Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

It is sad that in 2025 this needs to be repeated: fiction is not real.

This statement imply that:

* Simulated violence is not violence.

* Simulated sex is not sex.

* Simulated sorcery is not sorcery

And yet it is possible to make simulations extreme enough I would not opposed to banning them. There are some things that should not be normalized in society.

It shouldn’t be payment processors doing it unilaterally, I’ll grant that. But I’m not (and I’m sure a great many more of a silent majority) wholly opposed to the outcome.

> There are some things that should not be normalized in society.

That attitude has recently become normalized, and I find it Concerning(TM).

Yeah, who gets to decide whats too far?

There's a similar issue with free speech - the moment you ban certain speech the door to banning your political opposition opens.

From what I can tell, only one country in the world has free speech. Actual free speech. USA.

I don't know what your definition of "actual" free speech is but there are certainly limits to free speech even in the US[0].

And those are just explicit limits. Try supporting Palestine on a college campus or mentioning women or gay people in any government funded scientific publication, or finding a book portraying pro-LGBT content in a library or a school curriculum that portrays slavery in a way that "makes white people feel victimized" in the South.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

The limits to speech (in USA) depends (roughly) on if it's intended to incite imminent lawless action and is likely to do so.

Actual speech is communicating ideas or opinions, even distasteful or unpopular ones. The fact that university morons throw a riot if anyone disagrees with them (many such cases), does not affect your right to do so.

Denmark passed a law in 2023 that makes public burning, tearing, stepping on, or defiling holy texts illegal. It's informally called the Quran Law, because everyone knows who doesn't tolerate any criticism of their religion at all. This is one of many limits on speech in Denmark. In my view, speech is either free or it isn't, hence my argument that only USA has free speech.

thats a historical view, but not the most useful now that the second american revolution has happened.

things that lightly annoyed the president is now the decider between legal and illegal speech in the US, and the punishment is death, because nothing the president does that could be part of their regular responsibilities like talking to secret service assasins, can be considered in court proceedings.