https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist?wprov=sfla1
Collective Shout. Thanks to itch.io for naming them. TIL
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist?wprov=sfla1
Collective Shout. Thanks to itch.io for naming them. TIL
Wow, good to learn about the conservative christian, anti-abortion, "radical feminist".
My favourite fact is she thinks decriminalising sex work will lead to more sex trafficing.
Such wisdom and vision, we should let these people have power over payment processors
Damn, Rupert Murdoch and now this asshole. Australia has a monopoly on ruining media, lol.
You can thank Advance Australia for that. Huge think tank that likely bank rolls all this nonsense and more.
Also, down with Collective Shout! As someone who suffered child abuse, I condemn these cookers crusading under the guise of child protection. FFS, they were patting themselves on the back for stopping sales of plastic heads on Temu.
Reist reviewed the controversial Netflix film Cuties (2020) for both her ABC Religion & Ethics column[20] and for the Christian newspaper Eternity.[21] She described the film as "a social critique on what happens when we allow misogynistic, violent, exhibitionist internet culture to ravage girls – training them to wield their immature bodies as currency."[21] Reist related the film to the activism of Collective Shout: "In the past 10 years at Collective Shout, we have met many girls this age, who have felt the same pressures. Some have taken inappropriate pics and shared them, sexualising themselves either out of a sense of obligation, or because they have believed the lie that self-objectification is empowering or liberating."[21] However, regarding certain scenes in the film, she wrote that "the complexity here is that in trying to make a serious ethical point about girls and sexuality, the girls may have been used unwittingly — but still inappropriately — to a noble end. The scene could have been filmed differently[.]"[20]
Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can't come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it's fruit of the poisoned tree.
Transaction companies should not play police, in my opinion
In fact no company should play being police
This is why we have the digital market act
How are transaction offering companies not included there? Who gives them the right to choose what people consume?
Way do much centralised power
Basically a dictatorship
Fuck that
I mean, they have no problems offering transaction services to obvious scams like “find sex in your region” and other scammy find relationship websites.
gamers, unironically, rise up. this isn't going to end on niche porn games
It's already expanded. It started as going after "rape and incest" but now it's all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.
Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.
How do I tell politely in a letter to MasterCard, that if I want to buy a horse dildo it's only MY fucking business?
Any games with even mild nudity is next (like Nier)
Yep, then lgbtq games, then games with guns, then games with blood, so on and so on
This morality police crap being carried out by the most immoral bastards on the planet needs to stop.
Fuck religion.
Don't you just love people that can't mind their own fucking business?
Bro for real! Like I hate any porn game, as a game. Not as a societal flaw!
So you know what I do? Same exact thing I do about gay sex. I don't do it, I don't think about it very often unless there's a funny joke to be made in a tangential way, and I don't tell other people that they have to be exact like me.
Ffs, let people do what they want if they aren't hurting anyone.
We got GoonerGate before the release of the Epstein files
All my homies hate Collective Shout
I don't get it. Do payment processors want less money? Do they hate being entrenched and bringing in revenue just for existing? Do they want us to try and find alternatives to them?
this bullshit is surely coming from the recently intensifying family friendlinessification of the internet, but why the fuck do payment processors care? i have no idea. are they taking a cut of advertising revenue? do all ceos just want to appear as massive prudes? do they see children as an untapped market to exploit? or maybe they're just fucking stupid? what is actually going on
Capitalism is creating a level of censorship that exceeded what the US government was ever able to do after the Warren court. Parts of this have been there for a long time. You can drop f-bombs on cable TV all you like; the FCC can't do anything about it since it's not over public airwaves. They generally don't do that, because advertisers don't like it. Capitalism set the rule, not the government.
YouTube has put this idea into overdrive. You can't make a straightforward, monetized video about the Holocaust anymore, because the language you would have to use would violate YouTube's written and unwritten rules. Meanwhile, actual fucking Nazis have had little issue using YouTube to spread their bullshit.
Credit card companies have had issues with porn sites in terms of fraud reporting. Not necessarily because of actual fraud--if the site you use is under CCbill, it's fine--but because some guy's spouse sees the card transactions, asks what this particular line is for, and he lies and says it's probably fraud and he'll call it in. Get more than a few of those, and the processor will always be flagged for review.
They do outright stop some of the more fringe porn. Bree Mills (of Adulttime) has said that they get limited by the credit card industry far more than the government. All the faux-incest videos go out of their way to mention in dialog that everyone is a step family and over 18. You won't find scat on Kink.com, again because their payment processor won't allow it.
That's been the situation for a few decades, but it has gone beyond that in the last few years. They tried it on OnlyFans, and the company maneuvered things to show why that's an incredibly bad idea, and then the card companies backed down. But they're trying again elsewhere, and they're starting to be successful. I severely doubt they had any significant fraud issues on Steam or itch.io, NSFW items or otherwise.
Ultimately, this stuff is a tiny slice of their revenue. If they want to shut it all down on a moral crusade, they will barely notice the hit to their numbers.
On a side note, I'd like the advocate that you should pay for porn if it's within your means. You'll often find better quality stuff at sites that properly run their sets with consent. If you like queer porn or unconventional body types, there are a lot of sites for that which just don't show up on PornHub.
I find it funny that a lot of the fediverse is anti-cryptocurrency, yet this is a perfect example of a problem cryptocurrency can solve. No one can stop you from transacting on a number of blockchains.
Too bad cryptobros are more interested in using it as a speculative investment/scam machine than an actual currency.
Yeah the wild swings in exchange value instantly preclude its use as a currency.
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
Also, the issue here is not centralized currency under a government, it's centralized payment processing under monopolistic private companies. Crypto is not required to solve that, all that is needed is an alternative payment processor (in an ideal world, probably a public one run by that government, since in a modern world that seems like an essential service to me).
It's a good point, but a payment processor run by the government would also be under pressure (from voters) to wield its power to suppress marginal content.
Imagine a US-government-run payment processor right now - it would be blocking anyone that sells anything "woke" or "DEI".
I am a strong believer in democracy. I don't think that the answer to a bad government is to reduce the power of the government, because that power will inevitably go to undemocratic institutions. Only the government is accountable to the people. So even when the government is currently controlled by people I dislike, I still want more things to be brought under the power of the government rather than privatized.
The answer to bad government actions, in my view, is to fight for a more democratic government, and zealously advocate for good ideas among the voting population.
If it was used as an actual currency instead of an investment vehicle for speculators, that would help.
It also has zero protection from scams and fraud.
Crypto is so heavily regulated now, I don't even know how to procure any cause all the sites I have used years ago are just dead now.
Collective shout finacials
year: 2024
revenue: 458043
employee_expenses: 107000
other_expenses: 215488
net_surplus: 135555
employees:
total_fte: 2
full_time: 0
part_time: 1
casual: 4
volunteers: 15
donations_and_bequests: 389800
government_grants: 0
commercial_income: 0
expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%"
average_expense_per_employee: 39400
Leadership
- name: Melinda Tankard Reist
role: Founder, Movement Director
public_socials:
- Twitter: @MelTankardReist
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Caitlin Roper
role: Campaigns Manager
public_socials:
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Renee Chopping
role: Campaigns Strategy
public_socials:
- LinkedIn
public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy
role: Campaigns Strategy
public_socials:
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Coralie Alison
role: Movement Operations Manager
public_socials:
- Twitter: @CoralieAlison
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
Holy fuck why did Collective Shout go full nuclear and go behind the platforms’ back and straight to the payment processors. Like they could have at least talk to the Itch.io people.
If they wanted any games banned all they had to do was talk to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in Australia, where they're based. Any of the games listed would have likely been added to the 'Refused Classification' list and thereby banned from sale and import in Australia. If they wanted them pulled from Steam or Itch entirely they could have talked to those platforms.
But they didn't want to raise objections through appropriate preexisting channels, they wanted to push their Christian-based ideology on the whole world by going Karen on the social media of all the payment processors.
How do platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans circumvent this? I know OF had issues with payment processors in the past but I'm not sure what changes they implemented to stay compliant. There must be some way for itch.io to keep these things on their platform while not pissing off the payment processors (who can go fuck themselves btw, this is completely unnecessary)
Porn sites are categorized as high risk at these payment processors. So probably itch has to fall into the high risk category and incur higher fees or remove all porn content. If you fall into the high risk category the payment platform will probably audit you more often and thus charge higher fees.
OF probably had these same issues because they didn’t start as a porn site.
This is what killed tumblr.
I get not liking a game about SA and incest, but how about just not play that game?
Hmmm. Could porn once again because the medium catalyst for bitcoin to take off.
My biggest issue with this situation is: if they can get away with getting games they don't like being delisted, where does it end? Delisting books with themes or authors they don't like? Banning the sale of alcohol and cigarettes?
Why are they doing a comprehensive audit on the content and not doing a comprehensive audit on new payment providers? I sure would be