[HN Gopher] Steam, Itch.io are pulling 'porn' games. Critics say...
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Steam, Itch.io are pulling 'porn' games. Critics say it's a
slippery slope
Author : 6d6b73
Score : 309 points
Date : 2025-07-25 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| righthand wrote:
| More caving to the ultra-religious pearl grippers who just have
| nothing better to do than tell others how to live.
|
| All the hate speech trash and troll talk on the Steam forums is
| fine though. All the war games are fine though. Make sure people
| can validate genocide and what not but not see titties.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| No problems with violent imagery in TV and cinema either. In
| fact some of the most popular shows and movies are full of it.
|
| Not that I agree with censoring that (I don't), but the double
| standard is puzzling.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| It seems to me that people are waking up to the fact that
| tolerance seems to be a suckers game. The only way to maintain
| the social capital you have is to go on offense because at
| least recently it seems like the people screaming for tolerance
| don't actually have any once they become culturally ascendant.
| Though maybe it was always thus.
| some_random wrote:
| This is being pushed by an Australian Feminist organization,
| not the American Religious Right.
| righthand wrote:
| You may want to take a look at how feminist that organization
| actually is.
| some_random wrote:
| There is a huge sex-negative feminist school of thought,
| just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't
| exist.
| righthand wrote:
| I never declared it doesn't exist?
|
| Let me respond with your attacking-style:
|
| Just because you like it doesn't mean it's representative
| of feminism at large. It doesn't mean it's not a
| conservative think tank hiding behind a veil of feminism.
| bluescrn wrote:
| These days there seems to be a fair bit of sex-
| inconsistent feminism.
|
| With something like OnlyFans, where there's money to be
| made, the 'sex work is real work!' slogan comes out. And
| there's a reluctance to criticise big porn sites even
| after claims of links to sex trafficking etc.
|
| But at the same time, scantily-clad videogame characters
| designed to appeal to the male gaze are deemed
| unacceptable/objectifying/regressive. And 'sex robots'
| are seen as a horrifying prospect.
| some_random wrote:
| There's a range of views from a range of people, that's
| no surprise. That said, the common perception of men who
| pay for sex work (especially OF) is extremely negative,
| they are marks who deserve it. Meanwhile there is no such
| perception of men who pay for traditional media.
| the_af wrote:
| > _There is a huge sex-negative feminist school of
| thought, just because you don 't like it doesn't mean it
| doesn't exist._
|
| The specific organization we're discussing is not
| feminist. It's religious conservative, using some of the
| trappings of feminism.
| some_random wrote:
| Is it? The religious conservative organizations I've seen
| are also wringing their hands over other media as well
| such as smut or that shitty netflix show, while this one
| appears to be ambivalent to supportive.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The group bills themselves as feminist, but aligns with the
| religious right in most of their policies. They're directly
| at odds with many things feminists have fought for.
| some_random wrote:
| I agree completely that they align with the religious right
| in this aspect, but you can't pretend that sex-negativity
| isn't a huge school of thought in feminism. Vague calls to
| "stop the sexualization of women in media (aimed at
| hetrosexual men)" have been a huge part of the casual
| feminist suite of views for at least a decade.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| It's interesting that you equate opposition to
| sexualization of women in media with sex negativity. One
| does not necessarily imply the other. You can be sex
| positive and believe that media sexualizes women to a
| problematic degree.
| some_random wrote:
| There's a reason I wrote "casual feminist suite of views"
| because while they two are very closely linked they are
| indeed separate.
| Dweller1622 wrote:
| Can you give me an example of this? As far as I
| understand it sex positivity doesn't seem to be concerned
| with "media sexualizing women" in and of itself.
| Consequently I'm not sure what "media [that] sexualizes
| women to a problematic degree" is or would even look
| like.
| nosignono wrote:
| It has to do with agency, primarily. Is the character in
| the media given the agency and depth necessary to support
| their sexual appetites? Or are they treated like an
| object by the camera, a 2 dimensional cutout whose
| purpose is only to be an object.
|
| Compare, for example, Sex and the City, where 4 women
| were regularly engaged in a variety of sexual encounters
| and say, background dancers in a music video or advert
| that exist to appeal as objects to a male audience.
| Dweller1622 wrote:
| I've definitely seen people say it's about agency, though
| exactly what they mean by that and why they think that
| matters tends to vary. That said, I suspect your response
| is in line with the person I was originally responding
| to.
|
| In a different context I might be more sympathetic to
| this specific formulation of the concept since it's not
| always clear how much agency the background dancers in a
| music video or advert have. However, on the original
| topic of video games, the notion of "character agency" is
| rather pernicious.
| the_af wrote:
| But the specific organization we're discussing is not
| feminist, they only disguise themselves as such.
| poszlem wrote:
| No true feminist...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
| the_af wrote:
| The "no true Scotsman" dismissal doesn't work when it's
| actually _not_ a Scotsman.
|
| Or, as in this case, it's not a feminist organization.
| morkalork wrote:
| You can't really say that, there are many variations; for
| example, the women advocating for prohibition of alcohol
| way back in the day were feminists. Socially, their views
| would be more aligned with this Australian organization.
| nosignono wrote:
| There exist sex-negative feminists, but it is wrong to
| describe that as a feminist position.
|
| For the better part of a decade feminists have been
| wildly anti- _objectification_ , not anti-sex. It's an
| important distinction.
|
| For example, most modern feminists are pro sex-work, but
| only under conditions that guarantee safety, autonomy,
| and health care for the sex workers. That's very
| different from how most sex work is done today. So a
| modern feminist might say that we should be doing more to
| protect the sex workers who are held in bondage by a
| pimp, and forced to walk the streets while simultaneously
| arguing in favor of well regulated, protected brothels or
| private sex work.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I see Mormon(LDS) churches occasionally mentioned on these
| topics. The Australian cult angle had only surfaced during
| the last week or so.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I believe they get funding from evangelical orgs though
|
| and you have to assume MasterCard is willing and cooperating
| here to some extent
| the_af wrote:
| > _This is being pushed by an Australian Feminist
| organization, not the American Religious Right._
|
| The founder is Christian and writes and speaks in Christian
| venues and publications.
|
| She's not a "feminist" by any reasonable and modern
| definition of the word.
| BJones12 wrote:
| Being Christian does not mean one is not feminist. This
| person seems to advocate for a multitude of things
| including ones that are historically feminist (of at least
| one commonly accepted variety of feminism). Those
| advocations make it reasonable to call her a feminist.
| the_af wrote:
| I didn't mean that one cannot be a Christian and a
| feminist.
|
| I meant that this person chooses Christian venues to
| voice her opinions, and shares with them non-feminist
| values such as being "pro life", etc.
|
| Hers is not a feminist organization, and Collective Shout
| is perceived by some as a right-wing group seeking to
| also ban LGTB+ depictions in videogames (which is not
| standard feminist agenda). Like another commenter
| mentioned, Collective Shout receives funding from
| evangelical organizations. And really, you have to ask
| yourself: since _when_ exactly payment processors paid
| any attention to what genuine feminist organizations had
| to say about _anything_?
|
| At some point you cannot ignore the evidence anymore. At
| best you can point the non-empty intersection of
| conservative Christian groups and _some sex-negative_
| feminists who both seek to ban pornography, but this
| doesn 't make them the same thing.
|
| TL;DR this is a variation of "will somebody think of the
| children!?" pearl-clutching, and everyone should know by
| now it doesn't lead to anything good.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| It's unfathomable that an Australian Feminist organization
| wields this much power in the U.S. and globally. It seems
| more likely that this is a front.
| tumsfestival wrote:
| You're not wrong. I read a couple days ago that this group
| receives funding from evangelical organizations to do
| stunts like this. I don't know if the intention is to false
| flag feminists as responsible, but it sure seems like it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The processors had this bias for decades. Some calls that
| already conform to what they want to do needs less nudging
| than proper consumer rights.
| tracker1 wrote:
| It's not just mature content... there have been efforts to
| reduce the ability to legally purchase firearms as well as
| suppression of prominent social media figures. Not just the CC
| companies, but even the larger payment processors like
| Stripe/Paypal etc. are all doing it for different categories.
|
| There is a reason you have to pay cash at dispensaries, etc.
| alexjplant wrote:
| > There is a reason you have to pay cash at dispensaries,
| etc.
|
| I used to work for a fintech. As new employee I had coffee
| with a colleague who explained KYC, AML, and other compliance
| topics to me. They mentioned that marijuana businesses can't
| bank their money due to these considerations as it would make
| banks knowing accomplices to the federal crime of trafficking
| a controlled substance. This threat is material because
| cannabis, unlike adult content, is actually illegal, so I
| don't think it's a substantially similar example to what's
| mentioned in this thread.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I understand that cannabis is slightly different, but my
| other examples aren't.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| This is an opportunity for an entrepreneur to create a
| censorship-resistant platform, though, I don't know how you do it
| profitably when CSAM and other potentially criminal content needs
| to be reviewed.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| CSAM means material of actual kids, meaning actual victims from
| the real world have been harmed/abused. Weird video games on
| the porn side, are only fictional 3D models made of pixels, so
| no humans are being harmed.
|
| When I used to kill cops in GTA Vice City as a kid, 20 years
| ago, I wasn't killing actual cops(duh!). Has society lost their
| collective marbles since then, and can't differentiate what's a
| real crime and what's manufactured fiction anymore? Should we
| also ban all porn off the internet on the same logic?
|
| None of the games banned by Valve in the Visa/Mastercard
| scandal had any CSAM related stuff in them, they were just
| weird/degenerate for puritans, however they were not illegal.
|
| BTW, has anyone seen the female erotica book section in Barns &
| Noble? If we banned those games for being too erotic, we should
| also ban those books then, because in those books, women
| subject themselves to a lot of degenerate smut and they love
| reading that shit, yet nobody judges them or asks for that to
| be censored.
|
| So then why is society and the private sector bowing down to
| some screeching harpies activist group who just want to ban all
| stuff they dislike, even though it's all legal to the T and
| nobody is being hurt?
|
| Why isn't this activist group putting pressure to release the
| Epstein files, since actual kids have been harmed there? Are
| they going undercover with police officers into human
| trafficking orgs to fight child abuse? NOOO, of course not,
| it's much easier to claim you scored a victory for child abuse
| by going after people's video games for having computer
| generated pixels of kids. Get effed!
| progbits wrote:
| I think OP is saying someone should make a platform that
| hasn't lost marbles and would allow this content, but you
| would still want to block CSAM and that is not easy to do.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Itch hasn't lost its marbles, they're forced to remove this
| content by payment processors. They're critical
| infrastructure, they shouldn't be allowed to arbitrate on
| behalf of an entire society. We need laws to require them
| to carry payments for any legal transaction. Paying for
| porn games is legal.
| progbits wrote:
| Nobody said anything about itch, this is about the whole
| payment system. You are agreeing with both of us but
| writing it as argument.
|
| But the lack of reading comprehension on this site is
| making me lose my marbles.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| My apologies, my anger is at the payment processors, not
| at you/not meant to be combative.
| progbits wrote:
| All good, I'm angry at the same.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think the implication with saying "a company that
| hasn't lost its marbles" is that Itch and Steam have lost
| their marbles. You can argue that Steam should have
| pushed back, but Itch definitely lacks the leverage to
| refuse here.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| IANAL, but I understand there are varying definitions of CSAM
| which is also why I said "and other potentially criminal
| content". I'm also not equating CSAM to the actual reasons
| people are using financial censorship, I'm highlighting a
| challenge of a censorship resistant platform.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > are only fictional 3D models made of pixels, so no humans
| are being harmed
|
| I'm beginning to wonder if that's exactly what these
| religious cults are having issues with.
|
| If we think about it, liberalism came to existence partly as
| antithesis to medieval church ideologies. Maybe principles
| such as freedom of speech and freedom of thought within
| liberalism used to be specific reactionist smite against
| whatever religious bigotry around back in 1400s-1600s, and
| stressing what everyone thinks as the most liberalist,
| neutral, and rational take on these topics is what they find
| insulting.
|
| Not that I necessarily care, but I do want to know if there's
| any good ways to get them up to at least year 2000 and
| beyond. It's 2025 after all.
| LtWorf wrote:
| > If we think about it, liberalism came to existence partly
| as antithesis to medieval church ideologies.
|
| Sounds news to me. Do you have any origin for this?
| righthand wrote:
| The major problem is the payment processors though. Unless you
| defeat that duopoly or only accept cash how do you stop this
| exact situation?
|
| There are the FedNow tokens and ACH which could help but it
| still requires quite a bit of cost to begin even that route. My
| customers are going to want to use their cards to pay too.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Yeah and it isn't just you accepting cash. Let's say you
| decide to go with cash (or, more realistically, manual bank
| transfers) and even get some host like 1984 that'd go to the
| court for you, but what stops Visa/MC to go directly at your
| host and tell them to either drop your site or they'll drop
| them?
| gs17 wrote:
| In theory, if you went "full crypto", there's probably
| options like Filecoin and web3 domains (I'm not in that
| space enough to know what the current versions of these
| are) that could make something "uncensorable" by Visa/MC,
| but it also would limit its reach heavily.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Cryptocurrency is the only way I see this working.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Adding a broken, inefficient system to a problem just makes
| 2 problems.
| righthand wrote:
| Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have always
| been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use it. I
| want to buy something not support everyone that get their
| hands in my transaction chain.
|
| The US government can break up the duopoly and open up
| payments processing federally. That's worth the investment
| than that pipe dream of a global, frictionless
| cryptocurrency.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > The US government can break up the duopoly and open up
| payments processing federally.
|
| Between that and someone actually creating a viable Steam
| competitor, I will say the government breaking them up
| and rolling out their own solution would be even less
| likely. You'd have fights on both sides of the isle _and_
| from privacy groups. Not that we have much privacy now
| under the current scheme, but there 's at least a tiny
| bit of separation between V/MC and the government.
|
| What should happen instead is regulation. They should be
| held to the same standards as legal tender since they're
| used in place as such. They shouldn't get to decide how
| it's used, and that should be enforced.
| righthand wrote:
| Isn't regulation even less likely though than a split?
| You yourself acknowledge the times and the current admin
| is heavy anti-regulation.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Perhaps. You're right that it's currently unlikely, but I
| still argue that it would be easier to legislate than
| split up. It's not like the financial industry doesn't
| already have an insane amount of rules and regulations at
| both the state and federal level preventing them from
| being _too_ nefarious. Having a rule that states "You're
| not allowed to cut off vendor foo just because they sell
| bar" doesn't seem that much of a stretch, especially if
| you look at credit as basically another form of legal
| tender.
| xur17 wrote:
| This has mostly been solved. Bitcoin's lightning network,
| ethereum layer 2 networks, etc all have sub-cent fees.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Not sure about Ethereum's equivalent, but 'Lightning'
| just reintroduces the problem of having one person act
| like a payment processor.
| xur17 wrote:
| Not sure I follow.
| righthand wrote:
| V or MC perhaps?
| 0x457 wrote:
| >Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have
| always been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use
| it. I want to buy something not support everyone that get
| their hands in my transaction chain.
|
| But you're doing this with credit cards already?
| Different amounts, but still supporting everyone in a
| chain. If you want to "buy" something without supporting
| intermediates, then barter is the only way to go.
| Everything else requires common trust, and common trust
| comes with operating cost.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| > Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have
| always been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use
| it.
|
| That's not true, at least not in general. Polygon (and
| USDT/USDC on Polygon) fees are near zero, Ethereum is
| lately very cheap, and even Bitcoin fees are no longer
| outrageous. EDIT: ...and Bitcoin Lightning is cheap.
|
| A lot of p0rn payment processing is done in crypto for
| exactly the censorship reasons. If you can't use the
| payment processor, who cares what their fees are? (not
| saying they are cheaper or more expensive than crypto - I
| don't know)
| xxs wrote:
| So, you don't see it working at all.
| logicchains wrote:
| It already works; it's how people in China purchase adult
| content online, which is illegal there. Usually with USDT
| (which is also illegal there).
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's the Fair Access to Banking Act
| (https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-
| bill/401), currently stuck in committee, which would make it
| illegal for various financial services, including payment
| processors, to deny service for mere reputational reasons.
| delecti wrote:
| I wrongly assumed this was a D bill, and would die in
| committee. Turns out it's actually an R bill, with
| exclusively R sponsors, and now I'm wondering what awful
| shit is hiding in it.
|
| Though almost all of the sponsors are from almost 6 months
| ago, so it might die in committee anyway.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The text is on there and is very straightforward. As far
| as I can tell it's a basically good bill.
| delecti wrote:
| I agree that the text sounds good. I'm worried about the
| consequences I might not think of. What legal services
| are the Ds and Rs thinking of that currently have trouble
| with payment processors, and which are causing a lot of
| Rs to sponsor and no Ds? Because I'm sure it's not porn
| and video games.
| dlachausse wrote:
| Operation Choke Point is referenced by the proposed
| bill...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
|
| > Operation Choke Point was an initiative of the United
| States Department of Justice beginning in 2013 which
| investigated banks in the United States and the business
| they did with firearm dealers, payday lenders, and other
| companies that, while operating legally, were said to be
| at a high risk for fraud and money laundering.
|
| There's a whole list on the Wikipedia article of the
| kinds of legal businesses that were targeted by this.
| Some of them make sense, but others look like very
| serious 1A and 2A violations.
| metalcrow wrote:
| Historically, payment processors were usually against
| republicans, which is why you see them acting in support
| of this.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > and now I'm wondering what awful shit is hiding in it.
|
| Had to look into it a bit.
|
| From looking at the text of the bill, it looks like the
| sponsor did not like Operation Choke Point [0], which was
| specifically targeting banks that did business with
| Payday Lenders, Ponzi Schemes, and other shady vendors.
|
| This also included pornography, but I'm willing to bet
| that's not what Sen. Cramer was upset about. More likely,
| he's simply serving the interest of his donors.
|
| He also might have extremist "small business"
| constituents that are perhaps selling
| racist/sexist/homophobic merch, and they don't like being
| told that their bank/credit card processors are refusing
| to process payments on that swag.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| That's disingenuous. There were plenty of legit business
| types included also. Directly from your link:
| ammunition sales ATM operators
| cable box de-scramblers coin dealers
| credit card schemes credit repair services
| dating services debt consolidation scams
| drug paraphernalia escort services
| firearms sales fireworks sales
| get rich products government grants
| home-based charities lifetime guarantees
| lifetime memberships lottery sales
| mailing lists/personal info money transfer
| networks online gambling pawn
| shops payday loans
| pharmaceutical sales Ponzi schemes
| pornography[5] pyramid-type sales
| racist materials surveillance equipment
| telemarketing tobacco sales
| travel clubs
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Is it not possible to jawbone them into favoring free speech?
|
| If they are easy to sway in one direction, why not the other?
| Simply do what Collective Shout did, but in the opposite
| direction?
| mwill wrote:
| These conservative groups aren't pressuring Steam and Itch
| directly, they're targeting payment processors.
|
| I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam
| (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa.
|
| (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what
| it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete
| with Steam")
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| You don't need to compete with Steam or Itch for games that
| they can't sell, you're in your own market.
| josh_p wrote:
| being discoverable on the existing markets is extremely
| valuable.
| MBCook wrote:
| And as soon as people find out you exist, they get the
| payment processors to shut you down too as part of their
| crusade.
|
| Now what?
|
| If you're visible, you're a target. If you're not, you
| don't matter.
| chipsa wrote:
| What you need for running a site that people might not
| like: 1. Your own servers 2. Your own network 3. Your own
| CDN 4. Your own payment processor
|
| Step 4 gets you thrown in jail for violating AML.
| hungmung wrote:
| If we don't get a section 230 for payment processors we're
| looking at serious consequences for 1A because everything
| will be a civil suit away from getting blacklisted.
| _Economist_ reported that adult performers are having trouble
| keeping bank accounts open -- as soon as a bank or payment
| processor finds out it 's porn-related it gets nuked. Now
| that this is established practice, what's going to happen
| when Visa/MC gets sued for handling payments to do with
| disagreeable political speech? Our right to freedom of speech
| is currently only as strong as what Visa/MC are willing to
| defend in court, or you'd better be willing to live without
| any access to the banking system -- even if you're a
| gazillionaire who doesn't have to work, you've got to keep
| your money somewhere (and satisfy KYC).
|
| Even if somebody thinks certain speech should be censored, I
| doubt they'd want what they consider unsavory speech being
| driven to use a payment system like Bitcoin, and for that to
| become the norm, it would open up much more potential for
| abuse.
| MBCook wrote:
| This is not the administration to ask for that.
| qball wrote:
| Why not? Payment processors have done it to guns just as
| much as they've done it to porn, both under the Obama
| administration.
| MBCook wrote:
| I think they would be far more likely to support a gun
| exception than a general "no moralizing" rule.
|
| They seem totally fine with the age checks many states
| are enacting for porn sites. The Republican Party loves
| slagging pedophiles (real or imagined) and hating on
| LGBTQIA+ people or trying to make their lives as
| difficult/horrible as possible.
|
| Yeah some games delisted were horrible. One of the main
| offenders had already been pulled as soon as Steam (or
| was it Itch) was notified. But they still used it as
| evidence. The platforms were policing themselves well.
|
| But not only did gratuitous porn games and abuse games
| get delisted, lots of games on related to inclusiveness
| of LGBTQIA+ did too from what I'm seeing from developers
| on social media.
|
| I suspect if anything the administration would be _happy_
| to let people use this as yet another hammer in their
| culture war against such people existing.
|
| That's why.
| atmavatar wrote:
| Because one of the goals of project 2025 is to make porn
| illegal. Pornography, manifested today
| in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology
| and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a
| political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate
| claims about free speech, property rights, sexual
| liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First
| Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators
| and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as
| addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically
| destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed.
| The people who produce and distribute it should be
| imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it
| should be classed as registered sex offenders. And
| telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate
| its spread should be shuttered.
|
| Bonus: it also aims to eliminate sex ed.
| eliminate central promotion of abortion; comprehensive
| sexuality education; and the new woke gender ideology
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| So they want to not have women abort children, but also
| not have them aware of how their bodies and sex works.
| Surely not a formula for a dysfunctional future
| generation.
| jacobsimon wrote:
| Maybe a silly idea, but here's a solution to prevent
| financial censorship: make the game free. Or monetize via
| another way--ads, subscriptions, credits. There's actually a
| lot of options for Steam if they aren't being pressured
| directly to remove the content.
| gs17 wrote:
| > if they aren't being pressured directly to remove the
| content.
|
| The problem is that they aren't being told "we won't let
| people buy this through us", they're told "this needs to go
| entirely or no more credit cards for you".
| jacobsimon wrote:
| Fair enough - so in reality they _are_ being pressured
| directly to remove the content and it has nothing to do
| with selling the products. A slippery slope indeed!
| gs17 wrote:
| And it proves that it's not about these games having high
| risks of fraud and chargebacks.
| pfisch wrote:
| F2P games are very different in design from regular
| games(and far worse imo)
|
| You can't even realistically have a F2P game that requires
| a high spec machine because of how the market works.
| zer0tonin wrote:
| There's quite a few F2P games requiring high spec
| machines, Throne & Liberty for example.
| jandrese wrote:
| > Or monetize via another way--ads, subscriptions, credits
|
| That don't use Visa/Mastercard? The bans aren't coming from
| the platforms but from the payment processors.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Most of the games that have been deindexed on itch.io and
| some of the ones that were banned/removed were free or Pay-
| What-You-Want/Donation-Ware (some even via Patreon or
| SubscribeStar rather than itch.io's own payment
| processing).
|
| The problem isn't just "the Payment Processor doesn't want
| to support this game" but also "this game shows Guilt-By-
| Association that your platform's money might go to
| 'criminals' or 'sinners'."
|
| Guilt-By-Association is real gross, but a large part of the
| current fight, too, especially looking at itch.io's payment
| processor-required actions, not just Steam's.
| gqgs wrote:
| >Or monetize via another way--ads, subscriptions, credits.
|
| All of those are still prone to censorship if the attacking
| group is motivated enough. Even crypto, which should be the
| ideal solution to this problem, is not ideal because most
| transactions are performed through centralized exchanges
| which can easily blacklist whatever transactions they want.
| axus wrote:
| "Citizen's United" wasn't _wrong_ about money being a type
| of speech, that shouldn't be censored. Only wrong about who
| the first amendment is for.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Just get people to mail you cash. Sounds stupid, but that's
| how I built my first ecommerce business in the 90's, and it
| was a pretty normal way to pay for stuff online. Cash, money
| order, bank cheque, whatever.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Just get people to mail you cash.
|
| > (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of
| what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to
| "compete with Steam")
|
| Wow, not crypto, but GP fucking nailed it.
| FranchuFranchu wrote:
| You can't realistically target anyone outside the US with
| this.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| You can't even realistically target people inside the US
| with this. How many people are gonna mail cash to buy
| digital games? Gimme a fucking break.
|
| Yes, a small business in the 90s may have been able to
| make it work, but it's not the 90s anymore.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| You can't realistically target anyone inside the US with
| it either. USPS is allowed to seize cash in packages if
| it believes it's being used for illegal purposes.
| the8472 wrote:
| > I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with
| Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa.
|
| They could not allow those games to be sold through those
| particular payment processors and require wire transfers
| instead. More cumbersome payment method, but better than
| outright banning them.
|
| If the payment processors try to dictate what content these
| sites may host even when it involves competing processors
| that sounds quite anti-competitive practice.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The impression I get is allowing them to be purchased _at
| all_ is grounds for the payment processor to suspend their
| account. So this solution is a no-go.
|
| Probably the only way around it is to spin up a completely
| different corporate entity which only allows for payments
| via wire transfer, ACH, or perhaps some of the various
| payment apps available.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _they 're targeting payment processors_
|
| They're not "targeting" payment processors. Payment
| processors have to deal with significantly more problems due
| to the nature of porn games and chargebacks. Fix those
| problems and the payment processors won't have a reason
| anymore to ban porn (or anything). What's the point of a
| capitalist economy if not for startups to target market needs
| like these?
| jdasdf wrote:
| Those problems are artificially created by regulation.
| There is nothing inherent to these topics that makes
| servicing them physically impossible.
|
| Charge backs, etc... can be effectively solved by
| appropriately pricing in such risks (or not offering those
| services at all).
|
| This isn't a payment processor issue, it's a political
| choice.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Payment processors have to deal with significantly more
| problems due to the nature of porn games and chargebacks.
|
| This is commonly repeated, but doesn't hold up. Chargeback
| fees (especially for card-not-present transactions) are
| paid by the merchant and are simply increased (with
| reserves required) for high-risk accounts. It also wouldn't
| make sense to target hyper-specific niches if it were
| really about chargebacks, they would go after all of it,
| and go after things like the CS marketplace.
|
| But the biggest giveaway IMO is that they do not allow,
| e.g., Steam selling these games crypto-only. It's either
| remove them entirely or remove credit cards entirely. If it
| was really about specific titles having high
| fraud/chargeback rates, selling them some other way would
| be fine.
| zahlman wrote:
| Most of the people I've seen advocating for this kind of
| pressure, for the purpose of suppressing this sort of content
| in video games, would describe themselves as very much the
| opposite of "conservative". But perhaps it's for the better
| that they are recognized as such. Because it really is a
| conservative instinct, no matter what American party politics
| might currently be dictating.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Even if you manage to sidestep the issues with payment
| processors mentioned elsewhere, you don't end up as a "popular
| platform that just happens to take a principled stance and also
| hosts some controversial material."
|
| Instead, you become the hub for that kind of material -- and
| that reputation drives away more mainstream creators who won't
| want their work associated with it. See also: Kick, Parlor,
| etc.
|
| Rather than building a principled broad competitor to something
| like Steam, you end up cornering yourself into a narrow, highly
| specific market segment.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| >Rather than building a principled broad competitor to
| something like Steam, you end up cornering yourself into a
| narrow, highly specific market segment.
|
| Yes, that's the point. Not everyone cares about financial
| censorship, but the few that do will be your customers.
| BoxFour wrote:
| when you start talking about a business for serving "the
| few", you've already removed the incentive for most
| entrepreneurs (unless those "few" are the extremely wealthy
| and you can charge them exorbitantly).
| hyghjiyhu wrote:
| I've watched hikaru on kick and the only offensive thing
| about his stream is how he repeats himself. I don't really
| like how he says the same thing over and over. Chat, it's
| kinda starting to bother me how he repeats himself. Yeah I'm
| starting to think he repeats himself a bit too much for my
| taste.
| topato wrote:
| After the third sentence, I was like, what's wrong with
| this guy? After the fourth, I was like, Oh. Lol.
| gs17 wrote:
| One thing that might be a possibility for attracting
| developers of non-banned games is focusing on having lower
| fees than Steam's 30% or Epic's 12%, but Itch.io already does
| that (you can choose the split from 0 to 100%).
| nemomarx wrote:
| create a good censorship resistant payment network (stripe
| replacement) and these platforms would probably just be your
| customers?
| beeflet wrote:
| I think that the decentralized mechanisms used for censorship
| resistance would also make it difficult to monetize
| nurettin wrote:
| Oh be realistic. Hosting smut isn't exactly respectable at this
| day and age. Your choice for sponsors dwindles to illegal
| gambling sites and shady dating sites who scrape monthly fees
| from lonely men. Maybe an MLM scheme if you are lucky.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Looking at this US administration, I don't think
| "respectable" is much of a metric these days.
|
| And yes, you need a lot of private capital to pull this off.
| jajuuka wrote:
| The spirit of Visa/Mastercard isn't wrong. If a platform is
| doing something illegal they will break ties or give them a
| chance to course correct. When Pornhub was exposed for hosting
| lots of revenge porn and illegal porn Visa/Mastercard pulled
| back, Pornhub cleaned house and put up new stronger barriers to
| prevent that kind of material being uploaded. But instead of
| doing business again they said "just kidding" and did not come
| back.
|
| In this case with Steam and Itch.io they are targeting legal
| games and is just 100% in the wrong. There is a checkered
| history of Visa/Mastercard dropping legitimate causes because
| it's hot politically. Which is also in the wrong.
|
| Bitcoin/crypto was supposed to be the way around this kind of
| censorship, but that's basically a ponzi scheme so that's not
| the way forward. Unfortunately Visa/Mastercard have a monopoly
| on the market and they use it regularly to keep out
| competition. Regulation/investigations need to be done to fix
| this, but that sure as hell isn't happening under this
| presidency.
| axus wrote:
| How would you feel about a US Central Bank Digital Currency?
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-
| currency...
| scythe wrote:
| Seems like a good place to repost my comment from earlier:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44676726
|
| > I think the root of the problem is that it's just extremely
| unpleasant to moderate user-generated adult content. It's
| already difficult to moderate content on a somewhat serious
| online forum like Hacker News. Facebook moderators have been in
| the news and on South Park due to the emotional drain of the
| task. Who's going to sign up to pore over everyone else's
| weirdest thoughts given form? Certainly not me.
|
| > So this results in websites that allow people to upload
| pornography having lapses of moderation where something bad
| gets through every now and then. One day some creepy clip goes
| viral among some social conservatives and they try to make
| legal threats against the site and anyone they consider
| "affiliated". This creates problems, credit card companies are
| very protective of their reputations, and they usually decide
| the conservatives seem less bad.
|
| > Then someone sets up a new site that allows user-generated
| adult content and the cycle repeats.
|
| Anyway, a truly censorship-resistant platform is not going to
| be able to control child porn or anything else, by definition.
| Censorship occurs at the level of bits, and pornography doesn't
| exist at the level of bits.
|
| What you need is something like Section 230 but tailored for
| the situation facing user-generated adult content. Strict
| liability is not a good framework for criminalizing the
| possession of any digital material, be it a schematic for
| thermonuclear weapons or whatever else.
| misterbishop wrote:
| It is alarming for credit card companies to take on a politically
| censorious role that supersedes legal activity. This really
| kicked off in 2021 when MasterCard started imposing restrictive
| rules on sex sites like OnlyFans. The ACLU has a campaign against
| it: https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-mastercards-
| new-p...
| mirashii wrote:
| I strongly disagree about this being a recent thing, this has
| been happening for decades at this point.
|
| 2015 article that starts "For nearly a decade, PayPal, JPMorgan
| Chase, Visa/MasterCard, and now Square, have systematically
| denied or closed accounts of small businesses, artists and
| independent contractors whose business happens to be about
| sex."
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2015-12-02-paypal-square-and-big-ba...
| jfyi wrote:
| OnlyFans did manage to figure it out though. Maybe this is an
| opportunity for them to start a gaming division.
| colinwilyb wrote:
| Or a credit card processor.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The thing they figured out was "people can fight back and the
| credit cards will back down". Onlyfans is a lot of people's
| income, so they will naturally fight harder than a consumer
| market like games to keep the lights on.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| From 2017 .. (Fetlife, a fetish Platform)
|
| Last Tuesday we got a notice that one of our merchant accounts
| was shutting us down. One of the card companies contacted them
| directly and told the bank to stop processing for us. The bank
| asked for more information, but the only thing they could get
| from the card company was that part of it had to do with
| "blood, needles, and vampirism."
|
| https://pastebin.com/FFSQUML9
|
| https://mascherari.press/financial-censorship-when-banks-dec...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yeah, it's a problem because there aren't really realistic
| alternatives, and starting an alternative payment processor
| would be impractically difficult.
|
| Feels like we really need something like India's UPI that
| doesn't have a central company imposing beyond-the-law level
| rules.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Even before that, after Charlottesville, these payment
| processors were banning far-right wing people such as Andrew
| Anglin and Nick Fuentes. Same thing, really. Pressure from
| outside groups.
| some_random wrote:
| It's not a slippery slope, they're targeting non-porn games
| literally right now. Detroit Become Human, a very well reviewed
| cinematic/adventure game especially among non-gamers was one of
| their targets.
| neonate wrote:
| From the subhed: "Even games that have nothing to do with sex
| or abuse have been caught in the dragnet."
| some_random wrote:
| Yeah that's exactly the kind of framing that I am against.
| "caught in the dragnet" implies that there was some kind of
| mistake. Surely they didn't mean to argue for banning these
| ones, they just want to target 'porn' games. Nevermind that
| this started as just targeting 'extreme porn', we'll continue
| to say that the critics criticizing them for doing the thing
| that they are doing right now as arguing slippery slope.
| gs17 wrote:
| Detroit: Become Human has abuse as significant element to its
| story. It came under attack from the "National Association of
| People Abused in Childhood" when it came out, and also from
| Collective Shout.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| This amuses me, as my wife deals with trauma from childhood
| abuse, and she absolutely loved that game.
| AtheistOfFail wrote:
| It was such a masterpiece right up there with The Last Of
| Us.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Much like some people with drug addictions love Disco
| Elysium, specifically because of the authenticity it has
| regarding substance abuse.
| moate wrote:
| That was part of it, as well as the idea of an RPG that
| represents skills as essentially "shadow work". Very much
| helped me on my mental health journey!
|
| My pro-fascist brother-in-law with massive social anxiety
| hated it for some reason..
| madaxe_again wrote:
| By their own logic that association should disband, as
| their existence could remind people of their traumatic
| childhood experiences.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Should we only tell stories about good people respecting
| their fellows and living happy, wholesome, conflict-free
| lives?
| morkalork wrote:
| They might want to take a look in mirror and see what
| institutions have been involved in many such abuse cases in
| the past. Hint, it's not video game companies.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The theme is about androids being abused by society, so I
| suppose answering that question gives insight into your
| views on what may happen decades from now in this pursuit
| of General AI.
| imglorp wrote:
| Same slope, also slippery: this thing is not limited to
| opinions of moral minorities, because payment processors are a
| weak point for government pressure. We already started:
| pressuring CBS to fire Colbert for political speech, pressuring
| Columbia to curb anti-genocide speech, etc etc. So wait until
| this same route -- pressuring visa/mc -- is used on any product
| or creator that's not doubleplus good newspeaking.
|
| The government doesn't need to touch you to ruin you, if they
| can yank your payments.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussions:
|
| _Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44667667
|
| _Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new
| censorship rules_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44636369
|
| _Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44679406
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _Violence and dehumanization of women should not be acceptable
| outcomes of free speech. We also have to consider whose voices
| are being heard, and whose are being silenced. Does free speech
| apply to women, to survivors of rape and sexual assault? Do we
| have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes
| violence against us?_
|
| Every time someone insists on an escape hatch, it is immediately
| abused. One could have seen this coming.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and
| normalizes violence against us?
|
| I mean this sounds reasonable until you also consider that
| shows like Game of Thrones would then also be banned, and
| probably plenty of popular books.
|
| Hell, you could use the same reasoning to target most video
| games, since most video games use some level of violence.
| some_random wrote:
| >Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and
| normalizes violence against us?
|
| Worth pointing out that their definition of "right to object"
| is evidentially identical to "right to censor".
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, that's not precise. They are simply objecting. Others
| are listening to them. I have a right to tell you to go eat a
| pile of dung[0], for instance. Should you then go eat the
| dung, it is not that I exercised my right to make you eat
| dung.
|
| They are simply participating in the once-maligned "cancel
| culture" which was protected as "freedom of speech is not
| freedom from consequences". These kinds of escape hatches
| always have these results because one's enemies find a way to
| use them as well.
|
| 0: Just for the sake of argument. I'm not actually insulting
| you.
| some_random wrote:
| I am absolutely against the concept of "freedom of speech
| is not freedom from consequences" in the same way I am
| against Soviet "freedom of speech but not freedom after
| speech".
| wredcoll wrote:
| That makes no sense. Frequently the "consequences" of
| speech is other speech. Are you going to try to argue
| that the original speech should be privileged over the
| response?
| some_random wrote:
| I do not give a shit about people responding to speech
| with speech. I am arguing that responding to speech by
| using your authority over the speaker to hurt them, or by
| lobbying an authority to do so is something different
| than speech. Did you see the context for this thread?
| This is the rhetorical question I responded to: "Do we
| have a right to object to speech that promotes and
| normalizes violence against us?". I hold that they
| absolutely do have a right to object to such speech, any
| speech in fact, but "objecting" is not the same as
| lobbying Visa/Mastercard to ban speech they believe
| "promotes and normalizes violence against us".
| moate wrote:
| >>"objecting" is not the same as lobbying Visa/Mastercard
| to ban speech they believe "promotes and normalizes
| violence against us"
|
| Why not? Like, I'm a full on anarchist, but how do you
| create any sort of functioning society without out people
| being able to say "we as a group don't like that shit and
| are going to do things to stop it from happening"? Like
| if burger king comes out and says "We sell dogs here now"
| am i not allowed to say "fuck this, I'm allergic to dogs
| but I loved whoppers, I'm going to picket outside BK
| until the king fixes this travesty of hamburgers?"
|
| Again, I'm an anarchist so I have weird views on a lot of
| topics, but isn't this a problem that "the capital class
| wants to continue to have profit go up and to the right
| on their charts, they're cowardly and uncreative so they
| fear anything that destabilizes this movement on their
| charts, and large networks of people are the only thing
| that can utilize this fear to cause them to change their
| behaviors"?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Remember how the homicide rate exploded after violent video
| games became popular?
|
| They know this logic doesn't make sense. People are
| unfortunately happy to lie about it, despite decades of
| evidence to the contrary.
|
| They insisted rock and roll, jazz, and dancing they didn't like
| were going to harm women too. Somehow that didn't seem to
| happen either.
| morkalork wrote:
| Don't forget the D&D satanic panic! I also remember my local
| Baptist youth group burning Harry Potter books back when they
| came out. These people are unreasonable, they don't care
| about logic. They care about imposing their views and morals
| on those around them.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| No, no, no. You're both wrong. It was heavy metal.
|
| RIP Ozzy.
| qball wrote:
| >Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and
| normalizes violence against us?
|
| If men don't, then neither should women, who are murdered at
| 1/10th the rate men are.
| nosignono wrote:
| Murder is not the only violent crime. Please don't construct
| such obviously poor strawmen. Both men and women suffer
| similar rates of violence, albeit typically different
| violence.
|
| Trans people suffer a wildly higher rate of violent crime
| than either cis gender.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| What sort of leverage can a group like this realistically have on
| Visa and Mastercard? Can they really make a dent in their top
| line?
| spicymaki wrote:
| Ideological alignment with the party in control of the US
| executive, legislative, and judicial branches gives groups like
| these quite a bit of leverage.
| jandrese wrote:
| From what I understand it was more that they found a
| sympathetic ear in the management suite at Mastercard and Visa.
| They've been wanting to do this for some time but needed
| political cover.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Weaponized complaints to legal departments asking to enforce
| existing Terms & Conditions of Visa and Mastercard. It's a
| "squeaky wheel" problem.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44679406 - July 2025 (189
| comments)
|
| _Games: No sex, please. we 're credit card companies_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675697 - July 2025 (51
| comments)
|
| _Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44667667 - July 2025 (306
| comments)
|
| _Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new
| censorship rules_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44636369
| - July 2025 (162 comments)
| mvieira38 wrote:
| It's unfortunate because there really isn't anything anyone can
| do except wait for regulation or try raising awareness/usage of
| crypto payments or cash by mail
| sketchysandwich wrote:
| how do all these other adult sites get away with charging
| premium subscriptions?
| Calavar wrote:
| Porn sites use smaller special purpose payment processors
| that have higher fees. It makes sense for porn sites because
| they only sell sexual content. If Valve and itch used those
| same payment processors, they'd be paying the higher premiums
| on _all_ transactions, including those for nonsexual content
| (i.e. that vast majority of their transactions). It just
| doesn 't make sense for them from a financial perspective.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| My free speech red line is criticism of govt and leaders. Ban all
| the porn games ya want, I don't think they're very valuable.
|
| When did pornography become protected speech?
| sketchysandwich wrote:
| In what world is artistic expression not free speech? Just
| because you don't like it doesn't mean its not protected.
| vegadw wrote:
| That's already happening though. There's a bunch of quid pro
| quo for speech curtailment in the media right now. Hell, just
| this week Colbert lost his spot to appease the administration
| for the Paramount + Skydance merger. Even if it's not direct to
| the little guys and it's just quid-pro-quo, it's just them
| being smart enough to make it seem more palatable. It's the
| same thing.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Since when has protected speech required being valuable? And
| who made you the pronouncer of said value?
| gs17 wrote:
| > Since when has protected speech required being valuable?
|
| For this specific topic in the US, it's necessary. The third
| prong of the Miller Test is "Whether the work, taken as a
| whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or
| scientific value."
| pdntspa wrote:
| The three-pronged Miller test is for examining if something
| is obscene, which is a considerably narrower criteria than
| whether or not a given piece of free speech is worthy of
| protection. Speech does not need to be 'valuable' to be
| worthy of protection, it needs to have a specific lack of
| value as determined by the Miller test to _not_ be
| protected. Big difference.
| krapp wrote:
| >When did pornography become protected speech?
|
| A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v.
| Attorney General of Massachusetts, 1966 (https://scholar.google
| .com/scholar_case?case=101895573599950...)
|
| Miller v. California, 1973 (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_
| case?case=287180442152313...)
|
| Jenkins v. Georgia, 1974 (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_ca
| se?case=106399862265120...)
|
| -- https://reason.com/2019/10/04/pornography-is-protected-by-
| th...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Strictly speaking this isn't a conventional free speech issue
| since the government isn't involved here, just private
| businesses.
|
| That said, there's a de facto duopoly on payment processing
| that gives these companies near government-level power to
| dictate terms. Realistic alternatives don't exist and would be
| insanely hard to start.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Text is fairly comparable with speech, so it's be reasonable to
| argue that a pornographic novel is 'speech'.
|
| Not so sure about 4K video footage, though. Or videogames.
| That's more a 'freedom of art' issue.
| elijahdl wrote:
| Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of protected speech.
| When you give a group the ability to censor content on the
| basis of "obscenity", then that group and other groups can use
| this to label other subjects they don't like as obscene. LGBTQ+
| interest topics are especially vulnerable to this, as it is
| often made the case that being gay or trans is only about sex.
| You don't have to consume pornography yourself in order to
| benefit from a society that allows it.
| gs17 wrote:
| > LGBTQ+ interest topics are especially vulnerable to this,
|
| Exactly, the Heritage Foundation doesn't define porn the same
| way a reasonable person might. From Project 2025's Mandate
| for Leadership: "Pornography, manifested today in the
| omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and
| sexualization of children".
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah it's easy to see that Heritage would just ban Celeste,
| or any allegory about LGBT existence.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Ban all the porn games ya want, I don 't think they're very
| valuable._
|
| Ban all the games, I don't think videogames are very valuable.
|
| Ban all TV shows, I don't think TV shows are very valuable.
|
| Ban all televised sports, I think sports are very boring and
| not very valuable.
|
| In fact, ban all the things I don't particularly find valuable.
| edm0nd wrote:
| >My free speech red line is criticism of govt and leaders.
|
| Doesn't sound like you support free speech at all then if this
| is your red line. Criticism of politicians is needed to keep
| them in line. Being about to criticize the US government is
| true freedom.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The bitter truth is that the tech world's libertarian allergy to
| collective action is exactly why stuff like this keeps happening.
|
| Predictably, we get another round of "free speech on the internet
| is sacred!" polemics. Hate to break it to HN, but Visa and
| MasterCard aren't reading Hacker News, and they don't care about
| constitutional takes or appeals to values or consistency. Legal
| arguments won't do squat here. There is one way to reverse this
| and it's leverage and pressure, period.
|
| If you want to fix this, you actually have to organize and go
| after the payment processors, because it's not going to be solved
| by writing essays in the comments or waiting for Steam to
| suddenly develop a spine. That means collective action,
| campaigns, actual activism. Exactly the stuff that makes tech
| people itchy and nervous.
|
| It's the same reason tech unions never get traction. Everyone
| wants to be a cowboy and nobody wants to be part of a posse. If
| you're serious about reversing this kind of censorship, you'll
| have to do the one thing that feels worse: banding together,
| working as a group, and aiming your outrage at the folks actually
| making the calls.
|
| Or keep writing little op-ed comments and maintain the losing
| streak, because Visa and MasterCard will keep steamrolling as
| long as nobody pushes back.
|
| Sorry, but that's the game. Arguing that the rules aren't fair or
| trying to play out the same losing tactic isn't a winning
| strategy. Plan an actual demonstration. Visa and MasterCard
| conveniently have offices in SF and NYC. All it takes is working
| together.
| beeflet wrote:
| The libertarian solution has been to use cryptocurrency for
| payments. The problem is that only libertarians want to use
| cryptocurrency, and most people don't care.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >If you want to fix this, you actually have to organize and go
| after the payment processors, because it's not going to be
| solved by writing essays in the comments or waiting for Steam
| to suddenly develop a spine.
|
| Okay. If you have any wisdom or ideas, I'd love to hear them.
| But as is, this comment is about as effective as mine on
| fighting Visa/Mastercard. "Just come together and yell at
| Steam!"
|
| I'm not opposed to activism, I'm ignorant of it. The big issue
| of the internet is that we are all scattered very wide and that
| makes it harder to collect ourselvves under one goal. And as of
| now, I'm a laid off tech worker (who doesn't live in SF) who
| has no real capital to contribute to such a cause. I feel
| powerless.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Protesting only works when the media is on your side. I doubt
| the media would take your side on this one.
| uncircle wrote:
| I know people here love to hate it, and it's a very very
| controversial topic, but this here, is a good use case for
| Bitcoin [1]
|
| Now that we have Lightning and hyperfast micropayments, can we
| have a good plug-and-play payment processor that uses it? The few
| services that allow Bitcoin payments still require an on-chain
| transaction, which is very user-unfriendly.
|
| In any case, despite what the haters say, this is the value
| proposition of cryptos. If it's not the government deciding what
| you can purchase or not, it's the payment processor cartel.
|
| 1: Other cryptos are just piggybacking on the popularity of the
| main one so I don't care about them.
| fmbb wrote:
| Bitcoin existing is not going to make Itch.io not want to
| accept payments via Visa.
|
| Porn is a tiny market. It's not worth it losing the payment
| processors everyone is on to serve porn game buyers.
| uncircle wrote:
| > Porn is a tiny market.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. In the context of gaming, perhaps, but
| most of the Internet traffic is basically pornography.
| beeflet wrote:
| >Porn is a tiny market. It's not worth it losing the payment
| processors everyone is on to serve porn game buyers.
|
| I agree with this point but I don't agree with the premise. I
| don't really care about the censorship of porn, but it is a
| slippery slope to censorship in general. If you give them an
| inch they will take a mile.
|
| I think there is sometimes a business justification of
| putting your foot in the ground, even if the short term
| consequences are harsh.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Don't you have to create a distinct payment channel (on-chain
| transaction) for every person you pay over Lightning? Or am I
| misunderstanding things?
| uncircle wrote:
| Third-parties take care of this bureaucracy for you. Check
| out the Phoenix wallet, for example.
|
| (Unaffiliated, I hold some pocket money on there not to run a
| Lightning node myself)
|
| The on-chain transaction is just to "fund" a channel between
| two parties. These two parties can then make unlimited
| trasnfers between each other instantaneously for free. These
| nodes are organised in a network and can relay payment from
| other nodes as well. It's a bit like the Internet. You don't
| need to peer with everybody, you just need a path from A to
| B.
|
| If you and I have a channel funded with 100 sat, we can move
| these around as many times as we wish, even on behalf of
| others, but if you need to transfer more than you have on
| your side, you need to fund the channel with another on-chain
| transaction. That's where the Phoenix 1% fee comes from, as
| they deal with this exact problem for you, so you don't have
| to worry about it.
| beeflet wrote:
| >Third-parties take care of this bureaucracy for you. Check
| out the Phoenix wallet, for example.
|
| Sort of defeats the purpose then, doesn't it? Why not just
| make lightning payments directly from your bitcoin
| exchange?
| xur17 wrote:
| No. You can route through other people on the network, so you
| just need a path to the person through others.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's not in this case. The payment processors were going to
| drop _all_ support to these platforms if they didn 't remove
| these games. Bitcoin could allow them to keep operating, but at
| the cost that now all users who want any games at all have to
| use Bitcoin. Mainstream platforms accepting Bitcoin as an
| option is fine and great, but few if any are going to want to
| _only_ accept Bitcoin.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Mainstream platforms accepting Bitcoin as an option is fine
| and great, but few if any are going to want to only accept
| Bitcoin.
|
| For all of the talk (hype) about how crypto has the potential
| to avoid the exact type of meddling and manipulation and
| pressuring we're seeing now, it surprises me that no
| equivalents to PayPal have really popped up - that best that
| can be done is apparently something along the lines of what
| Linux was on the desktop a decade or two ago. Basically,
| before Valve and others picked up the slack and worked on
| things your average person actually cares about - notably,
| gaming and simple(r) to use desktop environments and software
| stores.
|
| Where's the flagship platform for payments that's built on
| crypto but lets you ignore the technical details, that's
| trivial to implement as a merchant and is a download away on
| app stores? If there are a few of those, why would anyone
| bother with these puritan payment processors?
| bornfreddy wrote:
| There are many actually, some extremely simple to use. The
| problem is that payers also need to use crypto and many
| people don't know how, but are instead used to paying with
| credit cards.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Isn't that what Monero is trying to do? Why can't I pay
| with Monero at the grocery store? Presumably because some
| gatekeeper that's in between me and the business has to
| decide whether it makes financial sense _to them_ whether
| to add Monero to the exclusive list of supported payment
| methods.
| beeflet wrote:
| Using cryptocurrency would give them leverage in a future
| negotiation. The goal would not be to replace payments
| entirely with cryptocurrencies (they are pretty inefficient),
| but to reduce the monopolistic power of conventional payment
| processors and strike a better deal.
|
| I would argue it's worth investing infrastructure into it,
| for the same reason that valve has invested infrastructure
| into linux to gain leverage over microsoft. Without leverage,
| negotiations get ugly: see the Epic vs Apple saga.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Random thoughts:
|
| * anything using proof-of-work is still gonna be a hard sell *
| good luck figuring out how to get the user experience on both
| ends appear to be in USD without ever having to give a shit
| about the constantly-fluctuating value of BTC * fun times ahead
| when you get big enough for the government to notice you and
| start requiring you to comply with all kinds of arcane
| regulations
| uncircle wrote:
| 1. Proof-of-work is a feature.
|
| 2. Just do the conversion at the time of sale.
|
| 3. Government prohibition and restriction of our rights is a
| terrible problem and it's why Bitcoin was invented in the
| first place. It's a necessary fight if only to keep
| government power in check, unless one really believes the
| State is always right and always has our best interest in
| mind. I don't.
| beeflet wrote:
| >good luck figuring out how to get the user experience on
| both ends appear to be in USD
|
| I think it works out fine with fixed/float exchanges. These
| are exchanges that let you agree on a fixed exchange rate for
| a small (<=%1 fee) or trade at a floating exchange rate. The
| fee covers the price risk
| burkaman wrote:
| If Steam dropped Visa and Mastercard and successfully got most
| of their customers to use a Bitcoin payment processor instead,
| wouldn't these organizations just pressure that processor? I
| don't see how it would be any different. If the problem you're
| trying to solve is that private payment processors can deny
| service to anyone they don't like, the underlying technology
| the processor uses is irrelevant.
| beeflet wrote:
| Well I think the advantage is that the cryptocurrency payment
| processors are interchangeable. But your point mostly stands
| mkleczek wrote:
| Bitcoin does not require any payment processor. That's its
| whole point: censorship-resistant, permissionless, p2p
| payment system.
| vel0city wrote:
| Bitcoin won't require a payment processor, but companies
| wanting to effectively handle Bitcoin will want a payment
| processor or else they will have to become one themselves.
|
| Even companies working in large amounts of cash end up
| hiring companies to handle the cash logistics and all the
| other complications in dealing with it.
| mkleczek wrote:
| I am not sure why any middle man is needed to
| "effectively" handle Bitcoin.
|
| It is a very liquid asset - easy to move and easy to
| sell.
| Fargren wrote:
| You want to handle refunds, fraud, money laundering,
| chargebacks... That stuff is really hard, and if it's not
| your main line of business, you really don't want to do
| it. And if you don't have a payment processor do it, and
| you don't do it yourself, criminals will scam your
| customers and use your platform to commit fraud and
| launder money and you will get in hot water with the law.
|
| Bitcoin can be used as currency for occasional
| transactions between individuals. But you don't want your
| business to depend on it. It doesn't scale, not due to
| technological reasons, but because of legal issues and
| customer experience expectation.
| mkleczek wrote:
| Sure - you can (and probably should) outsource your non-
| core business like accounting, accounts receivables etc.
| but it is not payment processing.
|
| Bitcoin adoption is a chicken and egg problem. But my
| guess is that censoring porn creates a very big incentive
| for people to start using it.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Its too bad that the old school anti-trust provisions against
| restraint of trade are no longer of interest to enforcers. This
| isn't a case where visa/mc are against a specific game/publisher
| transactions is where they are saying we will stop processing
| payments for your entire platform because of a few games we
| object to. And its worse because the pmt processors aren't really
| specific about their objections in public at least.
| can16358p wrote:
| What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content?
|
| Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. No one, including
| governments or payment processors, should be in the position to
| decide whether a platform can sell something or not.
|
| I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say
| a big fucking NO to censorship.
| bryceacc wrote:
| If you think (insert thing here) is genuinely evil, you might
| be inclined to rid the world of it. It may even make you seem
| like a better person (to god, to others in the same camp)
| because you are "cleansing" or "healing" the world through
| those efforts. It's self righteous
| RankingMember wrote:
| The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day.
| While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble
| origin story, the context was that they wanted the freedom to
| practice a much stricter, restrictive form of religion than
| that allowed by the Church of England.
| dzonga wrote:
| are you saying the puritans were the taliban equivalent of
| christianity.
|
| & want to bring back laws that sex would only be used to
| 'recreate' not recreation.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Yes that's exactly what they were and are today
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Well not equivalent, they taught their women to read after
| all.
|
| But let's be real here, they were a bunch of jerks. There's
| a reason it took no time flat for Rhode Island to exist.
| matthewrobertso wrote:
| This is the result of campaigning by an Australian group
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Quakers also came to the US early on to practice a peaceful
| an anarchistic form of Christianity.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| This sounds like a just so story. There were all sorts of
| groups who set up shop in America, and all contributed to its
| success and influenced the culture.
|
| Virginia was the most populous colony during the revolution,
| did English planter society just disappear and the Puritans
| made it all the way down to the South?
|
| What about the Quakers in Pennsylvania?
|
| Dutch society in New York?
|
| Poor Scots in Appalachia?
|
| And, in any case, this campaign started in Australia. Were
| there a lot of Puritans there?
| huslage wrote:
| The actors in this are Australian, by the way.
| gspencley wrote:
| I'm not so sure you can point the finger at the USA for this.
|
| I ran an online porn website for almost 20 years. For 15
| years it was my primary source of income.
|
| I'm in Canada which, compared to the USA is _extremely_
| progressive.
|
| In 2022, after a decade of doing business with a certain bank
| as this business, never having hidden anything about what we
| did, my wife and I received an urgent, signature required,
| overnighted letter from our bank informing us that they were
| terminating our accounts and that we had one month until we
| would no longer have access to any funds.
|
| The way this played out was that we had an incoming wire
| transfer get flagged and they phoned us to ask us questions
| about the wire. We answered everything on the phone honestly
| and transparently. We were doing nothing wrong.
|
| A few months later we get another phone call from our branch
| asking us to come in in person, urgently, and do an "extreme
| due diligence" check. During this process we had to answer an
| insane amount of questions about our business activities.
| They saw a credit card transaction from JetBrains, for
| example, and asked us to explain who JetBrains was and why we
| were doing business with them etc.
|
| A couple of weeks later we were informed about the
| termination with a brief letter explaining that we fell
| outside of their "risk appetite."
|
| We managed to get an extension on the closure, and for two
| months we tried in vain to find any banking in Canada that
| would take us... and we ultimately ended up shutting down a
| business that represented two decades of our lives.
|
| During that time we reached out to industry insiders, some of
| which we happened to know were in Canada. They all told us
| that they bank in the USA.
|
| One branch manager at a bank we met with was extremely
| empathetic but obviously couldn't put her own job on the
| line, and she explained exactly what was going on.
|
| The issue is "Know Your Customer" regulations that are coming
| into effect that are meant to target things like money
| laundering. These regulations force banks to ask questions
| that they never really cared about before. This branch
| manager explained that a local strip club used to say they
| were a "banquet hall", and everyone at the branch knew
| exactly what they were but it was "don't ask / don't tell."
|
| But once they start digging into these details because the
| government is forcing them to, then these things get to their
| compliance departments. And the policies exist because
| they're afraid of things like human trafficking and other
| things.
|
| And our major banks have foreign investors from all around
| the world. Including from countries where porn is actually
| illegal.
|
| While you point the finger at puritanism in the USA ...
| consider that in countries like Iceland, producing porn can
| land you in jail. Now consider MAJOR investments originating
| in countries like Saudi Arabia etc. and consider how that
| might impact your bottom line if they all pull out due to
| nonsense morality conflicts.
| azalemeth wrote:
| I'm amazed that producing porn in Iceland can lead to gaol.
| Can you expand upon that further?
| gspencley wrote:
| It's in Article 210 of the Icelandic penal code and, from
| what I gather, this follows a pattern typically referred
| to as "The Nordic Model" where it is not illegal to
| consume pornography, but it is illegal to produce and/or
| distribute it.
|
| Here is an article from the Reykjavik Grapevine that deep
| dives on it better than I could:
| https://grapevine.is/mag/2021/05/07/ask-an-expert-why-is-
| por...
|
| And for a broader overview, see "Pornography laws by
| region" on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_laws_by_region
| decimalenough wrote:
| The "Swedish Model" is about prostitution, specifically
| making it legal to sell sex but not to buy it.
|
| There are ongoing debates about how this applies to
| Onlyfans etc, with one faction claiming all sex work is
| abuse even if you're doing it solo in the privacy of your
| own home, so payments to Onlyfans should be banned.
| dandellion wrote:
| All this makes me think of war on drugs and other similar
| failed attempts at regulation, and of the article "the
| optimal amount of fraud is non-zero". The stronger the zeal
| to prevent porn the more expensive it gets to do so, and
| the more they cause legit companies like yours to close,
| the more profitable it gets to do it illegally. Just
| cranking on the symptoms without looking at the cause often
| has the opposite effect to the one desired, not that the
| people pushing for this probably care.
| solumos wrote:
| Yep, similar to how banning Juul led to the proliferation
| of foreign-made vapes[0]
|
| [0] - https://apnews.com/article/fda-vapes-vaping-elf-
| bar-juul-80b...
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I'd suggest that foreign investors dictating domestic
| policy is a huge problem. For a core institution like
| banking there ought to be a law forbidding them from
| discriminating against otherwise legal activities except in
| the case that a different law permits or requires them to
| do so. That would also absolve them of any PR concerns
| because "everyone has to; legally speaking we don't have
| any choice".
| derefr wrote:
| > we fell outside of their "risk appetite."
|
| If you take that statement at face value (not sure if you
| should), it's fascinating to think that your business was
| able to operate for two decades with what I assume are the
| standard problems people in the porn industry face (e.g.
| chargebacks from customers unwilling to admit they
| subscribed in their SO's presence and so pretending it was
| a scam, etc.)
|
| And yet seemingly none of the bank's risk heuristics based
| on actual transaction profiling ever went off.
|
| Wouldn't that mean that, _in practice_ , being in the porn
| industry isn't as high-risk as banks / payment processors
| think it is?
|
| And would this not then suggest a gap in the market, for an
| (ideally vertically-integrated) bank + payment processor +
| card issuer + KYC provider, who is willing to
|
| 1. evaluate risk on a customer-by-customer basis (through
| e.g. continuous dynamic network analysis of transaction
| flow, with txs annotated with their KYC info) rather than
| by actuarial categorization; and
|
| 2. avoid seeking any investment (at any remove) by parties
| who would insist they avoid these types of customers?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The risk they're talking about is risk of government
| interest in them, which is never cheap when you run a
| business.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Thank you for your story. I like to try to imagine what
| conversations happened behind the scenes. The fact that the
| suddenly hauled you into the branch, and still decided that
| you were too "risky" (clearly a made-up excuse) says a lot.
| Whatever force is behind this is _powerful_ and it 's not
| even remotely explained by a coalition of angry activists.
| bko wrote:
| I don't think you have to be Puritanical or particularly
| religious to realize that some content is generally not good
| for people. I've seen this destroy lives, drive addiction and
| lead to other forms of destructive behavior.
|
| Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless
| self gratification does not lead to flourishing.
|
| You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can
| at least concede it's not entirely arbitrary content like say
| a sitcom.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'll take the hard stance on this. I don't see how Sex is
| anymore harmful, addicting, or dangerous as any other
| number of socialties. Including Alcohol, fast food,
| gambling, and simply getting to into any given hobby (be it
| video games or playing guitar).
|
| A habit I've noticed is that a person vulnerable to being
| addicted to X is more prone to fall back on Y, Z, etc. even
| when X is fixed. So I only see "this hurts certain people"
| as a scapegoat. Stairs probably hurt more people in any
| given day than many activities, we don't base law purely on
| harm and potential harm.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Alcohol and gambling are commonly restricted if not
| outright banned in various localities though, and most
| people would consider those and fast food to be harmful.
| So you seem to be agreeing with GP that while you may not
| think it should be banned, you find it comparable to
| things that are widely recognized as "generally not good
| for people".
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Porn is also typically restricted. Just as many
| jurisdictions permit neither public consumption nor
| intoxication, everywhere I've lived had laws against
| publicly displaying "obscene" content.
|
| The issue with GGP is that in context it appears to be an
| argument in favor of increasing restrictions (ie in favor
| of the events that the article is talking about) despite
| disclaiming that "You don't have to agree that it should
| be banned". That's analogous to a loaded question.
| Expressing agreement with the literal wording of GGP
| seems to also carry an implication of agreement with some
| rather different things as well.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| My read was that they were merely saying that it's not
| helpful to characterize desire for such restrictions as
| fundamentally coming from some religious angle. There are
| entirely secular reasons to consider restrictions even if
| you e.g. weigh personal autonomy as more important than
| those reasons and therefore believe there should not be
| restrictions.
|
| It's perfectly fine to say "I think porn is generally
| unhealthy and would suggest people not partake, but I
| think they ought to be able if they'd like". It's also
| reasonable to say "I think things like porn, alcohol,
| cigarettes, violence, and/or gambling should be
| accessible to adults, but they should not be able to
| advertise in spaces where children are likely to visit
| (like an online video game store), and stores should
| check ID to purchase those things, and 'paying via
| advertising' should not act as a loophole for those ID
| checks." There's a wide range of reasonable positions to
| debate that are entirely shut down by basically implying
| that people are unreasonable to disagree.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because
| endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing.
|
| _
|
| So then why aren't those activists going after Instagram,
| TicTok, X/Twitter, etc. you know, the OG spyware, brain rot
| and anxiety inducing companies, because that would actually
| benefit society and not too many people would mourn their
| loss.
|
| Why are they instead going after a dozen random horny video
| games nobody heard of? Oh that's right, because those
| random game devs don't have the power to fight back in
| court, unlike Meta/X, so it's an easy win for them to
| collect brownie points, for performative nonsense.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It sounds more strategic than performative. Surely if
| they can set precedents against weaker opponents then
| they stand more chance against stronger opponents.
|
| Though Steam is not weak. But small-time game devs
| probably don't care to fight unless they're making bank.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _So then why aren 't those activists going after
| Instagram, TicTok, X/Twitter, etc. you know, the OG
| spyware, brain rot and anxiety inducing companies_
|
| What makes you think they aren't? Because it hasn't been
| discussed in the HN bubble?
| knappe wrote:
| And I've seen video games cause people to destroy their
| lives.
|
| What else should we arbitrarily ban based on this criteria?
| It doesn't seem to hold up to much scrutiny.
| bko wrote:
| I'm not saying we should ban anything.
|
| Sure video games can be unhealthy. Maybe I'm weird but I
| would much rather prefer my son plays video games 8 hours
| a day than watches adult content 8 hours a day. Let's
| stop pretending like they're comparable.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Maybe I'm weird but I would much rather prefer my son
| plays video games 8 hours a day than watches adult
| content 8 hours a day.
|
| Isn't it the end result that matters? Presumably you'd
| like your son to become a functional adult. Neither of
| the scenarios you describe there sound like that to me
| (excepting perhaps "professional competitive gamer" but
| somehow I suspect most parents don't really approve of
| that outcome either).
| kavok wrote:
| Is it the public's job to police what your son does or is
| it your job?
| Mawr wrote:
| I'd have an easier time with this argument if it got
| equally applied to violence. It's ridiculous that exposure
| to sex is considered worse than to violence.
| bko wrote:
| I'd feel more comfortable showing a 12 year old a violent
| movie than I would an adult movie.
|
| Or maybe put another way, if my child was at a neighbors
| house and one of the parents watched an adult movie with
| my child I would have a huge issue. If they watched
| Terminator or something similar, I would have much less
| of an issue.
|
| They're not even close to the same thing.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I think your analogy is a bit off. The "watched it with"
| really changes the dynamic. There are quite a few
| activities that I'd take issue with adult neighbors doing
| with someone else's child. That's an entirely different
| question from a child doing things on his own or with
| other children.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you can at least concede it 's not entirely arbitrary
| content like say a sitcom_
|
| I'd actually hypothesise that if you locked three sets of
| teenage boys in rooms, one with only porn games, one with
| only social media and one with only sitcoms, that the first
| group would likely emerge the healthiest of the three. I'm
| basing this on my bias towards activity and that nobody
| seems to have bothered with actually doing research on porn
| games, the organisation pushing for these bans included
| [1], instead proxying research on porn as a whole for this
| specific category.
|
| [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/research
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| What do you consider "healhty", though? It's a very broad
| term that doesn't actually mean much on its own.
| vunderba wrote:
| IMHO the creation of organized religion has led to far more
| injustice in the world than a stray nipple (outside of
| Helen of Troy).
| bloqs wrote:
| the group behind this, collective shout are Aussies
| dandellion wrote:
| The groups behind are two US companies. Some random group
| of weirdos from Australia are just a good excuse, at best.
| trothamel wrote:
| Collective Shout, which organized this, claims to be an
| Australian feminist organization. (Admittedly, this may be an
| act.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _laims to be an Australian feminist organization_
|
| I'm genuinely curious to see how this plays out in the
| American partisan landscape.
| pjc50 wrote:
| They are however influenced by the American discourse soup
| of lies and talking points, in the same way that the NZ
| mosque shooter was.
|
| Conservatives around the world talk to each other.
| anonym29 wrote:
| "Protecting women" is an incoherent excuse for pressuring
| websites to pull romantic games that feature consensual,
| loving, respectful homosexual male-male relationships, with
| no women even present in the game.
|
| The real motivations seemingly have nothing to do with
| protecting women, which appears to simply be a palatable
| facade for the true intention to suppress all depictions of
| sexuality, including the depictions that offer good-faith
| representation of historically marginalized groups.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Ironically, isn't most MfM smut written by and for women?
| t-writescode wrote:
| The irony is that many if not most of the porn ARTISTS I
| have know or known of are women, in a subculture that skews
| male *heavily*.
|
| And video games are just art.
|
| So, women, drawing and writing stuff they like, being
| banned and losing an income stream.
|
| I don't think drawing or writing porn is exploitative at
| all.
| the_af wrote:
| One of the best porn web comics (which I recommend,
| though like all web comics it has its highs and lows) is
| Oglaf [1], and the artist drawing the sexy pictures is
| Trudy Cooper... a woman.
|
| If somehow the puritanical mob banned stuff like that,
| I'd be genuinely sad.
|
| [1] https://www.oglaf.com
| pyuser583 wrote:
| No this isn't just American. Most of the world is very anti-
| porn. The BRICS countries mostly outlaw porn. Even Nordic
| countries, which are very socially liberal, discourage it (at
| least production).
|
| There's a tendency for social liberals to see their view as
| the only legitimate one. Sometimes they are right. But this
| is an area where there is lots of international push back
| from undeveloped, developing, and even many developed
| socially liberal countries.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Several of the BRICS (& other "global south" / non-
| neoliberal / non-western) countries also imprison
| journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups, and
| some even have the death penalty for minor cannabis
| possession. "Everyone else does things this way" isn't a
| legitimate justification.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| A justification of what, though? It isn't a cohesive
| argument on it's own but it is important perspective. If
| a significant fraction of societies have arrived at
| policies that contradict your worldview I think that
| ought to give you pause. (Note that I say that as someone
| who holds far more extreme views about legal freedom of
| expression than the vast majority of people out there.)
|
| That's getting somewhat off topic though. In the context
| of this thread it's merely the observation that
| attributing this to "puritans" or "christianity" or "US
| history" is rather misguided. The US and western Europe
| are very much the outliers here.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Are you defending the morality of authoritarian states
| imprisoning journalists and nonviolent political
| opposition groups?
|
| It's one thing to recognize that it happens, another to
| recognize the practice as legitimate, virtuous, or even
| desirable.
|
| To be clear, I'm not accusing you of promoting these
| practices, just asking you to clarify your position.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Not to whatabout but the US isn't free from punishing
| journalists.
|
| See the Steven Donziger[1] case. It was just done more
| Americanly. Private corporation threw their full weight
| at a lawyer defending an indigenous population who had
| their water supply poisoned. Chevron hired a private
| prosecutor who had him locked up on house arrest for
| years.
|
| Similar to this porn case, the censorship and suppression
| is coming from market interests rather than government,
| but they're nearly equally untouchable and even more
| difficult to hold accountable. You can't vote out the
| leadership of mastercard or chevron.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| When I finally got around to reading Fukuyama, I had an
| "aha" moment where I realized... oh, this is how liberal
| democracy thinks. They think they've perfected society and
| everyone agrees with them, except for a few weird
| superstitious cults.
|
| Then I realized that it was all wrong, countries accept
| western liberal democracy only as long as the free aid
| keeps flowing. And the libdems were in for a rude awakening
| if they ever ran out of kibble.
| pnw wrote:
| The Collective Shout group pushing for the censorship is
| Australian, not American.
|
| Most people are unaware of Australia's long history of
| censorship which continues to this day.
| ronsor wrote:
| Australia was a prison colony, after all.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The Puritanical origins of the US_
|
| Like slavery, smallpox, and tipping, Puritanism was Europe's
| gift to the new world.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| A couple of the groups that founded what would become US
| states were decent. Of course those decent groups got
| outcompeted by the authoritarian weirdos because live and let
| lives types and insular communities don't see the need to
| grab state power.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Presumably, the belief of Collective Shout is that there is a
| causal link between acting out incest, rape, and sexual
| violence in games and acting on those behaviors in real life.
|
| What would you do if you harbored that belief?
| evilduck wrote:
| Empirically prove it.
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| You say that, but history shows that people are much more
| likely to move based on what _feels_ true to them.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Making sure I get this straight. You're saying that if you
| shared that believe, you would go out in search of evidence
| to prove it? I hate to break the news, but if we read the
| literature published by members of Collective Shout, they
| _have_ in fact done this. The evidence they have supports
| their claims. Let 's be clear, the evidence they have is
| independent of the veracity of the claims, but they _have_
| done with you suggested. However, it had the effect of
| confirming their beliefs.
|
| I hate to ask the question again, but if you believed the
| same thing and felt like you empirically proved it, how
| would you behave?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if we read the literature published by members of
| Collective Shout, they have in fact done this_
|
| Granted, I've skimmed, but I'm genuinely not seeing it
| [1].
|
| The closest is this study [2], which counted how many
| times thirty-eight women "who self-identified as having
| experienced unwanted or non-consensual sexual experiences
| in relationships" and were "recruited via social media,"
| when "given the opportunity to reflect on their
| experiences of [intimate partner sexual violence], with
| prompting to speculate about their partner's motivations
| or any underlying causes for the violence" mentioned
| pornography. That's...that's not a study.
|
| [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/research
|
| [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077801
| 2209713...
| tremon wrote:
| We have seen time and time again that a lot of such
| reprehensible behaviour comes from a puritanical stance on
| sex. So it's likely that they already act out those
| behaviours in real life.
|
| They just want to hide behind "those games made me do it"
| when they eventually get caught.
| codedokode wrote:
| Why they don't go after alcohol? I am not an expert, but I
| guess most such crimes happen due to alcohol usage.
| fossgeller wrote:
| Well maybe they are bothered by its sexist content. People all
| are about free speech when it comes to censorship in media, but
| not that many talk about how objectification of women is still
| very common in it.
|
| I'm sure that there are dating sims that are just fine, but
| let's be honest here, these platforms are filled with much
| weirder stuff . Some of them even enter the morally grey areas
| imo.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Oh no, weird stuff in games? Or even... morally grey actions
| in games? How awful!
| fossgeller wrote:
| Well yes, one could argue that if games like GTA don't turn
| people into criminals than these games are also harmless.
| Imo it's a bit different in this case, as a more natural
| instinct (sexuality) is affected.
|
| Sure, games can be beneficial for living out fantasies, but
| how will it affect your view on women if you frequently
| consume highly sexist content? The bottom line of my point
| is that I think this type of content is too easily
| available nowadays, and especially too much of it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Imo it's a bit different in this case, as a more natural
| instinct (sexuality) is affected.
|
| I personally don't see the difference. Violence is a
| primal instinct and studies on video games and violence
| only concluded short term increases in aggression. Why
| would a similar conclusion with yet another primal
| instinct not conclude with short term increased arousal?
| I don't see arousal as inherently dangerous.
|
| >how will it affect your view on women if you frequently
| consume highly sexist content?
|
| Do you feel that people just find "sexist content" from
| some algorithm, or that already sexist people seek out
| content to conform to their views? I have my criticisms
| of Steam, but I am glad they are one of the few bastions
| left that aren't driven by "engagment boosting"
| algorithms. Just a simple tag system recommending other
| content with similar tags and good ratings.
|
| I agree with the undertone that we need better sex
| education. Those early years where we don't sell content
| to 10 year olds should be used to talk about the dangers
| before sending them off. Too bad such groups also go for
| an all-abstinence approach.
| caconym_ wrote:
| If you start down this road, policing which media people
| have access to based on your own totally subjective moral
| standards and interpretations, you will end up with
| pervasive censorship that severely stunts cultural
| development. Because who is "you", anyway? The answer is,
| of course, whichever monstrous nutjob chooses to devote a
| huge chunk of their time and money to seizing the levers
| of power so that they can impose their monstrous
| nutjobbery on everyone else.
|
| Seriously, outside of special, clearly delineated cases
| with indisputable negative externalities (especially on
| the production side), when has [effectively] banning
| certain [types of] media been a net good? Seems to me
| that all it's good for is political repression and
| fueling moral panics.
| broof wrote:
| Child rape is morally grey now?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Not my words. Look upthread.
| everdrive wrote:
| "Objectification" is just a clinical and negative way to
| describe normal male sexuality. ie, that physically beautiful
| women are sexually attractive.
| fossgeller wrote:
| In my book objectification means presenting women as
| walking sexual organs, bodies of flesh that one needs to
| conquer, nothing more. Many of pornographic content
| nowadays do this. Sexuality is not a problem, sexism is.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean your last point is fine, the problem is when the
| Overton window of what "normal male sexuality" is shifts
| towards violating other people's boundaries, or diminishing
| them as people beyond how it affects men's arousal.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Well maybe they are bothered by its sexist content.
|
| several Otome and BL content was hit by this as well. I don't
| think this is about protecting the women and children.
|
| >not that many talk about how objectification of women is
| still very common in it.
|
| It's not 2005 anymore. Show me any modern AAA game still
| doing this.
|
| in terms of porn... well, yes. Your reward is sexual
| gratification with your chosen mate in any given game. Porn
| is inherently objectifying. I don't think you're seen enough
| of the porn market if you think porn is focused
| onobjectifying women, though.
|
| >but let's be honest here, these platforms are filled with
| much weirder stuff .
|
| We're on Hacker News. I really hope we had enough background
| growing up to not wish for "weird" to be illegal.
| Levitz wrote:
| Where would books like Twilight or 50 shades of grey rank on
| this "weirdness" scale? Sexism? Those two books had orders of
| magnitude more of an impact on society, where is the outrage?
| _trampeltier wrote:
| That is what happens, if we give public functions to private
| companies. Noboy say you have to use Mastercard.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember checking out llama when it first came out. (meta's
| published LLM model)
|
| "what is the best sex position?"
|
| [blah, blah, ... non-answer]
|
| "How do you get a sex change?"
|
| [long detailed answer]
| isaacdl wrote:
| Well, those are somewhat different types of questions. One is
| subjective opinion, and the other is a bit more
| factual/straightforward.
|
| I'm also not entirely sure what this has to do with the
| comment you're replying to.
| m463 wrote:
| any sex questions led to non answers.
|
| the point was that content is blocked almost by default
| nowadays
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| But the LLM gave you a detailed answer on another sex
| question. I'm a bit confused why that example was used.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not entirely; the one question was sex and interpersonal
| relationships, the other was medical / scientific.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Intercourse vs sexuality. Not the same thing.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| the first version of llama was uncensored, so this story is
| not factual
| m463 wrote:
| It was llama-7b
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| that was uncensored
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| What is meant by uncensored though? Did it have for
| example the complete unfiltered human knowledge, or was
| its dataset filtered to exclude e.g. 4chan?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Don't like porn? Don't sell it in your store, simple as that.
| Aurornis wrote:
| When the Steam removals came up on HN, several people linked
| the list of games pulled. It looked more like they were
| targeting incest games (which is a genre I didn't know existed)
| rather than the generic "porn games" that keeps showing up in
| headlines. There could be more developments or a different
| story for Itch.io, but last time this story was circulating it
| appeared that journalists were avoiding talking about specifics
| because people were much more sensitive about removing "porn
| games" in general whereas as "incest games" is a different
| story.
| badgersnake wrote:
| So what? Why does that make any difference?
| simion314 wrote:
| Those games are legal, also in some USA states you canmary
| your cousin so why the fuck don\t this puritans do not go for
| incest inreal life first then handle virtual stuff.
| broof wrote:
| One of the example games that was banned was "daddy twins
| incest BDSM" and similar titles.
| simion314 wrote:
| >One of the example games that was banned was "daddy
| twins incest BDSM" and similar titles.
|
| Next you will ban games where you are killing people
| instead of focusing on real killers? I would prefer we
| have laws for what is legal and not let religious
| extremists decide what music we are allowed to listen,
| what type of books and games should we play, I guess
| there is no evidence they can bring to ban this content
| so they push their FUD around.
|
| So please either make it illegal or stop focusing on
| virtual crimes, maybe focus on real crimes or use those
| money religious people have on helping real people.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Next is a Superman videogame being blocked because it goes
| against the 'policies/interests' of a country that manages to
| lobby a lot here.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You seem to be sarcastic but there's plenty of countries that
| have stringent laws on what games are and aren't allowed.
| o11c wrote:
| There's a lot of dishonesty relating to this. This _really_ isn
| 't about Puritanism, unless you're redefining Puritanism to
| mean having _any_ morality at all.
|
| Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games?
|
| Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games?
|
| Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games?
|
| Do you really want to compel selling access to domestic
| violence games? [this is the only addition that I wasn't aware
| of from previous investigations, but I still don't think it's
| valid to call it a "slippery slope" yet]
|
| A lot of customers don't _want_ to be shown such games in the
| first place (keep in mind that most tag systems are pretty bad
| at negative filtering, either due to platform limitations or
| due to not being used in practice).
|
| We can argue about whether "it's better to sell pedos fake
| content rather than real content" etc. (keep in mind that some
| of these things are actually illegal in many countries even
| when no real people are involved), but if so we should be
| explicit that that is our argument, and not falsely claiming
| this is some attack on sex in general. (Also keep in mind that
| free games are immune to payment processor decisions.)
| MegaButts wrote:
| > Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games?
|
| > Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games?
|
| > Do you really want to compel selling access to incest
| games?
|
| So ban the things you believe are the problem instead of
| blanket banning everything.
| o11c wrote:
| Are they actually banning "everything" though? From what I
| can see, that's entirely clickbait fraud.
| SXX wrote:
| The group behind this censorship attack is not just
| against porn games. It's also attacked games like
| Detroit: Become Human.
|
| So they want to censor far more than just porn.
| o11c wrote:
| I didn't mention "porn", and there's a reason I included
| domestic violence simulations in list of specific things
| they're targeting; when phrased like that it sounds like
| a reasonable category to ban. I haven't played that
| specific game but it certainly sounds close enough that
| it could be caught even if not intended (and maybe it is
| intended - even if I trust what people say on the
| internet and the game is well-meaning, that doesn't mean
| it is actually healthy or sane).
|
| If it really is an example of a rare false positive, a
| manual fix for _that one specific game_ is a reasonable
| thing to seek, without giving the pedos their heyday like
| most of the comments here suggest.
| SXX wrote:
| You might disagree with me and others here and even want
| censorship for games. But don't you think it's should be
| regulated by your local government for your specific
| country or by whatever regulator there is where you live?
|
| Do you really think Visa and MasterCard should be making
| decisions what is acceptable for like everyone?
|
| Otherwise any random weirdos from UK or Australia will
| censor what are you allowed to watch or play in the US.
|
| And China can also put pretty good pressure on payment
| processors too. They'll certainly want many games gone
| since they are worse than pedos for CCP.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games?
|
| Games that are pedophilia is very different form games that
| appeal to potential pedophiles. The first one is not only not
| allowed on Steam but outright illegal overall. Steam doesn't
| even want you using adult models in their games for this very
| reason; they don't want to need to verify ages.
|
| For the latter: I guess so? It's really hard to determine
| what triggers someone to commit crime. I don't think any but
| the most blatant cases are as simple as "play video game with
| teenagers in it -> I want to have sex with a real teenager".
| This is why it's better to focus on who's victmized instead
| of who may or may not be influenced.
|
| >Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games?
|
| there are 1000 games released on steam every month. A game's
| existence isn't a compelling factor to buy it.
|
| With that in mind for all subsequent answers: yes, I dont
| mind games with rape being sold. I will not buy it, but if
| they find a market: so be it.
|
| >Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games?
|
| Sure. Maybe this is a hot take, but I never had a stronger
| attraction to my mom because I watched porn of someone else
| banging their "stepmother". I'm into it because it's other
| people doing forbidden acts (or toeing the line with the
| "step" aspects), not because I'm interested in doing the
| forbidden act myself. This goes all the way back to Romeo and
| Juliet; people are engaged by romance fighting against
| societal norms.
|
| >Do you really want to compel selling access to domestic
| violence games?
|
| GTA has been a thing for some 30 years now. I think this boat
| has set sail. But yes.
|
| >keep in mind that most tag systems are pretty bad at
| negative filtering, either due to platform limitations or due
| to not being used in practice
|
| okay. So how about we fix that instead of just banning
| content we don't like. Steam is already too strong for my
| liking, but they very much can enforce a system where an
| account is suspended for too many clearly bad tags.
|
| >keep in mind that free games are immune to payment processor
| decisions
|
| Itch has a donation system on all game pages. So that's not
| quite the case here. Also, pressurign payment processors will
| endanger the entire store, even if every NSFW game is free.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The same group driving this has attempted to get games like
| Detroit: Become Human banned because they include even the
| basic _concept_ of mistreatment against women as part of the
| dramatic narrative. Not glorifying it, just having it exist,
| even when explicitly framed as a negative thing the narrative
| explores the consequences of.
| nlawalker wrote:
| I don't really disagree with you, but to play devil's advocate
| - when you see something that you think is harmful to society,
| what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to
| advocate for and work towards its abolition in what you see as
| the best interest of everyone?
|
| Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go with...
| AI-produced child porn? Rolling coal and other egregious
| pollution? Online gambling? Abortion? Fentanyl?
| goosedragons wrote:
| Laws.
| RenThraysk wrote:
| It's not what, it's how is the problem.
|
| Side stepping local country government, and applying pressure
| to payment processors to enforce your own rules globally
| should not be able to happen. Even a government should not be
| able to dictate what other countries do.
| miohtama wrote:
| The advocate group who do this believe they are exercising
| the will of God and do not need to mess with things like
| laws
| martin-t wrote:
| If somebody things he knows better, he shouldn't be allowed
| to push his views on others from his position of power. All
| public policies should be subject to public scrutiny.
|
| Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. For his
| view to be even considered, he should be required to prove
| beyond reasonable doubt, that whatever he is against is
| actually harmful. And after that, only after that, should the
| voting whether this finding should influence public policy
| begin.
|
| People should be allowed to harm themselves when they are
| informed about the consequences. Similarly, society should be
| allowed to harm itself because not everything has to be a
| race to the bottom of productivity and strength.
|
| Do abortions lower the birth rate and are more populous
| societies stronger? Even _if_ the answers are yes to both, I
| don't see why any society should optimize this metric to the
| extreme. And theological arguments quickly fall apart in the
| first step of proving harm.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives.
|
| The pragmatics of activism prove contrary to this ideal.
| The reality is that this is a failed argument and it will
| continue to fail regardless of how often it's repeated. I
| hate to say it, but the only way to counter is to win at
| the activism game rather than complain about the rules.
| martin-t wrote:
| Nothing failed. People always did things they had no
| right to, as long as they were allowed to do them.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Your propositions are contradictory. If "society" decides
| to harm itself, and I'm part of it, I'll have to suffer
| from the choices taken by others.
| martin-t wrote:
| Are you, personally, harmed by someone having an
| abortion?
|
| Are you, personally, harmed by someone watching porn?
|
| Maybe it makes society as a whole weaker compared to
| other societies but that doesn't mean your society
| actually loses anything. Countries have nuclear weapons
| and multi-national defense pacts now. Just because China
| has several times the population of the US and could win
| a conventional war, doesn't mean it's gonna invade.
|
| We don't live in tribes of a few hundred people who are
| constantly on the brink of starvation and/or genocide
| anymore. But many people are still governed by instincts
| from that environment.
| amelius wrote:
| It all depends on how much power a company has, and so how
| easy it is to find alternatives.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for
| and work towards its abolition in what you see as the best
| interest of everyone?
|
| That lines creates justification for anything and even
| everyone to be banned, sadly.
|
| >Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go
| with... AI-produced child porn?
|
| My line is "is there a victim harmed with the action".
| Shooting a gun? Yes, someone is often harmed and killed. We
| should and do regulate gun usage.
|
| simulated CSAM is repulsive but does not have a victim, in
| theory. The jury is out on how you train such content, so I
| won't saw "AI porn has no victim", but the animated stuff
| within Steam definitely has no victim (and Steam pretty much
| forbids live actors of any form for such content. They dealt
| with such a case in 2023)
| Saline9515 wrote:
| The problem with simulated CSAM is that there is a risk
| that the viewer develops a fetish for such repulsive
| practices. It has then destructive consequences for the
| viewer and, should he try to perform it, his victims.
|
| Either way, I don't see the harm of forbidding it. The web
| doesn't lack regular pornography alternatives, free or
| paid.
| true_religion wrote:
| Gay conversion therapy, which has an entire society
| backing it, failed consistently despite trying pairing it
| with torture and social ostracism.
|
| This seems to suggest that broad sexual preferences are
| remarkably stable.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| This is the same "violence in video games" argument, no?
| I'm open to reading studies on the issue, but I haven't
| seen anything to suggest that simulated CSAM "converts"
| people who otherwise is not attracted to children.
| trothamel wrote:
| Two arguments I can think of:
|
| The first is that you're banning free expression, and
| banning free expression is inherently harmful.
|
| There's also the displacement theory - with the legal
| content being much more accessible and regulated to
| ensure minors aren't involved in production, it displaces
| illegal content that does harm minors.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The assumption they're making is "interactive incest and
| sexual exploitation games influence people's real life
| behavior".
|
| In purely hypothetical terms, what would we if there was
| evidence for this? I can see some folks standing by their
| ideals and concluding that even if this was true, we
| shouldn't ban these games, while others would conclude that
| there is a moral obligation to future victims to ban them.
|
| How would you behave if you shared the belief that incest
| and sexual exploitation games influence people's real life
| behavior?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's your line, but others have other lines; violence in
| games was a big thing twenty years ago, and some pearl
| clutchers tried to have all violent video games banned.
|
| Thing is though, if violent video games caused people to
| become violent, Columbine wouldn't have been a rare
| incident.
|
| But it's a difficult one. People play video games but for
| most people it doesn't change their moral compass; it
| doesn't make them think ripping out people's spines is
| normal or acceptable. It desensitizes them to a point I
| suppose.
|
| Does porn, porn games or simulated CSAM make people
| normalize objectification and violence towards people and
| children? I can't answer that, and I don't know if there's
| been any studies towards especially CSAM since it's such a
| taboo. N=1, but 20+ years of porn on occasion hasn't turned
| me into some rampant sex addict.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _when you see something that you think is harmful to
| society, what determines whether or not it 's moral and
| appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition_
|
| Evidence. If you think something is harmful to society, you
| have a hypothesis. The next step is to test it. Not assume
| it's true and ban everything.
|
| I have seen zero evidence that any of these games are
| harmful. If I had to hazard a guess, and this is again just a
| hypothesis, I'd actually suspect that a teenager exposed to
| porn games is less likely to suffer mental-health issues than
| one on algorithmic social media or forming intimate
| connections with chatbots.
| kreco wrote:
| This is not the correct way.
|
| If cigarette was banned from the beginning, we would still
| see people getting mad without much evidence.
|
| The truth is the evidence is coming half a century after
| when everyone got cancer.
|
| Precautionary principle should always prevail.
|
| That's why we just don't go full GMO, and you would still
| not wait for any proof that "it's harmless".
|
| You also don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a
| full proof that's it's harmless.
|
| Additionally, without cigarette, without GMO and without
| pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better
| without (if we stick with the cigarette).
|
| TL;DR: You actually need a proof, but it's a proof that
| it's harmless and not the other way around.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the evidence is coming half a century after when
| everyone got cancer_
|
| Yes. Then the evidence was suppressed for decades more.
| We have no analogy here.
|
| > _Precautionary principle should always prevail_
|
| Why? Why assume the _status quo_ is perfect? Also, what
| part of pornography _isn 't_ embedded into the human
| _status quo_?
|
| > _don 't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full
| proof that's it's harmless_
|
| There is no such thing as "full proof."
|
| > _without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide
| humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without
| (if we stick with the cigarette)_
|
| Now do vaccines, antibiotics, filtered water, the
| agricultural revolution and every other life-saving
| invention.
| kreco wrote:
| > Why? Why assume the status quo is perfect? Also, what
| part of pornography isn't embedded into the human status
| quo?
|
| No one said that. But you should fool yourself saying
| that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
|
| Here is your own quote:
|
| > I have seen zero evidence that any of these games are
| harmful.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > Precautionary principle should always prevail.
|
| This makes sense. If anybody at any point thinks that
| something might be bad, it should immediately and
| permanently be prohibited for everyone. We don't need a
| mechanism to check this because people are never mistaken
| or misled, and there is no such thing as a bad actor.
|
| Since the principle should _always_ prevail, it applies
| to people as well. If anybody thinks that another person
| could do harm in the future, they should be allowed to
| kill them in order to protect society from harm.
|
| A system where the only rule is "every person gets to
| make the rules for everyone else" isn't the stupidest
| imaginable thing because
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| But things like pesticides _are_ being tested and
| approved first. With the knowledge they were able to get
| at the time, they were approved. It was only later, when
| long term and large scale usage of certain pesticides
| were shown to have a negative impact on the ecosystem
| that they looked at them again.
|
| Of course, these things don't live in a vacuum; the
| manufacturers of e.g. pesticides have a vested financial
| interest in selling their product, because money. They
| pay for scientific studies in favor of their product,
| they schmooze (= bribe) with decision makers and
| politicians, they overwhelm the system, they take their
| product global and sell it to whoever is buying, etc.
|
| Same with cigarettes or asbestos or lead paint; it's part
| "we didn't know" because it's long-term effects or the
| science wasn't there yet, but part "shut up and buy my
| product" too.
|
| Anyway, proof that it's harmless is not easy to get in
| certain cases, not when the effects only show up long-
| term or when the science doesn't yet know how to test.
| Was science at a point where they could test for the
| presence and endocrine effects of microplastics in the
| human body?
| tomrod wrote:
| I disagree, the precautionary principle (Chesterton's
| fence) is heavily overused, often as a bludgeon and for
| power maintenance.
|
| This is sort of like Jordan Peterson's claim that
| something is true if it improves evolutionary fit - a
| claim that seems reasonable on the surface but is rotten
| nonsense inside.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Thing is, with things like these, they only need one or a
| handful of cases. With everything, there is always a
| handful of cases - porn addicts, gambling addicts, revenge
| porn victims, trans women in women's spaces and sports,
| etc. The fundamentalists and right-wing media will
| hyperfocus and signal boost these statistically
| insignificant cases to push their own agenda.
|
| For them, n=1 is enough evidence. For their moral compass
| or larger scale goals, n=1 is one too many.
|
| There will always be some people - teenagers or otherwise -
| that develop mental health issues from e.g. porn games. But
| there's people developing mental health issues from
| Farmville or ChatGPT supposedly turning sentient and
| sharing the infinite Truth of the universe too. Somehow
| those aren't an issue.
|
| It's not about preventing mental health issues. It's not
| about protecting women.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but declaring that a company
| shouldn't be free to decide who they can and can't do business
| with isn't the solution to this problem and I am no friend of
| the business world.
|
| It seems fine now when it's something you don't like but what
| happens when it's a situation that isn't so agreeable? like
| being legally oblidged to do business with South Africa during
| apartheid or working with a chocolate company that (allegedly)
| used child slave labor to farm it's cocoa??
| aezart wrote:
| A payment processor should be treated like a utility. They
| just let the money flow and skim profit off the top without
| caring who's at either end.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that.
|
| The claim isn't "we don't like it", the claim is "this is
| damaging to society".
|
| I don't agree with such things in many cases (and many people
| disagree with me when I'm the one saying something is damaging
| to society), but it's important to note the difference or you
| will always be arguing against something other than their
| claim.
|
| > No one, including governments or payment processors, should
| be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell
| something or not.
|
| It's kinda the job of the government to decide such things; but
| an automatic extension of that is, it's _not_ the job of the
| payment processors... and I think they should be banned from
| doing so because it 's damaging to society to let them take on
| this role.
| pstuart wrote:
| > the claim is "this is damaging to society"
|
| There is _some_ truth to that, but if one were to operate at
| that level then Facebook would be illegal.
|
| Porn is a convenient thing to weaponize anger in your
| constituents (just like babies not being born). It pushes
| emotional triggers and riles people up and then they're
| waiting to be told what to hate/attack next.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The real debate is which is worse to society, its existence
| or attempting to ban it.
|
| Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is
| illegal in South Korea and if anything they have some of
| the _worst_ gender toxicity.
| godelski wrote:
| > Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot.
| Pornography is illegal in South Korea
|
| Yet, there's a lot of porn there too. A whole lot of
| voyeur porn too. As well as prostitution, which is also
| illegal.
|
| Making something legal or illegal is just signaling. The
| real part is how it actually is implemented in practice.
| And as you imply, things are pretty complex. We really
| need to be careful about our own tendencies to want
| things to be simple. It always backfires...
| godelski wrote:
| > it's important to note the difference or you will always be
| arguing against something other than their claim.
|
| I think this is critical insight and applies to a lot of
| topics. I think it is true for pretty much every heated
| topic.
|
| The mistake we often make is that we believe that the other
| side is not optimizing correctly. Instead, it is often that
| they are optimizing but under differing constraints. If we
| don't pay attention to these differing constraints we'll just
| end up with infuriating arguments as it will ,, _sound like_
| '' we're talking about the same thing, but actually aren't.
| It's one of the major difficulties of communication: we have
| to make a lot of assumptions to interpret the other person.
|
| Importantly, there's no way to convince the other person that
| they're wrong unless you are able to understand their model.
| It's easy to assume you do, but if your model boils down to
| "they're dumb" or "they're evil" then all you can do is
| fight. You have to understand your enemy and all that...[0]
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17976-if-you-know-the-
| enemy...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| far right white christian nationalists... far right white
| nationalists far right nationalists far right right
| Republicans.
|
| They've basically decided that they can divide up america and
| have their morals parade and their capitalist greed and their
| white supremacy
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Don 't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that._
|
| don't like porn? run a for-pay pornsite, bleeding revenue from
| the other porn sites, which you will spend fighting porn; also,
| you'll have better targeted customer lists. extremely effective
| altruism.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Anger and outrage are our most viral emotions. Given ad-driven
| social media rewards attention, it also--by proxy--rewards
| those go generate anger and outrage. This is a market signal
| and entrepreneurial incentive as potent as any.
|
| As a result, you get collections of fuckwits like this one [1]
| finding the 2% of the internet who will give them money to get
| upset about an imaginary problem, a problem so imaginary that
| nobody is on the other side of the issue because the entire
| issue was made up for clicks.
|
| [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/our_team
| throw50928 wrote:
| IMO, in addition to, the shaky belief that rape games promote
| rape in real life to the audience, etc., maybe there is the
| belief attacking the creators like, "there is a person/group of
| people we _know_ profit off the fictional depictions of rape
| /see concept of rape itself as good for cash flow. Because
| these people went through all the trouble and effort creating,
| publishing this work focused on rape in gratuitous detail - so
| its significantly more likely they hold beliefs outside the
| safe norms society upholds, than someone whose only conception
| of rape is 'its horrible' and doesn't need to _think_ about
| implementation, writing graphic scenes, going out of their way
| to create and market 'a rape simulator', and so on. As
| punishment for perception of being immoral people their income
| source needs to be shut down."
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough
| to say a big fucking NO to censorship."_
|
| Perhaps we could develop some form of secure digital currency
| that is not reliant on central authorities such as banks,
| payment processors, or governments?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That was a great theory, but in practice it became an
| asset/investment; nobody pays with BTC because its value is
| too volatile.
|
| One would expect stablecoins to be more popular but I haven't
| seen them as valid payment options anywhere except crypto
| exchanges. That's just me though.
| swayvil wrote:
| In the game of politics we split one group away from another
| and get them to fight. This achieves several effects.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| You know. I used to be all about what you're going for. But I
| realized that porn to a certain extent is like cocaine. It's
| possibly one of the drivers for world wide declining
| population. Tons of dudes satisfying themselves without the
| urge to go out and do the real thing. There's growing science
| about this too.
|
| I don't like the conservative angle which is to be "proper" or
| it's against god, but from the scientific side this stuff is
| bad.
|
| Now I also agree that censorship is bad too and on a moral
| level this stuff doesn't harm anyone morally.
|
| I'm still a staunch 90s liberal, but over time I'm starting to
| realize that there's an evolutionary reason why conservative
| values exist. Humans weren't designed to live in a world of
| only fans where every girl who's slightly hot can gain so much
| power over hundreds of men. Like there are 4th - 10th order
| effects here that go past morality.
|
| I mentioned the population problem right, that's just one
| example. We have no idea wtf is causing it. But we do know that
| the population issue correlates with so many changes in
| society, and it's a big freaking deal.
|
| Another thing is rising womens power. I'm all for it. It's
| moral and right to give women equal rights and equal power, but
| humanity has never encountered such a scenario. It's always the
| men that lead the hunt and the family and they were the bread
| winners for millions of years. Were humans evolved to support
| such changes? Like if we satisfy every moral imperative in our
| primitive brains and build a utopia but human biology was never
| meant for utopia is it right?
|
| That's the problem. The population is declining. We don't know
| why. But we do know everything is different.
|
| So I know I got off on a huge tangent here. But i feel porn is
| one of these things. It's right to keep it open and free, but
| it's causing unexpected side effects. Most of us were not meant
| to deal with that level of extreme hedonism.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Similarly, if you don't like something, you shouldn't have to
| sell it. Or host it. Or process payments for it.
| godelski wrote:
| I agree with you, but I think we need to be a bit more careful
| about that argument.
|
| The problem is actually the slippery slope happened earlier,
| with advertisers. The slippery slope was advertisers not
| wanting to advertise on porn sites and adult content. It is the
| same thing we see with the creation of Algospeak and self-
| censorship. As the article points out, it is also very hard to
| accurately classify this information. I mean even on YouTube
| the other day I got a video in my shorts feed that was flagged
| for sensitive topic. The video? About a veteran who was wearing
| a shirt that said "Do not give in to the war within. End
| veteran suicide." Here's the vid, it still has the content
| warning[0]. What about this video is sensitive? That it
| mentions the word "suicide?" (Twice?) There's not even options
| in the settings and YouTube definitely knows I'm in my 30's....
| How do I even say "this was improperly flagged?" We're just
| letting algorithms shape our culture in a way we clearly don't
| want. We wouldn't have Algospeak if we wanted it... Sure,
| covert speech has formed in the past but mostly under duress
| and the current form allows for a much more rapid iteration and
| I really don't think that's good for society. It comes with the
| best intentions, but I guess we all know the old clique, right?
| The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. As much as it
| sucks to admit, a lot of "evil" is created by "good" people
| trying to do "good" things (quotes to let you define good and
| evil however you want)
|
| The reason I point out the argument is we can modify "Don't
| like porn? Don't buy it." can be modified to "Don't like porn?
| Don't advertise on those sites."
|
| But I think payment systems should have a different regulation.
| Similar to internet, common carrier. I'm actually surprised
| this isn't already a rule (it has to be, right?). As long as it
| is legal, they should be compelled to perform the transaction.
| Anything else seems like it is actually holding your money
| ransomed.
|
| I'll admit I'm biased and I think payments should be private
| and we should try to make the system so that digital
| transactions are as similar to cash transactions as possible,
| but I'm not convinced either party is in favor of that, nor the
| banks themselves which would like to make money on that
| information.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x6WzOx01Tws
| Shekelphile wrote:
| They're being forced to remove games that are essentially anime
| CSAM. Payment processors shouldn't need to be stepping up, but
| these platforms don't bother to curate or moderate content so
| their hands are being forced.
| JackFr wrote:
| > Don't like porn? Don't buy it.
|
| Ok.
|
| Don't like porn? Don't sell it.
|
| "CENSORSHIP! PURITAN NAZIS!"
| the_af wrote:
| In discussions about this topic, in almost every place I see
| them, lots of people (against this censorship) are going "I don't
| play this kind of games" or "I don't personally care about
| tentacle fetish" (or whatever).
|
| I don't get this. Let's say it openly: what's the problem with
| sex and nudity in games? Why is it so unacceptable -- that even
| people against the censorship must loudly proclaim it's not
| "their thing" -- but violence, guns, war, etc are not? Or not
| enough to pull from the stores, anyway?
|
| What I don't care about are the finer points of whether this
| technically counts as "censorship", because in pratice it is.
| There SHOULD be a place to buy games which depict nudity and sex.
| The quality of those games is not and should not be the focus of
| conversation (e.g. "they are AI slop" or "badly made", etc),
| because that's NOT what bothers the people doing the censorship
| -- they'd also be against the best, AAA made, high quality games
| with sex and nudity.
|
| Again, I ask: what is wrong with sex and nudity in games, that
| makes it worse than gore, violence and war? Why cannot whatever
| age-restriction measures taken for the purchase of violent games
| be also applied to sex games?
|
| Finally: we all know they are not going to stop at this, right?
| akomtu wrote:
| That's because people recognise that their self-control with
| regard to violence is solid, they know where the line is and
| won't have an urge to cross it, but with sex the story is
| different. Making this type of content mainstream will start a
| wildfire in our society. I believe this is the main reason why
| all religions are strict about sex, while at the same time very
| lax about violence (holy wars, the image of warrior, etc.)
| bloqs wrote:
| after how many decades of freely available pornography will
| you accept this is just not based in reality?
| zahlman wrote:
| Nothing is wrong with it.
|
| People are just accustomed to being insulted for willingly
| associating themselves with it, on the basis of imputed
| perversion, bad taste etc.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think the main point is showing solidarity, even for content
| that does not directly benefit them. There's nothing wrong with
| sex and nudity, but everyone will have different personal lines
| in their day to day life.
|
| >must loudly proclaim it's not "their thing" -- but violence,
| guns, war, etc are not?
|
| I don't think war or violence is most people's thing to begin
| with.
|
| Guns, that's definitely a thorny issue. Especially in the US.
| I'm personalyl fine with much stricter gun control
|
| >we all know they are not going to stop at this, right?
|
| indeed. It's not the first wave, it won't be the last. Gotta do
| the same thing either way and push back.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Porn games on Steam and itch are tacky af but they don't push
| them on me and I sort of just ignore them. That being said they
| should probably sell them on different website.
| nosignono wrote:
| > That being said they should probably sell them on different
| website.
|
| Why? (Genuinely)
|
| Why are filters not sufficient? If I enjoy adult games and non-
| adult games, why should I have to manage two storefronts?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Itch has been "that different website" for pretty much all its
| existence. If itch isn't safe, I don't know who is. Epic
| doesn't really allow any of that, and GOG is still pretty picky
| on any submission.
|
| DLSite is another good site but that was hit last year by this.
| crinkly wrote:
| The very idea of a store front for software needs to die. It's a
| single strangle point that serves only to concentrate power and
| create a legal or regulatory target.
|
| There should be no platform to "abuse". There should be no
| control point.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Everyone is free to build their own website to market and
| distribute their games.
| qualeed wrote:
| I'm curious, what do you imagine as the better alternative?
|
| I guess every publisher could just sell direct to customers on
| their own website, but that wouldn't address this issue at all
| (it would make it even easier for payment processors to abuse
| their duopoly), while also severely damaging the
| discoverability of games.
|
| And, considering that companies can _already_ do this if they
| want but still choose to sell via a platform, I 'm guessing
| there are several benefits beyond discoverability that I'm not
| thinking of.
| crinkly wrote:
| Well we have a couple of problems on the table at the moment.
| Stop Killing Games is a good exemplar of one so I won't go
| there. But the other is "what happens if Steam goes evil?".
| Remember Google's old motto?
|
| The only solution is you download stuff and it remains
| runnable and usable without any connection or authorisation
| to any service. The distribution of it can remain wherever
| and you can go via a side channel if you want. But being tied
| to a platform is utterly wrong.
|
| If the payment processor shuts your revenue down you can move
| elsewhere. With Stream as the distributor, you can't. It's a
| single point of failure.
| qualeed wrote:
| > _The only solution is you download stuff and it remains
| runnable and usable without any connection or authorisation
| to any service._
|
| I agree, but that could still be done even when using a
| centralized distribution platform. I would say those are
| two separate issues. I think (not positive) that's the
| whole premise of GOG, isn't it?
|
| > _If the payment processor shuts your revenue down you can
| move elsewhere._
|
| Not really, though. If the payment processor stops doing
| business with your company, your shit out of luck. Instead
| of pressuring steam or whoever, they just pressure you
| directly. The single (well, double) point of failure always
| chains up to the payment processors.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| How exactly does an independent developer have more choice
| or power against credit card processors alone? That's not
| how it works. Mega platforms have more power and still get
| pushed around. Indies are completely beholden to the whims
| of the payment platforms unless they opt out and accept
| crypto instead. Mega platforms could also accept crypto for
| controversial or all content too.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I guess the GP's plan is a scatter approach. 1 indie has
| no power, but if for every banned indie you have 10 more
| setting up payment, it becomes financially untenable to
| go after them all. Compared to, say, making one or two
| calls to Gabe. Turning it from a game of corruption to
| one of whack-a-mole.
| wredcoll wrote:
| It's not the store, it's the cc companies.
| djoldman wrote:
| The decision to provide or not some services or products should
| be free from considering downstream use.
|
| It would be ridiculous to deny a water supply hookup or
| electrical mains to a church because the water or electrical
| companies are opposed to those beliefs.
|
| Analogously, legislation should be passed to prohibit considering
| downstream use for all financial transactions.
|
| If the government wants to go after criminals, it can do it by
| itself.
| csours wrote:
| The problem with slippery slopes is that the world is made of
| them. You can't leave the slippery slope, at BEST you can choose
| which slope you're sliding down.
|
| Another way to think of this is 'long tail risk'. Some subset of
| people out there will develop real life problems from: porn, sex
| work, alcohol, weed, drugs, gambling, other 'moral' issues. It is
| difficult to meaningfully address both the median user and the
| problematic user.
|
| See also decrim.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| IMO the difference is whether the "slope" is emotional or
| physical.
|
| Exhibit A - emotional: the government has outlawed violent
| crime and wants to outlaw intimidation. Argument "once they
| outlaw intimidation, next they'll outlaw regular insults, next
| they'll outlaw criticism". This is a bad slippery slope
| argument because (I'm assuming) intimidation should be
| outlawed. Insults and criticism should not, but are not. If the
| government votes in evil-gov or you encounter evil-cop, it's as
| easy for them to harass you for insults and criticism, as it
| would be had intimidation never been outlawed.
|
| Exhibit B - physical: the government wants to give every
| citizen a brain implant that can be remotely activated to stun
| them. This would _significantly_ prevent crime. However, it
| would also be a terrible idea, because now if you get evil-gov
| or evil-cop, it's significantly easier for them to remotely
| stun you for non-crime.
|
| The key is that in Exhibit A, evil-gov and evil-cop face equal
| resistance for punishing insults and criticism regardless of
| whether intimidation is outlawed, because either way, people
| understand that intimidation should be outlawed and insults and
| criticism should not. More generally, _moving the Overton
| Window to contain a "good" thing doesn't make it contain a
| "bad" thing, at least not enough so that the "good" thing isn't
| worth it_. But in Exhibit B, evil-gov and evil-cop face
| ineffective resistance for stunning people for insults and
| criticism, because people allowed good-gov and good-cop to give
| them stun implants for punishing crime; whereas if evil-gov or
| evil-cop stepped up and said "alright, we're going to give
| everyone stun implants to punish insults and criticism", they
| would face effective resistance.
|
| ---
|
| Put into perspective: Visa and Mastercard using their Monopoly
| to effectively prevent payment for depictions of incest and
| rape, assuming you think that is OK, is Exhibit A. However,
| Visa and Mastercard having a monopoly in the first place is
| Exhibit B. My argument is "we should break the Visa and
| Mastercard monopoly (or popularize crypto) to prevent them from
| restricting LGBTQ and firearms etc. in the future" (this
| argument still applies if they're restricting some of that
| now). A counter-argument is "this will allow incest depictions,
| hate speech, and moreover actual drug and sex trafficking*,
| etc." and my counter is "those things are bad, but are they bad
| enough to leave us vulnerable to power shifts restricting good
| content in the future?" I support free speech with a similar
| argument**.
|
| It's an argument that relies on the uncertain future, but
| nonetheless the change here clearly and significantly decreases
| the probability of a bad future, because bad-gov or bad-cop
| must acquire power _then_ revert the monopoly breakup; whereas
| the emotional example can't even rely on the future, because if
| bad-gov or bad-cop acquire enough power to cause the bad thing,
| they would've just as likely acquired enough power had we not
| avoided causing the good thing.
|
| * Also note these things are already exchanged with real money,
| and breaking up the Visa/Mastercard monopoly won't make them
| legal nor stop law enforcement from tracking and prosecuting
| them. The more general argument is that it's better for society
| to make it hard for law enforcement to prosecute crime then
| give them the resources to do so, but also make it hard for
| them to prosecute non-crime; then make it easy for law-
| enforcement to prosecute crime so they need less resources, but
| also make it easy for them to prosecute non-crime. The
| justification is that we spend extra resources and let some
| crimes avoid prosecution, in exchange for decreased risk of
| non-crime prosecution now and in the future.
|
| ** and that speech is mild enough, sans confidential
| information etc., that it shouldn't be blocked simply to
| content whoever says it. But even confidential information
| doesn't warrant e.g. a universal backdoor and filter that could
| be stolen and exploited by a bad actor.
| ajdude wrote:
| I recently got a notification from Flickr: You must now have the
| paid account (around $8 per month) to view 18+ content. I wonder
| if it's related.
| nosignono wrote:
| This is absolutely a wedge to censor LGBTQ+ content. If you can
| separately argue that adult content should be blocked and LGBTQ+
| themes are for adults, then you can block queer content online en
| masse.
|
| Visa and Mastercard have too much power, and are too willing to
| capitulate.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| The group responsible also want to ban _Detroit: Become Human_
| , for context.
|
| That game advocates staunchly for civil rights and the autonomy
| of women, children, and other minorities. The Holocaust
| allegory is so on the nose you can't even call it veiled. It
| says domestic abuse is unforgivably, undeniably wrong.
|
| They don't even care about marginalized groups or even women
| themselves. Any piece of content that gives them the heeby
| jeebies, any media that has conflict: banned. Doesn't matter if
| it even supports their purported agenda.
| adamrezich wrote:
| This is why it is so tiring to see everyone reduce what is
| happening here to "they're trying to ban [specific thing I
| care about]!" rather than take the objective facts of the
| situation in total.
| scyclow wrote:
| There are a lot of people mentioning crypto as a possible
| solution to this, and a lot of people responding that crypto is a
| ponzi scheme, and they're not interested. But congress recently
| passed stablecoin legislation that could possibly fix this
| problem. Recipients would have a straightforward way of receiving
| money, and they wouldn't need to gamble on the price of bitcoin.
| Most people would probably still use a third part payment
| processor to handle the rough edges of managing money on the
| blockchain. But if any of them try to pull something like this it
| would be incredibly easy spin up a new processor and migrate
| accounts.
| nurumaik wrote:
| All stablecoins (at least popular ones) has the same underlying
| problem -- it's regulated and controlling entity can freeze any
| funds because it wants so
| scyclow wrote:
| Yeah, but so can PayPal and Visa and Mastercard. The issue
| here is that payments is essentially a duopoly. Itch doesn't
| have any alternatives because they're locked into traditional
| payment rails. Stablecoins at least let someone else decide
| "Hey, you know what, I'm going to create a coin that can be
| used as payment for porn games." And executing on that is
| fairly straightforward.
| nosignono wrote:
| Weirdly, Amazon sells TONS of porn and NSFW content, and yet
| doesn't lose their Visa/Mastercard processing.
|
| Game of Thrones, both the books and the show, contain content
| much, much more explicit than many of these games. Yet Itch and
| Steam have to pull stuff or their very existence is threatened.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Isn't this American culture? You can watch soft porn as long as
| you can claim it is not porn? The Spartacus Series comes to
| mind. Gore and Porn. But sure, it is "history"
| derbOac wrote:
| Why isn't there another counter group putting pressure on them to
| not pull this kind of thing?
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| The anti-capitalist left is disorganized and under-funded a
| priori.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Part of the left sees porn as abuse, so at a minimum they do
| not care about porn or may even support banning porn.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Because it's slightly/majority embarrassing. The groups backing
| this ban will find the worst of the worst thing, and paint you
| as a massive supporter. And their militant zealots will
| endanger your life if you become significant enough.
|
| It takes a certain kind of person to stand up for pornography.
| And most are not that kind of person.
| teddyh wrote:
| "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one
| spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is
| against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and
| oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be
| stopped at all."
|
| -- Commonly attributed to H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
| rustystump wrote:
| You can defend porn while not defending incest.
|
| Keep all the porn that is great. But there has to be a line
| somewhere and even the most accepting countries have a line.
|
| Often the groups defending porn are defending the most
| egregious stuff which makes it hard for people to support.
| tryauuum wrote:
| hello from Russia, which was disconnected from the rest of the
| world by our overloads Visa and Mastercard
|
| There's a whole buisness model of russians paying to a company in
| Kazahstan so that they buy a steam game and gift it to a russian
| user
| codedokode wrote:
| In Russia many of those games would be illegal: LGBT is
| illegal, propaganda against having children is illegal, etc.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| imo nothing wrong with a platform deciding what content it wants
| to host.
|
| But there's also nothing wrong with allowing this type of
| content. Who wants to help me build an uncensored game
| distribution platform? We could call it Steamy.
| SirYandi wrote:
| Yes, but it's not the platform really making the decision in
| this case. It's their payment processor
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Incest rape simulators, zoophilia, lolicon?
|
| I think this stuff has no place on 'normal' store fronts like
| Steam and Itch. It should be on an 18+ only store front at the
| very least.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The movie rental stores, back when they existed, used to have
| a room behind a curtain that adults could access.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| And they wouldn't be selling zoophilia/lolicon/incest
| pornography.
| bloqs wrote:
| where are mid-00s Anonymous when you need them
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Regulate Visa and MasterCard and the rest. As utility services,
| they should not have the ability to ban or deny service to any
| payment that is not clearly illegal. Or we should create a public
| alternative with private transactions.
| true_religion wrote:
| Although it's been tried before, we should all follow this bill,
| the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act which will criminalize
| lewd sexual material.
|
| In the current atmosphere, it might just pass.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/167...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I read from a fairly reputable source that money laundering is a
| huge problem in online sex industry.
|
| Which makes sense - you have buyers and sellers who insist on
| anonymity, services that leave no trace once rendered, buyers and
| sellers lying to family and friends about what they're doing,
| etc.
|
| There's often no "normal" amount of consumption, for example,
| some sellers receive million dollar tips.
|
| Money laundering is a massive problem, and it enables some really
| terrible things.
|
| I suspect the fact that American banks are so anti-porn comes
| from the fact that the American financial sector has such strong
| anti-money laundering regs (as opposed to, say, the American real
| estate sector, or the UK financial sector).
|
| One of the reasons OF is doing well is because they insist on
| following know your customer laws. Not many porn platforms could
| function that way.
| gs17 wrote:
| If it was about potential for money laundering, they'd have
| gone after the Steam item marketplace way before random adult
| games. Valve has had to take action against it in the past:
| https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/valve-block-counter-strike-...
| , but AFAIK it's hard to actually solve.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Not so much the potential for money laundering, as actual
| money laundering. Is there actual money laundering going on
| in Steam's item marketplace?
| gs17 wrote:
| Yes, at least back in 2019, from the link:
|
| > However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted
| to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this
| point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or
| sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced.
| As a result we have decided that newly purchased keys will
| not be tradeable or marketable.
|
| Many users still suspect it happens, although it's hard to
| prove.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Don't kid yourself. Has nothing to do with laundering. Payment
| processors want more transaction volume. The only time they
| start doing this is if they get legal pressure.
|
| The initial regulation also didn't suppress content, it just
| made you have to go through age verification, which everyone
| knows doesn't work.
| onlyfansfakes wrote:
| >One of the reasons OF is doing well is because they insist on
| following know your customer laws
|
| You'd think so, but nope. Using a throwaway account for obvious
| reasons.
|
| I ended up subscribing to someone who's catfishing. All their
| pics on OnlyFans and other socials were just stolen from random
| Instagram models. I reported it to OF, but got no response.
|
| Whatever verification system OF has, it's bypassable. It
| doesn't matter much when it's just regular subscribers - nobody
| really cares about consumer rights in the adult content space.
| That's why so many creators can get away with pretending
| they're the ones replying to messages. But I'm betting there's
| going to be a CSEM scandal linked to this in the next few
| years.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| They are targeting incest/rape games. I wouldn't call that
| 'LGBTQ' like some people seem to imply. If Itch and Steam don't
| want to police their store fronts _before_ the law gets involved,
| then I am not surprised that other businesses such as payment
| providers will choose not to work with them.
|
| Visa and MasterCard are in the business of making money, they're
| not doing this for fun.
| shevis wrote:
| The problem is that they are opting to ban all games labeled
| "NSFW", not just rape/incest games.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Itch is only doing this in the short term as they don't have
| enough time to go through all of the NSFW games on their
| platform.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| And 4chan is only introducing the Captcha until the spam
| stops
| gs17 wrote:
| > _before_ the law gets involved
|
| There's no law (as of now). If there was a law, Valve would
| happily de-list these things. For example, a recent custom map
| for Mount and Blade that was banned in South Korea:
| https://automaton-media.com/en/news/valve-cooperates-in-bann...
| flumpcakes wrote:
| This is my entire point: Valve and Itch do not police their
| store fronts (Itch actually does, it won't allow any games it
| thinks are 'hatred' but other content is OK) and now the
| payment processors think the risk is too great.
|
| I think one solution for Valve/Itch to continue with the 'no
| policing policy' is for governments to step in and say all
| video games needed classification like films do.
|
| I think a _few_ of these video games that are sold would be
| found to breaking some law if anyone cared to test it.
| gs17 wrote:
| Steam's storefront is actually policed somewhat, their
| rules are simply not the same as the ones you want them to
| have.
|
| > governments to step in and say all video games needed
| classification like films do.
|
| Valve and (I believe) Itch are both US companies. In the
| US, films are not required to get a rating anymore.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I think I missed the part where Valve or these games were in
| violation of any laws.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| MasterCard/VISA clearly think the risk is there.
| rahkiin wrote:
| They should consider banning sale of the Bible and Game of
| Thrones from Amazon as well
| crooked-v wrote:
| Collective Shout also actively targets games like Detroit:
| Become Human that are hardly 'incest/rape games'.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| And that game is still available. Hardly evidence that
| payment providers are targeting all 'NSFW' or adult games.
| superkuh wrote:
| Have you heard of a television show called "Game of Thrones".
| It featured live actors, real humans with human bodies, acting
| out representations of incest and rape. And positive
| representations at that. It was a worldwide phenomenon and
| hundreds of millions of people probably watched it. It's still
| available to buy and sell GoT and related merchandise and
| payment providers don't bat an eye.
|
| Video games don't even involve actual human bodies like GoT
| does. It's crazy that "Collective Shout" thinks this is worth
| invoking violence and violating peoples volition for. Certainly
| not consistent with all other aspects of entertainment in
| society. Makes me think there are probably other fame, power
| and money motivations behind their behavior. But it doesn't
| explain people agreeing with them. That's the weirdest part of
| this.
| rustystump wrote:
| I have always found it odd that whenever pornography comes up the
| degree to which people defend it in all forms. It is
| uncomfortably telling but also completely misses why this is
| happening.
|
| Itch.io is heavily saturated with anime porn games along with
| steam to the point I find both difficult to navigate even with
| nsfw filters turned on. Turning those filters off and it is
| pretty egregious the volume of it all let alone subject matter. I
| dont care about porn but the platforms have done a piss poor job
| for the majority of people who are not looking for porn games but
| find games like cyberpunk totally acceptable. How can i see
| cyberpunk but not hentai?
|
| This is happening because it was too easy for someone to pull up
| the home page on said platforms and point to several incest porn
| games. Using payment processors is not a solution i favor but
| people cannot find that experience acceptable.
|
| On a personal note, i dont want to live in a society that deems
| it acceptable to have a "no incest" filter for games. That is
| line for me and not for religion but because I find incest
| disgusting.
| SXX wrote:
| > How can i see cyberpunk but not hentai?
|
| There are filter by tags too. Works pretty well to filter out
| like all anime or hentai games.
| rustystump wrote:
| I like my game platforms how I like my streaming platforms.
| One for explicitly porn, and another for explicitly not porn.
| GoT on netflix while spicy is not porn. The issue is mixing
| porn with not porn. I shouldnt have to go click a bunch of
| special porn tags to not see that shit on the home page. I
| like anime games but cant seem to keep them without the
| hentai. Poor experience.
|
| The fact the default is porn games in your home page IS the
| issue. It gives all this ammunition for xyz group to do
| whatever.
|
| The politics of payment processors being the bad guys is
| nonsense. They have to bow down to too many governments to
| play ball so will always take the politically expedient
| option. Almost all bitcoin validators bowed down to us
| sanctions banning wallet addresses for example. That cat has
| been out of the bag for years.
| SXX wrote:
| Porn games are never ever visible by default on Steam. They
| were always opt-in.
|
| And no, Steam don't mess them up with Cyberpunk.
| thierrydamiba wrote:
| Few questions I think we need to address at some point.
|
| Why is there so much demand for these games?
|
| Why do we think government intervention is the solution in this
| domain but not others?
|
| Why is there so much demand for these games???
|
| To the point where the only way to stop people from playing
| them is making them illegal.
|
| Is anyone else worried about this??? I am!
| braebo wrote:
| The Trump admin wants to ban porn outright so this is just an
| appetizer.
| codedokode wrote:
| How do porn sites accept money then? Steam should just make a
| separate company for adult games and use the same payment methods
| as porn sites.
|
| Also this reminds me of Apple that for example demanded Telegram
| to block adult channels (including non-porn channels where
| authors blog about their sex life) from AppStore's Telegram
| version.
|
| Also if cryptocurrency were more popular and widespread, then
| banks would have less leverage to do this.
| amelius wrote:
| Don't we have something like net neutrality but for money
| transfers?
|
| And besides, why do payment processors even know/care what their
| customers use their money for as long as it's legal?
|
| If you want to ban porn, fine, but do it through the law, and
| don't let every company make their own laws. Especially if they
| are a quasi monopoly (have power).
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| The slippery slope is the one the payment processors have been
| sliding down for a while. Steam and itch dont want to pull these
| games. They dont have a choice.
| Jzush wrote:
| What I would like to know is why is it any business of VESA or
| any other payment processor, what I am buying with my own money.
| vESA has no business knowing what game I'm specifically buying.
| They just have to give money to Steam in my behalf and that's it.
| jackdawipper wrote:
| I see what you did there
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