5 ms·

Is US prudishness ruining the internet?

25 points by bensummers 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago
No. Unless you define the internet as 'a certain few US-based sites'. Facebook is not the internet. It is just one site. If facebook were based in Australia, they'd be following Australia's laws and morals more closely. And the same for any other country.
- alextingle 16y ago
  Um, what about those gambling companies which operated quite legally from Europe, yet whose executives were basically kidnapped by US authorities and tried for violating US law. Apparently US laws governs the whole world, but everyone else's laws are only local?
  - hga 16y ago
    "basically kidnapped"??? More like "foolishly placed themselves in the jurisdiction of a country who's laws they were breaking". They had two choices if they wanted to avoid this: don't accept money from US citizens residing in the US or keep themselves out the reach of US law by staying outside of the US. And do you really think the US has no legitimate interests in what non-citizens do with US citizens in other countries?
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      >And do you really think the US has no legitimate interests in what non-citizens do with US citizens in other countries? I would say they don't, since it happens on another states soil.
      - hga 16y ago
        To take an extreme example, if a non-citizen kills an American on foreign soil, America has no interest in the matter? I'm not implying they have the primary interest, just trying to ascertain if you think they have no legitimate interest. ADDED: To take one iconic example, "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead"....
  - mturmon 16y ago
    Remember, it's perfectly legal to be arrested in the country whose laws you've broken. In fact, it's also legal for a third-party country to arrest you, as in the case of Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet%27s_arrest_and_trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet%27s_arrest_and... The US was nothing to do with this affair. The crimes were committed in Chile, the judge who indicted him was Spanish, and Pinochet was arrested in London. (He was eventually released to Chile, but the reason was declining health, not lack of jurisdiction.) So it would seem in this case that Spanish law was trying to govern the whole of Europe?
lotharbot 16y ago
This is a pretty weak complaint. What it comes down to is the observation that certain very large US companies (Google, Facebook) believe "no boobs" and "no drugs" policies are best for their bottom line. They've made the guess that fewer people will leave over "not being able to show boobs" than will leave over "getting spammed by boobs". So they enforce the policy they think will make them rich. If you think they've made a mistake, go get rich by making a website with a different policy, and quit whining about how prudish Americans are ruining the internet.
- barrkel 16y ago
  I think you're not seeing the mechanics of tyranny of the majority. US companies can reach scale because of the wealth of the market and its relative cultural and linguistic homogeneity. Non-US companies find it very hard to compete against those economies of scale. Meanwhile, US companies inherit the mores of their native culture, the obsessions of their elites, and not to mention the practical implication of laws for content hosted in and served to the US.
  - acabal 16y ago
    But it doesn't have to be a non-US company that can rise to compete. In the article they cited Myspace as willing to host photos that FB wasn't. But it's all about the bottom line--these companies weigh the cost of lawyers along with lost revenue from the section of users they chance to alienate with either strategy. If anything, it's the tyranny of the majority of Americans who would rather not see boobs, versus the tyranny of individual companies whose founders or employees might inherit certain mores (though that of course could sometimes be the case too). I think that's what the article is getting at.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Even if this is the case, that means they are arguing against a completely different problem- a problem to which there is no real answer. So long as companies are bound by the laws of the countries they reside in, some other country will find them too liberal or too conservative, and removing them from laws alltogether will not produce favorable outcomes either. This is really about a clash of cultures.
stretchwithme 16y ago
yeah, I went on the Internet today and found it completely ruined. It was fine when I tucked it in last night.
kingkawn 16y ago
don't worry, chinese prudishness will make this seem like the era of boobs.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  And Islamic prudishness will make the chinese era seem like a cornucopia of smut
sudonim 16y ago
In New York, both women and men are allowed to be topless in public. Fewer women do it, but it's still legal. The fact that the market demands social sites to be the moral police on boobs is disappointing. National boobs on facebook day anybody?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  Same as in Portland, OR actually and at some college...like Reed you will see it.
ugh 16y ago
The web outside of Facebook and the like? I don’t think so. It seems to me that the US have one of the more liberal laws with regard to that. I’m also not sure whether stricter rules on Facebook and similar sites ruins anything. If you want to there are always ways to get nude pictures of yourself on the web. Use tumblr or Blogger or Flickr or whatever else.
tbrownaw 16y ago
Isn't 4chan hosted in / run from the US?
- hga 16y ago
  Yes, or at least a traceroute of boards.4chan.org resulted in a destination of as29761.ae1-320.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net for me. One hop from dfw1 (Dallas/Fort Worth) got me to lax1 (Los Angeles) which according to their network map is their western most core node after the Bay Area.

25 points by bensummers 16y ago

No. Unless you define the internet as 'a certain few US-based sites'. Facebook is not the internet. It is just one site. If facebook were based in Australia, they'd be following Australia's laws and morals more closely. And the same for any other country.

alextingle 16y ago
Um, what about those gambling companies which operated quite legally from Europe, yet whose executives were basically kidnapped by US authorities and tried for violating US law. Apparently US laws governs the whole world, but everyone else's laws are only local?
- hga 16y ago
  "basically kidnapped"??? More like "foolishly placed themselves in the jurisdiction of a country who's laws they were breaking". They had two choices if they wanted to avoid this: don't accept money from US citizens residing in the US or keep themselves out the reach of US law by staying outside of the US. And do you really think the US has no legitimate interests in what non-citizens do with US citizens in other countries?
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    >And do you really think the US has no legitimate interests in what non-citizens do with US citizens in other countries? I would say they don't, since it happens on another states soil.
    - hga 16y ago
      To take an extreme example, if a non-citizen kills an American on foreign soil, America has no interest in the matter? I'm not implying they have the primary interest, just trying to ascertain if you think they have no legitimate interest. ADDED: To take one iconic example, "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead"....
- mturmon 16y ago
  Remember, it's perfectly legal to be arrested in the country whose laws you've broken. In fact, it's also legal for a third-party country to arrest you, as in the case of Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet%27s_arrest_and_trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet%27s_arrest_and... The US was nothing to do with this affair. The crimes were committed in Chile, the judge who indicted him was Spanish, and Pinochet was arrested in London. (He was eventually released to Chile, but the reason was declining health, not lack of jurisdiction.) So it would seem in this case that Spanish law was trying to govern the whole of Europe?

lotharbot 16y ago

This is a pretty weak complaint. What it comes down to is the observation that certain very large US companies (Google, Facebook) believe "no boobs" and "no drugs" policies are best for their bottom line. They've made the guess that fewer people will leave over "not being able to show boobs" than will leave over "getting spammed by boobs". So they enforce the policy they think will make them rich. If you think they've made a mistake, go get rich by making a website with a different policy, and quit whining about how prudish Americans are ruining the internet.

barrkel 16y ago
I think you're not seeing the mechanics of tyranny of the majority. US companies can reach scale because of the wealth of the market and its relative cultural and linguistic homogeneity. Non-US companies find it very hard to compete against those economies of scale. Meanwhile, US companies inherit the mores of their native culture, the obsessions of their elites, and not to mention the practical implication of laws for content hosted in and served to the US.
- acabal 16y ago
  But it doesn't have to be a non-US company that can rise to compete. In the article they cited Myspace as willing to host photos that FB wasn't. But it's all about the bottom line--these companies weigh the cost of lawyers along with lost revenue from the section of users they chance to alienate with either strategy. If anything, it's the tyranny of the majority of Americans who would rather not see boobs, versus the tyranny of individual companies whose founders or employees might inherit certain mores (though that of course could sometimes be the case too). I think that's what the article is getting at.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Even if this is the case, that means they are arguing against a completely different problem- a problem to which there is no real answer. So long as companies are bound by the laws of the countries they reside in, some other country will find them too liberal or too conservative, and removing them from laws alltogether will not produce favorable outcomes either. This is really about a clash of cultures.

stretchwithme 16y ago

yeah, I went on the Internet today and found it completely ruined. It was fine when I tucked it in last night.

kingkawn 16y ago

don't worry, chinese prudishness will make this seem like the era of boobs.

sliverstorm 16y ago
And Islamic prudishness will make the chinese era seem like a cornucopia of smut

sudonim 16y ago

In New York, both women and men are allowed to be topless in public. Fewer women do it, but it's still legal. The fact that the market demands social sites to be the moral police on boobs is disappointing. National boobs on facebook day anybody?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
Same as in Portland, OR actually and at some college...like Reed you will see it.

ugh 16y ago

The web outside of Facebook and the like? I don’t think so. It seems to me that the US have one of the more liberal laws with regard to that. I’m also not sure whether stricter rules on Facebook and similar sites ruins anything. If you want to there are always ways to get nude pictures of yourself on the web. Use tumblr or Blogger or Flickr or whatever else.

tbrownaw 16y ago

Isn't 4chan hosted in / run from the US?

hga 16y ago
Yes, or at least a traceroute of boards.4chan.org resulted in a destination of as29761.ae1-320.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net for me. One hop from dfw1 (Dallas/Fort Worth) got me to lax1 (Los Angeles) which according to their network map is their western most core node after the Bay Area.