please actually reblog this post this time, as this one will gut national parks for more fucking paper. we have 14 days to stop it, giving us literally no time to do so.
they are literally betting on us to not do anything about it, because they’re that desperate on keeping control, and ruining lives for everyone, but themselves.
The proposed rule would rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (2001 Roadless Rule) (66 FR 3244, 36 CFR Subpart B (2001)), which prohibits road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting in inventoried roadless areas, with limited exceptions.
so itchio has shadowbanned any games tagged with ‘nsfw’, 'adult’, or 'erotic’ so they don’t show up in searches, and several devs have reported that their r18 games have been removed from the site with no warning
you know, maybe the internet shouldn’t be controlled by payment processors and terf lobbyists. and maybe people should be more concerned about this rise of censorship on queer media.
just to help spread accurate and helpful info about this as much as possible.
itch have less than 25 employees, and are just the latest target of a long running campaign to get payment processors to crack down on NSFW and LGBTQIA+ content (which the right wing hate campaigns see as one and the same) please blame itch as little as possible, yes they capitulated here, but they have very little power in this arrangement and have always been on the right side in the past. Hell, Steam have also complied, and they have way more power, and way more revenue from NSFW games, if they could have fought back they would have done. this is not a betrayal from itch, no matter how disappointing it may be.
the group claiming responsibility here are “Collective Shout” who claim it took roughly 1000 phonecalls to mastercard to get them to comply. They have the current admin and culture war momentum on their side, but we have way more than 1000 people on ours.
This is a big blow for comic artists, who have vanishingly few venues left to post work with adult content (and remember, the groups responsible for this don’t distinguish between “nsfw” and “queer”) for sale online.
It’s gotten demonstrably worse over the past decade, and right wing groups and credit card processors are the ones responsible.
Okay so bad news for everyone on YouTube right now
Starting the 13th, we will have an AI determine if we are children or not and if you are a child, than you are forced to send your ID, send a selfie or a credit card
This has the obvious cons of having your privacy being revoked from you and and in case there is a security breach, major identity thefts.
So what do we do in this scenario?
Well right now I have real idea as this is relativity new to me, but I do have two plans
Plan 1. Bug the shit out of them, send letters and send emails about how much of bad idea this is.
Include why the AI will mess up and target adults who watch cartoons, include privacy issues, censorship issues, anything you can think of that relates to this. I want you guys to bug the hell out of YouTube until they reverse this idea
Plan 2. Blackout.
Since the thing is coming out on the 13th.
The plan will be to completely avoid YouTube at all cost for that day, no watching, no sharing, no uploading, no nothing.
Download videos before things go down, watch Netflix. Whatever you do, don’t touch YouTube.
That’s all I can say right now, I also want you guys to let YouTubers know of this situation cause if it’s important for everyone on the website to talk about this immediately
Spread this stuff around, let people know of YouTube’s upcoming policy and how it’ll hurt everyone
if you don’t want to have to upload your ID or have your face biometrically scanned in order to access any website/platform with content deemed obscene: https://defendonlineprivacy.com
if you don’t want content on the internet to be censored in the first place: https://stopkosa.com
you should be signing both.
also check out https://yellat.money for other petitions and ways to contact payment processors who are the ones responsible for all these sudden changes on steam and itchio because they were “pressured” by a religious puritanical group in Australia.
sex workers tried to warn people ten years ago that this was where things were headed with the passing of SESTA/FOSTA but everyone ignored us. it was never about “stopping human trafficking” or “protecting children”. it has always been about control and surveillance. we need to kill the “kids online safety act”. this censorship didn’t start with video games or YouTube and it most certainly isn’t going to stop there. please wake the fuck up and listen to sex workers now before it’s too late.
Results from calling about the refusal to process payments for adult work on itch.io and Steam:
My script in each case hit the points of ‘I’m a cardholder calling about the recent refusal of this company to process payments for works deemed adult, particularly in regards to the Steam and itch.io games marketplaces. This has been in response to protests made by a small religious group in Australia. Frankly, I don’t find it [company]’s place to dictate how I spend my money, and I’m very concerned that this is in response to protests from a religious group that should have no legal power over me. If this continues I will be seeking an alternate way to make payments and will no longer be a customer of your brand.’
Visa
heard me out, thanked me for the feedback
asked me to email my feedback to '[email protected]’ so they can track it
advised to not include any identifying details such as card numbers etc in the email
Mastercard
the phone tree did not have a complaints section so I navigated the options as 'current cardholder’ -> 'a question about benefits’
happily took my feedback after confirming my customer details (full name and contact number)
let me know that they had already received significant feedback about this issue and it had been 'escalated’ and registered my feedback to add to the pile
I was concerned about feeling awkward about calling a company and basically being like 'yo I’m mad you won’t let me buy porn’ in terms of I don’t think a poor customer service rep should have to deal with that, so I was planning on sprinkling in 'and LGBT content is frequently mislabelled as adult’ in my script but I Forgor and it was fine. Each call was <1:30 and minimally painful. If you needed a sign to call, call today! Or, well, maybe email Visa.
Then call again later until you reach a real person. If their phones are tied up for days? Try again for days. Large companies hope that backlash dies down over time, so it’s important that you ensure they don’t see an end in sight.
Collective Shout only succeeded because they were fucking annoying, like most anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups. If you want to get payment processors to back down off this puritanical hate bullshit, you have to be more annoying than the opposition.
Mastercard is getting really fast! I spent almost no time waiting for a rep, or a supervisor. And when I spoke to a supervisor they pulled up my case from my phone number and said it was already being escalated. We need more callers!! Every day!
Visa still remains spicy and talked over me hung up again after finishing their script.
Paypal asked for screen shots of where I was seeing this new policy, and after I sent them they called me back and said this PAYONEERs fault, not them. Which isn’t true, but was kind of funny.
Stripe still won’t pick up the phone.
Remember! We can only win this if we keep the pressure up! Call them!
Terms like “family friendly” and “kid friendly” have been used to ban LGBT+ since the inception in homophobia.
It’s still used to ban drag story hour.
They see drag queens in their PG outfits reading kids books to children and they call that “exposing children to sexual deviancey” that’s “inappropriate for children” despite the fact that there’s nothing sexual about the behavior.
You don’t understand why banning horror games for being too violent is part of the LGBT+ erasure, but the crux of the issue is bigots have never stopped trying to ban kids from LGBT+ spaces. Kids are still banned from LGBT+ spaces where I live and the LGBT+ community has to do everything it can to be “family friendly” including ban the serving of alcohol to prevent teens from being banned from their space.
And the moment we start allowing big businesses and governments to determine what is and isn’t appropriate for public consumption, you better fucking bet that the fucking assholes that protest in front of my local gay bar during drag brunch is gonna use that opportunity to shove every bit of queer expression that I’ve fought for the past decade to normalize back into the closet.
It’s 100% about the gay shit. Because believe it or not we’re still not much improved from where we were in the 80s at the height of the gay aids crisis. Assholes are just waiting for their opportunity to drag us back there kicking and screaming, and they’ll absolutely use this “adult” label to do so.
INFORMATION ABOUT QUEER/ADULT CONTENT BEING DELISTED
Hey, I’m sure you’ve heard by now that several online retailers have blanket delisted queer/adult content. Information seems sporadic, so I want to create a masterpost of what happened, why it matters, and what you can do about it.
WHAT HAPPENED
You’ve probably heard that Steam and Itch.io have removed all of their adult/queer content from listings. Itch has even gone so far as to prevent creators from being able to get their payouts.
This is not Steam/Itch’s fault. Mastercard and Visa have pressured them to remove their adult content. Visa and Mastercard collectively hold over 90% of the market share in payment processing. Unfortunately, if they cut you off, you pretty much lose over 90% of your gross income, which is a death sentence for basically any company.
This is also not just localized to Steam and Itch. Several anime/manga retailers have also been affected, and more companies are likely to follow. I would not be surprised if Patreon cracked down again soon, so if you have adult/queer content on there, I suggest you prepare accordingly.
The reason for this happening is not a response to the current US political climate, or these payment processors randomly deciding to force their puritanical views. It is a concerted effort by a group called Collective Shout, an anti-porn group masquerading as a feminist liberation org. (Look up the meaning of the word SWERF.)
Collective Shout has, allegedly, sent over 1,000 letters to Visa and Mastercard urging them to take action against certain digital retailers selling adult content. Which, thankfully gives us an avenue to respond. More on that in the third section.
WHY THIS MATTERS
For some of you, I don’t need to explain why you should care. For others, let me explain to you why this is a massive cocern for everyone, not just adult content creators.
First of all, we’ve already seen perfectly sfw queer content catching strays from this. You should already be well aware that adult content and queer content are often conflated, and the two are pretty inextricably linked to each other. If you try to ban one, you will, inevitably, end up banning the other as well.
Secondly, this sets a precedent for “concerned citizens” to be able to pressure payment processors into removing whatever content they don’t like from the internet. Even if you don’t partake in adult content. Even if you’re not queer. Even if this doesn’t currently affect you or anyone you know right now, it will. They managed to do this with only 1,000 letters. If they get away with it, it’ll only be the beginning.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Remember when I said they sent 1,000 letters to make this happen? I bet we can get more.
I wrote a form letter for Mastercard and for Visa. Fill in your name. Print them. Sign them. Mail them out. The addresses for the respective companies are at the top. It shouldn’t cost much. Even international postage shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive for most people.
Some people are sharing phone numbers and emails. That’s fine, but I prefer a physical footprint. You can’t see 1,000 phone calls. 1,000 emails don’t take up physical volume. If you get 1,000 letters about something, you can see how much people care about it. That means something in this day and age.
SHARE THIS POST. Reblog it. Reblog it multiple times a day. Send it to everyone you know. Seriously. Everyone. Even if they’re not on Tumblr. Get the word out. The most successful advertising is word of mouth. So use your voice and make sure people hear it. We’ve beaten this shit in the past and we’ll do it again, but we still need to put in the work.
I’m going to do that. I don’t feel confontoble speaking on phone. But as housekeeper who sees paperwork can’t be easyly throw away, i like this idea.
UPDATE: Current target priorities are PayPal and Stripe alongside Visa and MasterCard. Call to send physical letters increases - How to send letters!
I’m making my own post for this. I have been talking a lot about the censorship of payment processors and the recent banning of NSFW/queer/taboo content on itch.io and steam. I want to scream as an artist witnessing the growing meddling of payment processors as they strangle out the art that we are aloud to make and profit off of. Here I have linked the resources am personally utilizing and I think are the most to the point and well organized.
BEST LINK TO SHARE. This site resources are very well organized and have scripts to follow and utilize and continuously updated numbers to call. UPDATE: Now has what to do if you get yelled at by customer service + new info for both what to do and who to call. Last update 8/1
I found this article to be extremely helpful on what to do in the meantime to keep selling your work as an independent artist online. This is mostly for my indie pub and visual artists who are selling PDF and Epub type digital files.
Greetings, my name is Ritsufan777 but you can call me Ritsu for short. I am nothing but a simple wanderer of tumblr.
Fair warning to those who follow me, I tend to reblog things at random. I rarely post things of my own which is something I am trying to change. This is a Multi-Fandom blog.
I also wouldn’t mind checking out any recommendations anyone has for me so feel free to send me some. ^-^
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