Anyone know if this is true or not?
these people have been planning on this for lot longer than a year. christians have been trying to ban video games for decades. the only reason this group hasn’t come after more games is because they know they don’t yet have enough politicians behind them to manage it.
Christians are evil
I don’t want to come off as pedantic, but what we’re dealing with in the US is a very strange and successful breed of “Christian Nationalism.”
Essentially, it’s a belief that ultra-conservative Christianity is the only legitimate religion and that the USA is a Christian nation.
It probably comes as no surprise that these people heavily influenced the Confederacy, is strongly white-supremecist, anti-vice, etc, and has been an anathema in this country since before the states actually formed.
Christians themselves are… A problem, but not the problem. It’s these Christian nationalists. They’re loud. They want you to think all Christians believe what they do too. They also tend to drown out opposing Christian speakers by being louder than them too.
It’s one of the reasons why MLK Jr was hated so much by Hoover, by the south, etc. He was a Christian pastor, and stood against everything they did.
It’s important that we don’t group Christians in with Christian Nationalists. It’s very difficult but necessary.
I do agree, but I still think that all religions are a cancer on humanity, harming us, dividing us and holding us back. Religion is the enemy of progress.
I go one step further. Ideology is the enemy of progress. It all eventually corrodes and corrupts into anti-humanitarian bullshit, even if a particular ideology starts out good.
The best counter example I’ve seen is Shintoism.
But on a separate note, i believe religion has an evolutionary advantage vs logic and reason, as evidenced by it being so prevalent throughout human history. So in the most literal sense, i believe humans wouldn’t have any progress without religion.
In order to survive, humans need to build societies that can adapt to the ever changing environments we find ourselves in.
One possibility is to use pure science, logic, and reason: educate every child on the scientific method, teach them how to not fall for logical fallacies, to be skeptical, to demand extraordinary evidence to support extraordinary claims, to repeat experiments and engage in peer review, to create ethical frameworks, and have a logical justification for the actions you take…
Another possibility is to use religion: brainwash a kid on what “good” looks like, and show them how to put on blinders to anything that might threaten that. Johnny down the street is “sinning”? Make him stop, that hurts our society. Father Dale is touching kids? Don’t lose sight of the goal, Father Dale is a great man, this is a personal struggle that we can help him through.
Which of those two methods of adaptation requires less energy? Because when an organism has to evolve, the organism that can do it using less energy will have the advantage. Religion, or the concept of morality in general, is a society’s selection pressure on itself. The best we can do is acknowledge this, and learn to wield it as a tool. And I believe that many leaders throughout human history, both political and religious, understood this well.
Was it nationalists carrying out the crusades? Diddling kids? Demonizing LBGTQ? Seems like a convenient deflection.
The existence of good does not justify the evil, and there has been way more harm than good in the name of gods, abrahamic or not.
I do not dispute that. I am stating that this power grab is Christian Nationalism. If you read my comment, about half-way through I said Christians are a problem, but not the problem right now.
I also would argue that MLK Jr. did much more good than any evil.
Mostly because of all the stupid.
All religions are evil.
Right on man. Fuckin’ Buddhists. Probably don’t even use Linux.
Buddhist nationalists do genocide all the same, like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
The bullshit going on in the USA under the christian name is short sighted, stupid and lacks empathy. Christianity isn’t USA fundamentalism tho.
Painting with such a broad brush is how these people got to where they are now, don’t make the same mistakes they did.
Lmao thanks for the heads-up, past me.
Edit: this user thinks that equal rights for women are Islamophobic.
Wait, how do you get that? I also use Voyager, but not seeing that :/
Edit: it’s called user tags. It’s not shared as far I’m concerned.
Press and hold on any user and you can add a tag. It is incredibly useful for a myriad of reasons. I started implementing a system for sharing/community tags but I didn’t like the implications of having a parallel voting system to the existing one and scrapped it.
Edit: the best part of the feature is that it can link you to why you created the tag. In this case the user in question argued that supporting women’s rights is the same thing as Islamophobia.
Religion is the closest thing to true evil that exist on this planet. Insane cultists shouldn’t be allowed around children. Not even their own (they tend to mutilate them in order to mark them as members of their insane cult).
There’s a distinctive difference between american evangelists and other christian groups, for starters that the evangelists have been integrated in the state-religion the USA has been running at least since the cold war., and they are actively utilized by the Republicans. This also means that those evangelists believe that in the US white nationalists should be in power.
Please note that the “christian” part in this has gone pretty far from any christian roots - it’s for the most part just utilized to identify the in-group and to radicalize members. The quip “Y’all qaeda” comes pretty close to the truth - they are just as radical and socially regressive as any other islamic sect that would use terror to achieve their goals.
They’ve been playing the very long game of trying to control human behavior for centuries, not just decades. The one thing to note is that the United States began as a bunch of colonies run by ministers, and the fundies want to go back to that theocratic form of rule. That by the 19th century the temperance movement came from the dozens of Christian subsects. Yeah, they also extended it to anything that did not define as “Christian” behavior, including choice of ideologies (socialism = bad), gender (male or female = good), source of knowledge (Bible > science), beliefs (they have veiled Islamophobia), and even eating and sexual habits.
Now – based on their basic blueprint – they want to artificially induce the Second Coming by trying to get their fucking project off the ground, and impose control on everyone else.
BTW, any collapse or devolution of the United States and the Western world would come off as a wonderful realization for Putin, Dugin, Kyrill, and their cronies. That Jesus himself in his actual Middle Eastern appearance and acts of progressivism would be considered an enemy by fundies expecting a “whitened” Jesus.
Going to need done links for you claims chief
Anthony Comstock.
J. Edgar Hoover.
Joseph McCarthy.
Roy Cohn.
Donald Trump.
Willful traitors all. Have it writ upon thy meager graves, “destroyed the union just so people wouldn’t masturbate.”
There’s more, I know. But those fellas are all linked.
Oh hey. GamerGate was used by Christian fundamentalists to censor video games. How interesting. I thought they cared about Freeze Peach?
Just stopped over there. They are downvoting anyone who brings up price hikes from tariffs. Their handlers are not happy with the few coming to their senses.
It’s almost like they are pathetic cult members. Who can’t give an inch in an intelligent conversation. Fucking losers.
So how does this tie into what’s happening now? Part of Vought and Project 2025’s plans are to remove Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). This law currently protects platform holders, providing immunity for any content uploaded to said platform that third-party users created.
By removing Section 230, platform holders, like Steam, would be liable for any “illegal” content uploaded to the platform, as opposed to those creating and uploading said content. If Steam were found guilty of hosting this content, the company could be hit with huge fines. Therefore, Steam, Itch, and many other platforms would likely place a blanket ban on any adult content, mitigating any risk of fines or other legal action. This, as pointed out on Reddit, would affect all forms of user-generated content, including fan art, mods, and videos, not just games themselves.
Seems like a deceptive headline.
The real takeaway is: Project 2025 guy also wants to do the platform-level censorship thing, but by removing legal protections (Section 230) instead of using payment processors.
Hear me out: what if repealing section 230 would end up killing our social media monoculture, since it would be impossible for these platforms to operate. Instead, what if people had to host their content themselves, you know, like we did back in the day, when the Internet was fun.
LLMs would be liable for every hallucination.
But how do you enforce it? When the internet crashes out into millions of websites again? When the people who made it happen are the people bad ones and they only go after messaging they don’t like?
Yeah I started to read comments on other sites and theres a LOT of speculation on this. But the actual article is pretty small. Thanks for breaking it down even further.
It’s like encountering a sudden storm at sea. But as long as you’re prepared, you can get through anything. I’ve been studying the “2025 Second-Hand Yacht Insurance Guide” lately. It’s like my “storm warning at sea,” telling me in advance how to save money and feel at ease, and be fully prepared.
Did you read all 900 pages? I sure skimmed but didn’t read it fully. Its entirely possible.
More importantly, if we dont act collectively all over the globe to end this tide of fascism only more sensorship will come.
This is not an end but a beginning.
I am not surprised in the slightest bit
Your title is misleading & false. The article is technically correct, but clunky.
Consider the title, Steam’s Content Removal Could Be A Wider Consequence Of Project 2025. The article misspells Russell’s name frequently. “Part of Vought and Project 2025’s plans are to remove Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)”. So the Steam content removal…is a consequence. Who is dishing out the consequences?
Louis Rossmann will tell you, it’s Collective Shout. Collective Shout has no relation to Russell Vought…or even America. It’s a ragtag group of 1067 Australian fuckheads that complained to Mastercard, Visa who then put pressure on Steam. And yes. This was enabled thanks to Russell Vought & removal of Section 230 of the CDA.
Russell Vought isn’t a good guy by any means, but this specifically was done by Collective Shout’s 1067 Aussies bitching to American credit card companies & American businesses, threatening them & trying to dictate what they can sell to Americans. It’s…truly infuriating. I don’t go to their mom’s place of work & smack the dick out of her mouth, I don’t write them emails & tell them how to run Australia. So kindly return the favor, don’t fuck with the US. Like what the hell.
The thing that’s been bothering me is, since when did a local, “ragtag group” of activists have this much influence on the actions of massive corporations? Bigger, more powerful groups have tried and failed to make changes like this over and over again. Why does collective shout have so much pull? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
This is quite literally the crux of the post: Who is actually making these decisions? Because there is, in fact, a zero percent chance that any number of Australian wokescolds would have leverage to force MASTERCARD AND VISA, the two global monopoly payment processors to change their practices just because the australians dont agree with the content of games.
This is a top down decision coming from the owners of visa. Any attempt to backpedal this into the hands of some activist group is the most disrespectful patronizing I’ve seen in my entire life. I’m glad you and others are calling this shit out for the farce that it is.
You mean to tell me the most successful activist movement in the last 50 years has been a single week protest lobbied at the most powerful capitalist institutions in the world, and the payment processors were bent over backwards for it? As if thats definitely not a giant, flaming red flag in itself?? It feels like the most obvious scapegoating of all time: a faceless Australian group nobody ever heard of before suddenly wrenched the arm of an economic lynchpin? No.
Visa and Mastercard are doing this because this is what they want to do. No amount of protest would achieve this outcome save the literal socialist revolution at their doorstep. I dont care what any report says, this is top down. Visa is not exposed to any risk by any protest, it is laughable to suggest otherwise.
With that out of the way, we can discuss the real matters of import: why are payment processors taking on the role of decency enforcement in global markets? What are their goals, who is making these decisions, and why is any government allowing these processors to dictate commerce within their borders unilaterally? Really and truly I dont even care about the games. I want names and faces of the people in charge of visa and Mastercard who are making these decisions, and I want them brought into a court room to clearly explain to everyone in the world what their exact reasoning is for caving to a historically insignificant protest. Stop killing games has been going simultaneously to this and, with millions of signatures, the response has been slander from the companies targeted. This collective shout bs is an absolute sham.
Americans fucking with the rest of us again? Why am I not surprised.
There’s so many good people in that country, I hope they can take down their evil fascist government and restore decency before we have to cut ties entirely to mitigate the damage they’re trying to do.
Our alliance with them is currently dying a death by a thousand cuts. Keep this up and eventually it’ll be over, sadly.
Collective Shout is Australian, but go off.
More fascists than people willing to stand up to them in the US. They’re a lost cause: unless they’re able to topple their orange overlord and his cronies the rest of the world should write them off as a loss and stop dealing with them
Funny how all the Yanks specifically blaming this on Australia are quiet now.
called it.
I’m not even slightly surprised
I mean, I kind of guessed this way back when Collective Shout pushed their action.
I actually had a comment removed here on Lemmy when I brought up how this was “US politics/elections affecting your life as gamers”, because the mods insisted it was purely an Australian action, and my comment was off-topic. But we live in a global online world. There’s no way that US politics wouldn’t have a huge effect on this type of censorship.
There’s no way that US politics wouldn’t have a huge effect on this type of censorship.
I’ve been called a fearmonger also for trying to tell apathetic gamers who “hate politics” that if they don’t get involved they’re going to start losing their own goddamn games.
I have linked the “Conservapedia” articles on video games all over reddit until they banned me. I have tried to tell people that voting for Trump or supporting his ideals even distantly isn’t going to “take the woke out of your games” that it will actually crush your gaming entirely, because… and I can’t stress this enough, Conservatives HATE GAMING. Not the online chuds and 4channers who hate women, they’re barely even conservatives… they’re fodder for the online fights. But the old-guard and middle-class conservatives who get marching orders from churches and grifters, the ones who have all the actual money on the right. They want to see an end to “distractions” and fiction and fantasy and everything that isn’t some kind of sanitized, un-nuanced devotion to Dear Leader and his United States of White Jesus.
Fiction has been an enemy of power since writing began, and games are just another kind of fiction that lets people stretch their imagination. This is why it’s dangerous, this is why they want to see it ended.
Fiction has been an enemy of power since writing began
x for doubt
Since there are downvotes, what are the earliest fictional texts and what did they do in regard of power?
Gilgamesh literally becomes king. He changes the power paradigm to put himself on top and thats the oldest text we have.
What came first, kings or the stories about kings?
I think kings came first, and the story supported their power.
Completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Even if, why shouldn’t something doubtful be pointed out?
But in this discussion it’s relevant. That White Jesus, do we believe that it is facts? Power is using fiction to create a following first. Then those followers prevent an opposition from forming.
Now why are stories about sex told? There seem to be many reasons but one could be to encourage people to have sex. So the opposition tries to make people experience reality with other people while Conservatives try to keep them in their fictional, isolated world.
In other words, fiction is not only an enemy but also a friend of power.
Not entirely surprising if true.
Project 2025 goal is to spread their backwards ideology across the globe. They want to see the world burn.
They think being cruel to minorities and women will make their lives better. Cause they’re idiots. Or naive. Or hateful. Probably all of those, but that’s speculation.
