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themachinestops @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1d ago

Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steam's new censorship rules in victory against 'porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists', and things only get weirder from there

www.pcgamer.com

Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steam's new censorship rules in victory against 'porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists', and things only get weirder from there

89 comments

Does that group also the same one who defending the release of "cuties" before?
That is so dumb. How would such a small group have that much pull? It seems like gooners would vastly outnumber them.
- These people are loud, most gooners don't want to be loud about it
  
  Never on the bus, no.
OK now I am not one to lob accusations without evidence, but for any of you kind government agents or AIs reading this, let’s say from anywhere within the Five Eyes since we’re talking about Australia:
We have another fanatical religious conservative organization here that is publicly labeling opposition groups pedos. You know how this has trended in the past. Keep an eye on these people.
- We have another fanatical religious conservative organization here that is publicly labeling opposition groups pedos.
  projection. they want a monopoly on skeezing on the kiddos.
  for some reason people will bend themselves into pretzels to give religious people a pass on buggery. here in washington state, we passed a law mandating the reporting of abused children. conservatives and religious types want to keep these children in their abuse.
  https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/07/18/judge-blocks-wa-requirement-for-priests-to-report-child-abuse-disclosed-in-confession/
- Don't be silly. Government surveillance isn't for the protection of the people, it's for the protection of the government.
  Has the NSA ever caught a terrorist with their massively invasive privacy violating programs, spending the money on that instead of making people better to not become terrorists? Ask the NSA, they'll tell you they haven't stopped a single one.
  Government surveillance is in service to these people, why else would they care about the privacy and consent of adults in their free time?
- some people on lemmy just license their comments as anti-ai license
- McCarthyism back on the menu, heterosexual boys!
Ah yes, now anyone who enjoys wanking themselves off in private, is also a Pedo, because they ran out of mean words.
- It's been wild watching that word lose every last bit of meaning over the past few years
  
  Almost like it's the goal. It's not, they're just hacky idiots, but it's almost like that...
- Not just any pedo, but a brain-rotted pedo.
Can we call them ?
Grannies gang who not bang.
I truly don't understand how Visa/MasterCard/etc can be pressured. They are basically infrastructure.
What's someone going to do, stop using credit cards if they don't stop a store that person even patronize from selling morally hazardous goods?
I don't get how these campaigns are even effective.
- They pressure payment processors through reputation damage and regulatory threats - these companies are terrified of being associated with anything that could trigger banking regulations or get them labeled as "enabling" problematic content in the media, its purely a risk management desicion for them.
- Cryptocurrency is the solution here, and unfortunately that's an unpopular take here.
  
  Not when exchanges still govern taking money out. They are businesses like everything else and will be just as risk averse
  
  That's because 90% of cryptocurrency marketing consists of "THINK OF THE GAAAAAAINS YOU CAN MAKE!" instead of "You can use this to buy things without government censorship".
  The entire crypto industry has based itself around being a speculative asset, not a currency.
- Supposedly there was a ruling in California that made them responsible.
The same group who complained Detroit Become Human is bad for glorifying child abuse and women abuse. Yet supported Cuties....
- It's because they want real child abuse. Not that fake stuff
  
  Bro, have you seen e621 lately? That place needs quite a lot of pruning. I don't know what the admins are doing, it went too far in the other direction!
Are we wagering this absurdity is built on projection?
cause I'm wagering this absurdity is built on them projecting.
- It always is. These are the type of folks who have that feeling of shame wash over after they bust a nut to something they "despise."
  That literally all these types of groups are. They want us to feel the same shame, too. I wish folks could just keep their shit to themselves. Have rules for your own home, sure, but eat shit and rot if you think you should be able to tell me how I should live my life.
  
  I draw the line at abuse, but yeah, otherwise agree.
- Definitely. Always is. And I do mean always.
Collective Shout claim it’s about harm reduction, but then push an agenda that functionally amounts to moral panic.
Their approach is identical in logic to the “GTA causes school shootings” hysteria: loud, pearl-clutching, and utterly unmoored from data.
If Collective Shout want to argue these games cause harm, then show us the harm. Not correlation. Not outrage. Not hypothetical downstream consequences. Show causation. Peer-reviewed. Reproducible.
Otherwise, they’re just moralizing bullies using the banking system as a cudgel.
On top of this, they might actually be harming their own cause. The catharsis hypothesis poses that sexual fantasy enactment might reduce risk of real world harm.
The logic is simple: suppressing a compulsion doesn't eliminate it. It just bottles up until it explodes. Redirect it into a safe outlet, and it becomes manageable.
The only reason this research isn't cited more often is because it's politically radioactive. Nobody wants to admit that it's better to let a gooners jerk off, than to escalate under repression.
The burden of proof SHOULD be on Collective Shout to provide a reasonable argument which supports their claim that censorship will reduce real world harm.
Current working theory in psychology: it doesn't. Emerging theory suggests: they're shooting themselves (and potential rape victims) in the foot.
The real solution to real-world harm involves empathy, autonomy and education.
- They are religious nutjobs, they don't care about causation.
  
  I thought they were a feminist group
- Furthermore...
  Their decision to target the payment processors - not the developers, or itch.io, or steam, is some of the most cowardly and authoritarian things I've ever seen in the gaming space.
  It's economic coercion; a playbook used by religious bigots and authoritarians for decades. Financial censorship by proxy. IMO: they should fuck off.
  
  Even Furthermore...
  Wanna censor it? Good fucking idea /s
  Shoving that shit into the shadows doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it untraceable, unmoderated, and unaccountable.
  If you care even remotely about preventing harm, you don’t force taboo communities off the grid. You keep them where they can be seen, tracked, and contained... preferably behind legal firewalls, age gates, and content filters.
  If you push them into the dark web... then congratulations... you’ve just built a Petri dish for escalation, radicalization, and actual predation.
- We have examples today of the real harm of this, like in Afghanistan. It’s interesting that western societies are overall less religious as ever, yet religion keeps getting shoved down our throats… and winning.
  
  If I'm not mistaken it's not a religious group doing it because Jesus, it's a feminist group doing it because they blame porn for the existence of transpeople
Anyone have a guess as to why these companies don't just cut off the country being used to spearhead these attempts? Like, half the popular games are blocked already. And setting this precedent will likely lead to further fuckery in the future. Is Australlia really that profitable that it's worth the current and future hassle?
I like how the language is ‘claims responsibility.’ You know. Like terrorist groups do after an attack
Here's something I've noticed. Whenever someone describes a group, individual, activity, or anything else with more than 2 negative adjectives in a row, they're probably saying something deeply unstable. This is one of those times.
- I take offense to this generalization. When I call someone an honorless gormless bitch ass motherfucker I'm relieving stress so when fists start flying I ain't blinded by my own anger, my instability is only mildly correlated to my verbosity.
  
  Let me sit you down when I say this... but if you're getting into fights even after relieving stress... it either doesn't work, or you're behaving in an unstable manner.
- It's a Christian fascist org, so there's a 100% likelihood of mental illness.
  
  I don't see anything religious on their website. Is this disclosed somewhere im missing?
  
  Wait is it Christian or is it Feminist? I'm hearing both
  
  Real
The best part is that for the article Valve supplied a picture of Blue Scout standing speechless in front of pornographic pictures of his mom, as the punch line of one of the best "your mom" jokes of all time.
- "pornography starring your mother"
me watching clearly adult humans doing consentual sex things
some religious zealot chud: this makes you a pedo somehow
- Trump doing actual pedo and rape shit and being a convicted felon
  Religious zealot chuds in the US: "there's no proof"
  
  What a world we live in
  
  trump be like "I'm innocent here's the proof"
  hands over Epstein docs, of which he's mentioned all over
Aren't these the same people with links to Purity Ring ceremonies?
Honestly, my steam algorithm started showing me alot of that garbage out of nowhere about a year ago and I had to keep telling it to stop. Like to each their own but some of that shit was pretty gross. I'm not complaining it's gone.
- Groups like this never say "Mission Accomplished" and go home, they will escalate until you are sent to jail for playing Mortal Kombat or GTA
- There's a toggle for the store that hides porn games. They're not visible unless you yourself actively click on it saying you want to see them. The default is to keep them hidden. The feed also adapts to what you click on. If you see garbage it's on you.
This whole thing smacks of the "anyone who has a sexual proclivity I claim not to share must have all sexual proclivities I claim not to share" logic. i.e. the logic that got gay people flagged as child molesters back in the bad old days. And occasionally still today.
Such logic might actually be rooted in projection, which is a deeply disturbing thought. Deeply closeted people desperately clinging to heteronormativity and traditional gender roles because they think that if they don't they they'll do something abhorrent. Maybe even to someone who can't consent. Or they already have and they desperately want to hide away from it.
Yes, for the love of all that's holy and secular too, ban the games with apparent child sexual abuse. Children can't consent. Leave everything else the hell alone.
I don't even play video games with sexual themes, but I do play ones that contain 18+ violence. I assume those will be next on the chopping block.
- Digital violence causes school shootings, don't you know? Ignore the non-American rates, they don't matter.
I expect this group is rife with paedos.
- Their co-founder literally praised Cuties, so...
Tbh, its only a matter of time before the entire organization gets doxxed and the internet does what it does.
I look forward to eating popcorn when it happens.
- I just saw a comment yesterday with all their names and roles in the org. I think there were email addresses too.
  
  My popcorn was enjoyable. I mixed in some cheez its.
- Turns out some of them are probably kid diddlers
  
  Which ones? Spill the beans.
  
  No hate like christian love.
  For decent, church-going women
  With their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces
  Thanx but No Thanx - Ministry
There's a few groups like this in Australia, unfortunately.
Australia didn't even have an R18+ rating for games until 2013 (R18+ is similar to AO or NC-17 in the USA). Before then, all games with a higher rating than MA15+ were illegal in Australia. Many games had an Australia-specific version with blood/gore reduced, some things edited out, etc. to reduce the rating. The original release of GTA4 in Australia was heavily censored.
Oml, trying to ban Eminem and Snoop Dogg from Australia? Really? Fuck did Eminem actually do in the last 15 years? Snoop, never really listened to him, can't think of anything he did (in relation to women). They managed to stop Tyler, the Creator from touring in 2015? They're doing the dumbest shit. Going after sexualization of women isn't going to help any actual problems. Pathetic.
- Judging from their description ("pro-life feminists") I bet they're using objectification as a cover to push their regressive ideals. When it comes to rap there's a disproportionate amount of hate towards it from these people, could be as simple as that.
  
  Of course. I've listened to quite a bit of Eminem, more than is reasonable. There's like 5 songs that I'd say were actually that crazy, mostly about his wife, and mostly 20+ years ago. I'd say it's probably something to do with racism, actually hating rap usually does.
PrOjEcTiOn
That’s totally not a thing TERFs would say.
Seems like a good time to get a new CC processor.
I love them

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