(Update: Here’s something from this comment thread, left by Banned Writers, I wanted to add to this post: “We have now received a letter from MasterCard saying pretty much the same thing: they aren’t behind PayPal’s policy.” You can get there from here to read the entire post and the letter from MC. For those who don’t know, this was PayPal’s comment.)

Banned Writers sent a letter to Visa and they received a response. The book banning issue gets better each time I read something new. For a while there I almost believed it was the credit card companies pressuring PayPal.

Thank you for your email regarding PayPal’s recent decision to limit the sale of certain erotica content. First and foremost, we want to clarify that Visa had no involvement with PayPal’s conclusion on this issue. Nor have we seen the material in question. This fact is made clear by PayPal’s recent blog post where it states that its own policies drove the decision. https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/03/paypals-acceptable-use-policy-on-sale-of-certain-erotica/

To read more, click here.

Talk about passing the buck. Now I’m not sure whom to believe.

All I can say is authors and publishers make sure your tags, titles, and blurbs don’t contain anything that would cause a search engine to put you on the banned list. I’d hate to think that a children’s book titled “Dad’s Favorite Little Girl,” that was written for children was banned because a book retailer trusted a search engine to decide which books are banned and which aren’t.