spoiler

“At least our free countries don’t have morality police controlling what people can wear” - “Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist… maybe they’re just better dressed and better hidden… they don’t have to control what you wear if they can control what you see…”

A quick and dirty meme after seeing the latest updates. Saimin? Really? But 50SOG with its dubcon (at best) is fine? Hmm… I wonder why. u/kaigyuu2016 would probably have a field day with this.

I mean, I’m no fan of ryona/guro myself, but I don’t go around telling others they can’t access it (even if they might need a bit of Touhou Jesus after that).

Then again, I guess when you have money and monopolistic/duopolistic power in a market/industry, you’ll try to reshape what society can see according to what you think is right… just like Steam.

I wrote some time ago that “this isn’t stopping at looks = age, but going beyond that. It’s anyone’s guess where it’ll stop.”

If they don’t stop at saimin… what’s next, timestop?

u/Jaggedmallard26 nailed it pretty well… “You can launder money from drug cartels so they can buy heavy weaponry with a bank but god forbid you use their service to see a titty.”

Fortunately, it seems like some in Japan are taking notice of this “make Japan and Japanese media conform to Western standards” and trying to stand up.

My condolences to our German weebs, though.

Sources:

  1. Pixiv Announces Transaction Restrictions For ‘Unethical’ Content
  2. DLsite March 2024 Tag changes for Japanese and English after the Mastercard and Visa credit card incident
  3. Dl Getchu bended knee to credit card companies.
  4. Movie: Star Wars The Phantom Menace
  • @Limonene
    2•7 months ago

    This post was kind of a pain to read, with all the reddit links. I had to convert them to old.reddit.com to get them to display properly.

    I think Steam was in the right to remove that one game. “Looks = age” is true for cartoon characters, since they have no biological age. It seems the character was described as 19 in lore, but in Steam’s opinion, they looked like a prepubescent child. Since cartoon child pornography is illegal, they were right to remove it.

    But that other stuff seems to be legal. Cartoon rape porn games are appalling to me, but are probably legal, and should be legal. I agree that people being unable to pay for legal (even if appalling) content is a form of undesirable censorship.

    It’s probably Visa’s fault. They seem like a complete monopoly. I rarely see anyone with a non-Visa credit card. I myself have a Discover card, but I have to have a Visa card too because some merchants don’t accept Discover. Every merchant accepts Visa, and every customer has to have a Visa card. Merchants today are more likely to refuse cash than to refuse Visa.

    Possible solutions:

    1. The libertarian approach: The government needs to remove barriers to entry in making new payment systems. Loosen BSA requirements for smaller payment systems. Require existing banks to interoperate with the design of new payment systems, if their customer requests it.

    2. The socialist approach: The US government could create a payment system. It would be protected by constitutional free speech rules, so legal content couldn’t be blocked.

    3. The moderate approach: Treat Visa like the monopoly that it is. Treat it as a defacto commons, where people are forced to go even if they don’t want to be there. As long as it remains a monopoly, it should be required to carry all legal customers. Even customers selling appalling content, like cartoon rape porn games.