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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

#461

Post by patmcc »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #447
ben_w wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 paym…

It's pretty wild that people think that porn is more damaging to society than censorship.

They may both be damaging, but currently we have a lot more porn than censorship, so it looks like it's causing more damage. If we flip to having a lot more censorship we'll feel that damage more clearly. Or we won't, depending how successful the censorship is.

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

#462

Post by mystraline »

Lerc wrote: post #450
pstuart wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You then have to ask, "In what way is it damaging?" Some porn is exploitative, but also so are other things. Why is the attack being made upon porn and not exploitation? If the things being criticised appear in many areas, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that they chose their target because it involves sex, and that is what they have a problem with.

> Some porn is exploitative, but also so are other things. Why is the attack being made upon porn and not exploitation?

If we are to talk about exploitation, then capitalism itself is subject to be attacked and prohibited.

If we work for a living, we sell our bodies to someone else for a time (40h a week or more). Does it really matter if we work on a factory floor doing parts, sitting and coding at a desk, or having sex in front of a camera? Labor is labor.

Sure its the christian 'sex is bad' in various stripes (puritanical to catholic to baptist etc). But in reality, its just different labor.

Now, capitalism in exploitive in that you generate X value, and you get a small percentage of your labor's output. Some owner is who collects the surplus.

So if exploitation is the problem, then its time to start looking at worker cooperatives, unions, banning shows like Shark Tank, and all the capitalist propaganda.

But no, its just 'sex icky'. We won't actually look at the root of exploitation.

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

#463

Post by hyghjiyhu »

topato wrote: post #90
hyghjiyhu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After the third sentence, I was like, what's wrong with this guy? After the fourth, I was like, Oh. Lol.

I guess from the down votes I'm getting that people don't have the full context here and won't seek it out on their own - something I should have foreseen.

I'm speaking of Hikaru Nakamura, who is one of the best chess players in the world. He is also a streamer on kick, and actually talks in the way I demonstrated. It's not an exaggeration, he actually repeats the same thought ~5 times in the regular.

He is the only kick streamer I know, so that's what I think of when I hear kick.

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

#464

Post by rustystump »

uncircle wrote: post #78

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 va…

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.

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

#465

Post by williamscales »

Beijinger wrote: post #226
nosignono wrote: post #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.

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"

A lot of the moralizing pressure groups are also against sexual content on TV (at least historically they have been).

One of the slippery slopes here would be that initially they go after smaller players and then work their way up. Would they ultimately go after Amazon or Warner Bros? It’s not totally clear to me that they wouldn’t.

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

#466

Post by deathanatos »

bko wrote: post #389
knappe wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> I'm not saying we should ban anything.

That's the context of this entire discussion though, that these things are being banned…

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

#467

Post by mixologist »

This actually took longer than I thought. It is really weird that for all my adult content I have to go to a dedicated adult store, yet for games I can find them on Steam and gog where kids shop for games.

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

While being removed from general stores, porn has become very visible on big gaming platforms which majority of customers don’t associate with porn. Backlash is inevitable.

I think we can expect a bigger push against porn in general as pendulum swings back on the other side.

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

#468

Post by cookie_monsta »

bko wrote: post #386
Mawr wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Not defending the ratings system here, but there is a big gap between M and R/X or whatever your country uses.

A better question would be if you would be more comfortable with your child being shown porn or snuff movies. For me the answer would be neither, in about an equal measure

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

#469

Post by rustystump »

nosignono wrote: post #205

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.

[flagged]

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

#470

Post by kelseyfrog »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #343
kelseyfrog wrote: post #71

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. Ther…

>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 act…

I don't want to sound patronizing, but how would you break the task of forming an activist group down into manageable chunks?
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