Raindrinker ❄ Icedrop Games

Lol what. I can press a button on godot interface and have the game running on my phone in less than 5 seconds. Much better than Unity

drawing of a robed creepy guy with a translucent head showing the skull beneath, holding a weird floaty glass

Drew a weird guy

Heavily inspired by Midst's Moc Weepe

Damn you mean itch didn’t actually just abandon these creators but has been working hard with its limited resources to figure out how to continue supporting them? How surprising

And if you argue there should be no line at all because it's impossible to have a line, you can be out of the conversation. Which is the correct thing to do if the conversation is happening in bad faith, which right now, it might be.

There's no law you can write that cannot be manipulated to oppress. I don't think it follows that therefore you should make no laws at all. That's why I was saying that I care more about having good systems to argue socially where the line should be, than deciding the position itself.

I don't think you can un-restrict your way into societal justice. I'm very anti-punitive justice, but best case scenario is some social contract that people feel invested in and can trust somewhat. The natural unrestricted state is not utopian and empowers privileged people a lot.

If you start applying that logic to all sorts of other laws you would end up arguing for anarcho-primitivism. Of course we want a system of laws that are as loose as possible on personal freedoms, and a tribunal system that's as independent as possible and defends potential victims.

Whatever law there is, if theres a powerful state that doesnt have a ton of checks & balances, it'll be a problem for marginalised people. I don't think trying to somehow *fully 100%* un-restrict speech, if that state allows it, necessarily will help the marginalised people that much.

*Text articles* have been written about assault victims that probably should have been borderline illegal. If it's fair game to make games depicting their rape as long as you don't *sell* them... I'm not sure I agree with that?

Maybe? I feel like that allowance would be very easy to weaponise against people more vulnerable than ya boy Epstein. And in the age of shock, content & fame, even if you're not *directly* profiting from it, you're probably getting some benefit from doing it.

I can agree with your "harm calculus" approach but yeah, that's very much a line you're tactically moving, and that is specifically what I was arguing for. This instead of trying to pretend there's no line at all, no matter how much we want it a looooot less restrictive.

You probably shouldn't be able to publish detailed information about a specific person and where they live and encourage people to harm them, even if you're not profiting.

Probably not jail, but like non-consensual nudes are "illegal", not only "non-profit", and they should be, for example. And I can easily think that depicting someone real being raped/murdered and advocating for their rape/murder is in a similar camp, even if you're not profiting from it?

Yeah, obviously, that's why we're only talking about a very vague "ban" as if we were the moderators of a website that hosts art or sth. It gets riskier otherwise.

But yeah sorry I do feel like I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I 99% agree basically. We're so far gone in the direction I'm arguing *for* that I don't wanna play too much for that team. We need a lot less censorship.

If depicting someone real being raped is illegal, is depicting someone real consenting to sex they wouldn't IRL, illegal? How explicit does the sex have to be? Could depicting two warring political leaders kissing be bannable? I do think its v complicated. Very easy to imply things in art

You'd need exceptions for public figures or sth so it can't be misused by public figures to ban protest art of all sorts, though. You can't really ban depicting someone real doing anything they wouldn't consent to.

Yeah, kinda agree. I think it's easier to come up with counterexamples the other way, as in, someone making art that poses as fictional but is victimising or referencing someone real against their will. I do agree that the intent of depicting someone real is a good frame of reference.

Anyway we're arguing over semantics I feel, and I don't expect anything more than making some sense to someone idk. I get your perspective, and I'm thinking about it.

"Fictional" work is also not the clearest line, and fictional work could be capable of doing quantifiable harm, which is also a hard thing to define. It's also hard to fully define what banning means. We have agreed on "banning" certain 100% fictional works for minors, for example.

I mean, that's still something that is routinely argued in courtrooms. Harm done, economic harm, reputational harm, reparations for all sorts of crimes small and big. Quantifying harm and deciding on retributions is a full-time job that is pretty tricky.

No one is *really* suggesting no line at all, so figuring out the methods we should have as a society to decide the position of the line is more important than arguing over the position itself, imo. It should definitely not be the onus of fcking Mastercard, that's for sure.

What about a caricature or a reference? All I'm saying is that it's not a problem that can be handwaved with an absolute approach, and it's relatively easy to come up with counterexamples for any suggested line.

And also false negatives. Your line could definitely be used to ban rape survivor stories, for example. It's a tricky problem, and I think we should respect it as being one. And whether an artwork "contains a real person" is very hard to measure. You mean a literal body, or a depiction of them?

Yeah thats of course a somewhat clearer line than the fuckery the payment processors are suggesting, but I do personally think I can imagine something that fits that criterion and I don't think should be legal.

Murder upsets me a lot, so I'm glad enough people agree that we managed to codify some laws that outlaw it. Some other stuff upsets me, but it either doesn't upset me enough to suggest writing it into law and/or not enough people agree, so I deal with it.

You frame it as "art thats too upsetting for me". I'm not suggesting that my will and upset-ness should be imposed on others, just that we should agree that were socially defining a line somewhere.

I totally get your position, and it's easier to defend than mine, and mine *will* make me aligned with people I don't agree with if I'm not careful. But I think absolute free speech can also align you with malicious actors, and it can also be used for harm.

I mean, I assume when you say art that "harms a real person" that you say does exist, you would want to silence the artist then, no? The line *is* somewhere. Mine is not necessarily more restrictive than yours, I just don't wanna pretend it doesn't exist.

Any censorship can be used maliciously against you, but also any "absolutist free speech" can also be used maliciously against you. As often happens, the how, who, and with what checks and balances is more important than the what.