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What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content? Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. No one, including governments or payment proce

What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content? Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship.

bryceacc 1y ago
If you think (insert thing here) is genuinely evil, you might be inclined to rid the world of it. It may even make you seem like a better person (to god, to others in the same camp) because you are "cleansing" or "healing" the world through those efforts. It's self righteous
RankingMember 1y ago
The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day. While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble origin story, the context was that they wanted the freedom to practice a much stricter, restrictive form of religion than that allowed by the Church of England.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dzonga 1y ago
  are you saying the puritans were the taliban equivalent of christianity. & want to bring back laws that sex would only be used to 'recreate' not recreation.
  - kingkawn 1y ago
    Yes that’s exactly what they were and are today
    - varelse 1y ago
      [dead]
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Well not equivalent, they taught their women to read after all. But let's be real here, they were a bunch of jerks. There's a reason it took no time flat for Rhode Island to exist.
- matthewrobertso 1y ago
  This is the result of campaigning by an Australian group
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  Quakers also came to the US early on to practice a peaceful an anarchistic form of Christianity.
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  This sounds like a just so story. There were all sorts of groups who set up shop in America, and all contributed to its success and influenced the culture. Virginia was the most populous colony during the revolution, did English planter society just disappear and the Puritans made it all the way down to the South? What about the Quakers in Pennsylvania? Dutch society in New York? Poor Scots in Appalachia? And, in any case, this campaign started in Australia. Were there a lot of Puritans there?
- huslage 1y ago
  The actors in this are Australian, by the way.
- gspencley 1y ago
  I'm not so sure you can point the finger at the USA for this. I ran an online porn website for almost 20 years. For 15 years it was my primary source of income. I'm in Canada which, compared to the USA is extremely progressive. In 2022, after a decade of doing business with a certain bank as this business, never having hidden anything about what we did, my wife and I received an urgent, signature required, overnighted letter from our bank informing us that they were terminating our accounts and that we had one month until we would no longer have access to any funds. The way this played out was that we had an incoming wire transfer get flagged and they phoned us to ask us questions about the wire. We answered everything on the phone honestly and transparently. We were doing nothing wrong. A few months later we get another phone call from our branch asking us to come in in person, urgently, and do an "extreme due diligence" check. During this process we had to answer an insane amount of questions about our business activities. They saw a credit card transaction from JetBrains, for example, and asked us to explain who JetBrains was and why we were doing business with them etc. A couple of weeks later we were informed about the termination with a brief letter explaining that we fell outside of their "risk appetite." We managed to get an extension on the closure, and for two months we tried in vain to find any banking in Canada that would take us... and we ultimately ended up shutting down a business that represented two decades of our lives. During that time we reached out to industry insiders, some of which we happened to know were in Canada. They all told us that they bank in the USA. One branch manager at a bank we met with was extremely empathetic but obviously couldn't put her own job on the line, and she explained exactly what was going on. The issue is "Know Your Customer" regulations that are coming into effect that are meant to target things like money laundering. These regulations force banks to ask questions that they never really cared about before. This branch manager explained that a local strip club used to say they were a "banquet hall", and everyone at the branch knew exactly what they were but it was "don't ask / don't tell." But once they start digging into these details because the government is forcing them to, then these things get to their compliance departments. And the policies exist because they're afraid of things like human trafficking and other things. And our major banks have foreign investors from all around the world. Including from countries where porn is actually illegal. While you point the finger at puritanism in the USA ... consider that in countries like Iceland, producing porn can land you in jail. Now consider MAJOR investments originating in countries like Saudi Arabia etc. and consider how that might impact your bottom line if they all pull out due to nonsense morality conflicts.
- bko 1y ago
  I don't think you have to be Puritanical or particularly religious to realize that some content is generally not good for people. I've seen this destroy lives, drive addiction and lead to other forms of destructive behavior. Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing. You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can at least concede it's not entirely arbitrary content like say a sitcom.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    I'll take the hard stance on this. I don't see how Sex is anymore harmful, addicting, or dangerous as any other number of socialties. Including Alcohol, fast food, gambling, and simply getting to into any given hobby (be it video games or playing guitar). A habit I've noticed is that a person vulnerable to being addicted to X is more prone to fall back on Y, Z, etc. even when X is fixed. So I only see "this hurts certain people" as a scapegoat. Stairs probably hurt more people in any given day than many activities, we don't base law purely on harm and potential harm.
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      Alcohol and gambling are commonly restricted if not outright banned in various localities though, and most people would consider those and fast food to be harmful. So you seem to be agreeing with GP that while you may not think it should be banned, you find it comparable to things that are widely recognized as "generally not good for people".
      - fc417fc802 1y ago
        Porn is also typically restricted. Just as many jurisdictions permit neither public consumption nor intoxication, everywhere I've lived had laws against publicly displaying "obscene" content. The issue with GGP is that in context it appears to be an argument in favor of increasing restrictions (ie in favor of the events that the article is talking about) despite disclaiming that "You don't have to agree that it should be banned". That's analogous to a loaded question. Expressing agreement with the literal wording of GGP seems to also carry an implication of agreement with some rather different things as well.
- bloqs 1y ago
  the group behind this, collective shout are Aussies
  - dandellion 1y ago
    The groups behind are two US companies. Some random group of weirdos from Australia are just a good excuse, at best.
- trothamel 1y ago
  Collective Shout, which organized this, claims to be an Australian feminist organization. (Admittedly, this may be an act.)
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > laims to be an Australian feminist organization I'm genuinely curious to see how this plays out in the American partisan landscape.
    - dr-detroit 1y ago
      there's a big push to classify fleshlights and dolls as rape because the extreme right won every battle there is to fight they need more battles. porn is next.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    They are however influenced by the American discourse soup of lies and talking points, in the same way that the NZ mosque shooter was. Conservatives around the world talk to each other.
    - swiftcoder 1y ago
      Also Murdoch's conservative media empire has had a strong influence in both Australia and the US
  - anonym29 1y ago
    "Protecting women" is an incoherent excuse for pressuring websites to pull romantic games that feature consensual, loving, respectful homosexual male-male relationships, with no women even present in the game. The real motivations seemingly have nothing to do with protecting women, which appears to simply be a palatable facade for the true intention to suppress all depictions of sexuality, including the depictions that offer good-faith representation of historically marginalized groups.
    - 1y ago
- pyuser583 1y ago
  No this isn't just American. Most of the world is very anti-porn. The BRICS countries mostly outlaw porn. Even Nordic countries, which are very socially liberal, discourage it (at least production). There's a tendency for social liberals to see their view as the only legitimate one. Sometimes they are right. But this is an area where there is lots of international push back from undeveloped, developing, and even many developed socially liberal countries.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    Several of the BRICS (& other "global south" / non-neoliberal / non-western) countries also imprison journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups, and some even have the death penalty for minor cannabis possession. "Everyone else does things this way" isn't a legitimate justification.
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      A justification of what, though? It isn't a cohesive argument on it's own but it is important perspective. If a significant fraction of societies have arrived at policies that contradict your worldview I think that ought to give you pause. (Note that I say that as someone who holds far more extreme views about legal freedom of expression than the vast majority of people out there.) That's getting somewhat off topic though. In the context of this thread it's merely the observation that attributing this to "puritans" or "christianity" or "US history" is rather misguided. The US and western Europe are very much the outliers here.
      - anonym29 1y ago
        Are you defending the morality of authoritarian states imprisoning journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups? It's one thing to recognize that it happens, another to recognize the practice as legitimate, virtuous, or even desirable. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of promoting these practices, just asking you to clarify your position.
        deleted 1y ago
- pnw 1y ago
  The Collective Shout group pushing for the censorship is Australian, not American. Most people are unaware of Australia's long history of censorship which continues to this day.
  - ronsor 1y ago
    Australia was a prison colony, after all.
    - pnw 1y ago
      I had to remind shocked Americans when they saw Australia's COVID response that, although many Australians are descended from prisoners, a fair number are also descendants of the jailers.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  The Puritanical origins of the US Like slavery, smallpox, and tipping, Puritanism was Europe's gift to the new world.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Also penicillin, trains, and the Haber-Bosch process.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  A couple of the groups that founded what would become US states were decent. Of course those decent groups got outcompeted by the authoritarian weirdos because live and let lives types and insular communities don't see the need to grab state power.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  You do know that porn is legal to produce and view in the US and the US produces a LOT of porn? This hardly seems puritanical.
- phyzix5761 1y ago
  Weren't the Pilgrims, also known as Separatists, being jailed if they didn't attend Church of England services per the Act of Uniformity of 1559? And weren't they jailed without trial if they tried to have their own religious services in private homes?
  - unnamed76ri 1y ago
    Shh don’t bring facts in here.
- pdonis 1y ago
  Exactly. The Puritans didn't leave England because the church there was too intolerant. They left because it wasn't intolerant enough.
kelseyfrog 1y ago
Presumably, the belief of Collective Shout is that there is a causal link between acting out incest, rape, and sexual violence in games and acting on those behaviors in real life. What would you do if you harbored that belief?
- evilduck 1y ago
  Empirically prove it.
  - throwawayoldie 1y ago
    You say that, but history shows that people are much more likely to move based on what _feels_ true to them.
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    Making sure I get this straight. You're saying that if you shared that believe, you would go out in search of evidence to prove it? I hate to break the news, but if we read the literature published by members of Collective Shout, they have in fact done this. The evidence they have supports their claims. Let's be clear, the evidence they have is independent of the veracity of the claims, but they have done with you suggested. However, it had the effect of confirming their beliefs. I hate to ask the question again, but if you believed the same thing and felt like you empirically proved it, how would you behave?
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > if we read the literature published by members of Collective Shout, they have in fact done this Granted, I've skimmed, but I'm genuinely not seeing it [1]. The closest is this study [2], which counted how many times thirty-eight women "who self-identified as having experienced unwanted or non-consensual sexual experiences in relationships" and were "recruited via social media," when "given the opportunity to reflect on their experiences of [intimate partner sexual violence], with prompting to speculate about their partner’s motivations or any underlying causes for the violence" mentioned pornography. That's...that's not a study. [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/research https://www.collectiveshout.org/research [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077801220971352?casa_token=jOmcr54dtbwAAAAA%3Ahu8t3VU3rwdlaBhCKVvRdkCydyDXSG6WB7uouMI3xaQyRs6oDzfCMdw1MkbS3xNNVlt8KGkqlSghsg https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10778012209713...
fossgeller 1y ago
Well maybe they are bothered by its sexist content. People all are about free speech when it comes to censorship in media, but not that many talk about how objectification of women is still very common in it. I’m sure that there are dating sims that are just fine, but let’s be honest here, these platforms are filled with much weirder stuff . Some of them even enter the morally grey areas imo.
- baobabKoodaa 1y ago
  Oh no, weird stuff in games? Or even... morally grey actions in games? How awful!
  - fossgeller 1y ago
    Well yes, one could argue that if games like GTA don’t turn people into criminals than these games are also harmless. Imo it’s a bit different in this case, as a more natural instinct (sexuality) is affected. Sure, games can be beneficial for living out fantasies, but how will it affect your view on women if you frequently consume highly sexist content? The bottom line of my point is that I think this type of content is too easily available nowadays, and especially too much of it.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      >Imo it’s a bit different in this case, as a more natural instinct (sexuality) is affected. I personally don't see the difference. Violence is a primal instinct and studies on video games and violence only concluded short term increases in aggression. Why would a similar conclusion with yet another primal instinct not conclude with short term increased arousal? I don't see arousal as inherently dangerous. >how will it affect your view on women if you frequently consume highly sexist content? Do you feel that people just find "sexist content" from some algorithm, or that already sexist people seek out content to conform to their views? I have my criticisms of Steam, but I am glad they are one of the few bastions left that aren't driven by "engagment boosting" algorithms. Just a simple tag system recommending other content with similar tags and good ratings. I agree with the undertone that we need better sex education. Those early years where we don't sell content to 10 year olds should be used to talk about the dangers before sending them off. Too bad such groups also go for an all-abstinence approach.
_trampeltier 1y ago
That is what happens, if we give public functions to private companies. Noboy say you have to use Mastercard.
m463 1y ago
I remember checking out llama when it first came out. (meta's published LLM model) "what is the best sex position?" [blah, blah, ... non-answer] "How do you get a sex change?" [long detailed answer]
- isaacdl 1y ago
  Well, those are somewhat different types of questions. One is subjective opinion, and the other is a bit more factual/straightforward. I'm also not entirely sure what this has to do with the comment you're replying to.
  - m463 1y ago
    any sex questions led to non answers. the point was that content is blocked almost by default nowadays
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      But the LLM gave you a detailed answer on another sex question. I'm a bit confused why that example was used.
      - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
        Not entirely; the one question was sex and interpersonal relationships, the other was medical / scientific.
        johnnyanmac 1y ago
        So the comparison was indeed of two unlike things, but trying to be displayed as such.
      - MSFT_Edging 1y ago
        Intercourse vs sexuality. Not the same thing.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bongodongobob 1y ago
Don't like porn? Don't sell it in your store, simple as that.
Aurornis 1y ago
When the Steam removals came up on HN, several people linked the list of games pulled. It looked more like they were targeting incest games (which is a genre I didn’t know existed) rather than the generic “porn games” that keeps showing up in headlines. There could be more developments or a different story for Itch.io, but last time this story was circulating it appeared that journalists were avoiding talking about specifics because people were much more sensitive about removing “porn games” in general whereas as “incest games” is a different story.
- badgersnake 1y ago
  So what? Why does that make any difference?
  - shard972 1y ago
    [dead]
- simion314 1y ago
  Those games are legal, also in some USA states you canmary your cousin so why the fuck don\t this puritans do not go for incest inreal life first then handle virtual stuff.
  - broof 1y ago
    One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles.
    - simion314 1y ago
      >One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles. Next you will ban games where you are killing people instead of focusing on real killers? I would prefer we have laws for what is legal and not let religious extremists decide what music we are allowed to listen, what type of books and games should we play, I guess there is no evidence they can bring to ban this content so they push their FUD around. So please either make it illegal or stop focusing on virtual crimes, maybe focus on real crimes or use those money religious people have on helping real people.
ardit33 1y ago
Next is a Superman videogame being blocked because it goes against the 'policies/interests' of a country that manages to lobby a lot here.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  You seem to be sarcastic but there's plenty of countries that have stringent laws on what games are and aren't allowed.
- DSingularity 1y ago
  Well you know Superman shouldn’t fight against genocidal maniacs and instead should fight for them. Then we wouldn’t have to ban him and infect we can all celebrate him.
o11c 1y ago
There's a lot of dishonesty relating to this. This really isn't about Puritanism, unless you're redefining Puritanism to mean having any morality at all. Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games? Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games? Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games? Do you really want to compel selling access to domestic violence games? [this is the only addition that I wasn't aware of from previous investigations, but I still don't think it's valid to call it a "slippery slope" yet] A lot of customers don't want to be shown such games in the first place (keep in mind that most tag systems are pretty bad at negative filtering, either due to platform limitations or due to not being used in practice). We can argue about whether "it's better to sell pedos fake content rather than real content" etc. (keep in mind that some of these things are actually illegal in many countries even when no real people are involved), but if so we should be explicit that that is our argument, and not falsely claiming this is some attack on sex in general. (Also keep in mind that free games are immune to payment processor decisions.)
- MegaButts 1y ago
  > Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games? > Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games? > Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games? So ban the things you believe are the problem instead of blanket banning everything.
  - o11c 1y ago
    Are they actually banning "everything" though? From what I can see, that's entirely clickbait fraud.
    - SXX 1y ago
      The group behind this censorship attack is not just against porn games. It's also attacked games like Detroit: Become Human. So they want to censor far more than just porn.
      - 1y ago
nlawalker 1y ago
I don't really disagree with you, but to play devil's advocate - when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition in what you see as the best interest of everyone? Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go with... AI-produced child porn? Rolling coal and other egregious pollution? Online gambling? Abortion? Fentanyl?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- goosedragons 1y ago
  Laws.
- RenThraysk 1y ago
  It's not what, it's how is the problem. Side stepping local country government, and applying pressure to payment processors to enforce your own rules globally should not be able to happen. Even a government should not be able to dictate what other countries do.
  - miohtama 1y ago
    The advocate group who do this believe they are exercising the will of God and do not need to mess with things like laws
- martin-t 1y ago
  If somebody things he knows better, he shouldn't be allowed to push his views on others from his position of power. All public policies should be subject to public scrutiny. Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. For his view to be even considered, he should be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that whatever he is against is actually harmful. And after that, only after that, should the voting whether this finding should influence public policy begin. People should be allowed to harm themselves when they are informed about the consequences. Similarly, society should be allowed to harm itself because not everything has to be a race to the bottom of productivity and strength. Do abortions lower the birth rate and are more populous societies stronger? Even _if_ the answers are yes to both, I don't see why any society should optimize this metric to the extreme. And theological arguments quickly fall apart in the first step of proving harm.
b00ty4breakfast 1y ago
I agree with your sentiment, but declaring that a company shouldn't be free to decide who they can and can't do business with isn't the solution to this problem and I am no friend of the business world. It seems fine now when it's something you don't like but what happens when it's a situation that isn't so agreeable? like being legally oblidged to do business with South Africa during apartheid or working with a chocolate company that (allegedly) used child slave labor to farm it's cocoa??
- aezart 1y ago
  A payment processor should be treated like a utility. They just let the money flow and skim profit off the top without caring who's at either end.
ben_w 1y ago
> Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. The claim isn't "we don't like it", the claim is "this is damaging to society". I don't agree with such things in many cases (and many people disagree with me when I'm the one saying something is damaging to society), but it's important to note the difference or you will always be arguing against something other than their claim. > No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. It's kinda the job of the government to decide such things; but an automatic extension of that is, it's not the job of the payment processors… and I think they should be banned from doing so because it's damaging to society to let them take on this role.
- pstuart 1y ago
  > the claim is "this is damaging to society" There is some truth to that, but if one were to operate at that level then Facebook would be illegal. Porn is a convenient thing to weaponize anger in your constituents (just like babies not being born). It pushes emotional triggers and riles people up and then they're waiting to be told what to hate/attack next.
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    The real debate is which is worse to society, its existence or attempting to ban it. Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea and if anything they have some of the worst gender toxicity.
    - godelski 1y ago
      > Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea Yet, there's a lot of porn there too. A whole lot of voyeur porn too. As well as prostitution, which is also illegal. Making something legal or illegal is just signaling. The real part is how it actually is implemented in practice. And as you imply, things are pretty complex. We really need to be careful about our own tendencies to want things to be simple. It always backfires...
cyanydeez 1y ago
[flagged]
fsckboy 1y ago
>Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. don't like porn? run a for-pay pornsite, bleeding revenue from the other porn sites, which you will spend fighting porn; also, you'll have better targeted customer lists. extremely effective altruism.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
Anger and outrage are our most viral emotions. Given ad-driven social media rewards attention, it also--by proxy--rewards those go generate anger and outrage. This is a market signal and entrepreneurial incentive as potent as any. As a result, you get collections of fuckwits like this one [1] finding the 2% of the internet who will give them money to get upset about an imaginary problem, a problem so imaginary that nobody is on the other side of the issue because the entire issue was made up for clicks. [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/our_team https://www.collectiveshout.org/our_team
throw50928 1y ago
IMO, in addition to, the shaky belief that rape games promote rape in real life to the audience, etc., maybe there is the belief attacking the creators like, "there is a person/group of people we know profit off the fictional depictions of rape/see concept of rape itself as good for cash flow. Because these people went through all the trouble and effort creating, publishing this work focused on rape in gratuitous detail - so its significantly more likely they hold beliefs outside the safe norms society upholds, than someone whose only conception of rape is 'its horrible' and doesn't need to think about implementation, writing graphic scenes, going out of their way to create and market 'a rape simulator', and so on. As punishment for perception of being immoral people their income source needs to be shut down."
Reason077 1y ago
> ”I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship.“ Perhaps we could develop some form of secure digital currency that is not reliant on central authorities such as banks, payment processors, or governments?
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  That was a great theory, but in practice it became an asset/investment; nobody pays with BTC because its value is too volatile. One would expect stablecoins to be more popular but I haven't seen them as valid payment options anywhere except crypto exchanges. That's just me though.
- creer 1y ago
  That is underway, with adult content providers (for example) now generally accepting payment methods that do not rely on credit card companies. All the way to accepting Home Depot gift cards that can be bought for cash. The issue is that for now, and for a long time ahead, all these content providers feel that most of their clients would prefer to use a credit card. So they need all of their content to be acceptable to these people. Which comes with lots and lots of lowest common denominator rules. Even if some people do not use credit cards.
swayvil 1y ago
In the game of politics we split one group away from another and get them to fight. This achieves several effects.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
You know. I used to be all about what you're going for. But I realized that porn to a certain extent is like cocaine. It's possibly one of the drivers for world wide declining population. Tons of dudes satisfying themselves without the urge to go out and do the real thing. There's growing science about this too. I don't like the conservative angle which is to be "proper" or it's against god, but from the scientific side this stuff is bad. Now I also agree that censorship is bad too and on a moral level this stuff doesn't harm anyone morally. I'm still a staunch 90s liberal, but over time I'm starting to realize that there's an evolutionary reason why conservative values exist. Humans weren't designed to live in a world of only fans where every girl who's slightly hot can gain so much power over hundreds of men. Like there are 4th - 10th order effects here that go past morality. I mentioned the population problem right, that's just one example. We have no idea wtf is causing it. But we do know that the population issue correlates with so many changes in society, and it's a big freaking deal. Another thing is rising womens power. I'm all for it. It's moral and right to give women equal rights and equal power, but humanity has never encountered such a scenario. It's always the men that lead the hunt and the family and they were the bread winners for millions of years. Were humans evolved to support such changes? Like if we satisfy every moral imperative in our primitive brains and build a utopia but human biology was never meant for utopia is it right? That's the problem. The population is declining. We don't know why. But we do know everything is different. So I know I got off on a huge tangent here. But i feel porn is one of these things. It's right to keep it open and free, but it's causing unexpected side effects. Most of us were not meant to deal with that level of extreme hedonism.
- jjaksic 1y ago
  I don't know if porn really affects population growth. There are so many other factors that do that to a much greater extent, such as: 1) gender equality and women working, 2) education, 3) contraception, 4) lower child mortality, 5) the fact that 200 years ago kids were an asset (free labor on the farm and support in old age) but today they're just a huge expense, 6) the fact that even a few decades ago child care consumed much less time as kids could be left to play outside, but today you have to supervise them 24/7 at least until they're 12. Etc etc. people don't have kids for a long list of reasons, none of which has to do with men watching so much porn they can't have sex even once. But even if that was true, who's to say that population has to keep growing? There's 8 billion of us, isn't that enough? Housing prices are through the roof and most young people can't even hope to be able to afford a house. Human population has doubled about 4 times in the last 100 years. If it doubles yet again there's going to be 16 billion of us. Do you think the world and humanity can sustain infinite exponential growth? I don't think so. The only reasons to want population growth is because the pension system is a Ponzi scheme, but that's a completely different problem. I also find it interesting that on one hand the argument against porn is, "porn is bad because it encourages X behavior in real life", but then another is "porn is bad because it discourages sex in real life".
ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
Similarly, if you don't like something, you shouldn't have to sell it. Or host it. Or process payments for it.
- creer 1y ago
  > you shouldn't have to sell it [etc] Until you abuse your market power. See Apple store vs adult content, see credit card companies vs an endless list of obsessions.
  - Aerroon 1y ago
    And if you do, your monopoly gets broken apart.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    Sorry no. No amount of "market power" should compel you to engage in behavior you find immoral. Also "credit card companies" are not a monopoly for any reasonable definition of monopoly. There are four major ones. That's like saying Ford, GM, Stellantis, and Tesla are a monopoly.
godelski 1y ago
I agree with you, but I think we need to be a bit more careful about that argument. The problem is actually the slippery slope happened earlier, with advertisers. The slippery slope was advertisers not wanting to advertise on porn sites and adult content. It is the same thing we see with the creation of Algospeak and self-censorship. As the article points out, it is also very hard to accurately classify this information. I mean even on YouTube the other day I got a video in my shorts feed that was flagged for sensitive topic. The video? About a veteran who was wearing a shirt that said "Do not give in to the war within. End veteran suicide." Here's the vid, it still has the content warning[0]. What about this video is sensitive? That it mentions the word "suicide?" (Twice?) There's not even options in the settings and YouTube definitely knows I'm in my 30's.... How do I even say "this was improperly flagged?" We're just letting algorithms shape our culture in a way we clearly don't want. We wouldn't have Algospeak if we wanted it... Sure, covert speech has formed in the past but mostly under duress and the current form allows for a much more rapid iteration and I really don't think that's good for society. It comes with the best intentions, but I guess we all know the old clique, right? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. As much as it sucks to admit, a lot of "evil" is created by "good" people trying to do "good" things (quotes to let you define good and evil however you want) The reason I point out the argument is we can modify "Don't like porn? Don't buy it." can be modified to "Don't like porn? Don't advertise on those sites." But I think payment systems should have a different regulation. Similar to internet, common carrier. I'm actually surprised this isn't already a rule (it has to be, right?). As long as it is legal, they should be compelled to perform the transaction. Anything else seems like it is actually holding your money ransomed. I'll admit I'm biased and I think payments should be private and we should try to make the system so that digital transactions are as similar to cash transactions as possible, but I'm not convinced either party is in favor of that, nor the banks themselves which would like to make money on that information. [0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x6WzOx01Tws https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x6WzOx01Tws
Shekelphile 1y ago
They’re being forced to remove games that are essentially anime CSAM. Payment processors shouldn’t need to be stepping up, but these platforms don’t bother to curate or moderate content so their hands are being forced.
- davikr 1y ago
  Not only that, but also furry content has been targeted in the past in other websites.
  - Shekelphile 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - thunderfork 1y ago
      Elaborate on this?
      - Hyperboreanal 1y ago
        [dead]
    - vunderba 1y ago
      Sounds like somebody drinks from the same crazy well as Greg Abbott. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2025/03/17/516109/gov-greg-abbott-backs-bill-banning-non-human-behavior-in-schools https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2025/0...
JackFr 1y ago
> Don’t like porn? Don’t buy it. Ok. Don’t like porn? Don’t sell it. “CENSORSHIP! PURITAN NAZIS!”
imachine1980_ 1y ago
It's not just porn, it's depictions of rape, from what I’ve read. So I don’t know if it’s really good for people to consume that kind of content. Real-life safe sex involves consent, which is obviously not the objective of this game. I believe this type of material can be genuinely harmful to our brains. Even though I’m against using payment processing restrictions, I do believe we need laws to prohibit this kind of content. There’s data suggesting that it impacts real people's behavior during sex and shapes harmful social expectations.
temptemptemp111 1y ago
[dead]
quantummagic 1y ago
I suspect that a lot of people who object to this censorship, would be perfectly fine with a game being pulled because say it glorified owning slaves, or if gameplay was explicitly anti-homosexual. Then they would see the harms, employ their empathy, and support the censorship. Not everyone, of course, but a lot of the people who are outraged about this article. Seems like everyone is pro-censorship, when they disagree with those being targeted. Most people supported censorship for anti-vaxers during Covid for instance. So in most cases it really just comes down to how many people are anti-porn, rather than any stance on censorship in general.
MangoToupe 1y ago
I wish we didn't have payment processors. But if wishes were fishes there would be no room for water.
swiftcoder 1y ago
> What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content? Porn is just the thin end of the wedge (as was "violence in video games" a generation ago) - porn is something society considers as distasteful, so politicians are less likely to go on record as supporting porn. Once the porn bans go into effect, they'll move onto the next target in the conservative playbook: gay marriage, birth control/abortion access, etc.
NoahZuniga 1y ago
What if said game is a realistic CP simulation?
blensor 1y ago
Would this really help though. Let's assume there is a payment processor where anything goes, the company utilizing it would still be punished by the other payment processors. I don't think Visa/Mastercard would care that you only sell the things they don't want through other payment processors, they still would threaten to cut you off entirely for having the content they don't like
jackdoe 1y ago
I guess you can also ask "don't like gambling, don't gamble". It goes even further. What was wrong with those people poisoning Socrates? For what? Don't like what he says, do not listen to him. You know how in higher dimensional space everything is almost orthogonal? I think people are like that, some like porn, some are afraid of it, some want to be impregnated by aliens, some hate aliens. Through good intentions democracy can be just as tyrannical as any tyrant; a pinch of incompetence and good intentions and it can not be stopped. When should others "save" you? When it is absolutely obvious some people need saving.
- Longhanks 1y ago
  > When should others "save" you? When it is absolutely obvious some people need saving. Who gave anyone the right to judge who needs or needs not to be saved? What if people don’t want to be saved?
  - jhrmnn 1y ago
    I think it comes down to how much society is an entity in its own right vs just a collection of individuals. Proportionaly, saving society may be worth restricting the absolute freedom of individuals to some degree.
constantcrying 1y ago
>No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. Obviously the government should make selling certain things illegal. And I think that many of the games sold their, should be made illegal. What should not happen is payment processors being the ones who decide what is okay to sell. If selling something is legal, payment processors should be forced to make that transaction. >I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship. I do not. I do not want legal financial transactions being dependent on the whims of how "brave" some company is.
lofaszvanitt 1y ago
The explanation is simple: they don't want easy revenue streams for people. You want to earn some side income, go F yourself. If you look around, and want to earn a few dollars, what can you do? Literally nothing. And this keeps continuing.
rayiner 1y ago
> Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that Except we live in a society and what goes into it affects all of us. Why does Germany ban Nazi content? Why do governments have minimum wages?
- tptacek 1y ago
  I believe you oppose the banning of Nazi content?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - hollerith 1y ago
    He is a lawyer in the US and most lawyers in the US oppose the banning of Nazi content, which is why Nazi content is not and has never been unlawful in the US.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    But not because I think people who don’t like nazi content should simply not buy nazi content. It’s because I don’t trust the government to ban any kind of political speech.
    - akerl_ 1y ago
      Why do you trust the government to ban non-political speech?
      - rayiner 1y ago
        I don’t, I just don’t think non-political speech is as important.
        akerl_ 1y ago
        One of the big problems here is that once you start letting the government ban a class of speech, you’re also implicitly letting them classify speech. Their definition of what is or isn’t protected political speech is going to be warped by their capability to ban non-political speech.
lumpysnake 1y ago
These are private companies and you better believe they have a say in what they make available on their own platform. They do not have to host your game that they don’t like and that doesn’t make it censorship.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

bryceacc 1y ago

If you think (insert thing here) is genuinely evil, you might be inclined to rid the world of it. It may even make you seem like a better person (to god, to others in the same camp) because you are "cleansing" or "healing" the world through those efforts. It's self righteous

RankingMember 1y ago

The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day. While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble origin story, the context was that they wanted the freedom to practice a much stricter, restrictive form of religion than that allowed by the Church of England.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dzonga 1y ago
are you saying the puritans were the taliban equivalent of christianity. & want to bring back laws that sex would only be used to 'recreate' not recreation.
- kingkawn 1y ago
  Yes that’s exactly what they were and are today
  - varelse 1y ago
    [dead]
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Well not equivalent, they taught their women to read after all. But let's be real here, they were a bunch of jerks. There's a reason it took no time flat for Rhode Island to exist.
matthewrobertso 1y ago
This is the result of campaigning by an Australian group
teaearlgraycold 1y ago
Quakers also came to the US early on to practice a peaceful an anarchistic form of Christianity.
IncreasePosts 1y ago
This sounds like a just so story. There were all sorts of groups who set up shop in America, and all contributed to its success and influenced the culture. Virginia was the most populous colony during the revolution, did English planter society just disappear and the Puritans made it all the way down to the South? What about the Quakers in Pennsylvania? Dutch society in New York? Poor Scots in Appalachia? And, in any case, this campaign started in Australia. Were there a lot of Puritans there?
huslage 1y ago
The actors in this are Australian, by the way.
gspencley 1y ago
I'm not so sure you can point the finger at the USA for this. I ran an online porn website for almost 20 years. For 15 years it was my primary source of income. I'm in Canada which, compared to the USA is extremely progressive. In 2022, after a decade of doing business with a certain bank as this business, never having hidden anything about what we did, my wife and I received an urgent, signature required, overnighted letter from our bank informing us that they were terminating our accounts and that we had one month until we would no longer have access to any funds. The way this played out was that we had an incoming wire transfer get flagged and they phoned us to ask us questions about the wire. We answered everything on the phone honestly and transparently. We were doing nothing wrong. A few months later we get another phone call from our branch asking us to come in in person, urgently, and do an "extreme due diligence" check. During this process we had to answer an insane amount of questions about our business activities. They saw a credit card transaction from JetBrains, for example, and asked us to explain who JetBrains was and why we were doing business with them etc. A couple of weeks later we were informed about the termination with a brief letter explaining that we fell outside of their "risk appetite." We managed to get an extension on the closure, and for two months we tried in vain to find any banking in Canada that would take us... and we ultimately ended up shutting down a business that represented two decades of our lives. During that time we reached out to industry insiders, some of which we happened to know were in Canada. They all told us that they bank in the USA. One branch manager at a bank we met with was extremely empathetic but obviously couldn't put her own job on the line, and she explained exactly what was going on. The issue is "Know Your Customer" regulations that are coming into effect that are meant to target things like money laundering. These regulations force banks to ask questions that they never really cared about before. This branch manager explained that a local strip club used to say they were a "banquet hall", and everyone at the branch knew exactly what they were but it was "don't ask / don't tell." But once they start digging into these details because the government is forcing them to, then these things get to their compliance departments. And the policies exist because they're afraid of things like human trafficking and other things. And our major banks have foreign investors from all around the world. Including from countries where porn is actually illegal. While you point the finger at puritanism in the USA ... consider that in countries like Iceland, producing porn can land you in jail. Now consider MAJOR investments originating in countries like Saudi Arabia etc. and consider how that might impact your bottom line if they all pull out due to nonsense morality conflicts.
bko 1y ago
I don't think you have to be Puritanical or particularly religious to realize that some content is generally not good for people. I've seen this destroy lives, drive addiction and lead to other forms of destructive behavior. Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing. You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can at least concede it's not entirely arbitrary content like say a sitcom.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  I'll take the hard stance on this. I don't see how Sex is anymore harmful, addicting, or dangerous as any other number of socialties. Including Alcohol, fast food, gambling, and simply getting to into any given hobby (be it video games or playing guitar). A habit I've noticed is that a person vulnerable to being addicted to X is more prone to fall back on Y, Z, etc. even when X is fixed. So I only see "this hurts certain people" as a scapegoat. Stairs probably hurt more people in any given day than many activities, we don't base law purely on harm and potential harm.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    Alcohol and gambling are commonly restricted if not outright banned in various localities though, and most people would consider those and fast food to be harmful. So you seem to be agreeing with GP that while you may not think it should be banned, you find it comparable to things that are widely recognized as "generally not good for people".
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      Porn is also typically restricted. Just as many jurisdictions permit neither public consumption nor intoxication, everywhere I've lived had laws against publicly displaying "obscene" content. The issue with GGP is that in context it appears to be an argument in favor of increasing restrictions (ie in favor of the events that the article is talking about) despite disclaiming that "You don't have to agree that it should be banned". That's analogous to a loaded question. Expressing agreement with the literal wording of GGP seems to also carry an implication of agreement with some rather different things as well.
bloqs 1y ago
the group behind this, collective shout are Aussies
- dandellion 1y ago
  The groups behind are two US companies. Some random group of weirdos from Australia are just a good excuse, at best.
trothamel 1y ago
Collective Shout, which organized this, claims to be an Australian feminist organization. (Admittedly, this may be an act.)
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > laims to be an Australian feminist organization I'm genuinely curious to see how this plays out in the American partisan landscape.
  - dr-detroit 1y ago
    there's a big push to classify fleshlights and dolls as rape because the extreme right won every battle there is to fight they need more battles. porn is next.
- pjc50 1y ago
  They are however influenced by the American discourse soup of lies and talking points, in the same way that the NZ mosque shooter was. Conservatives around the world talk to each other.
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    Also Murdoch's conservative media empire has had a strong influence in both Australia and the US
- anonym29 1y ago
  "Protecting women" is an incoherent excuse for pressuring websites to pull romantic games that feature consensual, loving, respectful homosexual male-male relationships, with no women even present in the game. The real motivations seemingly have nothing to do with protecting women, which appears to simply be a palatable facade for the true intention to suppress all depictions of sexuality, including the depictions that offer good-faith representation of historically marginalized groups.
  - 1y ago
pyuser583 1y ago
No this isn't just American. Most of the world is very anti-porn. The BRICS countries mostly outlaw porn. Even Nordic countries, which are very socially liberal, discourage it (at least production). There's a tendency for social liberals to see their view as the only legitimate one. Sometimes they are right. But this is an area where there is lots of international push back from undeveloped, developing, and even many developed socially liberal countries.
- anonym29 1y ago
  Several of the BRICS (& other "global south" / non-neoliberal / non-western) countries also imprison journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups, and some even have the death penalty for minor cannabis possession. "Everyone else does things this way" isn't a legitimate justification.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    A justification of what, though? It isn't a cohesive argument on it's own but it is important perspective. If a significant fraction of societies have arrived at policies that contradict your worldview I think that ought to give you pause. (Note that I say that as someone who holds far more extreme views about legal freedom of expression than the vast majority of people out there.) That's getting somewhat off topic though. In the context of this thread it's merely the observation that attributing this to "puritans" or "christianity" or "US history" is rather misguided. The US and western Europe are very much the outliers here.
    - anonym29 1y ago
      Are you defending the morality of authoritarian states imprisoning journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups? It's one thing to recognize that it happens, another to recognize the practice as legitimate, virtuous, or even desirable. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of promoting these practices, just asking you to clarify your position.
      - deleted 1y ago
pnw 1y ago
The Collective Shout group pushing for the censorship is Australian, not American. Most people are unaware of Australia's long history of censorship which continues to this day.
- ronsor 1y ago
  Australia was a prison colony, after all.
  - pnw 1y ago
    I had to remind shocked Americans when they saw Australia's COVID response that, although many Australians are descended from prisoners, a fair number are also descendants of the jailers.
reaperducer 1y ago
The Puritanical origins of the US Like slavery, smallpox, and tipping, Puritanism was Europe's gift to the new world.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Also penicillin, trains, and the Haber-Bosch process.
potato3732842 1y ago
A couple of the groups that founded what would become US states were decent. Of course those decent groups got outcompeted by the authoritarian weirdos because live and let lives types and insular communities don't see the need to grab state power.
UltraSane 1y ago
You do know that porn is legal to produce and view in the US and the US produces a LOT of porn? This hardly seems puritanical.
phyzix5761 1y ago
Weren't the Pilgrims, also known as Separatists, being jailed if they didn't attend Church of England services per the Act of Uniformity of 1559? And weren't they jailed without trial if they tried to have their own religious services in private homes?
- unnamed76ri 1y ago
  Shh don’t bring facts in here.
pdonis 1y ago
Exactly. The Puritans didn't leave England because the church there was too intolerant. They left because it wasn't intolerant enough.

kelseyfrog 1y ago

Presumably, the belief of Collective Shout is that there is a causal link between acting out incest, rape, and sexual violence in games and acting on those behaviors in real life. What would you do if you harbored that belief?

evilduck 1y ago
Empirically prove it.
- throwawayoldie 1y ago
  You say that, but history shows that people are much more likely to move based on what _feels_ true to them.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  Making sure I get this straight. You're saying that if you shared that believe, you would go out in search of evidence to prove it? I hate to break the news, but if we read the literature published by members of Collective Shout, they have in fact done this. The evidence they have supports their claims. Let's be clear, the evidence they have is independent of the veracity of the claims, but they have done with you suggested. However, it had the effect of confirming their beliefs. I hate to ask the question again, but if you believed the same thing and felt like you empirically proved it, how would you behave?
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > if we read the literature published by members of Collective Shout, they have in fact done this Granted, I've skimmed, but I'm genuinely not seeing it [1]. The closest is this study [2], which counted how many times thirty-eight women "who self-identified as having experienced unwanted or non-consensual sexual experiences in relationships" and were "recruited via social media," when "given the opportunity to reflect on their experiences of [intimate partner sexual violence], with prompting to speculate about their partner’s motivations or any underlying causes for the violence" mentioned pornography. That's...that's not a study. [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/research https://www.collectiveshout.org/research [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077801220971352?casa_token=jOmcr54dtbwAAAAA%3Ahu8t3VU3rwdlaBhCKVvRdkCydyDXSG6WB7uouMI3xaQyRs6oDzfCMdw1MkbS3xNNVlt8KGkqlSghsg https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10778012209713...

fossgeller 1y ago

Well maybe they are bothered by its sexist content. People all are about free speech when it comes to censorship in media, but not that many talk about how objectification of women is still very common in it. I’m sure that there are dating sims that are just fine, but let’s be honest here, these platforms are filled with much weirder stuff . Some of them even enter the morally grey areas imo.

baobabKoodaa 1y ago
Oh no, weird stuff in games? Or even... morally grey actions in games? How awful!
- fossgeller 1y ago
  Well yes, one could argue that if games like GTA don’t turn people into criminals than these games are also harmless. Imo it’s a bit different in this case, as a more natural instinct (sexuality) is affected. Sure, games can be beneficial for living out fantasies, but how will it affect your view on women if you frequently consume highly sexist content? The bottom line of my point is that I think this type of content is too easily available nowadays, and especially too much of it.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    >Imo it’s a bit different in this case, as a more natural instinct (sexuality) is affected. I personally don't see the difference. Violence is a primal instinct and studies on video games and violence only concluded short term increases in aggression. Why would a similar conclusion with yet another primal instinct not conclude with short term increased arousal? I don't see arousal as inherently dangerous. >how will it affect your view on women if you frequently consume highly sexist content? Do you feel that people just find "sexist content" from some algorithm, or that already sexist people seek out content to conform to their views? I have my criticisms of Steam, but I am glad they are one of the few bastions left that aren't driven by "engagment boosting" algorithms. Just a simple tag system recommending other content with similar tags and good ratings. I agree with the undertone that we need better sex education. Those early years where we don't sell content to 10 year olds should be used to talk about the dangers before sending them off. Too bad such groups also go for an all-abstinence approach.

_trampeltier 1y ago

That is what happens, if we give public functions to private companies. Noboy say you have to use Mastercard.

m463 1y ago

I remember checking out llama when it first came out. (meta's published LLM model) "what is the best sex position?" [blah, blah, ... non-answer] "How do you get a sex change?" [long detailed answer]

isaacdl 1y ago
Well, those are somewhat different types of questions. One is subjective opinion, and the other is a bit more factual/straightforward. I'm also not entirely sure what this has to do with the comment you're replying to.
- m463 1y ago
  any sex questions led to non answers. the point was that content is blocked almost by default nowadays
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    But the LLM gave you a detailed answer on another sex question. I'm a bit confused why that example was used.
    - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
      Not entirely; the one question was sex and interpersonal relationships, the other was medical / scientific.
      - johnnyanmac 1y ago
        So the comparison was indeed of two unlike things, but trying to be displayed as such.
    - MSFT_Edging 1y ago
      Intercourse vs sexuality. Not the same thing.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bongodongobob 1y ago

Don't like porn? Don't sell it in your store, simple as that.

Aurornis 1y ago

When the Steam removals came up on HN, several people linked the list of games pulled. It looked more like they were targeting incest games (which is a genre I didn’t know existed) rather than the generic “porn games” that keeps showing up in headlines. There could be more developments or a different story for Itch.io, but last time this story was circulating it appeared that journalists were avoiding talking about specifics because people were much more sensitive about removing “porn games” in general whereas as “incest games” is a different story.

badgersnake 1y ago
So what? Why does that make any difference?
- shard972 1y ago
  [dead]
simion314 1y ago
Those games are legal, also in some USA states you canmary your cousin so why the fuck don\t this puritans do not go for incest inreal life first then handle virtual stuff.
- broof 1y ago
  One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles.
  - simion314 1y ago
    >One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles. Next you will ban games where you are killing people instead of focusing on real killers? I would prefer we have laws for what is legal and not let religious extremists decide what music we are allowed to listen, what type of books and games should we play, I guess there is no evidence they can bring to ban this content so they push their FUD around. So please either make it illegal or stop focusing on virtual crimes, maybe focus on real crimes or use those money religious people have on helping real people.

ardit33 1y ago

Next is a Superman videogame being blocked because it goes against the 'policies/interests' of a country that manages to lobby a lot here.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
You seem to be sarcastic but there's plenty of countries that have stringent laws on what games are and aren't allowed.
DSingularity 1y ago
Well you know Superman shouldn’t fight against genocidal maniacs and instead should fight for them. Then we wouldn’t have to ban him and infect we can all celebrate him.

o11c 1y ago

There's a lot of dishonesty relating to this. This really isn't about Puritanism, unless you're redefining Puritanism to mean having any morality at all. Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games? Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games? Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games? Do you really want to compel selling access to domestic violence games? [this is the only addition that I wasn't aware of from previous investigations, but I still don't think it's valid to call it a "slippery slope" yet] A lot of customers don't want to be shown such games in the first place (keep in mind that most tag systems are pretty bad at negative filtering, either due to platform limitations or due to not being used in practice). We can argue about whether "it's better to sell pedos fake content rather than real content" etc. (keep in mind that some of these things are actually illegal in many countries even when no real people are involved), but if so we should be explicit that that is our argument, and not falsely claiming this is some attack on sex in general. (Also keep in mind that free games are immune to payment processor decisions.)

MegaButts 1y ago
> Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games? > Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games? > Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games? So ban the things you believe are the problem instead of blanket banning everything.
- o11c 1y ago
  Are they actually banning "everything" though? From what I can see, that's entirely clickbait fraud.
  - SXX 1y ago
    The group behind this censorship attack is not just against porn games. It's also attacked games like Detroit: Become Human. So they want to censor far more than just porn.
    - 1y ago

nlawalker 1y ago

I don't really disagree with you, but to play devil's advocate - when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition in what you see as the best interest of everyone? Is "Don't like X? Don't buy it" as far as we should go with... AI-produced child porn? Rolling coal and other egregious pollution? Online gambling? Abortion? Fentanyl?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
goosedragons 1y ago
Laws.
RenThraysk 1y ago
It's not what, it's how is the problem. Side stepping local country government, and applying pressure to payment processors to enforce your own rules globally should not be able to happen. Even a government should not be able to dictate what other countries do.
- miohtama 1y ago
  The advocate group who do this believe they are exercising the will of God and do not need to mess with things like laws
martin-t 1y ago
If somebody things he knows better, he shouldn't be allowed to push his views on others from his position of power. All public policies should be subject to public scrutiny. Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives. For his view to be even considered, he should be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that whatever he is against is actually harmful. And after that, only after that, should the voting whether this finding should influence public policy begin. People should be allowed to harm themselves when they are informed about the consequences. Similarly, society should be allowed to harm itself because not everything has to be a race to the bottom of productivity and strength. Do abortions lower the birth rate and are more populous societies stronger? Even _if_ the answers are yes to both, I don't see why any society should optimize this metric to the extreme. And theological arguments quickly fall apart in the first step of proving harm.

b00ty4breakfast 1y ago

I agree with your sentiment, but declaring that a company shouldn't be free to decide who they can and can't do business with isn't the solution to this problem and I am no friend of the business world. It seems fine now when it's something you don't like but what happens when it's a situation that isn't so agreeable? like being legally oblidged to do business with South Africa during apartheid or working with a chocolate company that (allegedly) used child slave labor to farm it's cocoa??

aezart 1y ago
A payment processor should be treated like a utility. They just let the money flow and skim profit off the top without caring who's at either end.

ben_w 1y ago

> Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. The claim isn't "we don't like it", the claim is "this is damaging to society". I don't agree with such things in many cases (and many people disagree with me when I'm the one saying something is damaging to society), but it's important to note the difference or you will always be arguing against something other than their claim. > No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. It's kinda the job of the government to decide such things; but an automatic extension of that is, it's not the job of the payment processors… and I think they should be banned from doing so because it's damaging to society to let them take on this role.

pstuart 1y ago
> the claim is "this is damaging to society" There is some truth to that, but if one were to operate at that level then Facebook would be illegal. Porn is a convenient thing to weaponize anger in your constituents (just like babies not being born). It pushes emotional triggers and riles people up and then they're waiting to be told what to hate/attack next.
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  The real debate is which is worse to society, its existence or attempting to ban it. Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea and if anything they have some of the worst gender toxicity.
  - godelski 1y ago
    > Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea Yet, there's a lot of porn there too. A whole lot of voyeur porn too. As well as prostitution, which is also illegal. Making something legal or illegal is just signaling. The real part is how it actually is implemented in practice. And as you imply, things are pretty complex. We really need to be careful about our own tendencies to want things to be simple. It always backfires...

cyanydeez 1y ago

[flagged]

fsckboy 1y ago

>Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. don't like porn? run a for-pay pornsite, bleeding revenue from the other porn sites, which you will spend fighting porn; also, you'll have better targeted customer lists. extremely effective altruism.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

Anger and outrage are our most viral emotions. Given ad-driven social media rewards attention, it also--by proxy--rewards those go generate anger and outrage. This is a market signal and entrepreneurial incentive as potent as any. As a result, you get collections of fuckwits like this one [1] finding the 2% of the internet who will give them money to get upset about an imaginary problem, a problem so imaginary that nobody is on the other side of the issue because the entire issue was made up for clicks. [1] https://www.collectiveshout.org/our_team https://www.collectiveshout.org/our_team

throw50928 1y ago

IMO, in addition to, the shaky belief that rape games promote rape in real life to the audience, etc., maybe there is the belief attacking the creators like, "there is a person/group of people we know profit off the fictional depictions of rape/see concept of rape itself as good for cash flow. Because these people went through all the trouble and effort creating, publishing this work focused on rape in gratuitous detail - so its significantly more likely they hold beliefs outside the safe norms society upholds, than someone whose only conception of rape is 'its horrible' and doesn't need to think about implementation, writing graphic scenes, going out of their way to create and market 'a rape simulator', and so on. As punishment for perception of being immoral people their income source needs to be shut down."

Reason077 1y ago

> ”I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship.“ Perhaps we could develop some form of secure digital currency that is not reliant on central authorities such as banks, payment processors, or governments?

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
That was a great theory, but in practice it became an asset/investment; nobody pays with BTC because its value is too volatile. One would expect stablecoins to be more popular but I haven't seen them as valid payment options anywhere except crypto exchanges. That's just me though.
creer 1y ago
That is underway, with adult content providers (for example) now generally accepting payment methods that do not rely on credit card companies. All the way to accepting Home Depot gift cards that can be bought for cash. The issue is that for now, and for a long time ahead, all these content providers feel that most of their clients would prefer to use a credit card. So they need all of their content to be acceptable to these people. Which comes with lots and lots of lowest common denominator rules. Even if some people do not use credit cards.

swayvil 1y ago

In the game of politics we split one group away from another and get them to fight. This achieves several effects.

ninetyninenine 1y ago

You know. I used to be all about what you're going for. But I realized that porn to a certain extent is like cocaine. It's possibly one of the drivers for world wide declining population. Tons of dudes satisfying themselves without the urge to go out and do the real thing. There's growing science about this too. I don't like the conservative angle which is to be "proper" or it's against god, but from the scientific side this stuff is bad. Now I also agree that censorship is bad too and on a moral level this stuff doesn't harm anyone morally. I'm still a staunch 90s liberal, but over time I'm starting to realize that there's an evolutionary reason why conservative values exist. Humans weren't designed to live in a world of only fans where every girl who's slightly hot can gain so much power over hundreds of men. Like there are 4th - 10th order effects here that go past morality. I mentioned the population problem right, that's just one example. We have no idea wtf is causing it. But we do know that the population issue correlates with so many changes in society, and it's a big freaking deal. Another thing is rising womens power. I'm all for it. It's moral and right to give women equal rights and equal power, but humanity has never encountered such a scenario. It's always the men that lead the hunt and the family and they were the bread winners for millions of years. Were humans evolved to support such changes? Like if we satisfy every moral imperative in our primitive brains and build a utopia but human biology was never meant for utopia is it right? That's the problem. The population is declining. We don't know why. But we do know everything is different. So I know I got off on a huge tangent here. But i feel porn is one of these things. It's right to keep it open and free, but it's causing unexpected side effects. Most of us were not meant to deal with that level of extreme hedonism.

jjaksic 1y ago
I don't know if porn really affects population growth. There are so many other factors that do that to a much greater extent, such as: 1) gender equality and women working, 2) education, 3) contraception, 4) lower child mortality, 5) the fact that 200 years ago kids were an asset (free labor on the farm and support in old age) but today they're just a huge expense, 6) the fact that even a few decades ago child care consumed much less time as kids could be left to play outside, but today you have to supervise them 24/7 at least until they're 12. Etc etc. people don't have kids for a long list of reasons, none of which has to do with men watching so much porn they can't have sex even once. But even if that was true, who's to say that population has to keep growing? There's 8 billion of us, isn't that enough? Housing prices are through the roof and most young people can't even hope to be able to afford a house. Human population has doubled about 4 times in the last 100 years. If it doubles yet again there's going to be 16 billion of us. Do you think the world and humanity can sustain infinite exponential growth? I don't think so. The only reasons to want population growth is because the pension system is a Ponzi scheme, but that's a completely different problem. I also find it interesting that on one hand the argument against porn is, "porn is bad because it encourages X behavior in real life", but then another is "porn is bad because it discourages sex in real life".

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago

Similarly, if you don't like something, you shouldn't have to sell it. Or host it. Or process payments for it.

creer 1y ago
> you shouldn't have to sell it [etc] Until you abuse your market power. See Apple store vs adult content, see credit card companies vs an endless list of obsessions.
- Aerroon 1y ago
  And if you do, your monopoly gets broken apart.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
  Sorry no. No amount of "market power" should compel you to engage in behavior you find immoral. Also "credit card companies" are not a monopoly for any reasonable definition of monopoly. There are four major ones. That's like saying Ford, GM, Stellantis, and Tesla are a monopoly.

godelski 1y ago

I agree with you, but I think we need to be a bit more careful about that argument. The problem is actually the slippery slope happened earlier, with advertisers. The slippery slope was advertisers not wanting to advertise on porn sites and adult content. It is the same thing we see with the creation of Algospeak and self-censorship. As the article points out, it is also very hard to accurately classify this information. I mean even on YouTube the other day I got a video in my shorts feed that was flagged for sensitive topic. The video? About a veteran who was wearing a shirt that said "Do not give in to the war within. End veteran suicide." Here's the vid, it still has the content warning[0]. What about this video is sensitive? That it mentions the word "suicide?" (Twice?) There's not even options in the settings and YouTube definitely knows I'm in my 30's.... How do I even say "this was improperly flagged?" We're just letting algorithms shape our culture in a way we clearly don't want. We wouldn't have Algospeak if we wanted it... Sure, covert speech has formed in the past but mostly under duress and the current form allows for a much more rapid iteration and I really don't think that's good for society. It comes with the best intentions, but I guess we all know the old clique, right? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. As much as it sucks to admit, a lot of "evil" is created by "good" people trying to do "good" things (quotes to let you define good and evil however you want) The reason I point out the argument is we can modify "Don't like porn? Don't buy it." can be modified to "Don't like porn? Don't advertise on those sites." But I think payment systems should have a different regulation. Similar to internet, common carrier. I'm actually surprised this isn't already a rule (it has to be, right?). As long as it is legal, they should be compelled to perform the transaction. Anything else seems like it is actually holding your money ransomed. I'll admit I'm biased and I think payments should be private and we should try to make the system so that digital transactions are as similar to cash transactions as possible, but I'm not convinced either party is in favor of that, nor the banks themselves which would like to make money on that information. [0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x6WzOx01Tws https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x6WzOx01Tws

Shekelphile 1y ago

They’re being forced to remove games that are essentially anime CSAM. Payment processors shouldn’t need to be stepping up, but these platforms don’t bother to curate or moderate content so their hands are being forced.

davikr 1y ago
Not only that, but also furry content has been targeted in the past in other websites.
- Shekelphile 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - thunderfork 1y ago
    Elaborate on this?
    - Hyperboreanal 1y ago
      [dead]
  - vunderba 1y ago
    Sounds like somebody drinks from the same crazy well as Greg Abbott. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2025/03/17/516109/gov-greg-abbott-backs-bill-banning-non-human-behavior-in-schools https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2025/0...

JackFr 1y ago

> Don’t like porn? Don’t buy it. Ok. Don’t like porn? Don’t sell it. “CENSORSHIP! PURITAN NAZIS!”

imachine1980_ 1y ago

It's not just porn, it's depictions of rape, from what I’ve read. So I don’t know if it’s really good for people to consume that kind of content. Real-life safe sex involves consent, which is obviously not the objective of this game. I believe this type of material can be genuinely harmful to our brains. Even though I’m against using payment processing restrictions, I do believe we need laws to prohibit this kind of content. There’s data suggesting that it impacts real people's behavior during sex and shapes harmful social expectations.

temptemptemp111 1y ago

[dead]

quantummagic 1y ago

I suspect that a lot of people who object to this censorship, would be perfectly fine with a game being pulled because say it glorified owning slaves, or if gameplay was explicitly anti-homosexual. Then they would see the harms, employ their empathy, and support the censorship. Not everyone, of course, but a lot of the people who are outraged about this article. Seems like everyone is pro-censorship, when they disagree with those being targeted. Most people supported censorship for anti-vaxers during Covid for instance. So in most cases it really just comes down to how many people are anti-porn, rather than any stance on censorship in general.

MangoToupe 1y ago

I wish we didn't have payment processors. But if wishes were fishes there would be no room for water.

swiftcoder 1y ago

> What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content? Porn is just the thin end of the wedge (as was "violence in video games" a generation ago) - porn is something society considers as distasteful, so politicians are less likely to go on record as supporting porn. Once the porn bans go into effect, they'll move onto the next target in the conservative playbook: gay marriage, birth control/abortion access, etc.

NoahZuniga 1y ago

What if said game is a realistic CP simulation?

blensor 1y ago

Would this really help though. Let's assume there is a payment processor where anything goes, the company utilizing it would still be punished by the other payment processors. I don't think Visa/Mastercard would care that you only sell the things they don't want through other payment processors, they still would threaten to cut you off entirely for having the content they don't like

jackdoe 1y ago

I guess you can also ask "don't like gambling, don't gamble". It goes even further. What was wrong with those people poisoning Socrates? For what? Don't like what he says, do not listen to him. You know how in higher dimensional space everything is almost orthogonal? I think people are like that, some like porn, some are afraid of it, some want to be impregnated by aliens, some hate aliens. Through good intentions democracy can be just as tyrannical as any tyrant; a pinch of incompetence and good intentions and it can not be stopped. When should others "save" you? When it is absolutely obvious some people need saving.

Longhanks 1y ago
> When should others "save" you? When it is absolutely obvious some people need saving. Who gave anyone the right to judge who needs or needs not to be saved? What if people don’t want to be saved?
- jhrmnn 1y ago
  I think it comes down to how much society is an entity in its own right vs just a collection of individuals. Proportionaly, saving society may be worth restricting the absolute freedom of individuals to some degree.

constantcrying 1y ago

>No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. Obviously the government should make selling certain things illegal. And I think that many of the games sold their, should be made illegal. What should not happen is payment processors being the ones who decide what is okay to sell. If selling something is legal, payment processors should be forced to make that transaction. >I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship. I do not. I do not want legal financial transactions being dependent on the whims of how "brave" some company is.

lofaszvanitt 1y ago

The explanation is simple: they don't want easy revenue streams for people. You want to earn some side income, go F yourself. If you look around, and want to earn a few dollars, what can you do? Literally nothing. And this keeps continuing.

rayiner 1y ago

> Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that Except we live in a society and what goes into it affects all of us. Why does Germany ban Nazi content? Why do governments have minimum wages?

tptacek 1y ago
I believe you oppose the banning of Nazi content?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hollerith 1y ago
  He is a lawyer in the US and most lawyers in the US oppose the banning of Nazi content, which is why Nazi content is not and has never been unlawful in the US.
- rayiner 1y ago
  But not because I think people who don’t like nazi content should simply not buy nazi content. It’s because I don’t trust the government to ban any kind of political speech.
  - akerl_ 1y ago
    Why do you trust the government to ban non-political speech?
    - rayiner 1y ago
      I don’t, I just don’t think non-political speech is as important.
      - akerl_ 1y ago
        One of the big problems here is that once you start letting the government ban a class of speech, you’re also implicitly letting them classify speech. Their definition of what is or isn’t protected political speech is going to be warped by their capability to ban non-political speech.

lumpysnake 1y ago

These are private companies and you better believe they have a say in what they make available on their own platform. They do not have to host your game that they don’t like and that doesn’t make it censorship.

deleted 1y ago

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