Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content

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

by panic • 12 months ago

331 318 12 months ago

For those who think this is about just banning adult content, think again.

What's actually happening is any content disliked by certain billionaires is being flagged by payment providers under their influence.

When they see something they disagree with, they'll send an email to the CEO of Visa or MasterCard and action gets taken.

mschuster912• 12 months ago

The problem is, Steam, Itch, Pornhub - they all had ample warnings and complaints about the kind of content they're hosting, but chose to forego introducing moderation in favor of continuing to make profit. Complaints about Pornhub went ignored for years, for example, until enough pressure built up.

And it's a similar same case for Facebook. The EU complained for years about anything from hate speech spread by the general public to outright propaganda campaigns, Facebook did nothing - but complained when the EU finally had enough and introduced the DSA.

itake2• 12 months ago

How would have applying moderation years ago enabled Itch and Steam to sell porn games today?

patchymcnoodles• 12 months ago

I agree only partially with you. Yes some problems were ignored for far too long, but these providers sometimes block stuff that is just adult content. And it is an issue, if a small amount of providers have so much power. Visa and Mastercard more or less have the entire market. Both US american as well, so not even an alternative from other countries.

And with Facebook: I mean yes theoretically it is good that the EU is trying to do something, I'm all up for it. But Facebook is in my opinion worse than it ever was and gets more worse every day.

freehorse• 12 months ago

Pornhub hosted material featuring sex trafficked women for years without taking serious action. Other porn sites were doing the same.

I do not see how a game in steam or itch.io where everything is fictional is anywhere close to that or requiring such moderation. This is a totally different issue, in the same way that a game involving killing others is not the same as an actual video of somebody killing people. Shall we ban books featuring similar themes too?

senectus1• 12 months ago

interesting claim.

I'm not saying I dont believe you, but do you have any form of evidence to back this claim?

aussieguy12344• 12 months ago

https://omny.fm/shows/hot-money/episode-5-the-billionaire-wh...

This particular example is also porn but you can see how the same method could be used for anything else even remotely controversial.

bob1029• 12 months ago

This seems like a compelling use case for cryptocurrencies or other tokenized/indirect value exchange schemes.

Zealotux• 12 months ago

Hopefully this can accelerate the world being free of historical payment providers.

itake2• 12 months ago

Maybe USDC being public makes this a better time. I believe Steam tried to accept bitcoin, but the price fluctuations and slow transactions made it impossible for them to provide the level of service that set.

herbst2• 12 months ago

BTC or any crypto lost way less value (in fact only increased) where 1 USDT/C lost 20-25% of its value for the average European since trump began crashing the US.

Really no reason at all to hold or handle USD compared to nearly anything else right now :)

Applejinx2• 12 months ago

People seem to not mention the 'slow transactions' that often, but suddenly adding all the business formerly transacted with credit card companies by itch.io would probably wreck all of crypto immediately. Too much volume.

aussieguy12344• 12 months ago

Yes, this is a very good example of traditional payments systems failing.

They'll censor any content they disagree with.

Crypto can't be censored so easily.

chii• 12 months ago

using a technological method to try solve a social problem is unlikely to really succeed.

Censorship is a social problem, and needs to be solved with social methods, such as enacting payment neutrality laws like net neutrality laws (hah, as if), or electricity neutrality laws etc.

Using crypto can temporarily bypass it, until it doesn't or you are stigmatized somehow under the law for it.

Jyaif• 12 months ago

On one hand the republican are pushing for puritan values via Visa/Mastercard, on the other hand they are pushing for cryptos which will reduce their control.

[edit: perhaps this pushing for puritan values is actually a 9000 IQ move to promote crypto-backed stores]

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

Crypto is a way for them to avoid the anti-bribery, anti-financial-crimes laws that were passed over the last hundred years. They know most people won't use it ever, but the people doing bribes were already willing to go above and beyond to get what they wanted.

seszett2• 12 months ago

It seems to me as this is a compelling use case for regulation that prevents discrimination by payment processors.

I just looked up a few porn sites and they don't provide Mastercard/Visa payment but they just take the national payment processor of the few (EU) countries I checked.

baobabKoodaa3• 12 months ago

I just looked up a few porn sites and they don't provide Mastercard/Visa payment but they just take the national payment processor of the few (EU) countries I checked.

What does this mean? "national payment processor"?

edflsafoiewq• 12 months ago

How? If CC companies refuse to process any itch payments unless the content they object to is removed from the site, then crypto would have to become itch's sole payment option. That would probably kill the site.

OldfieldFund3• 12 months ago

I think OP assumes widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies, but cryptocurrencies are very impractical for regular use.

oneeyedpigeon3• 12 months ago

Having one payment option is better than none. There are three alternatives:

1. Regulate the payment processors. This would need widespread agreement and some kind of global initiative—possible, but sounds like a LOONG process.

2. Invent an open payment technology that isn't crypto. Probably the most desirable outcome, but another LOONG process.

3. Bow down to the payment processor mafia. Sadly, this is where we exist; I think it's the worst possible option. Imagine what else we may be prevented from buying in future. Cash is becoming harder and harder to spend in the real world. First, they came for our porn; why wouldn't they come for our food, eventually?

dartharva5• 12 months ago

... until cryptocurrencies get banned too for "only being used by deranged criminals"

lioeters• 12 months ago

Over 20K games, book, and other content have been removed with no warning to customers and creators. All because of pressure from Visa and Mastercard, a duopoly propped up by puritans and authoritarians.

msgodel• 12 months ago

Capital one/discover has their own network. So at least in the US it's not a duopoly.

Not that it's much of a help here.

deaddodo• 12 months ago

Many nations have their own domestic card networks that exist from the pre-Visa/MC domination period.

A few major ones that come to mind are Russia, China, and Germany.

dlcarrier2• 12 months ago

It's not the payment processors applying the pressure, it's coming from regulators, through a strategy called jawboning: https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/six-things-about-jawboning

adfasofdjo2• 12 months ago

Do you have any further reports on this ? All the news are just reporting the action by payment processor, not much on who is pressuring them to do so.

Propelloni• 12 months ago

Great post, thank you for bringing it to my attention.

popalchemist2• 12 months ago

And in turn they are ultimately being pressured by Evangelicals.

WHA8m2• 12 months ago

Sailing is already back. Interestingly for very legit reasons. Maybe it's another case of who they say are the common early adopters...

beefnugs• 12 months ago

This should spark gradual movement to crypto or other payment processors. Lazyness wins again i guess

efitz• 12 months ago

Any corporation whose business is financial in nature and focused on facilitating commerce- banks, payment processors, and everything else- should be required to function as a common carrier. They should be allowed to alter prices to adjust for provable differences in risk, for example if transactions involving a particular seller or a particular class of product have a much larger than average dispute rate- but they should not be allowed to deplatform any customer for any reason not directly related to fraudulent or illegal behavior.

zavec• 12 months ago

It reminds me of net neutrality.

betaby3• 12 months ago

Net neutrality exists defacto in US and Canada.

tkel• 12 months ago

For context, the game which led to this mass censorship is mainly about blackmailing/manipulating women into sex

adfasofdjo2• 12 months ago

AFAIK furry games are also banned on Steam.

Krutonium2• 12 months ago

They're not the last time I looked.

berbec• 12 months ago

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2124380/Super_Lesbian_Ani... is still up

yugoslavia4ever• 12 months ago

babies and bathwater spring to mind

0xy2• 12 months ago

Why does that justify censorship? The content is unquestionably legal.

chromehearts• 12 months ago

It's sexual coercion - aka rape.

snvzz6• 12 months ago

How is this even relevant?

Tadpole9181• 12 months ago

For context, these games are sold under a NSFW tag with clear labels. And not tagged are games where you commit acts of assault, theft, murder, and arson against innocent civilians. Those are totally fine, apparently.

superkuh2• 12 months ago

Yes, but it's a game. Unlike, say, Game of Thrones, a live action depiction of such actions (and worse!) with real human bodies. Broadcast to the entire world, a global phenomenon, and no issues with payment providers or morality. And GoT is hardly the only show depicting such topics. Why are less realistic video games a problem then?

sReinwald• 12 months ago

This is a deeply concerning development, though not an entirely surprising one. While I sympathize with itch.io's position - being caught between their creators and their payment processors - the broader implications here are alarming.

Payment processors have effectively become unelected censorship boards with the power to strangle entire categories of legal content by threatening to cut off the economic infrastructure that platforms depend on. The fact that a single advocacy campaign can pressure Visa/Mastercard/PayPal into forcing platforms to remove legal adult content should concern anyone who values free expression online.

The fundamental issue isn't whether you personally approve of adult games or specific content - it's that a handful of payment companies now wield veto power over what legal content can exist in the digital economy. This represents a massive concentration of censorial authority in the hands of unaccountable corporate entities that face no meaningful democratic oversight.

We've seen this pattern repeatedly: PayPal blocking VPN providers over "piracy concerns," Visa suspending payments to adult sites, and now this coordinated pressure campaign. Each time, legal content gets effectively banned not through legislation or courts, but through corporate policy decisions made behind closed doors.

By inserting themselves as moral arbiters for the digital economy and free expression on the internet, these processors are creating a very strong case for being designated as common carriers or being subjected to much stricter public utility regulation. When payment infrastructure becomes as essential as electricity or telephone service for participating in the digital economy, treating these companies as neutral utilities rather than editorial boards becomes not just reasonable but necessary.

__loam• 12 months ago

One of the most concerning parts of this is that these are global companies. Regardless of local laws, these companies still wield enormous power. This is also a sovereignty and self determination issue.

scirob• 12 months ago

I hate to point out that we have completely free payment options (way too free for most) that could prevent all of this based on b***** technology. But then again maybe itch would get blackmailed even harder by the currently leading payment companies if they were to adopt b***** payments. So only with huge customer demand for free payments could they switch.

newswasboring2• 12 months ago

why are you censoring bitcoin?

0dayz2• 12 months ago

Using blockchain would come with other risks.

Such as different middlemen having their own agenda.

makeitdouble5• 12 months ago

completely free payment options

I thought you were going for direct bank to bank operations.

I think these are currently the most practical and promising way to get out of the credit card duopoly's influence. It is more onerous on KYC check, but that sounds like a smaller price than a paid service just not existing at all.

rcxdude• 12 months ago

crypto has well and truly poisoned its own well here, with the sheer number of scams and fraud on the various platforms. It's also hella expensive as a way to take payments, since you usually have 2x exchange fees as well as the network transaction fees on a payment.

coffeebeqn• 12 months ago

If you want a somewhat simple experience you still need to go through the exchanges which could also be coerced into censorship. I guess you can move the coins through multiple wallets but how many people want to jump through those hoops

bryanlarsen3• 12 months ago

UPI in India, Pix in Brazil, Interac in Canada, various iBAN schemes in Europe, WeChat and AliPay in China. Everywhere but the US has good options that aren't the credit card duopoly or the scam / crime filled bitcoin.

timeon• 12 months ago

Or how about actually elected alternative: government regulating these payment providers not to do this? (At least in countries where elections have total cap for donors per party.)

flatline• 12 months ago

Crypto moves the problem from payment providers like Visa to central exchanges like Coinbase. Until you have a completely decentralized ecosystem built around crypto, you run into trouble when offramping to fiat. If I recall, backpage accepted bitcoin when Visa dropped them, but it was way too much hassle to be useful. If you could pay rent and utilities and buy food using some sufficiently decentralized token, crypto may become a viable alternative.

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

They aren't free as in beer, which is part of the problem. (The other major part being that the people who build them are in love with deflation, which makes them extremely hard to use as a currency.)

safety1st• 12 months ago

Hacker News readers should be aware that the Department of Justice has sued Visa for monopolization and other unlawful conduct: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

There was also a recent class action lawsuit by business owners against both Visa and Mastercard accusing them of anti-trust violations, that was settled for $5.5B.

It's not yet clear how seriously the Trump Administration will take the lawsuit against Visa. There is mounting evidence and sentiment that both of these companies are not just self-appointed censors, they're also criminal entities who use their market power to extort and abuse both their customers and partners. Now more than ever it's important to contact whoever represents you in the government and tell them that a settlement won't cut it and you've had enough of criminal enterprises dictating the future of both United States and world society. There simply aren't any other solutions to organized corrupt power at this scale, it's either hand the world over to a tyranny ruled by this growing form of organized corporate crime, or act through the public institutions that we as the People have endorsed to represent us.

ethbr13• 12 months ago

Taking one look at the FCC, Americans should be more worried about this administration’s willingness to leverage any government power into coerced private industry action favorable to them.

‘That DoJ action? Might go away if you just _____.’

perihelions3• 12 months ago

"We've seen this pattern repeatedly: PayPal blocking VPN providers over "piracy concerns," Visa suspending payments to adult sites, and now this coordinated pressure campaign."

And more: before those, there was also Wikileaks[0,1], SciHub[2], and Tor[3]—among other high-profile acts of authoritarian censorship. There's countless others if you search HN—hard to sort them out for the sheer volume.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1969048 ("PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account (nytimes.com)" (2010) — 74 comments)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4808975 ("EU Scolds Visa et al. For Killing WikiLeaks Donations, Initiates Regulation (falkvinge.net)" (2012) — 61 comments)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23645305 ("Blackballed by PayPal, Sci-Hub switches to Bitcoin (coindesk.com)" (2020) — 290 comments)

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27371787 ("PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter (eff.org)") (2021) — 185 comments)

surgical_fire2• 12 months ago

By inserting themselves as moral arbiters for the digital economy and free expression on the internet, these processors are creating a very strong case for being designated as common carriers or being subjected to much stricter public utility regulation.

It's maddening that they are not common carriers at this point. In many ways it is very difficult - if not impossible - to operate in the world nowadays without access to payment infrastructure.

This should also come as a lesson to all the people that base their rationale in "government icky" moronic arguments. Corporations are all too happy to abuse consumers in the lack of proper regulations. While the government should not get blind faith, there are multiple avenues to scrutinize and question the government. Corporations on the other hand can and will fuck over everyone mercilessly without proper regulations.

Dracophoenix• 12 months ago

This should also come as a lesson to all the people that base their rationale in "government icky" moronic arguments. Corporations are all too happy to abuse consumers in the lack of proper regulations. While the government should not get blind faith, there are multiple avenues to scrutinize and question the government. Corporations on the other hand can and will fuck over everyone mercilessly without proper regulations.

Whoever said governments oppose this development? What makes you they're not ones holding the cards?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Suasion#Jawboning

zoklet-enjoyer2• 12 months ago

This is a perfect use case for crypto/stable coins

altairprime3• 12 months ago

If only they weren’t so intent on being untraceable, they could well have served that purpose by now. Sigh.

JohnBooty3• 12 months ago

    By inserting themselves as moral arbiters

While this is effectively what is happening, and I agree with everything you said, I would like to add the primary reason why I've always heard that payment processors don't want to deal with adult content.

The primary reason is because adult content has a very high percentage of disputed charges.

Typically, it's because some person's partner notices some kind of porn on the credit card statement, and the purchaser claims they were "hacked" or something and then disputes the charge. This doesn't necessarily happen a large percentage of the time, but going from e.g. 0.1% disputes (or whatever the industry norm is) to 0.2% really torpedos profit margins.

There is also some skittishness about local laws regarding morality. Credit card payments cross a lot of boundaries and various localities have wildly differing laws about adult content and so the payment processors simply don't want to risk it.

I guess what I'm saying is: the payment processors seem like the symptom of a larger problem, not the root cause.

Source: I've never worked in payment processing, but I used to run an online business with spicy content, and had to navigate this to an extent.

echelon• 12 months ago

This doesn't necessarily happen a large percentage of the time, but going from e.g. 0.1% disputes (or whatever the industry norm is) to 0.2% really torpedos profit margins.

Then you charge an additional fee in exchange for the MCC risk. This is easy.

What we're really seeing is moral policing.

dragonwriter• 12 months ago

The primary reason is because adult content has a very high percentage of disputed charges.

If that was the driving force, the payment processors would be reacting to the businesses on their own initiative from the dispute stats. But that is not what is happening, they are responding to public moral panic campaigns, which indicates that disputes are not the driving force.

resonious3• 12 months ago

I'm very puzzled as to how these "advocacy campaigns" are able to control all of the payment processors like this. That Collective Shout "open letter" must be the tip of the iceberg.

bilbo0s• 12 months ago

They're not.

There's always the other, less visible but more lethal attack front..

the CFO whispering in the board's ear about chargebacks.

I think what we need to get a handle on is guys, or gals, telling their spouses, "Oh I have no idea what that charge is doing on our card!?!?!"

Of course it's going to be disputed. We need some method of attribution that is definitive. So that people can't go around doing that any longer.

Make no mistake, these companies are about money. Morality or no morality, if you take chargebacks reliably back in hand adult content would likely show itself to be more profitable than nearly every other segment of their business.

Would there still be a line? Absolutely. But it would be a line that nearly everyone would be in agreement with, and the line would exclude nowhere near the amount of content it does today.

colpabar• 12 months ago

I think that payment processors want to be able to control everything. I don't think they care about adult content per se, they care about being able to allow/deny anything for any reason. They also don't really care about "hate speech", which is what gets censored when dems are in power. Republicans are in power now, so they're going after adult content. But to me, it seems like they only do it this way because it's easier than doing everything at once. Their real goal, the goal that they will mask with moral concerns about things like hate speech and adult content, is to have full control over who and what can use their payment systems without any restrictions. It seems be be working really well because instead of everyone fighting censorship by payment processors as a whole, half of us choose not to care when it happens to the other half. I really struggle reading these threads because the "it's a private company that can do what they want and if you don't like it build your own" argument is seared into my memory from when this started happening years ago.

CrackerNews2• 12 months ago

This goes back to the origin of cancel culture. Businesses hate risk, and here is a group presenting them with a perceived risk against their bottom line.

phendrenad2• 12 months ago

Yes it's puzzling. And I don't buy the answers to your comment so far. Chargebacks? Wanting to control everything? Those are just silly hand-waving explanations that lack supportive evidence. They sound good to the people who say them, but I want more. I want data. Or at least some "aha!" evidence. Or, at least I can make up my own hand-wavy speculation.

These groups like "Collective Shout" don't seem organic to me. Where do they find members? In churches? I'm pretty clued-in to the going on in various churches, nobody knows anything about Collective Shout. It just materialized out of thin air, with a slick website and loudly claiming responsibility for these bans. "Look at us! We did this! No need to look elsewhere!"

Let me put on my aluminum-foil hat for a minute... Could this all be social engineering by some government agency that wants to ban porn (not outright, but make porn sites go out of business) to increase the birth rate to avoid demographic collapse? Just asking questions here.

imtringued3• 12 months ago

The thing about them being moral arbiters isn't even imagined. They have had plenty of time to figure out a business model that serves these specific markets without cutting them off altogether. Instead, the payment processors are always threatening to cut off all access even to content that does not infringe upon their terms if there is even a single violation by mistake that gets remediated quickly or the payment method is disabled for the high risk content to begin with.

b8• 12 months ago

How did OnlyFans overcome this issue? They were pressured by a payment processor to stop allowing NSFW content, but reverse their decision. How did that pan out?

const_cast2• 12 months ago

I don't know exactly how they did it, but OF was/is unique in that the adult content is their entire business model.

When your company is at risk of being essentially forcefully dissolved, you're gonna be desperate. I was fully expecting them to tell Visa to fuck off and just switch to a different payment processor, because that's more economically viable than complying with Visa.

Maybe they threatened Visa with legal action and Visa felt that it was too risky, lest they lose their entire censorship operation. Just speculation.

robotnikman• 12 months ago

I'm guessing shady back office deals with the executives took place, or at least I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

They previously were banned (or maybe it was threatened to be banned) by the payment processors, then suddenly it went away.

ath3nd• 12 months ago

It's easy: https://simplebeen.com/onlyfans-statistics/ OnlyFans is so big in the US and so widely used in the US (94 million active accounts) which is about 28% of the population (with the caveat that some people might have multiple accounts). It's too big to fail. The American economy will fail and the government needs to bail it and nationalize it as a public goods service. /s

It's either that or shady backroom deals with Visa.

CrackerNews2• 12 months ago

I'm guessing they were willing to accept conditions such as verification of performers and censorship of unwanted adult content. OnlyFans has the scale to not be fatally affected by these costs of operation. They can present themselves as a cleaner alternative to an unregulated website.

creer• 12 months ago

How did that pan out?

OnlyFans has an insane amount of rules about what's allowed or not. And suspends and bans performers left and right for the slightest BS complaint (apparently usually from a competitor to that performer). That's how it panned out.

That must not be comfortable for OF because this is the kind of insanity that will make every performer keep looking for plausible alternate intermediaries so as to ditch OF. OF makes it because they are by far the largest source of traffic for performers.

bdcravens• 12 months ago

This isn't new, payment processors have exercised this kind of control over online content as long as people have been charging for content on the Internet.

ilaksh• 12 months ago

The solution is advanced cryptocurrency. Obviously. Almost no point in writing any comments on this site that use that word unfortunately.

gloosx• 12 months ago

This is a great commentary to think about for the people who believe bitcoin is a useless scam

ndkap2• 12 months ago

What I am surprised about the most is why do these payment processors care about these moral issues this much? They are a profit-making entity and money is money -- the more money you process, the more profit you get. What is the downside for allowing NSFW content be bought using their processor? Are the boards/CEOs of these companies puritans? Aren't they handing more credibility to these alternatives like Bitcoin Lightning or Monero with actions like these?

charcircuit2• 12 months ago

Why not allow JCB / crypto / other payment processors for such material instead of taking them down?

TheDong• 12 months ago

Visa does not allow that. The rules are worded as "If the merchant has _any relation to_ adult content, banned", not "if the merchant accepts visa payment for adult content".

snvzz6• 12 months ago

It depends on the adult content.

Actual porn OK. Onlyfans OK.

But fiction, for some reason, is not.

user857362• 12 months ago

Is it somehow related to this ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44668056

falcor842• 12 months ago

Yes, they mentioned that in TFA

orwin2• 12 months ago

The new code Hayes is exported to the world already, games are just another medium caught.

To be clear: i do think part of the complaint from the collective should be heard (CSAM have no place anywhere, and rape roleplaying should stay in bedrooms), but including incest or any non-violent fetish in the complaint seems weird and seems equating it to rape and child abuse, which it is not (it's a disturbing fetish to me, but _a lot_ of fetishes are disturbing to me, and i don't think anybody should ban them). My issue with it is that it is again a show of force by payment processors and i heavily dislike it.

breakingcups• 12 months ago

I'm curious, why should rape roleplay stay in the bedroom but mass-murder or burtal torture in, say, GTA V is fine?

orwin2• 12 months ago

Thinking about it you're right, it's just a kink. I still think rape or torture as a main storyline is extremely weird, but that's not a reason to ban them unless an informed majority wants to. In any case, it shouldn't be the choice of payment processors.

Jigsy• 12 months ago

CSAM have no place anywhere

The fact that a drawing can be "CSAM" is ridiculous, frankly. Why shouldn't taboo be explored in fiction? (Manga, Visual Novels, etc.)

Krutonium2• 12 months ago

For those of you in the US (I'm Canadian), there is a bill in congress right now that would make it illegal for any financial service provider to directly or indirectly prohibit or inhibit any legal transaction. It's called the Fair Access to Banking Act, H.R.987 in the House, S.401 in the Senate. Call your representatives. Get it passed.

Edit: Oh yeah and feel free to copy, paste, share this around, make people AWARE of this, because nobody is! Of course, change if you're not Canadian, but like... Make it happen.

some_furry2• 12 months ago

I'm seeing mixed things about HR 987 and S 401 online. There are resistbot campaigns claiming that this law will do the exact opposite of what we want.

https://resist.bot/letters/eb93c1f2-0b25-4fb3-b080-5e75f9c5c...

EDIT: I decided to blog about this topic. https://soatok.blog/2025/07/24/against-the-censorship-of-adu...

greyface-3• 12 months ago

Read the legislation for yourself.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/987/...

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401...

I don't see a basis for the assertion by the resistbot letter that it could "force banks to cut off services to" "marginalized communities". It actually appears to do the opposite - banks that cut off services to law-abiding people would lose their access to the Fed lending window.

mkleczek• 12 months ago

Yet another case for Bitcoin: permissionless, censorship resistant, peer-to-peer payment system.

I wonder if (when?) we reach a tipping point when people massively start using it. Censoring porn like this looks like a very strong incentive.

zero0529• 12 months ago

This also happened to steam a few days ago. They even changed their game policy stating that their payment processors determine the content allowed on steam.

Tiberium• 12 months ago

That's true, but at least Steam did not hide NSFW games from search/recommendations (if you had mature content enabled), which Itch.io did without warning. And I assume that NSFW games likely represent a far higher % of revenue/user activity compared to normal games for Itch than for Steam.

doublerabbit• 12 months ago

While this rubs one the wrong way.

Steam has the power to fight if it needed to hold its ground while it adjusts its policy.

With itch, I doubt so. In one swell swoop itch would be in the water; immediately action required.

I am not saying it's the correct way but to save a ship from being sank, credit card stuff are normally merciless...

Jackson__• 12 months ago

Mind you, the exact same situation steam faces right now, itch.io had been facing ~3 months ago. If the current state of itch.io is anything to go by, things are still likely to get worse for steam.

BlueTemplar• 12 months ago

Steam *banned* a smaller fraction of games.

perihelions3• 12 months ago

It's remarkable that these censors are hiding behind "feminism", as a framing to make their censoriousness seem more palatable, or progressive, or enlightened. Anyone familiar with literature (reading–not burning) might know the OG feminists defied laws and criminal arrests to publish obscene books.

Here's Margaret C. Anderson of "The Little Review", fined $100 and fingerprinted for flouting morality laws publishing Joyce's Ulysses in serialized form,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_C._Anderson

(Did you know the US Post Office used to burn books?)

baobabKoodaa3• 12 months ago

Anyone familiar with literature (reading–not burning)

nice one

Lerc2• 12 months ago

I'm not sure of the scale of Collective Shout. It may be little more than one person with an agenda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist

I suspect there is far more church backing behind this organisation than feminist.

wmf5• 12 months ago

There have been multiple waves and competing schools of feminism. OG feminism isn't relevant to what it means today.

perihelions3• 12 months ago

That this wave of modern feminists would arrest the 1920's feminists for moral crimes shows they are indeed very different.

shlip• 12 months ago

It looks like itch.io is partly down ? Is it in relation to this announcement ?

mrkramer2• 12 months ago

Crypto FTW.

johndoh42• 12 months ago

Sadly that ban also hit three of our our games that help victims cope with trauma. :(

Please write to your representative:

Dear [Representative's Name],

I am writing to formally request an investigation into the activities of Collective Shout, an organization whose censorship-driven campaigns have caused measurable harm to artists, survivors, and vulnerable communities. Under the guise of protecting women and children, they have erased trauma narratives, suppressed creative expression, and bullied platforms into enacting broad, opaque bans. Their actions disproportionately affect marginalized voices and bypass democratic discourse in favor of ideological policing. There is growing concern that their influence is rooted more in religious moralism than evidence-based advocacy. I urge your office to examine their funding, methods, and societal impact with urgency and transparency.

Sincerely, [Your Full Name] [Your Address / Constituency]

snvzz6• 12 months ago

While they also deserve some backlash, I would focus on bringing attention to the payment processors.

orlp• 12 months ago

This is useless. You can't stop Collective Shout (their campaign almost surely falls under First Amendment rights), and even if you could, 30 minutes later a new group pops up. Plus your message would fall completely on deaf ears for anyone who agrees with Collective Shout.

Bring attention to the fact that payment processors are acting as active censorship of legal content, rather than neutral infrastructure. Emphasize that if they can censor legal content, anything could be next, including but not limited to political donations of a specific party.

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

Collective Shout is a foreign organization attacking American companies. The First Amendment does not mean you get to speak and advocate in secret, and it only applies to American residents.

raincole2• 12 months ago

Uh, Visa/Mastercard chose to do that. We're talking about payment processors who process trillions of dollars every year. They won't just bend Steam over backwards to make an Australian NGO happy.

It's either that Visa/Mastercard always want to censor porn, or they're pressured by government(s) to do so.

kbelder• 12 months ago

I think it may be that they don't care about porn, but will performatively censor it sometimes in order to forestall actual government legislative action.

Funes-• 12 months ago

If there ever was a case to switch to crypto payments...

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

It really highlights how bad crypto is as a solution to what it claims that it can't be a solution here.

It is impractically slow, the user experience is too high a bar, it lacks meaningful consumer protections and it would not be able to handle the transaction volume. That it hasn't been able to address those problems in the last fifteen years calls the whole enterprise into question.

anon191928• 12 months ago

In early 2000s it was IMPOSIBLE for websites to handle millions of visits, except big ones like google and yahoo.

UX for websites was weak, mobile barely existed, https was not used, online payments were limited to certain websites, fraud was common and anyone with CC number could steal from your card.

Internet was not early and Crypto is now at that level. So think bigger and think about process.

eska4• 12 months ago

Reading the comments it seems to me that people focus on disallowing visa to censor. I think the bigger issue is that nobody can create an alternative payment processor and do business with Steam/Itch, because visa will pressure Steam/Itch. So to me it’s a problem of monopoly not censorship.

qualeed• 12 months ago

it’s a problem of monopoly not censorship.

It is both. The monopoly (or duopoly) is what enables the demands for censorship.

donatj• 12 months ago

Can we disrupt payment processors already?

This is getting really old. We shouldn't be bound by the moral compass of payment processors on what we can use our own money for.

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

Pix did it in Brazil. FedNow could do it, but it would require anyone in government to know how technology works instead of how to collect campaign contributions from the companies they regulate.

pull_my_finger• 12 months ago

Never a bad time to plug GNU Taler[1]

>> GNU Taler is a privacy-preserving payment system. Customers can stay anonymous, but merchants can not hide their income through payments with GNU Taler. This helps to avoid tax evasion and money laundering.

[1] https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

fidelramos5• 12 months ago

That was precisely Bitcoin's goal as stated in its whitepaper [0]

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions. The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.

[0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

BeFlatXIII• 12 months ago

What incentives are there for payment processors to be anything other than utterly amoral money movers?

progbits• 12 months ago

I'm tired of few jerks trying to police everyone and this "toleration of intolerance".

We can fight back. Any legal and nonviolent response against the "collective shout" people is acceptable. Share your ideas.

If you run a platform and see any of them as users get rid of them. Delete their account, wipe their data, ban them. Don't deliver them pizza. Don't accept restaurant reservations in their name. They think they can police others, it goes both ways.

Realistic? At this point, no. But we should normalize this sort of response. Wannabe bullies should be scared of personal consequences.

coryfklein• 12 months ago

When I was young there was a lot of fear that first-person shooter video games were leading to a rampant increase in youth violence.

This concern is virtually unheard of today, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they actually had a slight effect in the opposite direction: some of those youth getting trouble outside are now indoors playing harmless video games.

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

When it turned out video games measurably lower crime people suddenly got really quite about the social consequences of video games.

mvieira382• 12 months ago

Aaaaand this is why we need crypto, and with crypto I mean Monero

raincole2• 12 months ago

The big irony here is that we already have a widely applied age verification mechanism, which is... credit cards. In most countries minors can't apply for credit cards. Therefore in an ideal world, Steam/itch.io/etc should allow players to buy NSFW content if only they pay via credit cards.

But someone we live in an upside down reality where payment processors are the ones forcing stores to remove NSFW content.

roguecoder13• 12 months ago

The Australian and English TERF movements reviving the worst parts of the 1970s "radical feminist" movement has been absolutely corrosive to liberal society. The anti-abortion stance of this group gives the game away: it is about prudishness and control, not the full and equal humanity of women.

We need to realize that these people are not representative: they have been radicalized on MumNet forums the same way the flat earthers got radicalized on YouTube. The problem is when we let a small groups of radicals set global public policy based on who can behave the most outrageously.

lwidvrizokdhai• 12 months ago

I'm so tired of seeing this exact same thing happen to platform after platform. These puritans will never be satisfied.

snvzz6• 12 months ago

Don't get them wrong: It is about the power. They get a kick out of being able to impose upon others.

Forever miserable people who wish to make everyone else miserable as well.

edwardbernays• 12 months ago

Payment processors will refuse to service payments for fictional harm, but will happily help people support a fascist[1]. If we're going to censor things, we should at least censor the actual, out-and-out, self-admitted fascists. Icky games with fictionalized harm do not seem to result in real harm, yet we have a very recent history showing the harm of real-life fascism. What a strange standard!

[1] https://www.givesendgo.com/rift-connor-emergency-fund

rat_a_tat_tat• 12 months ago

[flagged]

kelseyfrog8• 12 months ago

Wait, what? How can someone tell another person what their gender is? Gender is a sense of internal alignment.

It sounds like you're talking about sex. Maybe you're confused?

If someone else can tell you what your gender is, then I could just tell you that your gender is woman and nothing you say could refute that.

tomhow• 12 months ago

We've banned this account. Please don't engage in gender warfare on HN. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for, and is against the guidelines. Further, don't register new accounts just to break the guidelines.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44676655 and marked it off topic.

realaaa• 12 months ago

so if this game is so horrible and indeed promotes rape etc - surely we (this shout collective specifically) can go after the actual creator(s), right?

otherwise indeed it's a lot of extra work & red tape for everyone else because of some ultimate dickheads, better to and bash them directly I'd say

of course still need to have checks and publishing rules etc

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Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content

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