Also see this English post about the Japanese Senator visit.
Context: In the past year there were pressure from VISA and Mastercard on shops selling content that can be considered adult; several sites tried to appease them by imposing restrictions on creators, but ultimately VISA and Mastercard stopped doing business with them (or vice versa), thus stopping those shops’ ability to accept those forms of payment.
DL.Getchu.com is a Japanese shopping site for doujin manga, and was one of the shops that stopped (or was forced to stop) taking VISA and Mastercard. (Others shops include Toranoana, DLsite, FANZA doujin etc.)
People were concerned about these issues’ impact on the freedom of expression. Several days ago, Japanese Senator Yamada Taro went to VISA HQ and confronted executives there. According to him, he was told (machine translation from the news article) “VISA headquarters does not make value judgments on the content handled by each site, etc., and if it does, it is at the site*. VISA also reported that it has never instructed them to stop handling content that contains specific terms (keywords).”
*at the site: the Japanese word used was 現場, on-site where the action happens, as opposed to far away in the back office or executive suite. Meaning if such judgments happened, it was done by somebody far lower and removed from HQ, or so they claimed.
A few days later, DL.Getchu.com announced that it will accept VISA again. It is unknown if it is related to the above, or if other sites will follow suit at this time.
Sounds good but it’s still ridiculous two companies hold so much power over world wide payment systems. Stories like this make me wish crypto became a realistic alternative (yes, I’m aware that has its own problems, just let me dream about a less centralized world).
Agreed. I do feel a bit sympathetic towards VISA for that being sued over their relation with Pornhub thing (which some speculated is what kicked off all of these), but I do not think it justify such a reaction. In any case, such power that enables some lackeys to unilaterally decide what is acceptable and what is not for a whole country’s creators should never exist.