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Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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Yeah, payment processing is among the many many many industries that ought to be nationalized so they can be administered in a transparent and democratic manner (see also, healthcare education housing electricity internet etc.)
There's just too much opportunity to use it to manipulate markets and oppress minority viewpoints for it to remain in private hands imo
Putting the ridicoulous idea that governments are fair and transparent aside, payment processors need to be international. Otherwise, most countries will not be able to access services because their local payment processor is not supported by smaller websites.
However, the payment processors should be regulated with something similar to net neutrality so they can't discriminate payments. And EU could probably launch a government run competitor to dilute their duopoly.
Well, yes. I just did not consider them to be the ones discriminating if it is against the law, but the government.
To me it's insane that food also isn't on that list. Anything that isn't a luxury can't be trusted to be handled by capitalism.
Do you really think most governments will administer payment processes in a transparent and democratic manner?
They can do a really shit job of administering payment processes in a transparent and democratic manner before they end up being worse than the status quo where it's entirely untransparent and undemocratic. Also, governments already have the power to make things they don't like illegal, so there's no reason to expect they'd block payments for things they've left legal, whereas payment processors currently block plenty of legal things.
So you expect governments like the Trump administration or Saudi Arabia will less likely block porn games than for profit companies?
You do realise this happened because thousands of people called the payment processors to complain about it, which means with thousands of people, you can pressure these companies to change their mind again. Try doing that to your own government, let alone a foreign government.
That's literally what calling your government representatives is. You're supposed to be able to pressure your representative to represent you.
I agree with your statement, but we are currently seeing politicians actively ignore their constituents wishes on policy.
Since people don't like hearing what I'm saying I'll reference the situation
Mitch McConnell is actively going against his former constituents and telling Repub reps to go against their constituents over Medicare/Medicaid. Saying "They'll get over it."
Several states voted to uphold abortion rights only to have their elected officials ignore them and ban those rights.
If a human is involved in any capacity, fallibility is built in. We may not like it, but it's a fact.
Your government representative only has a voice in the government, but they don't control it. Calling for profit companies en masse pushes your message directly to the people in charge who are scared of losing profits over this.
Tell me, when has calling your representatives ever resulted in a change in government policy within a reasonable time span? How often does a government do a major change in policy without you needing to vote someone out first?
That sounds wonderful to me, I just want that mass of righteous people to write down all of their ideas so future generations can continue their work even after the fervor has died down. I call those ideas laws and regulations and the ongoing spirit of that mass of righteous people a government, but I'm not too attached to semantics.
Well then, I guess you actually don't care that porn games are being removed from the stores right now because having the government be in charge will require you guys decades before such decisions can be overturned, just like how long the fight for free healthcare and sane gun control is taking in the US.
Maybe some governments are more receptive to their citizens plea than the US government, but most governments are definitely still in the pocket of people with big money.
At the moment, they're already at risk of being removed by the government, who can make them illegal, and simultaneously at risk of being removed by payment processors, who can prevent the stores from operating. It makes no difference to the government whether they're also the payment processor. They could remove them anyway. Having two entities with unilateral power to remove something can't be worse than just having one of them.
The US goverment can't make porn illegal in another country. A US owned payment processor can force other stores in other countries that uses their service to save money to ban porn as well. You're just advocating for giving governments of wealthier countries more control over smaller ones. I say no thanks to that nightmare scenario.
Why don't you prove your government can do their job and prevent payment processors from being such massive monopolies and maybe I'd trust that they won't immediately abuse their power.
Jesus christ.
Okay, buddy, I'm giving you homework: you need to attend 10 city halls and 5 protests by the end of this year.
Tell me when you guys finally get free healthcare and sane gun control laws.
How about something simpler, then? Get back to me when you guys finally stop funding Israel's genocide.
Even easier? Get your government to stop vetoing any UN resolution for a ceasefire in Palestine.
Show me how easy it is to change your government's mind. I'll wait.
Why should it be easy? Do you only do things that are easy? Was World War II easy?
Your forefathers spent months, years, working on projects some of them didn't even live to see completed. You want your activism to be easy? This is pathetic.
Of what use are you to humanity if the only victories you'll reach for are ones doable over a saturday? Whose grandchildren should even bother to remember your name?
When we win this one back, I think VISA should restrict you specifically from buying any porn games.
We're talking about the difference between government owned payment processors and for-profit ones when it comes to solving the issue of them giving undue influence to online stores.
Your argument for supporting goverment owned payment processors is that it shouldn't be solved within this lifetime because that's better? Wtf are you talking about?
Here comes the American way of doing things. And you wonder why I don't trust the US government to not immediately misuse their power if they actually own payment processors. Thanks for proving my point.
Shouldn't?
It is better.
Sounds like you should be involved, then. To keep them in check.
Yes, you said it shouldn't be easy and glamorising the fact that things had to be fought over more than a lifetime. Your words, not mine.
It sure is easy to keep the US government in check compared to a bunch of for-profit payment processors, isn't it? I can just call the US government support number to voice my disapproval, can't I?
I said it shouldn't only be easy.
Those people are stronger than you, so sure, yeah.
Let me lay out a strategy for you:
VISA has decided conservative authoritarianism is cool.
We bully them into rescinding this.
Later, VISA decides again that conservative authoritarianism is cool.
We bully them into rescinding this.
Later, when we have the means, we take their processor from them.
Now, we don't need to bully them. We own the processor. We decide what it does.
The above plan is, literally, all I'm arguing for. You're with everything until that final step. Why are you so against taking power?
If you don't trust the people in government, you should be in government then. Join your own country's, pressure the US.
If you would like "we" to be International, by all means. Go for it. I won't stop you. I don't need our PayPal to be owned by the US. Maybe all countries have their own PayPal. Maybe the UN governs one.
None of these problems get solved whatsoever, though, if you refuse to be in power. One day, VISA will just stop taking your calls. You'll get an answering machine that says, "We won the game for control of the world. Eat shit."
I think it is possible to have a government that functions in this way on a long term basis. I don't think the same can be said of for profit companies.
A for profit company can be replaced with another and is more easily affected by boycotts. A goverment is neither easily replaced or influenced by people from other countries.
Until they monopolize their industry, which is something they're always going to be trying to do by their very nature as for profits and which has already essentially happened here
A government can be influenced if it is transparent and democratic, which can be ensured if they've got good bylaws that are being scrupulously enforced. Like, if you have decisionmakers a) accountable to free and fair elections (whether they're elected directly or appointed by elected people) holding b) regular and public meetings where c) outside organizations can raise disputes and get them decided under d) neutral procedures that are published in advance and that every party has equal opportunity to understand and take advantage of, and e) if those decisions and the reasoning behind them are also published and cited as precedent to be reinforced or overturned in subsequent decisions, then I really think the rest takes care of itself.
And I think we had a lot of this figured out when we got done fighting totalitarian regimes in the 1940s and turned around and passed the Administrative Procedure Act, but conservatives keep adding loopholes and trying to drag all of us back to feudalism and monarchies.
So you admitted that people have succeeded in adding loopholes to the US government that makes all your argument no longer true, and you think they still should be allowed handle payment processing? To me it just sounds like you're arguing for transferring the power from one corruptible party (for-profit payment company) to another one (the government).
It would be easier for the government to actually regulate payment processors so they don't become so big that they can influence online stores that use them than preventing people in governments from turning corrupt and misusing the control over payment processes. Even then, the US government has failed to do the former, so how do we expect them to do the latter?
A lot of governments already do. The credit card duopoly is the reason the US decided to come after Brazil's solution.
Why would a government just block payments for something it doesn't like instead of, you know, making it illegal, which it already can do. I doesn't need to block my payment to the heroin store, because the heroin store isn't legally allowed to operate.
Because they can't make it illegal in another country. I'm sure plenty of countries would just use US or China owned payment processors rather than spending money to set up their own. This would just give them more control over other countries than they already have now.
Is the private sector currently doing that?
It'll end up like the shit we've got going on now with. ICE being given access to Medicaid and tax records in order to deport more people.
What is stopping the government from just commandeering PayPal's records?
So you want Trump and MAGA politicians to be able to deny your payments instead?
The problem with "just let the government do it" is when the government is run by people like this.
So don't let them.
Basically nothing works if no one cares about their community. One of the reasons Trump is in power right now is because of a deep seated American apathy for, like... everything.
Trump, et. al., are dismantling USPS, but I like USPS. It's bad that they're doing that.
How naive can you be? You think your vote matters here?
When every single district has been gerrymandered to death for 100 years, nobody's vote really matters anymore.
Your cynicism can't defeat me, man. I am God's holy warrior. I crush weak pessimism like yours beneath the weight of my iron will.
How is it you think private companies will be more easily coercible when Trump's cronies are the private sector?
Rofl. Your god can eat a dick. I've seen exactly what your god does.
It's easier to start a competing company than it is to start a competing government.
You need a powerful standing army for the latter, and standing armies are part of why we're in the trouble we're in.
Not when Trump's government refuses to do anything about all the slapp suits PayPal levies against you for treading on their financial turf.
Corporations, without oversight, just become warlords with their own standing armies. You're not getting out of this one through the low effort of simply buying a different brand of latte, man, I'm sorry.
The problem is that government even has the power to do those things.
And to paraphrase you, you can't solve government problems with more government, I'm sorry, man.
How would you stop them from doing this?
Not when you aren't in power. This is your fundamental flaw: You complain about the world, oh how you have complaints, but you have no will to power, no vision.
Plant a fig tree; it will benefit your grandchildren.
By dismantling as much of the power structure as I can. As often as I can.
Burn.
It
All
Down.
...By yourself?
How does Putin's boot taste?
Oppression isn't inevitable, even in the US, and you'll never have the equitable anarchism you're advocating for if the state doesn't put a stop to these oligopolies.
You are wildly off base if you think I have any love for that monster.
You are also completely wrong in that oppression is the natural state of power.
This is a very Russian mindset and exactly the kind of beliefs that created Putin. I'm not saying you support him, but I'm saying you are giving him your support either way.
It's exactly the opposite of what created Putin. He came out of the KGB state security service with control over the elite and the powerful.
How did those elite powerful get to be elite and powerful?
They were the product of a powerful central government giving them said power.
When the people are afraid of the government, there is tyranny. When the government is afraid of the people there is liberty.