2555. My thoughts about recent events on the internet

The recent events happening on the internet have got me thinking. In this post I'm laying everything down, trying to make sense all of it.

(It took me some days to compose this post as I kept going back and forth to confirm some stuff. Things evolve in real-time as I write, so post may be updated accordingly.)

Adult content removals

Steam and itch.io delisted and removed on adult contents from their platforms because of payment processors' new terms. These payment processors claimed that they were pressure (coerced?) by some activist group who protested about some adult games they didn't like hosted.

It is like waking up to see one or more of your contents, which you hardworkingly developed, marketed, properly tagged and marked as adult-only, gone because some entities decided they don't like it. It is like having someone in power who can remove creators' work all they want.

This is actually not the first time I encountered this kind of event. In 2020, there were some scandals around Patreon, policing around R18 anime-style artists and attempting to remove related creators, quoting: 'because the characters look too young'.

I found that stupid and ridiculous. Who gets to say about characters' art style and their ages: the creators or some platforms/payment processors? As a creator myself, the answer is obvious but apparently some people in power decided they want to have a say in this...?

I was on Patreon for a few years by then, posting my drawing daily for patrons. My art style was unpolished and needing improvements, a lot of deformed characters with no good sense of anatomy. I knew my shortcomings very well, and hearing about how they called out artists with certain art style, I realised how they could see my art style as problematic.

That made me think: does this mean I can't draw my characters – who are all adults – kissing, cuddling, be in love, having some nice sex with their partners? Can't I write about my characters doing their things and minding their own business, just because some people in power said they look too young, that they should not do that? Am I – the sole creator of these fictional characters – not allowed to share my creations because some people don't like what I make? Are they that afraid of my – and other creators' – creations?

I was spiralling in disbelief with all of these ridiculous things.

At some point I was wondering: would Patreon have wanted me to make my characters say "I am above 18 years old, I consent to being written and drawn loving my partner, and I look like this because my creator is still learning, she still sucks–" I mean, that would've been funny but see how very ridiculously one-sided this is?

Just to clarify: personally I am not interested in fictional media with extreme sexualisation contents, but for as long as the creators of those contents do not harm any living beings, I don't see anything wrong with it and I will not interfere their freedom of creating. Even when their contents are so degenerated and repulsive (subjective opinions) to many, they still have the freedom to do that. They enjoy making it, their market enjoy consuming it, they do mutual transactions, I don't interact with them because I don't care about those contents, and everyone is happy. What's the problem here again?

As I did not like staying in a platform who would eventually tell me what kind of drawing I can/cannot make, I slowly detached myself from that site. I was able to hop out and started BTS (this site) in 2023. It wasn't easy, but here I have the complete freedom of what I make and no one can tell me what I can/can't make. I figure it's the best place for content preservation for me, as I fully manage it myself.

Well, except payment processors of course. Which brings us back to the recent event: the mass delisting/removal by payment processors.

This event has similar nature to what is discussed above: this is censorship again. These people in power impose what they think is right/wrong, and control what people can make, sell, and buy. They prevent actual adults making money of human creations. They censor what they don't like, and the list is ridiculous if you've seen it.

Censorship starts from the easiest target: the ones not many would defend. Some may celebrate this, but let me convince everyone to believe that this is not the only thing that they will censor. They will not stop at the repulsive lewd stories, or at the toxic brutal games. This is the beginning of mass-control of the society: once we're conditioned to getting used of having someone filter things for us, they will slowly start to reach more aspects in our life. By then, we won't even notice the attempt of censorship to what we consider as perfectly fine. The powerful ones will have full control of what we consume, and how we live our life, to the extend.

I believe that to have creations in this world censored means erasing a way for our human culture to develop. With this concern, it's even more important to emphasize that the freedom of creating is very, very important. How do people learn about new things? Books, movies, visual novels, games of all kinds of topics – as entertaining as they can be, they also educate and give insightful view of the world. Not necessarily to glorify – especially for the darker topics – but these can teach us a lot of things.

Without all created media to learn from, soon in near future we will not be able to tell human's intricate aspect of life. If extreme pornography and degenerate contents are censored, we will no longer have the ability to discern sexual crimes in real life as we no longer can tell which one is which. If toxic relationship and abusive contents are banned, how can we tell whether someone is inside such situation if we no longer have the materials to learn the signs of it?

Many creators approach this with how they view the world, each will give their personal inputs and flavours to it. As consumers, we're enriched with this: we get to learn about its existence, how different people face it, fight it, and cope with it. The existence of this fictional media provide safe space for consumers to explore these topics. If all of these things were wiped out, how can we learn what's good and bad? What's toxic and safe? Do those people in power want us to no longer learn? When we stop learning – society as a whole will have our knowledge and culture eroded. Dumbed down. That makes it perfect to gain control over us.

And why do they want to gain control the society? That's an itchy question to ponder...

Some of my favourite stories deal with heavy topics, like death and grief for example. I enjoyed and learned from these characters dealing with losing someone precious to them, sometimes unconventional, fierce, and surprisingly beautiful. If those were deemed to be problematic and have to be censored, how can we learn about all these?

I also got to learn about some really disturbing and toxic relationship stories between some characters where they could be so wicked, evil, and immoral from fictional media. I could safely explore these situations and these characters thanks to the creators of these contents. Without them, I'd never learn about all the signs of toxic relationships and people.

Dark and heavy topics are important to exist. I believe it has great importance in cultural development. People learn what's right and wrong from it, and it enriches our society. Censoring all the 'bad things' (however they define it) does not rid the evil in our society. There is always evil people regardless of sanitising the media.

Given so, if you're the kind of person who is greatly disturbed with certain topics and absolutely can't stand to see it, it is your responsibility to do your diligence to not interact with it. Use the mute/block button and move on. You're not their target audience, and they don't want you to see it anyway. Stay away from it, don't bother the creators and consumers of those contents.

Everyone should be free to create and consume whatever they want. What we like and don't like is our personal view, and what we want to see and don't want to see is our own responsibility.

The more I think about this, the more it sounds weird for me what's going on... Open letters demanding an action never worked this fast and easily before. What power does this activist group have? Who stand behind them that make payment processors follow their demands? Did this group pay some amount of exorbitant amount to these payment processors that they decided to turn their back against thousands of creators across Steam and itch.io whose millions of transactions make business with them?

Now that's something to think about…

What can we do, then? Well, I agree with what others have said: contact the payment processors and talk to them. But remember: these payment processors seem to follow the pressure (coercion? order?) from that activist group, does that mean they have more power over the payment processors?

So I was thinking: it's probably a good idea to contact the lawmakers as well. In the end, payment processors have to follow the law where they reside. The lawmakers have power over them, so it's probably useful to poke them to look into this threat of our freedom of creating.

As for alternative platforms, I am honestly at loss as well. I will still keep my Steam and itch.io pages up for now.

For other aspects of preservations, I'll share what I personally do below:

1. have multiple back-up sites for everything I create. I have local, offline copies of everything I make.
2. download offline copies of references, materials, documents, e-books, tips, articles, games, anything that I really like. I always put the username or the web name where I got them on the file name.
3. have a personal, independent homepage. In my attempt to stop depending on any platform sites, I made my own website and hosted it on my server. It serves as a landing page, portfolio page, and archival of what I make. It's quiet, but it is fully independent. Bonus point for doing my own website: I'm not bound by any frameworks and can make my layout as crazy as I want.
4. have a tip jar/subscription site. Patreon was my choice until I started BTS. I've tried many other subscription sites and none are as complete, at least to my needs of unlimited blogging + paywalled posts + subscription with as much freedom as I can have. If you're looking into Patreon's alternative, I would recommend Ghost; it is what I'm using for BTS in the past few years and it's been working fine. It has monthly fee, or free if self-hosted (only has the payment processor's fee). BTS even replaced YouTube for me to host my art timelapse videos.

Age verification system to access the internet

I saw this when I went to X/Twitter just now:

and some other age-restricted message in various sites. These sites claim that this is to protect the children from the internet.

Huh...? What makes them think that sanitising the internet is the right way to protect the children? My first thought: it obviously can't protect the children. 'Protect' how? How does proving our age protect children again? After they get the information of our age, then what? What makes them think that the age we provide match our actual age in real life? How does the actual system work?

It has always been easy to bypass age gate system. Instead of doing any kind of protection (I doubt it), this only inconvenience all internet users. The more I see how things are going, the more I'm convinced that 'protect the children' is just a stupid excuse. Removing access does nothing about protection, it actually does the opposite. Children are not dumb, they will find a way to bypass this. This system will only lead to unsafe data collections of people and causing huge security issue for real people's data encryption. What insanity.

Unless, ID harvesting is their goal after all...? I mean, why do so many sites simultaneously request for it now? Very curious...

Anyway, implementing ID check is out of the question – pretty much no one is willing to do this, knowing so many social security scam calls and mails happening all over the world. If you're reading this and considering submitting your ID just to regain access to your social media accounts: don't do it! Do not participate! Your ID is one of the most important thing you have, do not just give it away! >:( No one should be forced to send their ID to social media sites that can do who-knows-what with it. They will never delete it from their system – even if people request it, and they said it is deleted, it is not. This is already proven for so so many times.

In conjunction to the adult contents removal event, limiting internet access is truly a dystopian move from the people in power. Now that internet has become a huge, integral part of our society, work and life, they know how much power they can control by taking its access and blocking people from using it. Now they ban the porn, fast forward to the future, they won't let you use your smart appliances because you did things they don't approve. This can very well be the future if people in power gain control over censorship.

I'm thinking: instead of this age-verification system they enforce on us, what would work here instead is the strict enforcement of tagging and labeling all uploaded contents. Make tagging contents mandatory. Rate contents age-appropriately. Set an objective guideline on the tags definitions to avoid clashing of personal art-style opinions. With proper mute and/or block feature that can be set at profile level, it should be a good approach of filter without obstructing anyone's freedom of creating and consuming.

Also, for children to even have the chance to access internet content to begin with, they need to have a device to do that. So, a possible good approach for their safety here is to implement parental-control software in their devices that allows or denies actions based on the configurations set by parents/guardians. Then, remote system that the child tries to connect to always returns metadata that the parental-control analyzes to allow or deny access. This could protect the children way more directly than age-verification system in the websites themselves. Since the blockage is done within the device itself, it's even safer to protect the children because no website would know whether a visitor is a child or not.

Fortunately, from what I can see in my timeline, many are fighting back. We will not let them take control of this. We are many times more people than them. By stopping this course early, I'm sincerely hoping that those people in power will not be able to continue taking control over the society. I'll stand by all creators and everyone's right and freedom to create – for as long as no living beings are harmed.

Throughout the years, I always do my best to treat everyone kindly and fairly regardless of who they are while holding onto what I believe is right. I don't usually be openly opinionated, but now seems to be the time where I need to share my thoughts, that I'm with the side of humanity.

Anyway, all this internet talk reminds me of this song:

Welcome to the internet, have a look around~
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found~

Take care!
Konayachi