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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

#841

Post by johnisgood »

mptest wrote: post #811
SilverElfin wrote: post #305

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.

>A public alternative with private transactions Anyone heard of Monero? Kind of their whole purpose... I know, I know, crypto bad, but when censorship comes for [insert your thing/country here], it kind of becomes obvious why people talked about crypto before btc was six digits. Anyone who knows how tech works and also any history about how authoritarian states work should probably see why crypto got so big in the fi…

I heard somewhere that they still found people who used Monero. I am not sure how, but apparently the Government has the tech to do so... allegedly. It might have been at the cash out stage or the process before that.

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

#842

Post by lupusreal »

AraceliHarker wrote: post #827
lupusreal wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video rental stores, when those were still a thing, were the same way. They'd have a room in the back with a curtain to section it off.

First, it's highly concerning that some companies have gained immense power through monopolization, a point also made by former FTC Chair Lina Khan. Separately, in physical stores, there's an incentive to comply with laws because police would intervene if pornography were sold alongside regular goods. However, online, there's hardly any punishment for distributing pornography. This has led to a proliferation of peopl…

I don't think any of that really has anything to do with my comment. I was commenting on the cultural normality of a business dealing in both adult and family friendly content simultaneously.

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

#843

Post by vel0city »

udev4096 wrote: post #641
vel0city wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin won't require a payment processor, but companies wanting to effectively handle Bitcoin will want a payment processor or else they will have to become one themselves. Even companies working in large amounts of cash end up hiring companies to handle the cash logistics and all the other complications in dealing with it.

[flagged]

There's still a lot of work in managing the custody of all that cryptocurrency safely and securely from a business perspective.

It's the same thing as a company needing a building for their factory. They decide they don't want to pay rent anymore, they're going to control their own properties they own themselves now. But the business of managing the property now falls to the business to do. So even when companies own their own properties they often end up hiring a property management company to deal the the day to day operations of running a commercial property. Because in the end they don't want to have to worry about their janitorial contracts, handling elevator certifications, landscaping contracts, maintenance techs, etc. They want to focus on producing widgets.

Same thing with hosting a digital storefront. Sure one could spend all the time managing servers on your own offices and ensure good uptime and security and what not, or you can just sign up for Shopify or others and they'll manage it all for you. If managing servers and software stacks and digital security isn't your main business competency, why get into it?

Most companies won't want to deal the logistics of handling crypto. So they'll often outsource that work, because I'm the end they want to focus on selling widgets not handling payments. For the same kinds of reasons why they'll hire a company to do cash logistics.

Do you need to hire payment processor to accept crypto? No. But in the end you will need to do that work though.

I'm not the reason why people choose these big centralized services. I'm not that powerful. They choose them because they see value in the services they offer. Not everyone wants to be their own bank.

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

#844

Post by immibis »

roenxi wrote: post #498
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the issue would be more that people don't accept this is censorship - the surface level here looks like companies negotiating who they will and won't do business with which is actually encouraged. If companies have a moral objection to something then they don't have to be involved. In theory stopping a flow of money takes a lot more than some crazy from Australia getting upset. The real censorship here is tha…

and those companies aren't heavily regulated.

In Europe they regulated exchange fees down to something like 0.3%. They just said the fees shall be low and lo, they were low.

They could also easily regulate that credit card networks can't block obscene content.

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

#845

Post by immibis »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #805
dahart wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the alternative? How do you propose to fix it?

I don't think blockchains are the way forward, but the crypto people had one thing right: The incentive towards providing storage/compute/connectivity for transaction settlement should be built into the protocol, not provided by some corruptible institution. The idea that coins would be mined by the people providing the compute has unacceptable consequences, but it did solve the problem that it set out to solve. So w…

The Circles white paper is something like this. (I heard the Circles project went off the rails, but the original white paper is still there)

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

#846

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #814
rayiner wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that Except we live in a society and what goes into it affects all of us. Why does Germany ban Nazi content? Why do governments have minimum wages?

I believe you oppose the banning of Nazi content?

But not because I think people who don’t like nazi content should simply not buy nazi content. It’s because I don’t trust the government to ban any kind of political speech.

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

#847

Post by immibis »

throwaway283185 wrote: post #804
overfeed wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it takes willpower not to watch it. if all the tube sites were banned, my life would be better. Now imagine if this was done for different proclivities: alcoholics, speadfreaks, over-eaters, game-addicts. Do you want the government limiting those activities for everyone because a minority lacks self-control?

regulating drugs, highly processed foods, and addictive games sounds good to me. they all exploit vulnerabilities in the human brain. if your product triggers a dump of dopamine, it is suspect.

What thing do humans do that's not an exploit? Isn't HN also a dopamine exploit? Would you ban it?

In other words how do you distinguish between a dopamine exploit and just dopamine?

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

#848

Post by immibis »

winrid wrote: post #765
_bent wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it looks like it's causing more damage what damage is it causing?

It raises your dopamine tolerance - part of why people tend to get into more and more crazy types of porn to get the same fix (see randy in south park :) ). Also, since your dopamine tolerance is higher, you enjoy real life less, which is bad mkay

Yeah, but that's also true for video games, board games, social media (HN included), and yummy food. Pretty much everything anyone ever enjoys, actually. The difference is that some of them (like, I'm assuming, board games) are associated with other outcomes you want (real life socialization)

I am writing this from the tail end of a 4-day techno music festival. I haven't taken any mind-altering substances, but I've enjoyed dancing to the music. Should it be banned?

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

#849

Post by akerl_ »

rayiner wrote: post #846
tptacek wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you oppose the banning of Nazi content?

But not because I think people who don’t like nazi content should simply not buy nazi content. It’s because I don’t trust the government to ban any kind of political speech.

Why do you trust the government to ban non-political speech?

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

#850

Post by SunlitCat »

SilverElfin wrote: post #305

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.

> a public alternative with private transactions

This is exactly why governments should step in and regulate Visa and MasterCard, to prevent them from banning porn or other adult services.

If this kind of banning goes too far, there will come a point when even Joe Blow and his dog start using cryptocurrency. And once (truly private and anonymous) cryptocurrency becomes widely circulated, people will no longer need to exchange it back into fiat currency. Joe might start paying other people directly with crypto and eventually, perhaps even his rent, utilities, groceries...?

And then what? How will governments collect tax revenue?

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