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

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

#71

Post by kelseyfrog »

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.

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

#72

Post by TulliusCicero »

madaxe_again wrote: post #67
mwill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")

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.

> 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.

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

#73

Post by _trampeltier »

misterbishop wrote: post #7

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...

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...

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

BoxFour wrote: post #24
magicmicah85 wrote: post #3

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.

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 bu…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by vegadw »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #60

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?

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.

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

#76

Post by AtheistOfFail »

libraryatnight wrote: post #59
gs17 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This amuses me, as my wife deals with trauma from childhood abuse, and she absolutely loved that game.

It was such a masterpiece right up there with The Last Of Us.

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

#77

Post by righthand »

fooqux wrote: post #34
righthand wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

Isn’t regulation even less likely though than a split? You yourself acknowledge the times and the current admin is heavy anti-regulation.

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

#78

Post by uncircle »

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.

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

#79

Post by TulliusCicero »

misterbishop wrote: post #7

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...

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.

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

#80

Post by crooked-v »

delecti wrote: post #52
crooked-v wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The text is on there and is very straightforward. As far as I can tell it's a basically good bill.
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