- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist?wprov=sfla1
Collective Shout. Thanks to itch.io for naming them. TIL
Wow, good to learn about the conservative christian, anti-abortion, “radical feminist”.
Well They ARE feminists.
👍
It’s damn clear that you’re gullible. So when the mask innevitably slips that feminists were always right-wing fascists, you scapegoat someone else.
Wow wow, hang on, I think I misunderstood your comment.
I agree with you. Fuck feminists. Someone just posted a picture calling for the death of all men due to catcalling and it was getting upvoted.
FUCK THAT.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49718552
This bullshit needs to stop.
Are you trolling me ?
The post I sent is real, isn’t it? I despise misandrists.
I even removed my original reply to you because I misinterpreted your comment.
I would appreciate if you edited yours too. I get it. I agree.
Here’s a different comment to avoid the other stupid one. Feminist support equal rights and freedom.
My favourite fact is she thinks decriminalising sex work will lead to more sex trafficing.
Such wisdom and vision, we should let these people have power over payment processors
Stuff like this is the strongest argument for a decentralized payment option. Hopefully some day crypto will not be so much a tool of monetary speculation and we can use it for that without having to have the same experience as the guy who bought a pizza with Bitcoin.
That’s what I always wanted “DeFi” to be, a systematic replacement for the legions of evil old banks who have happily collaborated with the worst institutions of the last several centuries.
Reist reviewed the controversial Netflix film Cuties (2020) for both her ABC Religion & Ethics column[20] and for the Christian newspaper Eternity.[21] She described the film as “a social critique on what happens when we allow misogynistic, violent, exhibitionist internet culture to ravage girls – training them to wield their immature bodies as currency.”[21] Reist related the film to the activism of Collective Shout: “In the past 10 years at Collective Shout, we have met many girls this age, who have felt the same pressures. Some have taken inappropriate pics and shared them, sexualising themselves either out of a sense of obligation, or because they have believed the lie that self-objectification is empowering or liberating.”[21] However, regarding certain scenes in the film, she wrote that “the complexity here is that in trying to make a serious ethical point about girls and sexuality, the girls may have been used unwittingly — but still inappropriately — to a noble end. The scene could have been filmed differently[.]”[20]
Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can’t come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it’s fruit of the poisoned tree.
Damn, Rupert Murdoch and now this asshole. Australia has a monopoly on ruining media, lol.
You can thank Advance Australia for that. Huge think tank that likely bank rolls all this nonsense and more.
Also, down with Collective Shout! As someone who suffered child abuse, I condemn these cookers crusading under the guise of child protection. FFS, they were patting themselves on the back for stopping sales of plastic heads on Temu.
If it’s any consolation, I’m sure the American versions (Focus on the family, alliance defending freedom) are right there with them.
Props to them for figuring out a real way of imposing colonialism on impoverished countries and former colonies alike. Now their ideas and laws are spreading worldwide, like someone with diseases shitting into the local water supply. Ugh.
I have a terrible feeling that the people they duped won’t figure this out for 30 years or more, with some trappings lasting for 50+ years.
gamers, unironically, rise up. this isn’t going to end on niche porn games
It’s already expanded. It started as going after “rape and incest” but now it’s all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.
Shit. Would you provide a source please?
i don’t know if any source has caught up yet, but a few days ago it was indeed just taboo kink games that were being targeted, now it seems all of itch.ios NSFW games are disappearing
I think all games being hit is a temporary measure while they get some sort of new process in place. We’ll see where things land.
Either way, card processing companies shouldn’t be dictating what kind of art consumers can consume, even if I don’t personally agree with the content of some of the worst offenders. If it’s not outright illegal, they can fuck off.
Isnt that addressed in the post?
Here’s one example I came across on Bluesky
Direct link to the game because the creator restricted who can view their posts on Bsky. Only viewable via a link or from their profile now, searching the name only returns a bunch of other dress-up games, but not this one, presumably because of the „Transgender“ tag.
Thanks for the context. Might have been caught up in the crossfire, but very worrying indeed.
It’s gonna stop once they hit a category that includes big AAA games. Once they start cutting into the revenue of Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed the big developers should take a stance.
I’ve already seen a pretty big YouTuber cover that they are targeting GTA 6 now. It was either moistcritical or mudahar
Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.
I’m not sure that works, like on a purely game theory level. If gamers start to apply pressure, threaten to stop buying games, the stores need to make a choice:
A. Risk facing the wrath of the gamers, sales are likely to drop. Possibly by a lot, perhaps 15-20%. That could keep up for months before stabilizing.
B. Risk facing the wrath of the payment processors, credit card sales will stop immediately, only alternative payment types get through. Sales drop by 80% overnight, over time some users will seek alternative payment methods, possibly resulting in only 50% less revenue than expected…
While both of those options are bad, one of them is totally fatal to their business.
Those numbers are of course only speculation, but that’s my best guess.
I meant pressing the payment processors, like those prude activists are.
I find it offensive that the only effective way to combat this is to fight fire with fire and also make a big bitchy noise about this like the conservatives love to do. I have better things I would rather be doing with my life. But such are the times we live in I suppose.
In the short term, I think that collectively being Karens about it would be able to reverse the pressure, by steering the monopolists away from oppressing us. Because they are mainly motivated by money.
In the long term, take away their monopoly power.
Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.
One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.
visa have similar restrictions… the issue is that payment processor, merchant, card network, issuing bank, and acquiring bank (and a few more) are all different layers to facilitating a transaction… there are very few card networks in the world, and essentially people pay online using mostly either just visa or mastercard
technically you could probably run a site that only accepts amex, diners club, jcb, discover, etc but it really wouldn’t go well: people want to whip out their card (often their only method of online payment) and just pay and go
you’d also need to find a payment processor that would be comfortable taking on the risk of facilitating transactions around mastercard and visa… they might just cut them off from access to their network. sounds like extortion? yeah welcome to the world of banking, where in any other industry it’d be called a cartel
making things even more difficult is that by law in the US payment processors must offer at least 3 (i think? it might be 2?) “routes” (these things aren’t always straight forward - sometimes there are multiple card networks involved), so you probably have to have a pretty mature payment processor because they’d have to accept several of the alternative card networks
oh and you have to push various stats to the federal reserve which is a massive back and forth bureaucratic challenge even above the technical challenge of interfacing with some pretty awful systems. it often takes over a year to get things sorted unless you’re a “too big to fail” type customer
there are a buuuuunch of other spanners that get thrown into the works, but i’m not sure where the NDA line hits so i’m gonna just leave it there and say trust me, payment processing (distinct from payment gateway) is an absolute nightmare mess
How do I tell politely in a letter to MasterCard, that if I want to buy a horse dildo it’s only MY fucking business?
buy a horse dildo with bitcoin and flaunt how they didn’t get any money from your transaction? idk man, i’m good at vague ideas, specifics are harder
Any games with even mild nudity is next (like Nier)
Yep, then lgbtq games, then games with guns, then games with blood, so on and so on
Are you sure gun and violence culture is on the chopping block? In the American market?
The big payment processors won’t let you buy firearm parts
It absolutely is. We only encourage gun and violence culture in real life, especially by authoritarian figures and their representatives. Allowing such in virtual spaces where no one can actually be hurt or killed runs counter to our patriotic ideals.
It absolutely is, it’s naive to think these puritans will just decide to stop here
GUNS are you nuts… Murican “morale” apostles might have infuenced the media worldwide, but if you take away guns… you lose Murica!
Collective Shout is Australian.
Doesn’t matter… No guns… Murican outcry! 😁
Or they mope about you not wanting their “culture” and offer to bring their democrazy…
Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc. would never let that happen.
Neighbors being kidnapped: I sleep
Taking my fetish games: Real Shit
most of the world isn’t american. we can’t do anything about your government
Capitalism is a global problem, its not contained to america. Replace neighbors being kidnapped with which ever country you’re in supporting a genocide and it still fits, and is likely accurate unless you’re like in Yemen.
Transaction companies should not play police, in my opinion
In fact no company should play being police
This is why we have the digital market act
How are transaction offering companies not included there? Who gives them the right to choose what people consume?
Way do much centralised power
Basically a dictatorship
Fuck that
I mean, they have no problems offering transaction services to obvious scams like “find sex in your region” and other scammy find relationship websites.
This will never go away. Payment processors make life easy for most consumers, people like them. And as long as we have them, they hold all the power around how money can be used. And they will always be limited by governments and local laws.
If you don’t like the situation, use cash. If that’s too inconvenient Bitcoin is essentially your only other option.
They have the power because states gave it to them. States can very easily take it back. But they won’t because they’re corrupted assholes.
Not even… They have the power because you gave it to them. States can take it away, but that’s worse, you don’t want that.
But it doesn’t really matter, it’s all connected. The payment processors control how money can be used and the state controls how they’re allowed to let you use it. And you let it all happen by voluntarily using a credit card.
How do you pay for a steam game without a credit card?
Bitcoin, or maybe better the millions other way more efficient alternatives 😜
Edit: “or better” instead of “and”, as I wanted to say that nearly any other crypto coin is more efficient than bitcoin. 😁
Or i wanted to say, if you offer bitcoin payment , please offer alternative crypto coins as well…
Not so sure anymore xD
At least the main thing I wanted to say, is that bitcoin is very inefficient.
“Bitcoin” and “efficient” do not fit together like that…
I guess you interpreted my comment wrong…
What I say is that basically any alternative crypto coin is way more efficient than bitcoin and thus it would be dumb to go for bitcoin compared to the trillion other crypto coins.
✌🏻
ah, that makes more sense!
just as an aside, for future reference:
you wrote,
Bitcoin, and the millions other way more efficient alternatives 😜"
when you really meant to write:
Bitcoin, or the millions other way more efficient alternatives 😜"
it may be s subtle difference, but when you write “and” it means bitcoin AND the other alternatives are efficient.
when you use “or” instead, it means bitcoin OR the more efficient alternatives.
so my interpretation was correct. you just didn’t write what you thought you did…
Ohh, yea, guess that are symptoms of my native language being swiss german 😆 we use sometimes strange word-combinations for comparison of stuff
Thank you for the head up!
hey, no worries!
just felt like it might be useful to know where the misunderstanding happened
i’m glad if it helped, cheers!
Why are they doing a comprehensive audit on the content and not doing a comprehensive audit on new payment providers? I sure would be
Because they would basically die off without the credit card processors, I assume.
Yeah so they should shop around now that theirs seems to be problematic
What I meant is that simply excluding Mastercard and Visa would turn away tons of sales and donations, even if they worked with every other payment processor on the planet at once.
They… could. But it would hurt, maybe even kill Itch.
My biggest issue with this situation is: if they can get away with getting games they don’t like being delisted, where does it end? Delisting books with themes or authors they don’t like? Banning the sale of alcohol and cigarettes?
Honestly haven’t thought so far. But Media lacks that, as almost everything is clickbait.
And you got a point. There is questionable stuff. But killing off a whole area is like a bit shot on a small bird
Fuck religion.
Don’t you just love people that can’t mind their own fucking business?
Bro for real! Like I hate any porn game, as a game. Not as a societal flaw!
So you know what I do? Same exact thing I do about gay sex. I don’t do it, I don’t think about it very often unless there’s a funny joke to be made in a tangential way, and I don’t tell other people that they have to be exact like me.
Ffs, let people do what they want if they aren’t hurting anyone.
but if people are watching porn or having gay sex then they’re not making babies to sacrifice to the capitalist meat grinder.
They want people having more babies so the US president has more supply to pick from. It’s not been as easy since he lost his best friend that helped sort it out for him.
They cannot help it. They literally think about it all the time, and there’s no helping people like collective shout or the crazies on the street. The unwashed ones with the “you’re going to hell for gay sex” signs.
I see the same people on the street all the time. And they think about gay sex WAY more than I do, and I’m married to a person of the same goddamn sex, lol.
Some people really need to cut loose. Generally, I’m not pro-drugs, but damn, they need some hard party drugs to reset things and help them get back to a normal life. Go to burning man, get a good job, then go hike the Appalachian trail or something, for Christ sake.
I would argue that instead of party drugs (which I assume is X, coke, alcohol, pot, and so on), I think they need a good ego death trip. I’m talking like twenty caps(or two wavy bois) or an LD50 of LSA.
“If you sin you’re going to hell, I have to save you from yourself!”
I’m so sick of this. What if we don’t want saving? Just fuck off.
I’ve got friends in both places, and I highly doubt God is gonna give you extra karma or brownie points for converting someone to a made up religion that’s like, maybe 200 years old, lol.
Go gardening. Volunteer at a big cat rescue place. Stop wasting your life preaching something that deep down, you probably don’t even believe in, but is distracting you from something else in your life that could be resolved with therapy.
We got GoonerGate before the release of the Epstein files
All my homies hate Collective Shout
deleted by creator
I mean, crypto is still not the answer so long as it is functionally a speculative asset even after all the proof efficiency improvements… Also it still has centralized points which keyholders could easily leverage.
I get not liking a game about SA and incest, but how about just not play that game?
Reminder they do nohing about all thise fujoshi comics which has rape & incest. They like cuties too. So the goal was destroying men"s outlet for sexual pleasure.
Notice they didn’t go after onlyfans
Internet’s memory sure is short. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-ban-adult-material-after-pressure-from-payment-processors
“They” here is CollectiveShout & they (as in Payment Processors) reversed the ban quickly (Because it affected women). Well Not in this case, this group also campaigned to deny SnoopDogg & Eminem Visas.
I thought it was obvious you meant Collective Shout.
So can I call the payment providers of the companies I don’t like and complain about them?
I don’t get it. Do payment processors want less money? Do they hate being entrenched and bringing in revenue just for existing? Do they want us to try and find alternatives to them?
this bullshit is surely coming from the recently intensifying family friendlinessification of the internet, but why the fuck do payment processors care? i have no idea. are they taking a cut of advertising revenue? do all ceos just want to appear as massive prudes? do they see children as an untapped market to exploit? or maybe they’re just fucking stupid? what is actually going on
Capitalism is creating a level of censorship that exceeded what the US government was ever able to do after the Warren court. Parts of this have been there for a long time. You can drop f-bombs on cable TV all you like; the FCC can’t do anything about it since it’s not over public airwaves. They generally don’t do that, because advertisers don’t like it. Capitalism set the rule, not the government.
YouTube has put this idea into overdrive. You can’t make a straightforward, monetized video about the Holocaust anymore, because the language you would have to use would violate YouTube’s written and unwritten rules. Meanwhile, actual fucking Nazis have had little issue using YouTube to spread their bullshit.
Credit card companies have had issues with porn sites in terms of fraud reporting. Not necessarily because of actual fraud–if the site you use is under CCbill, it’s fine–but because some guy’s spouse sees the card transactions, asks what this particular line is for, and he lies and says it’s probably fraud and he’ll call it in. Get more than a few of those, and the processor will always be flagged for review.
They do outright stop some of the more fringe porn. Bree Mills (of Adulttime) has said that they get limited by the credit card industry far more than the government. All the faux-incest videos go out of their way to mention in dialog that everyone is a step family and over 18. You won’t find scat on Kink.com, again because their payment processor won’t allow it.
That’s been the situation for a few decades, but it has gone beyond that in the last few years. They tried it on OnlyFans, and the company maneuvered things to show why that’s an incredibly bad idea, and then the card companies backed down. But they’re trying again elsewhere, and they’re starting to be successful. I severely doubt they had any significant fraud issues on Steam or itch.io, NSFW items or otherwise.
Ultimately, this stuff is a tiny slice of their revenue. If they want to shut it all down on a moral crusade, they will barely notice the hit to their numbers.
On a side note, I’d like the advocate that you should pay for porn if it’s within your means. You’ll often find better quality stuff at sites that properly run their sets with consent. If you like queer porn or unconventional body types, there are a lot of sites for that which just don’t show up on PornHub.
They make money hand over first for doing practically nothing… They’re perfectly happy with their current situation and the most important thing to them right now is not rocking the boat.
I think someone once told me its about charge backs. People will pay up for hours and hours of content (more for addicts) and then issue a chargeback, or otherwise say their card was stolen (how dare you insinuate I’m into that fetish! Type shit) and because there is no physical product to seize, the company is left with repeatedly eating investigation costs into fraudulent porn addicts.
E: I’m not judging anyone’s porn content, idgaf what you smack or flick to. Merely an observation of people not realizing how much they will charge their CC until statement time, and freak out and then chargeback, making the company susceptible to puritanical influence because “those damn porn users” keep costing the company money.
Why would a campaign group have any influence over that?
Mutualism, parasitism? The group wants some puritanical bullshit and knows a tactic to make other services comply
It’s all about misandry (attacking men’s enjoyment), These are all male-dominated medias, but they’re (as in CollectiveShout) OK with cuties.
Maybe from Collective Shout, but what about Visa and Mastercard?
Collective Shout has their people within those organizations, you don’t acquire this level of power without networking & organization.
Miserable fuckers, the whole lot of puritans…
I find it funny that a lot of the fediverse is anti-cryptocurrency, yet this is a perfect example of a problem cryptocurrency can solve. No one can stop you from transacting on a number of blockchains.
Too bad cryptobros are more interested in using it as a speculative investment/scam machine than an actual currency.
Yeah the wild swings in exchange value instantly preclude its use as a currency.
Yes you are right, there are always grifters everywhere, unfortunately.
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
Also, the issue here is not centralized currency under a government, it’s centralized payment processing under monopolistic private companies. Crypto is not required to solve that, all that is needed is an alternative payment processor (in an ideal world, probably a public one run by that government, since in a modern world that seems like an essential service to me).
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
I would argue that while crypto is as investment now, it was initially designed and intended to be used for transactions.
Out of curiosity though, why do you think this situation would be any different if it were government controlled? Especially considering that you sometimes have administrations like Trump’s, which would do anything no matter how corrupt.
If it were government controlled, it would be accountable to the people, to the extent that the government is democratic (ideally, much more than it is now), and would also be run as a service rather than for profit.
True, but crypto is used very successfully all the time to purchase things online. Now just because most of those transactions are for drugs doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, steam should start accepting monero, the only truly secure and private crypto currency.
They do accept Bitcoin, so that’s something.
It’s a good point, but a payment processor run by the government would also be under pressure (from voters) to wield its power to suppress marginal content.
Imagine a US-government-run payment processor right now - it would be blocking anyone that sells anything “woke” or “DEI”.
I am a strong believer in democracy. I don’t think that the answer to a bad government is to reduce the power of the government, because that power will inevitably go to undemocratic institutions. Only the government is accountable to the people. So even when the government is currently controlled by people I dislike, I still want more things to be brought under the power of the government rather than privatized.
The answer to bad government actions, in my view, is to fight for a more democratic government, and zealously advocate for good ideas among the voting population.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I guess in light of that what I would say is that, if you are going to have a state-run payment processor, you need to build in a) pluralism (enable and encourage multiple processors) and b) legal protections (legally guarantee that the payment processor has a limited remit in terms of allowing all payments unless instructed to block them by a court order) which would help mitigate or slow down anti-democratic backsliding.
Honestly, I am OK with payment processors being privatized, they always have been. What needs to happen is regulatory legislation that restricts the grounds on which a financial institution can reject a transaction to strictly what violates interstate commerce law.
Just because they always have been doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s definitely not good for private companies to have monopoly power like that. That power will only be used for their gain (and our collective loss).
Fair enough. I guess I am just so used to the way things are I struggle to see how a government payment processor works without running the risk of police overreach. I do understand that long standing agencies like the IRS and DoE do a good job of fending off advances of police trying to illegally obtain private info, but a new agency or new power for an agency wherein they have access to the exact purchase data of every transaction done using anything other than cash gives me strong pause. It would be trivial to put it under the executive branch and put in there that if someone uses it they waive their 4th Amendment rights in such a way that it is not unconstitutional. The police state already wants to push us towards a cashless society because getting the information is already borderline too easy and there are privacy laws in place to supposedly protect us from such intrusion. Taking out the middle man means I have to trust some department head who is probably a political appointee, and we all see how well that can go.
Rock meet hard place.
Crypto is so heavily regulated now, I don’t even know how to procure any cause all the sites I have used years ago are just dead now.
If you are in the UK, here is one.
In KYC systems it is really easy to acquire—companies are willing to sell it to you with no problems.
If you want to get it anonymously, the easiest would probably be to buy via cash. In Switzerland, you can buy via some atms
If it was used as an actual currency instead of an investment vehicle for speculators, that would help.
It also has zero protection from scams and fraud.
I mean you can use it as currency, and I do sometimes. I have bought plenty of steam games with Bitcoin. I’ve also bought a bunch of stuff on Newegg, and other places online.
It has exactly as much protection from scams and fraud as cash does, that’s essentially what it is.
Cash has zero protection too
And I don’t give cash to anonymous people online. I only use cash in-person for immediate services or products.
Monero
Couldn’t you just masturbate the normal way?
It’s more fun when it’s freaky
It seemed like every search on Itchio was 70% NSFW results before this move
