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Comment by johndoh42 | Hacker News Reader

Sadly that ban also hit three of our our games that help victims cope with trauma. :(

Please write to your representative:

Dear [Representative's Name],

I am writing to formally request an investigation into the activities of Collective Shout, an organization whose censorship-driven campaigns have caused measurable harm to artists, survivors, and vulnerable communities. Under the guise of protecting women and children, they have erased trauma narratives, suppressed creative expression, and bullied platforms into enacting broad, opaque bans. Their actions disproportionately affect marginalized voices and bypass democratic discourse in favor of ideological policing. There is growing concern that their influence is rooted more in religious moralism than evidence-based advocacy. I urge your office to examine their funding, methods, and societal impact with urgency and transparency.

Sincerely, [Your Full Name] [Your Address / Constituency]

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This is useless. You can't stop Collective Shout (their campaign almost surely falls under First Amendment rights), and even if you could, 30 minutes later a new group pops up. Plus your message would fall completely on deaf ears for anyone who agrees with Collective Shout.

Bring attention to the fact that payment processors are acting as active censorship of legal content, rather than neutral infrastructure. Emphasize that if they can censor legal content, anything could be next, including but not limited to political donations of a specific party.

Collective Shout is a foreign organization attacking American companies. The First Amendment does not mean you get to speak and advocate in secret, and it only applies to American residents.

Not quite. The First Amendment applies to everyone within U.S. jurisdiction, not just residents or citizens.

The first, third, fourth, fifth, and ninth amendments have all been historically used to establish various rights of privacy.

That's not to say that one agrees with or disagrees with the outcome here, just that this argument isn't based in an understanding of the law.

The first amendment doesn't "apply" the people, domestic or otherwise, at all. It applies to the government, and what it can't do.

Thanks. So the steelman version is, the first amendment applies to the government when they restrict rights of residents, not just citizens.

While they also deserve some backlash, I would focus on bringing attention to the payment processors.

Uh, Visa/Mastercard chose to do that. We're talking about payment processors who process trillions of dollars every year. They won't just bend Steam over backwards to make an Australian NGO happy.

It's either that Visa/Mastercard always want to censor porn, or they're pressured by government(s) to do so.

I think it may be that they don't care about porn, but will performatively censor it sometimes in order to forestall actual government legislative action.

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