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Yes. But some countries includes the United States, and US states, and others. There is an established relation between the US government and payment processors to shut down activity the government doesn’t like but either can’t or hasn’t make illegal.
I’ll tell you why. Government uses soft threats to encourage private business to censor things. I know some of you guys don’t like this side of this parallel story, but do you remember when the FBI was marking posts for twitter to take down as “misinformation,” and accounts to ban, that then was shown to not be misinformation, but rather just inconvenient for the current presidency in charge. Whether you like it or not, that happened, and it was wrong.
The legal code in the US is so large and companies engage in so much activity that it is impossible to run a 100% legal business. Companies instead run by an “ask forgiveness later” model. It’s the only one that can actually work in the US. But to be able to run that model you need the good graces of the government. The government can always decide to prosecute on an otherwise small matter instead of advise correction. So when it says jump companies do it.
There was a time when you could be banned off of twitter for saying factual things the FBI didn’t like. And it’s not like the FBI didn’t know better. We didn’t need independent verification of the Hunter Biden emails because we had confirmed cryptographic signatures on all of the emails. Journalists get a pass because they are technologically illiterate, but the FBI and Twitter sure didn’t. The FBI said “It looks like something Russia would hoax.” Sure. It does. But they didn’t because we have cryptographic signitures. Always did.
What’s crazy about this is that the supreme court ruled against this use of third parties. But the practice wasn’t new when it hit social media because it’s been a long practice with payment processors. So my question when that ruling came out was “what about the existing similar practice in payment processors.” Apparently the government and processors are still in cahoots in violation of that ruling. That relationship was actually started in an effort to crack down on bestiality porn, which is never the less legal in the US.
So the question is do you like to government directing third parties to censor?
Maybe people doing AI development who want the option of running local models.
But baking AI into all consumer hardware is dumb. Very few want it. saas AI is a thing. To the degree saas AI doesn’t offer the privacy of local AI, networked local AI on devices you don’t fully control offers even less. So it makes no sense for people who value convenience. It offers no value for people who want privacy. It only offers value to people doing software development who need more playground options, and I can go buy a graphics card myself thank you very much.
I’m for this because I want those games. But let’s talk strategy. Didn’t GoG just set the market value of those games to zero? Weren’t they already hurt by the censorship? Wouldn’t it be better to just give them a fair market to sell on?