Collective Shout, except you and you, oh and you.
A short story about a little known collective in so-called Australia convincing international major payment providers to think twice about providing payment services to anyone creating or platforming NSFW content.
In a story first published by Ana Valens for Vice (formerly), Valens reported that Collective Shout weaponised the ‘save the children’ rhetoric and allegations of sexual violence to convince payment providers to revoke their services from Steam, Valve and Itch.Io , if they didn’t remove an ever growing list of games on their platforms. Collective Shout targeted 500 games on Steam for removal, with many of those titles now gone. What this actually meant in practice was hundreds of games created by or featuring LGBTQI+ or BIPOC voices and creators were immediately deplatformed. Particularly games with any representation of Trans identities.
As per Valen’s reporting, on July 11 2025, Collective Shout published their open letter to the CEOs behind PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Paysafe, Discover, and JCB. Shortly after due to pressure from payment providers Steam, Valve and ItchIO removed titles and froze peoples accounts. The letter included signatories from a coalition of christian conservative anti-porn, anti-sex work and pro-life groups including National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), Exodus Cry, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and CEASE. You might remember Exodus Cry’s somewhat successful campaign against Pornhub in 2020.
Collective Shout was co-founded in so called Australia, by Melinda Tankard Reist in 2009 and has actively been on the anti porn crusade since. Reist formerly founded the conservative think tank, Women's Forum Australia and prior to that worked as advisor to conservative Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine. Since 2005, Reist has been an active anti-porn campaigner and describes herself as a conservative Christian and “pro-life feminist” or you know anti-abortion. During her time at Women's Forum Australia they actively campaigned against abortion access, transgender rights, and promoting conspiracy theories around Wi-Fi
One of Collective Shout’s first major campaign wins was the removal of an Ashley Maddison billboard from Sydney. The billboard featured an image of a young woman who appeared to be naked with the text, “Life’s Short, Have an Affair While in Sydney”. The Advertising Standards Board (ASB) agreed, somewhat reasonably, that maybe this shouldn’t be on a billboard in the middle of Sydney.
A big red flag for what Collective Shout actually stands for is tucked away in this original report by the ASB. The board noted complaints raised concerns that “encouraging affairs discriminated against married couples” and that complaints tried to make out that this advertisement was also targeting children and the image of the women appeared to be under 18. All of which seems like a mighty big stretch to say the least but paints a picture of Collective Shouts consistent tactics in weaponising ‘save the children’ rhetoric and pushing for conservative christian family values. Ironically Collective Shout features an image of the billboard on their website as they continue to celebrate their first campaign win.
One of the earliest uses of the “Save the Children” rhetoric was infamous anti-gay activist Anita Bryant. Bryant was a pop singer before leading a coalition named “Save Our Children” to repeal a 1977 law in Florida that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Bryant said that;
"As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children".
The Dollop have a great two part podcast episode all about the terrible actions of Bryant and the continued impacts her campaign has today. This ‘Save Our Children’ rhetoric has been used by conservatives at the core of every one of their christian fascist panics from slavery and colonialism to the current wave of anti trans and immigrant panic. It’s the same rhetoric that Collective Shout has weaponised to push their own conservative morals across the internet making online spaces less safe for anyone who identifies or even might present as LGBTQI+.
I’ve loaned my copy of Black Witness by Amy McGuire to my mum so apologies in advance if I miss quote or paraphrase poorly. But in the book, McGuire talks about how the faceless and voiceless ‘child’ is weaponised by structures of power and conservatives to push their agendas. The child is never given any agency, they can’t speak for themselves and are rarely ever even named but others speak for the child and say their actions are for the safety of the children. The fabricated horrors of the Northern Territory ‘Intervention’ were driven by this same rhetoric of ‘save the children’, all to push for more racial control of First Nations people and their communities.
It’s an almost impossible position to argue against, how do you say that no you aren’t saving the children when the problems being weaponized are often very real just not caused by the things conservative groups will have you believe. Politicians and institutions are guilty of either reactively giving in to these fears or for weaponising them for their own intents.
The inverse of this can occur also, like in the current QLD LNP driven panic around youth crime that saw an almost fascist government agenda take power at the recent Queensland elections under Crisifulli. In this case, voiceless children are weaponised to support the expansion of the prison and police systems all under the guise of community safety and of course ‘saving the children’ from themselves by locking them up in adult prison, serving adult sentences.
The Save Our Children moral crusade has had a bit of a renaissance since 2020 capitlising on the millions of panicked parents and conservatives suddenly finding themselves obsessively online due to the COVID pandemic. QANON was a big pusher of the panic and it's a major reason Trump managed to secure the presidency for a second term. In so called Australia right wing conservatives utilised the ‘Expose the 28’ pedophile conspiracy to gain further momentum off of the back of the anti COVID restrictions movement.
This Save Our Children movement has since morphed into an openly anti-LGBTQI+ movement with the growing advent of the trans panic. Hence the opportunistic shift in targets by groups like Collective Shout.
Collective Shout’s success with payment providers couldn't have come at a worse time with many states around the world pushing for age verification policies for social media, once again under the banner of saving the children. But those same payment providers were waiting for a good PR moment to further push their own conservative agenda’s, if it had not been Collective Shout any number of other conservative coalitions could have provided the cover they needed.
Paypal and Venmo have long since cut off services to suspected sex workers or adult creators who utilised their payment services. Often also withholding any funds remaining in their accounts. Mastercard and Visa outright banned sexworkers using their services in 2021 and Stripe also doesn't allow sex workers to use its services.
For Ana Valen’s efforts in exposing Collective Shout, they had their article forcibly removed from Vice by its owner Savage Ventures. Valen’s posted on Bluesky saying;
"Savage Venture requested the removal of my Collective Shout articles…This is due to concerns about the controversial subject matter - not journalistic complaints." In a follow up post Valens stated that Savage Ventures requested she no longer contribute to Vice.
Almost a month later my friends at ArtsHub posted an article titled “‘Harmful’ adult games: should credit card companies decide what we play?”. To which I’d like to invoke Betteridge's law of headlines, in which any headline that ends in a question can almost always be answered with a no. But posing the headline as a question the publisher and author are negating any responsibility for whether or not their reporting is correct. A cowardly approach considering Ana Valen’s continued reporting and advocacy on this matter. For Valen’s genuine reporting, she was fired and had their article removed along with a number of attempts to discredit their reporting since. The ArtsHub article mentions Collective Shout but zero context around who they are and why they might have been behind such an anti LGBTQI+ push in the first place let alone any context or acknowledgment of Valen’s reporting.
Initially christian conservative coalitions specifically targeted porn and online sexworkers, finding an open leverage point with many of the conservatively lead payment providers that make online commerce tick. Due to the shift in politics, largely emboldened by Trump, these same groups are now targeting LGBTQI+ creators under the same guise of saving the children. If this issue is again ignored or poorly reported on conservative groups will continue to find new groups to target until they can one day make the internet in the image of their own making.
All isn’t lost though, Ana Valen’s is leading a campaign to contact said payment providers and voice your concern about their increasing imposition of a christian moralistic view across the internet. You can see some specific contact numbers and methods here.
Call or email here:
MASTERCARD : (INTL) +1 (636)-722-7111
VISA : askvisa@visa.com
PAYPAL : (AUS) 1800 931 678
Customer Complaints Form (Australia)
enquiry@paypal.com
Sources:
https://www.collectiveshout.org/ashley_madison_billboard_pulled_down
https://omny.fm/shows/the-dollop-with-dave-anthony-and-gareth-reynolds/619-anita-bryant-part-one
https://www.advocate.com/politics/2015/08/19/storming-stage-history-disruptions-advance-our-rights
