Those games were already being removed before this whole thing started, though, so long as people were reporting them. So this stance doesn’t really hold water.
(editing to be kinder) You can say “rape” if you need to, since this isn’t Twitter or TikTok. There’s no automated mod that will punish you for using the word, if you didn’t know.
I really don’t don’t understand why everyone is brushing off the Cp and Grape stuff…
I really feel bad for people and creators who have been caught in the cross fire and I hope they are able to recover. But I also feel like everyone is brushing over the good that this is doing and only focusing on the bad. At the end of the day it is just on opinion on this topic and no one here has a wrong opinion or right opinion. All I’m saying is that this was, one way or the other, was necessary action because there are a lot of really sketchy games that should be removed and their creators and users should probably be behind bars.
No one’s brushing it off. Those games were never allowed before, this change is hurting a lot of people not making those types of content. I promise you, this is not a net positive.
Games like no mercy were up for months before being taken down, I wouldn’t call that effective control. That’s what started this whole thing. A game about sexually assaulting women shouldn’t be up for more than a few hours at most.
And I just like to be on the safe side of things when it comes to that, I often times take screen shots of things I’ve said to repost to other places. And I’d prefer to not accidently get a post or comment taken down because I said the wrong thing by accident.
And I agree with you on that it does hurt people, but I’ve been doing a bit of investigating and about 80% of the games I’ve found that have been taken down have some sort of illegal or border line illegal content. Don’t let me stop you from taking any measures you see fit as everything I say has no more weight than anyone else, I just think the reaction to this news is overly fiery and could lead to preemptive escalation.
Side note, porn hub has CP, Grape and other fucked up shit for years on its platform before it finally got removed, so don’t say that there wasn’t games like that on itch because clearly people aren’t reporting this stuff. My GF is the one who really brought a lot of this to my attention as she would find and report this stuff and nothing was done about it.
I double checked, “No Mercy” was up for roughly a week before it was banned. Not months. Should have been removed sooner, sure, but let’s keep our facts straight.
This is the point I feel like you’re missing: fucked up things require accountability when and where it’s needed. Payment processors are not governing bodies and should not be affording that sort of power to censor whatever they want.
Make a moral argument as much as you want to, the problem is a private company is bullying others to remove what they want at the behest of groups of radical right-wing puritanical organizations who hate porn. Just because you agree with what has been removed so far does not change the bigger picture: this is an issue of censorship and abuse.
It’s only getting worse, especially when you consider this started in 2021. Far longer than a couple of weeks.
It utterly terrifies me knowing that all these communities are brushing off the fact this is all caused by cp not being taken down and regulated over the years by companies.
I thought at least this community would be understanding and realize that people were posting actually real life content of children on itch. So what just because your favorite games to jack off to got taken down for a bit you start not caring about harm done to innocent children?
All games on itch can be appealed and you need to understand that if a game was wrongfully taken down it can be brought back up.
This isn’t WW3 guys. This is some porn that was temporarily taken down.
Please think about why this is happening and think about how some of y’all are coming off as supporters of CP content.
I’ve already had people fully admitted because of this that they are completely fine with cp content on itch, please let’s not have out community be seen like that. Let’s not forget the hate the furry community already gets and let’s not end up like that, the furry community is already still trying to recover by all the bad things a few people did. So let’s not support cp and rape please. This…is scary for me… I’m honestly starting to drift even further from thr community because of this all and how much it disappoints me greatly.
Sorry, I just did a search of my own and you’re right no mercy was up for a short time. My mistake.
How is it an issue of censorship and abuse when it’s a few companies using their reserved right to refuse business with partners that maybe violating the law, especially when those violations can and will effect them in a court of law? And if a government isn’t going to do something about literal child porn and rape how is it worse that a company deciding to do something about it, even if it is for selfish reasons? I just don’t understand the argument you’re making as it’s fundamentally flawed. You breeze over the fact this all started back in 2021 for child porn and other terrible shit, which resulted in these company’s being draw into lawsuits. This isn’t just a moral question, it’s a question of why all of these websites and games have been up allowing this content? I would rather not have any porn on the internet than the current state of the internet where child porn and rape is so easily accessed. I don’t think it matters whether a group is left or right, taking this stuff down and censoring it should be applauded or at least thanked with some apprehension, not booed and treated like it’s some terrible thing. More over how come anyone who speaks out against all the bad stuff going on is treated like they are some villain? I don’t think a lot of people are upset about censorship as if they were they would have thrown a fit and make a petition for twitter or Facebook or TikTok a long time ago. What makes this so different from them? Why is this censorship so much more harmful when its protecting people? It’s not like it’s saying you can’t watch porn, there are plenty of places to do that, nor is it stopping people form sharing their ideas or free speech. I just don’t understand your argument, maybe there is something I’m missing, but form what I can tell people are just upset because their losing their porn.
I like how you keep hammering about child porn and rape, and gloss over the fact that a lot more than that is being censored by evangelicals through mafia tactics by weaponizing credit card companies and it’s been steadily getting worse.
I don’t know how else to make this issue more plain to you. Maybe sue these websites and companies when they break the law and fail to take action on reported content. Credit Card companies are not the answer over legal action.
Regulation is one thing. Censorship is not.
My dear, Collective Shout has defended the movie “Cuties” - they are not against actual child porn. Plus, some members are apparently authors for books that feature those same themes they’re against in games. How can you justify their “cause” when there is a clear double standard?
It terrifies me that a lot more than CP, CSAM, CSEM, and rape is being taken down by the demands of two credit card companies and you’re simplifying it to somehow only being about child porn.
I beg you all, please stop oversimplifying this issue. Maybe do some research if you don’t fully grasp the situation.
I’ll be clear here: I want CP and adjacent content taken down to discourage pedos and groomers. I also don’t want to sacrifice everything else that is being demanded, explicitly by CC companies, to get it done.
Two things can be true.
this is stupid:
they didnt even blacklist CP or adjacent actions… they banned guns pointed at people, furries, stepsibling banging, and loving rape (the one being raped starts liking it)
the classical case of feminists being nothing more than a corporate mouthpiece with no thought other than “I am strong by doing this” is obvious considering the organization in question thinks it’s a morally good thing to make kids wear stripper gear and grind on a pole on live TV or be forced to have a man dressed as a woman grind on their face at a club and nothing CP related was banned
Yeah, I think it’s a good idea to not buy into Collective Shout’s propaganda about this. CP and rape were never allowed. Sure, Itch didn’t have a room of 10,000 people playing through every game uploaded to the website every 15 seconds (or less) to see if there was any form of objectionable content in them, but to argue that because of that no NSFW, or romance, or violence should be allowed on the website at all is asinine.
The things SirKata mentioned were not “caught in the crossfire”. They were the primary targets of this push, screaming about CP and rape were just the face they put on it for political reasons. You can read on their website or the file I uploaded earlier. They think that all porn is rape. They think that every piece of content ever uploaded to this website is rape. They think that gay people are an “affront against God”. Banning everything was their primary goal from step 1.
Sure, some things might come back for now, maybe, possibly (although many authors of LGBT books have been permanently banned from Itch according to the article Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote on this) but these people will push and push until everyone lives in their perfect dystopia. They are not your friends.
It should also be noted here that CSAM (and let’s use the correct terminology here - there is no such thing as “child porn,” as pornography is made by consenting participants) is still being put up on Steam and itch right this moment. It’s still going up on every social media site too.
What this rule results in is a punishment of self-reported adult and queer content. As someone noted above, the games which didn’t properly self-label are the ones still accessible via search.
No major site has the funding to pre-screen all content submissions, since that would take tens of thousands of well-paid employees due to how traumatizing it is to be constantly exposed to ToS-violating content. Look up how bad it is for Meta screeners, and they’re only doing a percentage of flagged content. This is a problem of scale and always will be - but pretending that cutting out all the people willing to self-disclose their content as adult actually solves any of it is honestly doing the actual people peddling CSAM content a favor, because it removes attention from them. “We did it! You can’t post adult content on the site anymore!” As if these people were ever honestly tagging their stuff with that in the first place. And the content was always prohibited.
Banning or stripping self-reporting tools just takes out everybody who was willing to self-report, and the people committing a crime recognized internationally by the vast majority of western countries are not self-reporting. All it does is decimate legitimate queer and adult-content producers, mostly individuals already in marginalized populations trying to make enough money to survive. This action is not a good thing and never was, it is a paper-thin “think of the children” justification plastered over the real goal of persecuting people like transgender content producers and wielding “you’re a pedophile if you disagree” as a weapon against real concerns over the actual targets of these things.
Take the energy you’re using to cheer on the moral-backsliding of western values towards regressive, “be closeted and ashamed of anything we disagree with” views and use it to support organizations that actually try to address the at-scale issue of CSAM via helping victims instead of those “attacking degeneracy.” Because one is actually helpful, the other is a dogwhistle for censorship and is never actually about the abuse of children.
I don’t agree with collective shout, but I do agree what the CC companies forcing itch, steam and many other companies to take down the illegal stuff. I’ve formed this opinion from my own research, not some propaganda article put out by collective shout.
i did my research and i dont think agreeing with propaganda is the smartest thing to do. how about you guys actually look into what happened on itch and what is actually happening. so maybe dont act like im the stupid one and actually look into this instead of watching youtube videos.
i think the delisting is bad but i also understand why it needed to happen.
Okay, if suing and reporting websites is so effective then why is there so much illegal material stuff up? I know a lot of this started because of suing, that’s why CC companies started this crack down. They are under threat of lawsuits and the law itself when they do business with these planforms that have illegal content. You seem to miss one of the major points of my argument.
but they have already been being appealed so what is the problem? ive done more research than a lot of people here. and a lot of people are lying about their content being taken down or being confused and saying banned instead of shadow banned. im not blaming them for being confused but i really do think people need to double check on their information.