So... Mastercard's statement is very clear:
> Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network.
But their "Rule 5.12.7" is... not so clear:
> A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.
Well, which one is it now? All lawful purchases (pretty clear-cut) or only lawful purchases that will not "reflect negatively" on Mastercard in Mastercard's opinion (vague as hell)?
We need Congress to make a law here in the US that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order.
We can write language to allow booting people for fraud, hacking, etc if “legal” + “court order” are insufficient.
There's a bill for almost exactly that currently pending in committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401 If you like the idea, read the text on there and call your senators to support it.
The relevant part is section 5b.
>(b) Prohibition.—No payment card network, including a subsidiary of a payment card network, may, directly or through any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, by contract, requirement, condition, penalty, or otherwise, prohibit or inhibit the ability of any person who is in compliance with the law, including section 8 of this Act, to obtain access to services or products of the payment card network because of political or reputational risk considerations.
Then the goalposts shift to: “This isn’t for reputational risk, it’s because we consider fraud more likely for this type of industry, and we are within our rights to take a proactive approach to fraud.” And there is no requirement that they disclose the reasons for that decision.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.
It would be a hard sell to finger Steam as being at high risk of fraud. Steam has a very generous refund policy, and if you don't consider it generous enough, and chargeback a purchase on your Steam account, they just lock it (and access to all your games) until you pay them.
I don't have insider information about how often Steam gets hit with fraud alleged chargebacks, but I can't imagine it's a significant percentage.
> Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.
Progress in this day and age is great. Progress right now is at least 2 orders of magnitude better than patiently waiting for a panacea.
> Steam has a very generous refund policy
It doesn't.
Can you provide counter examples? I've legitimately never had a refund refused within the terms they outlined.
For fraud related risk they should still be considered a common carriers but may adjust rates for certain types of transactions or businesses, if, in good faith and backed by empirical data, they can demonstrate the monetary risk to the card processor, and that the increased transaction costs are aligned with the level of risk and are not punitive or discriminatory.
The key point here is ”good faith”.
I don’t want to disadvantage their business or make them absorb fraud costs, but I want all excuses off the table.
OTOH Visa and MasterCard testified in front of Congress a couple of months ago that they have >50% profit margins which indicates to me that there is a regulatory failure in antitrust here.
i think that sounds like a perfectly fine compromise - choosing not to provide services that are an especially high risk of fraud should be within their rights.
it just means that they could be forced to defend those decisions in court, which is good and exactly the sort of thing that courts are supposed to decide.
Exactly. If they are misapplying their fraud criteria, companies start suing and winning and Mastercard stops misapplying their criteria.
This sounds great on paper, but what incentive does Valve have fighting for a game listing with only 100 players?
I get the feeling many companies would find it easier to allow payment processors to censor something if the product isn't earning them much anyway.
"That's one of our least popular items we sell so honestly we don't really care..."
Which is within the right for the reseller to decide, but it does nothing for protecting access to a product that's otherwise only available on a select few digital storefronts.
Then it becomes an issue for the game studio, who may not have the funding to fight a case to remain available. And then you have a situation where the game studio has become a victim of a payment processor's conspiracy theory that they're tied to fraud.
The section is not without its own flaws, mainly in 5(c):
> (c) Civil penalty.—Any payment card network that violates subsection (b) shall be assessed a civil penalty by the Comptroller of the Currency of not more than 10 percent of the value of the services or products described in that subsection, not to exceed $10,000 per violation.
I see 2 problems as it is currently written: (1) The penalty's too low, & (2) restricting dispense of the law to only the Comptroller renders it ineffective.
(1) is easily solvable with regards to editing the text alone: raise the limit to 50% & $100k respectively.
(2) is also solvable, by striking out "by the Comptroller of the Currency", or adding in ", or by a federal court, whichever penalty is higher, " at the end of that part.
Careful. That could backfire.
Right now there are things that a significant majority think are terrible and shouldn't exist but aren't a high enough priority to actually make illegal because they are small because most mainstream service providers don't want to serve them.
Take that away an those things might grow enough that they do become a priority for legally banning.
What kinds of things?
I won't trust the Congress. Far left and far right are both pushing for more censorship
Far left not needed. The center left will gladly do it.
what far left are you talking about exactly?
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Far right is calling for the government to block access to certain things they don't like aka censorship.
Far left is critiquing those who don't virtue signal enough. That isn't censorship at all.
You have them reversed. Are the far right the ones wanting to censor Musk, Trump and everyone else they don't like?
The far right don’t seem to want to censor those two people in particular, no.
Precisely. It's the far left who wants people censored.
I said “those two people in particular” for a reason.
There are plenty of right wing people arguing that sharing certain information (e.g. legal advice for unsanctioned immigrants) should be illegal on the basis that it is “assisting criminals”.
No, the far right are the ones dismantling federal agencies like the EPA, the FDA, USAID etc., sending the army to police states they don't like, firing the person responsible for jobs statistics because they don't like the numbers, slapping 50% tarrifs on countries because they dared to prosecute one of Trump's buddies etc. (just some of the latest examples).
The "far left" (as the far right likes to call anyone who doesn't agree with them) are those who don't like the above and are protesting against it...
https://x.com/the_jefferymead/status/1944493236170403960
https://x.com/pr0ud_americans/status/1917906982624731624
Are you willing to link to a reputable news outlet instead? Or is that "anti-conservative censorship" too?
Which is a "reputable news outlet" to you? CNN? CNBC? NY times? LA times? Washington times?
Which of those totally reputable 100% unbiased news source owned by Ted Turner, Mathias Döpfner, Jeff Bezos or Rupert Murdoch do you want to listen to?
Associated Press or Reuters, bud. The civilized world typically doesn't refer to any other outlet when asking for reputable reporting.
Huh, I didn't realize that these culture warriors were sitting in the highest echelons of government power and, just as a random example, wielding the DOJ to enforce their views and quash dissent. Yes, both sides are clearly the same.
> They may not be in the zeitgeist anymore but they would still love to ruin your life & career for not doing a land acknowledgement before you step into every public space.
Complaining about land acknowledgements as an example of the "far left" tells me that you don't actually have a handle on what the left actually looks like, as opposed to how it's portrayed through right-wing outlets.
First, there is literally nobody who would "ruin your life" for not doing a land acknowledgement, but also, the people doing land acknowledgements in 2025 are not the "far left". They're not even the left. Most leftist organizations don't do land acknowledgements at all!
EDIT: Since you updated your comment to include another favorite whipping boy:
> they would still love to ruin your life & career for not doing a land acknowledgement and pronoun announcement before stepping into public spaces
Again, "the left" is not ruining your life for not doing a "pronoun announcement", because they don't want pronoun announcements to be required in the first place, and in fact voice serious complaints whenever they are.
Both of the things you mention as examples of the "far left" - mandatory land acknowledgements and pronoun announcements - are things which you will find in very few actual leftist spaces. Where you will find them, however, is in mainstream spaces run by centrist or small-c "conservative" people, like corporate HR meetings. You will also, incidentally, see them on far-right media, which happens to be extremely obsessed with the concept of these things representing the left, despite the fact that actual leftists rejected them years ago.
No true scotsman fallacy.
Just because you consider yourself left and never cared about those things doesn't mean there aren't leftists who do.
There's about 50 different far left interest groups who care about different pet issues to varying degrees of insanity, just as there are on the far right.
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> We're kinda proving my point.
> Clearly this has been a grave mistake
Are we? Has it? I don't see anyone's life and career being ruined. If you're saying that the "grave mistake" is that you've made a statement and now other people are disagreeing with you, then I'll say that's factually correct, but I don't really have any sympathy for the position that you've been wronged in any way.
> I've edited what comments I could to reduce a further flame war.
> As we can see from this thread, you guys are actually super easy going and don't get emotionally triggered at all.
This is the third time you've made this exact accusation in this thread (although you've edited out the previous instances).
It doesn't sound like you're trying to stop a flamewar. It sounds like you're trying to start one. But not very successfully, it seems! Because thankfully people aren't falling for what's looking more and more like very obvious bait.
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who's life has been ruined? be specific
meanwhile the other side of the "both sides are the same" coin is literally building open air prison camps and selling merchandise for them
you are buying it hook line and sinker
James Damore.
*Skud incoming* ← and that is exactly what destroying a life means. Criticizing to no end while the guy wrote a perfectly scientific paper, to the point that he cannot work with his potential.
He immediately gained a platform to try to become a right-wing talking head, an exposure opportunity most people never get, and despite fumbling that has been gainfully employed ever since leaving Google.
Is that a destroyed life? It seems incredibly few people have ever been actually "canceled" in the life-destroying way the right-wing claims to be happening everywhere. Louis CK famously assaulted women and won a Grammy while supposedly being cancelled.
I worked in Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I'm not "buying" anything. I'm speaking from lived experience from sitting in actual meetings with these people.
Also, it appears I made a massive mistake trying to support a centrist "both far left and far right are bad" comment from OP, as this is now a flame war.
We're kinda proving my point.
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You assume people are buying something because "both sides" are doing it. But what about those who aren't ideologically aligned with either end and instead exist in the space between?
Just pass the law yourself I guess? (imagine a muscly arm emoji here)
The US barely has any genuinely left-wing politicians (Bernie Sanders, AOC, DSA). There are no one who realistically could be called far left in any significant position of governing power.
Even these are not far left, they're just basic liberal left.
Which groups or media that are commonly labeled 'far left' that are calling for nationalizing all land. Or eliminating all inheritances. Or nationalizing all communications and transportation industries. Or nationalizing the Federal Reserve (that one's really gone horseshoe theory, and is a republican plan now).
The only thing 'far left' people want to nationalize is health care, and that's simply the fiscally responsible policy. The thing that is crushing the federal budget is the obscene level of graft occurring in that industry, and the only way out is to nationalize or otherwise burn the existing system to the ground via government policy.
The meaning of words can change over time and across space.
The meaning of left and right in US politics encompasses more topics than the matter of who may legally own things.
Pretending that those referred to as left and right are all the same because the only true scottsman is Karl Marx is silly.
There's a whole bunch of socialism to the right of *!=) Marx and the left of classic liberalism.
Words have meaning, trying to characterise "far left" as some sort of US caricature of Blue haired liberal types is less than useful and only serves right wing outlets.
There is very little left wing discourse in the US.
GP was saying that there are hardly far left politicians, saying that the few that exist are Sanders/AOC/DSA.
I was just pointing out that even these are not actual socialists, they're Democratic Socialists of the stripe you find in the mainstream in a lot of staunchly capitalist European nations. There are definitely zero literal far-left politicians, objectively speaking.
Socialist/social democrat are two related but distinct concepts are confusing for those not versed in political science, but their definitions have certainly not changed: democratic socialists for example don't advocate for communal ownership or central planning. The actual policies put forward by DSA candidates in the US, viewed through a political science analysis, are vanilla liberal. The only thing making them 'far left' is that actual far right monied interests have systematically dragged the Overton Window into a place where "public figure performing the Nazi salute on the capitol steps" is "controversial, in some circles" rather than "immediately career-ending."
The list i provided was of left wing politicians.
There are zero far left wing politicians in the US Congress. The far left is literally anti capitalist marxists.
Yes - the Overton window in the US has shifted so far right that a Nazi salute is more or less mainstream, whereas democratic socialists like Sanders/AOC are now "far left". And judges who dare block Trump's actions are, of course, "radical left lunatics" (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/federal-judge...).
Center shit, not censorship.
This is a case where left and right can work together for totally different reasons. The left is fighting for rape porn in video games, and the right doesn’t want gun stores definanced. Both win with credit platform neutrality.
Nah.. Congress won't. When paypal stopped payments to wiki-leaks Congress was happy as to close their eyes.
How would that work with international money laundering regulations?
Would that apply to Australian courts?
If the regulation is legally binding by an act of Congress, it falls under the legal umbrella.
Same thing in AUS: If there's a AUS law, they have to follow it.
In those cases, what would a law...
provide? It might have prevented Visa and Mastercard from being brought into the PornHub lawsuit... in the US. It wouldn't have protected them from Australian laws weaponized by organizations such as Collective Shout.Yes, the US is not the world police and that’s okay. Let Australians deal with Australian laws and Australian lobbying groups.
... and risk adverse international companies (like Visa and Mastercard) need to follow the laws everywhere despite what various jurisdictions shield them from in those jurisdictions.
No: it’s cheaper for them to follow the minimum common compliance across all countries, but Mastercard-sized firms absolutely can and often do vary compliance per country (gestures at Google, Facebook) when it’s profitable to do so. Mastercard could have simply enforced Australia-specific rules on Itch if they’d wanted to, but they’re anxious about being labeled as smutty due to domestic U.S., and apparently exported Australian, puritanism. The solution is to ensure that cowardice does more lasting harm to their brand than they feel that their strategy prevents — which requires both loud and immediate response, as well as sustained pressure over time.
Mastercard and Visa have rather corse information about the transactions.
They've got the credit card number, the merchant name, the time, and the total amount of the transaction.
They do not have line item level filtering of a transaction. Remember those old carbon paper credit card thingies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter - that's all that's needed and all they get. Similarly, the credit card terminals where the merchant enters the amount, swipes the card (or reads the chip) and that's it is sufficient.
Mastercard and Visa would only be able to say "that merchant" not "that product." Filtering based on products and if it's legal there needs to be done by the merchant. Mastercard cannot check to see if someone is selling liquor to an underage customer... but if a merchant is doing that, Mastercard may drop that merchant as one of their clients.
If Itch and Valve are unable to enforce Australia specific laws on their own storefront, Mastercard and Visa can only enforce it at the "this merchant isn't allowed to transact with our network."
Mastercard can deny all transactions from Australia-billed cards to one merchant if they wish to. They are absolutely wired up for “Area of Use” internally and have this data available to their transaction approval processes. That they chose not to use it, instead pressuring merchants to remove content disliked by an Australian puritanical fringe group, is the corporate laziness I describe. Why respond with their own effort when they can just externalize the problem onto their customers, etc.
Mastercard does not have that information. Mastercard doesn't do the billing. The bank does the billing.
Mastercard does not know the location where a given card holder is (or for that matter, any demographic information about the card holder). They know where the merchant is, but that's less useful for digital goods.
Per section 7 here — https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n... — MasterCard could simply remove Australia from Itch’s Area of Use, at which point they would not be permitted to accepted MasterCard from Australian customers, which the merchant could trivially enforce by country filter on the billing address.
I suspect we’re going to find out that Stripe is unwilling to risk losing Mastercard in Australia and also unwilling to implement passthrough AoU restrictions to their sublicensees, and Mastercard isn’t willing to act against any single customer of Stripe or else they don’t profit from the “not our problem” discount rate they issue Stripe to make it their problem.
If an American company chooses to enter a foreign market and do business there, they should be subject to the laws and customs of said market. The complexity that comes with it is their problem to deal with. I echo the earlier sentiment that the U.S. shouldn't be the world's police (although we do behave like that now).
> Well, which one is it now?
Obviously the more complicated option with arbitrary criteria
Public announcement are in no way bound by truth, terms of service are, to a degree
PSA is a reputational risk, where ToS is a legal one.