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Sex censorship killed the internet we love

• nopriorarrests 8y ago
  Whats the point of this article? Tumblr is supposed to be monetized. You can't monetize porn content, so tumblr has 'no pron' policy now. Sorry, this is how the world works. Boo. Meanwhile, any kind of porn is plentiful if you go to the different url. Enter any keyword and have porn catered to your interest, in a good quality, abundant. Seriously, this was unimaginable 15 years ago, and yet author claims that someone "killed the internet we love". Come on. Maybe the right claim would be "For some unknown reason, VC does not fund unprofitable sites we love anymore".
  • Mirioron 8y ago
    The problem is that it's not just the sites that don't get funding, but it's hosting providers and pretty much the entire chain of services that you use that won't do business with you if there's sexual content involved.
    • nopriorarrests 8y ago
      Isn't it how the real world works? Have you ever seen BMW or P&G ad in a hardcore porn magazine you have recenty bought? Internet is only different bc VC bucks were willing to tolerate porn for some time, like in tumblr case. Time is up, so everyone has to play by society rules now.
      • Mirioron 8y ago
        The problem isn't the BMW ad. It's more about BMW refusing to sell me a car because I'm open about porn.
        • nopriorarrests 8y ago
          well, then it's not "Sex censorship killed the internet we love", it's "fcsk! world does not work the way I want". go to BMW marketing dept and pitch them the value of being advertised next to mature lady sucking two huge young cocks. maybe they really miss this opportunity and it will make them millions? I dont know.
          • monadgonad 8y ago
            Are you just going to keep talking about advertising? Because it's not about advertising.
            • nopriorarrests 8y ago
              nah. as long as advertising stays the most popular way for site owners to pay the costs -- this is about advertising, sorry. once patreons or subscriptions will become bigger -- we will talk. but as of now, it's about advertising.
          • Chinjut 8y ago
            What a facile response. EVERY complaint is "Fuck! The world does not work the way I want". That is the nature of complaint. It doesn't mean it's pointless to ever complain. One can reasonably desire and agitate for the world to work differently than it does.
            • nopriorarrests 8y ago
              >One can reasonably desire and agitate for the world to work differently than it does. yeah, tumblr allowing porn again will make all the difference in the world. lol
  • jacobwilliamroy 8y ago
    I don't understand why the corporate monoliths refuse to slap their ads on porno. Porno has got to be the most popular kind of content on the internet. Why cant my porno be brought to me in part by pepsi cola?
    • nopriorarrests 8y ago
      Good question. I think (dont quote me) that porn ads could be seen as "lowest common denominator", aka "cheapest product on market", and, generally speaking, nobody in marketing department wants to be associated with such label. We may argue that this is wrong and being advertised next to porn content does not carry such stigma, but this is how the world works, at least for now. If some brand will start with porn advertising, their competitors will instantly postition themselves as "premium", "top class", etc, having nothing in common with porn.
      • jacobwilliamroy 8y ago
        Are you thinking that if a porn-averse brand starts advertising on porno, then that brand could become associated with qualities of the spywares and phisheries which currently dominate porn adviertising? The nice thing about lookin at porn on tumblr was that there were no shady spam ads (nothing as shady as ad-supported porn sites). I'm sure if the porn-phobic brands continued to pull their ads the shady click farmers would have moved in to fill the vacuum. Perhaps tumblr would never need shady spam ads if more legitimate businesses would run ads on porn. Just thinking out loud here. Not a doctor or anything.
        • nopriorarrests 8y ago
          > qualities of the spywares and phisheries which currently dominate porn adviertising? do they? you can go to pornhub or xvideos and get all the porn you want, and ads will only ask you to subscribe to "full videos" (which are probably full, but I have never subscribed). Nothing shady about them, no spyware or phishery. I have no tumblr experience, but I dont expect tumblr porn ads being different from pornhub porn ads.
  • halfjoking 8y ago
    That's the real story here - payment processors and the US gov are policing morality by making it impossible to run a for-profit NSFW business: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are-still-policing-your-sex-life https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are... Tumblr and similar sites are just a casualty of monopolistic payment processors doing the bidding of the government. IMO - as long as what you're doing is legal you should be able to make money for it. Anything less is censorship.
    • nopriorarrests 8y ago
      oh come on. tumbler is aiming for sweet sweet sweet branding advertising dollars, which has nothing to do with payment processors. they are looking for a hefty 1-10-100M transaction from BMW, P&G or Unilever. payment processors are not in this business at all.
      • halfjoking 8y ago
        Tons of advertisers pay them (large and small). How is that not using a payment processor to process advertiser payments? It's true that there might be other reasons though... like SESTA/FOSTA scaring them enough that they self-censor. Whatever the reasons are the climate for making a NSFW business are terrible... you're way better off making a marijauna startup these days.
      • ndnxhs 8y ago
        Most payment processors ban selling adult content and the ones that don't explicitly ban it will often kick you off. A developer posted about it a little bit ago (since deleted). People pay for porn subs and then their wives see it on the bank account so the one who paid makes up a story about how they must have been hacked and calls the bank to report the transaction. All these reports end up with the websites account getting shut down. Its also an issue with selling marijuana in the places where its legal. In the modern world, visa and MasterCard have the final word on what businesses can exist.
      • romwell 8y ago
        >oh come on. tumbler is aiming for sweet sweet sweet branding advertising dollars Right, because with all the data collected about users, and all the data mined from all the pages, in the year 2019 it's still impossible to tell that a particular blog is NSFW to avoid showing an shampoo ad on it. What is targeting for 5000.
  • kome 8y ago
    Tumblr exists since February 2007; they lived, grew and prospered with erotica (and much more!) for 10 years. Let's stop telling ourselves that you can monetize with erotica. It's just American Puritanism, and yes, it's breaking the internet.
    • nopriorarrests 8y ago
      >they lived, grew and prospered with erotica (and much more!) for 10 years. Were they profitable during this period or were they sucking the VC tit all the time?
      • gscott 8y ago
        If the milk tastes good... drink it.
    • oaththrowaway 8y ago
      They were (and are currently) loosing ~Yahoo~... ~Oath~... Verizon Media money hand over fist.
  • xkcd-sucks 8y ago
    It sounds like the Illuminati social engineers need to start turning sex into a public matter, in order to capture this immense value. Imagine-- The Internet has made boatloads of money, but 95 percent is un(der)monetized porn. That would assure economic growth until the end of the practically significant future.
  • lazyjones 8y ago
    Last time I checked, this wasn‘t even primarily about ad money. Apple had kicked Tumblr‘s app out of the App Store (apparently because of actual child pornography and not just „adult content“), so Tumbler got into some real trouble and had broader reputation issues than just with advertisers.
    • nopriorarrests 8y ago
      >Last time I checked, this wasn‘t even primarily about ad money. from what I know, tumlbr was acquired by yahoo, and yahoo was acquired by verizon, so now verizon tries to make some money on tumblr. sooo it is about ad money. and of course having child pron is bad for your business.
  • erdo 8y ago
    I think you should read the article, it's not complaining about the lack of commercial porn
    • nopriorarrests 8y ago
      yeah, right. I was online since 1999, which is probably year when article author was born. I've seen internet changing at least 4 times. I do remember using napster, for example. So, some 20 year old is unhappy that tumblr she liked is no more? Cry me a river.
      • jackvalentine 8y ago
        I'd like to address your attempt to de-legitimize the author based on your assumption she was "probably" born in 1999. Firstly, a twenty year old's voice is just as valid as yours. It may be presented from a place of less experience, or it may even be even more experienced than you. Secondly, your assumption is incorrect and the author has been a published writer since at least 1998.
  • faissaloo 8y ago
    Actually pornography wasn't banned on Tumblr because of monetisation issues directly, what happened is Apple became aware of the child pornography epidemic on there and removed them from the app store, so in order to fix this they had to implement a general pornography filter because it was simply easier.
• trhway 8y ago
  >Now Tumblr is a sex-free haven for white nationalists and Nazis. reminded Matt Damon's character from Dogma : Loki : ... If I had a dick, I'd go get laid. We can do the next best thing. Bartleby : What's that? Loki : Well, let's kill people.
  • iamdave 8y ago
    Now Tumblr is a sex-free haven for white nationalists and Nazis. Is the author basing this on anything other than checking to see if white nationalists and Nazis are simply using the site as some sort of electronic forward operating base such that it's worth calling Tumblr a "haven" for these groups? Asked a better way: if you go looking for group x on just about any website, isn't it fair to say you're probably going to find some? Is Tumblr really a haven for these people? I ask as someone who without really trying, just managed to curate his tumblr "feed" to be full of classic cars, aviation, scifi and comic book stuff plus sometimes video game review, so I admit to being a bit ignorant as to what's going on outside my particular 'bubble' and will concede that I do lack some perspective on the matter.
    • Phlarp 8y ago
      Many people think nazis are objectively much less acceptable than porn. Particularly the type of softcore "artsy" porn one would expect to find on Tumblr before the crackdown.
      • anongraddebt 8y ago
        There was some pretty debauched stuff on Tumblr before the crackdown. There is some pretty cartoonish, trollish, and non-serious Nazi stuff out there. This line of argument goes in circles.
      • iamdave 8y ago
        I'm not disagreeing with that and I'm not even making a value judgment on what's more acceptable, porn or racism. I don't care to have that discussion. Perhaps my initial question was unclear to receive already negative votes for asking a pretty benign question. The author describes Tumblr as a "haven" for white nationalists, I'm asking based on what? What makes it any less of a haven than other social sites on the internet for those groups, is their presence on tumblr more or less pronounced than it is on, say, reddit? I legitimately don't know and was curious to hear insight from others because my experience on the site is deliberately starched and sanitized. Clearly that question offended a few people.
• lazyjones 8y ago
  YMMV... For me, the last straw was having to click away 2-3 banners that cover the content on every website and then often being slapped in the face with a subscription box. This is simply conditioning me to expect disappointment and hence to stop clicking on links. Even on HN I find myself clicking straight on the comment links to get an idea of what the link is about.
  • unimpressive 8y ago
    My friend wrote a browser plugin that removes sticky web elements like subscription boxes on pages (Chrome only, for now). https://git.sr.ht/~achmizs/AlwaysKillSticky.git https://git.sr.ht/~achmizs/AlwaysKillSticky.git Sad that we have to resort to this sort of thing, but... p.s: He would probably be happy to accept a patch which makes it compatible with Firefox.
    • ndnxhs 8y ago
      Won't that kill nav bars?
    • carlob 8y ago
      javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)() Bookmarklet that does the same
  • bad_user 8y ago
    Your unwillingness to click on a popup is nothing compared with the systematic censorship that has been sweeping the web. This is one of those cases in which I wished for the first comment I’m seeing to not be so shallow.
    • lazyjones 8y ago
      > Your unwillingness to click on a popup is nothing compared with the systematic censorship that has been sweeping the web. Excuse me for not caring much about Tumblr porn, nor seeing all this supposedly rampant censorship on the web among all the hate speech and political propaganda. Perhaps you’re just expecting wrong content in the wrong places?
• foolfoolz 8y ago
  This doesnt make sense to me. Core internet community experiences to me have always been about smaller sites, message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, voice chat groups, etc. Seeing large corporation websites like tumblr, reddit, facebook crack down on content doesn't stop any of that. it just means you need to get out of your internet bubble.
  • stevenicr 8y ago
    There are some portals listed on this similar recent hn thread, in which I added to a similar comment, ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040384 ) - basically that for many people the internet is google, and for many, especially in other countries from what I have read, 'the internet' is facebook. It appears many people do not know how to use urls or ask people about other portals. If facebook censors it, they may never know it every existed on the internet. For others if Google doesn't show it on the first page of results - it does not exist. I should of seen this coming years ago I noticed when I would tell people to go to whatever-site-url.com - they would open a browser and put that into the search box. Heck people put google.com into the box and search for it rather then enter a url and hit ctrl-enter. Now many phones and tablets are also defaulting search boxes, browsers, and voice searches to be using these censoring services - not showing ways to escape these bubbles, solidifying the walls of the garden.
    • pasta1212 8y ago
      > Heck people put google.com into the box and search for it rather then enter a url and hit ctrl-enter. Not even that. They google directly from the address bar. Once you could google without going to google.com, anecdotally I started to notice most people would google everything, including URLs they obviously knew
      • kkarakk 8y ago
        remembering urls is not a trivial task. it's the reason why we have bookmarks and history functions in browsers. a good search engine like google abstracts that away. i couldn't remember the name stack overflow for quite some time(i always associated stack with hay in my mind) just typing in "hay code questions" would get me to stackoverflow in google. not so in bing/yahoo search(at the time)
• jancsika 8y ago
  1. Read article 2. notice that r/dragonsfuckingcars isn't 404'd 3. Disagree with article
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • xkcd-sucks 8y ago
    We don't really know whether dragons reproduce sexually, and cars certainly do not
  • miguelmota 8y ago
    Warning: that sub is sort of NSFW and cannot be unseen once seen.
    • anextomp 8y ago
      Was that... not obvious? Really, what were you expecting?
      • saagarjha 8y ago
        Subreddit names aren’t always very indicative of their contents. There’s a whole set of “porn” subreddits that happen to be pictures of nature or people using fountain pens.
      • miguelmota 8y ago
        No it wasn't obvious, in the same way that /r/Ladybonersgonecuddly or /r/PeopleFuckingDying isn't what you expect. (both SFW)
    • kkarakk 8y ago
      i'd totally use a js framework called dragonsfuckingcars
    • jancsika 8y ago
      On the one hand I genuinely wouldn't want anyone to get fired by accidentally following the not-a-link I posted. On the other, if that really happened it would be hilarious and I'd love to do a podcast fundraiser with that person after the sting wore off.
• IndrekR 8y ago
  "Google News shows one lonely result for "porn," an article that is 26 days old." Must be a regional thing. Gives plenty of fresh (less than a day old) articles when searched in Estonia. Edit: this is for Google search "news" tab. If I go to Google News (https://news.google.com https://news.google.com) and search from there, get no results.
  • aussieguy1234 8y ago
    I've confirmed this happens in Australia. Except it's zero results, not one.
    • drodgers 8y ago
      Interesting. I just searched (in Oz too) and got a bunch of results; if you click on settings, is safe-search turned on? It's off for me.
    • woogiewonka 8y ago
      Same in Japan. Zero results for "porn". On a different note, I can't believe how terrible google news UI looks. It used to be easy to find things, now it looks like some designer had to prove something so he wouldn't be let go. Ahh, maybe I am getting too old for this - first they ruin Gmail, now they spread that vomit they call material design to the rest of the web.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• Mirioron 8y ago
  I think the author brings up a good point, but most of those are simply due to us using Google's services instead of other services. >In 2014 Google Play banned sex-themed apps This point, however, I think is slightly different. It's difficult for the average user to get apps on their android phones without the app being on the Play Store. On the other hand, people go to great lengths for sex stuff so I'm surprised there aren't very popular alternative app stores for android.
  • fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
    There are many other app stores. Most phones are locked down, so you can not simply use another app store, though.
• faissaloo 8y ago
  On the contrary, pornography killed the internet I loved. Every chan gets infested with it, it's gotten to the point where 8/b/ has had to limit it to two threads because nothing but pornography was being posted and it's a great way to instantly derail existing threads. This is one of the reasons why I straight up don't allow images on Ratwires.
  • pmlnr 8y ago
    This is also true - as always, there are two sides to a conversation. I remember altavista being ruined by the porn industry. I also remember not needing to go through loops to see "uncensored" fantasy (the D&D type) artwork, where female upper bodies might be uncovered. To overcome this the actual content needs to return to it's origin: personal/organisational websites, with their own forums, and for legislation writers to leave them alone. In the meanwhile, the rest of the world needs moderators, not automated, bad upload filters.
• aussieguy1234 8y ago
  Since I heard about Tumblrs new policy a week before it was implemented, I've been hard at work building Libr (https://librapp.com https://librapp.com) to replace it. A large amount of art that isn't porn, but that qualifies as "adult content" under the new policy has been all but purged from the internet. It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art. Libr is about two thirds of the way there (source is on GitHub) and I have posting, content search, blog feeds and content authoring of video/images and text posts done. Following, liking and the main feed are next. This will be a Progresive web app - No app store needed, meaning no app store bans.
  • phoe-krk 8y ago
    Are you going to federate with other content-sharing app via ActivityPub? Several other Tumblr alternatives have popped up as Fediverse instances and you might want them to interoperate with your project.
  • miguelmota 8y ago
    What's considered art vs adult content is a very big gray area that's open to interpretation from multiple perspectives. From a platform's point of view, it's safer to ban anything remotely that might considered adult content to avoid false negatives that could land them in trouble.
  • yann63 8y ago
    > It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art. Are you saying that adult content is not legitimate art? If so, I think you may be part of the problem, not the solution. English is not my first language, so please correct me if I am wrong. By adult content, most of us think "porn". But as has been said, there's also violence and other things that some culture do not want their children exposed to. There's no way to ban nudity or other things one may dislike without having to put some kind of filters in place. And once those filters are in place, they are abused to filter legitimate content. Every. Single. Time. We have to rely on education, the best filter is in our brains. That's the cost to real freedom of speech.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• hindsightbias 8y ago
  America's Puritan streak can be supressed, but never strangled.
• bad_user 8y ago
  What's interesting to me is how Americans don't bat an eye on all the violence exposed in movies, music and games, but then become prudish when it comes to sex. And these are the traits of the exported American culture. In my European country it is perfectly normal to have pictures of your children naked. It's also OK for them to see a nude body now and then, like at the beach (and yes I am aware that I'm not talking about all of Europe, some countries ban nudity in public). But do that in the US and you risk being labeled as a pedophile. I love how freedom of speech is protected by the US constitution, certainly a model to follow for the rest of us, however banning adult content while allowing violence, white nationalism and xenophobia is a huge double standard that gets exported to the rest of the world too. So as a citizen of an EU country that's not prudish about sex, why do I have to suffer from the censorship of US companies? And honestly, do you like it when you see actors like Tom Cruise not kissing the girl in his movies, possibly because it needs to be played in China?
  • throwaway415415 8y ago
    This. What is wrong with nudity? What is wrong if a child sees a dick or a titty? Why are ashamed? Why is nudity such an awful thing?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • taurath 8y ago
      It’s a religion thing primarily.
      • faissaloo 8y ago
        People use this explanation as a copout, have you considered why a religion would have such an attitude?
        • scarejunba 8y ago
          It's superstitious nonsense. Presumably it's historical and a means to control people.
• sgt101 8y ago
  The real "original sin" of the free internet is the curation of the experience of using neutral information systems to drive engagement and skew users decisions away from their own interest towards the commercial interest of the web sites. Routine deception and manipulation mean that there are no clear lines or defensible moats of freedom. There is no rule of law or communal standard of fairness on the internet. This article fogs that truth. When ever I turn off the filters on my search engines explicit content is served instantly. I think that the censorship that the author is referring to is either self imposed, imposed by commercial decisions (tumblr) or due to legal constraints (child porn, rape, worse things than that). Consensual sex work is mentioned, my perception is that the vast majority of sex workers are not doing it because of free choice, but rather because of exploitation and pressure. Drug and alcohol addiction as well as a history of abuse are often cited as drivers, and I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes. The "women speaking truth" can only every have authentic voices if they are speaking from positions of power and security; I do not believe that this is the case for prostitutes anywhere. The illegality of prostitution is not because people are prudes, it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work.
  • logicchains 8y ago
    > I hear of no stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as prostitutes Here's one: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-majority-of-sex-workers-enjoy-their-job-why-should-we-find-that-surprising-10083175.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-majority-of.... "In fact, when you ask sex workers about their job satisfaction and working conditions – as a study led by Leeds University just has – the majority of them are happy. When asked to describe their work, respondents typically selected positive or neutral words. 91 per cent of sex workers described their work as ‘flexible’, 66 per cent described it as ‘fun’ and over half find their job ‘rewarding’.". That aside, have you heard many stories where people have found happy and fulfilled lives as coal miners? As Amazon warehouse workers? Lots of jobs suck, but we don't ban them. >it is because prostitutes are routinely destroyed by their work. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/8/778/91471 https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/8/778/91471 found a standardised mortality rate of 1.9 for American prostitutes (almost twice that of the average member of the population), similar to what https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.54.5.758 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.54.5.... found for coal miners, but we don't ban coal mining. For prostitution, violence was one of the "predominant causes of death", a situation that would be significantly improved were prostitution legal, as prostitutes could then rely on police protection without fear of being arrested for their work.
• Knove 8y ago
  I think as an adult, we should have the right not to be prohibited.
• stinos 8y ago
  There's nude art subreddits, no? And Vimeo has a bunch of channels featuring nudity on stage, nude art performances etc. It's video though, and maybe not super popular on a global scale, but just mentioning this to counter the 'all is lost' feeling the article sometimes gave me while reading through it. For the rest though I wholeheartedly agree: the input (keyboard) and in between (servers) and output (search results/sites) being censored - with the majority of people not even realizing it - is quite terrifying. Question: I do remember Nerve, but find it a bit hard to believe there is really nothing like it anymore, is there?
  • xfitm3 8y ago
    Reddit used to be a lot more open. I can't help but think that since a few years ago there are more rules than ever, more mods, and more pressure to fit into an echo chamber of who the average redditor should be.
  • eloisant 8y ago
    It's shrinking. Tumblr is down. How long do you think reddit will resist? Also you can launch a website like Nerve if you want, I'm sure you'll find servers to host it. But who will know about it if you're not in Google's search results, and Facebook doesn't allow linking to your articles?
    • pmlnr 8y ago
      > But who will know about it if you're not in Google's search results, and Facebook doesn't allow linking to your articles? When I was a teenager, underground things that you only heard about through word of mouth, were cool, and I think it still is. The ones actually interested will find these things beyond Google or Facebook, which is the in-your-face mainstream in 2019. However, there is no money in it, like it should be with communities.
• mac_was 8y ago
  The artist claims that internet killed porn then switches to Yahoo News and is able to find what she is looking for, so it seems that she is unhappy that it is not reachable on Google. Another point is that when she worked with teenagers their biggest question was how to prevent diseases, pregnancy, one quick question- how would they find answers on porn sites? All the answers are available publicly on health related sites like the NHS for example, you do not need porn and sex-museums for that.
  • narrator 8y ago
    If I go to duckduckgo and type in porn related search keywords I get more sites than I could ever look at for the rest of my life. The REAL problem is the tech monopolies ate the internet. The little sites are still out there, but they are slowly bleeding out to the app/social media giant/google filter bubble monopolies.
  • renholder 8y ago
    >All the answers are available publicly on health related sites like the NHS for example... I hate to put it like this but the NHS is, largely, unknown to the Americans. They have their own version (e.g.: Department of Health, Surgeon General, etc.) but I think you skimmed on something that is a byproduct of that cultural mentality: Sex and nudity is bad; therefore, any education around that is bad. People might be able to go and find that information on the NHS' website, if the actual act of doing so wasn't - itself - stigmatised. There are ripe examples across the internet of people up in arms about sexual education in American schools (this used to be something largely concentrated to the Bible Belt, but as demographics move, has been spreading wider across their country)[0,1]. Then, you have the "think of the children!" crowd.[2, 3] I think someone paying for advertisement time to say, "If your parents, school, government is failing you, try to look for the information elsewhere - say the NHS," might go a long but - even then - you might be "unpatriotic", "unamerican", "literally the devil", etc. for even doing so. Fighting the herd mentality isn't without it's own plight. [0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sex-education-controversy-erupts-in-omaha/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sex-education-controversy-erupt... [1] - https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/03/31/parents-protest-graphic-and-explicit-sex-ed-curriculum-in-calif-schools/ https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/03/31/parents-protest-gra... [2] - https://www.hli.org/2018/04/comprehensive-sex-education/ https://www.hli.org/2018/04/comprehensive-sex-education/ [3] - https://www.lifezette.com/2016/12/evil-in-the-classroom-sexuality-education-kids/ https://www.lifezette.com/2016/12/evil-in-the-classroom-sexu...
• ben_w 8y ago
  The sex-bad-violence-good meme confused me at least since I became aware of its existence aged about 14. I was 16 when I got a letter published in a UK national newspaper on this topic, pointing out the absurdity that deliberate murder could be shown in a cartoon aimed specifically at young kids (i.e. BBFC rating Uc), but people “my own age”[1] couldn’t see pictures of uncensored sex even though we could legally[1] perform those acts. I’m now in Berlin, where “Dildo King” is advertised on rotating billboards in the City Centre next to adverts for kid’s dentists and nobody bats an eyelid. In the other direction, I also remember being shocked when I first visited the USA and seeing “to my dad” and “to my daughter” Valentine’s Day cards in the supermarket. [1] My own age at the time being the age of consent in the UK: 16
  • tnolet 8y ago
    Ah yes, the good old “Dildo King” ads always put a smile on my face and remind me that Germans (and Berliners even more) are not yet 100% sucked up into the US / SV stance on morality and censorship. I noticed in Berlin startups that this is sorta changing. Seems the exported “culture of being offended” is slowly taking hold of, surprisingly, mostly younger people.
    • thaumasiotes 8y ago
      Surprisingly? I'd expect any cultural shift to take place among young people. Older people already have their culture.
      • tnolet 8y ago
        I guess you’re right, just weird to see young people turn to a form of conservatism.
        • beobab 8y ago
          Rebelling against the rebels? How apt. :-)
        • oosjc9a5 8y ago
• black-tea 8y ago
  I wonder how long this woman spent finding the next thing to complain about. Her real gripe is quietly dropped in the third paragraph where she claims porn is about "women". Porn is made by men for men on the whole. I despise porn personally and while I don't support censorship I certainly don't want to use a service where I constantly see news about porn. Porn is not about "people". It's just something almost every young man is addicted to because it simulates the feeling of mating with multiple women.
  • scottlocklin 8y ago
    She's a bay area sex writer, and is probably kind of butthurt that work and fame ain't what it was some years ago. The internet actually was much better when "Violet Blue" was a bigger deal, but it has little to do with the number of porn search results in google news.
• mirimir 8y ago
  I don't see this for Google, using a German IP. But I do see it for Startpage, until I turn off the family filter. Searching for "porn start suicide". First hits: Google: Fifth porn star dies: Drugs, suicide factors in deaths - The Mercury News <https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/fifth-young-porn-star-dies-drugs-despair-suicide-factors-in-deaths/> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/fifth-young-porn-star... DDG: Fifth young porn star dies: Drugs, despair, suicide factors ... <https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/fifth-young-porn-star-dies-drugs-despair-suicide-factors-in-deaths/> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/fifth-young-porn-star... Startpage: Did porn star August Ames really commit suicide because of cyber ... <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6544965/Did-porn-star-August-Ames-really-commit-suicide-cyber-bullying-shoot.html> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6544965/Did-porn-st... Searx: Suicide Girls Porn Videos | Pornhub.com <https://www.pornhub.com/video/search?search=suicide+girls> https://www.pornhub.com/video/search?search=suicide+girls> It is interesting that Searx (using Bing, I think) returned Pornhub as the top hit, rather than one of the news stories. But maybe that was just randomness.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
  "Because it is women, people of color, LGBTQ communities, writers and artists who compose the majority population of sex communities" While it seems her concerns are warranted, that kind of writing just puts me off. It seems also unlikely that women are more concerned with sex than men. And it is not nazis and incels taking over the internet and censoring sexual content, but presumably US puritanism. And also, presumably, liberals who worry that porn is exploitation of women. Google and Facebook are dominated by SJWs, not by nazis (unless you admit those amount to the same thing). Maybe Puritanism simply won - their work ethic resulted in creating Silicon Valley, so now they get to establish their puritan rules in the global digital network.
  • marvin 8y ago
    Agree with this; I'm a straight guy that actively supports LGBTQ+ rights (actually being an active, paying member of my country's organization and participating in the Pride festival every year). I strongly support sex positivity and oppose censorship, but this routine of calling out small and troubled minorities, or even the male gender or masculinity in general as the bogeyman, really needs to stop. It excludes close to half of everyone who would otherwise enthusiastically support the cause.
• Sharlin 8y ago
  Tangentially related: Holvi [1], a digital banking service, just froze the account of a Finnish BDSM association without warning, referring to a clause in their terms of use that forbids "items that are considered obscene, or sexually oriented materials or services". The phrasing, especially the word "obscene" makes me suspect that the policy is dictated by big payment service providers (that is, credit card companies and PayPal) and Holvi is just covering its bases here; I doubt the company itself cares very much at all. [1] https://about.holvi.com/ https://about.holvi.com/
• meetowl 8y ago
  Why does this scream Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to me?
• ijb03qv7 8y ago
  The internet you love you mean. I am not a pornography addict, so those things you mention have not affected me at all. Maybe your problem is within yourself.
• DavidVoid 8y ago
  "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." - H.L. Mencken.
• marcus_holmes 8y ago
  I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy. Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject. I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religious, specifically more Christian, and the Christian Church has always taught that sex should only be for procreation. Enjoying it is a sin, apparently. Though I can't find that anywhere in any of the commandments, or the new testament. Plenty of instruction about not murdering people, though, but that didn't seem to get through...
  • lou1306 8y ago
    Italy is (was?) quite religious too, what with Vatican City and a very long Christian-Democratic dominance in national politics, but it is also the birthplace of commedia sexy [1], and erotic comics artists such as Milo Manara and Guido Crepax were quite famous back in their day (they still are). The US seem especially prudish when it comes the depiction of sex in arts and entertainment. [1]: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_sexy_all%27italiana https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_sexy_all%27italiana
    • thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > it is also the birthplace of commedia sexy [1] > [1]: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_sexy_all%27italiana https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_sexy_all%27italiana Sure enough, the Italian genre name is commedia sexy. I'm always interested in phrases like this -- sexy is obviously an English word. It's very common for foreign words to be borrowed when the speaker feels that the concept they express doesn't have a good match in his own language. I'm pretty confident that everything I understand by the word "sexy" can be idiomatically expressed in Italian that is not obviously foreign. Do you happen to know what the Italians mean by using "sexy" as opposed to a more natural-looking word?
      • BerislavLopac 8y ago
• charliebrownau 8y ago
  Whats ruining the West+EU+JP * ISLMAIFCATION * Diversity * open borders * Socialism in Western Society * Corrupt and broken "justice" system * Political "correctness" * Censorship * WOKE and "progressive" infection in culture and media and politics * Feminism * Actual discrimination, hate and racism from SOCIALISTS that are ANTI WESTERN towards ANYONE That isnt an Global LEFT SOCIALIST following the "progressive" cult... Known as Intersectional hate lens and Identity "politics"
• zeckalpha 8y ago
  This isn’t a new phenomenon. The great Usenet renaming was over 30 years ago.
• Tsubasachan 8y ago
  Sadly the big internet companies are all American. That means American law and American culture. I mean I'm sure we would all prefer it if globalization meant degeneracy and atheism for all Dutch style but that has never been the majority position in this world.
• dathinab 8y ago
  Sometimes I wonder how (un-)realistic it is to fill a complain with the EU of google misusing it's quasi monopoly on search to actively discriminate against: - People with open opinions about sex (e.g. down ranking there blog posts etc.). - People which had been victims of sexual violence (and similar) by making it harder for them to inform them self/get help. - Sex workers. - etc. (note that this is a unordered list!) Same goes for other platforms e.g. PayPal. Sure there might be a difference if you use a platform to display pornographic content to people without appropriate age checks. But non of this applies for Google (search) or PayPal (payment). Lastly people might argue that they are just following US law (e.g. for PayPal) but if they operate in the EU then they will have to follow EU law and discrimination against people for _any_ reason is illegal, this includes excluding a blog from search results because it openly speaks about porn or people _legal_ earning money with videos of their naked body. Well but then I'm not a lawyer and didn't really think this through either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > if they operate in the EU then they will have to follow EU law and discrimination against people for _any_ reason is illegal This is totally incoherent. Lack of discrimination is the problem that Google solves. Search results can't all be first; that would be the same thing as not having a search engine at all.
    • LeanderK 8y ago
      i don't agree. Google ranks, but shouldn't be allowed to treat one group unfairly. For example, google shouldn't be allowed to downrank one ethnicity and prefer another. Similiar, google shouldn't be allowed to "forcefully" downrank one's blog, just because it doesn't like some thoughts about sexuality (I don't know if it does though). It's not that google has the total freedom to adjust the search-ranking like it sees fit. I don't know how the law is implemented, but I bet they have a good definition what illegal discrimination actually is. For example, I don't think google would be allowed to rank results (or, as you say it, discriminate) based on gender.
      • 8y ago
• bambax 8y ago
  In general, superstitious behavior tends to win over non-superstitious behavior, even if it is a small minority. For example, say there are two communities in a given town; one of the community has decided that black doors were evil, and won't go through them. The other community doesn't care. Shops that have black doors lose the business of the superstitious community; even if that community is small, it simply makes no sense for a shop owner to keep a black door, whereas if the door is another color, it will cause no problem with anyone. And so, pretty soon there will be no black doors anywhere. This may appear controversial, but the fact is you can't fight superstition with openness because openness accepts superstition and lets it grow and conquer everything. The only way to combat superstition is to actively fight it.
  • grenoire 8y ago
    Taleb has a piece on this exact observation https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
    • amelius 8y ago
      How would it apply to slavery? I.e., a small but not insignificant portion of people thought that slavery was bad (namely the slaves themselves). Yet, slavery continued for quite a long time.
      • chr1 8y ago
        This wouldn't apply at all, because the majority needs to be indifferent, and there should be no other minority demanding the opposite.
  • namaemuta 8y ago
    Exactly what is happening with planes. I'm still astonished every time I get into one and see the missing row 13. It's so ridiculous...
    • 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• Lazare 8y ago
  Yeah. The article is accurate, and it's horrifying. It's nonsensical, harmful, and is, literally, killing people. Worse, I don't really...see...a fix? The people being hurt by this are the least powerful and most vulnerable; they're not going to force a policy reversal. And everyone else just doesn't care that much, and even if they do, what can they do about it? I find it all very depressing.
• charliebrownau 8y ago
  Gday Platforms that censor speech List :- * Facebook * Twitter * Google * Youtube * TUMBLR * Pateron * Stripe * Paypal * Twitch * Spotify * Apple * pin interest * LinkedIn * Mailchimp * Wordpress * mastodon * azure * Mastercard * Godaddy * MEDIUM * Shopify * Cloudflare * pusher * WIKI * Reddit * teespring * Slack * coinbase * GOFUNDME * VISA * Square * Bitpay * ROKU
• intake 8y ago
  He used the word incel unironically, his opinion is invalid. Also nothing has changed for me because I never used any of those normalfag sites to begin with, the internet is the same it was 12 years ago from my point of view
• protomyth 8y ago
  “Advertiser friendly” killed the internet we love. Sex is just one aspect of a poor excuse.
• jmsmistral 8y ago
  These types of articles are a great reminder of how prevalent censorship is on mainstream services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Question - what other tech/services exists out there that supports freedom? Would that be in the form of distributed tech like mastodon, for example? Could these be leveraged to trigger tech giants to revert censorship? Meh... It's demotivating to see that everyday services that everyone uses essentially limit perspectives on how life happens.
• meshr 8y ago
  Mad world: It is ok for the US president to pay prostitutes, restrict sex-redistributing websites and it is ok for the first lady to sell body. What is not ok is to do web search for this kind of activities that they did. They just don’t want us to have the same rights.
• Kenji 8y ago
  People don't make sites like Nerve anymore. No one can. This is nonsense. Anyone can make such a site if they put their mind to it. You just have to find your way around the internet to get to the good stuff.
• russellbeattie 8y ago
  Wow. This whole thread and Right Wing Conservatives and Republicans aren't called out once? Hacker News has become as pandering to the right wing as Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook. Hypocrites.
  • zozbot123 8y ago
    Not sure if serious, but sex censorship is mostly a bi-partisan endeavor these days. See, e.g. the whole controversy around Patreon, where creators of sexually-suggestive content and right-wing/conservative intellectuals are both facing the prospect of being "de-platformed" for political reasons.
    • russellbeattie 8y ago
      Creators of sexually suggestive content are being targeted by the right wing because God says it's bad and they don't like it. Neo-Nazis (or as you referred to them, "conservative intellectuals") are being targeted because their hate speech promotes intolerance and causes pain, suffering and encourages right wing extremists, who then go out and kill people with guns and cars. Try to learn the concept of false equivalency and stop pandering.
• jimhefferon 8y ago
  When I was a kid there were very few black people on television, and no major black characters (I'm from the US). Likewise there was no sex; Laura and Rob Petrie slept in separate beds, etc. There were three majors-- CBS, NBC, and ABC-- and people with names like Pastor Bob from Decent Society Now! would get their folks to pressure network departments, and these departments found it easiest for business to just not run this stuff. All very comfortable but all very wrong. Google, etc., seem a lot like the majors of our time. Sure they are private businesses acting according to the business environment they find themselves in, but the outcome may be, in the long run, bad for all of us.
  • bksenior 8y ago
    Google been a defacto monopoly for a long-time. I always just assumed it was to keep regulation from some states backwards religious senators/congresspeople at bay.
    • robertAngst 8y ago
      Aside from the privacy, google has been the best company of my life. But I'm one of those, dont care about privacy people with mild porn habits and I'm starting a non-profit. I don't have much to hide, especially given the good I've accomplished with Google's support. (Also I get 200+ website visitors from google daily)
      • pnw_hazor 8y ago
        Privacy is about the least of google, et al. evils. It is the legion of researchers and engineers that leverage personal information to build dark patterns and Digital Skinner boxes is where the danger and harm comes from.
• tim333 8y ago
  > It's just that Google's 2018 algorithm upgrade filters out news with the word "porn" in it. Like articles about porn performer suicide, tips for revenge porn victims, parents who oppose porn website age-verification I'm puzzled - I searched for "porn performer suicide" and the other two in Google and it returned relevant searches in each case. I don't particularly want Google bring up porn results when I'm not looking for it and it seems to work ok if you do want to look.
• syril 8y ago
  stuff like this doesnt even matter. who cares
• readingnews 8y ago
  The author seems to equate facebook, google, twitter, etc with "the internet". I agree, those are some major heavy hitting players on the network, but it seems the author wants the internet of yore, where it was the wild wild west. That internet still exists, you just can not get there from facebook, google, twitter. So why do we continue to use those services?
  • Riverheart 8y ago
    Too be fair, these silos are the internet for a vast swathe of people. Google has always been a gateway to discovering new places on the internet and as she pointed out, they are actively suppressing search results they don't like. They don't know there are or can't find the places outside the silos.
    • krapp 8y ago
      Is that really true enough to be considered axiomatic, or is it just an expression of the tendency of technical people to assume the typical user is little smarter than a ham sandwich? Using a small number of sites doesn't mean you don't know other sites exist. Consider the olden days of the web when discovery was, arguably, more difficult than today (the problem search engines emerged to solve.) Did people not comprehend that the web existed outside of Geocities or Yahoo? No, they still knew it was there. They may not have been able to find it, or cared to find it, but they still understood there was more "internet" out there. Nowadays, meanwhile, almost every business has a website. Authors have websites. Political leaders, countries, movements and offices have websites. Celebrities have websites. Fandoms and communities have websites. Have you ever paid attention to just how many URLS you encounter outside of the silos, in real life, throughout the day? People are inundated with them. And, those silos tend to be content aggregators which let people post content from third party websites. There may be some truth to the premise, but I suspect the extend is overstated in order to sell the narrative that the web is existentially under threat of corporate control and political censorship.
      • progval 8y ago
        All student organizations at my (small) university have a website and an active public mailing list. Yet, there is a constant push from their members for maintaining an account on Facebook. They know Facebook is evil, but "everyone is on Facebook and we have to be there to be visible". And unfortunately they are right: announcing an event on Facebook makes it more popular.
• phreack 8y ago
  I've had an idea for an adult oriented app, that many many people have told me they'd pay for and support, but it'd need push notifications to work (preventing it from working in a browser), and Apple is such a walled garden that you can't even sideload an app the way you can in Android (or any desktop OS). It's quite frustrating to see the way they get to shape culture.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    You can sideload on iOS but it’s annoying and you’re not likely to get paying customers to jump through the necessary hoops.
  • perilunar 8y ago
    You can do push notifications in browsers. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API
    • phreack 8y ago
      Yeah, but it's not supported on iOS' Safari. You need the user to install a native app for them to be able to receive notifications, and it looks like they're years away from implementing that on a browser. So it's App Store or bust.
• crazygringo 8y ago
  Again and again I see the comments of how crazy it is that we allow violence in films/TV/anywhere, but not sex which is peaceful and harmless -- as if this were some kind of idiocy or hypocrisy. There's a good reason we try to draw lines between areas where sex is "allowed" and "not allowed" -- because it's arousing and has the potential to be greatly embarrassing. It's private, in a way that violence isn't. I seriously don't get how so many people seem to willfully ignore this. When I Google something in a meeting or in front of my mother, I do not want sexual results to appear because some term has an alternate meaning. When I watch a movie with my parents, nobody's going to squirm from the violence, but we certainly don't want to watch a steamy sex scene together. That's just how human beings are wired. We're not prudes, there's just a time and a place. So having major internet services like Google and Facebook default to being non-sexual seems like a pretty smart move to me. And then there are still countless sites on the internet devoted entirely to sex. Keeping them largely separated seems smart. And while what happened to Tumblr was very sad, I'm sure other sites will replace it... it's the internet after all.
  • hobs 8y ago
    That's completely a cultural artifact though, there's no reason to be squeamish about sex and to accept violence. Plenty of cultures have much looser taboos around this than yours, its not how human beings are wired.
    • mberning 8y ago
      I would love to know in which cultures a teenage son watching soft core porn with their mother is perfectly comfortable or possibly even celebrated.
      • Juliate 8y ago
        That's not the point. The point is about the disconnect of a society that protects/promotes speech/messages/images/behaviour about violence while refusing the same for sex. While one is deadly and the second is not; while one can be a great resource of connection and pleasure, while the other is the exact negation of it.
• marvin 8y ago
  With all this censorship, isn't there now a massive unmet demand for a service that allows uncensored distribution of relevant, sex-related content? Necessarily located in a European country and avoiding any US-based platform that censors such content.
• apo 8y ago
  What happened was we failed to consider the consequences of centralization: - Google with its search - Tumblr (or Medium) with its blogging platform - Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram with their connection to friends, family, and news - Starbucks with its roaming internet access - Youtube with its ubiquitous video distribution - PayPal with its payment network - Apple with its walled garden App Store It's no accident that these are all American companies. When American companies control the internet's major centralization points, American cultural norms will rule. Like most cultural norms, they are inconsistent and downright ridiculous if examined closely enough. But that's beside the point. AI and Mechanical Turk workflows enabled these companies to scrub content that violated norms at massive scale. The article hints at, but fails to go for the jugular on a far more important point. Porn and sexuality are classifications. To an AI or Mechanical Turk, classifications are pretty much interchangeable. Entire areas of human knowledge have become easy to censor by decree. Vast swaths of scientific research, political discourse, and news coverage can now be branded as "fake," "offensive," "privileged," or "deplorable," and censored at the drop of a hat. Sexual censorship is just the tip of a monstrous iceberg.
  • joejerryronnie 8y ago
    Sadly, this massive wave of future censorship is being driven by the very people who would have fought for the right to free speech and expression in the past. We are so frightened of fake news, micro-aggressions, and things which may trigger our mostly white, middle class sensitivities that we are essentially forcing governments around the world to enact censorship for us.
    • duality 8y ago
      I wouldn't try to racialize this. I'm also not convinced our (whose? I'm guessing you mean USA's) mostly white middle class are the ones frightened of and complaining about fake news, microaggressions or being triggered. Those seem more like Bay Area sensibilities and concerns than Middle America's.
      • njarboe 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• drngdds 8y ago
  This is one of many reasons that hypercentralization is bad. You can't have one company arbitrarily decide to kill 12.5 million blogs if those blogs aren't hosted by one company, or even any company at all.
• gjsman-1000 8y ago
  I would say the opposite: Porn killed the internet I loved.
• fakare 8y ago
  Why we shout that all sexualities have to be accepted but then same time these big companies dictate and sensure everything ? Why shouting in streets about our gay or lesbian rights is ok but not write or day that in video is forbidden ? Why Facebook have so many sexuality options but no one can talk about it ? Time to leave Facebook Google and Twitter alone is now. There have to be alternative services for open minded people..
• uneewkly 8y ago
  The very premise of this article is flawed. I don't buy it. Censorship of sex didn't kill the internet it killed the popularity of sex on the internet. I am sorry the internet is not only for sex exploration or arousal. It serves many other useful ends besides healthy or unhealthy sexual proclivities. Decisions made by Google & Co to me are purely business decisions. Think about it, if you wanted to be the most popular search engine how do you reconcile that with getting blocked in schools, libraries, and homes. Call it cultural influence if you like but I personally won't be at all surprised tomorrow if Google made a switch to serve up search results with live hot steamy sex from two strangers on the side because that's the kind of user they are after. I, on the other hand, will block their services. If the author's argument is that censorship of any form is a threat to the vision of the internet, we can have a meaningful discussion about that. The problem described in the article is easily solved: The author should start an adult search engine, adult blog (insert your favorite adult content here) and serve up whatever explicit content tickles her fancies but these types of arguments are frankly trite and lacking much depth.
• pontifier 8y ago
  It's Utah's fault.
• Eli_P 8y ago
  We are not to tell nature what she’s gotta be. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. Richard Feynman So, humanity's greatest minds are chugging their assess on unsolved game theory problem: how to chop down the overpopulation tax and cram all pieces into everybody's asses, so after adding up again the tax sum is zero, and everybody's happy and nobody suffers/dies. Bad news, can't be done. Good news, can be solved in higher dimensions; add human stupidity, weaknesses, incompetence; thus sexual and cultural differences can be spared... Stop. This still looks like kind of eugenics. No, no, no, I'm outta here. I'll leave it to the best game theorists from Google. /me returned to 18 tabs with porn on Twitter
• yspeak 8y ago
  To complain about Google censorship is laughable. Unfortunately there is still plenty of raunch porn easily available even with safe mode. Google Amazon Yahoo and others have always provided little or no parental controls and are glad to let extremely explicit and harmful images, products, and sites flow freely. My guess is that the actions the article complains about are solely being done for China, child porn liability concerns, and possible bandwidth issues and are drops in the ocean. Porn hurts relationships, kills love, leads to sexual addictions for many, and often involves sex trafficked subjects and sometimes abused children. Google's unwillingness to chase Yahoo's efforts to go above and beyond and drown their users with sex from the far corners of the internet in an already sex obsessed society is something that should be encouraged.
• Too 8y ago
  - "Tumblr can't tell a potato from a boob." - "Google Drive scans your files and deletes what it believes to be explicit content." Think about that twice before choosing where and how to back up your data, regardless if it's explicit or not.
• minusf 8y ago
  wouldnt it be possible for these content hosting companies to host the content in a different jurisdiction? if i host the content, dont i get to make the terms of use?