The well-known doujinshi sales platform, DLSitehas announced that will temporarily suspend the use of Visa and Mastercard credit cards in its service. Although described as a temporary suspension, no specific date has been provided for its lifting. The parent company, EISYS, announced the suspension through its website, but did not go into detail about why those particular cards were suspended or when the suspension will be lifted. The company apologized to its customers for the inconvenience caused and suggested the use of alternative cards such as JCB and American Express in the meantime.
DLSite was founded in 1996 as a store specializing in the sale of doujinshi and other fan works. The site has since expanded its offerings and now includes video games, ASMR, and other software in addition to just doujinshi and manga. Recently, they had changed the labels for some categories (e.g. “incest” and “lolicon”) hoping to satisfy their payment processors. However, it seems that these changes were not enough to avoid the suspension of Visa and Mastercard.
The recent suspension of the use of Visa and Mastercard cards on DLSite is not only an inconvenience for users, but also highlights a broader issue: the influence of multinational financial companies on the adult content industry in Japan. This move by DLSite, although presented as a temporary suspension, appears to be a direct response to pressures exerted by these companies to censor certain terms and content considered problematic.
In recent years, financial services companies such as Visa and Mastercard have threatened to withdraw their services to platforms that do not meet their content standards. This has led to a situation where these platforms are being forced to make changes, even if that means censoring or modifying their content to meet the demands of these companies.
This situation raises important questions about freedom of expression and the autonomy of online platforms. To what extent should multinational financial companies influence the content that can be accessed and consumed on the Internet? Should they have the power to dictate which terms and topics are acceptable and which are not?
While it is understandable that these companies have policies to prevent the funding of illegal or morally questionable activities, the line between protection and censorship often becomes blurred. DLSite’s suspension is a vivid reminder of the complex dynamics at play between freedom of expression, content regulation, and the power of large corporations in the digital world.
Fountain: Yahoo! News
