Earlier quoted context omitted.
I definitely agree on the payment processor situation. In my opinion, businesses should also be free to refuse business for whatever reason, but, with the very important caveat that when they so large that to be considered a utility, they can't refuse legal business, like in this case Mastercard and Visa. There is not exactly an alternative to them. The point I'm more interested in here is the "Why do you people alwa…
> "Why do you people always presume they know what is best for other people?" Well. Let's examine the context of the conversation. You replied to the statement "Don't like porn? Cool, don't buy it or avert your eyes!" with "Why do you then tell others how to live their lives? Is really leaving everyone to their own devices the good idea?" Most folks have a healthy relationship with porn, and a reasonably-healthy rela…
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
#832Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME it doesn't help to villainize the other side, it only escalates things. You're right that there are bad actors, but I don't think this is accurate for the majority of people. You need to differentiate the people leading a group from the people within a group. Leaders may be highly manipulative bad actors, but that doesn't mean that the people that they duped are. It may not be good logic, or even self-consistent,…
I agree with most of what you said, and it was well said. However, I disagree in two ways. Firstly, while villainizing them is unhelpful convincing them is utterly impossible when religion is involved. It doesn't matter if we learn to understand their perspective, especially as logic/reason often doesn't apply and they aren't being honest about their goals and motivations. I think the best anyone can hope for in such…
> utterly impossible when religion is involved
If that were true, I wouldn't be where I am and we'd be having a very different conversation. I can tell you it wasn't impossible for meRe: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#833I read from a fairly reputable source that money laundering is a huge problem in online sex industry. Which makes sense - you have buyers and sellers who insist on anonymity, services that leave no trace once rendered, buyers and sellers lying to family and friends about what they're doing, etc. There's often no "normal" amount of consumption, for example, some sellers receive million dollar tips. Money laundering is…
>One of the reasons OF is doing well is because they insist on following know your customer laws You’d think so, but nope. Using a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I ended up subscribing to someone who’s catfishing. All their pics on OnlyFans and other socials were just stolen from random Instagram models. I reported it to OF, but got no response. Whatever verification system OF has, it’s bypassable. It doesn’t…
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#834Weirdly, Amazon sells TONS of porn and NSFW content, and yet doesn't lose their Visa/Mastercard processing. Game of Thrones, both the books and the show, contain content much, much more explicit than many of these games. Yet Itch and Steam have to pull stuff or their very existence is threatened.
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#835Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? Payment processors have done it to guns just as much as they've done it to porn, both under the Obama administration.
Because one of the goals of project 2025 is to make porn illegal. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predat…
Does that term still have any meaning?
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#836Earlier quoted context omitted.
The suggestion is new start businesses that do not need credit card processors.
We’re back to chicken and egg. If it’s not a credit card, it’s what debit? Different countries do it differently, so that’s a big hassle for the storefront. Sure you can use a payment processor, but look it’s someone to pressure to prevent you from taking money again. Maybe Crypto? How do people buy that crypto? Probably want to use credit cards. Oops. Or debit. See above. How do you turn your crypto into currency to…
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#837Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa. They could not allow those games to be sold through those particular payment processors and require wire transfers instead. More cumbersome payment method, but better than outright banning them. If the payment processors try to dictate what content these sites may host even when it involves competing proce…
The impression I get is allowing them to be purchased at all is grounds for the payment processor to suspend their account. So this solution is a no-go. Probably the only way around it is to spin up a completely different corporate entity which only allows for payments via wire transfer, ACH, or perhaps some of the various payment apps available.
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#838Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Debanking is a form of social deplatforming that (for now) mostly targets right-wing causes. That's not at all to assert that the bill is wrong or that censorship is right —I'm just clarifying why it's Republicans on the side against censorship, in this context, when in other contexts the roles are flipped. You can read the bill's author (Kevin Cramer) discussing that bill and his motives for writing it: https://web.…
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#839What 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.
You know. I used to be all about what you're going for. But I realized that porn to a certain extent is like cocaine. It's possibly one of the drivers for world wide declining population. Tons of dudes satisfying themselves without the urge to go out and do the real thing. There's growing science about this too. I don't like the conservative angle which is to be "proper" or it's against god, but from the scientific s…
As one of the “dudes satisfying themselves”, I’d happily “do the real thing” if that was an option. This is like complaining that people play spaceship simulator games instead of going out to drive an actual spaceship.
Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
#840What 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.
Well maybe they are bothered by its sexist content. People all are about free speech when it comes to censorship in media, but not that many talk about how objectification of women is still very common in it. I’m sure that there are dating sims that are just fine, but let’s be honest here, these platforms are filled with much weirder stuff . Some of them even enter the morally grey areas imo.