Fair enough.

You realise that the fact you’re even talking about it means it’s doing more than just making cars idle.

Now, whether it’s actually helping anything in a tangible way, that’s a different conversation entirely.

Possibly , but that’s not what you said.

The implication was that making cars idle was the point of blocking in the road, which is wasn’t/isn’t.

How does <this thing that i know was not the point> <fulfil the goal i know is unrelated to the thing i just mentioned> ?

A failure of sentence structure or purposeful trolling.

That’s like looking at a tennis match and asking “how does wearing white win the game?”.

Ignoring context to feign confusion is some weaksauce trolling.

Fair enough, came in a bit hot there, my bad.

I’d argue that it not being a legal threat doesn’t matter too much in this case because they aren’t looking for legal control, so much as “effective” control.

If they can stop you without needing for it to be signed in to law, then they’ll take that, if they can get a law as well, then I’m sure they’ll take that too.

Don’t get me wrong- its not that I don’t care about censorship, its that I don’t really view this as censorship because the consumption and purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible. Contrarily, if this were signed into law I would have a big fucking problem with it.

Censorship isn’t a binary, but we can agree to disagree on that one i suppose.

To this part though

purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible

Not really, there are numerous titles available exclusively on itch.io and steam, those are effectively censored by your rationale as you can no longer purchase them at all.

Honestly steam gift cards don’t work at all here because it’s not a ban on buying the games using a card, it’s a ban on steam listing the titles at all, on threat of losing the payment services.

Crypto cash and gift-cards are great if you have effective access to them.

• Crypto is out for most people for obvious reasons (technical knowledge, dearth of places that actually accept crypto)
• Cash works until it doesn’t and governments and big tech are trying their hardest to make it as difficult as possible, there is a big push to go cashless.

It’s not that people find cash less convenient because they are lazy (some are i suppose), it’s because it’s being purposely deprecated as much as possible, or just straight up doesn’t apply to the paradigm, such as online purchases.

The reason I brought this up is because I have seen it proposed that this issue will expand beyond the scope of digital marketplaces, which I find downright laughable.

As i said, this already happens, it’s weird in how it’s applied tbh, but that’s neither here nor there.

https://www.adyen.com/legal/list-restricted-prohibited

Mastercard just says : “brand-damaging Transactions” and doesn’t elaborate, at a quick glance.

A good example of this is casino’s and other gambling related physical locations, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get a payment processor to work with gambling, assuming they even give you the time of day.

People WILL stop using visa cards if you can’t use it to buy condoms and there’s an ATM in the gas station.

Sure for that specific thing, hard to pay cash at amazon or other online only retailers.

I firmly believe that if this issue is pressed further, at the very least Valve will js stop accepting payment directly through payment processors.

That i’d be interested to see tbh, because as i said there isn’t an equally available alternative to card payment processors (and it’s not even close).

If they did go crypto only for instance, there’d be a big move to crypto for some, but that’d be a significant loss to take on principle alone.

I do not believe “what they define as NSFW will expand!”

And that’s the core of your problem, puritan activists don’t generally have the capacity to think “actually, the thing i wanted other people to not be able to see is gone, i think I’ll leave it there” because the censorship isn’t the goal, the goal is control.

It’s even worse with organised puritans , because even if a few hang it up you’ll always find a few willing to just go a little further or have differing opinions on what is “acceptable”.

I would lay good money on this not actually being as far as they originally wanted, it was just what they could get for now.

I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?

Firstly, it’s the payment processors, you know the monopoly of companies that you need to take payments from regular people.

Secondly, payment processors can and will stop providing payment services for shops that carry physical goods they deem unacceptable.

(yes crypto exists, no it’s not equivalent yet) (yes steam cards exist, no it’s not equivalent and unless i’ve missed something itch.io doesn’t have an card system)

As far as cash goes, is there a new slot where you can put the cash monies directly in to the pc/console and it credits your account ?

Or do you mean, go to the store and buy a physical copy of the hundreds of thousands of games that don’t have physical editions ?

Aside from the existing deficit due to hundreds of years of systemic discrimination you mean?

for a long time, hotmail (and i think windows live mail) only checked the first 16 characters.