Get the latest tech news

The Anti-Porn Crusade That Censored Steam and Itch.io Started 30 Years Ago


Keywords and tags have never been a useful metric for distilling nuance. Pushing for regulations based on them is repeating a 30-year history of porn panic online.

Collective Shout, an organization “for anyone concerned about the increasing pornification of culture,” based its claim that Steam and Itch.io host “hundreds of rape and incest games” on user-generated tags, and the organizations that co-signed Collective Shout's open letter to payment processors did not respond to 404 Media’s questions about whether they tried to verify its accusations against the game platforms before signing on their support. Collective Shout's July 11 letter urged Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Japan Credit Bureau, Paysafe, and Discover to "cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games." Become a paid member for unlimited ad-free access to articles, bonus podcast content, and more.

Get the Android app

Or read this on r/technology

Read more on:

Photo of Steam

Steam

Photo of years

years

Photo of anti-porn crusade

anti-porn crusade

Related news:

News photo

Nvidia H20 GPUs reportedly caught up in U.S. Commerce Department's worst export license backlog in 30 years — billions of dollars worth of GPUs and other products in limbo due to staffing cuts, communication issues

News photo

Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

News photo

AWS accused of a ‘digital execution’ after it deleted 10 years of users' data without warning — software engineer details “complete digital annihilation” at the hands of AWS admins, claims false excuses given for account deletion