There should be laws forcing payment processors to be neutral. They should have to accept any transaction that would be legal if made using cash.

Noooooooooooooooo

How the fuck did we get to the point where a company which literally only takes your money and gives it to someone else (and also gets paid for that) can decide what kind of content people consume?

To be clear - "Collective Shout" both is and isn't responsible. It's the payment processors who actually enacted policies and are using them as the scapegoat for negative feedback.

How many times have people reported Twitter after Elon Musk took over for showing Nazi propaganda alongside their ads - with no response. An 'open letter' in July about a game already banned in April? DELIST EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY.

Collective shout finacials
year: 2024
revenue: 458043
employee_expenses: 107000
other_expenses: 215488
net_surplus: 135555
employees: 
  total_fte: 2
  full_time: 0
  part_time: 1
  casual: 4
volunteers: 15
donations_and_bequests: 389800
government_grants: 0
commercial_income: 0
expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%"
average_expense_per_employee: 39400

Leadership
- name: Melinda Tankard Reist
  role: Founder, Movement Director
  public_socials:
    - Twitter: @MelTankardReist
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Caitlin Roper
  role: Campaigns Manager
  public_socials:
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Renee Chopping
  role: Campaigns Strategy
  public_socials:
    - LinkedIn
  public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy
  role: Campaigns Strategy
  public_socials:
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Coralie Alison
  role: Movement Operations Manager
  public_socials:
    - Twitter: @CoralieAlison
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

I'm completely fine with certain content being delisted because it is considered essentially on par with hate speech or something like that.

However, I really do not like that it is payment processors making that call. If someone makes that call, it should be the store in question (itch.io, Steam, whatever) or it should be the government.

Meanwhile, on my feed there's a post directly below this one about a compiler that will give you BSDM messages for good and bad coding and can even be hooked up to a remote butt plug to pleasure you when you compile a successful program.

Goddamn cookers the lot of them. Perhaps I'll make an abortion game on Itch in protest.

Let the Digital Euro become a thing. It will wreck havoc on the current payment ecosystem.

And the Digital Euro is not a crypto. It will be a digital currency, backed by the ECB, at a one to one exchange rate with standard euro currency.

I'm wondering who gave these credit card companies the moral authority.

Fuck these god-bothering pieces of shit. No, seriously. It sounds like they need it.

I wonder who major porn sites use as payment processors? (I don't know the answer, I'm just saying...)

First they came for the incest/rape games, which most people somewhat agree with (although the principle is still wrong) Next up is all nsfw games. After that, it'll be mainstream and indie games altogether. This never stops with just one "victory" for these groups.

ACLU petition concerning the payment processors: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy

Posted this elsewhere so just going to copy paste here but with regards to Collective Shout:

I think we need to get this group to weigh in on the content of certain holy books. Surely as a secular organisation they will have no problem demanding that the bible and qur'an be banned (I bet I know which one they actually would like banned).

After all we don't want kids exposed to books that contain incest, sex, violence, rape, etc. I'm sure there are some parts of Ezekiel they will want editted at the absolute minimum.

I imagine balkanisation would be one way to make them slightly less visible/insufferable, and you know they would love some factional infighting.

Every time they get brought up they should be forced to confront that the people pulling their strings are most likely engaging in all the things they want banned from culture (regardless of culture or intent). Once they are forced to start lobbying Visa and MasterCard to block transactions to religious bodies I will accept they genuinely believe in the drivel they leak. Until then its performative puritanism.

P.s. not a fan of religion of any stripe, but I would feel as violently opposed to censoring them as I am to censoring anything else, I will accept it if its the only responsible solution until then alternative can be found.

First, fuck Visa and Mastercard. Second, fuck Collective Shout. Third, I feel for the itch forum mods.

Puritanical US based payment processors need to stop getting their panties twisted.

Can't wait for an EU alternative to Visa/Mastercard. Heard Wero is supposed to be that. Europe can't decouple from US garbage fast enough.

So how do we go about suing these guys? They're erasing art. And no, I'm not just some gooner who wants more jackoff material, Itch apparently removed anything with nudity in it.

I hope those "Payment processors" get vored alive!

It's nice to see a more reasonable response in the comments on Fediverse. On the itch discussion board people are frothing at the mouth posting death threats and the like against itch staff.

The anger is completely misdirected. I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to just let itch drop dead after this abuse from two sides simultaneously. Mega corps and rights groups at one side, and their very own users on the other.

Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.

Itch is even willing to go for partial filtering, what more do you want. The only thing that will please these people is when itch waves their magic wand and keeps everything as is. Like folks here have said, accepting crypto payments might help, but who knows how soon that is going to get regulated.

Can we force law banning money transactions to the churches and christian organisations?

Fight fire with fire (not literally, at least not yet, even if they did that long time ago already).

I never thought I would say this, but cryptocurrency might have a use after all.