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What happened was we failed to consider the consequences of centralization: - Google with its search - Tumblr (or Medium) with its blogging platform - Twitte

by 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
    You forget that almost everyone in America considers themselves middle class.
darkpuma 8y ago
It's not just American sensibilities that are in play. When you allow people to upload pornographic material you have to deal with the risk that they'll upload illegal material (shit that's illegal in Europe too, it should be pointed out. And we could dive into a tangent to discuss the topic of ISP-level content blocking in America and the UK if you wish..) If you're unable to effectively filter that stuff out the next pragmatic option is often to ban all pornographic content categorically. That's what happened to tumblr. For years they were an American company that allowed pornography, but they were unable to deal with the burden imposed by their users uploading illegal pornography. If I had to guess, reddit is probably next. Does reddit check the ID of every user who decides to upload a nude of themselves? I doubt it. It's probably only a matter of time before reddit finds themselves in hot water too and decides to axe all their NSFW subreddits.
- tripzilch 8y ago
  > It's not just American sensibilities that are in play. When you allow people to upload pornographic material you have to deal with the risk that they'll upload illegal material (shit that's illegal in Europe too (...)) Umm, disagree. If you allow people to upload beautiful, tasty delicious regular porn, they're not going to automatically upload ugly scary bad disgusting child porn, too. It's not like porn is a "gateway drug" (another American term, btw) to child porn. Similarly, if you allow violent action movies with strong language like Die Hard, you're not automatically going to get snuff clips of beheadings like ISIS. The point that you're trying to make is about moderation of uploaded material in general. It's still American sensibilities if you're somehow going to treat "not nude" and "showing a female nipple" differently.
  - ropelike_object 8y ago
    Consider the premise of pornography's capacity to motivate violence. This is an often neglected concept. But we see it readily emerging as a cognitive awareness of real denial and promoter of outsider self image, and depersonalization. So, individuals suddenly notice that they have no access to real sexual gratification, they are only permitted participation as distant observer. They live isolated from the inside of the fishbowl where everyone else has sex, and on the outside of the aquarium glass, desolation. In frustration, they lash out, violently. Those invited to the party are treated fairly and receive sexual favors as rewards for status, and they are not. Due to ugliness, poverty, or some other outsider status. This is made plain to those who only consume internet pornography, but shall never realize absurd and unattainable sexual fantasies that internet pornography might provoke. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel
bratah 8y ago
Why do we always ignore/forget LinkedIn?
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Not sure about the Tumblr one. WordPress apparently powers 1/3 of websites. But I also know that a lot of webhosts powering those WP sites forbid any adult content. Why? For two reasons — the difficulty in policing it, just as Tumblr had. But more importantly, the web host industry is built on people paying for resources that remain unused (massive overselling). Adult sites actually use the resources; bandwidth being the primary (which is a lot cheaper than it used to be), but now that video porn is ubiquitous, the processing needed to transcode and deliver video is immense. Which is likely why almost all porn is centralized now at a few top sites, that fund their operations through deals with porn creators or some kind of upper tier subscription.

by apo 8y ago

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
  You forget that almost everyone in America considers themselves middle class.

darkpuma 8y ago

It's not just American sensibilities that are in play. When you allow people to upload pornographic material you have to deal with the risk that they'll upload illegal material (shit that's illegal in Europe too, it should be pointed out. And we could dive into a tangent to discuss the topic of ISP-level content blocking in America and the UK if you wish..) If you're unable to effectively filter that stuff out the next pragmatic option is often to ban all pornographic content categorically. That's what happened to tumblr. For years they were an American company that allowed pornography, but they were unable to deal with the burden imposed by their users uploading illegal pornography. If I had to guess, reddit is probably next. Does reddit check the ID of every user who decides to upload a nude of themselves? I doubt it. It's probably only a matter of time before reddit finds themselves in hot water too and decides to axe all their NSFW subreddits.

tripzilch 8y ago
> It's not just American sensibilities that are in play. When you allow people to upload pornographic material you have to deal with the risk that they'll upload illegal material (shit that's illegal in Europe too (...)) Umm, disagree. If you allow people to upload beautiful, tasty delicious regular porn, they're not going to automatically upload ugly scary bad disgusting child porn, too. It's not like porn is a "gateway drug" (another American term, btw) to child porn. Similarly, if you allow violent action movies with strong language like Die Hard, you're not automatically going to get snuff clips of beheadings like ISIS. The point that you're trying to make is about moderation of uploaded material in general. It's still American sensibilities if you're somehow going to treat "not nude" and "showing a female nipple" differently.
- ropelike_object 8y ago
  Consider the premise of pornography's capacity to motivate violence. This is an often neglected concept. But we see it readily emerging as a cognitive awareness of real denial and promoter of outsider self image, and depersonalization. So, individuals suddenly notice that they have no access to real sexual gratification, they are only permitted participation as distant observer. They live isolated from the inside of the fishbowl where everyone else has sex, and on the outside of the aquarium glass, desolation. In frustration, they lash out, violently. Those invited to the party are treated fairly and receive sexual favors as rewards for status, and they are not. Due to ugliness, poverty, or some other outsider status. This is made plain to those who only consume internet pornography, but shall never realize absurd and unattainable sexual fantasies that internet pornography might provoke. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel

bratah 8y ago

Why do we always ignore/forget LinkedIn?

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

Not sure about the Tumblr one. WordPress apparently powers 1/3 of websites. But I also know that a lot of webhosts powering those WP sites forbid any adult content. Why? For two reasons — the difficulty in policing it, just as Tumblr had. But more importantly, the web host industry is built on people paying for resources that remain unused (massive overselling). Adult sites actually use the resources; bandwidth being the primary (which is a lot cheaper than it used to be), but now that video porn is ubiquitous, the processing needed to transcode and deliver video is immense. Which is likely why almost all porn is centralized now at a few top sites, that fund their operations through deals with porn creators or some kind of upper tier subscription.