Visa just reported a quarter above expectations. Not sure if the protests are affecting anything other than the wage slaves forced to deal with their calls and emails.
Even if it is just the wage slaves for now, it won’t be for long.
The employees get a lot more work, that’s for sure.
However, by some stroke of good luck they haven’t been reolaced by AI… For now at least. Which means they do something Visa/Mastercard want/need.
That something just so happens to be replying to real questions. These protest calls take up their time (which is the point).
The damage also encompasses those unfortunate to actually need the call center now, of all times.
And if Visa/Mastercard can’t react to real incidents properly, some might go to a competitor or they might be on the hook for contract breaches.
Overwhelming the call center doesn’t just affect the call center personell. It affects one cog in the machine (the call center), throwing the entire machine off-balance.
Specifically, lower call throughput limits their ability to react to incidents, which is a critical day-to-day operation with potentially disastrous consequences. Middle management of the call center and a few execs are surely panicking as we speak.
Lol, I’d like to see Visa and MC buildings overrun by groups of multicoloured cartoony animals.
Furries have hated the whole “legal adult business made difficult or randomly disrupted because the payment processor companies decided they dont like you” thing for quite some time now. Ive seen multiple artists I follow in that space make multiple switches of platforms because of it and plenty more complain about them. Tho its usually been paypal that gets complained about there from what Ive seen.
We sic the furries on them…
And stand with them!
Knowing the furries, we probably have agents in every one of those corporate data centers already. XD
If they really wanted to cause damage they could just instruct their agents not to turn up since they absolutely are senior IT staff.
The whole thing would probably fall apart within about 2 hours.
Furries are also a part of the phoning campaign, I’ve seen it all over my bsky timeline. We’re (the sane ones, not the 18 year old puritans) all pretty upset over it because it’s pretty obvious this is yet another attempt to erase queerness online with the veneer of “protect kids” or whatever the fuck they’re saying now.
I’m sorry… 18 year old puritan… furries? Can you elaborate?
I mean, that’s the whole story. Consider yourself lucky that you don’t know really. It’s kids parroting conservative talking points while thinking they’re progressive. They’ve quieted down recently after all the stupid shit that’s happening especially with visa/MasterCard.
They’re mostly on Twitter and Tiktok.
As a joking/ not so joking reference to the title. I unironically hope that this new wave of censorship attracts the ire of the Furry community. I can just see thousands and thousands of IT workers spending their spare time and money on fighting this shit instead of spending it on their hobby. I can see the potentially unlimited power.
On it’s certainly gotten their attention alright
Calling Visa today for mine! I don’t play those games, but I hate the precedent. It is not a payment processor’s job to dictate what can and can’t be done. (Now, I have worked FinTech for many years, there is a legit risk they are taking that the feds would blame them however -) it should be on the company selling the product itself, and any decent legal team at a payment processor would be able to handle it like a normal Tuesday.
They don’t really have this excuse though because the products that they are banning are legal in the jurisdictions in which they’re banning them.
They’ve been really coy about this, they’re really trying to push the idea that adult content is illegal and therefore it’s totally nothing to do with them. It’s the standard right-wing tactic of just blatantly lying in the vague hope that somehow it’ll become true.
Is what these scumbags always do when they didn’t really think it through and are now being called out on it.
So in other words, gamers are rising up?
they are naruto walking, converging on mastercard HQ
I feel this situation is only going to get worse for everyone. We as consumers, gamers or otherwise, don’t really have alternatives to this monopoly. At least that I am aware of. Typically if a company acts up we can just boycott it. But what other options do we even have here?
Cash. Start using cash again.
How does one safely use cash over the internet?
You have to buy a fax machine. Then feed the notes in one at a time.
You can buy Steam gift cards with cash and redeem them on Steam.
That seems good. Though I wonder if there is a third party behind those gift cards and the transaction process from them. I suppose as long as it’s not Visa it’s a good option.
As somebody who loves the internet and technology…
Ahem…
FUCK THE INTERNET. BURN OUT THE FUCKING CANCER AND THEN REBUILD AFTER.
I mean, what’s your definition of “safe?” There are benefits and drawbacks to every form of currency. Credit is centralized and benefits massive pieces of shit and requires computing power. Cash is untraceable, and it doesn’t fund anything in particular (minus the federal reserve, but that’s a huge complicated stupid convo), but if you lose it or get it stolen, you can’t file a complaint and get it credited back to you.
I’ve used cash over the internet. It’s a matter of mailing it and getting a product in return. Or you can use the apps that aren’t linked to visa and PayPal. But it’s all a trade off, for sure.
Also, we need to stop thinking of shopping on the Internet as the only way to get products for money. Buy local every opportunity you can, that’s the best answer
you put it in the retractable cup holder, of course.
Bummer, my computer hasn’t had one of these in quite some time.
Mine too. maybe we can use a scanner, email it and destroy the now worthless cash!
Thanks, i was one of the lucky ten thousand and am now a David Thorne fan.
Duopoly, but yeah.
quadopoly, but yeah
Should try selling artwork and then give away a copy of a game to customers. You can’t sell the game so might as well include it as a gift.
I feel like it took much less for them to make the decision to take it away than it is to just restore it…
Back tracking is FAR harder, ego wise.
Part of the goal isn’t to reverse it, but to slow further slips down the slope. They will remember the hassle it caused this time, and decide that it’s not worth trying for an easy life from the religious nutjobs, if the gamers will kick up more of a stink.
right wing pressure has more sway in america nowadays cause of trump
Sorry for asking a question that might be google-able but is this worldwide? I haven’t been on Steam lately and don’t normally purchase adult content through there anyway so I feel super out of the loop.
Also, why are they saying that adult content is not okay on those sites but they still work on actual adult sites? I’m just confused and the shit AI-generated articles I have found on this topic haven’t really helped.
So it all has to do with the extremist movement to censor online content. The argument is that ‘anybody’ can access Adult content, even though most of the situations there are verification, filters based on age, parental controls, etc. Since these groups weren’t gaining traction on the platforms (i.e. Steam) these groups started harassing the payment processors themselves. Because the processors don’t want to be held legally liable, they threaten to pull the ability to process payments through those channels (aka no more Mastercard / Visa unless you give in to our demands). So this is all or at least largely in part due to the monopoly that these payment processors have on the market. Obviously if your business is strictly online and the majority of your money comes from transactions from Mastercard and Visa, you’re going to do what they say lest you risk losing the majority of your business. As a side note there has been some progress made in Europe to break up that duopoly. I don’t know a lot so do your own look up but there are other payment processing options. If you can, do your part and support those companies!
Gamer furries
Why would anyone ever piss off the furries? Do you WANT your internet to suddenly go at dial-up speeds?
I mean, yeah, that’s definitely a part of them.
Furries have felt their entire identity targeted, even the sex stuff set aside. A bit like the drag queen attacks.
this makes me feel nostalgic and old. does anyone remember the gamers vs furries thing?
Bring on the downvotes, but this is where crypto shines. No bullshit rug pulls by ancient payment processors.
I’d use cryptocurrency but literally no one accepts it. Mostly because it takes 14 billion years to and a small rainforest worth of burnt trees process a transaction.
Hey. Just FYI. That’s all outdated now. Ethereum forked to use 99.9% less energy. (To a sustainable point). Several other coins have followed including Cardano. And transaction times on both are within minutes, sometimes seconds. (Whereas my bank takes days). Though admittedly sometimes it takes an hour or two for a transaction to complete if there’s a lot of traffic.
I buy a lot of stuff (not drugs! Wow!) through crypto - and payment processors aren’t even needed. You can literally get a chrome extension to access your crypto wallet to pay for things directly. Which is why crypto is such a threat to payment processors and fiat currency. Because crypto is the same as basically opening your wallet for cash, throwing that cash at the screen, and that works to buy whatever’s on it. Visa and Mastercard can get fucked.
Bitcoins original white paper was very specific: the point of crypto is to take the power away from the assholes like Visa and Mastercard. But also from Banks and the Fed. No one person or entity should control these things. So Bitcoin decentralized them.
And now, 15 years later, it works pretty fucking well. That’s why the price has increased 1000%+ in that time.
(EDIT: To be clear, saying someone doesn’t accept Bitcoin is like saying someone doesn’t accept gold. You’re using the wrong digital currency. There’s plenty of others that don’t need payment processors for transactions.)
Transaction speeds are faster than credit cards and debt cards now. Not every coin is like that (bitcoin for example still takes forever, while Digibyte is less than 1 min).
Oh a hold 60 seconds, well I guess my comment is completely redundant then because who could possibly process a transaction in less than a minute.
Cryptocurrency will only be useful when we surpass capitalism
That’s like saying violent revolution will only be useful once we surpass Fascism.
The wide adaptation of crypto would likely deal a killing blow to capitalism as all the bullshit fees and exploitation expected from transactions completely disappear - along with their revenue streams to capitalist overlords at Visa / Mastercard / Amazon / Google / Taxes for the Fed, etc.
Like, you can already start defunding the bullshit happening right now by just paying for stuff with Crypto.
That is not how material reality works, you can’t expect wide adoption of crypto while the state is controlled by the owners of the means of production, since that’s not profitable, despite crypto being very good to laundry money.
The people that own the means of production own the state, they force everybody else to use their currency, thought the use of monopoly of violence
Imperialism is the current stage of capitalism where a country through the use of violence forces every other country to trade using their currency
In material reality, the state is in no way stopping me from using crypto right this second. I can use it freely. And break no laws.
Why use their means of oppression if another tool exists, and can be used readily?
In fact, also in reality, Trump is accidentally bulldozing legislature meant to protect capitalism because he’s too stupid to know better. Specifically:
Trump has ordered his administration to supercharge the U.S. cryptocurrency industry, rolling back some regulatory enforcement and championing legislation that would broaden its accessibility and appeal.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-unveils-crypto-policy-roadmap-meant-usher/story?id=124215664
That’s reality.
As a business owner, depending on the country you live in, you cannot accept cryptocurrency as payment, you need to have your country currency so you can pay your taxes, you can’t change a country currency to cryptocurrency by individual action, because that is a coletivo problem
Trump and Milei are scammers they love some pump and dump, they do anything to get richier
As a business owner in any country, I can accept crypto as payment. Because modern crypto doesn’t need a payment processor. You can do transactions directly from your wallet and avoid needing to involve the state, banks, or anyone but you and your customer. You can even build websites on the blockchain connected directly to your wallet. Or tokenize physical goods to sell there without needing anything but the internet.
It’s up to you to report your sales on the blockchain for taxes. It’s not at all, in anyway, monitored by any government as that’s what the distributed ledger tech was designed to avoid.
If you want a new world. Waiting isn’t going to make it happen. You can use crypto right the fuck now to take money away from the system it’s trapped in. You just want to pretend it isn’t accessible because of government control, when escaping that control is the very reason crypto was created to exist.
Trump is certainly a scammer. But he is also, unquestionably, an idiot. And that works in both directions. Against us. But also against his capitalist backers.
He is unquestionably deregulating laws on crypto everyday, to his own benefit - but that also just makes using crypto and hurting capitalism easier.
You did not read the constitution of every country in the world to assert that
Individual action does not solve coletive problema, you should organize yourself with your fellow workers at a union and do as many strikes as you can to fight against the owners of the means to your work, this was historically proven to solve many class conflicts, join the communist party of your country that is the only way, fight for your interests, and don’t think you can use the bourgeoisie vote system to change things for better, they try in Chile and the US bomb’d their President
You are 100% correct. The sooner people adopt crypto, the sooner Visa and Mastercard are pointless. To be clear: MODERN CRYPTO DOES NOT REQUIRE PAYMENT PROCESSORS - YOU CAN MAKE PAYMENTS DIRECTLY FROM YOUR WALLET. (And not just for drugs).
Yep, making banks completely useless. People are just tied to banks because they dont want to research or actually think about a new system of payments.
Couldn’t agree more! 🙂
They need to have the rules to apply to furry and transexual porn as well; I’m sure nothing will happen to their security infrastructure.
tranny
That is considered a slur, btw
My bad, I cant always keep up.
Jesus Christ dude what’s wrong with you
I’ve read through a few of these now, and I still can’t figure out what the source/evidence is that has convinced people that visa and MasterCard are responsible for this. That seems to me like a pretty critical detail, but noone has mentioned it.
The literal rule change they made that caused this explicitly states you have to follow payment processor guidelines:
Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.
They also basically cofirmed this was brought up by the payment processors.
Thanks!
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Look, twenty some odd years ago, we all saw that episode of CSI and it fucked our perception of furries. But we have to move past our sophomore-in-highschool versions of ourselves and protect people who were just minding their own business and got attacked for liking something harmless that other people don’t approve of.
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They’re not hurting animals. Even if you want to focus just on the sex, consider: one has no control over their sexual preference and fetishes. By commissioning artwork and engaging in roleplay with consenting adults, they have a healthy outlet for their desires which harms nobody, nor any animals. You don’t have to understand it or like it. But it’s just nsfw art and adults having sex. It’s nothing to clutch your pearls over.
Hating on us harmless lot is just thinly veiled fascist shit, because the same way DEI is code word for N****rs, furry has become the socially acceptable code for anything LGBT
So improve yourself
As a wise man once said, check yoself brfo yp wreck yoself
Nope, I just hate furrys because I’ve been on the Internet and bestiality, and bestiality adjacent, is grotesquely vile. You wanna be mad at somebody? Be mad at the freaks who ruined it for the rest of y’all.
Why are you not mad at the “freaks you ruined it” instead of generalising millions of people?
Shut the FUCK up when you have no idea what furry/furry identity is
