Hmm, maybe, I haven't thought about it much. The angle I'm taking is, as a private citizen I choose not to do business with entities I think are immoral, such as Amazon and Home Depot and Hobby Lobby and Uline and Tesla. If I were a business owner, I would prefer to continue to not to do business with those entities and I'd be pretty pissed if I was forced to by the government. That does seem to agree with your "same rights as private citizens" framing, yes, though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to defend the CU decision. I dunno. Interesting question, I'd welcome your thoughts on this.

This is how it's been done in the USA since 9/11. Data isn't subpoenaed (would getting into people's rights) it's just bought (no rights violation). Controls aren't from the government, they are 'implementing industry standards'. Want to silence someone? Deplatform them. Want to deny access? Flag them with an opaque trust score. No constitutional rights are violated.

> Is it controversial that companies aren't allowed to refuse service based on gender or race (in the US at least)?

Those are legal categories known as "protected classes," and yeah, it was and is pretty controversial[1]. I think you'd have a hard time getting purchasers of porn games declared a protected class.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 ; further reading, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group

> We collectively agreed long ago that monopolies do not get to enjoy the same freedoms that other companies do.

I think that's generally only the case for natural monopolies, such as power infrastructure, where breaking them up isn't really a feasible solution (ie we don't want 20 different power lines running to each house). I don't think payment processing meets that standard, we could easily break them up and re-introduce competition into the market.

i'd add, they're also not private. i mean, i know a publy-traded company is "in the private sector", but it's still a collectively-owned resource and that's a lot different from compelling a privately-owned company.

You are correct, I don't think not being able to purchase porn games rises to the same level of danger as unsafe food or climate change, to require the government to tell businesses how they may operate.

> With your logic we should have just waited for free market competition to kick in Cocal cola and McDonalds to deiced on their own to stop putting arsenic into our food.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. No one is dying here. I do think the government should step into this market and perform major intervention by breaking up the big two companies into many little ones who can compete. After that, some payment processors may choose to support these business models despite the hit to their stock price (or whatever Visa's dumb argument is for not allowing these games).

> I have IRL facepalmed reading this. This comment gave me the equivalent exposure to 10 hours on X/Twitter.

I don't know man, jumping into a conversation like this is a great way to get people to NOT listen. I agree with your following point and would add I find these matters more complicated. For example, you wouldn't be typing a comment on this site without the kind of corporate freedom that raised the standard of living for the entire planet resulting in a shared technological advancement. Seems this is always a trade off, how much freedom are you willing to give up for centralized fascist governmental control?