I'm perfectly capable of seeing that censorship can be evil (thanks for the insult). But - and I've explained this at least three times now - this case isn't censorship. It's not. Couch it in whatever terms you want, ignore whatever viewpoints and examples you want, but it simply is not censorship.

Yes, my right to personal property and self trumps your right to force me to help spread your message. This is probably Pollyanna-ish but I'm going to put one more example out there:

Your devout Muslim neighbor holds a garage sale. You walk over there with your autographed copy of The Satanic Verses, tell him how great it is, and ask if you can put it in with his stuff for sale. He says "No."

This is not censorship. You can find somewhere else to sell it. You can hold your own garage sale right next door. You can read the book aloud in a public park. You can donate it to a library. You can do any of a dozen other things with it to try to spread your point around.

Nor is his rejection evil.

What some might consider evil is the lack of concern shown for the neighbor's sensitivities. But that's not really evil, either; it's just social carelessness within that interaction. It could also be chalked-up as selfishness, which is really what your position boils down to - ignore the other person's wishes so you can do what you want using his property in the name of your own idea of the greater good. Which is wrong. And maybe a touch evil, depending on intent.

So ultimately, your position is that it's right (as in right / wrong, so we can leave those pesky rights out of it) to force him to sell it. That is as wrong / unethical / immoral as the censorship that you continually and incorrectly claim this to be. Actually, it's more wrong since you advocate forcing him to do something against his free will in order to achieve your own goals, when (in this example) you had other means available to you. This bears parallels to slavery, and didn't you just get done saying how wrong slavery is?

And yeah, I'll discuss it in terms of 'rights'. Because hey, you're the one who brought exactly that into the discussion when you said, "And even though every store has the legal right to take part in censorship, it's extremely unethical. And I don't think it should even be allowed." Paraphrased as, "It's currently illegal to force someone to support a viewpoint against their will, but if I had my way then they would lose that right." If censorship isn't precisely about rights then I don't know what is.



It's curious how these discussions with you tend to end up the same way: you eventually tell the person about the mental and social flaws that you've assigned to them, as you portray yourself as the paragon of goodness, morality, and logic.

Why do you continually take the evil, immoral, and wrong path of defining others as mentally and socially flawed, supported solely by the 'evidence' of a failure to agree with your opinion? When you tell me there is something wrong with me - and you did that twice in just this one snippet of a post I'm quoting - this undermines my confidence in myself. In turn, this makes me feel like I shouldn't speak my mind because maybe there IS something wrong with me and I should not subject others to my thoughts. In effect, your actions - arbitrarily assigning flaws - may lead to self-censorship by discouraging others to express their own thoughts.

For one who periodically speaks about making a better society and evolving into a wiser and kinder humanity, you certainly have a knack for bringing down your fellow humans when they have viewpoints different from your own.



Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

Yes, because Steam- a multimillion/ billion dollar company with a near monolpoly- is equivalent to a garage sale by your neighbour. Really, that example is disingenuous at very best because the scale is utterly incomparable to Valve. A far better example would be if MS decided that windows users should not be able to access p0rn. By your measure that cannot be censorship, it's a 'personal' choice of the company. In reality it is an imposition of their morality on everyone using windows. Having Linux or iOS available as minor alternatives does not change that fact. Indeed, I have actually (and accidentally, I brought it back without even thinking about it and was rather surprised to find out it was banned) imported a banned by censor video here by buying it in the UK where it was perfectly legal and bringing it home with me. But having that alternative source- or even citing piracy as an alternative source- would not mean that it isn't censored here.

You require two things to have censorship. Firstly, a moral judgement. Secondly, the power to impose that judgement on others in general. Your neighbour lacks the second part, he has no power to impose his moral will in general. Steam/ Valve and MS have plenty enough power to do so in the PC/ PC gaming space.

None of that means that Valve/ MS do not have the right to do so- it's just that refusing such for moral reasons is a decision that is applied not just to them personally. It's applied to everyone who uses the service.

I'd buy that argument - sort of - if this game developer didn't have an option beyond Steam or any other online retailer. But it does: direct sales conducted on its own site.

My example was not presented as a case in lieu of Steam. It was an example in a general sense to cover the aspects of one's personal non-business property and also of the sale of a product, which was a brought up in his last reply. Essentially, a part of the broader picture beyond the particular case of this one title and this one store.

You replied to me so I'm going to reply.

You still don't get it. A garage sale is not a store. Some guy having a garage sale doesn't give him the responsibility of a store like Walmart or Target or Steam etc. Some guy having a garage sale has very little control over the flow of information and speech. Some Joe's garage sale in some shitty boring suburbs not selling a book because it's content makes some people butt hurt has very little affect on this world.

And sometimes when you speak the truth, insulting people is unavoidable. I could just say lies and avoid insulting people but what is the point of that? We aren't here to lie to each other. If thoughts pop into my head, they go into my post. That's how I roll. The truth is unpleasant sometimes, just like life. I am not here to please you. And I'm not being unpleasant to make you feel bad(not trolling). I do it in the name of truth. I don't get off from making you feel bad. All your life, everyone's been lying to you but I decided many years ago, not to take part in such bullshit. Do you really know what other people think of you in your circle? No. But at least with me, you know, where you stand. Fuck politeness. It's one of the worst things that humanity has spawned. If I had a time machine, I'd go back to the 1650s and prevent that shit from becoming popular among the high class.

"For one who periodically speaks about making a better society and evolving into a wiser and kinder humanity, you certainly have a knack for bringing down your fellow humans when they have viewpoints different from your own."
Like I said above, sometimes in order to speak the truth, you have to bring people down. And why are you singling me out? I'm not the only person in the world bringing down people who have different viewpoints. Look at what is happening between Gamergate and those who think Gamergate is evil. Two sides, saying what is on their mind.

And the truth is more important than people's confidence, self esteem etc. And I do periodically speak about making a better society aka evolving into a wiser humanity but I never believed in a kinder humanity when it comes to how we communicate with each other. I've always been against that(which is quite obvious considering in these past 2 years, I've lost almost 1500 rep). Being nice to each other, has no place in communication. It should be, people sharing their 100% uncensored thoughts like a pissed off Mike Tyson. When people are trying not to offend anybody, they are not really communicating. And nobody is entitled to everyone communicating to him or her in a way he or she wants. So I don't know why you are playing the victim card here and trying to make me look like a horrible person. If you stick your hand in a hungry tiger's cage, you are going to get that hand bit off. If you talk to me, you are going to get the sometimes abrasive truth that could possibly bruise your ego. If you don't want to deal with those consequences, then just don't talk to me. And if I try to talk to you, ignore me or tell me to fuck off. A lot of other people ignore me for the same reason. I'm not everyone's cup of tea. :)

" Best. Christmas. Present. Ever."
Yeah, enjoy being in your little happy comfortable bubble again. Enjoy the masquerade ball again.

Why yes, of course.
---
Look, by saying "culture", you stepped into a minefield known as "cultural relativism". Cultural relativism is an illogical, disgusting and batshit insane debating strategy which is employed by all sorts of terrible people, including rightwingnut asshats and asshats who try to piggyback on the social justice movement. This is not to imply that you're a rightwingnut asshat -- you just happened to say something trivially true (meaningless) that also has a second (and wrong) positive meaning.
It goes like this: Here's a white American woman bashing Obama for waging culture war on the millennia-old Judeo-Christian tradition of Uganda.
Here's Putin talking about how oppression is a Russian cultural tradition.
Here's a high-ranking Orthodox priest being happy that a Russian anti-pedo researcher and activist died (in Russian).

Rhetoric which reduces legal processes to "hur hur culture" and "how a bill becomes a law" sketches plays into this, and it's bad. Yes, trivially, things happened because something something string theory. But saying "dude, everything is culture" (which is trivially true and therefore meaningless) has only one effect: reinforces the power of those assholes. It equates banning crocs at a restaurant under threat of expulsion and banning education under threat of murder. Some laws and regulations have no deeper reasoning behind them than "a majority favors them", or "a majority used to favor them in the 1890s", or "an influential person favors them and paid money to write them into this year's spending bill". Others have an actual grounding in science, and if the majority opinion changes, the science won't. If Orthodox priests / Islamists / Mormons say "raping kids is okay if it's us, we, like, have a culture and stuff", it would still be disgusting and monstrous.

Hope you don't mind me saying, the mine explosion here was you... and it was friendly fire even. I may disagree on the degree of cultural versus biological influence, but I have no idea where you got the idea I'd defend cultural relativism and anything goes libertinism. Appreciate the Russian context, by the way.

And since it's now clearer what your point is, let me just ask. Regardless of nature or nurture causes for something nasty, why do you disagree the societal norms framing it as not just nasty but: illegal, censurable, shameful, etc... are themselves mostly cultural? After all, it's not so hard to find historical examples of societies with very nasty habits, and I'd not go so far to say these were biologically defective people (it's the radical extreme implied by what you're saying, yes?). I'm not interested in excusing actions because they are normalized by culture, yet I don't see how pretending it's not mostly a cultural causation helps anyone, be it in favor, or against, the nasty.

Anyway, consider whether you're fine with saying sexual preferences are purely defined biologically, think about possible implications. And maybe re-read our posts so far, cos I'm astonished how you interpreted my meaning or intent almost orthogonally to what I know to be the case. I think partly you may have assumed implications about actions whereas the dialogue was about speech, in fact I offered those specific examples of censorship precisely because the actions inherent in that speech are what justifies their censorship imo.