Ahh man, Australia have tried DNS blocking websites via our ISPs however running your own or changing your DNS (on your local machine or your modem if it's not locked down) completely dumpsters this strategy. From memory torrent websites were blocked and some rom / game piracy sites.

Obviously I'd prefer to pay in crypto directly but some of the stores I shop in don't accept it yet. In person I can pay in cash but shopping privately online is a different story. Gift cards are the next best option, and thanks to them I can use the self checkout scanner and online stores without my purchasing history being tracked. It also allows me to store my savings in a hard asset that can't be easily confiscated, frozen, inflated or stolen, that I can permissionlessly spend whenever I need to, that no one knows how much of or if I have, that if needs be I can flee the country with in an instant without worry that it will be sized or lost. And it gives me the freedom to not be at the mercy of the banking system and just take their debit card fee, debit card issuance fee, debit card replacement fee, transfer fee, deposit fee, overdraft fee, underdraft fee, too little money fee, account having fee, fuck you what you gonna do fee...

I mean isn’t this effectively the problem bitcoin aimed to solve originally? Don’t get me wrong, crypto is fucked and I’m not advocating for it here per se. But a locally processed, secure, digital version of cash bypasses the need for any of this. Granted it bypasses the need for some of the most powerful institutions on the planet too, and so will never happen in a truly egalitarian sense.

Hate to be a party pooper, but unless you're going thru self checkout (and the store for that matter) fully masked, you've given up way more information than by using Visa. I'll give you the access benefit.

Haha but also last I checked everyone but north Korea uses them and north Korea I'm just pulling out of my ass because it makes sense to me.

Probably the last tweet that was posted on this thread, if PayPal was denying purchases in certain regions than steam would get scared

That was kinda what I was alluding to. Apparently it worked before that, but they decided to make up extra rules or turned up enforcement.

You're even dumber I thought. Those sites mention (multiple times even) game account selling services (breaking TOS's all around), gambling and virtual phone numbers (used in scams almost exclusively). You really think you're going to get people using those sites?

A duopoly or any oligopoly is effectively the same as a monopoly.

And you're missing the point where payment processors aren't the police. They are not the ones to make any decisions like that, yet they do. Point in case: hoe many payment processors allow legal porn? It's easy to jump onto child pornography, but it's completely missing the point.

I'm not missing the point where payment processor aren't police. But they still need to follow legislation in the region they operate. First of, it's not "Point in case", it's "Case in point". Second, I can honestly say. I have no idea how many payment processors does or does not authorize payments regarding legal porn for various websites. Feel free to link an article or source that investigates that particular topic. If you look at the post. They claim "Possibly related to PayPal because people in ***certain regions*** have not been able to use it to pay on Steam." If this was PayPal taking a stand on a corporate level against porn games on steam. Why would only ***certain regions*** be affected instead of everyone? The obvious answer, is that it's only ***certain regions***, because of their legislation. If PayPal wish to do business in their region. They have to follow their laws for those customers.

Yeah, no. First off: payment processors (yet again) don't get to dictate what I as a customer am allowed to buy or not. Their reasoning doesn't matter. If they prohibited sexual material (most do) then they are effectively trying to ban me from consuming or using sexual materials. Fuck. That. Shit. I don't care for their reasoning, they are a payment processor, process payments and GTFO. Secondly: this has nothing to do with refunds or chargebacks. Sex is the biggest product on the internet, still, and they'd bank like there is no tomorrow would they allow it. A more realistic scenario is that some religious organizations got their hands in there somewhere as they tend to do, in an effort to ensure that their sick mentality gets applied for everyone because there is no religion like a fucked up religion

Payment processors, such as PayPal. Are private companies and have a wide discretion to decide who they do, and don't do business with. Just like you as a private person have a wide discretion to decide who you do, and don't do business with. A baker has every right to refuse a customer that wants a cake with a swastika on it. So the same rules have to apply to PayPal being allowed to refuse to do business with certain industries. They are not your bank. If, it was some "religious organization" that got their hands in PayPal. Why would they only stop authorizing payments in certain regions? Wouldn't it then be applied everywhere? The fact that it was only in specific regions. Makes it far more likely that it's due to the legislation in those regions regarding incest. Rather than a moral decision from corporate PayPal to stop authorizing payments to Steam. Steam did not remove every porn game. They removed those belonging to a very specific category.