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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8064 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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Do you mean everyone trying to implement age verification on their platforms and in their countries all of a sudden?

We ask that top-level posts in the main thread get a little more substance. If you don’t want to elaborate, you could try the Sunday thread.

What are you talking about? What even is public circle censorship?

There was an increase in censorship?

I would, if forced to make the decision, prefer our country's violent nutjobs target insurance company CEOs(who can hire private security, spend time behind secured areas instead of in public[eg going out to eat at country clubs rather than the local steakhouse], etc) than schoolchildren. From a utilitarian perspective I hope Luigi has copycats because it will redirect potential mass shooters. I would, of course, rather that our nutjobs be sane, or failing that confine themselves to long, thought out, and incomprehensible youtube comments, and if they must act out in public it's best they be institutionalized. But none of those things are going to happen.

I haven't noted any wave of censorship, either.

There's most certainly a lot more censorship lately. Even I can tell, and I'm not really paying attention. Vita and Mastercard pressuring Steam and some other platforms to remove pornographic content. Paypal is doing something similar as well (I was recently refused a purchase by them). England pushing for online IDs, and speaking of banning VPNs. X and Discord implimenting age verification. Australia is also pushing for online IDs, and there was something in Canada as well which I do not recall because I'm not really paying attention myself.

I didn't get to see the deleted comment, I'm just surprised with how fast you boiling frogs are getting used to the new temperatures. (I don't believe that you're unaware of what's happening, as I'm quite clueless compared to the average user here myself. So instead, I will assume that you either don't consider these things to be censorship, or that you don't consider it to be a substantial change)

The porn bans were signaled as inevitabilities way in advance of anything actually happening; at the end of the day, Texas law is probably a bigger reason than any wave of censorship.

The Uk and Canada are mostly cases of unpopular center-left governments trying to ban their opposition from speaking; this is something the Biden admin pretty transparently wanted to do but was unable to, as well.

In neither case do I really call it a ‘recent increase’ in censorship.

The Texas law is bad, but it only applies where at least a third of content on a site is under the 'harmful to minors' banner. Even accepting for how poorly that calculation is defined, there's little chance it'd apply to sites like itch.io or x twitter, and zero of it applying to Steam. It wouldn't apply to payment processors at all.

Edit: I replied to a child of a comment, thinking it was a direct reply to me. Oops.

I'm not sure which Texas law you're refering to? I consider it an effect, and not a cause. Did the deleted comment imply that everything is downstream from a new Texan law? I admittedly can't defend such a position, I'm just pointing out a pattern with the belief that no explanation makes it any less concerning.

'harmful to minors' is so subjective that whoever has the most power can make it apply to everything that they're against. The label has not had anything to do with what is literally harmful to minors for like 20 years now.

Anyway, Steam and Itch.io have already been hit by censorship (though Itch seem to have gotten some of the games back). ID laws are already gaining traction. I've already had purchases refuted by Paypal because of reasons which are false, but the sort of false where people are afraid of arguing against them because it will make them appear immoral. This is either censorship from many different causes in rapid succession, or it's a coordinated attack on human freedom by somebody with enough power to get multiple countries and multiple major payment processors on their side.

Panicking about Texas laws in ways that make it clear the panicked did not read it is a thing that happens all the time and is not unique to porn bans.

Is there a nutjob substitution effect?

I've heard (but not confirmed) that removing one suicide method (eg. putting fences on a bridge) reduces the total number of suicides by the marginal amount blocked by that intervention. In other words, there are bridge-jumping-suicidal people and pill-taking-suicidal people, but not suicidal-by-any-method people that would substitute one method for another.

Are there school-shooting-nutjobs and CEO-assassinating-nutjobs, or else are there mass-shooting-on-any-target-nutjobs?

I've heard (but not confirmed) that removing one suicide method (eg. putting fences on a bridge) reduces the total number of suicides by the marginal amount blocked by that intervention. In other words, there are bridge-jumping-suicidal people and pill-taking-suicidal people, but not suicidal-by-any-method people that would substitute one method for another.

I am very doubtful about that. Some of the suicides are likely by goal-oriented people following a long-term plan (e.g. in a MAID-like context), and for these I would expect substitution effects.

Even for spontaneous suicides, I think that there is some minor substitution effect. If a person had the worst day of their life and would jump off a bridge if not for the fact that it was fenced, I would expect at least a 20% chance that another convenient method (access to a tall building, a firearm, drugs) will present itself and be taken before they feel less suicidal.

I was told by a psychologist that the vast majority of suicidal impulses last minutes or even seconds. The idea is that they don’t have time to seek out a substitute before the impulse wears off. It may appear later in other circs of course.

I don't think even this is the right framing. It's not a question of a tiny population of nutjobs of one stripe or another that we hope to disincentivize. We know from history that a large proportion of human beings will kill in cold blood, or at least approve of it, if conditioned and pressured to do so. Apologia and celebration of this killing will only shift the margin of how rabid an anti-corporation true believer needs to be to undertake such an action.

There are ‘go kill people’ nut jobs- in the past they were serial killers, now they’re mass shooters and terrorists.

public circle?

Could it be Public Square? I don't know, I'm too square to be in the know.

I think it's referring to credit cards coming down against porn purchases on Steam. But needs more details.

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