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The Anti-Porn Crusade That Censored Steam and Itch.io Started 30 Years Ago

Keywords and tags have never been a useful metric for distilling nuance. Pushing for regulations based on them is repeating a 30-year history of porn panic online.
The Anti-Porn Crusade That Censored Steam and Itch.io Started 30 Years Ago
July 3, 1995 cover of Time magazine. Internet Archive

Collective Shout, an organization “for anyone concerned about the increasing pornification of culture,” based its claim that Steam and Itch.io host “hundreds of rape and incest games” on user-generated tags, and the organizations that co-signed Collective Shout's open letter to payment processors did not respond to 404 Media’s questions about whether they tried to verify its accusations against the game platforms before signing on their support.

Collective Shout's July 11 letter urged Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Japan Credit Bureau, Paysafe, and Discover to "cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games."

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