blog/src/posts/2025-07-28_collective-shout-puritan-agenda.md at 17e0709fd9c2ecc1427055f948662ca5f2420f8f

Expand on the implications of financial institutions being able to censor legal forms of expression of other countries and where this will lead down the road

2025-07-31 20:08:21 +02:00

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Exploiting the already vulnerable for a puritanical agenda

At first glance, campaigning against the sexualization of women and girls reads like a laudable goal. However, the rest of the About page quickly drifts into the typical puritanical rhetoric and seeks to blame the problem on a "pornified" society that allegedly endorses such abuse against women and girls if it can get them off. They deliberately create this bogeyman, once again using children as a front—a pattern common among puritans and right-wing activists pushing for nothing less than strict gender role norms as they see them. Their radical anti-porn stance also classifies pretty much anything LGBTQ+ related as "sexually deviant", further proving that this has nothing to do with protecting women, children or anybody else for that matter. The Venn diagram between these two groups is very much a circle.

And indeed, Collective Shout has the backing of several prominent religious and anti-porn activist groups, as (now former) reporter for VICE, Ana Valens, writes:

On July 11th, Collective Shout published an open letter to the CEOs behind PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Paysafe, Discover, and JCB. On the post, Collective Shout includes signatures from executives at such censorship-prone organizations as National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and Exodus Cry. Other allies include the anti-porn groups Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and the U.K. org CEASE. Both NCOSE and Exodus Cry have previously encouraged the removal of certain online content they deem harmful, with NCOSE in particular taking a strong focus on Steam.

In 2018, NCOSE previously targeted a series of visual novels on Steam, briefly threatening the removal of these titles on Valve's digital storefront. Steam ultimately reversed its decision to ban these games, instead opening the door to adult content on the platform. Since 2018, NCOSE has repeatedly mentioned Steam in its various articles, almost as if the anti-porn organization has been waiting for an opportunity to go viral with a censorship campaign against the platform. Did the group play a pivotal role in pressuring American payment processors to change their policies toward Steam? It's plausible. NCOSE, which originally began as the religious “Morality in Media” organization, is a conservative group based in the U.S.

They also maintain close ties with Australia's eSafety Regulator, giving them a direct line to the government. The eSafety Regulator is also part of the Global Online Safety Regulators Network (GOSRN), which lists the following members:

Collective Shout also, unsurprisingly, doesn't care much to familiarize itself with the subject matter of the games or media it's trying to get banned, as Valens further outlines:

In 2018, Collective Shout encouraged its supporters to sign a petition to ban Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human from sale in Australia, claiming the game features “child abuse and violence against women.” The petition focused on an abusive father's violent behavior toward his housekeeper and daughter in the game. This dynamic, core to the character Kara's story arc, is intended to encourage empathy for the abused woman and child. While it's unclear whether Collective Shout is actively targeting Detroit: Become Human in 2025, the removal of such a game would be akin to artistic censorship of material discussing misogynistic abuse against female family members. Targeting the game, in other words, could be considered anti-feminist in intent.

A previous article, also by Valens, also questioned the reasoning of Collective Shout and the games they target:

Without further proof from Collective Shout on the supposed games in question, it's hard to say whether child or childlike characters existed in any of the games targeted by the organization. It's certainly plausible that Collective Shout is disingenuously describing adult anime characters in adult video games as underage.

Both of Valens' articles are only available in archived form, since VICE operator, Savage Ventures, ordered their removal shortly after they were published, seemingly because Valens was among the first to highlight a connection between Steam's updated rules, the sudden removal of adult games and the involvement of Collective Shout, who probably didn't appreciate being challenged the way Valens dared. Valens and other writers subsequently quit VICE in protest.

Valens' articles show a clear pattern: Collective Shout takes a very shallow and vibes-based approach to targeting games and media for their campaigns. The smallest hint or mention in games and media of the things they are outspoken against is enough to set them off. They don't shy away from ripping things completely out of context and giving it only a very surface-level look and treatment if it furthers their case. Even when the games and media in question aim to make the audience sympathize with the victimized groups Collective Shout claims to advocate for, they want that thing nuked from orbit.

In their open letter, they talk about "hundreds of other games featuring rape, incest and child sexual abuse on both Steam and Itch.io", yet conveniently omit any mention of what games they're talking about, so nobody can challenge them on it, citing that "most of the content found within the games, including the graphics and the developers descriptions, are too distressing for us to make public."

Collective Shout is going by the same playbook we've seen dimes-a-dozen by now: make a highly sensationalized point, inflate the numbers to make it sound especially egregious, but be suspiciously tight-lipped about details, other than repeating their mantra-like ramblings ad nauseam about wanting to protect children and women.

Payment processors force platforms to bend the knee

Unfortunately, Collective Shout successfully "jawboned" Steam and itch.io by sending the payment processors after them. Steam has amended their developer onboarding documentation with a new rule about what a developer should not publish on Steam (emphasis mine):

Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.

In amending their guidelines in this way it becomes clear that Valve had to cave to payment processors' demands to either "remove the stuff or have the relationship terminated."

Valve later admitted as much to the media to have added this rule after being approached by said payment processors about the adult-oriented games on their platform and the subsequent blanket delisting of games.

What's particularly interesting in this context is, that Steam already had rules in place that specifically govern the availability of adult-oriented games on Steam:

Adult content that isn't appropriately labeled and age-gated

[…]

Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available

Content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers

By adding rule 15, Valve is handing over the control of their own platform to the whims of banks and credit card companies.

Similarly, developers on itch.io very abruptly found their games delisted from search and their accounts up for review. What initially drew a lot of anger from people is that it happened without much of any reasons given. Itch.io came forth with a statement some time later:

Recently, we came under scrutiny from our payment processors regarding the nature of some content hosted on itch.io. Due to a game titled No Mercy, which was temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April, the organization Collective Shout launched a campaign against Steam and itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms.

Our ability to process payments is critical for every creator on our platform. To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.

This is a time critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform's core payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change. We know this is not ideal, and we apologize for the abruptness of this change.

[!note] Update 2025-07-31 Removed mention of Consume Me and Mouthwashing. Neither Consume Me nor Mouthwashing have been listed on itch.io search results since 2018 and 2024, respectively, due to not meeting indexing criteria, i.e. not hosting their files on itch.io.

Among the casualties of games that no longer appear in the search results because of the fallout caused by Collective Shout is Radiator 2 by Robert Yang, former teacher at New York University's Game Center, which attempts to "expand eroticism in games beyond a cutscene", not by depicting intercourse, but more abstract and silly concepts, like:

"spank the heck out of a dude and learn about how BDSM communities formalize consent / caring"
"a short interactive music video game thing where you help a hunk enjoy a delicious shapely treat"
"an autoerotic night-driving game about pleasuring a gay car"

This has absolutely nothing in common with the extreme contents that Collective Shout and similar bigoted advocacy groups claim to campaign against "to protect women and girls from harm." This protects no-one and robs everyone of unique experiences that equally don't hurt anybody! They went for the payment processors specifically to suffocate gaming platforms, because there's a disproportionate amount of LGBTQ+ and minority media on Steam and itch.io, the latter of which has an even higher percentage of games and media by LGBTQ+ folk for a primarily queer audience. This also includes furries, which regularly have to defend themselves against accusations of bestiality and various interpretations of "sexual deviancy."

If Collective Shout were being honest, they would also take a stance against something like Game of Thrones, which had a far bigger audience and was full of things that these hypocrites could have taken offense to, i.e. all of the incest. So, imagine my surprise when I searched for the show on their website and came up with… nothing! Nice double standard you've got there! This implies to me that they lie through their teeth what this is actually about—namely hurting the previously mentioned minority groups and calling it "protecting children."

US payment processors hold too much power

This is just the latest in a series of events that shows how brittle payment systems online are. Visa and MasterCard hold a precarious duopoly over the global cash-free payment market, with 1.5 billion (37%) and 1.1 billion (32%) cards, respectively, in circulation globally.

This naturally translates to online payment, where this market dominance will force anybody's hand if they're hoping to offer their services to a global audience. This gives them tremendous power not only over Steam and itch.io, but also sites like Patreon, which back in 2014 and 2017 faced similar pressure from payment processors, threatening to cut ties with Patreon altogether over hosting adult-oriented content, which would've basically killed it overnight.

Other sites that faced similar issues include:

fansly (June 28, 2025): Updates policies to ban content such as anthropomorphic characters (furry), or calling yourself "puppy", "cat girl" or VTubing as such, because payment providers classify it as bestiality, hypnosis/mind control regardless of context, amateur or party wrestling as non-con and any sort of public space & recording locations.
Suruga-ya (May 20, 2025): The Japanese store removed adult works after pressure from payment processors. In similar fashion, other sites like DLSite, Fantia, Melonbooks and DMM stopped offering Visa and/or MasterCard as payment options, even after some of them tried to appease to these payment processors' policies.
Gumroad (March 15, 2024): In order to keep PayPal on board as a payment processor, Gumroad banned any and all adult content on the site, followed by a mass-exodus of artists.
pixiv (Nov 15, 2022): The Japanese art sharing site tightened its rules about how adult contents can be monetized on their paid offerings BOOTH and pixivFANBOX, after pressure from payment processors. Later, they announced that they were going to block US and UK viewers from accessing adult-oriented materials, starting on 25th April 2024.
OnlyFans (Aug 19, 2021): The site infamous for being a smash hit for adult-oriented performers announces that sexually explicit contents are no longer permitted. After public outcry, the decision was rolled back a week later.

PayPal is of particular mention here, as their controversial business decisions to their customers' detriment are well-documented. PayPal has since garnered a reputation of stealing NSFW artists' money, by freezing their account when anything of an NSFW nature is mentioned in e.g. a payment note, thereby disallowing them to move funds out of their PayPal account.

[!important] A word to artists If you're an artist using PayPal for your services, I urge you to take funds out of your PayPal immediately as soon as you get paid. Also, use PayPal's invoice system so you have full control over what appears on the transaction history what you were paid for.

Collective Shout correctly identified the weak point of every platform, company or individual wanting to do business online: threaten their ability to get paid.

[!note] Update 2025-07-29 A friend sent me an article in which NieR: Automata director Yoko Taro rightly notes that the dominance US payment processors have gives them leverage over another country's autonomy.

Visa's and MasterCard's duopoly also has other implications: since they're corporations based in the United States, operating within the United States' legal framework, it gives the United States itself an uncomfortable leverage over the rest of the world. Suddenly, what is perfectly legal in one country is effectively overruled if the same thing is illegal in the US or what intermediaries there think is acceptable use and what is not. It has the potential to greatly impact other countries' legal, political and economical autonomy. And the United States is not shy about using its dominance in certain areas to force other countries to cater to the interests of the United States and those of US lobby groups and corporations.

You might be inclined to think "Well, why won't they just process payments themselves?"

Steam is big, but not that big. And certainly neither is itch.io. Rolling your own payment processing entangles you into a lot of regulatory obligations even Steam is not prepared to deal with. Their forte is games, not banking infrastructure and the regulatory compliance therein.

There are, however, alternatives on the rise. One such alternative is WERO, a payment system in which banks process payments directly among each other, currently available in Germany, France and Belgium, with plans to roll out to all of Europe in 2026. On the US side there's FedNOW by the federal reserve bank which aims to do the same, with a small number of banks involved. Check if your bank supports these and if not ask them to do so.

There's also been calls to support S. 401 or the Fair Access to Banking Act, which aims to "amend the Federal Reserve Act to prohibit certain financial service providers who deny fair access to financial services." However, the bill is primarily backed by Republicans and as outlined on Republican senator Kevin Cramer's own website, it is aimed at banks not wanting to fund primarily Republican idealized, obviously idiotic and actually harmful things:

Cramer's legislation is a response to United States banks and financial institutions increasingly using their economic standing to categorically discriminate against legal industries and conservatives. For example, Citigroup instituted a policy in 2018 to withhold project-related financing for coal plants, and in 2020, five of the country's largest banks announced they would not provide loans or credit to support oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite explicit congressional authorization. Such exclusionary practices also extend to industries protected by the Second Amendment, with Capital One, among other banks, previously including “ammunitions, firearms, or firearm parts” in the prohibited payments section of its corporate policy manual, and payment services like Apple Pay and PayPal denying their services for transactions involving firearms or ammunition.

I urge you to think twice before calling for support for this bill, lest we'll have a Monkey's Paw situation on our hands.

And before anyone even thinks about bringing up crypto currency as the alternative: Kindly seek your nearest bus for some much needed face time to remove yourself from this gene pool! I can't think of anything less suitable than this bait-and-switch nothing burger tech bro eyewash bigger fool pyramid scheme, dressed up as "currency" that's even more vibe-based and less regulated than the stock market already is. Ultimately, it's nothing more than imposed recreational therapy for computers, involving fun number guessing games that contribute to setting our planet on fire even more than it already is by so-called "AI."

What you can do

[!warning] Don't waste your energy yelling at the agitators

I know it's tempting to give Collective Shout a piece of your mind, but I need you to understand that you're only giving them more ammunition for their case!

They've already posted to their website the most vile shit they've received after their involvement got public. They'll use this to further prove their puritan talking points!

TAKE THAT ENERGY AND FILE COMPLAINTS WITH THE PAYMENT PROCESSORS INSTEAD!!!

Resistance against Collective Shout has been ramping up over the past couple of days online.

People have compiled the phone numbers of various banks and credit card companies to file complaints with them and let them know that it is none of their goddamn business how people spend their own money.

One such compilation can be found at the aptly named website YellAt.Money and another one at stop-paypros.neocities.org. These go beyond phone numbers, email addresses and online forms, they also provide templates, phone scripts, "points to hit", links to petitions and explain how Australian citizens can contact the Australian government agency ACNC to file complaints against Collective Shout (their register entry can be seen here) for lobbying political action, which could threaten their status as a charity.

Staff of the hotlines of the payment processors have reportedly started to ask people to pivot to email. This is probably a desperate attempt by the call centers to cope with the sheer volume of incoming calls, because calls take priority over emails.

Don't let them shut you down!

KEEP CALLING!!!

If they hang up on you, immediately call again and ask for a supervisor, because you were just hung up on!

As soon as service levels drop considerably for an extended period of time, they will take note!

Tips from Bluesky:

Forecast accuracy needs to be off for at least a week before I notice / bring it to management's attention. What is off? Up by at least 10%. I don't know what normal volume is at MC or Visa, but that's one goal to get attention.

Increased handle times reeeealllly stand out. If every call is taking, on average, even 3 seconds longer than normal, that is typically worth one additional body in a seat. 30-60 seconds and suddenly we're talking of adding an unexpected new hire class, which costs soooo much money

Service level needs to drop for at least a month. This is how most call centers decided if they had a good month or not. Most times this means answering 80% of all calls in under 30 seconds. More and longer calls makes that harder.

Another monthly metric to keep in mind is first call resolution (FCR). A lot of places these days don't want customers calling back, and they measure this, typically against a goal of 90%+. Tanking this number will typically get an equal amount of attention as service level.

Having said that, if you do decide to call them, I want to be very clear about one thing:

Be assertive, but don't be an asshole!

The people on the other end have the least amount of control over this whole fiasco. They don't deserve your ire, the management at the payment processors and Collective Shout does. If it only took them a little over 1,000 calls to get what they want, I think we can make our voices heard orders of magnitude louder!

Another tip on Bluesky talks about how to more easily get through to a call agent at MasterCard:

Visa is easy but you have to trick the phone tree with MasterCard:

select option that you have a card

select option for account info

press a few random buttons when asked to give your card, wait until it transfers you to an agent

Request to file a complaint about discriminatory practices

Yet another approach you can take to gum up the works is being the insufferable oblivious customer that doesn't want to file a complaint but just ask why you can't pay for stuff online and to be put on hold instead of being called back (slightly edited for form):

Currently on the phone with Visa.

Instead of starting with a complaint, I approached this as a Confused American Consumer who doesn't understand why they can't buy things off a website they use.

The call center rep immediately asked if it was about Steam/itch. I said yes and asked for information, saying I don't understand what's happening, just trying to understand. Something about Australia? Why is Australia impacting me in the US?

They said to email complaints to an email address.

I don't have a complaint though! I don't even know what I'm complaining out.

Email offered again.

I repeated myself. Slower.

Email again.

After a few rounds of this I asked for a manager. I'm now on hold. My demeanor has been polite but confused. Talking slower than usual, to eat up time.

I've worked call centers before, and I'm not here to lash out at the rep. I'm playing the part of Polite But Annoying Customer. I'm causing friction but not giving them any reason to dismiss me.

They just offered me a callback from the supervisor but I said I'd stay on hold.

Got a supervisor.

Wasted time with greetings / asking how their day is, etc. Repeated everything I had told the rep. Said I don't want to waste anyone's time emailing a complaint if I don't know what the complaint is about.

Supervisor finally said they've been instructed to only hand out the email and give no further information. They can't tell me anything else on the phone. I say hey, no problem, I know this isn't your fault. I ask to file an internal ticket. Supervisor said all calls are logged with case numbers.

I ask for the case number.

I now have something I can call back about and waste more time (since I don't know how email works and I need people to explain things to me slowly on the phone).

Total call length: 25 minutes.

I think anyone who has done customer service before wants to be as efficient as possible when calling. But here, you need to play the part of someone who is incapable of doing any self-service while also embodying the kind neighbor who eats up 15 minutes of your life whenever you pass their porch.

A slippery slope into authoritarian censorship

Steam and itch.io are only a stepping stone. If we let these puritanical zealots have their way, we'll have much bigger problems on our hands than missing out on a bit of wank material.

Restricting access to or outright banning porn is just to get people on board with something allegedly laudable sounding and get laws enacted. Once it's law, however, the stage is set for progressively broadening the scope of what falls under its definitions.

Today, it's "porn." Tomorrow, it's banning anything that allows people to explore their sexuality on their own terms. Next week, it's censoring and banning anything they deem "harmful" in their very loose definitions or stuff they simply don't like. It's always a slippery slope, especially in the political climate we're currently living in. Make no mistake: the end goal is always to force their world views onto everyone else and demand conformity. Ask LGBTQ+ people how it feels to have your existence constantly politicized, when you're just trying to live your life. Puritans will not stop and target anyone that does not conform to their perfect image of how people are supposed to behave and maintain relationships.

If you need an example of what happens when puritanical fervor is passed as law, look no further than the UK's deceitfully named Online Safety Act.

Originally intended to prevent minors from accessing porn online, it is now used as a cudgel to classify Wikipedia as a "Category 1" platform, which would require by law that Wikipedia verify visitors' age, verify the identity of contributors and censor "harmful" topics (i.e. information about sexuality and LGBTQ+, but also important mental and physical health topics). The Wikimedia Foundation is currently challenging its classification in court, arguing that it "would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors, expose the encyclopedia to manipulation and vandalism, and divert essential resources from protecting people and improving Wikipedia."

If you live in the UK and want to help kill this dysfunctional mistake of a law, sign the petition on the UK government's website!

[!important] Circumvention is no solution As noted by Swiss privacy-focused service provider Proton, they saw a 1,400% increase in sign-ups to their VPN service. While it's one way to circumvent the restrictions imposed by the UK's Online Safety Act, you must not think this to be a solution to the issue at hand! The Online Safety Act is still a massive breach of privacy for everyone in the UK and it's only a matter of time before VPNs are outlawed or subject to steep fines for circumventing the restrictions.

Or look at FOSTA-SESTA, from April 2018 during Trump's first term, which got heavy pushes from bigoted hypocrite coalitions like Exodus Cry to "make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking," and amend Section 230 to exclude providers from its protections if they're found to host such content. Nobody in their right mind is against preventing sex trafficking, but what this bill and its proponents call "sex trafficking" is a disingenuous twisting of words that anti-porn groups like Collective Shout, Exodus Cry and NCOSE use to describe all of the legal sex industry. They believe everyone who is on there is so against their will and needs saving, even when it's professional adult performers making a living of it and do so on their own volition. After they got their law passed, they immediately started a campaign against PornHub to be shut down entirely on the grounds it's a sex trafficking website and garnered over 2.5 million signatures on a petition for that purpose.

FOSTA-SESTA is the nexus point to which you can almost always trace back all of this puritanical scrubbing anything sex-related off the internet. It's why payment processors immediately cut ties with anyone and everyone when these bigots come knocking. There's legal precedent, that when Visa tried to have their inclusion in a case against PornHub's parent company dismissed, a judge denied that motion, on the grounds that cutting ties and later reinstating them, Visa must've known about the contents, thus they're on the hook, regardless. However, in April 2024 another judge tentatively dismissed Visa's involvement in the case, arguing they merely acted as a utility service in this case. That didn't stop Collective Shout from claiming they're on the hook for what happens on the platforms they do business with in their open letter to pressure these companies, threatening the stability and predictability of their business instead. The only reason FOSTA-SESTA was enacted was to weaken Section 230 in order to make it easier for these groups to legally prosecute sites on the internet they simply don't like. In all of its existence, it was only used ONCE for its stated purpose, according to a GOA report from June 2021:

In June 2020, DOJ brought one case under the criminal provision established by section 3 of FOSTA for aggravated violations involving the promotion of prostitution of five or more people or acting in reckless disregard of sex trafficking. As of March 2021, restitution had not been sought or awarded. According to DOJ officials, prosecutors have not brought more cases with charges under section 3 of FOSTA because the law is relatively new and prosecutors have had success using other criminal statutes.

The implication here very much is that these puritanical advocacy groups draft their own laws, get them passed when the opportunity presents itself (i.e. when a very litigious executive that's very agreeable to their views is in office) and then go to town with that state sanctioned battering ram.

As for the payment processors, they will say this is merely an issue of "risk management." The risk being: getting dragged into court room bouts over fabricated facilitation of sex-trafficing and overblown claims of CSAM material being present on a platform they provide their services to. The risk in this case is very real as the case with Visa shows, but it also implies a very real and powerful lever payment processors can pull. No prior involvements of the courts, no evidence needed, just a bunch of religious nut jobs and they pull it in the name of "brand safety." This is the equivalent of micro-transactions using in-game currency to obfuscate how much you're really spending. Groups like Collective Shout can make payment processors say it's about their "brand safety" and "risk compliance"—but the reality is they let themselves get weaponized into making other people's judgement calls over content that doesn't comply with their subjective values and not even a surface-level understanding of the media they seek to have censored or banned. Not courts or elected officials. A private company without any transparency just decided, no, this thing doesn't get to exist because someone might feel icky about it, hurt their bottom line or make shareholders nervous. Suddenly, the question about morality becomes a matter of brand management.

The other uncomfortable truth of this is that one country gets to push their narrative of acceptable forms of expression onto the rest of the world. The fact that Japanese manga sites and indie developers on Steam had their revenues frozen over content that is perfectly legal in their homeland and has been approved of by domestic regulative bodies is proof of that. Once they've scrubbed the media landscape clean of "porn," they'll turn their attention to something else.

Optional story paths in your favorite RPG series with a gay romance option? Banned for pushing "the gay agenda."

Black super hero as the main protagonist? Banned for pushing "the woke mind virus."

Tactical espionage action game that challenges a country's narrative and ethos? Banned for "propaganda."

Hack-and-slash game that is themed around the occult? Banned for "promoting satanism."

Game that makes you come to terms with your own mortality? Banned for "stop making people sad."

The looming threat of losing business by being financially suffocated will inevitably have a chilling effect on game developers going forward if this is allowed to continue. Stories that never get told not because players or middle and upper management rejected them, but because nobody dared to even pitch them. Do you ever wonder why games have felt so lifeless and without teeth in recent years? It's because of this focus on maximum profitability and guaranteed profits, and it's going to get a lot worse if groups like Collective Shout get to have a say about what art and fiction are allowed to do.

Censorship will not come with sirens and handcuffs. It will come with a deafening silence of mediocrity that never dares to question, never dares to challenge, never dares to provoke, simply out of fear of being demonetized. If a few financial gatekeepers and religious lobby groups get to decide what's too controversial, across borders, without your input, without transparency and without any sort of accountability, it's no longer in the hands of developers anymore to decide what games get made and we are all going to be poorer for it.

The puritans are well-connected and use pretty euphemisms to mask as charities and organizations advocating for "safety" or "for the children" or "against sexual exploitation" as a thinly veiled cover-up to fool the larger population they're well-intentioned (and shut down anyone challenging them, because "oh, so you're actually for sexual exploitation of children?!") but push their puritanical agenda in the shadows until their world views dominate and are enshrined by law. They will not stop at porn, they will not stop at LGBTQ+ people and they will most certainly try to dictate how heterosexual relationships are allowed to exist!

Be very critical about these kinds of deceitful plays on words and scrutinize their talking points at every step of the way. Don't give them even the slightest benefit of a doubt! Your freedom of expression and everyone's privacy depends on it! If it's not Collective Shout celebrating victories over this, then it's going to be another group claiming to "protect children."

This is first and foremost a cultural and political problem, not a technical one. If you're pissed off that Australian puritans feel emboldened to dictate what you can do with your own money, I need the technologists, gamers and queer activists in my audience to rise up! An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us!

Finally, I want to leave you with this evergreen quote by Tumblr user genderkoolaid:

In order to not succumb to sex negative conservatism you have to accept that people will get off to things that are upsetting to you. And you cannot assume anything about what they have or have not experienced, what they do or do not believe, and how they act based solely on what gets them off. Even if it's extremely confusing and disturbing to you. There are people who have only ever had heterosexual vanilla sex in missionary with the lights off, who actively contribute to more real world harm than your average fetish artist. Kink is not a reliable source of information on someone's moral standing. It just feels good to think that way.

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