Liberals who express dismay, or more bizarrely a fevered hope, about the corporatists and imperialists selected to fill the positions in the Biden administration are the court jesters of our political burlesque.They long ago sold their soul and abandoned their most basic principlesto line up behind a bankrupt Democratic Party. They chant, with every election cycle, the mantra of the least worst and sit placidly on the sidelines as a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership betray every issue they claim to support.

The only thing that mattered to liberals in the presidential race, once again, was removing a Republican, this time Donald Trump, from office. This, the liberals achieved. But their Faustian bargain, in election after election, has shredded their credibility. They are ridiculed, not only among right-wing Trump supporters but by the hierarchy of the Democratic Party that has been captured by corporate power. No one can, or should, take liberals seriously. They stand for nothing. They fight for nothing. The cost is too onerous. And so, the liberals do what they always do, chatter endlessly about political and moral positions they refuse to make any sacrifices to achieve.

The Biden administration resembles the ineffectual German government formed by Franz von Papen in 1932 that sought to recreate theancien rgime, a utopian conservatism that ensured Germanys drift into fascism.Liberals, largely comprised of the professional managerial-class that dutifully recycles and shops for organic produce and is concentrated on the two coasts, have profited from the ravages of neoliberalism. They seek to endow it with a patina of civility. But their routine and public humiliation has ominous consequences. It not only exposes the liberal class as hollow and empty, it discredits the liberal democratic values they claim to uphold. Liberals should have abandoned the Democratic Party when Bill Clinton and political hacks such as Biden transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party and launched a war on traditional liberal values and left-wing populism. They should have defected by the millions to support Ralph Nader and other Green Party candidates.

This defection, as Nader understood, was theonlytactic that could force the Democrats to adopt parts of a liberal and left-wing agenda and save us from the slow-motion corporate coup dtat. Fear is the real force behind political change, not oily promises of mutual goodwill. Short of this pressure, this fear, especially with labor unions destroyed, there is no hope. Now we will reap the consequences of the liberal classs moral and political cowardice.

The Democratic Party elites revel in taunting liberals as well as the left-wing populists who preach class warfare and supported Bernie Sanders. How are we supposed to interpret the appointment of Antony Blinken, one of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and supporter of the apartheid state of Israel, as Secretary of State? Or John Kerry, who championed the massive expansion of domestic oil and gas production, largely through fracking, and, according to Barack Obamas memoir, worked doggedly to convince those concerned about the climate crisis to offer up concessions on subsidies for the nuclear power industry and the opening of additional U.S. coastlines to offshore oil drilling as the new climate policy czar? Or Brian Deese, the executive who was in charge of the climate portfolio at BlackRock, which invests heavily in fossil fuels, including coal, and who served as a former Obama economic adviser who advocated austerity measures, to run the White Houses economic policy? Or Neera Tanden, for director of the Office of Management and Budget, who as president of the Center for American Progress raised millions in dark money from Silicon Valley and Wall Street while relentlessly ridiculing Bernie Sanders and his supporters on cable news and social media and who proposed a plank in the Democratic platform calling for bombing Iran?

The Biden administration resembles the ineffectual German government formed by Franz von Papen in 1932 that sought to recreate theancien rgime, a utopian conservatism that ensured Germanys drift into fascism. Biden, bereft like von Papen of new ideas and programs, will eventually be forced to employ the brutal tools Biden as a senator was so prominent in creating to maintain social control wholesale surveillance, a corrupt judicial system, the worlds largest prison system and police that have been transformed into lethal paramilitary units of internal occupation. Those that resist as social unrest mounts will be attacked as agents of a foreign power and censored, as many already are being censored, including through algorithms and deplatforming on social media. The most ardent and successful dissidents, such as Julian Assange, will be criminalized.

The shock troops of the state, already ideologically bonded with the neofascists on the right, will hunt down and wipe out an enfeebled and often phantom left, as we saw in the chilling state assassination by U.S. Marshals of the antifa activist Michael Reinoehl, who was unarmed and standing outside an apartment complex in Lacey, Washington, in September when he was shot multiple times. I witnessed this kind of routine state terror during the war in El Salvador. Reinoehl allegedly killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer during a pro-Trump rally in Portland, Oregon in August.

We stand on the cusp of a frightening authoritarianism. Social unrest, given a continuation of neoliberalism, the climate crisis, the siphoning off of diminishing resources to the bloated war machine, political stagnation and the failure to contain the pandemic and its economic fallout, is almost certain.

Compare the gunning down of Reinoehl by federal agents to the coddling of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two protesters and injuring a third on August 25 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Police officers, moments before the shooting, are seen on video thanking Rittenhouse and other armed right-wing militia member for coming to the city and handing them bottles of water. Rittenhouse is also seen in a video walking toward police with his hands up after his shooting spree as protesters yell that he had shot several people. Police, nevertheless, allow him to leave. Rittenhouses killings have been defended by the right, including Trump. Rittenhouse, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his legal fees, has been released on $2 million bail.

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We stand on the cusp of a frightening authoritarianism. Social unrest, given a continuation of neoliberalism, the climate crisis, the siphoning off of diminishing resources to the bloated war machine, political stagnation and the failure to contain the pandemic and its economic fallout, is almost certain. Absent a left-wing populism, a disenfranchised working class will line up, as it did with Trump, behind its counterfeit, a right-wing populism. The liberal elites will, if history is any guide, justify state repression as a response to social chaos in the name of law and order. That they, too, are on the Christian Right and the corporate states long list of groups to be neutralized will become evident to them when it is too late.

It was Friedrich Ebert and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, siding with the conservatives and nationalists, that created the Freikorps, private paramilitary groups composed of demobilized soldiers and malcontents. The Freikorps ruthlessly crushed left-wing uprisings in Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, Hamburg, Halle, Leipzig, Silesia, Thuringia and the Ruhr. When the Freikorps was not gunning down left-wing populists in the streets and carrying out hundreds of political assassinations, including the murder of Walther Rathenau, the foreign minister, it was terrorizing civilians, looting and pillaging. The Freikorps became the antecedent of the Nazi Brownshirts, led by Ernst Rhm, a former Freikorps commander.

All the pieces are in place for our own descent into what I suspect will be a militarized Christianized fascism. Political dysfunction, a bankrupt and discredited liberal class, massive and growing social inequality, a grotesquely rich and tone-deaf oligarchic elite, the fragmentation of the public into warring tribes, widespread food insecurity and hunger, chronic underemployment and unemployment and misery, all exacerbated by the failure of the state to cope with the crisis of the pandemic, combine with the rot of civil and political life to create a familiar cocktail leading to authoritarianism and fascism.

Trump and the Republican Party, along with the shrill incendiary voices on right-wing media, play the role the antisemitic parties played in Europe during the late 19thand early 20thcentury. The infusion of anti-Semitism into the political debate in Europe destroyed the political decorum and civility that is vital to maintaining a democracy. Racist tropes and hate speech, as in Weimar Germany, now poison our political discourse. Ridicule and cruel taunts are hurled back and forth. Lies are interchangeable with fact. Those who oppose us are demonized as human embodiments of evil.

This poisonous discourse is only going to get worse, especially with millions of Trump supporters convinced the election was rigged and stolen. The German Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher in the 1930s said that fascism is a constant appeal to the inner swine in human beings and succeeds by mobilizing human stupidity. This mobilized stupidity, accompanied by what Rainer Maria Rilke called the evil effluvium from the human swamp, is being amplified and intensified in the siloed media chambers of the right. This hate-filled rhetoric eschews reality to cater to the desperate desire for emotional catharsis, for renewed glory and prosperity and for acts of savage vengeance against the phantom enemies blamed for our national debacle.

The constant barrage of vitriol and fabulist conspiracy theories will, I fear, embolden extremists to carry out political murder, not only of mainstream Democrats, Republicans Trump has accused of betrayal such as Georgia governor Brian Kemp and those targeted as part of the deep state, but also those at media outlets such as CNN or The New York Times that serve as propaganda arms of the Democratic Party. Once the Pandoras box of violence is opened it is almost impossible to close. Martyrs on one side of the divide demand martyrs on the other side. Violence becomes the primary form of communication. And, as Sabastian Haffner wrote, once the violence and readiness to kill that lies beneath the surface of human nature has been awakened and turned against other humans, and even made into a duty, it is a simple matter to change the target.

This, I suspect, is what is coming. The blame lies not only with the goons and racists on the right, the corporatists who pillage the country and the corrupt ruling elite that does their bidding, but a feckless liberal class that found standing up for its beliefs too costly. The liberals will pay for their timidity and cowardice, but so will we.

Read more here:

In the End We Will All Pay for the Cowardice of the Liberal Class - Common Dreams

BEHIND THE VETO THREAT President Donald Trumps war against Big Tech turned into a game of chicken today: Congress is forging ahead with a must-pass defense policy bill while ignoring Trumps threat to veto it unless it repeals a 24-year old law that protects websites from lawsuits. The law Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 means that tech giants like Twitter and Facebook (and tech small fry, too) cant be sued for the user content on their platforms. Many credit it with giving rise to the internet we know and love to hate today.

Repealing it has become an obsession for Trump, one that has escalated in the twilight of his presidency, as Cristiano Lima details today. He mentions it frequently in his rallies without really explaining what it does. Yet President-elect Joe Biden also has said he supports repealing the law, telling The New York Times in January, Section 230 should be revoked, immediately. So theres at least the potential for bipartisan agreement for change when Congress is off deadline.

Nightly asked a group of experts and insiders whether they think Section 230 should be repealed or amended or whether it should be left alone. Heres what they said:

Section 230 is Big Techs sweetheart deal. No other companies get the kind of protections that internet giants enjoy. And over and over, weve seen them abuse those privileges by censoring and deplatforming anyone who contradicts whatever progressive agenda theyre trying to push on any given day. If Congress cant get its act together and revise Section 230 to allow Americans to fight back, the whole thing needs to go. Maybe a clean slate is exactly what we need at this point to ensure that real change happens. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)

It is long overdue to amend Section 230. The whole point of Section 230 was to enlist online service providers as Good Samaritans so that they would help reduce the amount of abusive online activity. Congress knew then, in 1996, that federal agencies needed help in curtailing and combating toxic and dangerous online activity and that online service providers were in the best position to help.

Yet Congress did not condition the legal shield for under-filtering on any behavior at all. This has led to sites enjoying the legal shield even though they encourage, solicit or make money from clear illegality. So revenge porn operators enjoy that immunity their business model is the destruction of peoples lives. They should not enjoy that immunity. Section 230(c)(1) should be amended to condition the immunity on reasonable content moderation practices in the face of clear illegality that causes serious harm. That would reset the statute to its original purpose rewarding online service providers that act as Good Samaritans. Danielle Keats Citron, a law professor at Boston University and a 2019 MacArthur fellow

Many recent proposals to change Section 230 would make it more difficult for platforms to curb misinformation and abuse, purportedly in the name of free speech. Of course, although Section 230 provides procedural protections, the First Amendment also allows private platforms to decide whether to carry user content. More generally, the interests of free expression are best served by competition policy that ensures there are multiple platforms including those with varying content policies, and by allowing platforms to take steps to ensure they are safe for all users. We support reforms that address platform business practices for example, to ensure that platforms are responsible for ads they carry, and oppose efforts to use Section 230 to avoid normal business regulation. Any reforms we may consider are part of ensuring that Section 230 continues to be a law that promotes speech online. John Bergmayer, legal director for Public Knowledge, a D.C.-based public interest group that promotes freedom of expression and open internet

We rely on Section 230-protected internet services literally multiple times an hour. Amending or repealing Section 230 likely solves none of the problems that would motivate such changes, while the changes would jeopardize the things we love the most about the internet while entrenching incumbents at the expense of new startups.

I wish our members of Congress would understand just how much Americans love the internet services that Section 230 enables; and it shows greatly disrespect towards their constituents when Congressmembers threaten to repeal or amend Section 230 as a bargaining chip, as a way of trying to punish Big Tech, or to send messages to their base. Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University who has co-edited a new book about a key Section 230 case

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Austins mayor is the latest example of a political leader not necessarily following his own pandemic guidelines. Reach out at [emailprotected], or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

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More than 94,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19. With cases spiking across the country once again, desperate families demand that Congress take immediate action to save lives. aarp.org/nursinghomes

A man wearing full protective clothing and a gasmask walks through the decorated piazza of Covent Garden in London. | Getty Images

STILL MIGUK? In Korea, the U.S. is called miguk, which directly translates to beautiful country. It has always seemed like a fitting name, considering Koreas longstanding admiration of the U.S. But these days in Korea, TV broadcasters talk about the U.S. with grim faces, flashing to b-roll of lines of Americans wrapped around buildings waiting for Covid-19 testing or graphs depicting an exponential growth of pandemic deaths, writes Catherine Kim from Seoul.

Newspaper headlines question the strength of U.S. democracy above pictures of demonstrators protesting mythical claims of voter fraud. One recent column in the Hankyoreh, a major center-left daily newspaper, was titled, Covid-19 and the downfall of the U.S. Another headline, in sisajournal, a popular weekly current events magazine, read: The surprising election system that make you wonder Is the U.S. actually a democratic country? And its not just in the news. In boardrooms, in classrooms and in casual dinner table conversations, youll hear the same sense of bewilderment: How did the U.S. lose its way?

Its a shocking development for a country that has, for decades, largely viewed the United States almost like an older sibling a model of success and progress that Koreans were proud to emulate. Now many Koreans see the U.S. as a failing country, deeply divided and unable to meet basic challenges.

The shift began after Trumps 2016 win, when many Koreans were shocked to see him claim the presidency after a string of scandals. But the clincher has been Americas bungled response to Covid-19, followed by Trumps and the GOPs recent efforts to contest the legitimate results of the 2020 U.S. election. For Koreans, the last year has exposed the deep problems within the American system, from hyper-partisanship and deep distrust in government to a poor healthcare system issues that have long been familiar to Americans, but not to Koreans, many of whom have maintained the idea of American exceptionalism far longer and livelier than many Americans.

YES, 2024S STARTING Even in defeat, Trumps hold on the Republican party remains strong. The president has teased running again in 2024 and while Trump was slow to win party support four years ago, plenty of Republican lawmakers are ready to support his next bid, write Burgess Everett and Melanie Zanona. In a series of interviews today, House and Senate Republicans made clear that the party has no intention of turning its back on Trumpism or Trump himself. Thats in part because Trump remains an exceedingly popular figure in his party, far more than most congressional Republicans.

The political calculus is also clear. While he will soon lose the Oval Office, hell still have his Twitter handle and is expected to still be in firm control of his base. Trump could play a central role in Senate and House primaries in 2022 and create trouble for incumbents who break with him. Future Republican presidential candidates will presumably be eager to court his supporters if he ultimately passes on another campaign.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel is inviting roughly a dozen potential 2024 candidates to the committees January meeting in Amelia Island, Fla. the most explicit move shes made yet to show that the committee will be impartial going forward.

TEARS ON THE FLOOR Prior to Sen. Lamar Alexanders farewell address in the upper chamber, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a tearful goodbye to the Tennessee Republican. I myself have leaned on Lamars wisdom for many years, but I think I leaned just as much on his optimism, his can-do spirit, his ability to look on the bright side and then discern how some more hard work could make it brighter still, McConnell said.

HART ATTACK A Democratic candidate who fell six votes short of holding an open battleground congressional district in Iowa is planning to challenge those results directly with the House, placing the chamber in the highly unusual position of potentially determining the outcome of the race, Sarah Ferris and Ally Mutnick write.

After what appears to be the tightest congressional election in decades, Rita Hart, a state senator, has decided to forgo a legal battle in her home state and will instead contest the election directly with the House Administration Committee. Iowa election officials certified Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks as the winner on Monday after a recount diminished her initial victory margin from 47 votes to only 6 votes.

LITTLE STATE IN THE GREAT MENTIONING Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is now a top contender to be Bidens HHS secretary pick, according to two people close to the transition, Alice Miranda Ollstein, Adam Cancryn and Tyler Pager write. Raimondos rise comes as New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is no longer favored for the role, according to one of those sources and another familiar with the discussions.

FROM TRANSITION PLAYBOOK A former colleague of Heather Boushey, a top economic adviser to Biden, is publicly airing prior accusations that Boushey mismanaged the think tank she runs and verbally abused her and other subordinates, saying she wants to prevent future White House employees from enduring a similar experience, write Alex Thompson and Theodoric Meyer.

Former subordinates and employees have alleged that Boushey was phenomenally incompetent as a manager and had frequent episodes of yelling and swearing. The complaints were serious enough that the think tank where she worked hired a management coach to work with her to improve her management style around 2015.

But Dinetta Parrott, who reported directly to Boushey as Washington Center for Equitable Growths director of development from 2017 to 2020 before leaving for the Brookings Institution, said the criticisms of Boushey dont match her experience. I just dont think its an accurate depiction, she told POLITICO.

BIDENS CARPENTRY You cant please everyone, especially when youre putting together a team to run the federal government. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, Megan Cassella looks at why Bidens promise to build a Cabinet that looks like America hasnt turned out the way advocates had hoped and what sort of turbulence his nominees could face in the Senate.

Welcome to Bidenology, Nightlys look at the president-elect and what to expect in his administration. Tonight, Andy Blatchford writes from Ottawa about Bidens relationship with Canada:

The arrival of a Biden presidency is expected to warm up the chill between Ottawa and Washington under the Trump administration.

Trump drove a turbulent NAFTA renegotiation, an undertaking marked by U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, and counter-measures from the Trudeau government on American goods. There were even choice words at the executive level. (Trudeaus hot mic moment at a NATO conference led Trump to call him two-faced.)

While the Biden White House is destined to be more neighborly, some Canadians worry the president-elects agenda could hurt cross-border business. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden are aligned on a lot of things, like climate policies. But there are trouble spots such as Bidens pledge to kill the Keystone XL project and his Buy American vows.

Biden and Trudeau have shared very few public moments together. But back in December 2016, a few weeks after Trumps election win, Trudeau hosted then-Vice President Biden for a state dinner on a snowy night in Ottawa. The guest list included former Canadian prime ministers. Biden gave a speech that touched on his own ties to Canada and his personal connection in the 1970s with Trudeaus father, who was prime minister at the time.

The day after the dinner, Biden stuck around to attend a round table with Indigenous leaders and provincial premiers where they talked at length about climate change and clean energy the two places where Canada and the U.S. are expected to start rekindling their relationship. At the round table, Biden called climate change the most consequential issue of our generation and argued the countries could grow their economies while bringing down emissions. He also made the case that Canada and the U.S. could determine their own energy futures and help shape energy trends around the world.

Nightly asks you: Every December, the news media reflects on the lives we lost this year, and 2020 has been especially deadly. Tell us who youll miss the most a family member, a civic leader, a celebrity and how youll remember them. Send us your answers in our form, and well publish select responses next week.

PADILLA RISING? Sen. Dianne Feinstein publicly threw her weight behind California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill Sen. Kamala Harris soon-to-be-vacant seat, signaling that Padilla remains a favorite of the Democratic establishment, Andrew Desiderio and Jeremy B. White write. Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint a replacement for Harris when she resigns to take on her vice presidential duties.

I have given him my support. I did that quite a while ago. He worked for me at one point, so I know him, Feinstein said in an interview. And my sense is that hes going to represent California very well.

BRITAIN GOES FIRST For once, the U.K. really was world-beating. Boris Johnson will be delighted that British regulators were first over the line in approving a Covid-19 vaccine, delivering global headlines and a welcome bit of good news after a bruising parliamentary rebellion against domestic coronavirus restrictions, Charlie Cooper and Emilio Casalicchio write.

Nearly 1 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be delivered to the U.K. for use from next week. By the end of the year, several hundred thousands more will have been sent to Britain, which has ordered 40 million doses of this vaccine, plus more than 300 million doses of other candidates that have not yet received regulatory approval, including 100 million of the Oxford-produced AstraZeneca vaccine.

For a country whose record on Covid-19 has been among the worst in the Western world, being at the forefront of the global rollout of vaccines has a welcome feel of redemption for Johnsons government. The prime minister himself was uncharacteristically muted in his celebrations, calling the regulatory approval unquestionably good news but by no means the end of the story and cautioning citizens, during his weekly question session in the House of Commons, not get their hopes up too soon over how quickly the two-dose vaccine could be rolled out.

A SETBACK FOR BABES FREQUENT FLYER MILES Your pet peacock may soon not be allowed to fly the friendly skies with you anymore, now that the Transportation Department is tightening rules on emotional support animals after a series of high-profile incidents on board airplanes, Stephanie Beasley and Evan Semones write.

Today, DOT said it will no longer consider animal companions used by travelers on commercial flights for emotional support as service animals, opening the door for airlines to ban them outright. Passengers who wish to bring their emotional support animals with them when they travel will likely now have to check them as baggage or leave them at home entirely.

The new rule, which updates the definition of a service animal to a dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, was issued following a litany of complaints from airlines and flight attendants alike about people bringing unusual animals including pigs, gerbils, turtles and birds, among others on board that they said were for emotional support.

A message from AARP:

SENIORS DEMAND ACTION

It is an outrage that more than 94,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19, representing 40% of all COVID-19 deaths nationwide, even though nursing home residents make up less than one percent of the U.S. population. Cases are spiking across the country once again and Congress must act now to help save lives in these facilities.

Congress must ensure residents and staff have regular and prioritized testing and personal protective equipment (PPE), that facilities are adequately staffed and that residents have access to virtual visits with their loved ones. Additionally, Congress must make sure taxpayer dollars going to nursing homes are spent only on items directly related to resident care, COVID-19 prevention and treatment.

Tell Congress to act now to protect the residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. aarp.org/nursinghomes

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Something Trump and Biden agree on - POLITICO - Politico

Dear Stranger readers,

We've never experienced a year like 2020. What a doozy. As the year draws to a close, we'd like to THANK YOU for your ongoing support and readership. We literally couldn't have made it without your generosity.

2021 will be another epic ride for Seattle, and we want to navigate it with you. This year, we're asking you to give yourself and Seattle the gift of The Stranger by supporting us with a year-end gift. You can even gift it to a friend! Make a contribution in their name, and we'll send them a personalized thank you note.

Your one-time or recurring contribution will help ensure that we will be here to navigate it together, come what may! We are truly grateful for your support.

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Slog AM: Giuliani Turns Election Hearing into a Circus, US Sets COVID Death Record, Another Freaking Monolith Appears - TheStranger.com

Its the weekend! Before we call it a week, lets revisit some of the biggest tech stories of the past few days, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs comments at a Congressional hearing that might hint at the future of the web.

Will the U.S. Government revamp Section 230, changing the internet as we know it in the process? That was the question hovering overa major U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearingthis week. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among those testifying, and they pushed back against Senators accusations that Section 230 is encouraging bad behavior on the part of the tech industry.

In essence, Section 230 spares websites and social networks from having to take responsibility for potentially defamatory content; for example, you cant sue Facebook because a user posts a mean comment about you on their profile page. However, website and social-network administrators also have a responsibility to moderate traffic in some waysotherwise, blatantly illegal and harmful content would spread online.

During the hearing, Republican senators argued that tech CEOs and administrators have overstepped their bounds by de-platforming or blocking political content (especially Twitter, which has blocked links to articles about political controversies, and posted fact-checking messages next to President Trumps Tweets).

While many technologists are aggressively in favor of Section 230, Zuckerberg used the hearing to suggesthes open to additional legislation:We support the ideas around transparency and industry collaboration that are being discussed in some of the current bipartisan proposals.

In theory, we could see legislation passed that would force websites and social networks to open up their moderation policies to public scrutiny, as well as move quickly to obey any court orders about removing content. In turn, that could have a substantial impact on how everyone from website administrators to web developers do their jobs.

As if there wasnt already enough going on, hospitals are reportedly facing a wave of cyberattacks.According toThe New York Times, hackers based in Russia are targeting 400 hospitals. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services have already issued warnings.

What do the hackers want? Money. Experts hypothesize this latest round of attacks might be retaliation for the takedown of Trickbot, a notorious botnet. Microsoft and government agencies collaborated on Trickbots dismantling, which in turn may have irritated the hackerswho depended on it for revenue.

Even as Google faces government anti-trust scrutiny over its search-engine dominance, Apple might be moving to build a search engine of its very own.

According to TechCrunch, theres some evidence that Apples at least kicking the tires on a full-fledged engine: The most visible change is the fact that in iOS 14, Apple is now showing its own results when you type queries in the home screen. In addition, there seems to be an increase in activity from Apples web crawler.

Three years ago, Apple also hired Googles head of search,John Giannandrea, although his official role is A.I. and Siri. And given the companys cash reserves, they could hire pretty much all the talent they needed to launch a web crawler.

ButshouldApple compete with Google in search? Its worth remembering that Google currently pays Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine on iOSmoney that Apple wouldnt want to give up except in the most extreme circumstances. And unlike Facebook, Apple doesnt compete directly with Google for ad dollars, so theres not a lot of financial incentive to spin up a search rival.

On the other hand, Apple is a company whose guiding ethos has always been to do everything in-house. Thats why Apple launched a Maps app, rather than continuing to rely on Google. So its possible to see a future where Apple decides to launch its own search productespecially if the U.S. government does something to curtail Googles reach.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Stay safe.

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Weekend Roundup: Facebook, Twitter, and the Battle Over Section 230 - Dice Insights

Signs at a pro-BDS protest in New York following the US decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri.

The news that Zoom has once again denied service to a webinar featuring the infamous Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled following protests from advocacy groups was very welcome, but it also raises an issue and a tactic that has become ever more controversial with time: deplatforming.

Deplatforming is a very simple, indeed somewhat simple-minded phenomenon. It is essentially a means of political protest and activism that involves denying specific forums usually but not always of the prestigious variety to certain speakers or movements. This means things like disinviting or picketing speakers, disrupting events (sometimes violently), pushing social media companies to ban offensive accounts and, perhaps most effectively, convincing companies and corporations to fire people who engage in offensive speech or espouse offensive ideas.

There are many synonyms for deplatforming political correctness and cancel culture likely being the most popular but they all raise a simple dilemma: what precisely constitutes offensive speech or ideas? To a great extent, of course, offensive is in the eye of the beholder. For supporters of trans rights, for example, the claim that biological sex is immutable is offensive speech. For opponents, it is simple common sense. Indeed, as many critics have pointed out, the very idea of codifying offensive speech for the purposes of deplatforming is in many ways a violation of the right to free speech.

Ironically, Khaleds leftist and Islamist defenders immediately leapt on the free speech bandwagon once she was threatened with deplatforming. The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which is promoting the terrorists webinars, quickly began fulminating an antisemitic conspiracy theory, shrieking in ridiculously overwrought rhetoric that the deplatforming was emblematic of the corporate takeover of our universities and the influence of Zionist and right-wing organizations and individuals, along with the power of information capital, to set the agenda for what can and cannot be said or taught in a public university.

October 29, 2020 5:35 pm

The irony of this is that pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic forces on university campuses have been perhaps the foremost practitioners of deplatforming anywhere in the United States. Pro-Israel events are regularly disrupted, pro-Israel and even simply Jewish speakers are harassed and shut down, and Jewish and pro-Israel students are systematically subjected to campaigns of hate, violence and intimidation.

This has gone so far as to force Jewish students off campus; as was the case with the CUNY law student Rafaella Gunz, whose horrible odyssey was reported by this publication. And often, these acts of violence are enabled and supported by faculty and administrators.

The obvious goal of all this is to violate precisely those principles Khaleds defenders claim to advocate and thus brutalize Israel and Judaisms campus defenders into surrender and silence. In other words, they want to deplatform the Jews. The question, then, is whether we ought to do the same to them.

On the one hand, it is an uncomfortable question, given that many of us disapprove of deplatforming itself and oppose attempts to deplatform the Jews on precisely that basis. But that is essentially an argument over ideals, and we do not live in an ideal world. Whether we like it or not, the other side has laid down the rules of the game. When student mobs, faculty and administrators collaborate in an attempt to deplatform the Jews, it is no longer an issue of free speech. It is an issue of power: who has it and who doesnt. And is only by empowering ourselves that we can fight back, as was successfully done against Khaled and her supporters.

Moreover, if the deplatformers, whether students or faculty, wish to continue using the tactic, they must be consistent. They claim hate speech is an actual threat to life and limb, the moral equivalent of physical violence and even murder. By this definition, groups like Students for Justice in Palestine that incite violence against Israel and Jewish students, and often call for the outright genocide of Israels Jewish population, are unquestionably hate groups, and thus certainly qualify for deplatforming according to the deplatformers own standards. Against this, our opponents can simply have no argument. They have chosen to live by that sword, and can hardly complain when they die by it.

Of course, it could be said that if we start to live by that sword, we will also die by it. But we are already dying by it, and it is only by seizing it for ourselves that we can effectively defend ourselves. These are the values, after all, that those who ought to know better have embraced, and it appears that, sadly, it is only by adopting them that we can force them to act according to those values, which they allegedly hold so dear.

Benjamin Kerstein is a columnist and Israel Correspondent for The Algemeiner. His website can be viewed here.

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Deplatforming the Campaign to Deplatform the Jews | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com - Algemeiner

POP Network Masternode

SINGAPORE (PRWEB) October 30, 2020

POP Network, a leader in decentralizing the streaming economy, today released a multiplatform upgrade to its POP Network Masternode, the feature-rich software which makes streaming on the decentralized web easy, accessible, and intuitive. The new POP Masternode adds Mac and Linux to the existing Windows distribution.

The POP Network Masternode leverages the largest peer-to-peer network in the world, with over 90 million active users, to let anyone embed decentralized streaming video on their website through simple drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste functionality.

As an alternative to using YouTube or Facebook embedded video this means viewers still consume the video on the content creators site but, critically, the video itself streams from the decentralized web. This ensures the value they collectively create is not automatically forfeited to those centralized corporations, effectively ends the threat of deplatforming, and serves as the foundation for a more equitable blockchain-based streaming economy.

With the rise of generalized blockchain storage solutions like Filecoin aiming to decentralize the web, purpose-built peer-to-peer streaming services like POP Network are a natural extension of that movement, said Valerian Bennett, Managing Director of The Pop Network Foundation. POP Network is like Filecoin for streaming. What Filecoin is to S3 or Dropbox, POP Network is to CloudFront or Akamai.

Mr. Bennett added, This latest release marks a major milestone as we build the future where people become owner-operators of the Internet, rather than just a commodity within it.

Plans to reward Masternodes with cryptocurrency, the POP Network Token (POP), will be announced at a later date. In anticipation of this imminent event, POP is currently being distributed exclusively on ProBit, a global exchange based in South Korea.

About POP Network

POP Network is a decentralized media platform helping creators, their communities, and crypto node operators capture value in the streaming economy. Platform components include decentralized peer-to-peer content distribution, an ultra-fast scalable blockchain, and artificial intelligence to defend the network from harmful content.

For more information, please visit https://thepopnetwork.org

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POP Network Brings Decentralized Streaming to the World's Largest Peer-to-Peer Protocol - PR Web

Social media were supposed to democratize speech, liberating the people of the world from the tyranny of gatekeepers. They failed. Seduced by vanity and ideology, theyve become censors themselves, a Soviet-style thought police.

Once upon a time, Googles motto was Dont be evil, Facebook was all about connecting people, and Twitter executives proclaimed it the free speech wing of the free speech party. Fast-forward to 2020, and theyre all about deplatforming voices the legacy media and the political establishment has denounced as unworthy of being heard.

Who the hell elected you? thundered Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, during Wednesdays hearing, expressing frustration over the platforms crackdown on a story about a major political scandal. In attempting to suppress the story of Hunter Bidens dubious business dealings, Twitter has locked the account of Americas oldest publishing newspaper, and even gone after White House officials and members of Congress.

Yet anyone who didnt see this coming in the months after the 2016 US election simply hasnt been paying attention. The greatest irony is that Cruz and his fellow Republicans enabled it themselves, partly by preferring sound bites over legislative action, but also by validating the Russian meddling conspiracy theories peddled by their political opponents in an effort to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump.

Make no mistake, Russiagate is how Big Tech was pushed onto the path of censorship. By way of just one example, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was used to bludgeon Facebook into hiring censors and partnering with outside fact-checkers. When it eventually turned out there had been no scandal and the whole thing was a manufactured outrage by self-serving whistleblowers and the media there wasnt so much as an apology, and the mechanisms stayed in place.

Silicon Valley has been more than eager to go down that path, too. Public records show the vast majority of their employees donate to Democrats, while their executives have poured millions into the campaigns of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden this year.

Nobody needed to pressure Google into embracing the role of the good censor, its executives and employees did so themselves. Not surprisingly, the president of their parent company at the time, Eric Schmidt, had been fully invested in Clintons campaign.

It took a mere suggestion of a crackdown by an influential Senate Democrat for Twitter to ban all RT advertising and overhaul its entire advertising policy, back in October 2017. Not surprisingly, the proposal by Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) went nowhere, but its purpose had been accomplished.

Like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled, the pressure to censor objectionable content steadily rose over the course of the Trump presidency. It marched on regardless of the revelations that Russiagate was a scam and that the real collusion was between the spies, police, prosecutors, media, and the political establishment.

Things almost boiled over when the platforms started deleting any mention of the alleged whistleblower who kick-started the Democrats impeachment proceedings against Trump even those made by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).

The Covid-19 pandemic the very next month saw an expansive effort to ban misinformation about the virus meaning anything not coming from authorities, even as those very authorities kept changing their line over time! That was probably when the frog first began noticing the boiling water.

By then, however, Twitter had begun openly censoring Trump this spring. Condemning riots? Glorifying violence,restricted. Putting rioters on notice they cant set up a lawless autonomous zone in Washington, DC? Abusive behavior, threatening harm,restricted.

Oh, granted, the same insane standard was later applied to a metaphorical statement by a self-identified socialist, but whether that was the exception that proves the rule or an effort to both sides the issue, at the end of the day, Twitter had appointed itself arbiter of acceptable speech and that was the point.

How can this happen in a country where free speech is the very first enumerated in the Constitutions Bill of Rights? Because, as both Democrats and libertarian-minded NeverTrump Republicans have been quick to argue, the First Amendment applies only to the government, not to private companies! This is manifestly absurd, but hasnt been challenged in the courts just yet.

This sophistry has enabled the champions of corporate thought-policing to argue that technically, the US doesnt have the kind of censorship of word and thought once attributed to the Soviet Union. Because it has Big Tech, it doesnt have to! Meanwhile, some lawmakers certainly arent shy about demanding for more censorship, either.

If you think the comparisons to the KGB or the Stasi are too much, note Twitters insistence that the New York Post founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 needs to delete the offending tweet before its account can be unlocked, but it will supposedly be free to repost it then, because the rules have since changed.

In order to truly work, submission must be voluntary. Thats why Americans still file their tax returns, even though the IRS has been withholding taxes from their wages since the Second World War. That is why in George Orwells 1984, Winston Smith couldnt just be broken he had to love Big Brother. That is why Twitter forces you to bend the knee before they will allow you to speak.

What started as anyones ability to compete with the New York Times, Washington Post, or CNN on equal footing has morphed into the neutral platform choosing to promote their non-stories while shutting down legitimate lines of thought and inquiry under the guise of protecting our democracy and fighting (phantom) Russian disinformation.

It didnt have to be this way. It doesnt have to stay this way. But it will take more than just strong words to make speech in America free again.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Soviet-style thought-policing has come to America, outsourced to Big Tech corporations - RT

Photo credit: Drew Hays via Unsplash.

Oxford University mathematician John Lennox stars in the one-night-only filmAgainst the Tide: Finding God in an Age of Science, in theaters across the country on November 19.Get your tickets here, and dont forget to bring family and friends!Looking forward to the release, Professor Lennox took time to answer some questions fromEvolution News.

The film includes a fascinating section where it covers how you were invited to lecture at universities in Communist countries. Communist intellectuals were known for explicitly embracing materialist explanations for the origin and development of life and being intolerant of anything that went beyond materialism. Are you worried that universities in the UK and America are embracing the same sort of intolerance you saw in Communist countries?

Well, of course. Although, I wouldnt call myself an expert on exactly whats going on. But culturally, one can see it. I experienced it in the former Soviet Union all over the place, where their commitment to materialism had actually in my view left them intellectually weak. It was very dogmatic.

It was associated with an attitude to education that was learning by rote. You learned what the professor said, and you reproduced that. There was no learning how to think. Universities are supposed to be places where people are taught to think. The difficulty today is that there are certain cultural movements, some of them coming from Marxism, some of them coming from elsewhere, that are reversing the idea of a university. They are forbidding free speech and de-platforming people and saying that the students mustnt be exposed to this idea or that idea. That contradicts the very definition of a university.

The idea of tolerance has changed its meaning in a tragic and very dangerous way. The Latin verb tolerre means, If I tolerate you, I disagree with you but I will defend your right publicly to say what you believe. We need to get back to that but were losing it. This is a complex story, and Im not an expert on culture, but at least from what I observe there is a huge danger today in putting on colored glasses that see everything in terms of power, oppression, and oppressors. Theres an element of whats often called critical theory, pejoratively called cultural Marxism, that is sweeping around on the left side of political academic thinking. Its been very influential in the university world. And to my mind, anything that stops freedom of speech is the exact opposite of a university.

One of the things that I never tire of saying is: Look to the origin of the great universities. They were mostly founded on Christian thinking. That is extremely important. Now what weve got is the dominance of naturalism, with universities going against their very foundation.

In the really ancient world, the Christians fought the pagans. They got involved in the debate, but now were afraid to debate in case we upset somebody. It is very important because it is damaging. This looking at things in terms of oppressor-oppressed, the victim culture, is blinding people to real issues. The trouble is once you lose the kind of stabilizing influence of rational thought and respect, then you can end up with violence, as we have seen.

No stranger to public argument, Professor Lennox has debated famed atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. See the event with the late Mr. Hitchens Is God Great? here:

For some related reflections on stultifying materialism, see also, Inside the Evolution Silo Darwinism as a Cult.

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Against the Tide: The Darkening Intellectual Scene - Discovery Institute

UFC commentator Joe Rogan took to Instagram and commented on the most recent controversy that has surrounded his podcast platform. The host of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast recently featured right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for a sit-down. As a result, Spotify, who signed a deal of up to $100 million with Joe Rogan, has come under heavy fire.

Chiefly, Spotify and other major platforms came in at de-platforming Alex Jones for Hate Speech back in 2018. Jones is a magnet for controversy as he has built a career around his fiery hot takes and conspiracy theories. His show Infowars was at this helm of the brand that Alex had created.

Spotify users have called out the streaming service for double standards, as theyre wondering why Jones is back on their platform. The companys chief legal officer and head of global affairs in Horacio Gutierrez spoke out on the situation, saying that Spotify wouldnt ban specific individuals.

The long-time UFC broadcaster used his massive social media platform to provide some clarity to the situation. In addition to the aforementioned contention, the episode that Jones appeared on swiftly disappeared from the site. This understandably caused the pot to boil over, and Rogan was quick to lay it out.

Whats more, he also clarified a controversial aspect of their discussion involving the COVID-19 vaccine. The two debated the possible dangers of consuming the vaccine in the test phase, and Alex Jones had some interesting things to say. Jones views once again stirred up a larger conversation, and Joe Rogan shared an IGTV clip that sees Bill Gates corroborate some of his information.

The situation surrounding Jones appearance on the Podcast has led to some much-expected chatter around the same. The increased exposure largely stems from the fact that Rogan has the biggest podcasting platform in the world. Furthermore, as his viewership grows, there is no doubt that the future holds more fervent conversations around Joes content.

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House Party. // Courtesy Eek! Games

Today, weve got an opinion piece on the complications of tackling adult themes in video games. Why? Because were fascinated by what it takes to push the art of games forward. We dont want to shy away from the complicated perspectives around art, whether it go high-brow or low-brow. And todays author who is a creator attempting to measure his own work (and its mainstream criticism) to find a newfound perspective. The game in question is called House Party. And its creator is named Bobby Ricci.

The game and its creator have drawn widespread criticism, but there are valid points of discussion that arise from examining the source of these complaints. Within the grand history of games, how does one explore sexuality without alienating an audience? Ricci has some opinions on what his project did right, and where he might do better next time. And that mixed reception seems appropriate for a game hailed as the worst game of 2017 (via Rock Paper Shotgun) yet receiving best of awards elsewhere, and selling exceptionally well for a small indie title.

Is a dating sim game that sets out to be comedic/satirical inherently free of the criticisms that would normally befall an adventure with sexist elements? Is the divide between audience and critic too vast, or is all of this just different shades of grey? Is it stupid that violence has been embraced by games for decades, while anything dipping its toe into sexuality is in danger of being lambasted?

Perhaps most importantly, this is a chance to examine the journey of the gamenot just its development and constant change, but the battles it encountered along the way in terms of access. Even if you were to find the titles content to be not your cup of tea, the struggles of genre creators everywhere can be found echoed inHouse Partys navigation of the inconsistent minefield that is content curation. Who makes these judgments and why are they always in flux? Should all art be accessible to those who are interested, or do some titles simply have no place in our culture? Can adults treat other adults as adults?

Here are some observations on the development, reception, release, and continuing evolution of one of gamings most interesting lightning rodsas written by the man who keeps pushing for it.

The world can be a weird place.

The video game world can be even weirder.

For an indie game developer just trying to make his mark, that world can be brutal, especially if your game happens to contain murder, violence, torture, decapitation, dismemberment, war, or genocide.

Just kidding! All of those things are perfectly fine and encouraged video game content inclusion, unlike the focus of this piece; nudity and sex.

Immediately, that probably made some of you reading this uncomfortable. In fact, you would probably feel more comfortable if I said I was here to talk about violence and murder. Im here to ask why that is. Im not being disingenuous when I say I really dont get it.

My name is Bobby Ricci. I am the owner and founder of Eek! Games, and I conceptualized and wrote the game House Party, which has gone on to sell over 700,000 copies and has positive review scores among players. [As of publication, it has an average score of 9/10 stars and just under 7,000 votes.]

House Party is a point-and-click adventure game where your choices shape the party around you in real-time. The player can play the game as a sandbox. They can run around and do whatever they want. They can dive into the individual party guests stories and get deeply involved in them. The point of the game is to uncover the lunacy, zany stories, and opportunities waiting to present themselves based on the players choices and watch the madness unfold with each choice.

When I wrote House Party, I didnt even think it would be that big of a deal. I didnt expect it to get the attention it did, at least not with the sexual content held up to a magnifying glass. In fact, I should make it clear that House Party was not intended to be a pornographic game. I was generously awarded that label by people who I think felt uncomfortable with the topics the game contained.

Somebody expecting pornography would be grossly disappointed by this animated adventure; in my opinion. You know how they say youll recognize poronography when you see it? I do not think anyone could see it here. Thats because House Party isnt a sex simulator. Sexual scenes account for less than 5% of the games content. Sex is a mechanic in House Party, much like driving a car or shooting a gun is a mechanic in Grand Theft Auto. Its just something that the player can do, but the reward is the comedy that ensues on the players path.

When it came time to implement the sex scenes, the thought did cross my mind to censor it, but then I thought, Why? It was 2015 when I began work on this title, and the most popular television show Game of Thrones had regular male and female full-frontal nudity alongside a plethora of other modern cultural taboos. Peoples perceptions of nudity and sex in media have changed. Theyre no longer acting like children when they come across it. Naked bodies grinding against each other (which is about all the House Party sex scenes animatedly show) seem to be normal in mainstream entertainment. So why self-censor? Wouldnt people be, you know, into this?

If I had instead made killing everybody at the party in weird and gruesome ways the core mechanic of House Party, I doubt it would have even raised a single eyebrow. It wouldnt even come close to measuring up to the violence and gore in games like Friday the 13th, Doom, or Mortal Kombat. Video games are fiction and are intended to be fantasy. They are not meant to be taken in the context of reality. Are people able to disconnect reality from violent entertainment? I would think that weve all agreed on that by this point. Unless you personally feel like youre incapable of doing so. In which case perhaps you should stop? I dont personally know any adults that believe theyre incapable of separating the two.

Why cant people disconnect in the same way when they approach a game about sex? And why arent more developers writing games about sex? Part of the reason I chose to make House Party was because sex and physical relationships are such a staple of film and television, but grossly underrepresented in video games.

It wouldnt be so prevalent in other media if there wasnt a demand for it. Why would we, as an industry, pretend that there isnt?

When House Party first released to Early Access, a journalist reviewed the game on Rock Paper Shotgun. One of his criticisms included that the game might be misogynistic. I found that reductive since the game is choice-based. You can make crappy choices in House Party, which result (for the most part) in crappy outcomes, but you can also make better choices that can provide rewards. You cant make a meaningful choice-based game without putting in reactions and outcomes to bad choices. In effect, I suppose Im saying that the game is only misogynistic when youre playing as a misogynist. Does it give you the option to do so? Yes.

One thing the reviewer got right was that it was a bad game when he reviewed it. There is no denying that.

I was a solo developer moonlighting on the game for two years at that point. There was only so much I could do in that short amount of time, but it was a fun and quirky idea that I did hope would at least emotionally resonate with people. Now I have a team of eight and work with several other companies and contractors on further development. The game is looking, playing, and generally feeling much better. Its a pleasant evolution to watch.

Could you read elements of misogyny in some of House Partys content? I think insofar as much as you can read toxic behavior in a lot of mainstream stories about dating. It would be unreasonable to pretend that we live in a world where that doesnt exist. In Grand Theft Auto, the player can choose to go on a murderous rampage because they feel like it, but thats accepted in terms of giving a player choice. However, allowing the player to take his pants off would be a bridge too far. The NPCs in House Party dont respond well to these types of actions in the game, obviously. It is again an attempt at crafting honest reactions to a series of choices. Yes, if you drop your pants out of nowhere, people are going to hate it. The option to make that choice is not inherently good or bad, but you absolutely understand how the cause and effect will play out.

During the development of the game we tried not to reward bad or misogynistic behavior and we only portray consensual acts of sex in the game. We also presented LGBTQ+ options in the game. And that was simply the baseline from where we launched. Our next phase of evolution in the game is finally realizing a female main character play-through, which has been one of our goals since the initial pitch. Again, one of those things we wanted to explore but that a lone programmer couldnt knock out while attempting to make this simply functional.

I cannot say Ive been completely unassailable for the choices that Ive made in the development of House Party. As the game evolved, as well as my understanding and awareness of consent culture, it was clear that I needed to make sweeping changes to the narrative. Not that any of this was ever born from a place of ill-intent, or even dubious grey areas, but rather I came to understand that players were left in positions where they might take the wrong message away from a situation. Reworking the interactions and the story to clarify and improvethats been the thrust. I also began striking elements that I realized could make people feel uncomfortable in a way that undercut the intended levity of the game. Trying to do comedy is hard, and trying to do comedy around such complicated subjects as sex and datingfor a wide and diverse audiencefeels impossible to get right. But were still trying.

This was a great lesson for me as a developer of adult games. The rules for this genre arent written in stone and it was through taking missteps that I could grow and my game could evolve. That evolution still hasnt reached its final stage. More than anything, Im thankful for the opportunity given which allowed us to find and develop our path.

Shortly after its initial release, the game was actually removed from the game store Steam. I got an email saying that there had been complaints and my game was awarded the honor of being considered pornographic. Through trial and error, we re-released a ridiculously over-censored version, that at least allowed the game to continue to be sold. Working alongside the community and taking the more constructive criticisms to heart, we got the chance to keep developing this into something that seems to have engaged more people and at least satiated some of the critics who thought it went too far.

The censoring of our game actually lead to Steam setting a new policy which allow games with sexual content and nudity to be sold, so long as they are age gated. Thats perfect. Thats all I could want here. House Party is intended for mature audiences, and I dont mind the disclaimer. All I wanted was to be treated fairly and similarly to other games. And this feels like an important step forward for the entire genre/medium.

Why does our game and team have to fight this uphill battle? I think it comes from a place where any and all sexual content can wind-up being a Pandoras box. I am sympathetic to anyone who finds such art handled poorly or even offensively because of course that should happen. Just as the characters in game have their own sets of choices, so do those who engage with our content. But at the end of the day, the ability for anyone tochoose to interact with our content should be allowed. There are, as aforementioned, plenty of violent games that I may choose to playor have no interest in whatsoever. Some of what they do might offend me, and then I know it isnt for me. But we do our entire industry a disservice when the access to those titles is opened almost everywhere, but banning and deplatforming coming faster and easier towards creators that want to explore human intimacy. Certainly, sex and dating is a more universal experience than, say, firing a rocket launcher? Why hide from the complications of, you know, reality and society?

While I cant offer any solid conclusions as to why sex is still considered forbidden territory in video games, or where it will go in the years to come, I do hope that House Partys success can speak for itself. The audience and interest are there. Maybe we should try to treat each other more like adults while working in this adult space.

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Why are sex and nudity a bridge too far in video games? Observations on the reception and evolution of House Party - Kansas City Pitch