Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
In 2017, when the ban hammer came down on us, the Daily Stormer said that financial deplatforming would not stop at “Nazis.”
Who knew it would go all the way to anime in the space of seven years?
Credit card companies are continuing what appears to be a coordinated effort to censor Japanese artists.
The most recent targets have been Ken Akamatsu’s “Manga Library Z”, a website which hosted old and out of print manga as a method of archival and ad-revenue sharing with artists, as well as Melon Books, a Japanese book retailer.
Manga Library Z is being shut down entirely, unlike most websites targeted by payment processors, this time even Japanese credit card companies joined in according to Akamatsu.
After the credit card companies pulled out, the only active form of payment processing left to them was BitCash, which couldn’t sustain the site.
The decision payment processors made came after an ultimatum which criticized Manga Library Z’s “handling of adult content” on the site. Similar ultimatums have forced sites such as Pixiv and even Patreon in the west to harshly censor or restrict access to content based on geographical location.
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Payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard have been implementing what appear to be economic sanctions against adult artwork for years, despite no apparent legal obligation to do so. Speculatively, their decisions may be informed by rhetoric accusing such artwork as contributing to “violence against women and girls“, which is what one UN-affiliated committee had to say about anime and manga earlier this year.
They don’t censor actual porn though. Just cartoons.
Why is an American company allowed to go into Japan and tell them what they’re allowed to believe? There isn’t even a law.
Shouldn’t a company as big as Visa/Mastercard be subject to international regulation, if they are operating internationally?
