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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

#941

Post by pyuser583 »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #594
phendrenad2 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I finally got around to reading Fukuyama, I had an "aha" moment where I realized... oh, this is how liberal democracy thinks. They think they've perfected society and everyone agrees with them, except for a few weird superstitious cults. Then I realized that it was all wrong, countries accept western liberal democracy only as long as the free aid keeps flowing. And the libdems were in for a rude awakening if the…

The very strange thing I’ve found about liberal democracies is not just the amount of people who believe the entire world believes in the value of liberal democracies. It’ the amount of people who believe, for some strange reason, that other countries support the values of liberal democracies even more than liberal democracies themselves. Hence comments about the U.S. being extremely puritanical, when anyone can look…

A lot of this goes back to Rousseau, a philosopher who sees civilization as the root of evil.

He thought of undeveloped places as filled with “noble savages” uncorrupted by the evils of modern society.

This is why many people believe that anti-gay sentiment only exists because of American or European influences.

While it’s true undeveloped counties often have very different sexual ethics, that does not mean humanity’s default is liberal individualism sanctioned by custom and community.

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

#943

Post by swiftcoder »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #925
swiftcoder wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a lot of sex trafficking going on in the porn industry, but not so much in the censorship industry [citation needed] I'll grant that there is sex trafficking going on at least in the fringes of the porn industry - but that's at least in part because of censorship. If porn production was widely legal and appropriately regulated, there'd be significantly less market for the edgy stuff filmed in Eastern Europe…

Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/us/pornhub-sex-traffickin... https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-trafficking-in-persons-re... https://www.tokyoreporter.com/japan-news/breaking/npos-more-... https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/girlsdoporn-owner-micha... https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-japan-porn-20160613...

I'm not clear that any of those run contrary to what I said?

Regulation and enforcement thereof is obviously a necessary part of ensuring that porn producers are operating legally/safely, and if porn production were more widely legal/regulated then these fly-by-night trafficking operations wouldn't thrive

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

#944

Post by baobabKoodaa »

m463 wrote: post #892
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was uncensored enough to a point where I can confidently say that the parent's story is not true.

sorry, I looked again and I think it was either llama-2-7b or llama-2-13b from TheBloke on huggingface. It is very old and my vm no longer runs it (I must have installed too much conflicting software since). I used ggerganov llama and ggml ggerganov llama, and when I run ./main ... it now coredumps.

no worries!

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

#945

Post by odo1242 »

uncircle wrote: post #91
odo1242 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you have to create a distinct payment channel (on-chain transaction) for every person you pay over Lightning? Or am I misunderstanding things?

Third-parties take care of this bureaucracy for you. Check out the Phoenix wallet, for example. (Unaffiliated, I hold some pocket money on there not to run a Lightning node myself) The on-chain transaction is just to "fund" a channel between two parties. These two parties can then make unlimited trasnfers between each other instantaneously for free. These nodes are organised in a network and can relay payment from ot…

Ah, I see

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

#946

Post by nosignono »

Dweller1622 wrote: post #522
nosignono wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a videogame, I can think of some examples. In Kotor 2, there's a character called "The Handmaiden", who will join your party if the player character is a male. She talks at great length about her situation and the decisions the player should make. She's depicted as a chaste, virginal religious character. But one of the very first things you can do with her when she joins your party is spar with her. And she strips…

No, that's fine, since I think it's not only the case that these are sufficient, but that I simply wasn't explicit enough in my rejection. What I'm disputing is any application of objectification theory to media analysis wherein there are no actual agents involved. Neither The Handmaiden nor Night Sister Mirrin ever possessed any agency, nor were they deprived of it. There is simply no moral valence in how one treats…

Sorry, I should have included -- in the context of the story. They are of course, not agents. They are fictional characters in a videogame.

But humans built them, and humans framed them in the camera. Those humans did have the choice to provide them with a setting in which the characters do or do not have that agency. Those humans chose whether or not to depict that agency.

Art reflects something about the creator, and often (but definitely not always) it's the values of the creator. If the authors choose to depict a world in which the character has no agency (within their setting), then perhaps the authors did not feel it was important or valuable to do so. Likewise, if the authors do depict a world in which the characters have agency, perhaps the authors feel it is valuable.

But even detached from authorial intent, art is subject to critique -- we can look at a piece of art, knowing nothing of the creator, and ask, "What themes do we draw here? What values does this work put forward?" Kotor 2 raises many interesting questions about pedigogy and teaching, for instance. One critical read is that it is a piece of art that believes you should absolutely question the motivations of the people who want to teach you. Another thing Kotor 2 seems to value is women can (or even should) be objectified (in the case of the handmaiden) or instrumentalized (in the case of Kreia).

None of the above requires you to recognize that the characters are agents within our world or have agency here.

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

#948

Post by nachox999 »

advael wrote: post #863

It's crazy to me that people can simultaneously understand that censorship is bad and still think we can allow for exceptions for things like "obscenity/pornography" or "hate speech" Free expression means that objectionable things will be said, even published. There are certainly hairy exceptions, like doxxing, slander, or incitement to violence that can put people in immediate danger, but stuff like this clearly doe…

censorship isn't bad

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

#949

Post by tincholio »

sedatk wrote: post #597
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…

I've been using Steam as an adult for the last two decades. I have hundreds of games in my library. I've never seen one porn title recommended to me or while browsing the site. Steam also has extensive parental controls: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49...

I had to specifically block those from being shown, they were all over for me. I don't have any issue with them, but my kids use my steam deck, and game on my pc, and I didn't want them seeing those.

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

#950

Post by Dweller1622 »

nosignono wrote: post #946
Dweller1622 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's fine, since I think it's not only the case that these are sufficient, but that I simply wasn't explicit enough in my rejection. What I'm disputing is any application of objectification theory to media analysis wherein there are no actual agents involved. Neither The Handmaiden nor Night Sister Mirrin ever possessed any agency, nor were they deprived of it. There is simply no moral valence in how one treats…

Sorry, I should have included -- in the context of the story. They are of course, not agents. They are fictional characters in a videogame. But humans built them, and humans framed them in the camera. Those humans did have the choice to provide them with a setting in which the characters do or do not have that agency. Those humans chose whether or not to depict that agency. Art reflects something about the creator, a…

There's a number of things being said here, but much of it seems orthogonal to the original discussion and so I'm not going to address it.

Rather, if these characters aren't agents, I wonder where this leaves us re: sex positivity and "media [that] sexualizes women to a problematic degree." I don't think anything here tells me.

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