Porn Good! Censorship Bad!

The right to artistic expression, free speech, et. al., is a hard fought one. Yes, I'm talking about porn, and not just porn, but gross, obscene, nasty porn.

If something is legal, consensual, and is a fantasy where no one is harmed, should payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, etc) have the right to weigh in on moral judgments and prevent you from buying it?

Well, a fundamentalist Australian group called Collective Shout successfully got Visa and Mastercard to stop processing payments on games they deemed pornographic and offensive. It started with a game called "No Mercy," a game that engages in taboo topics like incest, sexual assault, and other generally "tasteless" acts.

Anyway, that was only one game removed, there were hundreds removed across Steam and Itch.io, games that Collective Shout and Visa/Mastercard deemed "pornographic."

It has once again opened up the doors of what constitutes valid censorship.

Should a payment processor have the right to stop you from buying something that is consensual and legal to buy where you live?

Even if you hate incest games, furry games, BDSM games, movies, whatever it is in media you find objectionable, do you think these corporations have the right to make your moral judgments for you, while also allowing their payment processing systems to be used by people who have shown themselves to be actually dangerous to others?

For example, you can use a payment processor to buy a gun. You can use a payment processor to send money to Donald Trump, a known sexual predator, pedophile, and fascist. Yet, say if I want to buy an LGBTQ+ game, that is outside the moral boundaries set by Visa and Mastercard?

It's nonsense. It's utter bullshit.

Art needs to be protected, even art I don't like. Especially art I don't like. Allowing corporations to decide whether or not you can consume something they don't like is the same as every fundamentalist Christian saying you can't watch porn because they think it's wrong.

I think if it's legal, consensual, and remains a fantasy, it should be available to you to purchase.

It's one thing to be guarded against some speech. For example, yelling fire in a crowded theater shows credible and real intent for harm, and so is actionable.

Having a game where a person can engage in rough sex, BDSM, and so on? No, that's not actionable as long as they're not telling you to go out and do it. Some people might say that by allowing you to play such a game it's encouraging you to do so, but that has always been a weak argument used by anti-game politicians for years claiming that games cause mass shootings.

Again, even if it's something obscene, disgusting, tasteless, as long as it's not real, as long as it's not something that encourages real life acts, as long as it's legal, and consensual between the parties (in this case the developer and the customer who knowingly visits the site and purchases the content), then it should be allowed.

As a result of this push, Visa and Mastercard are getting their asses handed to them by consumers who are now realizing that the things they like can be rejected because the processor itself doesn't want you to have it. Consumer freedom? Consumer choice? If that matters, then this is something you should investigate.

I say this because many of us know this kind of censorship never stops at sex games, it will extend to violent games, hell even just LGBTQ+ games because in the US being gay or trans is seen as being a sexual pervert by people in our government.

John Waters once said that pornographers have always been at the front lines of free speech. He was right. These are human experiences that will not go away, they'll just be driven underground. Prohibition for this kind of speech does not work.

Oh, and here's the article if you're interested:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertain...med-by-gamer-fury-over-censorship/ar-AA1JrMqk

You open the door to this shit when you engage in the exact same tactics to punish people who refuse to placate the alphabet mafia.

I keep getting anime shit and porno game footage in my porn results like it's a fruit salad of madness, and if someone can get hard to that shit, more power to them.

1. Porn is generally bereft of any artistic merit, but I don't think speech needs to have any particular merit to be protected. Attitudes and opinions can differ and change.

2. The day my financial institution blocks me from spending my own money on a legal product or service, they will cease to be my financial institution.

I've never called for Kevin Sorbo movies and Dennis Prager kids books to be banned.
The other side never holds back though.

Exactly! I understand how someone would feel if it was forced on them, like if you bought a game thinking it was one thing and ended up being another, but even that should just get you a refund and the knowledge to always double check game descriptions before buying. In this case, these games are only accessible if you've enabled adult games, and you have to make the purchase. The developers and Steam followed the rules, they shouldn't be punished for it.

It would be like me walking into a Hustler Hollywood and demanding they stop selling porn videos. It's laughable on the face of it.

There are people who get shit on for what they say and do, but often they get shit on because they're actively promoting the harm of others. Bigots like UA and FF might say that we get what we deserve, but the truth is that a game about two furries fucking does not harm them at all, while game developers and authors that use their funding to enact policies which will discriminate against others is actively harming people.

They likely can't tell the difference because that would require understanding power dynamics, something they completely lack the ability to understand as indicated by their hundreds and even thousands of posts somehow missing the point entirely every time.

I remember when the Piss Christ painting caused a storm of controversy, and people were like "it's in bad taste, it's blasphemous!" and yeah, it was blasphemous, but our country's laws aren't supposed to be governed by religion. No harm was done to anyone. It was a painting, it couldn't hurt anyone. Now if the author had stated the intended message was "you should dunk Christians in a vat of piss," yeah, that could be actionable and would be a different story, but they didn't.

There really is a fine line, for sure, between what is free speech and what is advocating harm for others, but a video game, a novel, a painting, a movie, as long as they're not advocating harm to others, they're just expressions of imagination, fantasy, and should be treated as such, and certainly they shouldn't be censored by the payment processors whose jobs is literally to just take money and transfer it where it's supposed to go between two consensual parties just because they don't like it.

Just like pharmacists who won't issue birth control if it's against their religious beliefs: you are engaging in preventing others from exercising their rights because of your personal beliefs.

Also, everyone knows Xena was better than Hercules.

Is the banned content possibly illegal in Australia? They're a prudish bunch. It was a whole thing a decade ago when Australia more or less banned porn with small breasted women since they might look underage.

https://www.jezebel.com/rumor-australia-bans-porn-with-small-breasted-women-5458674

If the payment providers banned illegal content, that's reasonable. If they offensive yet legal content, it's time to withdraw some cash to purchase torches and pitchforks.

Well, that's the thing, it's not just affecting Australia, Visa and Mastercard have demanded Steam and Itch.io to remove it from their platforms for every country. One small backwards group shouldn't have that kind of power, nor should an international payment processor have the power to ban speech around the world based on its own preferences.

Again, to use the LGBTQ+ community as an example, if it's illegal to say gay in Uganda, that shouldn't allow Visa and Mastercard the right to stop LGBTQ+ games, movies, and novels to be sold in the United States.

A friend of mine who was a very successful talk radio host made an interesting point when Jerry Falwell was suing Larry Flynt. My friend Jon said of Flynt that while he was a complete sleazebag "we need this guy. The magazine is trash, but being able to buy trash like that is how we know that we have freedom of speech."

It's the storefront making the decisions. Not visa or MasterCard.

Exactly right. You can call Larry Flynt a piece of shit, and his magazine a pile of garbage, but it's legal, consensual garbage, and it pushes the envelope that gives the rest of us breathing room when it comes to our freedom to say what's on our mind.

Incorrect. Visa and Mastercard are at fault here. Those payments processors have said "either remove these titles or lose our services," and so Steam and Itch.io have complied. A statement from Itch.io already explained that they had no choice in the matter.

Read that here: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

Visa and Mastercard account for the bulk of purchases made on Steam and Itch.io. Itch is falling back on its other two processors, Stripe and Paypal, to carry the weight until they can conform to the guidelines being demanded by Visa and Mastercard.

Keep in mind that Stripe and Paypal also have Visa and Mastercard as clients, so they might also be at risk here.
This is moral blackmail.

How much power do you want your payment processor to have? Do they have a right to control your legal and consensual choices?

This thread made me think of "Even this one I have where Jesus Christ is jackhammering Mickey Mouse in the doo-doo hole with a lawn dart as Garth Brooks gives birth to something resembling a cheddar cheese log with almonds on Santa Claus's tummy-tum.".

Scrutiny does not equal closing vendor accounts by the card companies.

The storefront is doing what they should have done in the first place. That they're doing it badly isn't the payment companies' fault.

This has nothing to do with net neutrality and everything with a b2b relationship.

If the storefront were giving away the product, it wouldn't be a problem, right?

Card companies aren't allowing payments for cannabis either. Where's your righteous indignation over that?

Nah, did you even read the letter? They repeatedly mentioned that they were under strict and immediate pressure from Visa and Mastercard to remove the content or otherwise lose their services. It's the content itself they want gone. Giving it away wouldn't change anything since it's adult material of which Visa/Mastercard doesn't approve. That Itch.io and Steam are hosting it is the problem for them, and it's been at the behest of a fundamentalist censorship group not even in the United States.

That said, developers can't live off of free giveaways, so what is the point of your statement?

Oh, and if you want, you can go buy Game of Thrones, a show full of murder, blood, violence, incest and rape, from Amazon and Visa/Mastercard will happily process your payment.

Quit being stupid. We have several posters here already who are denser than a neutron star. Don't add to the noise.

"They mentioned."

Until they have had their accounts closed for breach of contract with the payment processors it's just posturing.

Why have you chosen to be dumb today? UA already posted in here. We don't need another one who can't think for shit.

Care to use your brain to refute my statements?

I already posted the response from Itch.io refuting your statements. What are you talking about?

Ok. You're right. Scrutiny by a payment processor of a vendor selling dodgy products shouldn't be allowed.

Dodgy products? Why are you lying now?

I just said they're pushing back on NSFW games but will allow you to buy Game of Thrones right off of Amazon, and that the people behind getting them to move is a fundamentalist censorship group in Australia.

Are you reading this thread while freebasing sidewalk chalk?

You're right again. The woke liberal in me made that leap of judgement.

You mean like when Christian fundamentalists claim they only care about the children when banning LGBTQ+ content?
You should buy a timeshare.

The two aren't equal.

If you think sexual violence and torture are at the same level as LGBTQ content, you're the one with a problem.

He's dumb every day. Do you not recall him raging against Man Afraid Of His Shoes and claiming his cookie shower avatar was directly related to and causing gun violence?

Don't forget shooter's avatar.

You get to make the decision for yourself what you consider acceptable or obscene when it comes to fantasy. You can refrain from buying these games, novels, movies, etc.
What you shouldn't be able to do is stop everyone else from engaging in fantasies of which you don't approve, and if you're a payment processor, you do not get to revoke commerce based on your own moral concerns if you're an international processor. You're more of a utility. It would be like the electric company refusing to power your house because you touch yourself at night.

That's him?! Fuck, I didn't know that. Ah well, maybe other people who read my posts will get what I'm trying to say.

Shoe's av made me feel unsafe.
He was eating a cookie, and my av is a guy made of cookie.
It's racially and culturally and nutritionally insensitive.