Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.
While Collective Shout solely targeted games it said violated policies held by payment platforms, Itch.io’s move to temporarily remove all NSFW content resulted in games with LGBTQ+ themes being removed.
One petition signer who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community said they were concerned that banning sexual-based games would be the start of cracking down on LGBTQ+ content.
There it is.
if the LGBTQ+ games were not sexual in nature (why does it not say?), then that is quite damning and I approve of this conspiracy theory.
How can you know a game is LGBTQ+ if they don’t talk about sex/gender? They look like normal humans to me, which differ in sexual preferences only? Example: How can you say this guy is gay without knowing his sexual preferences?
There is a difference between talking about sex and gender and something being sexual. If a shopkeeper mentions his husband, I can extrapolate that he’s at least bi, but that doesn’t mean the game is sexual.
While that makes sense to logical people, there is a rabid right-wing movement in the US that in intent on defining any acknowledgment of LGBTQ+ is inherently “sexual”.
In some jurisdictions, something being LGBTQ+ is inherently sexual. Places like Florida have a very psychotic view of what makes something sexual, and bans media for containing LGBTQ+ themes.
And how is casually referring to heterosexual relationships then not sexual?
It is, did I write something wrong which negates that?
Cognitive dissonance, naturally.
If you google Tankard-Reist you’ll find it’s not a conspiracy theory - she has actively tried to block queer representation at every level in every way for decades
Fair enough
It’s not all that much of a conspiracy theory as those pushing this line at the payment processoers openly advocate that since LGBTQ+ references sex by way of sexuality and gender, then that is sexual content, and is therefore inappropriate for children. This, of course, completely ignores heterosexuality and cisgender because they consider queer people existing to be harmful to children. And trying to get through to them about how important age-appropriate sexual education is in combating child abuse is an exercise in frustration.
politicians have literally said that the reason for censorship bills about the internet are specifically to go after lgbtq spaces.
The Mastercard/Visa monopoly (or duopoly) is bad for consumers. It should be broken up.
We should hope digital euro breaks this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro
And hypothetically if it won’t get broken up because the government works for them and not for us, then we can break the monopoly ourselves.
Fuck Collective Shout, or anyone spreading censorship!
100’s ??? no no,no,no last I checked it was in the tens of thousands of nsfw games on itch.io
Let’s keep up the pressure
Good on her parents for putting Tankard in her name since you need at least one to deal with her bullshit. Bad on them for releasing her into the world instead of into a rectum where she belongs.
I’d love to boycott them, but literally everything I do uses one of those 2.
Yeah there doesn’t seem to be any alternatives in my country other than cash which doesn’t work for online purchases.
Apparently there is a complicated thing I can do where I have to go to the post office and then I can send money directly to a company. But that’s really inconvenient (it’s like a 30-second walk from my house, I’m not doing that) and I don’t think steam accepts that payment method anyway. In fact I’ve never heard of anyone except that payment method so I don’t really understand why it exists.
I feel like a dipshit for not participating.
Feels like we’re going back to the 90s/00s “Christian parents against video games” moral panic era. But this time, they’re being appeased more heavily.
I despise conservatism. It destroys everything it touches.
Just as long as they get rid of dungeons and dragons. Everyone knows that’s the real danger in our society.
Pathfinder is clearly the answer
It’s another Satanic Panic.
And there’s way fewer Christians nowadays
But more fascists
It’s amazing how they have a book that tells them to love everybody and somehow they’ve taken that, and turned it into oppress everybody.
Ugh… This shit again…
The fucking Bible is FULL OF FUCKING HATE. Hate for women, hate for blacks, hate for gays, hate for the “other”.
I’m really sick of people trotting out two lines from that book of fairytales and doing a pikachu face “how could people read this and be evil?!?”
Easily, because the Bible is filled with vile shit. Because it’s made up bullshit that let’s you argue every side of every point because it’s a amalgam of garbage written by idiots with the occasional line of wisdom sprinkled in.
Kind of like how we love watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons, but would generally prefer to lightly forget how those cartoons contained frequent racist caricatures towards indians, island natives, black people, etc.
But the ones who remain get worse and worse.
Keep the pressure on.
Collective Shout got them to change their position and they’re a small group. We are legion, as the kids say
And we’re the ones spending the money
That’s really what I don’t get. Why make it impossible for people to give you money. That doesn’t seem to be the way capitalism is supposed to operate if something is popular then you should allow it.
They’re the ones at risk of losing money if they get sued by reintroducing said content. You’re not going to stop using the payment processors because there’s literally no other option. This is performative.
Sued for what? They aren’t stopping illegal content from being sold. That, as is implied by the word “illegal”, was already not allowed on these stores. They’re stopping legal, but potentially (not my opinion) objectionable, content from being sold. There’s no legal risk for allowing it.
I’m not saying there is illegal content. Read my comment.
I’m saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles. They’d need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.
And it would be an absolutely stupid business decision for them.
I am NOT condoning what they did, nor what they are doing. I am explaining, from their business perspective, why allowing potentially illegal content back on the platform is a non-argument and you cannot convince them otherwise.
I’m saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles.
Again, no. If there were illegal content before then it’s already breaking the rules. If you’re breaking rules once, why would adding more rules change anything?
They’d need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.
What? Yeah, the store moderators have to enforce the rules. I don’t know what this has to do with anything. Illegal or just banned, they have to be removed by the moderators. What difference does it make? This doesn’t make any sense. Adding more rules doesn’t magically remove the content. Moderators still have to do it. If they weren’t doing it for illegal content, why would they do it for only banned but legal content?
The reason they did it is because they were pressured by a weird group who has a lot of influence. It wasn’t because they were worried about illegal content, which is obvious because that’s not the rule they applied. If the rule was “you’re not allowed to sell illegal content” (which is obviously always true) then it’d be fine. Instead they made a rule for not allowing specific types of legal content.
You’re not great at risk assessment, are you?
They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.
And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.
If the expected risk is positive in case 1, they will opt for case 2.
You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? If not, then I’m afraid this conversation is over because you’re not even remotely trying to understand their logic, and you’re just looking for a reason to be mad. Your irrationality makes me nauseous.
They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.
And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.
You’re not getting it. They’re the exact same risk. If it was illegal, it wasn’t allowed before. If you’re breaking the rules, you don’t care. Especially if you were breaking the law and the rule before, you don’t care that there’s a new rule that also applies. This doesn’t change risk at all. It doesn’t make it any more unlikely, and certainly not “literally never happens.”
The opposite could be true, if it were just against the rules but then is also made to be against the law. It might dissuade some people who were skirting the rules to reconsider. If they were breaking the law already, they don’t care that they’re breaking a new rule because they already were breaking the rules. It doesn’t make it any worse for them. It’s the exact same. If they’re discovered, they’re removed from the platform, exactly the same as before.
You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? Once you’re breaking the rules enough to be removed from the platform, why do you care if there are more rules that will remove you from the platform? You’re either stopped or you’re not, and the platform either stops them or it doesn’t. The risk to the payment processors is the same. You trust the moderation or you don’t. They aren’t going to do a better job because the illegal content is doubly not allowed. They’re either stopping content that isn’t allowed or they aren’t.
That’s something we all have to remember. We have to be just as vocal as these idiots or they take over. They are not the majority, they are only the most vocal.
We are legion, as the kids say
God I’m old lmao
Tired of this story. The fucking prudes need to give up and stop already. Shit
What’s even the argument here? Steam already has parental control options, age gates, and content filters… if you don’t want your kids seeing that shit on steam, then, like, don’t let em?
…meanwhile, let’s just continue shoving blatant gambling down minors’ throats in the form of lootboxes.
And the reason sexual things had to be filtered was that they are harmful and skew kids’ perception of healthy sexuality.
Gambling wasn’t considered healthy even where and when marrying a toddler was normal. After all, a traumatized person with unhealthy sexuality does generally understand they are traumatized, a person taught that addiction is normal - not.
This group isn’t interested in protecting children they’re just interested in pushing their own beliefs on everybody else. The easiest way they can do that is to pretend that they’re interested in children. Which I’m sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
It’s a classic right-wing tactic. Because nobody wants to be against a law that protects children.
People like them used to go after books, now games.
https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/aldous-huxley-brave-new-world/
They’re still going after books too. Any and all media, speech, any kind of communication, which is free from their clawing grasp.
“ All dem queer books are hurtin our kids, makin em all gay and shit! “
Says the man standing in front of his trailer with a deep five o’clock shadow spanning his double chin, a permanently sainted wife-beating tank top and a prominent beer gut, who has five scrawny & bruised kids, and a wife that bears an eerie resemblance to himself but can’t quite look anyone in the eye.
Oh they’re still going after books.
Which I’m sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
I laughed, then I cried :_(
The argument is control. Religious zealots are all about controlling society and subduing people to follow their rules (that they themselves tend to break all the time)
That’s their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
There’s usually some on-paper benevolent veneer to wrap their hateful bullshit up with.
For example, they hate trans people, but they don’t campaign on that out loud - they justify that hated under the guise of shit like protecting bathrooms.
But this is fucking Steam - access to that bathroom is already under lock and key behind an armed guard. They can’t just pull the “think of the children!” card when the children already have a myriad of protections.
…or maybe they can, considering what just happened. We live in stupid times.
They are quite literally lying about the content of games like GTA V. They pulled the whole “the goal of the game is killing women” schtick
They want a nanny state to do their parenting for them, cus they are shit parents who spend their time petitioning the government about things they could just fucking unplug.
Bingo. They’re just projecting their failures as inadequate parents because they didn’t realize how hard child rearing would be after knocking up their high school sweetheart and buying a white picket fence. It’s always the same case.
They precisely can and they kinda just did. “Think of the children” is the magic phrase to shut down critical thinking and give you carte blanche to do whatever you want.
Not always. School shootings happen and suddenly crickets on gun control. “Think of the children” only applies to moral outrage, not tangible physical threat prevention. Also applies to school lunches and any other actual tangible thing to ACTUALLY benefit general child welfare.
Sure, I implied moral outrage. It’s not like they actually give a damn about the children.
That’s their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
The same way they always do: “WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!1111”
Wow, people start caring when they come for their porn. These duopolies should be broken up, people should adopt crypto payments.
Nhaa fuck crypto. At least the crypto that are actually popular. Shit like bitcoin and ethereum are deflationary. And why the fuck would you spend money if there’s a good chance your money is worth more tomorrow?
I believe monero has protections to prevent this. All transactions are secret.
How would secret transactions make a the coin not deflate? The issue is control of the production of the currency. If you can’t control it, it’s a cointoss wether it’ll be infaltionary or deflationary. A lot of inflation is bad, and any deflation is catastrophic, so I’d really rather not leave the economy up to random chance and private entities’ willingness to control the production of their shitcoins.
So basically it could help combat our blatant consumerism as well? Seems like a win to me
I’m sorry, but that is just a blatant misunderstanding of how economics work. It wouldn’t combat blatant consumerism, it would literally destroy the economy. Not to be replaced by something better, but just destroy it. There would be no reason to invest in literally anything, including people, no reason to repair your house or feed the poor, because the money it would cost, would be worth more tomorrow.
Why would I buy a car, or bike, or proper nutritional food, if I could save that money for tomorrow, and buy more? Only tomorrow it’s the same thing, so I’ll live like shit until the next day, then the next day, and then the next…
The only people who would have any quality of life, would be the rich cunts. They’d live like the do now, because they don’t actually need more money.
Deflation is never a good thing, I’m saying this as a socialist.
They’re not misunderstanding; you’re using Keynesian economics. “The economy” as described today is rich people’s wealth, not the wellbeing of the poor.
If people saved instead of building up credit scores, it would be much easier to strike. We don’t need to be forced to invest somehow or become even poorer (which is what actually happened). You’ll repair your house because you need a house and buy food because you need food. You’re more likely to participate in mutual aid with savings than with credit.
Which one. Is there a valid one? BTC is not has high fees slow and to volatile.
Monero. No question.
Yep definitely, it is amazing. It is what BTC should have been.
I would be for a state owned chain, does not have to be completely decentralized, it’s just good tech that can make the payment processors of today obselete.
Basically require each bank to run nodes, while letting the central bank of the country hold the keys to mint new coins.
I mean one could also have verifying nodes run independent.
The tech is there, doesn’t have to mean use anarchy moneys, it just means an overhaul of our ways of transferring value around.
“The internet has no borders. Women and girls everywhere are impacted by male violence against women and misogyny in general which we believed these games perpetuated,” she said.
Yet the fictional violence against men and boys is A-Ok!
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They got together enough people to mass email, that is all it took.
Companies tend to multiply received responses to represent the total number of people who were to lazy to complain, so Visa and MasterCard saw 1,000 emails as 10,000,000 in their risk averse actions.
Now 4chan is pissed and have started their own mass email and phonecall campaign, so we shall see where this goes…
Who do you even email for that? mastercard@gmail.com?
I assume they own their own domain.
gmail@com.mastercard
Visa also have a fairly well documented history of kowtowing to Christian groups. The CEO of their Asian division is a right-wing religious fanatic who hates, well he’s a religious fanatic so you know what he hates, but it’s basically everything and everybody.
They don’t like Japanese anime very much as well, probably because they think it’s all pornography (anime does tend to have that bent, but it’s not all pornography).
The thing is on their website they claim not to make moral judgements about purchasers, they claim to authorise anything that isn’t actually illegal, so they should be totally fine with pornography and anime. If they are going to be right-wing religious fundamentalists at least they could be honest about it on their website.
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Maybe read those two comments again, then read your response.
Your reading skills are not what you think they are.
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You need a hug or something?
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This is some low effort trolling, isn’t it?
Urghs, you are really aggressive and kind of pathetic so thank you for blocking me.
Mate you didn’t read the comment right. You might want to check yourself while you reck yourself.
Sounds like we’re fighting back with the same technique! Good enough for me!
But how the hell did some Australian Christofascist group get this powerful?
It’s Australia, we only laugh when China does it, otherwise it must be good if we’re doing it.
Want to have backdoors to chat apps, done, allow the siezure and forced unlocking of computers and phones at the border, done. Inter refigees in our own offshore concentrarion camps for decades until they suicide and make it illegal to report on, done. Regularly kill our first nations peoples amd have the jailed ? Done. We’re a fucken’ embarrassment!
Probably because they didnt go throught the government, which takes a long time to move on anything, and just put pressure on some profit seeking corporations that just want to get a bother to go away, but which also unfortunately have been put in a position of practical power equal to some types of legislation.
