that you can refuse third party (mostly ads) cookies? They could come back home and ask for the site to continue to respect their privacy! It's out of question...
I don't remember the sites names, but among the one so liked by the trumpist here, and so often shared (at least in the past), there's a handful of them that act that way, at least one of them being a nation wide newspaper.


Shouldn't amazon and facebook also have age verification
I already answered for Amazon.
I don't have the same content than you, everything that is explicit not being shown to me. Therefore, they comply to the regulation. You aren't exposed to real and explicit content, and it's assumed that to pay you need to be old enough to have a bank account.
The same can probably be said for Facebook, hence my "where can I find this" joke.

Once again, the issue isn't the regulation, but the way sites respond to it. Some apply it only when it's mandatory to do so, while others care more about their users, or are more concerned by basic moral issues, and apply them for everyone.


The important part of that is not for adult content or porn. The are a lot of stories about revenge porn and people being caught trying to meet up with minor through facebook and yet the only thing I can find about mastercard and visa and facebook is them turning facebook down when it tried to make it's own currency.
It's funny because you seem to not understand that everything you say demonstrate that it's whatever you can think about but absolutely not a morality crusade.

Patreon received threats from payment processors, for a really good reason: Payment processors are legally accomplice if they process transaction they know as coming from illegal activities.
Patreon were having users using the service for prostitution. This is illegal activities, and payment processors were aware of it. Legally, they now became accomplice, and as anyone a bit sane, they wanted to protect their ass.
Application of the law: "Hey, we see that, through your intermediary, our services are used to fund prostitution, this have to stop immediately!"
Side node: The same surely apply for OnlyFans, but I have nothing to back it up, so I only talked about Patreon.

Facebook and other sites, host illegal content. But they just host it. They aren't payed to host the content. At no time payment processors are involved in the process. Then, why should they say something ?
Morality crusade: "Hey, we see you host porn content. It's bad, you have to stop immediately!"

Now, if you can prove to payment processors that there's prostitution through Facebook market, or that pages/groups used for prostitution advertise on Facebook, it will be something else. In both cases, there's money transaction happening directly on Facebook, and payment processors would now be in the same position they were with Patreon, accomplice of known illegal activities.
But as long as there's no money exchanged directly through Facebook, there's nothing illegal at payment processors level, and them asking Facebook to change would be them trying to enforce certain views regarding morality.


And at no time is it said that money was involved, therefore it do not regard payment processors, and it would be them crusading for a certain morality if they were asking Facebook to forbid this.


We are talking mostly western countries with a few exceptions like Japan that has also been affected by the policies of financial services like mastercard and visa.
Here it fallback to the fraud risk and payback cost. If, as cam model, you contact payment processors, and provide them the number of a frozen account with one or two millions, they can use to cover the payback cost, so in short if you do what Patreon had to do (with more millions) in order to keep its deal with payment processors, I'm sure that you can come to an agreement and keep your account.
So, once again this can mostly be solved by providing a full legal status to sex workers. The frozen account would still be asked by payment processors, but doing a job with an official and legal status, sex workers would be able to legally regroup. There would be something like the "Sex Worker Agency" or a name like that, globally working in the same way that music right managing agencies. You would have to pay a reasonable subscription fee, and in exchange you would be able to use the frozen account owned by the association/company/whatever as guaranty for payment processors.

Payment processors aren't against sex workers because they are sex workers, but because they generate around 10 more cases of fraud, or alleged frauds, and in the end cost more in payback than they brings in through the transaction's fees.
It's why some sex workers never had issue with payment processors for years, even when not really hiding what they are doing, this while others, some almost unknown, are hit in less than one year. Payment processors do not pay people to pass their days browsing the web in search of sex workers, then tracing them back to a back account. They have a threshold on the payback number, and if you pass it, it trigger an investigation. So, if you are a sex worker who do not generate much case of payback, you'll stay below their radar, and if you aren't, you'll be kicked out; because you're a sex worker, but due to the number of payback, not due to morality views.
So, as I said above, give them a legal status, offer them the possibility to use the service of an entity managing their rights and having a significant enough frozen account, and payment processors will stop what looks like a morality crusade but isn't one.


Yet none of that matter when we are taking about chasing sunsets, mastercard and visa want to follow the law and ban incest etc. from patreon but I can buy it from amazon with no age check or problems, that makes no sense at all.
I just past through 7 pages of result (it's amazing the number of books and song named "chassing sunset"), and at no time did Amazon proposed me the game. What only prove everything I said previously:

  • Patreon ban regarding drawn/rendered character is mostly due to a bad timing;
  • Payment processors aren't engaged in a morality crusade;
  • There's companies that only apply regulation where they are mandatory to apply, and don't care about the rest of their customers.


How can amazon sell incest manga etc. but patreon has to ban it or loose mastercard and visa?
I already answer that. When asked to remove all prostitution, incest and CP from your site, request intended as "implying real persons" but not explicitly stating it, you can hardly answer "yes but".


But that would not have been an issue, if the UK did go after anyone it might have been the dev of the game / dev's of the games. They would not have opened lawsuits against visa or mastercard.
It's the law, payment processor have no choice than to comply.
It's illegal for them and banks to proceed transaction they know as coming from illegal activities, period. Do you really believe that they would goes, "oh, we will do as if we didn't know" ?

They did it in the past. For decades banks and payment processors made sweet money from human trafficking, drugs, and all, knowing perfectly from where that money came, but deciding to not care.
Then one day, in the late 80's if I remember correctly, but could have been the early 90's, a country decided to put a stop on this and sued them. Not as part of a lawsuit against a human trafficker, drugs lord or whatever, but as a totally independent lawsuit; you benefit from criminal activities, you've to be sentenced for this. And other countries started to follow.

Is it hard to understand that they don't want the same to happen again, and therefore that now they don't anymore do as if they didn't knew ?


[...] yet no legal action was mentioned or taken against mastercard or visa.
I may have missed the part of Westy case where it have been said that payment processors where aware that his money was coming from illegal activities.
Once again, it's illegal for payment processors to proceed transaction they know as coming from illegal activities.

There's surely dealers in my town. And they are the bottom of the pyramid, so they don't earn much and put this on their bank account, later using their credit card to buy groceries.
The carpenter who works next door surely did some works paid under the table. It's not possible to discriminate the part of his income that is legal, and the part that is illegal.
That guy who bought a counterfeit pair of Nike Sneakers, him too did something illegal.

The "know as coming from" part is important for all those reasons. At world size, every day there's millions of illegal transaction processed by payment processors and banks. They can't be held responsible for what they don't know, but obviously are for what they know.


To add to that, if one little UK politician can find all that info then conservatives with more backing and financial support could find much more than him and push the issue more.
He didn't found anything, and especially not "all that info".
I don't know how he found about it, but being a politician, it's surely through Liria Roux that it happened. He heard talking about her, or even seen her in the arm of whatever rich local CEO. And being the stuck up he is, he jumped on the occasion to gain some political points in hope to raise in its party. Then he needed a full week to discover that Patreon also had games, and that those games had incest, at a time where more than half adult games were incest ones... He was so deep in his delirium, that he had to also act about this.
In short, he's just an UK equivalent to McCarty, except that he's even more a failure than him, because no one even know that it's him who did this; well, I know, but I don't remember his name, so... Both started with a precise case that was actually what they claimed it was. Both did it out of anger more than for any other reasons. Both tried their best to find other cases, but only uncovered obvious facts that they totally distorted. And in both case, like the initial claim was true, they were heard and it led to an oversized answer.


But that's not the case, camming is legal in the UK too.
It's not about camming.
At this time Liria Roux was not known for her photos and videos, she was know for being one of the most elitist escort girl. Cover the travel cost for her and her team, pay the hotel (only palace) for her and her team, one week minimum, and you can have the girlfriend experience for one day; a day for which you'll still have to pay, and during which you'll cover all the expense.
A long journey ; yet, US$ 1,100 for two hours, was already some top prices.


Remember we are not talking about netflix though,
All big website works the same way, even Patreon, I just talk about Netflix because I knew were to find references.


BUT when mastercard / visa (i.e. the US) pull there service all people around the world who use those cards loose access to Pixiv. So essentially yes they can.
No, MasterCard/VISA can, what is different from your "the US can".
Then being US based do not give the power to the US. If the US change its banking regulation, they'll just have to apply those change to US based transaction, not to the rest of the world. If the US say that pornography is banned, they'll just stop to handle pornography transaction involving US citizens.
The only case that would impact them is if the US starts to have a law strictly forbidding to any US based company to engage in a way or another with pornography. But like both MasterCard and VISA are a banks partnership, all their none US based partners (so the majority) would either force for a relocation, or stop being partners. It would need few months, but in the end once again only the US would be impacted by the decision.


No because it's doesn't matter if they are headquartered in the EU, mastercard and visa would still insist on them banning incest, beasty, non con etc.
SubscribeStar exist, and don't have a partnership with VISA and MasterCard. It's annoying of course, it cost more for the customer, but it's totally possible.
VISA and MasterCard being the biggest and most known payment processors do not mean that there isn't alternative. So, to continue the previous point, it the US forbid all US based companies to deal with pornography in a way or another, and VISA/MasterCard's partners do not oppose to this, you just have to move outside of the USA and use none US based payment processors, .


That should be the case but it's not, if it were then mastercard and visa would say that the ban on content would be region based.
And they don't, proof that it's not at all a question of morality, but a question of legality... And that, as I said, the incest and all ban collided with the prostitution issue.


The adult industry is being targeted and there is a clear double standard at work
So far, I only see clear biases in your thinking process, and so far no double standard. I summarize:

  • PornHub is the main platform for a company world wide know to not care about law, abuse its models, and that own the biggest part of nowadays porn industry. Targeting them do not necessarily mean that you target sex workers, you can just target abusers.

  • There's companies that care more about their users/customers than others, and therefore enforce regulations they feel rational to anyone, even when there's don't have the obligation to do so. It's not because some of them are related with sex works that sex workers are targeted, it can perfectly just be that the other companies like to fuck you deep in the ass anytime they can, and are precisely doing it.

  • Payment processors have the legal obligation to not process transaction they kown as coming from illegal activities. Them asking sites for which they process transaction to stop illegal activities, while leaving alone sites for which they do not process transaction, do not mean that they target sex workers. It just mean that they do not enforce their moral views.

  • Patreon wasn't targeted for hosting sex workers, but for hosting prostitutes; that are a specific kind of sex workers.

  • Payment processors letting companies like Amazon sell incest/bestiality stories, just prove that it's not was triggered payment processors when it came to Patreon. Context made them believe that there were real incest/bestiality content, what would have been illegal for them to knowingly process. And context made it that Patreon wasn't in position to limits the field of application of the ban.

I think I summarized all the points, and when you put them all after the others, not only there's no double standard, but there's also no crusade against sex workers. At least not coming from the payment processors, nor from the regulations.


and the context of this thread is that our porn games are being targeted and those responsible are claiming they are not to blame.
And what if they aren't to blame because precisely they aren't targeting our porn games ?

Everything you said so far goes in their way. To quote OP, "they can make judgements on the legality of transactions but not the content", and it's precisely what they are doing.

Broadcasting porn without the consent of the person involved, prostitution, and CP are all illegal. As it is illegal for banks and payment processors to benefits from transaction known as coming from illegal activities.
Reason why they ask companies for which they process payment to ensure that this kind of content will not appear anymore, while they say nothing to companies that have that content, but for which they do not process payments. They judge the legality of the transaction, not the content...


BUT No one is allowed to subscribe to games like chasing sunsets or man of the house.
Their Patreon page is fully functioning right now :confused: