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.
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
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.
Who's behind this sudden wave of age verification bullshit, Schrödinger's parents? The ones who shove an iPad in front of their 2 year old and berate school teachers for not being poorly paid babysitters who raise their kids for them? And yet they claim to care SO MUCH about the well being of children that they push these obscene and draconian policies on the rest of us? What a bunch of fucking hypocrites, but that's typical for conservatives.
Don't be fooled, that's not the real reason. Parents that shove iPads in front of their children are not even remotely worried about what their kids are watching online. This is purely about control, has nothing to do with children.
Governments and some religious nutjobs.
They only pretend to care about children. It is about power and control. Always has been, always will.
So sick of conservatives forcing their beliefs on others. Filter your own content, use parents controls, don’t ban everything you don’t like because of your arrogant belief in made up morality. Morality is relative and religion does not give your opinions weight.
Yeah but Jesus definitely preached love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and also, ew gay people not in my back yard.
I'm pretty confident on two of those anyway
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.
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 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.
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/
Maybe it’s just because I’m so focused on my own issues as a US citizen… But how the hell did some Australian Christofascist group get this powerful? Like, the RIAA and MPAA combined couldn’t get the United States government to make this much movement on “objectionable content” (piracy at the time, and also now, and all of the time between then and now), but even the crypto fascists of yesterday year couldn’t get this much traction. Probably because people like Frank Zappa and Fred Rogers came forth to criticize the ridiculousness and the consequences of such a position and search policies.
May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications
And 16 years later:
Frank Zappa at PMRC Senate Hearing on Rock Lyrics
STAND UP!!! FIGHT BACK!! Citizen complacency is the most powerful weapon the fascist have – – relying on that you will be paralyzed with fear and do nothing to stop them.
RISE UP! RESIST! REVOLT!!
And show us the fucking Epstein files already, you fucking rapist, con man, felon, pedo, traitor!
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...
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.
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.
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.
It's another Satanic Panic.
"Face backlash" = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.
They don't care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.
I switched all my master and visa cards to amex, canceled a visa card and the only have my debit as visa now because my credit union ONLY offers visa for debit
The Mastercard/Visa monopoly (or duopoly) is bad for consumers. It should be broken up.
Somebody should check their PCs and internet history; after all, name a better duo than Conservatives and Projection.
I’d bet real money that the CEO of Collective Shout has CSAM on one or more of their computers.
Let's say it like it is: after the world of hundreds of developers is undermined, and the property of thousands of customers is compromised.
"[Elon Musk] said he wanted to get his own X payments platform «going soon»".
Surely that's going to solve the problem. There's absolutely no censorship on Twitter. /s
“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!
Yet 1000 weirdos in Australia will have more sway, curiously.
When is the European alternative to these coming?
An alternative to PayPal, called WERO is currently in it's rollout process in Germany, Belgium and France. In October the next step will be activated, allowing payments in e-commerce. Later down the road, you'll be able to pay in real shops. Luxembourg and Netherlands are to join in next. More and more banks start to adopt WERO.
I urge everyone to use WERO as much as you can. It's flying a bit under the radar at the moment and this must be a success. Hopefully more EU members will join soon.
Fuck Collective Shout, or anyone spreading censorship!
Tired of this story. The fucking prudes need to give up and stop already. Shit
100's ??? no no,no,no last I checked it was in the tens of thousands of nsfw games on itch.io
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
