Today, Japan's pixivFANBOX was forced to suspend the publication of a vast number of works due to intervention by payment service providers.The keyword-based censorship is utterly unreasonable; for instance, there are reports that content was flagged simply because the Japanese pronunciations of words like "calorie" and "terrorist" contain the sound "loli."
What makes this instance particularly notable is that the platform itself has explicitly cited "directives from payment service providers" as the reason for the censorship. In the past, Japanese businesses forced to implement such measures—likely to preserve their relationships—rarely disclosed the involvement of payment providers.
Intervention by payment service providers is threatening to destroy Japanese content culture in an unreasonable and uninformed manner. Neither Japanese creators nor consumers desire this outcome, yet this may not be an issue that can be resolved within Japan alone. We would be deeply grateful to address this challenge through information sharing and cooperation with interested parties around the world.