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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

#581

Post by anonym29 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #578
anonym29 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gives you the impression that I might be offering my critiques lightly or arrogantly, as opposed to only after arriving at them through extensive, careful, and deliberate thought? Humans engaged in tribalistic groupthink committing moral atrocities is a tale as old as time. It is never wise to accept a majority or status quo position reflexively without thoroughly interrogating the ideas held within. A great dea…

> What gives you the impression that I might be offering my critiques lightly or arrogantly, as opposed to only after arriving at them through extensive, careful, and deliberate thought? Perhaps the fact that you made a claim without bothering to explain this supposed "extensive, careful, and deliberate thought" of yours? Also the fact that your tone generally comes across as ideologically charged; in my experience z…

>Is it really your intent to imply that I have called for such? That is quite the wild leap. I feel compelled to object that the turn this exchange has taken does not come across as being one of good faith.

No, that was not my intention. You are right to object here. I allowed myself to get worked up by inadvertently framing your more methodological perspective as a moral perspective, and your perception that I came on too aggressively in response to that is correct. I'm sincerely sorry. This wasn't an attempt to attack you or your character, but it did come out looking like that, and that was my fault. My bad on this one.

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

#582

Post by drdeca »

supplied_demand wrote: post #570
drdeca wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say that I think my past use of pornography has harmed me. I haven’t used it in over 2 years, but I still on a daily basis observe the effects it had on me. Others might argue that it is only because of my views that the effects are “harmful”, but I think they are wrong.

Can you clarify how it “harmed” you? You didn’t quite answer that question.

https://xkcd.com/598/

(Except, remove the last panel)

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

#583

Post by Rapzid »

ben_w wrote: post #241
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.

> 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…

> and I think they should be banned from doing so

In general though outside protected classes business can, and should IMHO, have a lot of discretion over who they choose to do business with and how they do business.

Unless we want a carve out for payment processors. Treat them as a utility of sorts? Sounds like an interesting idea TBH.

To me it's critical though that society has room to moderate itself where the government can not and should not. Something we've lost with social media is the ability to collectively ignore the guy at the bar nobody likes talking to. All the guys from all the bars are on the internet now being very loud.

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

#584

Post by wredcoll »

some_random wrote: post #308
wredcoll wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. Frequently the "consequences" of speech is other speech. Are you going to try to argue that the original speech should be privileged over the response?

I do not give a shit about people responding to speech with speech. I am arguing that responding to speech by using your authority over the speaker to hurt them, or by lobbying an authority to do so is something different than speech. Did you see the context for this thread? This is the rhetorical question I responded to: "Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes violence against us?". I ho…

> lobbying an authority to do so is something different than speech

Really? How is it different, specifically?

If you're a guest in my house and you say something racist and I ask you to leave...

Or you're a customer in my restaurant...

Or you work for the company I'm a ceo of...

Which one of those freedoms should I be disallowed from using?

(The actual issue here is that mastercard/visa are effectively a duopoly with no competition. The only reasonable way to have a monopoly provider of a vital service is to make it part of a democratic government)

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

#586

Post by ants_everywhere »

ivape wrote: post #456
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One can make a very strong argument that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn. You only need to type any random sexual thing and find any explicit subreddit you want, that’s how pervasive the porn is on even an allegedly non-porn platform. Every other game has basically stripper-level female characters now days. We’ve literally gone crazy. Holistically,…

> that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn.... The Christian right is wrong about so much, but the progression of our society has finally made them mostly correct on this issue.

I have news for you my friend, the Christian right is fucking people up way more than porn.

So is the NoFap/incel movement.

There are some pretty fucked up people who see women as breeding machines. This is tied pretty closely to the great replacement conspiracy theory and similar white nationalist conspiracy theories.

People who believe this junk promote the idea that porn is bad because they want young men desperately horny so they breed with women either with or without their consent. This is the same reason it was a major priority for them to deny women's rights to their own bodies.

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

#587

Post by sitharus »

Rapzid wrote: post #583
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…

> and I think they should be banned from doing so In general though outside protected classes business can, and should IMHO, have a lot of discretion over who they choose to do business with and how they do business. Unless we want a carve out for payment processors. Treat them as a utility of sorts? Sounds like an interesting idea TBH. To me it's critical though that society has room to moderate itself where the gov…

> Unless we want a carve out for payment processors. Treat them as a utility of sorts?

Given that there are two payment processors that have about 90% global market share (excluding China) and your bank chooses the payment processor for the most part, yes we should regulate them and force them to process payment for any legal business.

They have the ability to effectively determine what we can spend our money on when we can’t get cash to the vendor in person, and almost every alternative processor has to deal with them and is also subject to their rules.

The only way around this is via informal networks. Cryptocurrency isn’t an option for many as it’s very hard to obtain, due to the duopoly coercing banks and governments to keep people on their systems.

I don’t live in the US, and where I live has a local electronic non-credit card payment system which has been around since the 80s. It’s less popular now because only the card networks support contactless payments instead of swipe/chip and pin. All the systems support contactless use, but banks won’t enable it because it has no interchange fees.

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

#588

Post by MangoToupe »

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.

I wish we didn't have payment processors. But if wishes were fishes there would be no room for water.

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

#589

Post by rishav_sharan »

bko wrote: post #233
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 don't think you have to be Puritanical or particularly religious to realize that some content is generally not good for people. I've seen this destroy lives, drive addiction and lead to other forms of destructive behavior. Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing. You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can at least concede it's n…

Not sure if you are talking about religion or porn games..

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

#590

Post by MangoToupe »

__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.

Tbh I lost track of what people thought "censorship" is, especially as a pejorative, many years ago. Not only is censorship good, but information is more free than it has been at any point in history. Just pirate the games ffs.
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