Looks like they’re already showing their true colors. A good reminder that “They won’t target me, I’m not one of the bad ones…” doesn’t work.
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Telling you the same thing I’ve told others, that petition focuses more on live-action sex work, not digital content. Which has not gotten as much focus from payment processors and Collective Shout as the fictional stuff.
If you want one that focuses on the digital content that artists work on, I have a different petition that’s gotten more attention linked into this post.
Edit: just checked that petition, suspiciously the “signatures needed” number went up. What happened to needing 100,000? Not only that, but it hasn’t even gotten any attention, likely due to the fact that live-action sex work hasn’t actually been as targeted as drawings and games.
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The “signatures needed” thing is usually a formality from what I know, every time the goal is reached it’ll raise, it’s moreover just a thing to constantly incentivize people into signing. No petition actually needs a goal.
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What’s wrong with supporting sex work?
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Alright, I’ll post a quote since you won’t follow the link
If you’re still not willing to read it, the TL:DR is that payment processors and Collective Shout haven’t been going after live-action stuff - such as OnlyFans and Cuties, which the Sex-Work is more focused on - art, games, and writing are barely mentioned, making it seem like it’s placed there as an after-thought. Meaning, that petition leaves a large loop-hole where the opposition can look like they’re making a change while not really doing so. The one I’ve mentioned covers everything by saying that payment processors - barring legal reasons - can’t decide who does or does not do business. It just covers all topics.
Yeah I’ll be honest, dude, reading that ACLU petition covers literally what we’re going through right now on content creation. I feel like you’re hyper focusing on sex workers and ignoring the context entirely. Even with the cryptic Selective Capitalization like it’s some kind of a dog whistle.
The page is pretty clear, because this is where I personally noticed it when it rolled out on Patreon:
Patreon forced all of its 18+ pages submit their IDs to republish their pages. itch is about to do the same thing. OnlyFans, Fansly, and LoyalFans are forced to do the same. Clips sites like Clips4Sale and ManyVids are pushed to do it too. Don’t be shocked if Steam follows suit, like Patreon is doing, and Itch is about to do.
It’s not only affecting live performers, it’s just who’s getting hit the hardest right now, and they’re getting harder almost every day. This censorship is only more recently explicitly spilling over to affect games, artwork, and literature (NSFW or not, as someone pointed out).
Now, if your point is it’s not calling out censoring media outside of live performers, you’re not wrong, but you are off base about it ignoring our content too. That loophole doesn’t exist necessarily, they’re calling on the payment processors to stop censoring adult content. That means ALL of us.
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We’re in the p*rn prohibition era now?
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Because that worked so well in the Alcohol Prohibition era. It just inspired people to make it themselves. Likely if the blocking of more NSFW content happens, it is just going to cause a larger influx of that content to be made.
People hate being told they can’t do something when it doesn’t harm others.
You are wrong. Collective Shout has been campaigning against all forms of pornography since 2010.
Here is an article they wrote in January.
“Pornography is a form of violence against women…”
“All forms of pornography are an assault on women…”
They have also started aggressively targeting sex workers, attempting to get them banned from major social media websites regardless of content filters.
Regardless, the ACLU petition identifies all creators in the industry as sex workers, from people making games to the guy behind the camera in a porn video.
You can push your change.org petition if you want (not that change.org achieves much of anything) and the ACLU petition is likely just a leverage tool for a lawsuit, but calling government officials and feeding information to the media is probably more significant. We’ve already seen the articles and videos made about this stuff result in heavy backlash for CS. They also have contacts on their website, although I suspect their phones are blowing up right now already. Looks like their socials are hidden too.
And as an added bonus, some of you may have heard about ridiculously restrictive laws in the UK and parts of the US requiring users to send their personal identification such as ID over the internet in order to access adult material? You’ll never guess who’s behind that push, or at least one of the groups supporting it.
The ACLU petition seems to be largely focused on that, and considering what happened with this website when the EU attempted similar legislation a few years ago, I imagine it would not go over well here. For those that weren’t here, this website went dark for the EU, unless you use a VPN. To my understanding, this website is hosted in the US, so if that law spreads to the federal level…
Joining a bit late, but as a content creator myself I’m really not too worried about anything that’s happening with itch. I think the crack down is justified as there are a lot of terrible and illegal games on the website. In a week or two all of this will blow over as they sort things out on itch. I really can’t be mad at the payment processers either as they do have a right to not want to associate with illegal imagery. It does suck that a lot of games have be caught in the cross fire, but it’s just part of what itch has to do in order to sort all this out. Nothing they have done is permanent, they have said this in their official statement and I think people need to relax and cut itch some slack. If the payment processers pulled out from itch than no one could make games on the site. There is also a lot of miss understanding about what games have been removed, this probably stems from the fact different countries have different blockers and restrictions on the internet. You can still find all your games on itch so long as you have a link or a game that shares a tag with it.