Some notes based on frequent comments:
- Not my petition, I’m just sharing it.
- I don’t live in the USA.
- You can sign a petition and call them to complain. The numbers are downthread.
I wonder if the real reason credit card companies have been responsive to these groups is the potential for lawsuits that drag payment processors into them, which is a result of various shitty laws that have been passed to generally empower these sorts of regressive trolls to do so. If so petitions from the other side might not be as effective, because they can be sued for providing services to the wrong people but not so much for cutting off service, and there’s not much actual risk to them even if a lot of people are mad about the latter.
Don’t waste your time with change.org. Call your CC company directly and complain. Not email. Call.
No, you need to do all three.
Change.org and email can be ignored automatically. Calling them costs them call center money.
Except the change.org gets media attention. Proven by the fact that we’re talking in this thread right now. Emails must be at least a little effective considering that’s one of the methods that Collective Shout group used to put pressure on these companies in the first place. Along with public displays of course which goes back to the petition point. So again, I say again you should do all three.
If you really want to sign the petition, fine. Just call them before doing that.
Well yes, that’s what I’m advocating, doing all of them. Though frankly I’d say write your email and sign the petition while you’re on hold, probably more efficient that way.
Name one change.org petition that accomplished anything except giving change.org a valuable email list to spam and sell.
I think we need to level the playing field with these religious zealots. We need to counter with bold statement in a language they understand, using the same tools they use, like this crude draft:
I am a member of the New Sexually Free Worship Church (NSFW Church for short), and I am deeply disappointed by recent actions recklessly taken by payment processors to ban religious content
I believe these actions violate my freedom of religion and I urge world governments to take immediate steps to stop this outrageous attack on religious liberty
For fuck sake. Online petitions are worthless. Directly call and email them. Force human staff to deal with your complaint multiple times a day until they revert the policy. Bog their entire support system down through a sustained effort. That is how you will get their attention.
I find it hilarious that the reason these payment companies requested sites pull their NSFW content was due to direct action by a puritanical activist group but people upset by it not only don’t care enough to participate in direct action themselves but won’t even put their real name on a petition. Recently signed by: Crazy crazysmile. Thanks for the support Mr. Crazysmile!
Say what you want about right wing nut jobs, but they at least care enough about their ideas that they go out and make a difference.
The reason they’re effective at it is the exact reason we aren’t. We just want to be left the fuck alone and want to leave others alone. We don’t bombard people with our shitty ideas because we’re good people.
I’m all for us doing it as a reaction but do not celebrate these degenerates trying to govern your life. Fuck that and fuck them.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. People fought wars to end monarchy, slavery, fascism. Wanting to be left alone isn’t the mark of a good person. Good deeds are what make a good person. It is your actions, not your beliefs, that make you a good person.
You don’t need to bombard people with your ideas. You need to stand up for them.
Your discomfort in pushing your ideals is why you’ll lose them
I do kind of wonder how you go about pushing against a company that has virtually no customer support. Just an AI chatbot or something. No numbers, no emails. It’s not common, but I’ve seen it, and I expect we’ll see more of it increasingly. I suppose at that point you could try to locate their address and mail them a letter?
EDIT: Btw both mastercard and visa DO have simple ways of contacting them. You can email mastercard and Visa has chat, email, and phone call. It was pretty easy to snap off an email to both calling them out. About as hard as signing the petition so I recommend doing that instead.
They also have massive financial backing
Spam e-mail? Its On its way
email is easily instantly and trivially ignored
Fuck, uuuuuuh phone calls?
I shall be doin that too!
US local phone numbers, English:
Master card
800-627-8372,1,1Visa
800-847-2911,1,4Script:
I’m calling to urge you to immediately end your new policy that unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers even more vulnerable. I’m also asking you to sit down with stakeholders- specifically sex workers and adult content creators- to develop solutions that ensure equitable access to financial services, create stability, and reduce harm for sex workers.Instead of “sex workers” wouldnt “adult content creators” be more palatable?
Maybe so! Mentioning that human rights are at stake can be more impactful, but also risks turning off potential supporters, so idk
I feel like “adult content creators” covers all genres. Games or porn.
Not enough, We need to actively seek out & destroy the fascists (CS in this case). Document those individuals & prevent them from getting a job, EVER. They use children as human shields, while violating them. (They support Cuties & Germaine Greer)
Lol
Curious
The irony. Also, who/what does the money go to?
Change.org is a private, for-profit, venture-backed company. Your money goes to their executives.
Ah, amazing. Petitions on change.org also don’t have any legal basis, so corpos can just ignore them. ECIs have a lot more power.
Petition?
No, no, they should be legally enforced to do so.
I feel like this should be an official EU petition like Stop Killing Games as well. Have lawmakers actually tell payment processors that they have no right to deny legal transactions (not just fictional content, but any legal transaction).
I’m pretty sure they don’t deny transactions. They just threaten to pull out. If they clearly state that they don’t have customers with explicit content I think that’s fine, but I assume they went full bully instead.
These companies tend to have rules about what types of transactions they want to be associated with and only have deals with companies that adher to that. When I was working in Klarna they were very clear that they did not associate with porn, sex, weapons etc. Of course they also own the bank Sofort that handles shady customers.
The problem here is that these providers are so big that it’d be a major blow for Steam to lose them and hence they can be bullied into submission.
I wonder if VISA and Mastercard could be regulated in the EU as gatekeepers in the DMA
Or just use Gnu Taler instead and encourage others to use it as well. We only need 3.5% of the population to use it and then it’ll become a universal option that will break Visa’s fucking business model’s back and kill Visa.
Taler isn’t a general payment solution, it’s designed so that separate entities can have their own way to handle small transactions. For example, you attend a conference and deposit some cash into the event, and then you go and use those tokens to exhange for various stuff at the event, and the event organizers settle up with merchants after the event.
Rolling this out on a more global scale mea a you’d need some major institution, like a bank, to back the currency and handle settling up. AFAIK, this hasn’t happened anywhere and isn’t likely to happen because banks already have a system that works that requires far less effort: credit and debit cards.
We already have a solution here that has some market presence, and it’s cryptocurrency. Get some Monero and you can go buy stuff today without those transactions being public. The fees are minimal, transactions are fast, and merchants exist. The main issue is the negative public perception of cryptocurrencies, which is mostly due to speculation and bad actors running scams, but there are solid, proven currencies that can be useful as a cash alternative.
If taler uses the same banking systems as visa and mastercard, they can be pressured the same way. It sounds like taler shifts even more responsibility to the merchants and they would still comply with KYC which means you can expect stuff like submitting an ID scan for “Verification” in order to comply with laws.
I do hope it takes off, because fuck visa and mastercard, but im not gonna get my hopes up.
Well countries tend to hate alternative currencies and for extremely good reasons. As once a nation stops having control over their own currency; it very quickly can stop being a country.
Does it ever work for real payments yet?
Define what you mean by real payments. You can buy food from businesses with it (if the stores support it yet, as customers have not been demanding it yet)
Show me a place that accepts it and a way to deposit into the wallet.
Look at who the commercially supported businesses are
I have been to that website. Have you? I see no way to actually use it, that’s why I’m asking. There is a demo with fake money and that’s it.
Well it is a demo for businesses to try before buying commercial support for themselves to start using Taler as a business. If you are asking for how to use it as an individual customer the how to guides are what you need
