Anyone know if this is true or not?
Americans fucking with the rest of us again? Why am I not surprised.
There’s so many good people in that country, I hope they can take down their evil fascist government and restore decency before we have to cut ties entirely to mitigate the damage they’re trying to do.
Our alliance with them is currently dying a death by a thousand cuts. Keep this up and eventually it’ll be over, sadly.
More fascists than people willing to stand up to them in the US. They’re a lost cause: unless they’re able to topple their orange overlord and his cronies the rest of the world should write them off as a loss and stop dealing with them
American here:
I’d appreciate help from the rest of the world.
Please embargo us. We need our economy to be in ruins next November, with Trump and his goons as the culprits. Heck - if you can fuck our economy by January, we may even be able to primary some current Republicans so thet Trump is fucked by the midterms no matter which party wins.
I mean, I kind of guessed this way back when Collective Shout pushed their action.
I actually had a comment removed here on Lemmy when I brought up how this was “US politics/elections affecting your life as gamers”, because the mods insisted it was purely an Australian action, and my comment was off-topic. But we live in a global online world. There’s no way that US politics wouldn’t have a huge effect on this type of censorship.
There’s no way that US politics wouldn’t have a huge effect on this type of censorship.
I’ve been called a fearmonger also for trying to tell apathetic gamers who “hate politics” that if they don’t get involved they’re going to start losing their own goddamn games.
I have linked the “Conservapedia” articles on video games all over reddit until they banned me. I have tried to tell people that voting for Trump or supporting his ideals even distantly isn’t going to “take the woke out of your games” that it will actually crush your gaming entirely, because… and I can’t stress this enough, Conservatives HATE GAMING. Not the online chuds and 4channers who hate women, they’re barely even conservatives… they’re fodder for the online fights. But the old-guard and middle-class conservatives who get marching orders from churches and grifters, the ones who have all the actual money on the right. They want to see an end to “distractions” and fiction and fantasy and everything that isn’t some kind of sanitized, un-nuanced devotion to Dear Leader and his United States of White Jesus.
Fiction has been an enemy of power since writing began, and games are just another kind of fiction that lets people stretch their imagination. This is why it’s dangerous, this is why they want to see it ended.
Fiction has been an enemy of power since writing began
x for doubt
Since there are downvotes, what are the earliest fictional texts and what did they do in regard of power?
Gilgamesh literally becomes king. He changes the power paradigm to put himself on top and thats the oldest text we have.
What came first, kings or the stories about kings?
I think kings came first, and the story supported their power.
Completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Even if, why shouldn’t something doubtful be pointed out?
But in this discussion it’s relevant. That White Jesus, do we believe that it is facts? Power is using fiction to create a following first. Then those followers prevent an opposition from forming.
Now why are stories about sex told? There seem to be many reasons but one could be to encourage people to have sex. So the opposition tries to make people experience reality with other people while Conservatives try to keep them in their fictional, isolated world.
In other words, fiction is not only an enemy but also a friend of power.
Your title is misleading & false. The article is technically correct, but clunky.
Consider the title, Steam’s Content Removal Could Be A Wider Consequence Of Project 2025. The article misspells Russell’s name frequently. “Part of Vought and Project 2025’s plans are to remove Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)”. So the Steam content removal…is a consequence. Who is dishing out the consequences?
Louis Rossmann will tell you, it’s Collective Shout. Collective Shout has no relation to Russell Vought…or even America. It’s a ragtag group of 1067 Australian fuckheads that complained to Mastercard, Visa who then put pressure on Steam. And yes. This was enabled thanks to Russell Vought & removal of Section 230 of the CDA.
Russell Vought isn’t a good guy by any means, but this specifically was done by Collective Shout’s 1067 Aussies bitching to American credit card companies & American businesses, threatening them & trying to dictate what they can sell to Americans. It’s…truly infuriating. I don’t go to their mom’s place of work & smack the dick out of her mouth, I don’t write them emails & tell them how to run Australia. So kindly return the favor, don’t fuck with the US. Like what the hell.
The thing that’s been bothering me is, since when did a local, “ragtag group” of activists have this much influence on the actions of massive corporations? Bigger, more powerful groups have tried and failed to make changes like this over and over again. Why does collective shout have so much pull? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
This is quite literally the crux of the post: Who is actually making these decisions? Because there is, in fact, a zero percent chance that any number of Australian wokescolds would have leverage to force MASTERCARD AND VISA, the two global monopoly payment processors to change their practices just because the australians dont agree with the content of games.
This is a top down decision coming from the owners of visa. Any attempt to backpedal this into the hands of some activist group is the most disrespectful patronizing I’ve seen in my entire life. I’m glad you and others are calling this shit out for the farce that it is.
You mean to tell me the most successful activist movement in the last 50 years has been a single week protest lobbied at the most powerful capitalist institutions in the world, and the payment processors were bent over backwards for it? As if thats definitely not a giant, flaming red flag in itself?? It feels like the most obvious scapegoating of all time: a faceless Australian group nobody ever heard of before suddenly wrenched the arm of an economic lynchpin? No.
Visa and Mastercard are doing this because this is what they want to do. No amount of protest would achieve this outcome save the literal socialist revolution at their doorstep. I dont care what any report says, this is top down. Visa is not exposed to any risk by any protest, it is laughable to suggest otherwise.
With that out of the way, we can discuss the real matters of import: why are payment processors taking on the role of decency enforcement in global markets? What are their goals, who is making these decisions, and why is any government allowing these processors to dictate commerce within their borders unilaterally? Really and truly I dont even care about the games. I want names and faces of the people in charge of visa and Mastercard who are making these decisions, and I want them brought into a court room to clearly explain to everyone in the world what their exact reasoning is for caving to a historically insignificant protest. Stop killing games has been going simultaneously to this and, with millions of signatures, the response has been slander from the companies targeted. This collective shout bs is an absolute sham.
Not entirely surprising if true.
Project 2025 goal is to spread their backwards ideology across the globe. They want to see the world burn.
They think being cruel to minorities and women will make their lives better. Cause they’re idiots. Or naive. Or hateful. Probably all of those, but that’s speculation.
these people have been planning on this for lot longer than a year. christians have been trying to ban video games for decades. the only reason this group hasn’t come after more games is because they know they don’t yet have enough politicians behind them to manage it.
Christians are evil
I don’t want to come off as pedantic, but what we’re dealing with in the US is a very strange and successful breed of “Christian Nationalism.”
Essentially, it’s a belief that ultra-conservative Christianity is the only legitimate religion and that the USA is a Christian nation.
It probably comes as no surprise that these people heavily influenced the Confederacy, is strongly white-supremecist, anti-vice, etc, and has been an anathema in this country since before the states actually formed.
Christians themselves are… A problem, but not the problem. It’s these Christian nationalists. They’re loud. They want you to think all Christians believe what they do too. They also tend to drown out opposing Christian speakers by being louder than them too.
It’s one of the reasons why MLK Jr was hated so much by Hoover, by the south, etc. He was a Christian pastor, and stood against everything they did.
It’s important that we don’t group Christians in with Christian Nationalists. It’s very difficult but necessary.
All religions are evil.
Right on man. Fuckin’ Buddhists. Probably don’t even use Linux.
I’m all in for banning pornographic content but if their intentions is anything else than that then I am all against it.
FYI: I have no idea what the hell is going on, I don’t follow the news, I just randomly opened lemmy then stumbled upon this post, I didn’t read the whole article, just a paragraph or 2.
Very shocking to me that a conservative would barge in with a strong conservative opinion but not know what’s going on and having barely tried to find out.
This is sarcasm, right? Surely you jest.
yes but the kernel of truth is that is a bit shocking that they were self aware enough to admit not having the information, that’s better than most conservatives
I’m all in for banning pornographic content
Fuck off. Just don’t consume it, idiot.
If you are worried about your kids getting exposed to it, be a better parent.
Or better yet, don’t have kids.
I’m all in for banning pornographic content
The issue isn’t so much that they’re banning pornographic content, it’s the fact that there is no possible definition of “pornographic” that people can agree on, and every attempt at trying to do this in the past has always been simply an attempt by lawmakers to legislate what you can and can’t enjoy - IE: state approved media that doesn’t go against power. We had many court cases about this in the US, they always have ended siding against those trying to censor what people can and can’t look at.
“Porn” is like physics. You can call almost anything porn from certain vantage points, so an open-ended policy that allows those in control to decide what’s porn or not allows them to control what you think in a very real way.
Calling it now: What we currently know as “Project 2025” will reveal itself to be the largest conspiracy of this millenium. The push for internet ID verification “to protect the kids” in UK, US, Canada, EU, Australia is 100% a collective effort. Fuck this timeline, we will not comply!
A conspiracy implies they made an attempt to hide it.
I’ve been showing people this shit on social media and reddit for years now and nobody cared. I was called a fearmonger and hyped up “shrill” leftist, stirring up controversy over unrealistic possibilities, etc. etc.
Fuck all ya’ll, I know some of you are out there reading all this, some of the same head-buried-in-the-sand lazy fuckers who tried to dismiss real warnings about real things because you didn’t want to be bothered to get involved or change your vote.
I know this is not going to be well received here, but we as a society do need to do something to prevent children from being able to access pornography. We are just now getting research showing the detrimental effects of social media and internet pornography on developing children’s brains. There hasn’t been concrete evidence until recently, and now we know. Things do have to change.
However, this needs to be done with as little information as possible collected and distributed. Zero-knowledge proofs should be used to establish that a person is above a certain age without telling the site what their age actually is. This can be done, however I do imagine they are going to skip past all of that and just go to collecting all the information possible.
we as a society do need to do something to prevent children from being able to access pornography
Yes, it’s called “parenting”
This. Times 1000.
Kids aren’t born with internet-connected devices in their hands. Adults give devices to them and then walk out of the room.
Would you let the average internet poster or YouTuber babysit your kid? Because that’s literally what you’re doing.
I grew up in the '80s and '90s. My mom did her best to pay attention to the shows/movies I was watching, the books I was reading, the music I was listening to. And up until I was about 13, it was all very tightly controlled. It’s still possible to have that kind of oversight, but it’s more work than a lot of parents are willing to do.
I live outside the US now, and most of my elementary-school students have parents who very tightly control their screen time and actively monitor their usage. The kids have sports training, dance classes, and other activities that get them out in the world. It’s very, very different from the kids I used to teach in the US.
Why do we regulate alcohol and cigarettes? Why dont parent’s just parent their kids? How would the kid even bave the money to buy them in the first place? To be clear, when these restrictions were being put in place, people absolutely had the exact same arguments you are making right now. The onus is on the parents.
Even kids with parents that have reasonable restrictions are easily able to access internet pornography because internet devices are everywhere. Internet devices are easier to access than cigarettes and alcohol, and can do just as much damage to their development. Why wouldn’t the government also control access to confirm someone’s age.
Please do not respond to me about giving out your ID if you do not acknowledge my comment on use zero knowledge proof’s to verify you’re over an age.
Why do we regulate alcohol and cigarettes? Why dont parent’s just parent their kids? How would the kid even bave the money to buy them in the first place? To be clear, when these restrictions were being put in place, people absolutely had the exact same arguments you are making right now. The onus is on the parents.
And so now no kid can’t access alcohol or cigarettes, right? Right?? Aaaaah, yes they can…
Even kids with parents that have reasonable restrictions are easily able to access internet pornography because internet devices are everywhere. Internet devices are easier to access than cigarettes and alcohol, and can do just as much damage to their development. Why wouldn’t the government also control access to confirm someone’s age.
It’s going to have exactly the same efficiency: none. Kids educated enough to know they shouldn’t seek it won’t. The others will definitely find a way to get it. We will never hear about it after. There will be no report, stats, anything. How much stats have you seen on the efficiency of “anti-terrorists” laws?
Please do not respond to me about giving out your ID if you do not acknowledge my comment on use zero knowledge proof’s to verify you’re over an age.
I don’t acknowledge vaporware.
“Child’s protection”, “anti-terrorist”, “against pedophile” so many emotionally triggering words so that we slowly accept more and more control. Had this been proposed 10 years ago, people would have screamed this is “soviet-style”. Nowadays, it’s just one more small step.
I don’t give it another 10 years before you accept webcams in your house with IA monitoring you with complete guaranteed privacy as the IA is only to report cases of harm on children by their caretakers. It will just take a bit more push and a big case of child abuse on the news. We do watch people’s behavior outside the house, right? Why not inside? How many more kids are you ready to sacrifice in the name of privacy??
It’s going to have exactly the same efficiency: none
It’s objectively wrong to say the regulations had no efficiency. They absolutely made it more difficult gain access to. Kids should not be a single google search away from accessing hardcore porn. Will they be able to access it still? Of course. But they’ll likely be older, and learn to be more tech savvy to get around the block.
“Child’s protection”, “anti-terrorist”, “against pedophile” so many emotionally triggering words so that we slowly accept more and more control.
I do not want to be associated with right wing Conservatives because I kind of agree on a single topic. The only part I mentioned was child development, which research has shown to have a negative impact (just like we did with cigarettes and alcohol). The hardcore Conservatives seem to want to take it away from everyone, adults included, but I don’t give a shit what adults do.
I don’t acknowledge vaporware.
I am not asking you to. I am saying that it should be implemented this way. That’s it. I am advocating for secure and private age restriction on internet pornography witb true zero trust implementation. The more people that advocate for it, the less likely it will be vaporware. Research is already being conducted on this exact thing, it absolutely can happen. If it’s going to happen at all, this is how it needs to.
But they’ll likely be older, and learn to be more tech savvy to get around the block.
The school my kid attens provide Chromebooks, with a tight control of course.
That’s why 11y old had to learn from one of their classmates how to bypass the control. Thanks to tech protection they were safe from accidentally finding porn (did that ever happen to anyone in real life??) for at least one week.
The only part I mentioned was child development, which research has shown to have a negative impact (just like we did with cigarettes and alcohol).
We all agree. Yet I don’t understand why you so much want to defend a mechanism that is already failing its stated purpose. In case you missed it: it is a miserable total failure. It just increased VPN usage. That, and the massive data collection. Period. Nothing else achieved.
So now I guess it’s going to be ok to control VPN.
That’s going to fail, by the way. Then I guess you must ban Tor at ISP level. Completely block it, for the sake of the children.
Then, then, then…
Then children are still exposed to porn, but we’re working on it! Meanwhile, would you come to the station explain why you visited that website and posted that nasty anonymous comment about the PM last wednesday night?
Fuck that. I was raised in a rural area. My only potential sex partners for my first 20 years of life was my family. Without being able to use dial-up to access hentai manga and VNs, my sexuality would have completely withered on the vine. Many of my years of youth were sexless, and by the time I had some agency, my body wasn’t up to the task of enjoying sex for more than several minutes at a time.
Puritans have no place in dictating who should have porn, because they cannot account for the circumstances or nature of a person’s sexual existence. People should be allowed to explore and enjoy sex, and if they don’t like it, then they don’t have to infringe on other people’s ability to partake.
Porn should be normalized.
I am not religious, and religion should stay far the fuck away from government and laws.
However, if there is conclusive research on the negative impacts of watching internet pornography during developmental years, why should that be allowed? Once someone is an adult, they can do whatever the fuck they want with internet porn. But we stopped letting kids drink alcohol and smoking cigarettes because of the negative health impacts that were far worse when consumed prematurely.
I explained my circumstances, and you ignored them. You have demonstrated why conservative values are evil, as they would have prevented me from finding myself as a person. My emotions were stunted by living in rural isolation, and only started to grow after being exposed to VNs and porn.
Not all people have YOUR privilege of having friends, platonic or otherwise. What you trying to steal from my childhood, is a better future for someone you don’t know. Your values exist expressly to benefit those who live by narrow-minded sexuality, and have a community of likeminded people. This sucks, because you are advocating that people outside of your ingroup shouldn’t live full lives as humans.
Not all people have YOUR privilege of having friends, platonic or otherwise. What you trying to steal from my childhood, is a better future for someone you don’t know.
Are you advocating for replacing social interactions with internet porn due to rural conditions? Basically all of human history has had a very limited number of people they can interact with, and that only changed very recently.
My emotions were stunted by living in rural isolation
Research has shown that not socializing during development harms their emotional and social growth. There are people there you could have socialized with, but you didn’t have to because the internet provided an escape.
I explained my circumstances, and you ignored them. You have demonstrated why conservative values are evil
I am not conservative. I am not religious. I am literally only talking about research, which is neither a religious not conservative thing to do. Even if someone had anecdotal experience as to why alcohol helped them get through their childhood, that does not mean we should allow children to have alcohol. Likewise, it does not matter if it benefited you (which I am skeptical of to begin with) if research shows it to be harmful to kids and teens.
You ignored my life experience. Again. I had no access to people beyond my own family. No friends, let alone people to have sex with. You would have to walk many miles to find other people, most of whom were at least three decades older than me. Plus, my parents DIDN’T have friends nor social lives.
I don’t give a damn about your “research”, because it is clearly intended to ruin the lives of people. People discover their sexuality through media and other humans, the former often allowing them to identify what kinds of folks are compatible with them. It could be the camaraderie of furries, perhaps girls liking girls and finding their partner. The key thing, is that in our formative years, our sexuality is either discovered or destroyed. Your position exists to stifle the humanity each of us have.
You are welcome to ignore your own sexuality. All I ask is for you to not repress children from figuring out what makes them happy, because that dictates whether they possess a guiding light for the rest of their lives.
I don’t give a damn about your “research”, because it is clearly intended to ruin the lives of people.
I don’t think you understand how research works.
No friends, let alone people to have sex with. You would have to walk many miles to find other people, most of whom were at least three decades older than me. Plus, my parents DIDN’T have friends nor social lives.
You didn’t go to school? You didn’t interact with people your age? Could your lack of friends not be partially caused by your dependency on the internet
No one is saying that kids should be able to access pornography. People are saying that it shouldn’t be the states job to raise your children for you.
Effectively blocking pornography for everyone in the country unless you dox yourself to shady websites is not the answer. The answer is developing the tools and simplifying processes required to stop children accessing these things on the device and local network level and putting those tools in the hands of parents. Doing this is almost certainly orders of magnitude cheaper than trying to police the internet
The Great Firewall of Britain is a frankly stupid concept.
People are saying that it shouldn’t be the states job to raise your children for you.
This logic does not hold up in most other cases. We stopped selling alcohol and cigarettes unless you dox yourself to shady gas stations and stores. Parents should be able to stop their kids from being able to buy that shit, why should the stores have to do more work to enforce it? You’re seriously going to inconvenience all the adults that can legally buy it just to prevent kids from being able to buy it? Why can’t we keep our cigarette vending machines? Surely it’s cheaper just to have parents control their kids, rather than manage every single store in the country.
The internet is different, and it’s currently the wild west. Because it’s different, it’s also possible to prove your age without doxing yourself (like I mentioned with zero-knowledge proof). It is possible to prove you are over an age without telling anyone anything about yourself. Unlike being required to give your drivers license/ID card to buy alcohol or cigarettes which gives all of your information to every person you hand it to.
Not all parents are going to have the know-how to lock down a child’s internet access. They may need to use 3rd party tools, many of which would cost money. Does it really make more sense to have parents try to secure every place a kid may access internet pornography rather than securing it at the source? Again, if done correctly, it can be done privately and securely. I am not advocating that we give our ID to every sketchy internet site. I am advocating for a widespread secure and standardized solution. That makes more sense than to put all of the onus on the parents.
The internet is different, and it’s currently the wild west.
As opposed to real world where I could buy alcohol without any problem at 15–16 and was offered cigarettes at the same age despite both being forbidden in my country? If kids wants something bad enough, they’ll get it. The stronger the ban, the higher the interest it creates for teens.
Again, if done correctly, it can be done privately and securely.
The only thing you could try is parental control on their devices. Be aware they will seek other devices outside, from their friends, etc. UK has seen an explosion of VPNs use since implementation of their control: it’s miserably failing already.
Or is it? Many adults went through the ID confirmation process…
Education: that works! Mindless coercion never works. But the advocate of these solutions know that very well. The kids were never their target.
We stopped selling alcohol and cigarettes unless you dox yourself to shady gas stations and stores.
Both of which famously keep databases of everyone’s IDs, and require transmitting your ID over who-knows-what network to who-knows-where.
Oh, wait, no they don’t.
Again, if done correctly, it can be done privately and securely. I am not advocating that we give our ID to every sketchy internet site. I am advocating for a widespread secure and standardized solution.
Right, and such a solution will ultimately just require everyone to trust the fact that it’s been “done privately and securely”
Both of which famously keep databases of everyone’s IDs, and require transmitting your ID over who-knows-what network to who-knows-where.
Scanning ID’s into a database is a thing. It’s not everywhere, but I have seen places do it. Usually Hospital’s and Casinos
Right, and such a solution will ultimately just require everyone to trust the fact that it’s been “done privately and securely”
No, that is not true. It is possible to set it up with zero trust, so we do not have to trust them. It will be setup properly in the first place. It’s like the fact that Bitwarden can be open source and yet people can’t just decrypt vaults despite everyone having access to the code. Zero-knowledge proofs can be done without requiring us to trust anyone. That is what I have been saying, but it keeps seeming to be skipped over. There would be an initial proof with a government identification (which basically everyone already has) and from there the system could be setup in a way that you can prove you are over the age without them knowing literally anything about you. It is possible to prove you are over 18 without them even know your age (other than it is greater than or equal to 18)
Removed by mod
Can anyone ELI5 this issue for me? At first i thought they were going after those weird upskirt and borderline anime cp games. Are they going after every 18+ game now?
They were always going to go after every 18+ game and then every queer game under the guise that it’s corrupting to youth. The fact that you’re confused about that is part of their plan.
