[darkengine]

SESTA and FOSTA are certainly DC's doing, but I think it's fair to say there is a serious aversion to sexuality and eroticism among incumbent platforms, that did not require any prodding from US lawmakers. For example, AFAIK, Instagram has never allowed "adult" content, since long before FOSTA; Steam has never allowed "pornography" on its platform, resulting in hundreds of games requiring patches [1] to play in the form the publisher intended.

Eroticism being a core component of art going all the way back to literal cave paintings, I am sometimes frustrated at the prudishness of the platforms we use in the contemporary age.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34059662-Uncensor-Pat...

[KennyBlanken]

It has nothing to with "DC" (numerous anti-porn laws have been struck down by courts) and everything to do with the banking industry's moral codes, which is where the Christian Right shifted their moral crusade to after losing numerous legal challenges.

That's why you see platforms like Patreon crack down on adult content. The banking industry notices, the payment processors and merchant banks sit up and threaten to close the service's accounts, and the service instead capitulates and cranks up their rules around adult content.

They'll bray about fraud rates being high for adult content, but if high fraud rates were a concern, you'd think they wouldn't give the gym industry (for example) free license in credit card processing and ECH transfers...they're prolific scam artists. Ditto for all the as-seen-on-tv crap with outrageous shipping and "handling" fees and so on.

If the banking industry figures out that you're an adult media actor, you stand a good chance of getting banned from the entire system. What possible argument for fraud is there in that case? None. "Fraud" is just a cover for Christian moral code enforcement.

Edit: okay, maybe it's not the Christian Right influencing US banks rejecting porn stars for accounts for "moral" reasons. Must be the sentient Big Mouth Billy Bass units.

[colpabar]

I agree that it's the banks but do you have any evidence to support your claims that it's the christian right?

[rpdillon]

This entry[0] has useful background.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Ex...

[mildmotive]

It’s the liberal that’s holding the power here, not the Christian that is fighting an uphill battle to preserve their religious lifestyle, and the right to parent their own children how they want.

It’s clear for all that opening the floodgates of porn into social media and platforms that both adults and _children_ use will cause this particular category of content to dominate the entire space. It’ll also lock out any children from most social media whose parents refuse (and rightfully so) to let them see porn. Not that this effort will always be successful, because children who don’t know any better will cave in to peer pressure from friends. This dystopia where what’s essentially filmed prostitution finds its way into almost all spaces in society, including children’s lives, is what the very powerful liberal wants.

Shouldn’t you be more concerned about the increase in women and girls forced to sell their dignity to survive? Is the suffering of people not more important to you than your cummies?

[jrajav]

Outspoken Christians form 9 out of 10 members of Congress despite representing 65% of the US population [1]. Religiously motivated laws get argued and passed on a weekly basis, and Christian fundamentalist ideas are constantly in the media spotlight.

Put down the persecution complex.

[1]: https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/04/faith-on-the-hill-2021/

[mildmotive]

9/10 political power, yeah right. That’s why you have things like this being regularly pushed on society from the top down:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vhxVIKmKmlo

It’s disturbing.

What’s the end game of sexual liberation? Who knows.

[refurb]

That an amazing attack on religion - well done.

Try it with “outspoken Muslim” or “outspoke Jew” and see if it has the same ring.

[solveit]

Outspoken Muslims form 9 out of 10 members of Congress despite representing 65% of the US population?

I'm genuinely uncertain what point you're trying to make.

[refurb]

The point is in the US we do our best to avoid labeling people with religious beliefs as "tools of their religion" when they occupy political office.

You should try and see how many political leaders are Jewish and then compare that to the % of the population that are Jewish. Comes across as kinda shitty behavior no?

Plenty of government leaders are religious but that doesn't mean they rule according to those beliefs. To make the assumption they do is just a weak attempt to smear people based on their personal beliefs.

[KyeRussell]

I genuinely can’t tell if this is your legitimate view or if you’re moving the conversation along by making the religious right’s arguments for them. Either way, I’ll bite. 1. Nobody is arguing against a parent’s right to choose their parenting style. This is about altering society to fit their parenting style. 2. Permissive social networks (like Twitter) don’t have an issue with adult content overrunning the network. Furthermore, if adult content wasn’t roped off to all but a couple of mainstream social networks, isn’t it arguable that the reduced concentration will mitigate your hypothesised “overrunning”? 3. The implication that all sex work is exploitative is in 2022 untenable. There are myriad women out there who consensually do sex work when they could do something else instead. Sex work has pros and cons for the worker like any other job. The characterisation of this as “selling their dignity” is indicative of a view of sex and sexuality that is increasingly out of step with the attitudes of the young people who typically engage in sex work. The implication that sex work is exploitative or even “sad” is driven by the US’s legal stance on prostitution. I live in a jurisdiction with more permissive prostitution laws and the difference is night-and-day obvious. The (il)legality of full service sex work fuels the stigma, not the other way around.

[zeruch]

No one is stopping Christians from preserving their lifestyle. No one. None. Zero.

What they are doing is not being held hostage to same said Christians from force-feeding it to everyone else. If you like it, fine. Have a biblically awesome life.

"This dystopia where what’s essentially filmed prostitution finds its way into almost all spaces in society, including children’s lives, is what the very powerful liberal wants." As opposed to the Handsmaid Tale/Stepford/Leviathan-like dystopia every Abrahamic hardliner wants.

Yeah, Hard pass on evangelical claptrap.

[pclmulqdq]

Twitter has a lot of porn on it, and we don't see it as "overrun with porn" or "unsafe for children." There is a way to do it right.

[mildmotive]

> Twitter has a lot of porn on it, and we don't see it as "overrun with porn"

That’s why I said “opening the floodgates”. Yes of course there is porn in social media already. It’s still a fact today that you wont see porn on Twitter/YouTube/Facebook/etc. unless you look for it. If you remove restrictions and push porn just like any other content, then all these platforms will essentially degrade into hybrid porn sites because this particular type of content will dominate the entire space. Some people here are upset that it’s even kept in check at all. SV are being called puritans for having some common sense and not letting this filth dominate their sites.

> or "unsafe for children."

Some people would argue that though.

[ako]

I'm actually more concerned about religion than i am about porn. Religion is a tool to manipulate the people through lies, and it relies on training people not to do any critical thinking. And the lack of critical thinking in the world today is very scary.

[nerdponx]

This is a classic case of an industry attempting to self-regulate in order to avoid legal regulation, with teeth. Even inconsistently-applied loose rules are good enough to keep the powerful Christian lobbyist pitchforks at bay.

[zeruch]

This is probably the most pithy distillation of what the actual cause is.

[Ekaros]

I think Steam has pretty much given up on not allowing porn... Outside certain cases.

[int_19h]

When browsing Steam VR titles, it feels like half of that is interactive porn.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

> Steam has never allowed "pornography" on its platform

The amount of pure porn games that clutters some lists makes me doubt this very much.

[okasaki]

Steam does allow porn games now, though you have to log in and change some settings to see it.

[oneoff786]

And if you do, it’s ridiculously over saturated with them

[nhinck2]

Iirc steam only bans porn games with real people due to legislation regarding keeping track of the actors in the material.

It's been a long time since they blocked any other legal porn.

[CPLX]

I mean isn’t this a function of all this stuff being ad supported?

Brands don’t want ads next to porn. That seems like the core of the issue here.

[LewisVerstappen]

Steam isn't ad supported.

[echelon]

It's Visa supported, and Visa doesn't want sex.

There are actually strong, non-"puritanical" reasons for this. An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-related services carry an extremely high rate of charge backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than other categories of goods and services.

So while Visa could simply charge more, there are numerous other headwinds that make this tricky. Political will, payments risks, brand risk, and deep rooted family/social stigmas that fuel the rest. They kind of all have to be dealt with at once for this to start making economic and business sense.

For proponents, it's going to take generational change to shake all of these network effects out. The first step of which is consumers (Gen Z?) publicly admitting that they see no harm in sex-related commerce and to begin showing this in their purchasing behaviors.

John Oliver recently covered this as it relates to sex work. Stigmas and dispositions are changing, but it's slow. A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people.

[KennyBlanken]

None of this explains why the banking industry blacklists porn stars from having checking accounts, nor why they allow other high-risk industries wholesale access...the gym industry, for example, is incredibly fraudulent and yet the banking industry has no problem letting them use ECH, a system so permissive it's a fraudster's wet dream....or why the banking industry has done nothing to self-regulate payday lenders.

[spindle]

Very good comparisons IMO.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

I wonder how much of it is outrage-by-proxy, where you don't have a problem with it, but fear that others will.

[zozbot234]

> An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-related services carry an extremely high rate of charge backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than other categories of goods and services.

Bitcoin solves this.

[Bandeau]

In particular a layer two solution such as the lightning network appears necessary to reduce transaction costs and delays.

[kipchak]

I'm not sure how they're working things on the payment processing front but Steam has sexual content on it's regular storefront now without requiring external patches. Heck some are even Steam Deck verified.

[newbamboo]

“A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people.” More signaling makes all signals weaker until everything is noise. Probably not the desired outcome.

[KennyBlanken]

...steam is covered in ads, even opening them in a separate window when you launch the client. They're only for stuff sold on steam, and publishers (supposedly) can't buy ad space, but they're ads nonetheless.

[KyeRussell]

This advertising obviously does not have the attributes that the conversation is referring to, namely that a third party is buying the space.

[gumby]

Steam is in Washington, not the Valley or SF.

[zeruch]

It didn't "require prodding" because it was assumed from the get go that there was more money (and/or less scrutiny) to be made 'playing it safe' than much else.