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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25647 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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There has been a recent crackdown on naughty games on steam and itch.io. The game platforms say the crackdown has come from payment processors. Payment processors have said they don't want their business associated with unsavory practices, and that adult products have higher charge back rates. Some people have blamed activist religious groups on aggressively lobbying the payment processors for this crackdown.

I mostly feel a sense of annoyance. My libertarian leanings have me feeling certain ways about all this.

  1. The biggest problem is that payment processors are usually an unholy alliance of governments, banks, and financial groups. This makes them allergic to competition and new entrants to the market. The Internet has reshaped society over the last three decades and I'd say only 1.5 payment processors came out of it. PayPal, and the crypto market. The term "coup complete" got thrown around a lot in the Biden presidency to describe what was necessary to build a competing Internet ecosystem.
  2. I'm worried this might signal the revival of the religious culture wars that happened in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000's. It's frustrating to me but a lot of people seem to gravitate towards religion of some kind. I think woke culture has plenty of religious elements. The atheist movement in the 2000s seemed genuinely anti-religious. But it seems the longer term strategy is just have a different religion.
  3. Neutrality as a default. This is the end goal. Once you accept that a thing is subject to politics it becomes entirely subject to politics. We are cancelling thots and porn this year. 4 years ago it was lab leak conspiracies. I certainly think some things are more important to not be censored, but the machinery of censorship seems to work regardless of the subject being censored. Once it is built it will be used.

Some people have blamed activist religious groups on aggressively lobbying the payment processors for this crackdown

Last time we saw this exact same play, Operation Choke Point came directly from the DOJ. I can easily understand how Federal investigations and lawsuits would apply significant pressure; I have to wonder how much pressure activist groups can really apply to these institutions? They seem unlikely to me to be the real driving force. On the other hand, Trump's first DOJ shut down Operation Chokepoint, so I don't see why his 2nd one would boot it back up. Maybe this really is just something payment processors have decided is in their own interest.

It's not necessarily the US government that is turning up the pressure. The rest of the Anglosphere hasn't exactly been shy about pushing for such censorship recently and even if the Trump administration isn't going to apply similar pressure itself, it's not likely to apply counter pressure to prevent such crackdowns.

Sorry, the best we can offer is JD Vance mocking the UK PM about "freedom of speech" in the Oval Office and on Twitter. It's not much, but it's more than the previous administration, I suppose.

One of the possible explanations for the timeline here is the UK's Online Safety Act implementation and related age-gating, which would actually explain why the hammers came down for itchio in the way that they did, and which the administration is actually pushing on (if for unrelated and kinda stupid reasons).

Hasn't Trump threatened sanctions against Brazil for going after Musk? Here's an NPR affiliate https://www.wlrn.org/americas/2025-08-13/brazil-kept-tight-rein-on-big-tech-trumps-tariffs-could-change-that complaining about it. Not Anglosphere, I suppose.

I’m guessing porn developers arent quite as tight with Trump.

The Executive Order announcing the tariffs on Brazil mentioned both the trial of Bolsonaro and the treatment of US tech companies. The Truth Social rant that preceded it focused on Bolsonaro, so unless there has been non-public communication informing the Brazilian authorities to the contrary, the Brazilians are going to assume it is mostly about Bolsonaro.

Is there a deal on offer to Brazil if they let Bolsonaro off the hook and don't change tech regulation - almost certainly, given that the UK and EU got deals without budging on tech regulation. Is there a deal on offer if they hang Bolsonaro and allow Musk to run the birdsite the way he wants to? Probably not, based on Trump's posturing to date.

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