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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

#151

Post by morkalork »

nitwit005 wrote: post #134
renewiltord wrote: post #26

> 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…

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.

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.

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

#152

Post by beeflet »

nonameiguess wrote: post #93
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…

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.

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.

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

#153

Post by _trampeltier »

can16358p wrote: post #105

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.

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

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

#154

Post by dzonga »

RankingMember wrote: post #115
can16358p wrote: post #105

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.

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.

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.

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

#155

Post by beeflet »

egypturnash wrote: post #97
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…

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

>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

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

#156

Post by morkalork »

the_af wrote: post #122
some_random wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the specific organization we're discussing is not feminist, they only disguise themselves as such.

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.

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by LtWorf »

numpad0 wrote: post #68
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 religiou…

> 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?

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

#159

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

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.

> 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

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

#160

Post by beeflet »

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…

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.
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