Russ Vought is his name, he's the mastermind or one of the most relevant ones (probably it's not a coincidence but rather an indirect reference the "Vought" which appears in The Boys).
From Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1mkha72/russ_vought_is_behind_the_latest_push_threatening/
He's behind what happened lately, and there's also a video and other proofs mentioned.
Share. Everywhere.
He is NOT a villain. (Villains are fucking badass in their own ways. Kefka Palazzo. Luca Blight. Senator Armstrong. Baramos. Lavos. Et cetera.) Calling him a villain is giving this fucking piece of shit far more credit than he deserves. He's a scumbag asshole and we need to figure out what we can do to stop his censorship plans.
Use the label you prefer, but it's important to clarify that this guy is not just one of the many trash around the world who steal money and makes our world a worse place: he IS the source of censorship or represents this source.
When thinking what to do to stop their plans, people must know that this guy is a core element of the whole picture, and expose him to the public is already a step forward, since he's kinda invisible and has several layers of scapegoats, namely Steam/Itch which will be blamed from several players; payment processors which are pretty much following their orders and Collective Shout, which is gonna claim as their own the result of the actions of Russ Vought, both to gather visibility and to keep hidden this guy.
Also this is extremely important because as far Collective Shout was supposed to be the cause of the problem, people would think that this problem comes from a group of australian fanatics: no, this is a problem which comes from America, the current government is strictly involved and, unlike a fanatic's delirium, this is part of a long term plan supported from institutions and companies.
This is our actual enemy and its positive that now we know who they actually are, since it's kinda impossible to defeat an enemy which you don't even know who/where it is
> Share. Everywhere.
Not your personal army, bud.
> He's behind what happened lately, and there's also a video and other proofs mentioned.
Yes, and Hitler alone holds La Responsibilite (<- Disco Elysium reference) for what Germans did.
Now, remind me, why are you spamming random links from Reddit here, backed by AI video and some screenshot?
And, more importantly, which alternatives YOU offer? Which good deeds YOU done to mitigate impending catastrophe?
You can stand here pretending to "help" by "raising awareness" in the middle of the system is about to crash. Sober people would prepare to evacuate from the ruins or help those caught in the aftermath.
Sorry if that sounded like a command, not my intention, i just wanted to make it clear that this is very important.
If you know who's the guy, what he talks about and what happened recently you can figure out he's not a random guy, i'd like to think that our worse threat was just a bunch of fanatics but it's not so simple, it's much more structured than that.
I post links which contain useful information and more knowledge, and i want to share since that's kinda the purpose, or it won't spread, or not spread more than what it would deserve. I don't know if you even checked it out but feel free to provide concrete proofs that it's AI, lately it's kinda easy to call AI even where it's not. But i'd like to keep the focus on the actual topic... i can grant you you won't hear about that guy that often, probably we can say the same for the latest 20 years ago.
What i did? Not very much, i'm just a random gamer and game developer, which is trying to do a bit of activism, not in a particular brilliant way... there's plenty of people which is more suited than me. It would be much more convenient to just do my stuff and see what happens meanwhile, and to be honest what i'm doing won't probably impact that much compared to not doing it.
However i still decided that i'll try to "waste" some of my time trying to gain more awareness on this story, because i don't like what's happening and to just let it happen, fortunately i'm not alone, in fact, gamers are billions, and many of them are way skilled and informed than me, there's even people who isn't involved with game developement and yet they are interacting with us to share their knowledge from another perspective. The real activists actually did something concrete, like for example creating a dedicated site to gather knowledge and share with other people more aimed ways to make some activism on their own, with also resoursces, templates and concrete facts documented.
They are much better than me so i'm also trying to bring them to the attention of many other gamers, they are more prepared than me and can convince you better. Also, they spent some concrete effort and their effort reached me, so i want that their spent time can prove worthy. It's not only me the one they reached and if i do something as well, that will be the proof that their voice reached at least 1 other people. It would be really great if my/their voice would reach at least another one, and so on.
By the way those guys as well probably are ordinary guys like me, but you shouldn't wait for a hero perfectly qualified at saying other people what to do, it doesn't exist and it won't come to save us. Still, we are many and we can and should gather: that's something we can do and millions of people won't gather on their own by just doing nothing. It already happened and it happened recently, for example Stop Destroying Games gathered 1.4 million people: we can do that again and we can become way more than that.
I will try to do something and knowing that more people will do that gives me more strength to keep doing that. I don't like the idea to just let it happen, besides i dislike even more the idea of surrending or even debunking what the other activists or other people that do some activism are trying to do, it might be constructive if done properly; disruptive otherwise. It's way more easy to convince other people to not act than the opposite, so there's not any need to spread further that mood.
At the end of the story you're not my enemy and i'm not your enemy, gamers should avoid to fight each other, that would help to gather our voice and communicate
Help itch.io find better payment gateway options. It'll have more positive impact on more people.
There are too many dope-heads-with-power to chase in the world, unfortunately.
If, by any chance, you DO have a will and a strength to "raise awareness", there are ongoing wars in the world. It's... you know... at least SLIGHTLY more important than yet another ruckus related to videogames.
If i can i will try
There's plenty, the point is chasing the correct/significant ones... or more precisely chasing the contextual ones, according to the scope of the battle we are fighting. It's better for each one to clarify the situation and the goals, rather than just fight everyone and everything at the same time. Usually, catching the general of the enemy's army makes the battle end faster and more efficiently.
You mean like actual wars? (Like Israel and Palestine) Without any doubt they are more tremendous and dangerous, but they are not completely unrelated with this, they share something: killing liberties. Both that war and this censorship for example are backed up from America, the fact they suddenly escalated recently is surely related to Trump (extremist) being elected again and his agenda. To make a long story short, when an enemy country, a terrorist army or an extremist government (not like they are that much different among themselves) want to invade another country, military forces are kinda a given, but also propaganda is involved in the process and, especially in the age of the Web, you want to cut any communication with/from the outside, namely you're gonna choke the flow of information, which is literal censorship like banning socials, erasing the news, arrest journalists/reporters and anything else you can imagine.
There's even people who doesn't know that Palestine is no more no less a victim of the overwhelming rampage of Israel and the information are distorted in a shameful way. This is what i'm talking about.
Which one is more important between bracing a gun and fighting on the web? Both. They aren't unrelated episodes, they are both part of a long term plan for restricting the liberties of people and you need both to make it work properly. So both battles need to be fought.
With censorship the first thing which comes into mind is NSFW, but that's just a part of the whole thing, it's about the control of citizens, in order to enforce a government, especially when such government wouldn't be acceptable otherwise. It didn't start with videogames and it won't stop with videogames. As we speak, this site (https://stopcensorship.net/) keeps evolving and clarifies which risks come from this latest wave of censorship: once they can control what you can do on the web, the web becomes meaningless, the same can be said for the real world.
We consider rights and freedom as a given, but that's not the case, in fact, our ancestors braced guns and paid with blood for a future in which people could live peacefully and, hopefully, without bracing a gun anymore. Nowadays, for now, we possess one more powerful tool to protect our freedom and rights: the Web, let's use it.
Said that, about real wars activism, it's more contextual to use social platforms (or other ways which i probably don't know) in which even non-gamers can be reached... on itch it doesn't seem to fit properly, despite spreading info is never enough. On the other hand on itch, since censorship of videogames is happening now, it's definitely the case to talk about those arguments
Well, i wrote it by my hands and spend some actual time to share my perspective with you.
Seems that you're not even trying to listening me, too bad. You should know what i'm trying to say: it's obvious that actual war is the most concrete and worst form of violence, but if you really think that worldwide censorship (a.k.a several forms of liberty) and its long term implications have no impact on our future... then your perspective is quite naive, assuming you are speaking in good faith
This topic came up in an unrelated search, but it’s interesting.
My thoughts… the Trump budget director who’s in the part of the Epstein Files appearing to be from the FBI investigation into the huge trafficking ring’s foreign interference in US politics (from the time Vought withheld US Congressional aid to Ukraine in our official ally’s defense against Russian invasion) and who was a co-writer in the Republican party’s (culture war) Project 2025 is thought to be a source of the current wave of censorship?
A long English-language sentence that references US politics in a slightly angry tone can be difficult to parse. Let me rephrase. What I mean is that Russell Vought is one of the guys who made headlines about scandalous behavior in Donald Trump’s first terms of political office. He contributed to a political plan to take away civil rights of UA citizens. Project 2025 is relevant to the restrictions through US-based payment processors that censor low-profile creatives. The same political figures bolstering huge scams that involve sex crimes and horrific violence of historic scale. But I hadn’t thought before about this particular name’s possible connection to what’s happened on itch.io and other project host sites.
I guess it’s good to remember there’s more to the events like the mass shadowbanning on itch.io or the censoring legislation happening around the world than what any one of us will know about.
If we sum up even the current war and all the ICE mess...
That government agenda is all about censorship, racism, fear, threatening and war... pretty much the same agenda of Fascism, they are the same thing.
Well, i guess the dots are starting to connect (actually they were connected since a long while)
