When that individual or company plays a role in whether people see that media – a publisher, broadcaster, hosting platform – their decisions not to publish/host something they consider offensive or harmful are censorship, and best called that (as they generally have been historically).
Otherwise we can end up blind to the fact that when a lot of them make the same decision, it has the same effect as a government law censoring something. (Or stronger! Some laws are less enforced than a publishing company consensus.)
Private censorship will usually have more gaps and exceptions than a strongly enforced government law – and that’s one of its virtues. Things that get wrongly excluded can usually still find a place somewhere, a small press or niche forum, from which they have a chance at an audience.
Yep, but we’re not arguing about their legal right to moderate material on their site. We’re arguing about whether they should ban some fictional material, and if so by what criteria. That has very little to do with their legal rights, which are straightforward, but only end the argument if you think everything that’s legal is therefore moral/ justified.
Imagine the last few days playing out without the payment companies involved at all – itch deciding to delist all NSFW content and then adopting a principle to not monetize “anything containing” noncon or scat. Maybe they do it bc of Collective Shout, maybe just because the censors who’d always been on the team got the upper hand in internal policy debates.
I do not think the reaction would have been “fine, whatever.”
I do not think the reaction should have been “fine, whatever.”
I certainly don’t think the majority of the arguments people have been making and liking on this thread are consistent with “fine, whatever.”
So there’s a hint of motte-and-bailey here. Yes, there’s a strong case for imposing common-carrier rules on Visa/Mcard, and probably an even stronger one for the US and EU ignoring the bank lobbyists and creating a digital system like Pix or UPI in India that works for online payments. But set that aside for a sec. We’re also debating
and if that doesn’t include fictional CSA, that needs justification, not just “of course we all agree on that, no one’s arguing that.” All the questions you’re raising about “who decides? who gets the power of the censor?” apply there too. Who draws the line and decides what side of it Lolita falls? Or the arguably glorifying stuff like Leon or Sailor Moon?
If our only answer is, “it’s already illegal,” that just puts wind in the sails of people fighting to make noncon an issue of law. Should it be illegal? If so, why, and what makes it different from rape content? I am, along with you, ready to yuck NAMBLA’s yums. The fact that somebody yums to it isn’t an argument-ender.
I absolutely do not want Collective Shout operating as the arbiters of morality. But if we step back from fighting for an alternative moral standard and try instead to argue for a moral vacuum (into which we smuggle a few taboos, but without acknowledging that’s what we’re doing), we’re yielding the floor to them.
It is plainly possible to exclude content that glorifies nonconsensual sex and genocide without excluding LGBTQ content. We’re all on a forum that does that, talking about the games of a company that does that. I understand why some of us don’t want to see that as a norm on big platforms, especially payment providers. I wouldn’t argue nearly as hard if this conversation were limited to “Visa/ Mastercard shouldn’t be allowed to do this,” because of the unique role they play in rich-country economies. I can see the case that the duopoly’s powers here are more like the state’s, and that we should resist their censorship for the same reasons we want to minimise state censorship.
But in the broader argument of “who do we want making these decisions,” I don’t think we’re in a position any longer for the answer to be “nobody.” (There are too many other areas where we’re ready to defend limits on speech, for one thing. It’s not the 90s or 00s any more. ) Fighting for glorification of nonconsensuality to be the red line is a stronger strategy for keeping the puritans at bay than arguing for no red lines.
We agree, regardless of the specifics. But saying that a company should do something isn’t the same as saying it should be forced to do something. As customers and citizens, there are lots of things we can do to pressure and persuade which fall short of force.
And if you said publishing companies should never face pressure around what they publish, I would both disagree and point out that you’re ceding the field to advocacy groups that are willing to apply pressure.