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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • MC and Visa go, oh, hey, you’re violating our guidelines

    No, that is not how that would work. People cannot buy games that violate MasterCard’s and Visa’s policies using MasterCard or Visa. If someone buys the game using a different payment method, crypto or a direct bank link, it would not violate MasterCard or Visa’s policies because they had no part of the transaction.

    Being mad at Valve is shooting the messenger.

    Being mad at Valve is reasonable, because they did not have to ban all games that their payment processors disagree with. They would need to remove the option to pay with those for certain games, and the process of filtering them out and deciding would take a lot of time, money, and labor. It’s easier for valve to just ban it outright, but it is not the right thing to do. Valve is not the reason it started, but there is reason to be mad at Valve as well.


  • As of July 16, Steam’s new guidelines state that game publishers should avoid releasing titles that may violate the terms and conditions of its payment processors. In other words, the storefront is asking creators to not only follow the platform’s rules but also submit to potential oversight from companies like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.

    and from the petition

    MasterCard and Visa have increasingly used their financial control to pressure platforms into censoring legal fictional content

    Steam is enforcing MasterCard’s, Visa’s, and PayPal’s policies. From Steam’s Rules and Policies:

    What you shouldn’t publish on Steam: … 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.

    Point number 15 was not there in a Snapshot from February on the wayback machine. If anything, the solution should just be to remove the payment method for those games (which would still hurt the creators substantially).

    There is a line that is confusing:

    In response to this censorship, some fans have launched a petition on Change.org urging Valve to revert its policies

    There may be petitions about reverting Valve’s policy, but it’s not the main petition against Visa and MasterCard (which is the one they linked).



  • As I already said in my other response, it’s really about the developing child. Jonathan Haidt’s books “The Coddling of the American Mind” and “The Anxious Generation” both talk about the idea of over protectionism. You cannot deny that buy expensive shoes they will inevitably grow out of to avoid some light teasing from the school boys is over protecting them. They should be tough enough to handle comments about the fact they don’t have expensive shoes. If they aren’t, that’s a great parenting moment to help them work through those feelings and how to better handle the social situations.


  • The goal of childhood is to prepare you for adulthood. It is better to be teased as a developing child, especially for something trivial, and be a well rounded adult. Children have to figure out how to navigate difficult social situations themselves, rather than simply avoiding them. It is becoming increasingly problematic when kids aren’t working things out amongst themselves, or at the very least putting up with it, and instead resort to having an adult fix it for them. If they learn they can always go to an adult to fix their problems, they are being prepared for an authoritarian government. The solution to their problems is a higher power that will fix things for them. This is not quite the same, but it is avoiding difficult confrontation over something as trivial as shoes.

    I do think kids should also have the freedom to choose their own shoes. If you give them a budget, and they can find Nike shoes in that budget, good on them. Maybe they even keep an eye on them going on sale. But if they cannot find shoes within the budget, they will have to settle for what they like within their price range. Which is also a valuable lesson for a developing teen.

    they feel those problems with the same intensity we do

    We cannot protect kids from big feelings. It is vital they experience big feelings. It’s becoming increasingly problematic with over protectionism and treating children as fragile beings. It’s caused higher levels of anxiety and reduced social skills. While you may say them not having name brand shoes will lead to anxiety, if they are always given a way out of their easy to handle middle school problems, how are they going to be prepared for adulthood problems, or the countless other things out of their control. They need to experience the anxiety and learn how to handle it in healthy ways.

    something that’s important to a child should also be important to their parents, in my opinion

    I get where you’re coming from, but that cannot be universally true (and I think you would agree). A child wanting every toy they ever see, no matter how important to them, obviously is not going to be important to you as a parent. If a teen thinks it’s important everyone they meet loves them, you cannot encourage extreme people pleasing. No kid “needs” name brand shoes. That is very distinctly a want. Perhaps they do some extra chores to earn their more expensive shoes, so you are all happy. But simply giving them expensive shoes they will inevitably grow out of because of a few comments from some school bullies is not a big problem. It is a little problem. Kids can handle little problems without adult intervention.







  • To make matters more complex, if I were to murder someone I would leave me phone at home, maybe leave it playing videos. It would be much less likely that my phone is randomly at the house of someone who was just murdered if I am truly innocent. That alone does not prove me guilty, of course, but it sure doesn’t look good.