Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 953 posts

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

#521

Post by gitt67887yt7bg »

patmcc wrote: post #461
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would say we are already pretty severely censored. We no longer have social tools to vet misinformation. We can't publicly insult dumb people and their wrong ideas to their faces. There are people -professional trolls- who, while they should not be deplatformed, should have their ideas publicly scrutinized and yes, humiliated. But we can't do that, because it's cyber bullying, or whatever.

Irl, if a crazy person gets on a soapbox and starts shouting at everybody, then people can shout back. Online, anybody who flamebaits is protected by the platforms and can censor the responses. They delete opposing comments, shadowban users, harsh language usually gets automatically deleted by the platform - and all that shouting-down is actually just counted as "engagement" which algorithmically boosts and spreads the bad idea further. The argument just directly profits the person with the bad idea, and incentivizes them to come up with even worse ideas to make everybody even madder.

This kind of censorship is causing a whole lot of problems right now.

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

#522

Post by Dweller1622 »

nosignono wrote: post #457
Dweller1622 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely seen people say it's about agency, though exactly what they mean by that and why they think that matters tends to vary. That said, I suspect your response is in line with the person I was originally responding to. In a different context I might be more sympathetic to this specific formulation of the concept since it's not always clear how much agency the background dancers in a music video or advert h…

In a videogame, I can think of some examples. In Kotor 2, there's a character called "The Handmaiden", who will join your party if the player character is a male. She talks at great length about her situation and the decisions the player should make. She's depicted as a chaste, virginal religious character. But one of the very first things you can do with her when she joins your party is spar with her. And she strips…

No, that's fine, since I think it's not only the case that these are sufficient, but that I simply wasn't explicit enough in my rejection.

What I'm disputing is any application of objectification theory to media analysis wherein there are no actual agents involved. Neither The Handmaiden nor Night Sister Mirrin ever possessed any agency, nor were they deprived of it. There is simply no moral valence in how one treats or regards them.

The demand here is that they be treated as if they possessed agency. I see no reason or obligation to do so.

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

#523

Post by [deleted] »

gspencley wrote: post #207
RankingMember wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm not so sure you can point the finger at the USA for this. I ran an online porn website for almost 20 years. For 15 years it was my primary source of income. I'm in Canada which, compared to the USA is extremely progressive. In 2022, after a decade of doing business with a certain bank as this business, never having hidden anything about what we did, my wife and I received an urgent, signature required, overnighte…

[deleted]

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

#524

Post by IcyWindows »

ramesh31 wrote: post #520
mixologist wrote: post #467

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…

>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 t…

That's the clause in the agreement they use to justify the increase in rates, but it's unclear it's actually "risky" when it's a large company like Valve.

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

#525

Post by gitt67887yt7bg »

bobthepanda wrote: post #437
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.

The real debate is which is worse to society, its existence or attempting to ban it. Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea and if anything they have some of the worst gender toxicity.

The real debate has nothing to do with porn. The only reason this started with porn, is because they knew they would get away with taking over the world while everybody is distracted by an unrelated debate.

The debate is weather or not credit card providers should ever be able to blackmail independent companies, for any reason they feel like.

I say no.

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

#526

Post by vitaflo »

__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.

You can’t have a free market without censorship. It’s one or the other.

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

#527

Post by BobaFloutist »

garciansmith wrote: post #483
mixologist wrote: post #467

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…

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.

Also grocery stores sell alcohol, and I'm personally more fine with children getting access to porn than to liquor.

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

#528

Post by ramesh31 »

IcyWindows wrote: post #524
ramesh31 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

That's the clause in the agreement they use to justify the increase in rates, but it's unclear it's actually "risky" when it's a large company like Valve.

>That's the clause in the agreement they use to justify the increase in rates, but it's unclear it's actually "risky" when it's a large company like Valve.

The risk is not from Valve; disputes pass through to the processor. This is the same problem dating sites, gambling, etc. all deal with. Any sufficiently large adult oriented business becomes a de-facto payment processor, where their entire core business function is in managing this risk, not whatever they actually do for the end user. It's either that, or charge the exorbitant fees that come with using a niche provider who takes on that risk.

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

#529

Post by mystraline »

simplify wrote: post #507
mystraline wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You're framing of "sex icky" is a common reductionist approach to remove all humanity from the topic and try and make it purely logical. But that's always been a ridiculous way to argue. The human experience has never been pure reason. A picture of a naked person will have wildly different effects than a picture of a dog, even though you could technically say they're both "just pixels on a screen". Reductionism doesn…

Remember, that the SCOTUS judgement of what obscenity is defined as, is "I'll know it when I see it".

I prefer reductionist rather than the current standard of 'whatever 9 fucks think of it'.

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

#530

Post by esseph »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #511
garciansmith wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not the same as an online store. There is a way for people to know kids are in a place they shouldn't be or to deny them access to adult content in real life. In Steam, there isn't

Adult content on steam is marked as such very clearly.

Under Community Content Preferences, you'll see an option for Mature Content and Adult-Only Sexual Content.

You'll also be preventing from accessing mature content depending on the filters in your account settings, and in the Family Management section of steam, for Family Shared Libraries.

Post reply on HN