#end duopoly in us politics

[alwayswiselight]

The Fascist and corporate owned Democrats, not to mention Republicans, are trying to stop this momentum. They're scared and rightfully so! The Stein & Ware campaign is the only anti-genocide one that has a chance to win the White House. I've come into contact with young Americans online and in person who demand change. And though I'm an old guy, I'm with them 100%.

[usauthoritarianism]

Not a popular sentiment here, but uh. Yeah. I got my passport last year. I suggest you do the same.

[millionmovieproject]

[politijohn]

Screaming from the rooftops I hate Trump I hate Biden I hate Desantis. All of our options suck. None of our elected officials give a fuck about what the people want, what the majority want, half of our government is geriatric and been in power so long they'll never give it up. I didn't vote for Biden or Trump but third party really does feel like throwing a vote away at this point. Do you have any advice for the upcoming election on who sucks the /least/? They're all horrible but I genuinely cannot fathom voting for Biden who was SO complicit in commiting active genocide against Palestine (ignoring so many other things).

You're right - the political duopoly leaves us with two terrible options for President. You should vote for your best interest recognizing the circumstances. If you live in a swing state, you may want to be strategic with your vote. Third party votes are a lost cause for Presidential elections until serious systemic changes are made to the political process.

At the end of the day, if neither Trump nor Biden has earned your vote, that's understandable. It's 100% on them and their parties for propping them up in the first place. Remember you can drive real change at the local level no matter who is elected President!

[imall4frogs]

From the article:

Around the world, liberal regimes were under assault from right- and left-wing populist movements. He [Patrick Deneen] saw that a window was opening for critics of liberalism to articulate a vision of an alternative regime in which conservatives presided over a strong central state.

That last sentence reverses decades of conservative thinking. Abandoning their “small government” rhetoric US conservatives are now warming to the idea of a strong central government. How strong do they want this central conservative government to be? Offhand I would hazard that they want a central authority strong enough to ignore elections.

The political divide that Patrick Deneen has articulated can seem academic, so please allow me to place the terms of the debate into cornbread language: both liberalism and conservatism seek to wield greater governmental power, but to different ends. Liberals want to intrude into our boardrooms but conservatives want to intrude into our bedrooms. Within our American political duopoly we must choose one.

Choose wisely. And if freedom and dignity still mean something to you, then keep your ear turned to Deneen, and be ready to refute his highly polished attack on liberalism.

[mini-starfruit]

I love how, as election season comes up, I get to see essentially mindless election discourse float across my dash. Voting for genocide, voting against genocide, voting for the guy who listens to reason, voting for the guy who isnt a cryptofascist—its so silly.

I live in New York, so my perspective is definitely influenced by that, but like. The MIC is going to exist no matter what you vote for. The parties will support the genocide no matter what. Thats not what its about on our end, "our" meaning american "leftists". Voting is not a chance to do no wrong, a chance to make some deontologically ethical action; it is one of many chances to wield the miniscule amount of political agency afforded to you as a citizen. You can use that agency to *not* vote, but unless youre forming a concerted anti-voting bloc (which do exist!!), not voting isnt a signal of any kind. It doesnt say anything, it doesnt indicate anything meaningful to the halls of power. They already know theyre failing to capture the american left, and they dont care. Leftism is anathema to their establishment.

Moreover, voting does not turn you into some sort of branded individual. You can vote and then turn right back around and throw bricks at cops or organise local support systems. These things are not mutually exclusive.

So, what does voting do? Its a ballot cast for a guy to be in the office. What does the guy do in the office, then? He appoints members of the cabinet and supreme court, and effects policy. I don't know about you, but I would like people moderately more left in cabinet positions (because that stuff DOES matter, to the domestic US, to countries economically involved (euphemism) (read: every country) with the US.)

The duopoly sucks!! I dont want neoliberals to be in charge. Unfortunately, they will be, and exercising your influence over them does not curse you forever to be incapable of resisting them in other political avenues. When did understanding your actions via their consequences fall out of vogue?

[fdotaku]

An Analysis of Pixiv's Recent Censorship of Femdom Artists

Do you have femdom artists you love? Pixiv is the #1 online platform that Japanese artists use to share their art, sort of like Japan's version of DeviantArt. Even among Western 2D femdom artists, Pixiv's popularity has rapidly increased in the last few years.

This article is my attempt to shed light on Pixiv's policy enforcement changes this year that have targeted a number of artists, which sadly include femdom ones.

If you're a fan of 2D femdom, especially the heavy BDSM variety, it's natural to want to know if some of your favorite artists have been forced to delete or alter their creative works, and why. It's hard to find that info anywhere else, due in large part to the fact that Japanese artists don't always defend themselves as vocally as they have a right to.

Also, just to be clear, I'll say this up-front: the only parts of Pixiv that have been affected are the 3 monetizable parts, Pixiv Fanbox (a Patreon-like site), Booth (an itch.io-like site), and "requests" (i.e. paid commissions). The main Pixiv site where artists can create profiles and share their works for free has been unaffected, and is likely to stay unaffected.

Sorry, this will ultimately be a very lengthy post; if you just want to learn what's up with Pixiv, skip down to the section "Changes at Pixiv in Late 2022" for recent events, or the section after that "2D Artists Later Targeted" for a list of some of the affected artists.

To start, I want to explain the role of international credit card companies in all of this. This controversy ultimately begins and ends with them.

The Specter of the International Credit Card Companies

Two American companies, VISA and MasterCard, have an international near-duopoly when it comes to processing credit card payments. In other words, when a site like Pixiv wants to accept customers' money, one of the most convenient and popular ways to do that is to let them pay with credit cards, but in order to do so, Pixiv needs to make a deal with a bank which in turn has a deal with a payment processing company, and their only real choice is the VISA-Mastercard duopoly if they want to reach a large number of customers, especially internationally.

So what does this duopoly mean? It means that VISA and Mastercard are also responsible for making sure they don't accidentally fund terrorists or other kinds of criminals… Or to put it in terms they understand, they need to make sure they don't accidentally facilitate the payments of someone in a way that results in political fallout. It's not like these 2 companies are omniscient and can prevent anyone from ever processing a payment for a crime, and small controversies will pop up frequently. But if they fail to properly police their partners, especially if they were previously "warned" by an outside entity but failed to take action, and a small controversy becomes a massive controversy, it's not impossible that they could have that status taken from them. Their duopoly only exists through the tacit approval of the United States government, which expects them to do a competent job. For now, there are no serious threats to their duopoly. But in my personal opinion, if they allow 1 or 2 more massive controversies on the level of what happened with Pornhub, they could lose it. These 2 companies could be said to be "responsible" for an unfathomable amount of financial transactions, so they probably don't feel that they can slack off in their relentless efforts to minimize controversy.

Thus, VISA and Mastercard have always been especially harsh on pornography. The vast majority of the commercial porn industry, especially before the web rose in popularity, revolved around real-life actors. So when these companies came up with policies about what kind of "content" was acceptable to sell, they implicitly formulated them with respect to real-life situations. Keep in mind that depictions of sex and violence are outright illegal in many parts of the world, and even safe and consensual BDSM is a crime in most places if the police are prejudiced enough to try to prosecute it. Why wouldn't they want to avoid financial liability for real-life porn that involves depiction of physical abuse, when they obviously have no way to judge whether it's a faked effect (like ketchup instead of blood) or a real act, and BDSM porn is known to depict real acts? And why wouldn't they object to real-life porn that has bestiality or child porn, when that obviously constitutes abuse? In any case, VISA and Mastercard's policies were mostly based in reason and respect for international law. After all, there is still a worldwide market for these materials, and it needs to be taken seriously. In particular, those who trade in depictions of children and animals who are unable to consent, sometimes even the brutal murder of animals, financially support or at least morally support the horrific creation of such material, the existence of which continues to traumatize many victims.

That said, porn isn't just 3D, it's also 2D, and not everyone can recognize the difference between fiction and reality. Perhaps thanks to some well-known classic literature with elements of fetishism such as Venus in Furs, I don't believe there has ever been a criminal prosecution in a Western country for purely written depictions of sexual and physical abuse that equates them with financially supporting the acts they depict. Text-based femdom is subject to the same common sense which tells us that a movie which depicts a brutal murder isn't equivalent to condoning murders. Overall, the written word is treated differently--as connected to the realm of ideas which are by themselves not crimes--than visual material. But the same can't be said for fictional visual material. Because "porn" can sometimes be defined as a reference to depictions that's independent of how those depictions are created, there's a kind of legal theory that treats scratches on a piece of paper as equivalent to photographs of horrific real-life crimes. And there have been scattered cases around the world where people were prosecuted for possession of kinky drawn porn, or even just non-pornographic manga with fan service, under laws intended to clamp down on a criminal industry.

Japan's creative industry has fiercely protected its 2D artists from arbitrary censorship for decades, and even strongly objected to occasional attempts of outside bodies such as UN organizations to pressure Japan to legally enforce censorship of "explicit" content in their domestic manga industry, such as perceived sexualization, groping, or anything that Western sensibilities object to. The Japanese 2D porn scene has its roots in the doujin scene, where people drew their fantasies without holding back (other than adding mosaics/bars over exposed genitals in accordance with Japanese law) and printed them to be sold at twice-a-year conventions. Around the turn of the millennium, that industry took to the web, and not only could people sell and buy physical erotic doujin magazines, they could sell and buy digital-only doujin works on sites like DLsite, and they expanded beyond manga into voice works, CG sets, video games, and so on. While Japan's corporate erotic industries are regulated by various entities, such as EOCS for eroge which requires games be submitted to them for advance approval, DLsite doesn't face quite the same level of restrictions, as works are speedily reviewed by DLsite staff. The popular Japanese artist site Pixiv barely ever regulates its users' erotic art, except to force them to re-upload it with mosaics. That's in contrast with the English-speaking internet, which lacked a central online marketplace for 2D porn until the VN industry pushed Steam to open its doors to erotic games, and even then they ban many games for their content; even when you compare artist sites, DeviantArt censors far more content than Pixiv, as it doesn't allow depictions of male erections, sexual contact or explicit sex acts, or characters who could be interpreted somehow as underage, and has its own volunteer army of Christians and porn haters who try to report as many fetish artists as possible. Well, anyone who's familiar with Japanese otaku culture probably understands that for better or worse, their attitude toward sex is different from that of many Western countries.

The Duopoly's Oppressive Influence on Artists

Patreon was created in 2013. At first, it was relatively censorship-free. I remember that Fenoxo, creator of Corruptions of Champions, was a top-ranked creator; that game included significant amounts of furry, latex, bestiality, futanari, mind control, rape, and of course, corruption fetish content. In truth, porn had never actually been officially allowed on Patreon. But for a while, the company clearly just wasn't sure where to draw the line when it came to how to define sexual content or not, so they left it alone.

However, all that changed in November 2017, when they outright banned a wide range of kinks. The major ones that everyone noticed were rape, incest, bestiality, and underage characters. Guro was also banned. And they interpreted these terms broadly. Some creators fled to SubscribeStar, but SubscribeStar doesn't accept as many types of payment methods as Patreon. Many creators, such as Fenoxo, stayed on by adjusting the content they produced. Half a year later, as a new ban wave swept the platform, Patreon staff confirmed that it was under pressure from payment processors to 'review content'. And then in 2019, Patreon had a major crackdown on hypnosis and mind control kink, because they defined it as a type of rape.

Now, let's look at the Japanese side. Japan was slow to understand Patreon's appeal. Due to Japan's cultural differences, there was some initial resistance to both the crowdfunding and subscription models; many people had a kind of right-wing mindset where they said that creators should just create a product and sell it rather than "beg for money". But that changed in April 2018, when DLsite launched a sister site called Ci-en, pronounced "shien" which means "support/aid". It was a smart move, because many creators already had DLsite accounts to sell their works, so it wasn't hard to expand that to Ci-en and let them set up plans to receive money from fans or just blog about whatever they wanted. A lot of ambitious femdom projects started up around this time, with the S na Kanojo-based game Escalation! among them. With Ci-en's explosion in popularity, two Japanese rivals emerged in a matter of weeks: Fantia and Pixiv's Fanbox.

Fanbox stood out for one clear reason: it's the only site that adopted the Patreon model. Ci-en has both free and paid plans, but treats each month-tier as a kind of purchase, where you unlock all posts at that tier for that month permanently. Fantia has more variety of payments options, but is also more focused around per-month purchases, and lacks a free tier. Fanbox, in contrast, creates a "box" which creators add to periodically, which is completely accessible once you pay for it, for as long as you pay for it, for the tier that you pay for; in other words, it's Japanese Patreon. And as you might expect, it's proven more popular than its rivals.

Just like Patreon, Fanbox also spent a few years relatively censorship-free, its "honeymoon" of sorts. But recently, the international credit card companies have come for Pixiv.

Changes at Pixiv in Late 2022

In mid-November 2022, Pixiv suddenly announced that they would be making changes in December to their Terms of Use to "clarify" what kind of content is not acceptable. They were open about the fact that international credit card companies had pressured them to take action. In fact, they didn't yet reveal what the specific changes would be… this was effectively an announcement about an announcement.

For anyone who had any doubt: Japanese people are far from ignorant about how their views on sex differ from Western countries. In fact, many Japanese people, especially those who appreciate otaku culture or adult content, are aware of and strongly oppose "political correctness" (ポリコレ/porikore) in Western countries. (Most of their impression of it comes from Western cinema, games, and comics, where they feel that these stories are distorted for the worse by the writers' need to adjust story elements, and in particular limit women's cuteness or sexiness.) Japanese people also understand that there's a faction in the West that wants to censor otaku culture. Furthermore, there's an overwhelming consensus among Japanese people that drawings cannot hurt anyone, and should not be criminalized.

And so the Japanese public's response to this announcement was, as expected, one of displeasure. There was a lot of discussion in Twitter about how tyrannical international credit card companies are, and it wasn't the first time such discussions had taken place, as plenty of other Japanese businesses have had disagreements with the international credit card companies in the past over the sale of erotic art. The magazine Bunshun, which is well-known for its investigative journalism, reported on how the credit card companies had been on a hair trigger ever since the Pornhub controversy in late 2020, and that because they recently discovered Fanbox had been used as a front by some Chinese vendors to covertly sell child porn and necrophilia porn hidden within lengthy videos, they were watching to make sure Pixiv came down hard on illegal content and were prepared to even ban Pixiv's entire parent company if Pixiv's actions didn't satisfy them. It wasn't only Mastercard, which is known to be a bit more strict than VISA, but also VISA and JCB (Japan Credit Bureau, an international credit card company based in Japan) who were likely to do so.

Finally, in early December, Pixiv unveiled the changes they would make to their Terms of Use. First, they distinguished between 禁止商品, content that would result in an immediate ban (which includes child porn), and 要修正商品, content that would just result in being designated as private/unmonetized until altered and re-approved by Pixiv (which includes all non-photorealistic drawings). This kind of difference in treatment is obvious, but Pixiv laying it out clearly also probably helped reassure some artists that they wouldn't be treated as criminals by Pixiv just because a "problematic" drawing was detected on their Fanbox, as well as reassure credit card companies that truly evil content would receive more than a slap on the wrist in response. Second, they add separate pages with clarifying examples of what kinds of situations are considered problematic. The key point is that their 要修正商品 page cites "sexual exploitation or sexual abuse of a minor (*1), incest, bestiality, rape (or any other non-consensual sexual behavior), non-consensual mutilation of a person or body part, [and] any other content deemed inappropriate by pixiv". Furthermore, it's clarified that this content is judged by the holistic situation presented by the image, title, tags, caption, and description; therefore, text-based context may matter as much as the art itself.

Up until this point, Pixiv had been vague about what content wasn't allowed on Fanbox and other services which utilized credit cards; they effectively just said you couldn't post "illegal" content. They were probably reluctant to tell Japanese users "look at all the fetishes that Western credit card companies consider 'illegal' to draw!" and just hoped it wouldn't result in a problem. However, as Bunsun reported, they had seen frequent cases over the years where these credit companies refused to settle payments for specific content on their platforms, and now, the credit card companies had taken the initiative to more or less band together and force Pixiv to spell out what they considered problematic in their Terms of Use.

In any case, to those of us who already were aware of what fetishes credit card companies hate most, the list didn't contain any real surprises. The real question was… to what extent would these new rules be enforced? Were they just lip service to the credit card companies who'd held them to the fire, or would they really make sure Pixiv banned every piece of incest fan art they could find on Fanbox?

Many creators held their breath around this time, and prepared to be banned when the changes took effect in mid-December. negisho, a femdom artist who both draws and digitally renders situations with muscular boys who're tied up and beaten by sexy older women, was particularly certain that he'd be censored, since he had the triple-whammy of somewhat photorealistic 3D renders, underage characters, and violence. As it turns out, his Fanbox wasn't censored. But some of his Booth works were, and out of fear, he moved to Fantia anyway. Another femdom artist, makin, creates only 2D art, but a lot of them feature loli characters and incest, so he made them all private in preparation for expected censorship… but when it didn't come, he just un-privated them in mid-January, and they're still up. So for the most part, what people feared didn't happen. However, it's true that a number of artists who produce 3D renders were targeted in a wave of suspensions that unfolded in late December. Still, overall, the impression most people had is that Pixiv's rule changes weren't being enforced strictly, and if they were enforced, it was mostly accounts who produced 3D renders that were targeted, not traditional 2D artists. There was a collective sigh of relief. And I'm sure Pixiv was happy, too, that the controversy had died down.

2D Artists Later Targeted

Unfortunately, the story didn't end there. After an apparent pause of a few months, a number of 2D femdom artists on Pixiv have had their Fanboxes targeted in a new wave of censorship.

To be clear, this is what happens: an artist is suddenly told that their Fanbox has been suspended for problematic content or have a number of their posts set to "private", which won't be visible to the public until they manually correct the problematic posts. In the case of Fanbox suspensions, they're not always told exactly which posts are problematic, so they have to somewhat guess what's problematic and make a large number of changes before applying for re-approval by Pixiv staff. They may also be told they need to remove external links such as ones to Google Drive.

Here are a list of some of affected artists, and what they revealed about the circumstances behind their account's censorship.

Miginohito Mitsuru: In March 2023, several posts set private. Reason suspected by artist: depictions of young male/female characters. Result: moved to Ci-en. (Note: The image used in this blog post is taken from their work.)

Luster Don (commissions both art and adult videos): In April 2023, he reported that he noticed some of his older posts with apparently NG (banned) keywords in their tags had been made private by Pixiv. Result: he reworded the text to not have those NG words, and re-submitted them. In fact, he had already taken the step of moving his photographic content off Fanbox onto other platforms, to preempt the possibility of a mixed fight being judged as 禁止商品 and having his entire Pixiv account banned as a result.

Kia-shi: In May 2023, their Fanbox was suspended. No specific reason/art cited by Pixiv. Reason suspected by artist: oneshota and/or oyoufuku akachan (a male character trapped inside tight clothes worn by a larger female character and pressed against her body). Result: deleted all art with those 2 fetishes, registered for Fantia, and posted that art on Fantia; continually operates both Fantia and Fanbox accounts but posts less art on Fanbox.

Robo Mikan: In May 2023, their Fanbox was suspended. Stated reason: there was a problem with the top page. Result: he changed all the images and tags displayed on the top page, and it was unsuspended. He suspects that loli content was the source of the problem (since he's a lolidom artist) but is unclear about what exactly caused it, so he created a Fantia account too and continues to operate both it and Fanbox.

Uramacoto (femsub focus artist, but lots of yuri femdom): In May 2023, their Fanbox was suspended. Stated reason: problems with their cover image, portfolio, plan cover images, and perhaps other unstated reasons; they'd also previously had a few posts flagged due to the need to revise the text or tags. Result: they changed everything that was designated problematic, but in an effort to avoid further suspensions, they researched what other people advised they do on Twitter/5ch, and in the end, they took the drastic step of censoring all adult terminology in text-based elements of their pasts and future posts (with the ● symbol, such as ア●ルト instead of アダルト): namely titles, tags, captions, and descriptions--they even took the effort to censor terms like bondage, S-onna, netorare, and seme. Note: they didn't censor the actual Japanese text within the images, just the post metadata.

Murasaki Gankyuu Suisou (SM-kei circle with a lot of heavy femdom works): In May 2023, or possibly early June 2023, their Fanbox was suspended. They fixed it in mid-June. No reason provided for why, though MGS does have a lot of violent content; if they had to censor any of it, they would've said so, so perhaps they just reworded some text or thickened some mosaics.

Philia (Korean femdom artist): In September 2023, his Fanbox was suspended. Stated reason: insufficient mosaics, external links to Google Drive. The NTR-themed CG set "Perfect Girlfriend" was also not allowed by them for some reason. Result: He did what Fanbox told him to do, and his Fanbox was restored. "Perfect Girlfriend" was apparently canceled.

My best guess is that around May 19, Pixiv automatically scanned the text-based metadata of the posts of all Fanbox creators for certain keywords associated with the content that they'd explicitly banned the previous December. And for accounts with a significant number of flagged posts, they suspended the accounts and told them they needed to fix this, and once they did so, restored their accounts. It's possible that merely changing the text would've been enough to satisfy Pixiv, but some creators like Kia-shi were more cautious now that they were under a microscope, and chose to delete the offending posts altogether. (In general, they're cautious because Pixiv has warned that repeat offenders may be outright banned.) That said, there are other cases of censorship too, but it's rare to see creators want to discuss it in detail, in part because of the shame/stigma of being told your fetishes are problematic, so in the end, the sample size I've examined is too small and I can't be confident about any of my conclusions.

Conclusions

It doesn't seem that many femdom artists have been affected by Fanbox's censorship… at least, for now. And in most cases, they've been able to make trivial fixes that let them stay on the platform. This is good news. But ultimately, the future is unknown, and the tension between Pixiv and credit card companies will probably remain for a while.

So, who are the villains in this story? Well, the criminals who misused Fanbox as cover to peddle illicit materials, obviously. Aside from them… I don't know. I don't resent any of the fundamental forces that sustain this dynamic which represses freedom of expression in erotic art. In particular, the credit card companies just want to protect themselves legally, and they have every right to be upset when the sites they partner with end up exploited by criminals. At the same time, some of these criminals are very clever, and I don't blame a site like Pixiv for not being able to detect all hidden content within videos sold on Fanbox, any more than I blame YouTube for every copyright notice that's filed against its videos. (Note: It's not like I believe Pixiv couldn't have done any better. But hindsight is always 20/20, and they're clearly putting in a real effort now.)

Villains aside, if I had to pick who else I dislike most, it's the people who embrace the censorship that results from this complex legal dynamic and falsely moralize it. For example, the current Patreon moderation team doesn't just ban certain fetishes, it outright morally condemns them in the warnings it sends to creators: "Per our guidelines, we have zero tolerance for the glorification of sexual violence, and this includes depictions of sexualized minors, non-consensual sex, incest, and bestiality." They actually implicitly accuse these artists, whose fantasies hurt no one, of encouraging violence. Fortunately, most organizations don't feel the same way. Steam famously has a single official policy toward its erotic games: they only ban what's "illegal" (read: they also follow guidelines similar to the credit card companies') or "trolling". Although they've received some flak because their moderation team treats all high school characters (no matter how curvy, no matter what school year, no matter whether they're stated to be 18 or not) as children, they've at least been largely consistent and refused to moralize their judgments; they even apologized for their premature ban of Chaos;Head Noah which led to fan outcry. Meanwhile, Japanese companies not only don't moralize this issue, they resist censorship as best they can. Even Pixiv, which was placed under a lot of pressure last December, has only censored a handful of 2D accounts that essentially verbally self-confessed to the content that credit card companies object to; there are countless femdom creators on Fanbox who I didn't mention, because they haven't encountered any censorship.

What's kind of ironic, actually, is that this past summer, Rium (Msize) started a Fanbox… less than a year after the changes in its Terms of Use caused Fanbox to lose face compared to Ci-en and Fantia. I hope it works out well for him.

Update on January 22, 2024

On January 17, 2024, Pixiv Fanbox enacted a new ban (well, force-hidden) wave, and this one covered a broader set of terms found in tags and titles.

There's been a lot of talk about it on Japanese Twitter. Tweets like this one list examples of all the terms that have been newly declared unacceptable. In short, the terms are all associated with any of 3 categories: non-con, underage, and incest. Previously, the main banned terms had been the ones associated with underage character depictions, and only a small subset of terms had been banned. Now, a broader set of terms has been used, and they expanded into two other categories. So for example, if a Fanbox fetish artist draws erotic art and uses the word "forced" (犯され) in the image's title, it was be force-hidden in the recent wave. And any erotic work tagged with family terms like "older sister" is unacceptable, which would even included, for example, an image of an "older sister" having sex with a complete stranger (just the two of them).

It's worth noting, though, that Fanbox's censorship wave does not instantly ban anyone, it just hides their works by default and forces them to make some kind of "change" before it can be un-hidden. This means that simply removing the offending title/tags, or renaming that with a censor such as レ〇プ instead of レイプ (rape), appears to be enough for their works to be restored. Same as what happened in last May's censorship wave.

Anyway, while a lot of creators are disturbed by what has happened, most of them appear to be sticking with Fanbox. I think the main draw of Fanbox for a lot of creators is that foreign patrons can't access Fantia or SubscribeStar with their credit cards, Patreon censors even harder, and Ci-en's subscription model and features are more limited and awkward.

Update on August 17, 2024

For a condensed summary of some recent events of note, check out the Side Talk section at the very bottom of this unrelated recent post I made.

Side Talk

This post took a while. I had to change my focus and rewrite a large part of it, and yet I still find myself wondering if I rambled on too much about details most people don't care about. I tried to minimize links to Japanese sources, though it's worth noting that if you know Japanese and are interested, the Bunshun article is worth reading. In any case, MGS is the only circle I'm truly excited to see more works from these days, so I hope that they can avoid censorship when they try to publish Femme Fatale on DLsite. They seem to be approaching the point where they can put out a trial version...

Lately, I've been trying to play some of the Western erotic game community's femdom games. It's been interesting. Too many of them are slow-paced VNs, with characters I don't find very likable. I always wish more English language devs would create fun character dynamics like the kind in Crazy GameMaster: The 7 Crystals. I also wish they would just finish their games. Too many of these devs stop developing their main game when they're close to done with it, in order to develop their next game in advance with the hope that they won't lose patrons once they finish their main game. I don't like to play unfinished games, but I rarely have a choice here.

I hope my next post won't take nearly a full year to put out. I have many ideas for posts that excite me more than this post, but I prioritized this post because I felt like the subject matter was more time-sensitive.

[goopgirlie813]

Long is fine lol, I do it a lot too.

Again, I agree with pretty much everything you're saying and am struggling a bit to see what exactly you are criticizing about this post specifically. It seems more like a general rant toward behaviors observed from American democrat voters as a whole. Which I admit I've been guilty of those kinds only-tangentially-post-relevant-but-I'm-fed-up-with-the-pattern type rants in the past so no judgement. Just left me a little confused.

So to confirm that I did properly understand you; you're expressing a criticism of people's contentment with "lesser evil" voting and asking that Americans 1) stop praising Democrats simply for opposing Republicans, and 2) do something to end the domination of the Republican+Democrat duopoly before it devolves into dictatorship. Possibly revolution, but if not, at least some form of organized movement to break out of the political status quo.

Is that accurate?

If so I want to say, I fully agree. I just don't know how to approach it besides what I am already doing: supporting voting reform.

As far as I can tell there are no active communist/socialist parties where I live. I have no idea how to start one nor do I believe I have the charisma or relevant skills to grow one into something impactful. Not to mention that being anti-communist has become so synonymous with American identity that even with those skills I'd be unlikely to persuade pretty mcuh anyone. Hell, it may make things worse and serve to make people more eager to support fascism considering the outright terror that the average American feels toward even the association with Communism.

And idk how this compares to Brazil but US culture is super....Isolating? Individualistic? People just don't participate in community, don't have time for community. Everyone is so socially distant, and public spaces tend to be unwelcoming. It can be incredibly difficult to organize anything because our culture does not leave room for community. Its just work, eat, sleep. Especially now with everything being so expensive many people have to work multiple jobs just to get by and simply do not have time to participate. Hell, I work 2 jobs with a 1hr commute meaning I am away from home for at least 16hrs a day during the week. My only free time is on the weekend (or during break, like now) unless I want to sacrifice my health by not sleeping. And by then I'm so exhaused I barely want to get out of bed to go get food with my family. I say this just to make it clear that I do genuinely want to make a change, many of us do, but just don't know how to find the time to even make a solid plan.

I'm not trying to be defeatest or pessimistic with this, I'm simply saying that these are hurdles I have no clue how to overcome. The two things I know I can do, however, are vote and donate any extra money I may have to causes that may help change the system. Which is why I choose to spend my break time advocating for whatever political candidate I think has the best outcome in this instance because its the one thing I know I can do. Its not because I'm content, its because I'm stumped on what else to do. And from what I can tell, that's the camp a lot of Americans are in. Its not as simple as just "organize" because everything from our culture to our infrastructure keeps people isolated from each other, making that task extremely difficult.

You motherfuckers yes I hate Kamala too but when she is announced to be the Democratic candidate we are all going to shoot fireworks and go to the goddamn polls

[dallasareaopinion]

Same ole song and dance, the government is going to shutdown ho hum……again.   But first, does the low propensity voter feel insulted?

I wonder because they might be the smartest voters.

It seems the world only pays attention to them for two months out of every four years. They are just as important for the entire four years as everyone else. So many of us spend the entire four years yelling and screaming at our government and it never listens anyway even if you give the politicians advice. You have to be careful with advice, it is like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, while advice is either good or bad in the ear of the listener. Anyway our politicians just don’t care about the majority of us for four years, but for two months this fall everyone is talking about the low propensity voter; like what does that mean.

And I am being a hypocrite here, I have written that we need to cut down the time of our elections anyway, but I rant and rave all the time about politics in this blog. Maybe the low propensity voter has this down to a science, just don’t give a rat’s back end until September and bam everyone wants your vote now. So they do what I say and that is care about elections for only a couple of months. It would actually do this country some good to cut down election season, but I haven’t got the fortitude not to be the angry old man yelling at politicians to get off of my lawn.

Of course politicians will make the same empty promises to them that they do to the rest of us, yet the low propensity voter is at least promised irresponsibly to specifically. I don’t get that attention and again I even give out free advice.

So let’s hail the low propensity voter, pat them on the back for their ingenuity and more importantly their sanity for ignoring all the hubris for over 3 and a half years and still be the group most people say will decide this election.

Maybe I should target them to get new parties.

And I asked the question of someone specifically this evening, but now to y’all: are you tired of hearing about another government shutdown? I mean this issue is older than dirt, but much less important. We need dirt for food, still trying to figure out why we need our current political parties.

A shutdown will cause problems, but the duopoly that gets elected every two or four years still hasn’t figured out, it is us, the voters/citizens they are supposed to respond. And you knew this one was bad when the Representative from Georgia Ms. Marjorie T. Greene even called out her own caucus over it.

It is old news, bad government, bad political theatre and incompetence all rolled into one overly dramatic stage show that accomplishes nothing. And over the years this has pushed our budget into very dangerous territory.

And people think I waste my vote when I don’t vote for Democrats or Republicans, please… please think about this before you waste your vote.  We are way past the lesser of two evils consideration, this is the greater of two incompetencies thinking.

Cheers

[vamptastic]

Re: understanding third parties. Respectfully, voting 3rd party in the current system is putting the cart before the horse. The electoral college is designed to prevent a third party win, it simply will not happen even with massive voter support, bc electors are already pledged to either main party. It's a shitty, archaic, bullshit system we've inherited, but it's what we've got to work with at the moment.

We have to do the work to dismantle the EC *first* if we want to break the duopoly, otherwise we're just throwing that energy into a bottomless pit.

There is a much better chance of us taking our current frustrations and using them to push hard for ranked choice voting (we already have it in a handful of places) and getting that in place before the 28/32 elections. But certainly not in six months, and not at all if we allow regressives to retake power, not only for the usual reasons but because they're already trying to pre-emptively ban RCV and reinforce the EC bc they literally cannot win + keep power without it.

HI sorry this took so long to respond to my inbox is always glitched out and doesn't display the right number of asks. I don't remember what this is relating to specifically but you do make a good point.

I mostly agree that this election is simply not the right time for a significant third party victory given what West and de la Cruz are polling at (and frankly, while I like West as an author neither are very 'electable'). For a third party to bring their policy concerns fully into the public consciousness, or even actually win the election, a solid candidate, concise and popular platform, and years of campaigning is needed, and we just don't have that right now.

Unfortunately I kind of think the Democratic and Republican parties will just end up having another major policy change/dissolve entirely on their own because both are a complete nightmare mess and we're at the point in the American political cycle where this tends to happen. Don't see either party allowing a candidate I'd approve of to win the primary anytime soon.

It's worth noting that the Republican party is infighting like crazy right now, and has their own third party threats to contend with. So it'd not entirely a bad idea to take some risks if it looks like Trump has a poor chance of winning anyway.

But right now I don't want the Senate and HoR to go red, so I'll probably vote for Biden in the election. Not entirely unconvinced that lying on a poll to scare the Dems is a bad idea, but frankly I probably won't vote in the polls anyway bc my name won't be changed until pretty close to the election (so I won't be registered yet). Next election, I'll probably vote third party, but it depends on who runs next.

I just hope we actually see some change soon. The primaries are fucked to hell and back already and RCV is hardly popular with either party.

[millionmovieproject]

[theculturedmarxist]

Joe Biden is an unpopular candidate for president, but he is still running well ahead of the opposition. Fortunately, there is a socialist running against him who may be able to consolidate the anti-Biden vote and pose a serious challenge to his candidacy much like Bernie Sanders did to Hillary Clinton in 2016. There is every reason to believe that he can do this if opponents of capitalism rally around his campaign and work to bring the rest of Biden’s opposition into the fold. Unfortunately, however, our socialist candidate faces multiple capitalist challengers who are trying to compete for the socialist vote by positioning themselves as vague radicals — and an ostensibly radical network of online activists and media figures who are willing to play along and unwilling to adopt an adversarial position against his opponents.

This, of course, is the problem that leftists faced throughout the 2020 Democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist, was from the day he announced the logical rallying point for a left-flank challenge — not just to Biden, but to the entire capitalist system. But Sanders was swarmed by a liberal opponents like Elizabeth Warren who positioned themselves as radicals and prevented his campaign from building the early momentum it needed to get over the establishment’s Super Tuesday speedbump at the end. And those candidates were abetted, of course, by a whole constellation of activists and pundits (like Sean McElwee, for example) who argued against rallying around Sanders and against a competitive, critical stance towards his opponents.

If there’s one lesson socialists should have taken from 2020, it’s that hedging our bets with progressive capitalist candidates is a guaranteed lose. And yet that is exactly what ostensibly Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr. are us to do by running against actual socialist candidate Cornel West. West’s campaign had such a terrible launch in its association with the reactionary People’s Party Nick Brana front group that the overwhelming majority of socialists, including yours truly, rightly rejected it. But almost immediately, West left Brana’s group and declared his candidacy for the Green Party’s nomination instead. If you are an opponent of capitalism, the obvious thing to do at this point is to rally around the candidate who also opposes capitalism and treat Williamson and RFK as the capitalist Democrats that they are. Look, it’s so easy I’ll even make a flowchart:

That any of this has to be spelled out after what was, for socialists, one of the most vivid and catastrophic learning experiences in modern electoral history tempts me to spend a lot more time gaming and a lot less time doing whatever this is. As far as I can tell there are only two reasons you could possibly object to this.

First, because you think that, in the arena of presidential politics, the Democratic Party is the only possible vehicle for progress.This is a popular strategic position, albeit one I disagree with. It’s shared by everyone from Joe Biden to AOC to Bernie Sanders. It is, however, a funny rationale to hear from Williamson / RFK supporters who have long at pains to distance themselves from Democratic entryists and reformists, and who have abandoned principled opposition to capitalism for some vague opposition to “the establishment” or “the system” or whatever. If you won’t stand up to capitalism or the duopoly what then what exactly is this system you have a problem with?

Second: because you don’t oppose capitalism. This is a popular position too! Elizabeth Warren was a capitalist who positioned herself as a radical proponent of “big structural change”, and her supporters spent a good year positioning themselves as deluded deadenders for one of the more embarrassing campaigns in recent history. Hell, Joe Biden also loves capitalism. So is this a Communists for Hickenlooper deal where we’re supposed to back a liberal Democrat because he’s taken a decent position on one or two issues to try to distinguish himself from the pack?

Socialists have a fight ahead of us. It’s going to be hard for West to recover from a bad campaign launch. It’s going to be hard to prevent The People’s Party from using him to further their own ambitions. It’s going to be hard to prevent Williamson and RFK from shepherding opposition to Biden back into capitalist Democratic politics. And it’s going to be hard, as always, to overcome Democratic loyalism and lesser-evilism out among people who are rightly worried about a Republican win. There’s still time for better candidates to announce, and if we get a better socialist I think there’ll be plenty of room to revisit our support. But for now, Cornel West’s run with the Green Party is the only game in town.

[garudabluffs]

Cornel West on Running for President, Ending Ukraine War & Taking on “Corporate Duopoly” of Dems & GOP

June 07, 2023

"Thank god for Democracy Now! And thank god for a few other venues that try to tell the truth about this. Because, you know, my dear Sister Amy, that I am — I’m a jazzman in American politics. And jazz is about blues, and blues is about catastrophe, lyrically expressed and candidly confronted and artistically transfigured. And the catastrophes have to be wrestled with. It could be ecological ones. It could be economic ones of grotesque wealth inequality. It could be social ones, political ones, psychic ones.

And then there is swing, which is a different conception of time. So we have ways of authorizing a better future, given what seem to be all of the closed routes, all of the foreclosures, all of the alternatives trumped. So you have to make sure that the vitality and energy that you have swings in such a way that you never lose hope in having solidarity with oppressed people around the world.

And, of course, the third element is improvisation. And improvisation is about what? Well, it’s not just an artistic skill, as the Ron Carters and geniuses like that still alive remind us. It’s also a form of practical wisdom. As freedom fighters, we’ve got to be improvisational. We’ve got to be flexible. We’ve got to be fluid. We’ve got to be protean. We’ve got to learn how to listen. We can’t be dogmatic. We can’t be ossified. We can’t be petrified in how we look at the world."

LISTEN READ MORE Transcript https://www.democracynow.org/2023/6/7/cornel_west_2024

[fimbulvetr-now]

I'd argue that third party candidates can work, but currently ONLY AT THE LOCAL LEVEL. Your sheriffs, school board folks, mayors, etc, all sorts of local level elected officials.

So often, these are conservatives running unopposed. And when you run unopposed, there's no incentive to actually do anything to improve the lot of your constituents. (Not to mention it's partially how they get the notion that people actually like or want their weird ass policies)

We need to work our way up in breaking the duopoly and making third party candidates viable at the national level.

So yes, you NEED to vote for Harris/Walz now, but then use the next four years to get invested in politics at the local level!

The United States, for better or (more typically) worse, effectively legislates for the whole world now to one extent or another. Because of how interconnected we are in the digital age, what passes in the US controls many of the companies that underpin the world's digital and economic systems.

Which means the laws that, say, silicon valley are beholden to often end up the laws that large swathes of the internet are beholden to (think weird "protect the children" laws that end up being cudgels used against queer folks and sex workers).

Please don't let this election be a referendum solely on Palestine. Make sure that as you continue to apply pressure on Palestine's behalf, that those in charge might respond with more than brute force to silence you.

For now, that means Kamala. But with dedicated, persistent grassroots organising at the local level, then next time that could mean a third party candidate.

Please think about the Supreme Court when you go to vote.

Please think about Agenda 47 (née Project 2025) when you go to vote.

Please think about the January 6 insurrection (and the copycat events like in Brazil) when you go vote.

Please think about your marginalised friends when you go vote.

Please think about the 2000 election when you go vote.

With Kamala/Walz going up DAILY, I've seen more people talking about voting third party/Jill Stein (EW) and I believe the above screencaps from @three--rings can explain WHY Third Party votes NEVER work NOR is this the election to screw around in.

Everyone....like she says above.....PLEASE LEARN FROM HISTORY!!!

(Because if Trump gets in, he's NEVER LEAVING).

[notthemayor]

thinking like 13 year olds is why we (#usa) got into this mess 🐣

profits are valued mmhigher than health, happiness, and environment causing most citizens to suffer 🦀🦀🦀

men care about masculinity and affiliations more than they care about their country 😷

we can cut trillions of dollars from the defense budget and audit the Pentagon 🕊️

we can cancel student loans without the need of input of Congress 🎰

we can lead as a nation under Truth 😶

corporate lobbyists are passionately working against the average american EVERY DAY 👿

a woman will balance the budget (this quote is from one of her fans) ��

all republicans are not fascistic and most are dignified, open, and decent along with most of the population 💗

authoritarianism is weakening our national immune system 🏴

free tech schools and guaranteed livable wages are how we defeat the [neonazi] 💸

ending the status quo of injustice is what will clear your stress and most of the populace agrees with me especially the young and those a little left-of-centrr ⚖️

political elites won't change themselves as they continue to play us [and bleed us] 🩸

democrats and republicans forge an unholy alliance as one corporate duopoly ♊

change comes from the people, not the president ♀️

~marianne williamson 2024

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Rail monopolies destroyed the American supply chain

The rail barons were the original monopolists, whose ability to make or break whole industries based on their parochial needs spurred the first American antitrust laws. For generations, railroads were tightly regulated to ensure resiliency, competition and fairness. Today, the monopolists are back, and their greed has shattered American supply-chains.

The pandemic has seen massive failures in rail service — late deliveries, waves of derailments, huge backlogs. But rail profits have soared, as have the prices of carrying freight. No wonder: in 1980, there were 40 US “Class I” railroads. Today, there are seven.

How did this happen? Blame Carter. And Reagan. And every president since. The Carter administration lit the kindling for the bonfire of regulations and Reagan poured gas on it. In 1980, the dismantling of rail regulation picked up a good head of steam and it hasn’t slowed since.

Writing in The American Prospect, Matthew Buck provides an excellent, highly accessible overview of how railroad deregulation made a small number of people — especially the notorious hedge-fund looter Bill Ackman — spectacularly rich, and how those riches were turned into political power to further the removal of the rail industry’s brakes.

https://prospect.org/economy/how-americas-supply-chains-got-railroaded/

The rail industry wasn’t just a pioneer in 19th century corrupt monopoly, it was also the trailblazer for late 20th century tolerance for monopolies. In the 1980s and 1990s, the DoJ and FTC were still occasionally willing to get out of bed and block a merger or two, but rail was governed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), which basically slept through both decades. “By the 1990s, STB policy blessed nearly all mergers except those that left only one railroad in a market.” You will not be amazed to learn that “a 2018 study of railroad mergers from 1983 to 2008 was unable to find that mergers improved efficiency.”

All this started under Carter (never forget that Carter was a milder version of Reagan, the way GW Bush was a junior-league Trump). In 1980, Carter signed the Staggers Rail Act, which ended the regulation of railroad freight prices by the Interstate Commerce Commission. This allowed the railroads to once again pick the winners, by offering preferential freight prices to the biggest companies, thus pricing the smaller competitors out of the market (no coincidence that this period saw the rise of big-box stores like Walmart).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247576067_Two_Cheers_for_Discrimination_Deregulation_and_Efficiency_in_the_Reform_of_US_Freight_Transportation_1976-1998

The law also ended the railroads’ duty to provide service on “unprofitable” routes, effectively choking off whole regions and leaving them to wither and die. By 2008, the railroads had abandoned more than 40% of their routes.

Today, the remaining Big Railroad companies have divided up the country into noncompeting territories. Two companies — CSX and Norfolk Southern — dominate the east-of-Chicago trade. West of Chicago, there’s another duopoly run by Union Pacific and BNSF. North-south rail is controlled by three companies. Most train stations have only one railroad servicing them.

The railroads haven’t just hiked their rate-cards, they’ve also hiked their hidden fees, doubling their revenues from “demurrage and accessorial” fees — these are the rail equivalent of airline baggage upcharges.

But most of all, railroads have implemented “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR), a just-in-time system that saw mass closures of freight facilities and huge staff reductions — since deregulation the rail industry went from 500,000 jobs to 130,000 jobs. Much of these staff reductions involved closing union shops and and replacing well-paid workers with low-paid workers who have fewer on-the-job rights.

This was good business for the railroads, kicking off decades of big dividends and stock buybacks: $196b since 2010 — more than the companies have spent actually maintaining their infrastructure.

But this is bad business for the rest of us. Right from the start, PSR created shipping delays and losses. Railyard accidents shot up, and with them, worker fatalities. Derailments soared. People died.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3angy3/freight-rail-train-disaster-avoidable-boeing

The number of usable track-miles in America plummeted. Productivity — driven by layoffs and service cuts — leveled off when there weren’t any workers or routes left to cut.

That was before the pandemic. Today, the American rail system has been cut to the bone, and it represents one of the weak links in the US supply chain. The system experiences bottlenecks at every point: loading, unloading, delivery — not to mention all the cargo that disappears overboard when the trains derail while traversing under-maintained tracks.

Congress and the GAO are pushing to re-regulate the rail companies, leaning on their notionally still-extant common carrier obligations. But it seems to me that the medicine the rail companies really need is the same stuff that worked in the 19th century: breakups.

Not just for the sake of a robust supply-chain, either. America can’t transition to a zero-carbon economy with trucks. Freight-trains are far more fuel-efficient, easier to electrify, and far safer than trucks.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2009/01/01/back-on-tracks/

Railroad deregulation made the industry far more profitable than it had been since the days of the robber-barons — and it made America as a whole poorer, and more vulnerable. It is a classic capitalist success story, wherein profits are privatized and losses are socialized.