4 ms·

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 dr

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.
  - abalashov 16y ago
    This is really about a clash of cultures. Well, yes, it is. The fact that the article chose to focus on a particular microcosm of it is just that, a particular viewport into the problem. That said, I do agree that the idea of a discrete "solution" to this problem per se is probably unintelligible.
- astine 16y ago
  Nonsense. If the only Jew in Buenos Aires can't find a kosher deli, that is not 'Tyranny of the Majority.' Tyranny of the Majority is when a majority actively pursues legislation that is harmful or marginalizing to a minority. If a Jew in 1938 Berlin can't find a kosher deli because the Nazi government outlawed them, then that is Tyranny of the Majority. The situation you describe is just a market difficulty. Not being able to post topless photos of oneself on Facebook is hardly oppression.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    Truly, spoken like one of the majority. ;)
  - abalashov 16y ago
    Not being able to post topless photos of oneself on Facebook is hardly oppression. It is a arguably a matter of degree, not kind.
    - astine 16y ago
      I disagree. Oppression is a loaded term. At he very least it implies a certain unreasonableness. For example it is not unreasonable to expect me, when visiting Italy for example, to realize that certain hand signs are offensive and to avoid them. In the same way, it is not unreasonable to expect that Europeans, when visiting an American website, understand that Americans have particular sensibilities and respect that. The fact that many Americans don't realize that this is a two way street makes them jerks. The fact that Americans are a majority on the Internet and most successful sites target them is an inconvenience to non-Americans. But none of this is oppression. To claim otherwise is melodrama and hyperbole at best. Letting different website set their own rules about what is appropriate on their pages, is no more oppression than forcing to have to look at your ugly torso whenever we look you up on Facebook.
      - stretchwithme 16y ago
        exactly. It is not oppression when I don't let you use MY printing press. It is oppression when I don't let you use YOUR printing press.
- abalashov 16y ago
  Very well said. Unfortunately, you might have a hard time convincing an entrepreneurial, individualistic crowd of how this dynamic works, as I'm sure I don't really need to tell you. It's a libertarian constituency given to see life as a succession of fairly hermetic, individual choices and more readily given to accept that the economic game is a fundamentally functional, if imperfect meritocracy. It would undermine a great deal of the narrative of this whole startup scene mythos into which we are all supposed to be buying here to draw vast attention to examples like the self-perpetuating character of poverty (as a generalisation, not an exception-less rule), and with it, insinuations about the economic privilege commanded by American corporate entities to export de facto Internet-defining cultural impositions or expectations along with their products. The American capitalistic success story told to children here is dispositionally arrayed against allegations of a very close interplay between "politics" and "naked economics," for some reason. Plus, you're going to run up against the seeming consensus that to the degree that identifiably American values are actually "imposed" this way, far better those, with their historical indebtedness to Anglo-American liberal intellectual heritage and democratic ideas and whatnot, than, oh, some other cultures we could name. Anyway, it seems to me that fixating upon the issue of boobs or nudity on Facebook per se is missing the point. We can argue about the degree to which it is truly "oppressive," and pull Godwins by alluding to the experiences of German Jews in the 1930s all we want, but they're all "angels on the head of a pin" type sophistry. The most salient takeaway from the article is that we should be wary of economic disparities and resulting power relationships as they relate to the facts of intercultural transmission, dissemination and assimilation in the context of the Internet as a global medium but whose organisational components are anchored to particular cultures, governments, financiers, and institutions.
  - lotharbot 16y ago
    It's not really appropriate to phrase your argument in terms of how a "crowd like this" won't agree with you because it would "undermine a great deal of the narrative", or to assemble a straw man about a "seeming consensus" regarding the imposition of cultural values. Argue the idea, not the person.
    - 16y ago
hugh3 16y ago
Last I checked it wasn't all that difficult to find pictures of boobs on the internet. In fact, last I checked it was very easy, even using the US-based and supposedly-prudish Google. It's really only facebook that has meaningful anti-boob policies (remember a huge fraction of facebook users are children) and while I am a big fan of boobs I don't think they would particularly enhance the facebook user experience.

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.
- abalashov 16y ago
  This is really about a clash of cultures. Well, yes, it is. The fact that the article chose to focus on a particular microcosm of it is just that, a particular viewport into the problem. That said, I do agree that the idea of a discrete "solution" to this problem per se is probably unintelligible.
astine 16y ago
Nonsense. If the only Jew in Buenos Aires can't find a kosher deli, that is not 'Tyranny of the Majority.' Tyranny of the Majority is when a majority actively pursues legislation that is harmful or marginalizing to a minority. If a Jew in 1938 Berlin can't find a kosher deli because the Nazi government outlawed them, then that is Tyranny of the Majority. The situation you describe is just a market difficulty. Not being able to post topless photos of oneself on Facebook is hardly oppression.
- barrkel 16y ago
  Truly, spoken like one of the majority. ;)
- abalashov 16y ago
  Not being able to post topless photos of oneself on Facebook is hardly oppression. It is a arguably a matter of degree, not kind.
  - astine 16y ago
    I disagree. Oppression is a loaded term. At he very least it implies a certain unreasonableness. For example it is not unreasonable to expect me, when visiting Italy for example, to realize that certain hand signs are offensive and to avoid them. In the same way, it is not unreasonable to expect that Europeans, when visiting an American website, understand that Americans have particular sensibilities and respect that. The fact that many Americans don't realize that this is a two way street makes them jerks. The fact that Americans are a majority on the Internet and most successful sites target them is an inconvenience to non-Americans. But none of this is oppression. To claim otherwise is melodrama and hyperbole at best. Letting different website set their own rules about what is appropriate on their pages, is no more oppression than forcing to have to look at your ugly torso whenever we look you up on Facebook.
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      exactly. It is not oppression when I don't let you use MY printing press. It is oppression when I don't let you use YOUR printing press.
abalashov 16y ago
Very well said. Unfortunately, you might have a hard time convincing an entrepreneurial, individualistic crowd of how this dynamic works, as I'm sure I don't really need to tell you. It's a libertarian constituency given to see life as a succession of fairly hermetic, individual choices and more readily given to accept that the economic game is a fundamentally functional, if imperfect meritocracy. It would undermine a great deal of the narrative of this whole startup scene mythos into which we are all supposed to be buying here to draw vast attention to examples like the self-perpetuating character of poverty (as a generalisation, not an exception-less rule), and with it, insinuations about the economic privilege commanded by American corporate entities to export de facto Internet-defining cultural impositions or expectations along with their products. The American capitalistic success story told to children here is dispositionally arrayed against allegations of a very close interplay between "politics" and "naked economics," for some reason. Plus, you're going to run up against the seeming consensus that to the degree that identifiably American values are actually "imposed" this way, far better those, with their historical indebtedness to Anglo-American liberal intellectual heritage and democratic ideas and whatnot, than, oh, some other cultures we could name. Anyway, it seems to me that fixating upon the issue of boobs or nudity on Facebook per se is missing the point. We can argue about the degree to which it is truly "oppressive," and pull Godwins by alluding to the experiences of German Jews in the 1930s all we want, but they're all "angels on the head of a pin" type sophistry. The most salient takeaway from the article is that we should be wary of economic disparities and resulting power relationships as they relate to the facts of intercultural transmission, dissemination and assimilation in the context of the Internet as a global medium but whose organisational components are anchored to particular cultures, governments, financiers, and institutions.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  It's not really appropriate to phrase your argument in terms of how a "crowd like this" won't agree with you because it would "undermine a great deal of the narrative", or to assemble a straw man about a "seeming consensus" regarding the imposition of cultural values. Argue the idea, not the person.
  - 16y ago

hugh3 16y ago

Last I checked it wasn't all that difficult to find pictures of boobs on the internet. In fact, last I checked it was very easy, even using the US-based and supposedly-prudish Google. It's really only facebook that has meaningful anti-boob policies (remember a huge fraction of facebook users are children) and while I am a big fan of boobs I don't think they would particularly enhance the facebook user experience.