There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most.
Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
> "which will fissile out in a few months"
A tangential nitpick: it's fizzle out, from a Middle English etymology meaning "to fart"; not to fission (fissile being an adjectival form), from Latin "to split".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fizzle#Etymology ("Attested in English since 1525-35. From earlier fysel (“to fart”). Related to fīsa (“to fart”). Compare with Swedish fisa (“to fart (silently)”). See also feist.")
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feist#Etymology
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fissile#Etymology ("From Latin fissilis.")
I’ve never heard fissile out but I love it for describing a problem that will go away once the full consequences have already been felt.
It's fizzle where I'm from in the UK. To fizzle out is to weakly and pittifully end with no meaningful after effects.
Like after lighting a firework that didn't actually go off.
"It's fizzled out!"
"to fission (fissile being an adjectival form), from Latin 'to split'."
Does this mean "Missile" means "to miss"? 'Cause boy have we been using those things wrong :-)
No, 'missile' means 'something that is sent' or 'suitable for throwing'
The missile needs to know how to miss, because it knows where it is from knowing where it isn’t.
https://youtu.be/bZe5J8SVCYQ
guessing it was autocorrect issue :)
I don't think having this on USgov radar would improve the situation. Since FOSTA/SESTA, and various state level age verification laws, it seems likely that government attention would simply bring a bigger hammer down on games. It's the US anti-money-laundering system that ultimately exerts a lot of financial control, after all.
> it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA
In many countries, if you pay locally, you absolutely can. China's UnionPay, India's UPI, PayNow in Singapore, PromptPay in Thailand, PayPal, Cash App, and more.
And places like Steam take a lot of payment options. Most online services that wanted to have wide international appeal in the 90s and 2000s had to simply because credit cards were rare in many places, and a lot of those services still have a wide array of options
Steam added recently a rule 15th what you should not publish:
15. 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. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
See discussion here for example: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/6019100814124...
Maybe they could come out with a client named "Steamy" where they post all the nudie games and take all forms of shady, underground, scandalous payment methods, like btc and doge.
The US also has Discover/Capital One and American Express and if you live in some of the nicer parts people still take checks.
Does that actually help? Because it would send a pretty strong message if the payment screen said, "sorry you can only buy this with amex/discover" (click here for why) but that doesn't seem to be how this plays out.
Because making these products for sale at all in the catalog will cause Visa/MC to pull out for other, "approved" offerings.
You need the government to cajole the market to create safe and free inter bank transfer programs. We're not going to do that in the USA -- no one's buddies would get their kickbacks!
Like FedNow that was launched in 2023? https://www.frbservices.org/news/fed360/issues/071625/fednow... https://www.frbservices.org/resources/fees/fednow-2025
Not even close the service offered by, as an example, Pix in Brazil.
Granted, but Pix didn't have to compete against entrenched political interests.
I expect the meta-plot with FedNow is to commoditize the backend network, then allow private companies to compete on top of it (e.g. Zelle on FedNow), then after adoption as the backbone, finally roll out P2P and P2B type support that finally kills off Visa / Mastercard / Amex (as processing networks).
Not sure why you were downvoted. Pix is a fantastic example of how much more efficient p2p payments can be, without relying on the Visa-Mastercard duopoly.
Of course Pix had the backing of the government, so it had a huge initial boost, and didn't have to compete with entrenched players for market share.
Still, the fact is that it's universal, fast, efficient, lower cost for merchants, and less prone to censoring. What's not to like?
In a way it's more convenient than making congress pass laws to define payment providers as common carriers. With Pix, payment companies are free to chose their policies, but now citizens have options. Unfortunately that's not the reality in the US.
> You need the government to cajole the market to create safe and free inter bank transfer programs
We've had that in EU/eurozone for years, SEPA.
That's great to hear, but this is a US-centric complaint discussing US-centric companies.
It is not really US-centric. VISA and Mastercard actions resulted in delisting content in all the markets globally. Steam and Itch.io pulled games from all regions, Manga Library Z was hit in Japan, Patreon and Stripe are pressured globally. Suggesting to boycott VISA and Mastercard if you have an alternative is valid.
In principle, a service like this could be offered in the US as well, without any credit card companies acting as middle men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow
Germany actually uses their own card system .. or cash. They are very much against visa/mastercard due to their “high commission fees” and “privacy concerns”
Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard
You're comparing a regional debit network to an overarching network that includes lots of different fee structures. The USA has debit networks (STAR, etc) with similar cost structures too - Germany is not unique in this regard.
My debit card is a VISA.
That's somewhat outdated and Wikipedia even slightly alludes to it with "Some banks are phasing out girocards". "some" in reality is "nearly all". Girocard is practically dead and I don't see it coming back without state intervention. There's a few holdouts in stores here and there that only accept Girocard and no other cards (my vet for example), but it's on the decline there, too.
"Privacy concerns" won't hold out long against relentless pushes for more deregulation of privacy laws for AI/other tech/"the economy"/etc and removal of data access hurdles for police/security services/etc coming from certain political spectrum - whose voters generally don't have high concern for such fundamental rights issues when at the ballot box.
Unfortunately, that's not enough to shake the MasterCard/Visa stranglehold. Even if all of Valve's German customers used Girocard and Steam sold those particular games only in Germany, they would still have to yield to pressure from MC and Visa because losing them would cost them many more of their global customers.
It's not enough to simply have an alternative to the credit cards, that alternative has to be in the pockets of 90% of your user base before you'd be willing to lose the method of transaction they currently rely on.
>Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%
AFAIK all credit cards in the EU have similarly low interchange rates because of EU regulation.
0.2%
> Payment service providers shall not offer or request a per transaction interchange fee of more than 0,2 % of the value of the transaction for any debit card transaction.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2015/751/oj/eng
So does Russia, Denmark, Belgium/Netherlands, Iran, China. I’m sure there’re others. I know someone working on unified payment platform for games in Africa. They have dozens of different payment systems instead of the two.
Germany also sold Eurocard to MasterCard.
> Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
Why not? Lots of people, especially in lower income brackets, don't have ANY credit cards at all. I know many. They buy groceries and gas with cash and pay their utilities by ACH or mailing a check. Everything else they need, they buy locally.
What you mean to say is that it's _inconvenient_ for you personally to boycott Visa/Mastercard. Which may be true enough.
Visa and Mastercard run debit networks for majority of banks and credit unions. They get fees there as well.
Even lower income citizens use debit cards more than cash nowadays.
You would need to use different networks like Discover and American Express to effectively boycott them
I use cash for 90% of my expenses, and I bank with a local credit unions, but this and every other bank and credit union around use visa or mastercard for debit card services and I have to use the card for most online purchases.
That depends entirely on who you are paying. Many places reject checks, fail to setup ACH, etc. Those aren't direct competitors anyway: that would be American Express, which is often rejected since their business model is centered on customer bonuses funded through high transaction fees.
Well, we are discussing an online storefront/distribution service for a digital good (with obvious relevance to people here). Are you suggesting that it's merely inconvenient for Valve and its customers to not transact in cash?
> Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
Every single time I have the option to buy an event ticket by SEPA transfer or credit card, which is actually very often, I choose SEPA transfer.
One time I even used Bitcoin.
It does seem to be mostly event tickets that have this option, for some reason. And I'm not talking about the TicketMaster monopoly, either.
You can switch to Amex, but here in Argentina like half of the postnets don't recognize it.
Also there are a few QR networks, some made by the banks like "Modo" and other no-a-bank ones like "MercadoPago" and a few minor ones. Even the guy/gal that sells hot bread on the street accept most of them.
Amex is only available on Steam in the US. I have a basic free Amex card as a backup, but I wouldn't be able to use it for my Steam purchases. Presumably because the processing fees are just that much higher.
Somehow I'm able to use a JCB card though. As far as I'm aware, JCB cards aren't even available here.
> You can switch to Amex, but here in Argentina like half of the postnets don't recognize it.
To this point, it was even a punchline in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
You can, if you switch to using American Express and Discover cards. They’re both closed networks that only take their particular card.
It’s almost trading one for another but it would be an effective way to boycott these companies
Whole heartedly agree. I would also rather the discussion be how can we disrupt the problem rather than a mob mentality to take down Visa (which is never going anywhere anyway).
It is on their radar, but they only care that the whole world pays a US tax via these payment providers. The US does look to kindly on local payment systems.
Honestly I hope this comes under the EU's radar.
EU is already working on an alternative: Wero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU.
Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.
> Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.
Like with DMA/DSA that force gatekeepers to open up? SEPA that mandates free immediate bank transfers? Caps on credit/debit card transaction fees? The million infrastructure projects? Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if it's decision making can't be explained (which the AI act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on e.g. railway operations?
It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
I stated quite clearly that not every regulation is bad. But it seems that you want to hear that every decision made by the EU is right. I'm sorry, but I'm not a religious person. And I think self-criticism is a great privilege of democratic (not dictatorial) countries, so let's use it.
> Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if its decision-making can't be explained (which the AI Act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on, for example, railway operations?
It's such a naive question that I can't understand how you can take it seriously.
Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot
I would like to see the data, not the social or individual biases. It's only a matter of "when" AI will prove to be safer than humans at performing task X. I find it absurd to deprive ourselves of such an advantage, supported by data, just because our understanding isn't absolute.
Can we prove the safety or determinism of what we use or do on a daily basis? I doubt. Shouldn't we experiment with physics because our understanding is limited, and we might accidentally create a black hole? I doubt.
Also, I find it such a generic definition... Google Maps implements AI, and accidentally sends you into a ditch. What do you do? Ban AI from Google Maps? What doesn't put people's lives at risk?
I totally understand the skepticism and fear. The risks, etc. But I'll leave it to the fortune tellers to pass judgment before it's even "a thing".
> It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
> I stated quite clearly that not every regulation is bad. But it seems that you want to hear that every decision made by the EU is right. I'm sorry, but I'm not a religious person. And I think self-criticism is a great privilege of democratic (not dictatorial) countries, so let's use it.
But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.
> Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
> Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
How is the EU killing the car market, exactly?
> But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.
I understand your point, but I see no reason to invest time defending the EU's positive aspects. What's the point?
> Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you. The EU seems to listen to people like you, not people like me. I should be the one who's concerned, haha. I'm worried because bureaucracy is a slow-acting cancer. It's a process that's easy to start but incredibly difficult to stop or reverse.
The problem with bureaucracy, regulation, and welfare is that they all come with a price. Increasing costs require a strong, cutting-edge economy to sustain them. Yet, no one seems to be concerned. In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating. No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Of course, no one is against welfare; my concern is its unsustainability. As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power.
Europe is aging, and so is its appetite for innovation and risk. Yet, we keep adding costs upon costs. Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
How long can we keep going? The rope will break sooner or later. And why doesn't anyone seem to care?
> How is the EU killing the car market, exactly?
1) https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/dragh... 2) "The Draghi report: In-depth analysis and recommendations (Part B)" 3) Page 146
I think this report its quite comprhensive to state what its not going that well in EU.
I dont agree with everything in the document, but i think its a good starting point.
> I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you.
Because the "less regulation" is in response to the EU saying you can't have algorithms making life or death decisions if they can't be explained and can't be escalated to a human. People are literally asking for companies to be able to shrug behind "computer says no" with no recourse. We have the UK Post Office scandal for a closer to home example on why this is a terrible idea. "Less regulation" here would be plainly terrible for everyone.
> No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Along with migration, it's probably the two most discussed topics. Funnily for it too, everyone says "nobody cares", yet it's literally among the most discussed things.
> Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
> In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating
Because you're comparing massive economies with lots of capital to burn, vs a loose collection of much smaller countries. There is tons of innovation in various European countries, it's just of different types, and doesn't scale nearly to the same extent. And that is a problem (because, as you said, a lot of the economy is reliant on big old players, which isn't necessarily bad, but is lacking in economic diversification).
> As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power
It's the same in France too, and it is indeed worrying. Public budgets are getting increasingly more complicated to balance.
But, allowing companies to deploy AI to make life or death decisions won't change anything around this. Allowing them to harvest personal data without even knowing what they have won't change anything around this either. Allowing gatekeepers to stifle any possible competition (not having DMA/DSA), same thing.
The biggest changes needed are capital investments to help the tons of startups all over Europe scale; and complex policies to help minimise the demographic collapse. Some of it is natural and nothing can be done about it (if a couple doesn't want kids, no amount of aid is going to change their mind), but for others it's a matter of being unable to afford (more) kids.
> Along with migration, it's probably the two most discussed topics. Funnily for it too, everyone says "nobody cares", yet it's literally among the most discussed things.
Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting. This is a bubble.
> I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
We've reached the point where if there's a risk of something happening, no matter the probability neither the magnitude, something must be done. Even if the solution is totally destructive, inappropriate for the problem, etc. Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI. This is what you are proposing. This is what I criticize.
Slowing down or stopping everything because MAYBE it's the right thing to do, MAYBE something we don't like might happen. This comes at a cost, especially if you apply this principle to everything around you in small doses. It's poison for productivity and efficiency.
I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy. China and South Korea are able to build reactors quickly and at low cost. The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
In the name of some ideology, we are destroying our productivity and efficency. Again. Why?
And I know very well that the answer is always the same. Safety. But it's just an excuse to sell you the services of yet another bureaucrat. There are very precise risk analyses that show nuclear reactors to be orders of magnitude safer than all other energy sources. So why this ideological obsession? Safety has nothing to do with it.
No one cares about risk analyses. Because the answer will always be “it's never enough.” But at what cost? Again, no one cares.
And thanks to this choices, in the name of safety, building reactors in Europe is difficult and expensive. But in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to build gas or coal-fired power plants.
Europe is full of this kind of hypocrisy.
> Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting
No, it's discussed everywhere, at the EU and the local level. There has been plenty of action at various levels (like in France, under Macron first as minister of the economy and later president; and he's been decried and criticised a lot, but has also gotten a ton of reforms through).
> This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
That's the point though. Literally the main thing the law does is that if the AI can make decision that can result in deaths, there should be a human escalation and its decision making should be explainable. That's it. If that's too much burden, something is wrong.
> Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI
But the problem already exists, again, cf. United Healthcare Group in the US. We know they're killing people and hiding behind a well known faulty "AI". We don't want that shit in the EU.
> I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy
If you're pro nuclear, you should know what the real problems with EPR are. The main are failures at EDF with the quality of their work, due to lack of qualified personnel, like welders. This has been well documented for Flamanville and Hinkley Point, and EDF has even written extensively about all the lessons learned from those disasters that have been incorporated. They even flat out say that Flamanville has allowed them to build industrial capacity and human know how to be able to build the next ones.
Do you have anything to back your claim that somehow bureaucracy is to blame? EDF are a state owned company, but I'm pretty sure that the British wouldn't stop yapping around if EDF were bungling Hinkley Point because of French/EU bureaucracy. There should be at least as much material on it as there are about the quality control issues, right?
> The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
Yes, because we stopped building reactors for decades, and nobody is around that knows the intricacies of that. Hence the investment in EPR, to improve on the failures at Flamanville, Hinkley Point, Olkiluoto, and be able to reliably deliver EPR reactors with predictable costs.
I don't even think this is a problem of competition (although more is welcome).
This is just Visa+Mastercard abusing their market position and the EU should come down on them like a ton of bricks. Incur heavy fines or break them up if necessary.
How is "abusing their market position" not a "problem of competition"?
The only reason they have that market position is because there is insufficient competition.
It is a problem of competition.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
Go to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and see that there are 20-30 payment systems at every convenience store, electronics store, grocery store, etc... Then go to the US where there's effectively 2. The government claims this is because Visa and Mastercard have prevented competition.
I disagree. The need for regulation in this case stems from a lack of competition.
Regulations are empirical decisions, based on a very limited amount of data, whose implications can be endless. Regulations are a shortcut capable of poisoning the market and competition. Just look at what's been done with energy, automobiles, AI, GDPR, etc. Bureaucrats are not gods; they often make mistakes and don't predict the future. Regulations should be the last resort.
Furthermore, we're talking about a US monopoly here. The goal would be to grab a share of the pie through honest competition, not to enstablish golden collars.
Regulation should facilitate competition, not legitimize the status quo.
"under the radar" means not noticed
Oh the EU will happily pass new laws to screen your entire life when you'd like to buy a game (and to record and store everything you talk about with fellow gamers in case you say something that goes against EU policies).
EU will even arrange a special new bank account for ya outside of Visa Mastercard called CBDC.
No problem. EU is here for ya! /s
What are you even talking about?
1984 took place in the EU. I mean, if Brexit hadn't happened and the EU existed in 1984, of course.
That’s factually untrue. 1984 takes place in Britain (now known as “Airstrip one”) which in the universe of the book is part of Oceania along with Australia, southern Africa and the Americas.
The other two superpowers are Eurasia (which as the name suggests is Europe less the UK and Ireland but with Asia) and Eastasia, which is South-East Asia more or less
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_geography_of_Ninetee...
You can just say it happened in Europe.
> Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA
Most countries have some kinds of domestic transaction systems, or at least a more local credit card brand. They're also usually instant. It's more or less an US-only situation that people use Visa/Mastercard even for intranational stuff.
Most countries I've been to use Visa as their most common card. Living in a major Asian country and every bank and credit card company offers Visa as their main card as well.
China is kind of an outlier with Union Pay, and while a large number of countries offer their own alternatives, I'd say most are Visa-first. Apparently about 37% of cards around the world are Visa, so that's a huge chunk. JCB is the biggest non-Chinese non-American provider by revenue, and even they're a minor player in their home country.
That is absolutely false. In pretty much any western country, you're forced to use the VISA network, even for debit cards. Take a closer look at your locally branded card, and you'll almost certainly see a VISA log tucked away somewhere.
Depends, in France for instance all the cards are dual "VISA/Mastercard" and "CB ". They will use CB in france and use the partner network in foreign countries.
The EU should certainly look into this though. I don't always like what they do, but a conglomerate of many large markets (countries) means that these shitty fucking companies and scumbag executives get forced to sit up and listen.
You can boycott both but say goodbye to saas purchases and being tracked.