[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley's sex censorship harms everyone
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Silicon Valley's sex censorship harms everyone
Author : laurex
Score : 126 points
Date : 2022-03-20 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| jarjoura wrote:
| What is this post about exactly? Reddit has more porn than any
| one person can possibly see in a lifetime. Twitter too.
|
| Apple and Facebook took a middle of the line approach to avoid
| offending people.
|
| Also sex is a hard line to walk. There's just so much shady shit
| out there that is exploitative and done in bad faith. It's much
| easier to set conservative rules and leave other dedicated spaces
| for more provocative content.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree, except with the characterization
| of Apple and Facebook as taking some sort of 'middle line'? I
| guess Apple doesn't actively prevent me from watching porn on
| that sweet pro display xdr. But Facebook doesn't even allow
| non-erotic nudity. It's PG-Pope, as far as I can tell.
| jchw wrote:
| I am almost 100% with this article and would often go even
| further, and I absolutely agree that marginalized people are
| going to be disproportionately affected. However, there are a
| couple assertions that seemed a bit dubious. For example:
|
| > Danielle Blunt, a queer-identified sex worker with a master's
| in Public Health who's spent time observing the phenomenon, notes
| that she's seen Instagram ban hashtags like #femdom and even
| #women--while #maledom remains available.
|
| I'm not exactly a porn or sex work connoisseur, but my immediate
| first thought is that I've actually _heard_ the term "femdom" but
| never maledom. Of course, that could just be a lack of
| understanding on my part, but at least a cursory search seems to
| agree: femdom is a dramatically more popular term. I searched
| both on Google (which is a nice thing to have sitting in my
| search history, I'm sure) and moved a couple pages back to
| hopefully grab a more accurate result count, and got the measure
| 1,880,000,000 /22,200,000 = 84x more popular. Exactly why is
| unclear, but my guess is that maledom is more often lumped into
| the larger BDSM umbrella and not distinguished. I suspect many
| popular BDSM terms that are not gendered are also blocked.
|
| Of course, I could be wrong. I don't have an instagram account,
| so I can't verify how often these terms are used on such websites
| even if I wanted to.
|
| Still, it goes on to continue draw this sex puritanism as being
| firmly gendered, but I think that this is _not_ a result of
| Silicon Valley's weird obsession with puritanism. Rather, the
| reason why some non-explicit sexual content is allowed and other
| non-explicit sexual content is not runs a lot deeper than just SV
| companies, and is the result of the general culture we have for
| what is "safe" and what is not safe. This is definitely 100% for
| sure biased, but that was never not the case, and certainly not
| an invention of Twitter or Instagram. Tumblr's infamous "female-
| presenting nipples" line definitely is insultingly stupid, but
| its insulting stupidity rooted in deep American traditions of
| having double-standards.
|
| If you disregard our bizarre cultural inequities regarding what
| sexual content is "safe", what remains is a very clear issue:
| payment processors and advertisers (and some other gatekeepers,
| like the App Store) yield immense control over the entire modern
| Internet. I don't even think it's necessarily an issue with
| Silicon Valley specifically.
|
| I was really hoping cryptocurrency would help provide a balance,
| but instead it looks like the primary function of cryptocurrency
| is to launder money and provide another place to gamble.
| Unfortunate, but oh well.
| antattack wrote:
| Sex censorship seems to be benefiting music videos. And IMO the
| videos make the sex more twisted than then reality, something
| like magazines and healthy body image.
| elevenoh wrote:
| bradlys wrote:
| I find it weird that "Silicon Valley" is to blame here. This is
| the result of DC's actions - not SV. Which is mostly coming from
| the religious right who are big funders/power-holders and dislike
| sexual imagery and non-fundamental norms in the public eye.
|
| SV is just going with where the $$$ are at and complying with the
| law. They don't give a shit about anything else as long as stonkz
| go up.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Which is mostly coming from the religious right who are big
| funders/power-holders and dislike sexual imagery and non-
| fundamental norms in the public eye.
|
| The universe of people who "dislike sexual imagery" is a lot
| broader than the (evangelical Christian) "religious right."
| Left-leaning Black and Hispanic Christians, non-Christian
| socially conservative groups (Muslims, Hindus), non-religious
| socially conservative groups (many East Asians), and also sex-
| negative feminists have similar attitudes toward sex and sex
| work.
|
| That's why these laws have broad bipartisan support. "Sex work
| is work" is an area where (generally sex-positive) progressives
| and libertarians agree, but those two groups combined are still
| a pretty small constituency.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I agree with this. It's easy to point to some other group to
| blame on this but I don't meet many people in any group in
| the US who would be okay with children seeing nudity on TV.
| Contrast my experience with Scandinavia, where nude saunas
| are the norm and maybe it seems like the US just hasn't yet
| progressed to sexual normalization.
|
| Is that even a bad thing though? Who's to say the
| Scandinavians aren't messing their kids up with all the
| nudity? Who's to say the Americans aren't messing their kids
| up with their Puritanical approach to sex? I feel that nobody
| knows the answer right now and we're most comfortable not
| changing anything until we do.
| greyface- wrote:
| Apple, historically, has taken an anti-porn stance.
| https://www.wired.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-porn/
| colpabar wrote:
| My understanding is that the payment processors hold the power
| here.
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-mastercards-new-porn-rules...
|
| CESTA/FOSTA definitely plays a part, but why would mastercard
| wait until 2021 to make these new rules?
| [deleted]
| rkk3 wrote:
| > Which is mostly coming from the religious right who are big
| funders/power-holders and dislike sexual imagery and non-
| fundamental norms in the public eye.
|
| The Religious Right? Nicholas Kristof of the NYT, is probably
| the most powerful individual sex censor - the guy
| singlehandedly got Pornhub financially de-platformed!
| devmor wrote:
| To be fair, getting pornhub punished wasn't hard. They were
| hosting child pornography.
| rkk3 wrote:
| It wasn't hard to de-platform them because they are a vice
| company, not because of what was on there servers
| unintentionally. By your standard Meta/FB/Insta are much
| worse perpetrators of hosting child pornography
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Pornhub's problem wasn't sex. It was revenge porn, authentic
| rape videos, and all the other content you will host if you
| allow anonymous uploads.
|
| Not seeing that there is a difference between content
| intended for public distribution and content that is not is
| arguably part of the problem here. (Or, even worse,
| considering someone having sex and someone being raped to be
| morally equivalent.)
| rkk3 wrote:
| > Pornhub's problem wasn't sex. It was revenge porn,
| authentic rape videos, and all the other content you will
| host if you allow anonymous uploads.
|
| Meta/FB/Insta/Whatsapp/Messenger were & are responsible for
| facilitating significantly more of all of the above
| terrible things. Of course the problem was sex and that
| they are a vice company, it made them an easy moral outrage
| target.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > I find it weird that "Silicon Valley" is to blame here.
|
| Even before FOSTA/SESTA companies like Facebook, CloudFlare,
| and PayPal have fought far, far harder for the rights of far-
| right groups than they even have for sex workers.
| TheTester wrote:
| jdrc wrote:
| It is not that lawmakers censor nipples. it is google that is
| demonetizing them, even though it has the power (by virtue of
| controlling both sides of the ad market) to change those
| attitudes. Yet they have only been becoming more restrictive ,
| not less
| olliej wrote:
| It is the politicians that pass laws to punitively punish
| companies like google is they ever allow any kid to see
| anything that isn't ideologically pure.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unless it's a carefully framed slow motion sequence of
| someone getting their brains blown out. Or hacked to death
| with a large sharp blade.
|
| But at least our kids are safe from nipples.
| jdrc wrote:
| No law prevents google from placing ads almost wherever
| they like. Late night TV shows always had advertising on
| them, yet even remotely referencing sex on the net is
| unmonetizable
| lukev wrote:
| Could you provide an example of such a law? To my knowledge
| the US courts and legal systems have been fairly consistent
| that sexual content is protected under the First Amendment.
|
| The main culprit appears to be the prudishness and
| conservatism of large companies, somewhat big tech
| companies but especially credit card companies and payment
| processors.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's normal. Silicon Valley is the only part of America that
| makes anything or does anything worthwhile. As a result, people
| have built up an expectation that that is where they should go
| to get things done.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Agree that politicians are to blame here, but SESTA / FOSTA
| laws have bipartisan support, not just from the religious
| right.
| UberFly wrote:
| Exactly. The whole goal originally was to counter online sex
| trafficking which is easy to be for, not for religious
| zealots to "censor nipples" as some here who probably didn't
| read the wired article think. It's just that like everything
| there are unintended consequences.
| loeg wrote:
| The goal was to shut down online prostitution; trafficking
| is just a performative excuse.
| UberFly wrote:
| Don't pretend trafficking wasn't/isn't a major problem
| made even bigger and easier by the internet. Here's one
| example: https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-allegedly-
| trafficked-backpag...
| devmor wrote:
| Both major parties cater to Christian interests over anything
| else. The US is a "light theocracy".
|
| Until that changes, we will constantly have to defend our
| industries and personal lives from the intrusion of the
| church.
| saghm wrote:
| To expound on this, we've still yet to have a president who
| doesn't identify as Christian. I don't think we're
| particularly close to a point where a self-professed
| atheist could get elected president either, although I
| could see someone of another mainstream religion getting
| elected in the not too distant future.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Trump is very clearly not a Christian. Seemed to be loved
| by people who call themselves Christian but seemingly
| don't follow any of Jesus' message.
|
| It's really curious.
| krapp wrote:
| >Seemed to be loved by people who call themselves
| Christian but seemingly don't follow any of Jesus'
| message.
|
| That describes most Christians, honestly. Trump
| identifies as a "non-denominational" Christian (as
| opposed to atheist or any other religion), employs
| Christian symbols in his politics (likely not in good
| faith, but again that isn't unusual) and has strong
| support within the Evangelical Christian community, who
| clearly find something within him that resonates with
| their faith.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > That describes most Christians, honestly.
|
| In your experience, perhaps, but it's exceptionally
| dishonest, and frankly hateful, to say that describes
| "most Christians." I know more Christians than non-
| Christians and the behavior discussed here describes
| maybe 4 of them (out of about a thousand).
|
| That'd be like someone saying "most LGBTQ are
| pedophiles." I'm sure it's true in some cases, but is
| highly unlikely to be true for "most".
|
| Honestly, I get tired of everyone using hyperbole so
| flippantly. It gives your opponents easy targets to
| completely discredit the point you were making. So,
| just...stop.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Trump presented himself as a Christian, which is the
| relevant factor here.
| spindle wrote:
| As a non-American, can anyone please tell me how the
| media reacts to Tulsi Gabbard not being Christian? (She's
| Hindu ... and religious, so this is not relevant to the
| atheist part of your point.)
| saghm wrote:
| I actually don't think I was aware of this! Most of the
| media coverage I've seen on her is about her coming
| across as fairly unconventional for a Democrat in the
| debate performances, but I think the field was so large
| then and then narrowed down quickly enough that she
| didn't get much extended attention. I imagine if she
| makes it further into a national campaign, it might end
| up coming up though.
| int_19h wrote:
| Chris Butler's cult isn't Hindu, although they would sure
| like people to believe that.
| adventured wrote:
| > The US is a "light theocracy".
|
| That's not remotely close to being true. The US has among
| the strongest separation of church and state laws of any
| nations and they're well protected decade after decade. If
| the US were actually a light theocracy, the conservative
| majority Supreme Court would wreck the US promptly with
| crazy theocratic changes that would make Iran blush. It was
| the first nation in history to explicitly codify such a
| strict separation in its constitution as well. Those
| separation lines have, on average, been made stronger over
| time.
|
| You can dislike the Christian culture that exists in the
| US, certainly. It hasn't made any consequential inroads
| into state in two centuries, in fact the opposite is the
| case: Christianity (and religion more broadly) has been
| pushed back out of US life in numerous significant ways
| (and properly so; eg: gay marriage, abortion rights, making
| it illegal to discriminate based on religion, acceptance
| and ease of divorce, sunday alcohol sales & business
| activity, drug legalization laws, press dominance and
| positioning (the press is ~95% left-leaning now and very
| much not religious in nature)). That there have been
| occasional set-backs in things such as abortion rights,
| doesn't nullify the overall point. Religion has been losing
| political and cultural ground in the US for a long time and
| that's likely to continue. Religion used to dominate US
| life and heavily factor into US politics, as recently as
| the post war 1950s-1980s era, and that is no longer the
| case (the left for example is drastically less religious
| than it was just 40-50 years ago).
| rat9988 wrote:
| I'm not sure you disproved his point. You disproved it
| was a theocracy which no one has argued.
| darkengine wrote:
| SESTA and FOSTA are certainly DC's doing, but I think it's fair
| to say there is a serious aversion to sexuality and eroticism
| among incumbent platforms, that did not require any prodding
| from US lawmakers. For example, AFAIK, Instagram has never
| allowed "adult" content, since long before FOSTA; Steam has
| never allowed "pornography" on its platform, resulting in
| hundreds of games requiring patches [1] to play in the form the
| publisher intended.
|
| Eroticism being a core component of art going all the way back
| to literal cave paintings, I am sometimes frustrated at the
| prudishness of the platforms we use in the contemporary age.
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34059662-Uncensor-
| Pat...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It has nothing to with "DC" (numerous anti-porn laws have
| been struck down by courts) and everything to do with the
| banking industry's moral codes, which is where the Christian
| Right shifted their moral crusade to after losing numerous
| legal challenges.
|
| That's why you see platforms like Patreon crack down on adult
| content. The banking industry notices, the payment processors
| and merchant banks sit up and threaten to close the service's
| accounts, and the service instead capitulates and cranks up
| their rules around adult content.
|
| They'll bray about fraud rates being high for adult content,
| but if high fraud rates were a concern, you'd think they
| wouldn't give the gym industry (for example) free license in
| credit card processing and ECH transfers...they're prolific
| scam artists. Ditto for all the as-seen-on-tv crap with
| outrageous shipping and "handling" fees and so on.
|
| If the banking industry figures out that you're an adult
| media actor, you stand a good chance of getting banned from
| the entire system. What possible argument for fraud is there
| in that case? None. "Fraud" is just a cover for Christian
| moral code enforcement.
|
| Edit: okay, maybe it's not the Christian Right influencing US
| banks rejecting porn stars for accounts for "moral" reasons.
| Must be the sentient Big Mouth Billy Bass units.
| colpabar wrote:
| I agree that it's the banks but do you have any evidence to
| support your claims that it's the christian right?
| rpdillon wrote:
| This entry[0] has useful background.
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_S
| exual_Ex...
| mildmotive wrote:
| It's the liberal that's holding the power here, not the
| Christian that is fighting an uphill battle to preserve
| their religious lifestyle, and the right to parent their
| own children how they want.
|
| It's clear for all that opening the floodgates of porn into
| social media and platforms that both adults and _children_
| use will cause this particular category of content to
| dominate the entire space. It'll also lock out any children
| from most social media whose parents refuse (and rightfully
| so) to let them see porn. Not that this effort will always
| be successful, because children who don't know any better
| will cave in to peer pressure from friends. This dystopia
| where what's essentially filmed prostitution finds its way
| into almost all spaces in society, including children's
| lives, is what the very powerful liberal wants.
|
| Shouldn't you be more concerned about the increase in women
| and girls forced to sell their dignity to survive? Is the
| suffering of people not more important to you than your
| cummies?
| jrajav wrote:
| Outspoken Christians form 9 out of 10 members of Congress
| despite representing 65% of the US population [1].
| Religiously motivated laws get argued and passed on a
| weekly basis, and Christian fundamentalist ideas are
| constantly in the media spotlight.
|
| Put down the persecution complex.
|
| [1]: https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/04/faith-on-the-
| hill-2021/
| KyeRussell wrote:
| I genuinely can't tell if this is your legitimate view or
| if you're moving the conversation along by making the
| religious right's arguments for them. Either way, I'll
| bite. 1. Nobody is arguing against a parent's right to
| choose their parenting style. This is about altering
| society to fit their parenting style. 2. Permissive
| social networks (like Twitter) don't have an issue with
| adult content overrunning the network. Furthermore, if
| adult content wasn't roped off to all but a couple of
| mainstream social networks, isn't it arguable that the
| reduced concentration will mitigate your hypothesised
| "overrunning"? 3. The implication that all sex work is
| exploitative is in 2022 untenable. There are myriad women
| out there who consensually do sex work when they could do
| something else instead. Sex work has pros and cons for
| the worker like any other job. The characterisation of
| this as "selling their dignity" is indicative of a view
| of sex and sexuality that is increasingly out of step
| with the attitudes of the young people who typically
| engage in sex work. The implication that sex work is
| exploitative or even "sad" is driven by the US's legal
| stance on prostitution. I live in a jurisdiction with
| more permissive prostitution laws and the difference is
| night-and-day obvious. The (il)legality of full service
| sex work fuels the stigma, not the other way around.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Twitter has a lot of porn on it, and we don't see it as
| "overrun with porn" or "unsafe for children." There is a
| way to do it right.
| mildmotive wrote:
| > Twitter has a lot of porn on it, and we don't see it as
| "overrun with porn"
|
| That's why I said "opening the floodgates". Yes of course
| there is porn in social media already. It's still a fact
| today that you wont see porn on
| Twitter/YouTube/Facebook/etc. unless you look for it. If
| you remove restrictions and push porn just like any other
| content, then all these platforms will essentially
| degrade into hybrid porn sites because this particular
| type of content will dominate the entire space. Some
| people here are upset that it's even kept in check at
| all. SV are being called puritans for having some common
| sense and not letting this filth dominate their sites.
|
| > or "unsafe for children."
|
| Some people would argue that though.
| gumby wrote:
| Steam is in Washington, not the Valley or SF.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is a classic case of an industry attempting to self-
| regulate in order to avoid legal regulation, with teeth. Even
| inconsistently-applied loose rules are good enough to keep
| the powerful Christian lobbyist pitchforks at bay.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think Steam has pretty much given up on not allowing
| porn... Outside certain cases.
| int_19h wrote:
| When browsing Steam VR titles, it feels like half of that
| is interactive porn.
| okasaki wrote:
| Steam does allow porn games now, though you have to log in
| and change some settings to see it.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| And if you do, it's ridiculously over saturated with them
| CPLX wrote:
| I mean isn't this a function of all this stuff being ad
| supported?
|
| Brands don't want ads next to porn. That seems like the core
| of the issue here.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| Steam isn't ad supported.
| echelon wrote:
| It's Visa supported, and Visa doesn't want sex.
|
| There are actually strong, non-"puritanical" reasons for
| this. An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that
| finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-
| related services carry an extremely high rate of charge
| backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than
| other categories of goods and services.
|
| So while Visa could simply charge more, there are
| numerous other headwinds that make this tricky. Political
| will, payments risks, brand risk, and deep rooted
| family/social stigmas that fuel the rest. They kind of
| all have to be dealt with at once for this to start
| making economic and business sense.
|
| For proponents, it's going to take generational change to
| shake all of these network effects out. The first step of
| which is consumers (Gen Z?) publicly admitting that they
| see no harm in sex-related commerce and to begin showing
| this in their purchasing behaviors.
|
| John Oliver recently covered this as it relates to sex
| work. Stigmas and dispositions are changing, but it's
| slow. A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of
| people.
| kipchak wrote:
| I'm not sure how they're working things on the payment
| processing front but Steam has sexual content on it's
| regular storefront now without requiring external
| patches. Heck some are even Steam Deck verified.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| None of this explains why the banking industry blacklists
| porn stars from having checking accounts, nor why they
| allow other high-risk industries wholesale access...the
| gym industry, for example, is incredibly fraudulent and
| yet the banking industry has no problem letting them use
| ECH, a system so permissive it's a fraudster's wet
| dream....or why the banking industry has done nothing to
| self-regulate payday lenders.
| spindle wrote:
| Very good comparisons IMO.
| newbamboo wrote:
| "A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people."
| More signaling makes all signals weaker until everything
| is noise. Probably not the desired outcome.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| I wonder how much of it is outrage-by-proxy, where _you_
| don 't have a problem with it, but fear that _others_
| will.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| ...steam is _covered_ in ads, even opening them in a
| separate window when you launch the client. They 're only
| for stuff sold on steam, and publishers (supposedly)
| can't buy ad space, but they're ads nonetheless.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| This advertising obviously does not have the attributes
| that the conversation is referring to, namely that a
| third party is buying the space.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a branding and criminal liability problem too.
|
| Yak about sex worker empowerment, but companies like Craigslist
| made themselves unwitting business partners with pimps and
| other low rent types.
| gorwell wrote:
| Silicon Valley's Censorship Harms Everyone
| jdrc wrote:
| The attitude of silicon valley is, ultimately, shaped by the
| cultural and religious values and background if its worker base.
| Such attitudes are often expressed in this forum as well.
|
| > When female nipples are censored but male nipples are not, we
| know that we must police our own bodies to ensure we do not
| arouse men
|
| It is probably true that digital media is more lenient to gay
| male sexuality than to female sexuality probably because the
| former is still media taboo. There is a sense that they go out of
| the way to protect women from themselves which is an attitude
| that should be thoroughly condemned.
| freyr wrote:
| Not to mention advertisers, but could it be that most _users_
| don't actually want porn and solicitations by sex workers showing
| up in their Facebook and Instagram feeds?
|
| There is no shortage of places to find porn or sex workers
| online, for those who seek it out, including on some popular
| social media sites. It can be difficult to even search Twitter
| without getting a close-up photo of someone's genitalia in the
| results. I don't think it's necessary that _every_ social media
| site becomes a platform for porn and sex work.
| Animats wrote:
| _" Instead, it seems likely that they simply don't see queer
| users as important"_
|
| 3.8%.[1] That's below the noise threshold from a revenue
| standpoint.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Have these people been on the Internet?
| badrabbit wrote:
| Eh? Are there barriers to sex-friendly startups and platforms?
| Let's discuss those then. "Silicon valley" or not, others
| shouldn't be compulsed into featuring or supporting others'
| expression of sexuality. Consent as I understand is a
| foundational principle of any healthy sexual relationship or
| expression.
|
| If a person wishes to censor or prohibit expressions of
| sexuality, so long as they don't prohibit others from
| independently expressing their sexuality then what is the
| problem?
| olliej wrote:
| How is this Silicon Valley's fault?
|
| You have a bunch of puritanical politicians and voters who
| attempt to aggressively punish anyone that goes against their
| idea of a perfect puritan society. The result is laws that _by
| design_ force corporations into over censoring to avoid
| liability.
|
| Turning around and blaming SV for this is nonsense, especially
| when the same puritans are blaming SV for all of the non-
| puritanically pure parts of society.
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| What an uninteresting point of view. I don't have time to be
| enraged about this
| hnuser847 wrote:
| [deleted]
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It isn't. You might be thinking of titillation, which is much
| more common. And I guess that's because if you're going for
| viewcounts, the lowest common denominator will get you the
| most.
| markdown wrote:
| Not mentioned in this article is the way indigenous people are a
| victimised by Facebook for just... being, because their
| traditional dress (in non-sexual contexts) is considered too
| revealing by Facebooks standards.
|
| This happens all the time in Vanuatu and Papua Niu Guinea.
|
| > "Those pictures are appropriate to me because it's part of my
| culture, but to Facebook it's not appropriate ...those who are
| working at Facebook should understand that we have different
| cultures around the world."
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/facebook-mistakenly-b...
|
| https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2...
| throwawayp0rn wrote:
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| Is there even one guy who got laid through direct messaging on
| Onlyfans and not paid for it?
| throwawayp0rn wrote:
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Instagram doesn't want to be the local bar
| rr808 wrote:
| It is kinda weird to see war footage of people burning alive,
| dismembered corpses, children being bombed. But one little
| nipple... I guess US TV is the same.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I always assumed it was because of Christianity making sex
| taboo above almost all else.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Ah, so that's why Catholics have so few children. /s
|
| It's easier to be chaste than it is to be holy, so people go
| for chasteness and pretend it's holiness. Completely
| misunderstanding the gospels in three process.
| watwut wrote:
| I did not seen children being bombed. I have heard about that
| happening and seen video where it took place, but after the
| fact and fairly sanitized.
|
| The brutality of War is not nearly shown as much on TV as your
| comment implies, at least not in TV I was watching.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| In Europe, sex is good and violence is bad. In the US, it's the
| other way around.
|
| (stolen from someone on /. years ago)
| runako wrote:
| In fairness, American TV also does not (frequently) show (real)
| gore as is often the case in other countries.
| suifbwish wrote:
| What are you talking about, more than half of the internet
| bandwidth being used in the world as I type this is
| transmitting pictures of nipples.
| mescaline wrote:
| Even this comment contains nipples.
|
| ( o ) ( o )
| pengaru wrote:
| (.)(.)
| k8sToGo wrote:
| All I see is eyes
| onion2k wrote:
| A 2014 Google study reckoned 4% of the Internet is porn.
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/16959/share-of-the-
| internet-t...
| nrclark wrote:
| 4% of websites, according to that article. I didn't see any
| graphs on bandwidth. I doubt that half of all traffic is
| porn, but 10% wouldn't surprise me at all.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I've noticed social media using more aggressive censorship (not
| exactly censorship; more like requiring you to be logged in) on
| war gore than sexually explicit images.
| norvvryo wrote:
| Real violence is getting harder to find as well. Everything
| that isn't advertiser friendly is purged from mainstream
| channels. And it seems like the definition of "advertiser
| friendly" gets more and more stringent every day.
| tyrfing wrote:
| You're overstating it, lots of violent content is banned on
| every single popular platform, including hosting services.
| teej wrote:
| I have to activate a complicated account level override to
| see nipples on the Reddit app. I can see gore in 2 clicks.
| tyrfing wrote:
| James Foley, Christchurch, etc. There's a long list of
| stuff that is almost universally censored, it's not a
| matter of setting account flags. Incidentally, Reddit is
| one of the most permissive hosts in terms of content,
| allowing stuff that even Imgur doesn't.
| vxNsr wrote:
| The issue is that people have gotten used to being able to put
| things on the internet for free. Unfortunately for people
| involved in selling sex, there are many laws that make hosting
| their content relatively expensive. Each piece of content
| uploaded needs to be moderated by someone to confirm it's not
| something that runs afoul of the law, this is unscalable, and
| thus the classic SV playbook doesn't apply.
|
| In fact the more popular a service gets, the more expensive it
| becomes to run, on an almost exponential scale. Meaning there's
| an inflection point where the service won't be able to profitably
| add more customers.
|
| There's a reason such a service hasn't sprung up... no matter how
| you run the numbers there's not a good, safe way, to both allow a
| backstage-type service and promise on penalty of criminal charges
| that some form of (child) abuse won't take place on the platform.
| Zak wrote:
| I think a big part of it is platforms not wanting to get listed
| as "adult content" by organizations maintaining filter lists.
|
| Facebook wants absolutely everyone to use Instagram, especially
| teenagers. They almost launched Instagram for kids under 13, whom
| social media companies in the US are forbidden from offering
| their standard products to. I've seen public wifi filters class
| reddit as "adult".
| teej wrote:
| I've worked at a VC-backed social media app and currently work
| for a privately owned porn company.
|
| SV has the dumbest double standards about sex and nudity. Just
| colossally dumb.
|
| There's a few forces at work that the article doesn't dig into -
|
| 1/ VCs get their money from LPs. LPs are orgs like university
| trusts and pension funds. Those LPs demand "morality clauses"
| that limit what VCs can invest in. And VCs give it to them.
|
| 2/ Google starting 2018-ish began to cave to advertiser pressure
| about nudity. They passed that pressure down to their different
| business. Now YouTube, AdWords, Adsense, etc all must ensure ad
| content is never shown next to nudity. Those business teams
| rolled out this missive in the most bungled way possible. False
| positives be damned, the ad dollars must flow.
|
| This leads to startups being squeezed on both sides - investors
| can't be seen supporting sex and ad platforms salt the earth
| anywhere an adult word might be uttered. So as a social media
| platform, you pretend it doesn't exist (Reddit, Instagram), you
| quarantine it (Twitch), or you mass-deplatform and cross your
| fingers (YouTube, Snapchat).
|
| I don't know what the answer is for those products, but I feel
| like we could do better.
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