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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

#721

Post by jMyles »

_1tem wrote: post #720

I don’t understand people who defend porn access. Porn is an addictive behavior with measurable effects on the brain similar to hard drugs. We regulate gambling, paid access to porn is worse. Furthermore it is fraught with misogyny and exploitation and objectification of women. Would you defend ISIS games on Steam promoting Taliban-style patriarchy? Porn is worse.

> Porn is an addictive behavior with measurable effects on the brain similar to hard drugs.

This comparison alone soundly defeats your argument. Prohibition of hard drugs has been a spectacular failure, directly resulting in increased rates of death, disease, and crime, and elevating drug cartels to enormous international influence.

The danger of porn as an addictive substance - which is very real as you point out - is a great argument against its prohibition.

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

#722

Post by martin-t »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #601
martin-t wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, personally, harmed by someone having an abortion? Are you, personally, harmed by someone watching porn? Maybe it makes society as a whole weaker compared to other societies but that doesn't mean your society actually loses anything. Countries have nuclear weapons and multi-national defense pacts now. Just because China has several times the population of the US and could win a conventional war, doesn't mean…

The dangerous thing is that there are some busybodies who will believe they are harmed by such things, and so you have to take the argument a step further and precisely define harm to confirm that they have no case. It would be easier if people had a common definition of "if it doesn't involve you then it's not your business". And the difficult thing about that is that externalities do exist for some things. Pollutio…

Both points are true. I chose these examples in response because they are relatively simple, clear cut examples of "not your business", yet people still try to dictate other people's lives around them.

These people are on one end of the authoritarian spectrum. The other are anarchists, usually ancaps in places I frequent, and they are just as wrong because they are ignoring how people in the real world will actually behave. Negative externalities are precisely the thing that they ignore, minimize, or try to redirect your attention by linking you to a 2 hour video which is supposed to address it but doesn't.

Well, at least they do generally get out of other people's lives though. But it's a system which doesn't work and when it fails, leads to the rise of authoritarians. I wish people were able to understand that policy is a multi-dimensional spectrum and extremes on any one axis are unlikely to lead to stability.

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

#723

Post by jajko »

netule wrote: post #552
paulddraper wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart does sell them. Next to pharmacy.

And that’s a good thing. There are too many stories of unsafe insertion of household objects ending up in the ER.

Lol I don't think that the reason for that is lack of vibrators in nearest walmart

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

#724

Post by jajko »

Loughla wrote: post #488
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…

Grocery stores absolutely sell sex toys now. Wal-Mart carries them as well. I'm no prude, but it's really weird to me.

Seems like you are a bit of prude :) No shame there, you are fully entitled to your opinion in democracy

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

#725

Post by Telemakhos »

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…

> It's kinda the job of the government to decide such things;

In some countries, maybe. In the US, there were concerted attempts (like the First Amendment to the Constitution) to prevent that from being the government's job, because of the fear that government would use that job to suppress dissent and coerce opinions.

If payment processors are picking up that job, and doing so in a coordinated manner that doesn't allow porn companies to simply say "use these payment rails to do business with us, not those ones," it is not unreasonable to suspect that they are doing so not for their own business interests but as a proxy for powers that the government is denied. Someone should be taking a long look at whether the US-based payment processors are becoming a tool of censorship and, if so, how that censorship is being coordinated. It's not like Visa and Mastercard come up with these things independently and on a whim.

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

#726

Post by martin-t »

Saline9515 wrote: post #536
martin-t wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, personally, harmed by someone having an abortion? Are you, personally, harmed by someone watching porn? Maybe it makes society as a whole weaker compared to other societies but that doesn't mean your society actually loses anything. Countries have nuclear weapons and multi-national defense pacts now. Just because China has several times the population of the US and could win a conventional war, doesn't mean…

The issues you are talking about are not "society-wide" issues requiring compliance of others. A better example would be to consider that pre-op transgender people, namely MtF, can share the same spaces that were reserved to biological women. For instance in sport. If I'm a woman and now I have to compete with a biological man in MMA because society chose that it's the new normal, yes, I'm going to suffer from it. If…

I agree with the trans example because 1) it's a great example of one individual being allowed to do something that directly harms another individual; 2) it's fairly easy to prove that someone who grew up with male bone and muscle structure does not suddenly get the female structure because of a reassignment surgery or hormones. I am all for letting people do what they want with their bodies but their freedom stops at interacting with other people's bodies.

I cannot agree with the toddlers example: 1) it's possible it does some damage but as I said, to even consider it, we need proof; 2) even if they are bad at life, it doesn't automatically harm another individual - don't hire incompetents and they won't harm your business. They might harm society in general but society does not IMO have any right to force people to optimize for society's goals. The balance might change if this was true and happened on such a scale that society measurably declined but then I am still of the opinion that we should have mechanisms how a group of people should be able to get together separate themselves from others. We have no right to force the Amish to start using modern tech, even if a few more able bodies would probably be beneficial on some scale. Similarly, if the majority feed TikTok to their toddlers and a minority does not, they should be able and allowed to form their own society with its own rules, as long as everyone participates willingly.

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

#727

Post by Carlseymanh »

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…

I really hope you don't like alcohol or any kind of spice because historically those are coming next

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

#728

Post by simoncion »

npteljes wrote: post #679
linuxhansl wrote: post #672

Why do you people always presume they know what is best for other people? Don't like porn? Cool, don't buy it or avert your eyes! As if this would stop anybody from getting access to pornographic content.

Some people actually care for the whole, or for the wholesomeness of a specific subset. This includes (on the face) most people who participate in public life. Which is a lot of people! >Don't like porn? Cool, don't buy it or avert your eyes! Why do you then tell others how to live their lives? Is really leaving everyone to their own devices the good idea? >As if this would stop anybody from getting access to pornogr…

I'm not a downvoter, but I have a few minutes to kill, so sure, I'll bite.

> Why do you then tell others how to live their lives?

In all reasonably-free societies, the default stance is "Mind your damn business, and everyone else will mind theirs.". Deviations from that default veer into "telling other people how to live their lives" territory. Sometimes it's right and proper to actively interfere in the lives of others. It is occasionally even extremely important to do this. But -the majority of the time- the folks doing this are nothing more than busybodies sticking their noses in other people's business.

You might think that US-based businesses should not be permitted to accept payments tendered by the two major credit and debit card processors for the sale of more-extreme pornographic content. I think it's none of those processors' business what legal goods consenting adults purchase using their systems.

Given Visa and MasterCard's enormous size, I think it's absolutely essential that they not be permitted to refuse any legal purchase for any reason other than credible suspicion of fraud. You may feel differently. You're totally entitled to that opinion.

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

#730

Post by akoboldfrying »

Saline9515 wrote: post #685
johnnyanmac wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how. We have entire sections of our brain dedicated to aggression and adrenaline management. Knowing how to recognize a threat, fight, and flight is every bit as base as knowing how to breed.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11757-020-00607-y End of page 3, the author does a litterature review and finds that current studies show that exposure to CSAM increases probability of offending for those with predispositions.

Haven't read this yet, but I'm going to take a wild stab and guess that none of those "current studies" mentioned in the literature review were RCTs, because an RCT would entail deliberately exposing people with a predisposition towards paedophilia to CSAM, and that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would ever be allowed by an ethics board.

If that's the case, then all these studies were observational studies, which lack the ability to infer causality. They can at best hint at directions to pursue for studies that can infer causality.

As a concrete example of the way that observational studies can go wrong despite good intentions: It was believed for a long time that paedophiles have lower average IQs than the general population. This was based on the observation that a larger fraction than would be expected of those caught and sentenced for sexual crimes involving children were of low IQ. Of course, a better explanation of this observation is that paedophiles with higher IQs are better at covering their tracks and evading suspicion.

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