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Organize to stop payment processors deciding what you can buy [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-07-26

Payment processors such as Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Stripe are extending their control of what you can spend your money on. This authoritarian and censorial trend received more attention this week after they forced software platforms Steam and Itch.io to remove or delist adult-themed games. Freedom-loving Americans are rallying to respond; it's up to you to make the costs clear to these companies.

First, the ACLU, taking aim at Mastercard: "End Your Unjust Policy."

The policy itself imposes strict and invasive requirements on adult content websites using Mastercard's financial services – including pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and monitoring the age and identity verification process for all performers. The stated intent of this is to prevent child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual content. But the policy only applies to websites that host adult content – when all available evidence indicates that these problems proliferate across all kinds of sites.

A change.org petition, already with more than 100,000 signatures, hopes to catch their attention: "Tell MasterCard, Visa & Activist Groups: Stop Controlling What We Can Watch, Read, or Play"

We demand that MasterCard, Visa, and their pressure partners:

Stop censoring legal fictional content that complies with the law and platform standards.

Reject influence from activist groups that promote moral panic or misrepresent fiction as harm.

Be fully transparent about content restrictions and the rationale behind them.

Protect creators' rights to make legal adult content and ensure a fair appeals process for any penalized media.

The Financial Censorship Call Campaign offers a template for respectfully contacting your represenatives; it would be even better if you wrote your own thing, however short. There's a thread on reddit for discussion of payment processors.

Here's a website collecting advice and information on how to fight back, including contact information for the payment processors themselves.

Payment processors have caved to the outcry of a small, right-wing puritanical group who wants to dictate what adults can or cannot buy with their own money, and is setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the future of independent art on the internet. Many livelihoods are at risk because of the outcry of a niche of people who seek to restrict artistic freedom. With your help, we can speak louder.

Be respectful, don't abuse the humans you get through to, but make sure they can't ignore you.

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