Censorship and Tinfoil

August 1, 2025

Puter.

The above photo represents me attempting to use my computer.

The year is 2042. There's a tornado outside and the world is in war-torn, glitchy peril. But the one thing I can still turn to is the lovely world of the internet, and the intersting things I can find there. But oh dear, what's this? I have to allow my monitor to give me a retinal scan to ensure that its AI can accurately estimate my age? Oh well, might as well let it do its thing, then it can send it off directly to the server that the POTUS is keeping in the White House basement. This is about protecting the kids, is it not? My neighbor spoke out about this once, said it was a violation of his own privacy and risked totalitarian rule over the people, and it simply disgusted me. When you push back against measures such as these...you enable the harm of children! Thank goodness the police took him away and shoved him in that lowly dank cell where he belongs.

Of course, that's all exaggeration. But with what's happening now, I feel like anything is possible at this point.

Every single controversy regarding censorship, age verification, free speech, children etc., occured within the month of July alone.

I'm obviously missing some, but those reading this probably understand what I'm talking about anyway, and I don't want half of this post to just be recaps.

Initially, I thought this was a case of the Land Down Under trying to spread its retarded obscenity laws to the rest of the world (I scarcely need to remind the reader of them), but as time passed and the current situation began to unfold all at the same time from multiple fronts of the world, I did the unthinkable: I thought of putting my tinfoil hat on.

How exactly did all of this begin? What was the catalyst? Of course, the brilliant minds over at Collective Shout. Just the name alone, Collective fucking Shout, should explain essentially all they're about. This isn't anything new to them; keen eyed readers might remember when they successfully took Grand Theft Auto V off of the shelves of Australian Target, or how they tried and failed to do the same to Detroit: Become Human. Their reasons? "Violence against women" and "depictions of child abuse", respectively. Most recently, at what was perhaps the start of it all, was the bending of the knee Steam gave to payment processor demands after Collective Shout consulted them.

Valve, a company notorious for dragging out legal battles and answering to no one, knelt to Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. According to their website, Collective Shout took full responsibilty for it, explaining their method of issuing thousands of calls and emails right to the doorsteps of said processors.

This is where the tinfoil comes in.

Nobody was happy about this, from reactionaries to libtards to just the average, common man. The plan, the one currently being carried out, is to fight fire with fire. From what I can understand, the calls and emails from everyone pushing back against the censorship of video games and other media far, FAR outweigh anything Collective Shout is even capable of.

Posty

This Bluesky post has been making the rounds recently, a piece of evidence that calls are flooding in to the point of employee exhaustion.

I even sent Mastercard a call two days ago, since that's the debit card I own. Once I politely explained the situation, the woman on the other end was very helpful and understanding, and explained that she'd transfer me to a manager before I was put on hold. I was on hold for five minutes...then they hung up on me. Perhaps a news story of a union of Mastercard workers going postal is right around the corner?

Oh right, the tinfoil.

It took only a few thousand calls and emails to apparently flip Visa and Mastercards decisions on what content they're willing to process transactions for. Conversely, the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of calls that they seem to be getting doesn't seem to be changing their minds so far. They appear to be standing firm on their decision. Why is that? Why is it that anyone who pushes out against the censoring of tabboos is labeled as one who supports and perpetuates those tabboos?

I'd like to believe that this is just a scheme by them to avoid bad PR, since they were involved in a controversy fairly recently over allowing transactions for obscene material, but then the other news began to rear its mug. Out of nowhere, itch.io was next, gutting nearly every single NSFW game that was published to the site, including some games that weren't even NSFW, such as Moutwashing. Before one even had time to process it, suddenly, the Child Safety Act. Give up your face and ID to third parties, and don't ask questions.

What's next? Uh oh, you've got to verify your age with an ID to use Spotify! Uh oh, you've got to verify your ID to order a pepperoni delight from Domino's! Uh oh, you've got to verify your ID to use YouTube!

All of those are real examples, including YouTube. YouTube is even worse somehow, since not only is it being rolled out to the rest of the world later in August, your ID won't even be the final deduction. According to the horses own mouth, YouTube will ignore your stated age and ID and instead estimate your age via the use of a *drumroll* an AI algorithm! Don't you just love AI?! Isn't it so fucking cool?

James Cameron is currently having a panic attack reading the news about it.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Those are people with brain-eating diseases, and I don't think I have one last time I checked. But to me, Collective Shout has more power then they're leading on. They aren't just some lousy NGO, otherwise they wouldn't have had an immediate victory against bascially the entire world with payment processors. Even if their organization is still populated by bumbling morons, each and every day, I believe they're being used as a scapegoat.

Why is this? Let me tell you.

Internet censorship, and censorship in general, isn't anything new for Australia. When it comes to video games, games such as Saints Row 4, Manhunt, Hotline Miami 2, etc. remain fully banned in the country. Games that are not were only approved for release after heavy censorship or legal disputes. Left 4 Dead 2's Aussie release still has little to no blood, the first Hotline Miami was banned for almost ten years until a censored Aussie version was released, and Katana Zero was banned for a short while (not even for violence, but for drug use) until it was overturned. Even fucking Rimworld was banned in Australia for a while. This is why I called their obscenity laws retarded. This doesn't stop just at media; according to the Press Freedom Index, the government of Australia appears to be imtidating journalists and censoring certain stories more and more every year. All's quiet on the Austrailian front.

The group Collective Shout is also based in Australia (who would've thought). As I said, I theorize that they're far more powerful than they're making themselves out to be. What is it that they're advocating for? "Protecting children and women", and their method of doing so is to censor and remove media. Just as the higher ups in Australia like to do!

"But MC, they're just a nonprofit on the other side of the planet. Does it really matter?"

The consequences of what they do are very clearly affecting you as well.

I personally find it unbelievable that a nonprofit of privilege-checking feminazis has the capability of putting the world in a stranglehold through intimidation. But you know what kind of entity does have that of power?

news clip

A government who has the audacity to tell other countries how they should be run.

They always say it's about "the children". It's not. It never was. But you know that.

The only thing I can urge you to do right now is to RESIST. I'm very lucky to not be living in the United Kingdom, AKA Western China, but there's nothing stopping worldwide governments from intimidating each other into become authoritarian dictators. That's also what the tinfoil on my head is telling me; this has been in the works for far longer than people realize and it's not reactionary, otherwise it wouldn't all have been dumped on the world at the very same time. If you doubt me, please ask yourself this: on a whim, would a developed western nation such as England find it fit for their citizens to live without Wikipedia access? One of the largest and easiest to access knowledge databases known to man?

Maybe not all is lost...for now. You want some good news after this disaster of a blogpost? Very recently, itch.io has reinstated every deindexed game that was free to download, and according to their most recent developer update, they're looking for good alternatives to the big processors to ensure that, slowly and surely, we can go back to normal. There's already one I use on infrequently, called Wise, but it's lacking in support on most fronts.

But that's potentially a sign of more good news to come.

These sorts of decisions and sudden dumping of totalitarian bullshit on the world has not only soiled the name of the monopolistic payment processors, who were already under attack by multiple anti-trust lawsuits, but it has also shined a 10,000 lumen spotlight onto the importance of privacy. This is not just a situation that gamers are upset about anymore. which explains the major news coverage of it all.

Collective. Fucking. Shout.

This cartel of evangelical conservative cocksuckers had a lot of fun with their scheme, I'm sure. Well congratulations to you, and your buddies at PayPal and rats lurking in the dungeons of the Aussie parliament. Rather than building an asinine puritan utopia in your image, you've instead united everyone from all sides of the political spectrum, from the blue-haired tumblrite socialists to the gun-touting rednecks, against you and everything you stand for. You are directly responsible for giving the world the chance to discuss the payment processors, and potential future alternatives to them to shake up the current duopoly. It appears you have the foresight of a koala with a learning delay.

I don't think I have much more to say at the current moment. I'll be keeping up with new developments, and so should you, lovely reader. A future blogpost about whatever is in store for the next few weeks is possibly in order. Let's hope for the best, you and I.

Thanks for reading. For now, Radioquarium is signing off. Good night.