Consumer Rights Wiki - User contributions [en]

Talk:Financial censorship

2025-08-25T15:10:49Z

Gingercake:

== 2021 Onlyfans Sexwork Ban and Unban ==

The censorship of Steam and Itch.io are probably linked to 2021 censorship of sex workers that Mastercard financially benefited from. I'm going to leave some links here for myself or some excellent person to expand on the Financial Censorship article at a later date.

https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-mastercard-is-endangering-sex-workers

https://time.com/6092947/onlyfans-sexual-content-ban/

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/clarissajanlim/onlyfans-reversing-ban-on-adult-content
[[User:Gingercake|Gingercake]] ([[User talk:Gingercake|talk]]) 04:25, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

== Compliance With Wiki Mission Statement ==
This page needs to be expanded to include the ways that financial censorship is anti-ownership/anti-privacy. I think an argument can be made that a duopoly should not be able to prevent people from purchasing legal stuff, like NSFW content that payment processor may find objectionable. This practice is a violation of user privacy and anti-ownership (ownership of money!). I'm working on improved verbiage and will update accordingly.
[[User:Gingercake|Gingercake]] ([[User talk:Gingercake|talk]]) 15:10, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Financial censorship

2025-08-25T04:30:37Z

Gingercake: Added See Also link to Collective Shout page.

{{Stub}}

'''Financial censorship''' is the practice of major [[payment processors]] to refuse to process transactions for entities they deem to not align with their own values. Since these payment processors hold an extremely dominant position in global finance with no widely-adopted alternative, this practice results in a strong chilling effect by making independent free expression that runs afoul of their policies financially unsustainable.

==Examples==
{{Incomplete section}}

===Steam===
In July 2025, [[Steam]], an online platform and digital marketplace for video games and related computer software and assets, added a new rule to their [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/onboarding#5 publishing guidelines] against "in particular, certain kinds of adult only content", and proceeded to withdraw hundreds of titles from sale on the platform.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Koselke |first=Anna |date=2025-07-18 |title=Valve confirms pressure from banks and card companies is to blame for the storefront axing adult Steam games: "Loss of payment methods would prevent customers from being able to purchase other titles" |url=https://www.gamesradar.com/games/valve-confirms-pressure-from-banks-and-card-companies-is-to-blame-for-the-storefront-axing-adult-steam-games-loss-of-payment-methods-would-prevent-customers-from-being-able-to-purchase-other-titles/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250726022008/https://www.gamesradar.com/games/valve-confirms-pressure-from-banks-and-card-companies-is-to-blame-for-the-storefront-axing-adult-steam-games-loss-of-payment-methods-would-prevent-customers-from-being-able-to-purchase-other-titles/ |archive-date=2025-07-26 |access-date=2025-08-15 |work=GamesRadar+ |quote=Judging by the information available on SteamDB, over 100 games have been marked as "retired" from Valve's storefront in just two days – many of which are titles with adult-only content.}}</ref>

===Itch.io===
In July 2025, Itch.io, a platform for many indie games, delisted "all adult NSFW content" from their storefront. Later that month, they restored all NSFW games, as long as they're free. Currently, they are in negotiations with payment processors to start restoring some paid titles, but they have acknowledged that this will see some titles permanently removed from the platform.

==See also==
[[Collective Shout]]

==External links==

*https://www.eff.org/issues/financial-censorship
*https://www.change.org/p/stop-payment-processors-from-dictating-legal-purchases
*https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/987/text

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Common terms]]

Talk:Financial censorship

2025-08-25T04:25:57Z

Gingercake: Created page with "== 2021 Onlyfans Sexwork Ban and Unban == The censorship of Steam and Itch.io are probably linked to 2021 censorship of sex workers that Mastercard financially benefited from. I'm going to leave some links here for myself or some excellent person to expand on the Financial Censorship article at a later date. https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-mastercard-is-endangering-sex-workers https://time.com/6092947/onlyfans-sexual-content-ban/ https://www.buzzfeednews...."