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

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221–230 of 953 posts

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

#221
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.

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

#222
post #101

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.

This has mostly been solved. Bitcoin's lightning network, ethereum layer 2 networks, etc all have sub-cent fees.

Not sure about Ethereum's equivalent, but 'Lightning' just reintroduces the problem of having one person act like a payment processor.

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

#223
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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".

Yeah it's easy to see that Heritage would just ban Celeste, or any allegory about LGBT existence.

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

#224

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.

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 g…

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.

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

#225
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has mostly been solved. Bitcoin's lightning network, ethereum layer 2 networks, etc all have sub-cent fees.

Not sure about Ethereum's equivalent, but 'Lightning' just reintroduces the problem of having one person act like a payment processor.

Not sure I follow.

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

#226

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.

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"

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

#227

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.

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??

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

#228

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.

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 g…

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.

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

#230

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.

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 g…

It all depends on how much power a company has, and so how easy it is to find alternatives.
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