Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.
Let’s say it like it is: after the world of hundreds of developers is undermined, and the property of thousands of customers is compromised.
Who’s behind this sudden wave of age verification bullshit, Schrödinger’s parents? The ones who shove an iPad in front of their 2 year old and berate school teachers for not being poorly paid babysitters who raise their kids for them? And yet they claim to care SO MUCH about the well being of children that they push these obscene and draconian policies on the rest of us? What a bunch of fucking hypocrites, but that’s typical for conservatives.
Don’t be fooled, that’s not the real reason. Parents that shove iPads in front of their children are not even remotely worried about what their kids are watching online. This is purely about control, has nothing to do with children.
So sick of conservatives forcing their beliefs on others. Filter your own content, use parents controls, don’t ban everything you don’t like because of your arrogant belief in made up morality. Morality is relative and religion does not give your opinions weight.
Yeah but Jesus definitely preached love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and also, ew gay people not in my back yard.
I’m pretty confident on two of those anyway
everything you don’t like
On issues like these, conservatives will discover the magic of actual reasons. It’s only “things you don’t like” when we’re talking about banning hate speech or something.
Keep the pressure on.
Collective Shout got them to change their position and they’re a small group. We are legion, as the kids say
And we’re the ones spending the money
That’s really what I don’t get. Why make it impossible for people to give you money. That doesn’t seem to be the way capitalism is supposed to operate if something is popular then you should allow it.
They’re the ones at risk of losing money if they get sued by reintroducing said content. You’re not going to stop using the payment processors because there’s literally no other option. This is performative.
Sued for what? They aren’t stopping illegal content from being sold. That, as is implied by the word “illegal”, was already not allowed on these stores. They’re stopping legal, but potentially (not my opinion) objectionable, content from being sold. There’s no legal risk for allowing it.
I’m not saying there is illegal content. Read my comment.
I’m saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles. They’d need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.
And it would be an absolutely stupid business decision for them.
I am NOT condoning what they did, nor what they are doing. I am explaining, from their business perspective, why allowing potentially illegal content back on the platform is a non-argument and you cannot convince them otherwise.
I’m saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles.
Again, no. If there were illegal content before then it’s already breaking the rules. If you’re breaking rules once, why would adding more rules change anything?
They’d need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.
What? Yeah, the store moderators have to enforce the rules. I don’t know what this has to do with anything. Illegal or just banned, they have to be removed by the moderators. What difference does it make? This doesn’t make any sense. Adding more rules doesn’t magically remove the content. Moderators still have to do it. If they weren’t doing it for illegal content, why would they do it for only banned but legal content?
The reason they did it is because they were pressured by a weird group who has a lot of influence. It wasn’t because they were worried about illegal content, which is obvious because that’s not the rule they applied. If the rule was “you’re not allowed to sell illegal content” (which is obviously always true) then it’d be fine. Instead they made a rule for not allowing specific types of legal content.
You’re not great at risk assessment, are you?
They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.
And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.
If the expected risk is positive in case 1, they will opt for case 2.
You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? If not, then I’m afraid this conversation is over because you’re not even remotely trying to understand their logic, and you’re just looking for a reason to be mad. Your irrationality makes me nauseous.
They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.
And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.
You’re not getting it. They’re the exact same risk. If it was illegal, it wasn’t allowed before. If you’re breaking the rules, you don’t care. Especially if you were breaking the law and the rule before, you don’t care that there’s a new rule that also applies. This doesn’t change risk at all. It doesn’t make it any more unlikely, and certainly not “literally never happens.”
The opposite could be true, if it were just against the rules but then is also made to be against the law. It might dissuade some people who were skirting the rules to reconsider. If they were breaking the law already, they don’t care that they’re breaking a new rule because they already were breaking the rules. It doesn’t make it any worse for them. It’s the exact same. If they’re discovered, they’re removed from the platform, exactly the same as before.
You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? Once you’re breaking the rules enough to be removed from the platform, why do you care if there are more rules that will remove you from the platform? You’re either stopped or you’re not, and the platform either stops them or it doesn’t. The risk to the payment processors is the same. You trust the moderation or you don’t. They aren’t going to do a better job because the illegal content is doubly not allowed. They’re either stopping content that isn’t allowed or they aren’t.
That’s something we all have to remember. We have to be just as vocal as these idiots or they take over. They are not the majority, they are only the most vocal.
What’s even the argument here? Steam already has parental control options, age gates, and content filters… if you don’t want your kids seeing that shit on steam, then, like, don’t let em?
…meanwhile, let’s just continue shoving blatant gambling down minors’ throats in the form of lootboxes.
This group isn’t interested in protecting children they’re just interested in pushing their own beliefs on everybody else. The easiest way they can do that is to pretend that they’re interested in children. Which I’m sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
It’s a classic right-wing tactic. Because nobody wants to be against a law that protects children.
People like them used to go after books, now games.
https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/aldous-huxley-brave-new-world/
“ All dem queer books are hurtin our kids, makin em all gay and shit! “
Says the man standing in front of his trailer with a deep five o’clock shadow spanning his double chin, a permanently stained wife-beating tank top and a prominent beer gut, who has five scrawny & bruised kids, and a wife that bears an eerie resemblance to himself but can’t quite look anyone in the eye.
They’re still going after books too. Any and all media, speech, any kind of communication, which is free from their clawing grasp.
Oh they’re still going after books.
Which I’m sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
I laughed, then I cried :_(
The argument is control. Religious zealots are all about controlling society and subduing people to follow their rules (that they themselves tend to break all the time)
That’s their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
There’s usually some on-paper benevolent veneer to wrap their hateful bullshit up with.
For example, they hate trans people, but they don’t campaign on that out loud - they justify that hated under the guise of shit like protecting bathrooms.
But this is fucking Steam - access to that bathroom is already under lock and key behind an armed guard. They can’t just pull the “think of the children!” card when the children already have a myriad of protections.
…or maybe they can, considering what just happened. We live in stupid times.
They precisely can and they kinda just did. “Think of the children” is the magic phrase to shut down critical thinking and give you carte blanche to do whatever you want.
Not always. School shootings happen and suddenly crickets on gun control. “Think of the children” only applies to moral outrage, not tangible physical threat prevention. Also applies to school lunches and any other actual tangible thing to ACTUALLY benefit general child welfare.
Sure, I implied moral outrage. It’s not like they actually give a damn about the children.
“think of the children” WRT school ahootings means more police in American schools and arming American teachers.
They are quite literally lying about the content of games like GTA V. They pulled the whole “the goal of the game is killing women” schtick
They want a nanny state to do their parenting for them, cus they are shit parents who spend their time petitioning the government about things they could just fucking unplug.
That’s their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
The same way they always do: “WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!1111”
And the reason sexual things had to be filtered was that they are harmful and skew kids’ perception of healthy sexuality.
Gambling wasn’t considered healthy even where and when marrying a toddler was normal. After all, a traumatized person with unhealthy sexuality does generally understand they are traumatized, a person taught that addiction is normal - not.
“Face backlash” = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.
They don’t care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.
I switched all my master and visa cards to amex, canceled a visa card and the only have my debit as visa now because my credit union ONLY offers visa for debit
Exactly. We need thousands of people calling them non stop disturbing them for hours on end, not just signing petitions.
You mean like exactly what’s been happening over the past few days?
Right, the actual solution is everyone taking their money out of the bank on the same day
Feels like we’re going back to the 90s/00s “Christian parents against video games” moral panic era. But this time, they’re being appeased more heavily.
I despise conservatism. It destroys everything it touches.
It’s another Satanic Panic.
Just as long as they get rid of dungeons and dragons. Everyone knows that’s the real danger in our society.
Pathfinder is clearly the answer
Rockstar paid for part of that as PR stunt
The Mastercard/Visa monopoly (or duopoly) is bad for consumers. It should be broken up.
And hypothetically if it won’t get broken up because the government works for them and not for us, then we can break the monopoly ourselves.
We should hope digital euro breaks this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro
Discover was just acquired by Capital One, so one less viable competitor too.
As long as it is legal CC companies should be barred from dictating what products and services their systems cover.
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Yet 1000 weirdos in Australia will have more sway, curiously.
“The internet has no borders. Women and girls everywhere are impacted by male violence against women and misogyny in general which we believed these games perpetuated,” she said.
Yet the fictional violence against men and boys is A-Ok!
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Somebody should check their PCs and internet history; after all, name a better duo than Conservatives and Projection.
I’d bet real money that the CEO of Collective Shout has CSAM on one or more of their computers.
The bookies wouldn’t even give you numbers on that. You can’t bet on a sure thing.
“[Elon Musk] said he wanted to get his own X payments platform «going soon»”.
Surely that’s going to solve the problem. There’s absolutely no censorship on Twitter. /s
Oh it’ll be interesting to see how he manages to make a worse payment processor than PayPal. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
Elon was fired as CEO of PayPal, so he already has the credentials
When there are enough competing parties, the argument of “I live in country A and I don’t care about B’s special services reading my messages”, where A and B are in a state of adversity, starts working.
By competing parties I mean not just A and B, but a plethora of snakes in that pit.
So - do it Elon. It’s fine.
Didn’t he invest in Dogecoin?
When is the European alternative to these coming?
An alternative to PayPal, called WERO is currently in it’s rollout process in Germany, Belgium and France. In October the next step will be activated, allowing payments in e-commerce. Later down the road, you’ll be able to pay in real shops. Luxembourg and Netherlands are to join in next. More and more banks start to adopt WERO.
I urge everyone to use WERO as much as you can. It’s flying a bit under the radar at the moment and this must be a success. Hopefully more EU members will join soon.
shiiiit I wouldn’t count on that anymore. With the age verification and ID stuff they would honestly at this point probably make it worse.
I used to be an advocate for European alternatives for US based tech companies but now? no way, started self hosting everything. it sucks.
Do you mean digital euro? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro
This would be the only thing that could break visa mastercard duopol. Hopefully 2028
Tired of this story. The fucking prudes need to give up and stop already. Shit
