631–640 of 953 posts
Don't we have something like net neutrality but for money transfers? And besides, why do payment processors even know/care what their customers use their money for as long as it's legal? If you want to ban porn, fine, but do it through the law, and don't let every company make their own laws. Especially if they are a quasi monopoly (have power).
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"Objectification" is just a clinical and negative way to describe normal male sexuality. ie, that physically beautiful women are sexually attractive.
In my book objectification means presenting women as walking sexual organs, bodies of flesh that one needs to conquer, nothing more. Many of pornographic content nowadays do this. Sexuality is not a problem, sexism is.
Also, I don't see how women in porn are any more objectified than men. In the porn that I've seen, men are 100% objectified and portrayed as only good for "one thing".
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.
I don't have strong feelings around wether steam or itch sell adult content, but its the fact that a duopoly and using their power to exert political influence.
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These conservative groups aren't pressuring Steam and Itch directly, they're targeting payment processors. I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa. (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete with Steam")
You don't need to compete with Steam or Itch for games that they can't sell, you're in your own market.
The problem with alternatives to things like OnlyFans is that the performers who work through OnlyFans want to go where people can find them. They can dumb down their acts - and have lots of paying traffic, or they can do what they would prefer - and have hardly any paying traffic. That's tough.
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You don't need to compete with Steam or Itch for games that they can't sell, you're in your own market.
And as soon as people find out you exist, they get the payment processors to shut you down too as part of their crusade. Now what? If you’re visible, you’re a target. If you’re not, you don’t matter.
Regulate Visa and MasterCard and the rest. As utility services, they should not have the ability to ban or deny service to any payment that is not clearly illegal. Or we should create a public alternative with private transactions.
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...ok? My comment didn't say anything about the distinction you're drawing here.
My point is that it's not just a framing, an excuse to push their likes and dislikes on everyone. If anything, it's actually the other way around. Their puritan views of what makes a healthy society is what informs their likes/dislikes. They are legitimately fighting for what they legitimately think will make a healthier society. If you assume otherwise, you will misjudge them.
You've indicated two things here which you assert are legitimate:
* Their fight for their goals
* The thinking underlying these goals
On the latter: Nobody except the people doing the thinking can (at least with current technology) truly know. And it may be entirely unimportant. My best guess is that u/fenomas has it about right; their aesthetic seems to have informed a manufactured narrative about societal impact. It may be that these people have personal unresolved sexual trauma which is activated by these subjects. Surely no matter their reasons, they deserve to be treated with compassion. But I don't think that u/fenomas is being illogical here, or failing to steelman their position; I think that it's perfectly reasonable to question someone's basis for advocacy of censorship.
However, on the former, I more strongly disagree with your use of the word "legitimately". Using the heavy hand of the state (including the unfortunate configuration in which payment processors need its anointment and good graces and are thus vulnerable to political pressure) to censor the internet - a resource characterized chiefly by its cross-cultural and cross-political availability and unity - is not a legitimate tactic. The internet does not seem to tolerate this variety of censorship; in every instance, the Streisand Effect, May 35, and similar phenomena have quickly and decisively punctured the erected walls.
Whether these people truly view these materials as likely to harm society or not, their legitimate avenue of change is through voluntarily persuasion, not censorship by way of force.
We shouldn't be privatising money.
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I don't want to sound patronizing, but how would you break the task of forming an activist group down into manageable chunks?
That's what I was essentially asking. I'd want to start with small actions that feel realistic. I know it's not gonna just pop up overnight, so more reason to break it down. If none of us know, then the next alternative is "can we point to any existing organizations to throw support at"? Or at the very least, an adjacent organization who can tell us steps to take?
The basic sequence is simple:
Set up a Discord. Market it to attract a handful of early adopters. Run a book club using Organizing for Social Change[1] or Beautiful Trouble[2]. Along the way, you build shared language and alignment. People start to get a feel for tactics: collective letter campaigns, pressure targeting, framing, etc.
By the time you wrap the first book, you’ll have a core group with a working vocabulary and some trust. You’ll know how to set up a continuous recruitment and onboarding loop. You’ll be ready for a second round of action. For example, something sharper, louder, more public-facing. From there, it's just iteration after iteration.
The most important seed is a vision holder, someone whose primary job is building solid relationships and gradually offloading the core functions: facilitation, comms, outreach, tech, and education. Don't worry. You don't need money and you don’t need credentials. You need consistency above all, social fluency, emotional and logistical endurance, and a bit of luck.
Trust me when I say it's not easy, but the overhead is basically zero. The only real cost is showing up (again and again and again).
1. https://www.amazon.com/Organizing-Social-Change-Bobo-Kendall...
2. https://orbooks.mybigcommerce.com/beautiful-trouble-paperbac...