Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new censorship rules

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/australian-anti-porn-group-claims-responsibility-for-steams-new-censorship-rules-in-victory-against-porn-sick-brain-rotted-pedo-gamer-fetishists-and-things-only-get-weirder-from-there/

by kradeelav • 1 year ago

178 151 1 year ago

perihelions2• 1 year ago

"This was first reported by Waypoint, which has since pulled its two articles on the subject without explanation. The articles' author, Ana Valens, has alleged that Vice's parent company, Savage Ventures, removed the articles due to concerns over their controversial content rather than any error in the reporting."

"Vice" shut down last year[0]; its brand was recently purchased and is now run by a hedge fund based in Nashville. I think this incident very clearly sums up the difference between what's news journalism, and what's a vapid content farm operated by financebros.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39476074 ("Vice website is shutting down (writing.exchange)"—459 comments)

bitwize3• 1 year ago

Ana Valens, also of "cis woman breeding farm" fame, is really not one who should be complaining about censorship. Far as she's concerned, when they go after her gooner games it's just a matter of the wrong people being censored. No bad tactics, only bad targets, amirite?

reactordev• 1 year ago

One would argue, are there any "news" organizations left? Or are they all operating from a content farm operated by financebros position? Can you name me one news organization that isn't owned by a parent company that has vested interests in specific stories and outcomes?

miltonlost• 1 year ago

ProPublica generally.

i_am_proteus• 1 year ago

Christian Science Monitor (nonprofit run, the religion really is siloed to the "Christian Science Perspective" section and the reporting is good and as independent as it comes)

mvdtnz3• 1 year ago

There are lots of news organisations not owned by parent companies with vested interests. RNZ in New Zealand, ABC in Australia, CBC in Canada and BBC in UK to name just a handful.

larodi• 1 year ago

Wondering the same for a while. And does paying for news provide any guarantees…?

carefulfungi• 1 year ago

https://www.trustworthymedia.org/list-of-independent-media/

ascorbic• 1 year ago

The Guardian is owned by an independent trust: https://www.theguardian.com/about

bitwize3• 1 year ago

Al Jazeera?

drngdds• 1 year ago

404 Media is owned by its reporters

NietzscheanNull• 1 year ago

Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan. Can't recommend it enough.

mardifoufs• 1 year ago

I mean, Vice was more or less founded by the most stereotypical "dudebros" so I'm not sure if that's actually a good example of that

Insanity2• 1 year ago

Man, having “GTA 5” and “No Mercy” as targets in the same conversation is strange. GTA5 is IMO really mild for a game, while I do think No Mercy probably crossed the line.

But I haven’t played a GTA game in a decade so maybe I’m misremembering..

lupusreal3• 1 year ago

GTA was a lot more controversial in the past than it is today. It used to be the subject of moderate to heavy moral panic, since it's a game about committing crimes; stealing cars and running over cops / hookers. Hearing people whine about GTA today feels like a blast from the past.

Insanity2• 1 year ago

Totally fair point, the first one I played was GTA III in the early 2000s, and I definitely remember some of these conversations. Similar to how DOOM and Mortal Kombat had a lot of controversy, but like you, I had assumed that this was mostly in the past.

perihelions2• 1 year ago

There's actually a statue of Hillary Clinton in GTA IV (2008), in commemoration of her many battles against the series.

[0] https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Statue_of_Happiness

veeti• 1 year ago

Kids these days probably never heard of Jack Thompson's crusades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)

iamtedd• 1 year ago

"Today" being 10 years ago. Collective Shout's campaign was in 2015.

ta1243• 1 year ago

GTA5 shows everything wrong with puritan morality. No problem with drugs, guns, shooting innocent people, etc, but have sex with a hooker and the camera pans away. At least under after when you then go and kill them and steal their money.

lupusreal3• 1 year ago

People like to give America shit for anti-porn activism and laws but it really seems like America is just trailing behind the rest of the anglosphere. This case for instance, of Australians imposing their prudish values on American companies that were content to tolerate these naughty games. And those porn ID laws that Texas/etc get flack for are just on the path already trail blazed by the UK.

Mistletoe• 1 year ago

Not surprising, that’s where they came from!

The Puritans were a group of English Protestants who originated in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. They sought to purify the Church of England by removing Catholic practices and beliefs. Driven by their religious convictions and facing persecution, they eventually migrated to North America in the 17th century, establishing colonies in New England.

autoexec• 1 year ago

I remember having to download the Australian version of Fahrenheit because the US release (renamed as Indigo Prophecy) was censored. In my experience the US loves violence while the rest of the world is more likely to censor it, but the US hates sex, alcohol, and anything else that might possibly offend Christians (including religious references and iconography like how Final Fantasy was censored to rename the spell "Holy" and the Tower of Prayers). Germans censor anything nazi related in the same way, banning swastikas like the US removes crosses. Japan seems the least likely to censor artistic works, and when they do it's often for violence.

rstuart4133• 1 year ago

I can say as an Australia our governments have always been very enthusiastic about controlling what we can read, see, and hear. It was true 60 years ago with our movie rating scheme ("not given a rating" was the newspeak for "banned"), 30 years ago with games, and lots of books.

The internet has more or less rendered these efforts moot in recent times. This was highlighted when they tried to impose a rating system on games a couple of decades ago. I asked a school kid about the effect on him. He said it didn't effect him, as he downloaded his games from the internet. It all fell apart about then. Consequently we had the opportunity to see seen the flood of porn would do to society, and noticed nothing of consequence. The flood of conspiracy theories for life hacks on the other hand was completely unanticipated and it's impact badly underestimated.

Collective Shout is an excellent illustration of the effect. It's effectively a one girl band, yet her shouting on the internet about her desire to force her Baptist pro-life maternal morals down everyones throats has now been heard across the world.

speeder• 1 year ago

An interesting article I saw today in Portuguese language, is speculating that the real reason USA is threatening to tariff Brazil in 50% is because the invention of "Pix Parcelado" that is supposed to go online soon, will reduce the popularity of Mastercard and Visa, and thus remove an important tool of censorship from US government hands.

Lula also himself accused the USA of putting tariffs because of credit card companies.

miyuru2• 1 year ago

Ironically, incidents like these further underscore the necessity of independence from Mastercard and Visa, as it seems anyone can influence these companies to serve their own interests.

woodpanel4• 1 year ago

given how the Brazilian state itself is notorious for censorship and turning into a judge-aucracy i guess not really about censorship bit rather who censors?

YurgenJurgensen3• 1 year ago

Really, it kind-of is. Governments are supposed to answer to their electorate, while corporations answer to their shareholders. While I’d prefer no censorship, one of these is less likely to turn into a tyrant than the other.

some_random8• 1 year ago

This is usually how it seems to go, the nations that are first and most interested in home-shoring (nationalizing? I don't recall what the right term here is) are those most interested in performing their own censorship activities.

coliveira• 1 year ago

It's not speculation, Mr. Trump started an investigation against Brazil and one of the items is the Pix system which he considers it's going against US interests.

rf152• 1 year ago

People often don't consider that the US wants to be a super power, which means it needs at least soft power over other countries - which this indeed undermines, albeit slightly.

tmaly• 1 year ago

It seems like we need two things. First, some type of universal standard to id the country of legal residence of a user. Second, some type of way to know what laws a company needs to comply with to operate in a jurisdiction.

There are too many laws across different jurisdictions that makes it really challenging for companies to offer goods and services.

nemomarx• 1 year ago

I'm not sure if this solves it exactly? If MasterCard says they'll cut you off unless you adopt their requirements it doesn't really help to say you'll apply that policy in X country and keep selling the stuff in another country, they could still cut you off unless you do it globally.

Spivak• 1 year ago

Are you sure you want an internet where it's not possible to go escape legal censorship? Because that's what you're proposing with an id standard.

Sharlin3• 1 year ago

The entire point is that this has nothing about complying with laws. It’s an entirely arbitrary, extrajudicial power.

welshwelsh2• 1 year ago

We need exactly the opposite: it should be impossible to determine the location of an Internet user. The fact that a user's IP address generally reveals their country is a massive flaw in the design of the Internet.

The only way to circumvent jurisdiction-specific laws is to make them impossible to enforce.

gs177• 1 year ago

How would that apply to this? It's not about a law. They aren't even demanding better age verification, they want to be able to force arbitrary things to be removed entirely (starting with more objectionable topics, but I'm sure it will expand).

NewsaHackO2• 1 year ago

Is there anything that can be done with the weaponization of the payment system? Cryptocurrency as obviously failed, but is there really no possible recourse when every traditional payment method seemingly colludes to not take the business for whatever reason?

miyuru2• 1 year ago

Cryptocurrency as obviously failed

I don't think cryptocurrency has failed. Yesterday I successfully payed with crypto when the payment with multiple credit cards failed.

NewsaHackO2• 1 year ago

The problem more so is capturing customers on the other end. Every time a site that relies on online payment tries to switch to crypto they say that the majority of potential customers are not willing to use it.

zeld4• 1 year ago

Cryptocurrency is on the way being managed by govt. So it's correct to say cryptocurrency did not fail, but certainly the original libertarian vision behind it is dead.

qingcharles• 1 year ago

The biggest issue, for me, is that it is really annoying and hard work to use. The easiest way to use it is through something like MetaMask, but imagine trying to get grandma to buy something that way. It's tiring, and she'll probably get her wallet drained at some point.

WhyNotHugo2• 1 year ago

Removing the middlemen is the most obvious solution, but they’re also amongst the most powerful players in the world, so it’s going to be challenging (to put it mildly).

See: https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

masklinn• 1 year ago

In some places it’s already more than viable. In Europe it’s baked into the banking system, SCT (SEPA Credit Transfer) lets you move money between any two European accounts with only as much hassle as your bank wants in your way. And EPC QR lets you initiate transfers from QR codes.

The biggest annoyance with it is that uptake is quite variable from country to country.

tonyhart7• 1 year ago

-removing middleman

-also introduce new middleman

I don't think that works honestly, its just move a new money into new player everyone want to take a cut

gs177• 1 year ago

Part of the problem is that you have to make a clean break from these middlemen. Steam can't say "for these games, we only take this form of payment", it's either only sell games Visa and MasterCard say you can, or no one can pay with their credit cards.

xandrius2• 1 year ago

In what way failed? Because it's like saying P2P failed because the big corps don't like it and try their best to stop it, while still existing for quite a while.

dkersten• 1 year ago

In the sense that people don’t really use it to buy things with.

some_random8• 1 year ago

I tend to be extremely critical of government regulation, but I think it really could be a tool here. It's important to preserve the ability of payment processors to block fraudulent purchases and they are legally required to block illegal purchases, but surely there is some way to write "you can't block purchases based on perceived reputational risks" into law, right?

terminalshort• 1 year ago

It would be very easy to write a law that banned payment processors from refusing service without showing financial justification (e.g. high chargeback rate). But why would the government do that? They like to have power to lean on companies to hurt people where they can't do it directly due to the constitution.

jazzyjackson• 1 year ago

I think a 'purchase' ie a bank transfer like Zelle or even a paypal non-refundable 'gift' isn't likely to be blocked, it's just Visa and Mastercard that don't want to deal with offering fraud protection for vendors that see an extremely high number of chargebacks. So if you want to pay, pay by some method that doesn't offer money back in case of fraud.

I've also been prevented from sending money by e-check because my bank was concerned the form of payment was too suspicious, so I ETF'd money from another account instead. I don't think the law can force a 3rd party to facilitate a purchase.

Aerroon• 1 year ago

Why can't governments do it? Have a digital cash. Something that works like cash that the government runs. They already handle physical currency, so why not digital?

Add in some really heavy handed rules that government can't use it to spy and maybe it will work.

Also, these people really should be shamed for their censorship.

bhaskara2• 1 year ago

congrats you just invented CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency)

lrvick9• 1 year ago

Because governments always follow rules and never change them?

Private spending and communication are the beating heart of a healthy democracy and must be run directly by the public and decentralized or aspiring tyrants will co-opt them.

The people will never actually be in charge until we stop letting currency be controlled by governments and corporations.

rs186• 1 year ago

Need some hard evidence of "cryptocurrency failed". Two counterexamples that I can think of, as someone who doesn't even pay close attention to it:

* PornHub has been only taking cryptocurrency for payment for a while, and they seem to be doing ok

* The US just passed GENIUS Act with somewhat bipartisan support -- probably not even imaginable one year ago

cryptonector2• 1 year ago

Not really. You can insist on retail vendors accepting legal tender by law, but these things are online, and online it means every payment can and _will_ be tracked. As with everything you do in public, online payments can and _will_ be used against you (in the labor marketplace, in court, in... everything, to control you and your habits). More people will accept or insist on policing of your and their habits than people who will resist it.

Peroni• 1 year ago

You can insist on retail vendors accepting legal tender by law

That's a common misconception. In most jurisdictions retailers can set their own payment policies.

SoftTalker• 1 year ago

"Legal tender" only applies to debt payments, not to retail transactions. A retailer can refuse cash.

lrvick9• 1 year ago

You can say cryptocurrency is failed, but adult entertainers heavily rely on it because they have been censored by payment processors basically forever.

Censorship has a way of pushing people to learn inconvenient technology, just like how most Chinese citizens know how to use VPNs.

polski-g• 1 year ago

Yes its a very easy problem to solve, would take about 3 states to pass a law mandating "must-process" payments rather than the current framework of "may-process" (under threat of revocation of money transfer authority). Then the only method for them to not process a payment is those prohibited under existing law (ie: terrorist financing).

I could see CA and FL easily passing such a law given the right push from constituents.

ijk• 1 year ago

In the USA, some things that come to mind:

* Legal changes. Web platforms have section 230 protection to host user content. For payment processing this might be something like the proposed Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) that requires banks to offer additional (non-Visa/Mastercard) payment providers. Or a more explicit payment neutrality law the requires credit card companies to be more even-handed in non-financial issues. Or anti-debanking laws that ensure everyone has some minimal access to sending and receiving payments.

* Lawsuit results. Part of the issue with Visa was that they got dragged into lawsuits against sites that were using them to process payments; the lawsuits and appeals around that are still unresolved but if Visa's lack of legal liability goes away then it will be harder for random outside groups to harass them, for good or ill.

* Introducing an independent payment processor. While JCB in Japan has had some similar pressure applied to them, when there were national sovereignty concerns over Visa being able to dictate that American laws and norms should apply to their country Japan had many other payment processors to fall back on. Similarly, PIX in Brazil makes it much harder for non-government private actors to dictate what people can and cannot buy.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

Earlier:

Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625681

Acrobatic_Road• 1 year ago

If only we had some kind of purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

doctorpangloss• 1 year ago

it really depends if you sincerely believe that some no name "anti-porn" group or payment processors have anything to do with any of this whatsoever

Diti• 1 year ago

How do you get that electronic cash in the first place without going through a financial institution?

Possibly by trading with someone who already has electronic cash, I guess – but how do I know I’m not laundering the other person’s money, and/or financing terrorism or CSAM with my fiat money?

welshwelsh2• 1 year ago

Ideally your employer would support paying your salary using electronic cash. Or you can offer goods and services in exchange for electronic cash.

ranguna• 1 year ago

If only there was a peer to peer electronic cash system that was instant and you didn't have to pay for fees for each transaction.

Jokes and cryptocurrencies aside. The digital euro is being built and will be deployed in the coming years, enabling offline digital money transfers. I'll have to see it to belive it.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 1 year ago

If only we had some kind of purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments

Unfortunately, all such systems are quickly co-opted for the purpose of speculative price schemery. Bitcoin will soon reach a point of no-return, when the smallest fractional has an exchange rate so high that it will be impossible to purchase small goods at all (except in bulk), though in reality that point was reached many years ago. The entire concept of cryptocurrencies might actually be irrevocably poisoned, because even a new system would have to deal with the public perception baggage of the last decade's many Ponzi-type scams and various joke/meme coins. If only Satoshi had been a social genius instead of a technical genius.

woodpanel4• 1 year ago

All these porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists so desperate to get their hands on rape-my-little-sister incest games they’re now exchanging clues on how to find them so that they don’t all die overnight," Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist tweeted on July 18th.

Which begs the question: Is it true, that there are such games? And how would one defend its availability to the public? Is w#nking off to such content considered free speech?

ycombinete• 1 year ago

You can type “wanking” on this website. This isn’t a special space for children.

simion3142• 1 year ago

Which begs the question: Is it true, that there are such games? And how would one defend its availability to the public? Is w#nking off to such content considered free speech?

We are discussing blocking of legal content by the payment companies. If they do not like this games or GTA or metal music they should make laws.

But they are concerned by virtual incest while in USA cousin marriage is still legal in many states.

If i believe in this stupidity that music and games are harmful then I would use the big money to do some studies to prove this and then make laws, not force my ideology by abusing the payment monopoly this companies have to push my stupidity to the entire fucking world.

Sharlin3• 1 year ago

The US is actually an outlier in how taboo it considers first-cousin sexual relations. They’re certainly eyebrow-raising these days, but not considered incestuous in most of Europe or other parts of the world (with China and parts of India being two admittedly big exceptions).

whatshisface• 1 year ago

One of the reasons that credit card companies have an incentive to keep this stuff off people's statements is that they sell your credit card histories on the data market, and would not want you to have a strong reason to want to stop them.

freedomben4• 1 year ago

Hey that's a pretty interesting thought actually. I hadn't considered that, but "follow the incentives and assume rationality" is generally (in my experience) the best way to try and understand why people do what they do. This theory definitely makes a lot of sense from that lens.

arprocter• 1 year ago

I just checked and my statement says 'Steam', not what specific game was purchased

chaosbolt• 1 year ago

And this is really bad, like I forgot the number of times I give in to get that pack of candy near the register at a shop then after a couple days exactly as the pack is empty I get shown a commercial of the same brand of the same pack/size etc.

thaumasiotes2• 1 year ago

Where are you? In the United States, there are displays of candy at every cash register, but they're individual servings that you're expected to eat in full immediately after leaving the store. A big bag with several days' worth of candy would have to come from the candy aisle.

And... are you really being served internet ads for candy?

some_random8• 1 year ago

That's an interesting effect but I really don't think that's a significant driver here. It really seems to me like they're just being threatened by activists, journalists, and activist investors.

chimeracoder3• 1 year ago

That's an interesting effect but I really don't think that's a significant driver here. It really seems to me like they're just being threatened by activists, journalists, and activist investors.

Right-wing groups like Exodus Cry and Morality in Media (the groups behind the shutdown of Xtube, and the all-but-shutdown of Pornhub[0], as well as the short-lived ban of pornography on OnlyFans) are definitely the driving force behind these bans, but fundamentally the card networks are ambivalent at best when it comes to anything that could be remotely considered pornographic.

[0] Pornhub still operates, but they removed all "non-verified" content, so it mostly serves as an marketing outlet for studios and OnlyFans creators, and all of the older content that was never verified was removed entirely.

dlivingston3• 1 year ago

@grok is this true?

just kidding. this is the first i've heard of that, though.

i don't think it totally makes sense. your card transaction will still say "STEAMGAMES.COM 7264823" or similar, regardless of the content purchased. on top of that, all sorts of shady porn & dating websites that you would NOT want leaked use the credit card companies.

lrvick9• 1 year ago

Data enrichment brokers cross index purchase times with other data from legal factory installed spyware found in cash registers, analytics tools in proprietary software you already have on your computer, etc etc.

Every time you buy an over the counter medication at the pharmacy with a credit card, the data brokers know by combining information sources, and sell it to insurance companies.

mvdtnz3• 1 year ago

Nonsense. The title of the game you purchased on Steam does not end up on your statement.

jakupovic• 1 year ago

Without reading anything I feel empowered to say: "If you don't want to see something don't look at it"

kbelder• 1 year ago

At least you're practicing what you preach.

freedomben4• 1 year ago

This is likely far from over: Collective Shout is no doubt feeling emboldened by a second public success in its efforts to police content on Steam specifically. The games I saw removed from Steam in this wave all featured risible content and suspect quality, but Collective Shout has a broader anti-pornography, even anti-expression remit that it has demonstrated in the past.

Yes indeed, a huge success like this will give them a big boost in motivation and funding for many, many years to come. IMHO we need to regulate away the credit card processing companies ability to discriminate like this, and while we're at it we should stop letting them heavily tax the entire economy

jact4• 1 year ago

Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing? Pornography and obscenity should not be protected speech. It’s violence against human dignity akin to hate speech.

YurgenJurgensen3• 1 year ago

You think that a payment processor having arbitrary power to shut down any business they want anywhere in the world for any reason is a good thing because this time you agree with the reason?

Book burners don’t have any morals, they just want to burn books, and they’ll come for yours sooner or later.

jact4• 1 year ago

They don’t have arbitrary power - power is never exercised unilaterally. I can’t imagine they would succeed for very long at say, shutting down all the grocery stores in the world. They wouldn’t even dare try from the hell they would have to pay.

And the payment processors aren’t “book burners.” They’re acting to restrict an unsavory market that potentially hurts their business. They have no agenda or incentive to promote censorship as such.

some_random8• 1 year ago

I am absolutely sick and tired of people using the word violence willy nilly when discussing things they don't like. "Violence against human dignity" is not real, that is a nonsensical concept. You are not being stabbed in the human dignity. No one's human dignity is being blown to pieces. You are more than welcome to argue that pornography causes psychological damage, but calling it violence and lumping it in with hate speech is not compelling in the slightest.

jact4• 1 year ago

We certainly sanction hate speech because of the psychological and physical damage it causes to its victims. Pornography is harmful to everyone involved, from producer to consumer. In the case of video games that don’t depict real people this is attenuated somewhat, but not in the way that counts. By consuming or producing pornography, you are blowing your own human dignity to bits.

If you would prefer, I’d say it’s an “affront” to human dignity.

My opinion is that sexuality is something that shouldn’t be commodified in any way, shape, or form. When we package it and promote it as a commodity or for entertainment, that practice as such is harmful. There’s simply no such thing as “healthy” pornography because the very preconditions for pornography to come into existence are rooted in an unhealthy and disordered understanding of human sexuality. I think MacKinnon and Dworkin were absolutely right on this front.

I’m far more afraid of the world we currently live in, where we treat sex/sexuality as something that exists for entertainment value and can be commodified — than I am of this form of censorship. At least our overlords are making the ethical call here.

northhnbesthn• 1 year ago

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s violent and some pornography is good for most people. It’s not going to kill or murder or whatever people.

But what’s been happening lately with onlyfans and other things is a recipe for a disaster in my mind. We’ve made it hard for younger generations, made paths to success much less atrainable and instead have enabled black markets while the economy suffers because of it. I imagine we’re stuck with a deranged and broken society of people moonlighting to make ends meet by doing soft porno in far greater numbers than before. And yes of course that’s what strip clubs are for but that was way less of an issue than this.

const_cast• 1 year ago

It’s violence against human dignity

You can't just call things violence. We need to stop doing this. If nobody is getting physically harmed, it's not violence.

And no, your stupid bullshit about harming one's soul doesn't count. I mean leg chopped off type of thing. Then, you can call it violent.

Otherwise, you're just dishonest and manipulative.

j-bos• 1 year ago

How does these types of Australian anti-vice groups have so much global sway, and yet Australia leads the world in gambling addiction and accessibility? Presumably they'd be interested in both vices, but seem to only wield power over one. *edited for clarity of question

jimbob45• 1 year ago

They don't. Valve got their profit from the incest/ageplay/noncon crowd and now they want to revert to their family-friendly image with that money drying up. This is just a convenient excuse to do so.

Jensson• 1 year ago

Valve was forced by credit card processors to do this, its not Valve that is trying to keep a family friendly image here, if they could they would keep those games they said so themselves.

bmn__• 1 year ago

Collective Shout is no doubt feeling emboldened by a second public success in its efforts to police content

O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from these turbulent prigs?

Razengan• 12 months ago

Let's try a social experiment:

Create an app/website called FakeMoney. Put a big ass disclaimer up front saying that it's not real money, and you can't buy anything with it, but let people buy FakeMoney with in-app purchases. Pretend it's a game.

The app just shows a number and lets you send some of it to other FakeMoney accounts.

That's it.

If there were "endpoints", people who gave you "real" cash in exchange for FakeMoney, could something like that eventually replace "real" money?