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I thought Old Man Yaoi was like a specific person or entity. Like you walk down to the river, there’s Old Man Consequences, you walk down to the oak tree there’s Old Man Sensibility, and then you walk into the gay club and you’ll never guess who it is

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This person wrote a manifesto I ain’t reading all that but this is literally the type of behavior im talking about the idea hobbies all cost money is so removed from reality if you have the time to pick up your phone and write 7 paragraphs on how im victimizing you with my offhanded post you have the time to watch a movie on YouTube with your very same phone instead come on now. How is you freaking out on the internet helping any of these issues

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Pay attention to the particulars of Mastercard's responses, because this a textbook example of how to create plausible deniability.

"Mastercard has not barred any legal transaction" is, technically, a true statement – because Mastercard is not the one processing the transactions in the first place. Mastercard does not deal directly with any merchant, and in fact typically refuses to communicate with merchants at all; there's always a payment processing service sitting in between Mastercard and the merchant, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or any of dozens of other service providers.

Consequently, there are two layers of service agreements in place: the agreement between Mastercard and the payment processing service, and the agreement between the payment processing service and the merchant. That second layer of service agreements, between the payment processing service and the merchant, is where all of these content restrictions are being imposed. Mastercard can thus truthfully claim that they aren't barring legal transactions.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you've probably already spotted the issue: if the content restrictions are being imposed upon the merchants by individual payment processing services and not by Mastercard, why do all of those payment processing services seem to have exactly the same content restrictions?

That's where the critical sleight of hand comes in: while Mastercard's own terms of service do not require payment processing services to bar transactions of particular types, their ToS does require payment processors to bar transactions which could be damaging to the Mastercard brand. What constitutes damage to the Mastercard brand is not defined; it means whatever Mastercard wants it to mean. The payment processing services are thus in a position where they can be held in breach of Mastercard's terms of service for basically any reason, which gives them a strong incentive not to test any boundaries.

And that's why Mastercard can truthfully say they have never barred any legal transaction: they're never the ones doing the blocking. The layer of payment processing services that sits between Mastercard and the merchants are enforcing those content restrictions, based on a series of unwritten handshake agreements between the payment processors and Mastercard regarding what does and does not constitute acceptable content – and because the particulars of those handshake agreements aren't in writing, Mastercard can assert that their terms of service do not compel payment processing services to bar any legal transaction and technically be telling the truth.

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plane tickets should be Free if you miss yuor friends

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from the bottom of my heart: just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed to exist

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hey guys I wrote more poolverine

wade continues to pine for worstie while slutting it up crazy style for old man logan

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an underrecognised tragedy of AI slop isn't just that any piece of contemporary art could be AI, any news reel could be AI, it's that now just any video of something vaguely nice and whimsical happening in the world could be AI

this is about the trampoline bunnies

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fuck em up gang

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Posting a Tiktok I really enjoy since she’s going away 😔

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There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

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do not let up the pressure

https://yellat.money/

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a collection of pics of wasabi being a scrunkly little creature

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eevee is like a prey animal to me

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in the 21st century you will either have to show mastercard video footage of your heterosexual christian marriage in order to unlock the copy and paste tools on your computer, or communism will make it so that you can get free surgery to add a knot to your dick. and you gotta choose which side you’re on pretty fuckin fast

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[video by mr.tomtotoro. no caption]