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Mastercard and Visa face backlash after hundreds of adult games removed from online stores Steam and Itch.io (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.

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[+] 155 points 1 year ago (17 children)
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  • [–] 71 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    This group isn't interested in protecting children they're just interested in pushing their own beliefs on everybody else. The easiest way they can do that is to pretend that they're interested in children. Which I'm sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.

    It's a classic right-wing tactic. Because nobody wants to be against a law that protects children.

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  • [–] [S] 22 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    People like them used to go after books, now games.

    https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/aldous-huxley-brave-new-world/

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    “ All dem queer books are hurtin our kids, makin em all gay and shit! “

    Says the man standing in front of his trailer with a deep five o’clock shadow spanning his double chin, a permanently stained wife-beating tank top and a prominent beer gut, who has five scrawny & bruised kids, and a wife that bears an eerie resemblance to himself but can’t quite look anyone in the eye.

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  • [–] 94 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    The argument is control. Religious zealots are all about controlling society and subduing people to follow their rules (that they themselves tend to break all the time)

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  • [+] 19 points 1 year ago (8 children)
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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    They precisely can and they kinda just did. "Think of the children" is the magic phrase to shut down critical thinking and give you carte blanche to do whatever you want.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Not always. School shootings happen and suddenly crickets on gun control. "Think of the children" only applies to moral outrage, not tangible physical threat prevention. Also applies to school lunches and any other actual tangible thing to ACTUALLY benefit general child welfare.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    They want a nanny state to do their parenting for them, cus they are shit parents who spend their time petitioning the government about things they could just fucking unplug.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    Bingo. They're just projecting their failures as inadequate parents because they didn't realize how hard child rearing would be after knocking up their high school sweetheart and buying a white picket fence. It's always the same case.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    And the reason sexual things had to be filtered was that they are harmful and skew kids' perception of healthy sexuality.

    Gambling wasn't considered healthy even where and when marrying a toddler was normal. After all, a traumatized person with unhealthy sexuality does generally understand they are traumatized, a person taught that addiction is normal - not.

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    • [+] 136 points 1 year ago (9 children)
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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    And there's way fewer Christians nowadays

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    But more fascists

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It's amazing how they have a book that tells them to love everybody and somehow they've taken that, and turned it into oppress everybody.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ugh... This shit again....

    The fucking Bible is FULL OF FUCKING HATE. Hate for women, hate for blacks, hate for gays, hate for the "other".

    I'm really sick of people trotting out two lines from that book of fairytales and doing a pikachu face "how could people read this and be evil?!?"

    Easily, because the Bible is filled with vile shit. Because it's made up bullshit that let's you argue every side of every point because it's a amalgam of garbage written by idiots with the occasional line of wisdom sprinkled in.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Kind of like how we love watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons, but would generally prefer to lightly forget how those cartoons contained frequent racist caricatures towards indians, island natives, black people, etc.

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    [–] 127 points 1 year ago* (13 children)

    While Collective Shout solely targeted games it said violated policies held by payment platforms, Itch.io's move to temporarily remove all NSFW content resulted in games with LGBTQ+ themes being removed.

    One petition signer who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community said they were concerned that banning sexual-based games would be the start of cracking down on LGBTQ+ content.

    There it is.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    if the LGBTQ+ games were not sexual in nature (why does it not say?), then that is quite damning and I approve of this conspiracy theory.

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago

    It's not all that much of a conspiracy theory as those pushing this line at the payment processoers openly advocate that since LGBTQ+ references sex by way of sexuality and gender, then that is sexual content, and is therefore inappropriate for children. This, of course, completely ignores heterosexuality and cisgender because they consider queer people existing to be harmful to children. And trying to get through to them about how important age-appropriate sexual education is in combating child abuse is an exercise in frustration.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    How can you know a game is LGBTQ+ if they don't talk about sex/gender? They look like normal humans to me, which differ in sexual preferences only? Example: How can you say this guy is gay without knowing his sexual preferences?

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  • [+] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    In some jurisdictions, something being LGBTQ+ is inherently sexual. Places like Florida have a very psychotic view of what makes something sexual, and bans media for containing LGBTQ+ themes.

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    • [+] 119 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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    • [–] 247 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Keep the pressure on.

    Collective Shout got them to change their position and they're a small group. We are legion, as the kids say

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  • [–] 112 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    And we're the ones spending the money

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago

    That's really what I don't get. Why make it impossible for people to give you money. That doesn't seem to be the way capitalism is supposed to operate if something is popular then you should allow it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    They're the ones at risk of losing money if they get sued by reintroducing said content. You're not going to stop using the payment processors because there's literally no other option. This is performative.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Sued for what? They aren't stopping illegal content from being sold. That, as is implied by the word "illegal", was already not allowed on these stores. They're stopping legal, but potentially (not my opinion) objectionable, content from being sold. There's no legal risk for allowing it.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I'm not saying there is illegal content. Read my comment.

    I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles. They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.

    And it would be an absolutely stupid business decision for them.

    I am NOT condoning what they did, nor what they are doing. I am explaining, from their business perspective, why allowing potentially illegal content back on the platform is a non-argument and you cannot convince them otherwise.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles.

    Again, no. If there were illegal content before then it's already breaking the rules. If you're breaking rules once, why would adding more rules change anything?

    They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.

    What? Yeah, the store moderators have to enforce the rules. I don't know what this has to do with anything. Illegal or just banned, they have to be removed by the moderators. What difference does it make? This doesn't make any sense. Adding more rules doesn't magically remove the content. Moderators still have to do it. If they weren't doing it for illegal content, why would they do it for only banned but legal content?

    The reason they did it is because they were pressured by a weird group who has a lot of influence. It wasn't because they were worried about illegal content, which is obvious because that's not the rule they applied. If the rule was "you're not allowed to sell illegal content" (which is obviously always true) then it'd be fine. Instead they made a rule for not allowing specific types of legal content.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You're not great at risk assessment, are you?

    They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.

    And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.

    If the expected risk is positive in case 1, they will opt for case 2.

    You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? If not, then I'm afraid this conversation is over because you're not even remotely trying to understand their logic, and you're just looking for a reason to be mad. Your irrationality makes me nauseous.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.

    And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.

    You're not getting it. They're the exact same risk. If it was illegal, it wasn't allowed before. If you're breaking the rules, you don't care. Especially if you were breaking the law and the rule before, you don't care that there's a new rule that also applies. This doesn't change risk at all. It doesn't make it any more unlikely, and certainly not "literally never happens."

    The opposite could be true, if it were just against the rules but then is also made to be against the law. It might dissuade some people who were skirting the rules to reconsider. If they were breaking the law already, they don't care that they're breaking a new rule because they already were breaking the rules. It doesn't make it any worse for them. It's the exact same. If they're discovered, they're removed from the platform, exactly the same as before.

    You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? Once you're breaking the rules enough to be removed from the platform, why do you care if there are more rules that will remove you from the platform? You're either stopped or you're not, and the platform either stops them or it doesn't. The risk to the payment processors is the same. You trust the moderation or you don't. They aren't going to do a better job because the illegal content is doubly not allowed. They're either stopping content that isn't allowed or they aren't.

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    • [+] 76 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Don't be fooled, that's not the real reason. Parents that shove iPads in front of their children are not even remotely worried about what their kids are watching online. This is purely about control, has nothing to do with children.

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    • [–] 55 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The Mastercard/Visa monopoly (or duopoly) is bad for consumers. It should be broken up.

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    • [–] 35 points 1 year ago

    Fuck Collective Shout, or anyone spreading censorship!

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    [–] 113 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Somebody should check their PCs and internet history; after all, name a better duo than Conservatives and Projection.

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I’d bet real money that the CEO of Collective Shout has CSAM on one or more of their computers.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I would put ten dollars on it.

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    • [–] 29 points 1 year ago

    As long as it is legal CC companies should be barred from dictating what products and services their systems cover.

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    [–] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    When is the European alternative to these coming?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    shiiiit I wouldn't count on that anymore. With the age verification and ID stuff they would honestly at this point probably make it worse.

    I used to be an advocate for European alternatives for US based tech companies but now? no way, started self hosting everything. it sucks.

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    • [–] 26 points 1 year ago

    Tired of this story. The fucking prudes need to give up and stop already. Shit

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    [–] 23 points 1 year ago

    Yet 1000 weirdos in Australia will have more sway, curiously.

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    [–] 64 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    "[Elon Musk] said he wanted to get his own X payments platform «going soon»".

    Surely that's going to solve the problem. There's absolutely no censorship on Twitter. /s

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    When there are enough competing parties, the argument of "I live in country A and I don't care about B's special services reading my messages", where A and B are in a state of adversity, starts working.

    By competing parties I mean not just A and B, but a plethora of snakes in that pit.

    So - do it Elon. It's fine.

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