There is also a petition from the ACLU, regarding removing policies related to sex work in general. I encourage you to sign both if you can! Some context for why this is coming up now, today...
My reason for posting this in ~lgbt is because these censorship policies are impacting the queer community. There's the hypothetical slippery slope of them someday deeming all content with LGBTQ+ content as NSFW or inappropriate, but it's already doing damage. Itch.io hosts a variety of queer content including games and ebooks, and now many queer creators have lost their main source of income. One of the creators quoted in the article called itch "the last refuge for authors of offbeat queer stories, until now."
Currently a conservative Christian Australian group called Collective Shout seems to be the primary driver behind this policy change, and there are reports they made around 1,000 calls to Visa and Mastercard to get this policy pushed through. So along with these two petitions, there are now calls for people to start calling, emailing, and flooding their social media to pressure them to reverse this policy. There are even people suggesting that Americans call their state congress members to put pressure on it, since the companies are based in the US. I hope the pressure works, but the fact it got this far—and that they have this much power—is still horrifying.
This censorship is removing legitimate and trustworthy platforms to publish and discover LGBTQ+ content. Itch is just the latest in a string of platforms hit by it, and it needs to stop now.
Note that this isn't so much a hypothetical, given that it's a core goal of Project 2025. The Republican plan is to, through courts or law, classify anything LGBT as "pornography," while...
There's the hypothetical slippery slope of them someday deeming all content with LGBTQ+ content as NSFW or inappropriate, but it's already doing damage.
Note that this isn't so much a hypothetical, given that it's a core goal of Project 2025. The Republican plan is to, through courts or law, classify anything LGBT as "pornography," while simultaneously making all pornography illegal through court cases and legislation. (Then there are additional steps that, if you read between the lines, could boil down to promoting imprisonment for being LGBT, because all proliferation of their definition of pornography is "child abuse.")
You can already see aspects of that normalization in the wave of book banning targeting public and school libraries. "Pornography" keeps being used to describe any book with LGBT characters or topics. (Or Maus.) And the majority of references to "pornography" in the Project 2025 text are in the same breath as "transgender ideology" or "drag queens." Then we have the various states that have rammed through identification laws that require invasive identification and record keeping...
All obscenity doctrine is a crass violation of the first amendment and should never have been allowed to stand for this long.
Obviously there's crypto, but the challenges associated with crypto mean that websites which offer only crypto as payment don't tend to make nearly as much money as they would otherwise. Its not...
Obviously there's crypto, but the challenges associated with crypto mean that websites which offer only crypto as payment don't tend to make nearly as much money as they would otherwise.
Its not so much a problem of finding alternative payment methods, as it is finding a website which uses those methods and stays afloat.
As far as the recent changes, JASTUSA is a smaller games store that is already trying to pick up any content that got kicked off of itch, but they still use normal payment methods. If Visa/MasterCard were to blacklist them, they'd likely have a very hard time remaining afloat. What I think makes Jast a bit safer is that they primarily sell adult games, so they will not comply in advance because that would just mean shutting down, they'll keep open until they are forced to close.
The Fair Access To Banking Act would also solve these problems by preventing Visa/MasterCard from making these decisions unilaterally in the first place, so if you're in the US give your representatives a call. This was even introduced by a Republican so its probably got a shot at passing.
Seeing as the major reason we are pushing this is because of Visa/Mastercard is chasing after pornography, I highly doubt this will inspire the GOP to stop them. In fact, they probably are...
The Fair Access To Banking Act would also solve these problems by preventing Visa/MasterCard from making these decisions unilaterally in the first place, so if you're in the US give your representatives a call. This was even introduced by a Republican so its probably got a shot at passing.
Seeing as the major reason we are pushing this is because of Visa/Mastercard is chasing after pornography, I highly doubt this will inspire the GOP to stop them. In fact, they probably are cheering these payment processors on because banning porn (and, ultimately, LGBT stuff) is a major talking point of theirs.
It was explicitly stated in Project 2025 that pornography and things like it "need to be removed" for society. Obviously it's a bunch of bullshit, but this was always a GOP goal.
It was explicitly stated in Project 2025 that pornography and things like it "need to be removed" for society.
Obviously it's a bunch of bullshit, but this was always a GOP goal.
Almost every reference to "pornography," if you search the Project 2025 PDF is also simultaneously referring to "drag queens" or "transgender ideology" in the same sentence. It's clearly a...
Almost every reference to "pornography," if you search the Project 2025 PDF is also simultaneously referring to "drag queens" or "transgender ideology" in the same sentence. It's clearly a two-front approach to destroy the first amendment and make being LGBT illegal.
I think something like SEPA in Europe is a good starting point. Zelle and Walmart's OnePay (sold my soul to the company store) feel very different from a standardized government regulated system....
I think something like SEPA in Europe is a good starting point.
Zelle and Walmart's OnePay (sold my soul to the company store) feel very different from a standardized government regulated system.
Fraud prevention, purchase protection (chargebacks), and using other benefits is usually pretty painless with credit cards. But governmental money transfer services can also be easy to use. With SEPA Direct Debit, people have up to 8 weeks from the purchase date to request a chargeback and reverse the payment.
Though other lightweight systems like the UK's Faster Payments Service (FPS) are more difficult to undo.
There is also a petition from the ACLU, regarding removing policies related to sex work in general. I encourage you to sign both if you can!
Some context for why this is coming up now, today itch.io removed all NSFW content at the behest of payment processors, following Steam doing the same last week.
This is just the latest incident of payment processors forcing platforms to censor and restrict the permitted content. Their policies influence not just domestic markets, but have a global impact as the vast majority of people, and thus websites, use Mastercard, Visa or Paypal. Even companies based outside of the US and marketing to a specific country are subject to these guidelines and censorship, to the point of some websites having to shut down. It's actually terrifying to see how much power that payment processors have over the internet and world at large.
My reason for posting this in ~lgbt is because these censorship policies are impacting the queer community. There's the hypothetical slippery slope of them someday deeming all content with LGBTQ+ content as NSFW or inappropriate, but it's already doing damage. Itch.io hosts a variety of queer content including games and ebooks, and now many queer creators have lost their main source of income. One of the creators quoted in the article called itch "the last refuge for authors of offbeat queer stories, until now."
This latest purge includes not only NSFW titles, but also content tagged "adult" due to featuring heavy and triggering themes rather than outright sexual content. I'm looking at The Transfeminine Review's Bluesky account, since it has many requests for trans creators in particular to share their experiences of deslisted content, and is also quoting some non-queer accounts. One person speculates that a non-NSFW visual novel titled Perfect Circle Stand Alone got delisted for being part of a bundle titled "Give Trans People Money Please", which had a lot of 18+/nsfw content. (You may need an account to view that post.)
Currently a conservative Christian Australian group called Collective Shout seems to be the primary driver behind this policy change, and there are reports they made around 1,000 calls to Visa and Mastercard to get this policy pushed through. So along with these two petitions, there are now calls for people to start calling, emailing, and flooding their social media to pressure them to reverse this policy. There are even people suggesting that Americans call their state congress members to put pressure on it, since the companies are based in the US. I hope the pressure works, but the fact it got this far—and that they have this much power—is still horrifying.
This censorship is removing legitimate and trustworthy platforms to publish and discover LGBTQ+ content. Itch is just the latest in a string of platforms hit by it, and it needs to stop now.
This HAS to be undone.
Note that this isn't so much a hypothetical, given that it's a core goal of Project 2025. The Republican plan is to, through courts or law, classify anything LGBT as "pornography," while simultaneously making all pornography illegal through court cases and legislation. (Then there are additional steps that, if you read between the lines, could boil down to promoting imprisonment for being LGBT, because all proliferation of their definition of pornography is "child abuse.")
You can already see aspects of that normalization in the wave of book banning targeting public and school libraries. "Pornography" keeps being used to describe any book with LGBT characters or topics. (Or Maus.) And the majority of references to "pornography" in the Project 2025 text are in the same breath as "transgender ideology" or "drag queens." Then we have the various states that have rammed through identification laws that require invasive identification and record keeping...
All obscenity doctrine is a crass violation of the first amendment and should never have been allowed to stand for this long.
So do we have a name yet to mark this new wave of satanic panic?
the puritanic panic? new temperance tantrum? the karen kulturkampf?
Are there alternative payment methods that anyone wants to recommend?
Obviously there's crypto, but the challenges associated with crypto mean that websites which offer only crypto as payment don't tend to make nearly as much money as they would otherwise.
Its not so much a problem of finding alternative payment methods, as it is finding a website which uses those methods and stays afloat.
As far as the recent changes, JASTUSA is a smaller games store that is already trying to pick up any content that got kicked off of itch, but they still use normal payment methods. If Visa/MasterCard were to blacklist them, they'd likely have a very hard time remaining afloat. What I think makes Jast a bit safer is that they primarily sell adult games, so they will not comply in advance because that would just mean shutting down, they'll keep open until they are forced to close.
The Fair Access To Banking Act would also solve these problems by preventing Visa/MasterCard from making these decisions unilaterally in the first place, so if you're in the US give your representatives a call. This was even introduced by a Republican so its probably got a shot at passing.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401
Seeing as the major reason we are pushing this is because of Visa/Mastercard is chasing after pornography, I highly doubt this will inspire the GOP to stop them. In fact, they probably are cheering these payment processors on because banning porn (and, ultimately, LGBT stuff) is a major talking point of theirs.
It was explicitly stated in Project 2025 that pornography and things like it "need to be removed" for society.
Obviously it's a bunch of bullshit, but this was always a GOP goal.
Almost every reference to "pornography," if you search the Project 2025 PDF is also simultaneously referring to "drag queens" or "transgender ideology" in the same sentence. It's clearly a two-front approach to destroy the first amendment and make being LGBT illegal.
I think something like SEPA in Europe is a good starting point.
Zelle and Walmart's OnePay (sold my soul to the company store) feel very different from a standardized government regulated system.
Fraud prevention, purchase protection (chargebacks), and using other benefits is usually pretty painless with credit cards. But governmental money transfer services can also be easy to use. With SEPA Direct Debit, people have up to 8 weeks from the purchase date to request a chargeback and reverse the payment.
Though other lightweight systems like the UK's Faster Payments Service (FPS) are more difficult to undo.