[Shank]

> I feel like you are omitting the content that visa and mastercard find particularly objectionable that is commonplace in japan but not elsewhere.

At this point, I would argue that the reasoning isn't even cohesive or unified. Some sites lose all processors (e.g., Amex bails too) whereas others lose only Visa and MasterCard, and the distinctions aren't made clear to end users.

Sure, DMM and DLSite end up offering a large variety of pornography, but it's not just that -- Niconico Douga's premium subscription service was also blacklisted, despite the fact that it's basically just YouTube Premium for Japanese livestreamers (i.e., not pornography).

A lot of people argue that the reason is specific genres of pornography, but the practical reality is that it can be basically any type of content of reason. Stripe considers pornography an industry that's too-hot-to-touch, for example, despite the fact that some processors do work with pornography, and end up charging much higher processor fees for the hassle. A lot of user-generated content, which is wildly uncontrolled, combined with a relatively high risk of refunds, can lead to this type of action without necessarily transgressing a general rule like "this specific variety of pornography is bad".

[Dalewyn]

>DMM and DLSite end up offering a large variety of pornography

What's really twisted is these same payment processors seemingly have no qualms about Steam's large variety of pornography[1], some of which are Japanese eroges[2] (with less/no censoring![3]) that DMM, et al. are demanded to delist.

Banks and payment processors really need to stick to just doing their business, which is securely storing money and facilitating the transfer of money between two parties regarding legal business transactions.

[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/adultonly/ (Warning: NSFW!)

[2]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073440/__Koikatsu_Party/ (Warning: NSFW!)

[3]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/955560/Evenicle/ (Warning: NSFW!)

[numpad0]

It's clearly Japanese amateur content publishing economy that they are after. They're leaving professional comic/porn sections of same websites as-is, while cutting off multiple amateur bookstore chains[1] altogether. This is not even double standards.

Their intent is undoubtedly to throw wrenches into Japanese manga ecosystem that incubate and train authors rather effectively through out-of-economy feedback mechanisms in social media and self publishing, massively supercharged in the past decade through Twitter; it had proved immune to foreign replication attempts, financial incentives, leverages, even generative AI tools[2]. Those tools don't do much, other than raising barrier to entry by raising expectations and bolstering Japanese dominance.

Some crazy person somewhere must be on a cultural crusade trying to "solve" that problem, not understanding that trying to deny financial incentives just widens the cost-performance gap between Japan and the rest of the West by suppressing market valuation of Japanese manga and anime, allowing it to be more heavily subsidized by authors' dayjobs. They never made money in manga. Introducing money to disinterested then refusing it achieves nothing. Otherwise it makes no sense.

1: as in small videogame-shop-like franchises that specialize in casual self-published books - yes, that's a thing in Japan.

2: AI is completely useless in manga, I mean, there's no way copyright flamewar and watermarking movement existed if it worked. Pornographic voice drama authors[3] are loving it for generating cover arts for free. But even they don't look interested in AI content generation, they just love free covers.

3: yes, it's a thing in Japanese language, seem to be steadily growing even among English speakers. They're picking up Japanese fast. The hardest language on Earth, not anymore.