Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

> 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.

  > it's important to note the difference or you will always be arguing against something other than their claim.

  The difference between you and me is smaller than the difference between us and our respective leaders.

  > Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea

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.

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?

Would this really help though.

Let's assume there is a payment processor where anything goes, the company utilizing it would still be punished by the other payment processors.

I don't think Visa/Mastercard would care that you only sell the things they don't want through other payment processors, they still would threaten to cut you off entirely for having the content they don't like

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

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."

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

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.

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?

What if said game is a realistic CP simulation?

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

That is what happens, if we give public functions to private companies. Noboy say you have to use Mastercard.

> What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content?

Porn is just the thin end of the wedge (as was "violence in video games" a generation ago) - porn is something society considers as distasteful, so politicians are less likely to go on record as supporting porn. Once the porn bans go into effect, they'll move onto the next target in the conservative playbook: gay marriage, birth control/abortion access, etc.

> ”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?

Similarly, if you don't like something, you shouldn't have to sell it. Or host it. Or process payments for it.

In the game of politics we split one group away from another and get them to fight. This achieves several effects.

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??

>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.

I wish we didn't have payment processors. But if wishes were fishes there would be no room for water.

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.

Next is a Superman videogame being blocked because it goes against the 'policies/interests' of a country that manages to lobby a lot here.

Don't like porn? Don't sell it in your store, simple as that.

> Don’t like porn? Don’t buy it.

Ok.

Don’t like porn? Don’t sell it.

“CENSORSHIP! PURITAN NAZIS!”

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.

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]

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.

It's not just porn, it's depictions of rape, from what I’ve read. So I don’t know if it’s really good for people to consume that kind of content. Real-life safe sex involves consent, which is obviously not the objective of this game. I believe this type of material can be genuinely harmful to our brains.

Even though I’m against using payment processing restrictions, I do believe we need laws to prohibit this kind of content. There’s data suggesting that it impacts real people's behavior during sex and shapes harmful social expectations.

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.)

I suspect that a lot of people who object to this censorship, would be perfectly fine with a game being pulled because say it glorified owning slaves, or if gameplay was explicitly anti-homosexual. Then they would see the harms, employ their empathy, and support the censorship. Not everyone, of course, but a lot of the people who are outraged about this article.

Seems like everyone is pro-censorship, when they disagree with those being targeted. Most people supported censorship for anti-vaxers during Covid for instance. So in most cases it really just comes down to how many people are anti-porn, rather than any stance on censorship in general.

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"

It's art. Not porn!

It feels they should be a neutral payment system. They're implementing global policy otherwise due the monopoly they have, that's something that should handled at government/state level.

There is no "the rest". All the payment processors or aggregators ultimately talk to Visa or MasterCard. Even if there are alternative payment methods that include direct transfer etc. they still might get kicked off if they don't follow their rules.

Bookstores sell kids books and adult material just fine. The adult stuff might be behind the counter or in a certain area, same as stores like Steam where you have to actively seek it out.

> You don’t get adult toys in your local grocery store

In the US at least the classier vibrators have been starting to be sold first at shops like Sharper Image, and now, indeed, grocery stores. The packaging of course would not raise any questions from kids, and they are sold in the same aisles as condoms and lubricant. "Sexual health" is the umbrella term which feels like it is in play.

I've been using Steam as an adult for the last two decades. I have hundreds of games in my library. I've never seen one porn title recommended to me or while browsing the site.

Steam also has extensive parental controls: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49...

> You don’t get porn movies on Netflix or Disney stream. You don’t get adult toys in your local grocery store.

I'd be more interested in questioning these than why porn is available on Steam. I mean, Disney is essentially an anti-porn product, so I get that, but Netflix is a perfectly reasonable platform for porn. I don't see any reason adult toys can't be sold in Walmart or whatever.

> Backlash is inevitable.

I don't know. This doesn't seem like a grassroots movement.

Grocery stores absolutely sell sex toys now. Wal-Mart carries them as well.

I'm no prude, but it's really weird to me.

I'm not sure is "very visible", there is some streisand-effect going on with this issue. I've been a subscriber to steam since...the beginning. Signed up for Steam to play half life 2 at its launch. And I didn't know there were porn games on steam until this issue with mastercard/visa came up in the last week.

Back in my day, we went to the blockbuster, and you had to muster up the courage to walk back into the adults only section!

Your own examples show the slippery slope this is. Walmart, Netflix, and Disney all DO carry content that some people want banned†. No matter what you're talking about, someone is going to take offense and want the content removed entirely.

Collective Shout, the group behind this latest censorship push, also wanted Detroit Become Human to be banned because the story depicted someone abusing a child. If we're banning that, why not ban memoirs of child abuse survivors or "James and the Giant Peach"?

You suggest it would be easy for Steam and Itch to run alternative storefronts. Given that they removed content that was offensive to their payment processors, they'd need to engage with high-risk payment processors to power these new store fronts. To say nothing of the technical work involved, those high-risk payment processors certainly charge more for their services. That'd raise the already high 30% that Valve takes on most transaction.

Additionally, if a games journalism website also has relationships with payment processors, are they allowed to review adult games even if those reviews don't include pictures? Or are they going to be equally punished for giving adult content a positive rating?

This all limits the options available of responsible adult consumers and costs creators of LEGAL content revenue.

===

†Here's a longer look at your examples:

Define adult toys. I assume you mean dildos. Walmart doesn't sell those in physical stores, but they do sell them online. Additionally they, like most other stores, do sell lube, condoms, and vibrating rings in their brick and mortar store. Every clothing store that sells underwear sells something many would describe as lingerie. Target has an entire lineup of "after dark" board games stocked right next to Candyland.

"After Netflix published a marketing poster showing the [11 year old girls] twerking in revealing cheerleading outfits without any context, an online petition calling for the cancellation of the US release received more than 140 thousand signatures."

'According to a source close to the production, Pixar’s next feature film, “Lightyear” does feature a significant female character, Hawthorne, who is in a meaningful relationship with another woman. While the fact of that relationship was never in question at the studio, a kiss between the characters had been cut from the film. Following the uproar surrounding the Pixar employees’ statement and Disney CEO Bob Chapek‘s handling of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, however, the kiss was reinstated into the movie last week.'

>You don’t get porn movies on Netflix or Disney stream. You don’t get adult toys in your local grocery store. Why do we sell porn on Steam?

Why not? One shouldn't confuse games with real life.

>Why haven’t game stores just spin off separate store front for porn content? It is basically free, since they already have the infrasructure.

Because the payment processing is unreliable and prohibitively expensive. For all the whining about "moral pearl clutching", the reality is that adult oriented businesses deal with massively higher rates of fraud and charge-backs. Visa and Mastercard couldn't care less about the ethical issues, it's simply a risk calculation for their business.

Don Don Donki in Asia sell sex toys, the section is just behind a curtain.

Yes, I think this is 100% the take we should come away with.

I don't have strong feelings around wether steam or itch sell adult content, but its the fact that a duopoly and using their power to exert political influence.

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.

Yeah there are definitely upsides to this.

Does LGBTQ+ content include incest porn? I dont think it does but that is being bundle in right now which makes it hard for me to stand with you.

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.

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.

That doesn't explain why Visa/Mastercard have gone after written erotica (gumroad, patreon, etc), Japanese manga/doujinshi distributors (DLsite), and video games.

>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.

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")

    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.

    eliminate central promotion of abortion; comprehensive
    sexuality education; and the new woke gender ideology

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.

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.

    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

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.

create a good censorship resistant payment network (stripe replacement) and these platforms would probably just be your customers?

I think that the decentralized mechanisms used for censorship resistance would also make it difficult to monetize

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!

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.

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.

You just described the problem. You want men to be pacified through their screen rather than engaging with real women.

You aren't the only one who seems to think this way though, we have more things than ever to pacify men and even increase estrogen and decrease testosterone probably because some believe that men are inherently dangerous.

In Russia many of those games would be illegal: LGBT is illegal, propaganda against having children is illegal, etc.

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.

Weaponized complaints to legal departments asking to enforce existing Terms & Conditions of Visa and Mastercard. It's a "squeaky wheel" problem.

Ideological alignment with the party in control of the US executive, legislative, and judicial branches gives groups like these quite a bit of leverage.

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.

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...

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...

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.

OnlyFans did manage to figure it out though. Maybe this is an opportunity for them to start a gaming division.

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.

From the subhed: "Even games that have nothing to do with sex or abuse have been caught in the dragnet."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The fact that the majority of validators caved to sanctions from us means bitcoin is not gonna cut it esp if uncle sam gets involved. Pro crypto folks want to stay on the up and up due to trying to change the negative view of it.

I personally worked in the crypto payment processing space and we had to say no to many very well known porn companies for this reason.

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?

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

...sweet summer child visa is hitting DLSite hard https://cs.dlsite.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500002888202-What-p... actually it seems all the major western credit card players have already blocked them. i remember seeing pay with crypto so i guess thats what you need to use in the west

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.

>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".

>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.

> 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.

Protesting only works when the media is on your side. I doubt the media would take your side on this one.

>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.

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.

Yes, but it's not the platform really making the decision in this case. It's their payment processor

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.

> 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.

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!

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.

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.

This is being pushed by an Australian Feminist organization, not the American Religious Right.

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.

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.

Everyone is free to build their own website to market and distribute their games.

It's not the store, it's the cc companies.

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.

> 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?

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.

The anti-capitalist left is disorganized and under-funded a priori.

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.

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.

It isnt sex and nudity in games but the other “content” people gloss over that is bundle in.

The other context is that global companies must cater to multiple countries cultures which conflict so they take the path of least resistance.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Since when has protected speech required being valuable? And who made you the pronouncer of said value?

> 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.

In what world is artistic expression not free speech? Just because you don't like it doesn't mean its not protected.

>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.

>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_case?case=106399862265120...)

-- https://reason.com/2019/10/04/pornography-is-protected-by-th...

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.

how do all these other adult sites get away with charging premium subscriptions?

> _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...

Collective Shout also actively targets games like Detroit: Become Human that are hardly 'incest/rape games'.

I think I missed the part where Valve or these games were in violation of any laws.

The problem is that they are opting to ban all games labeled “NSFW”, not just rape/incest games.

They should consider banning sale of the Bible and Game of Thrones from Amazon as well

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.