VISA & Mastercard's Nonsensical Censorship
Date: July 26, 2025
I think I really, really need to talk about this. Some of you heard that VISA and Mastercard withdrew any payment process for Japanese websites like Manga Library Z, DLsite, Melonbooks and etc. because they have pornographic content. Well guess what? It got a whole lot worse, to the point it started affecting video games that contain sexually explicit content, telling Steam and Itch.io to not allow those content to be in their stores, basically making VISA and Mastercard the bosses of what's right or wrong, even though their job is to deal and process with digital payment.
Listen, you don't need to be an absolute porn addict maniac to know that it can lead to something even worse; censoring things that some people deem as “bad” or “evil”. Don't they know they're basically asking the scenario of Fahrenheit 451 to happen in real life (though the worst thing has yet to come to this world…). It's not the government most of the time who censor things (well, depends), but it comes from regular people who have a knee-jerk reaction and instead of trying to do it in a legal manner (like at least talk about this to your governor), they instead went to these duopolies and make them do the dirty work. And guess what? They're doing these actions thinking that it will “protect the children and women”, when there are real life cases of it happening yet they do nothing with it. Like damn this doesn't help no one.
In all honesty, there's a part of me that says “why even care about it? It only affects these perverted porno games”, which I can't even blame some people thinking like that. But when it's not done legally through the government of a country or state and instead is done by privately owned companies, they'll take it a mile when you give an inch of censorship. We may not know what else they might censor, they could even censor us Christians in the future, like banning us from getting money because we don't follow their rules. Oh wait, that's what the Book of Revelations told us will happen when the Anti-Christ has risen.So don't get me wrong here, I hate pornographic content and I wish it doesn't exist, but when it's done like this? Just asking for trouble, just saying…
Anyhow, I want to get this out just because I know that it'll affect me the most since I want to be a writer, and the stuff I have written can be seen as “bad” by the moral grandstanders and VISA/Mastercard. Thanks for reading, and God bless