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Silicon Valley's sex censorship harms everyone
- hnuser847 5y ago
- oh_sigh 5y agoIt isn't. You might be thinking of titillation, which is much more common. And I guess that's because if you're going for viewcounts, the lowest common denominator will get you the most.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rr808 5y agoIt is kinda weird to see war footage of people burning alive, dismembered corpses, children being bombed. But one little nipple... I guess US TV is the same.
- nerdponx 5y agoI always assumed it was because of Christianity making sex taboo above almost all else.
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoAh, so that's why Catholics have so few children. /s It's easier to be chaste than it is to be holy, so people go for chasteness and pretend it's holiness. Completely misunderstanding the gospels in three process.
- runako 5y agoIn fairness, American TV also does not (frequently) show (real) gore as is often the case in other countries.
- suifbwish 5y agoWhat are you talking about, more than half of the internet bandwidth being used in the world as I type this is transmitting pictures of nipples.
- onion2k 5y agoA 2014 Google study reckoned 4% of the Internet is porn. https://www.statista.com/chart/16959/share-of-the-internet-that-is-porn/ https://www.statista.com/chart/16959/share-of-the-internet-t...
- nrclark 5y ago4% of websites, according to that article. I didn't see any graphs on bandwidth. I doubt that half of all traffic is porn, but 10% wouldn't surprise me at all.
- mescaline 5y agoEven this comment contains nipples. ( o ) ( o )
- Robotbeat 5y agoI've noticed social media using more aggressive censorship (not exactly censorship; more like requiring you to be logged in) on war gore than sexually explicit images.
- watwut 5y agoI did not seen children being bombed. I have heard about that happening and seen video where it took place, but after the fact and fairly sanitized. The brutality of War is not nearly shown as much on TV as your comment implies, at least not in TV I was watching.
- norvvryo 5y agoReal violence is getting harder to find as well. Everything that isn't advertiser friendly is purged from mainstream channels. And it seems like the definition of "advertiser friendly" gets more and more stringent every day.
- tyrfing 5y agoYou're overstating it, lots of violent content is banned on every single popular platform, including hosting services.
- teej 5y agoI have to activate a complicated account level override to see nipples on the Reddit app. I can see gore in 2 clicks.
- tyrfing 5y agoJames Foley, Christchurch, etc. There's a long list of stuff that is almost universally censored, it's not a matter of setting account flags. Incidentally, Reddit is one of the most permissive hosts in terms of content, allowing stuff that even Imgur doesn't.
- throw_a_grenade 5y agoIn Europe, sex is good and violence is bad. In the US, it's the other way around. (stolen from someone on /. years ago)
- elevenoh 5y ago
- bradlys 5y agoI find it weird that "Silicon Valley" is to blame here. This is the result of DC's actions - not SV. Which is mostly coming from the religious right who are big funders/power-holders and dislike sexual imagery and non-fundamental norms in the public eye. SV is just going with where the $$$ are at and complying with the law. They don't give a shit about anything else as long as stonkz go up.
- jdrc 5y agoIt is not that lawmakers censor nipples. it is google that is demonetizing them, even though it has the power (by virtue of controlling both sides of the ad market) to change those attitudes. Yet they have only been becoming more restrictive , not less
- olliej 5y agoIt is the politicians that pass laws to punitively punish companies like google is they ever allow any kid to see anything that isn’t ideologically pure.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoUnless it's a carefully framed slow motion sequence of someone getting their brains blown out. Or hacked to death with a large sharp blade. But at least our kids are safe from nipples.
- jdrc 5y agoNo law prevents google from placing ads almost wherever they like. Late night TV shows always had advertising on them, yet even remotely referencing sex on the net is unmonetizable
- lukev 5y agoCould you provide an example of such a law? To my knowledge the US courts and legal systems have been fairly consistent that sexual content is protected under the First Amendment. The main culprit appears to be the prudishness and conservatism of large companies, somewhat big tech companies but especially credit card companies and payment processors.
- jdrc 5y agoThe attitude of silicon valley is, ultimately, shaped by the cultural and religious values and background if its worker base. Such attitudes are often expressed in this forum as well. > When female nipples are censored but male nipples are not, we know that we must police our own bodies to ensure we do not arouse men It is probably true that digital media is more lenient to gay male sexuality than to female sexuality probably because the former is still media taboo. There is a sense that they go out of the way to protect women from themselves which is an attitude that should be thoroughly condemned.
- olliej 5y agoHow is this Silicon Valley’s fault? You have a bunch of puritanical politicians and voters who attempt to aggressively punish anyone that goes against their idea of a perfect puritan society. The result is laws that by design force corporations into over censoring to avoid liability. Turning around and blaming SV for this is nonsense, especially when the same puritans are blaming SV for all of the non-puritanically pure parts of society.
- jarjoura 5y agoWhat is this post about exactly? Reddit has more porn than any one person can possibly see in a lifetime. Twitter too. Apple and Facebook took a middle of the line approach to avoid offending people. Also sex is a hard line to walk. There’s just so much shady shit out there that is exploitative and done in bad faith. It’s much easier to set conservative rules and leave other dedicated spaces for more provocative content.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y agoI don’t necessarily disagree, except with the characterization of Apple and Facebook as taking some sort of ‘middle line’? I guess Apple doesn’t actively prevent me from watching porn on that sweet pro display xdr. But Facebook doesn’t even allow non-erotic nudity. It’s PG-Pope, as far as I can tell.
- xiphias2 5y agoHow do you watch porn on apple devices? For me the 3rd party apps only work on Android (a great example when side loading can help)
- mxkopy 5y agoPretend you make a video about the best gay movie stars, because you're gay and you like to document your role models. You're doing something that doesn't involve genitals or anything explicit, but is per se sexual because gayness is by definition a sexual topic. Post it to YouTube, and you get demonetized because you're making sexual content (worst case). Or your viewers get recommended videos about sex toys too (average case). I think there is a pretty hard line between straight porn and sexual content that is pretty easy to police, but the problem remains that conservative approaches towards sex tend to stifle the experiences of people who aren't sexually conservative. People have a set of assumptions that they make when they hear "movie star" (straight white man). When you add more adjectives (gay movie star, female movie star, black movie star), those are assumptions are broken and we are no longer in the land of "normal" movie stars, but "sexual" "political" and "ethnic" ones. I didn't read the article bc fuck Wired but I can assume they're pushing for openness towards sex bc it allows us to be more open to those who have an identity strongly rooted in sex (which honestly should be everyone even if you're straight)
- antattack 5y agoSex censorship seems to be benefiting music videos. And IMO the videos make the sex more twisted than then reality, something like magazines and healthy body image.
- jchw 5y agoI am almost 100% with this article and would often go even further, and I absolutely agree that marginalized people are going to be disproportionately affected. However, there are a couple assertions that seemed a bit dubious. For example: > Danielle Blunt, a queer-identified sex worker with a master's in Public Health who’s spent time observing the phenomenon, notes that she’s seen Instagram ban hashtags like #femdom and even #women—while #maledom remains available. I’m not exactly a porn or sex work connoisseur, but my immediate first thought is that I’ve actually heard the term “femdom” but never maledom. Of course, that could just be a lack of understanding on my part, but at least a cursory search seems to agree: femdom is a dramatically more popular term. I searched both on Google (which is a nice thing to have sitting in my search history, I’m sure) and moved a couple pages back to hopefully grab a more accurate result count, and got the measure 1,880,000,000/22,200,000 = 84x more popular. Exactly why is unclear, but my guess is that maledom is more often lumped into the larger BDSM umbrella and not distinguished. I suspect many popular BDSM terms that are not gendered are also blocked. Of course, I could be wrong. I don’t have an instagram account, so I can’t verify how often these terms are used on such websites even if I wanted to. Still, it goes on to continue draw this sex puritanism as being firmly gendered, but I think that this is not a result of Silicon Valley’s weird obsession with puritanism. Rather, the reason why some non-explicit sexual content is allowed and other non-explicit sexual content is not runs a lot deeper than just SV companies, and is the result of the general culture we have for what is “safe” and what is not safe. This is definitely 100% for sure biased, but that was never not the case, and certainly not an invention of Twitter or Instagram. Tumblr’s infamous “female-presenting nipples” line definitely is insultingly stupid, but its insulting stupidity rooted in deep American traditions of having double-standards. If you disregard our bizarre cultural inequities regarding what sexual content is “safe”, what remains is a very clear issue: payment processors and advertisers (and some other gatekeepers, like the App Store) yield immense control over the entire modern Internet. I don’t even think it’s necessarily an issue with Silicon Valley specifically. I was really hoping cryptocurrency would help provide a balance, but instead it looks like the primary function of cryptocurrency is to launder money and provide another place to gamble. Unfortunate, but oh well.
- gorwell 5y agoSilicon Valley's Censorship Harms Everyone
- Animats 5y ago"Instead, it seems likely that they simply don’t see queer users as important" 3.8%.[1] That's below the noise threshold from a revenue standpoint. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite...
- throwawayp0rn 5y ago
- WinterMount223 5y agoIs there even one guy who got laid through direct messaging on Onlyfans and not paid for it?
- throwawayp0rn 5y ago[flagged]
- oneoff786 5y agoInstagram doesn’t want to be the local bar
- Zak 5y agoI think a big part of it is platforms not wanting to get listed as "adult content" by organizations maintaining filter lists. Facebook wants absolutely everyone to use Instagram, especially teenagers. They almost launched Instagram for kids under 13, whom social media companies in the US are forbidden from offering their standard products to. I've seen public wifi filters class reddit as "adult".
- freyr 5y agoNot to mention advertisers, but could it be that most users don’t actually want porn and solicitations by sex workers showing up in their Facebook and Instagram feeds? There is no shortage of places to find porn or sex workers online, for those who seek it out, including on some popular social media sites. It can be difficult to even search Twitter without getting a close-up photo of someone’s genitalia in the results. I don’t think it’s necessary that every social media site becomes a platform for porn and sex work.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoHave these people been on the Internet?
- chairmanwow1 5y agoWhat an uninteresting point of view. I don’t have time to be enraged about this
- markdown 5y agoNot mentioned in this article is the way indigenous people are a victimised by Facebook for just... being, because their traditional dress (in non-sexual contexts) is considered too revealing by Facebooks standards. This happens all the time in Vanuatu and Papua Niu Guinea. > "Those pictures are appropriate to me because it's part of my culture, but to Facebook it's not appropriate …those who are working at Facebook should understand that we have different cultures around the world." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/facebook-mistakenly-blocks-vanuatu-images-over-nudity-ceremony/12807604 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/facebook-mistakenly-b... https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018642361/another-facebook-photo-fail https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2...
- teej 5y agoI’ve worked at a VC-backed social media app and currently work for a privately owned porn company. SV has the dumbest double standards about sex and nudity. Just colossally dumb. There’s a few forces at work that the article doesn’t dig into - 1/ VCs get their money from LPs. LPs are orgs like university trusts and pension funds. Those LPs demand “morality clauses” that limit what VCs can invest in. And VCs give it to them. 2/ Google starting 2018-ish began to cave to advertiser pressure about nudity. They passed that pressure down to their different business. Now YouTube, AdWords, Adsense, etc all must ensure ad content is never shown next to nudity. Those business teams rolled out this missive in the most bungled way possible. False positives be damned, the ad dollars must flow. This leads to startups being squeezed on both sides - investors can’t be seen supporting sex and ad platforms salt the earth anywhere an adult word might be uttered. So as a social media platform, you pretend it doesn’t exist (Reddit, Instagram), you quarantine it (Twitch), or you mass-deplatform and cross your fingers (YouTube, Snapchat). I don’t know what the answer is for those products, but I feel like we could do better.
- jdrc 5y agonot even nudity. we run a website with virtual avatars, and some people like to dress them up with sexy clothes. somehow adsense detects nipples behind virtual clothes
- _8j50 5y agoEh? Are there barriers to sex-friendly startups and platforms? Let's discuss those then. "Silicon valley" or not, others shouldn't be compulsed into featuring or supporting others' expression of sexuality. Consent as I understand is a foundational principle of any healthy sexual relationship or expression. If a person wishes to censor or prohibit expressions of sexuality, so long as they don't prohibit others from independently expressing their sexuality then what is the problem?
- jdrc 5y agoyes there are. if you e.g. try to start a nudist community where no sex is involved, you can't monetize it through ads, and mastercard&visa require that you hold government ID proof for every member that uploads images. demonetization is for all intents and purposes prohibition
- _8j50 5y agoYes.. but crypto? Even if you are right, the problem is master card and visa not silicon valley censorship. So pass a law that prohibits payment processors from refusing any legit business? My whole point was to address the root cause instead of the lazy cause.
- vxNsr 5y agoThe issue is that people have gotten used to being able to put things on the internet for free. Unfortunately for people involved in selling sex, there are many laws that make hosting their content relatively expensive. Each piece of content uploaded needs to be moderated by someone to confirm it’s not something that runs afoul of the law, this is unscalable, and thus the classic SV playbook doesn’t apply. In fact the more popular a service gets, the more expensive it becomes to run, on an almost exponential scale. Meaning there’s an inflection point where the service won’t be able to profitably add more customers. There’s a reason such a service hasn’t sprung up… no matter how you run the numbers there’s not a good, safe way, to both allow a backstage-type service and promise on penalty of criminal charges that some form of (child) abuse won’t take place on the platform.
- guilhas 5y agoThese past couple years must have beaten all records in censorship So we are cool with political censorship, scientific and medical censorship, covid... But sex censorship adjacent is the thing we need to investigate A lot of the points have nothing to do with 'Silicon Valley' since it broadly reflects society views. It seems more a hint that someone wants 'Silicon Valley' to manipulate society views I don't think anyone has any problem finding sexual content Also I don't think we want sex related content being forced on us 24/7
- int_19h 5y agoOr, maybe, we're not cool with any censorship? And nobody is suggesting that sex-related content should be forced on anyone 24/7. But there's no reason why one shouldn't be able to find and join a group on, say, FB that caters to such things.
- alanwreath 5y agoSome things should be censored, just like some things should not be promoted or given air time. I'm sure that even though you stated "we're not cool with any censorship", even you can find something. And given previous statements here, the second that Steam or any other platform knows you're an adult they will not stop suggesting "adult" themes/products to you. Advertisers don't need to wait and gauge whether you will respond well to sexualized material. It's a given that you most likely will. There is no problem with publishing or finding erotic material on the internet. The reverse, however, is much harder problem. Anyone that has tried to create a platform with content sharing knows this. So, yeah: Sex censorship does harm everyone, because it saps resources from actual product development. But boy oh boy please keep doing it. Trim out the noise, many appreciate it.
- int_19h 5y agoYou're missing the point. It's not about "erotic material" at all! It's about discussions on topics related to sexuality. The sex work angle here is not about sex workers finding clients - it's about them being able to discuss their work in general. Not to mention that whole thing where anything "gay" is automatically "sexual" etc.
- tonguez 5y ago“ BARDOT SMITH CALLS herself a “corporate finance escapee.” Petite and exuding intellect, she looks the part, but for the past 10 years she’s been involved in a different industry: the precarious world of sex work. She is also, alongside a growing community of sex workers, actively challenging Silicon Valley’s status quo through research and activism. I first encountered her work in the form of an essay she wrote for the critical Silicon Valley publication Model View Culture in 2014. In it, she argued that “[t]he increasing presence of women’s skill and success represents a challenge to tech culture” and that “[w]omen’s success and agency are in direct conflict with an industry culture that caters to the priorities—and egos—of males.” Her words resonated and stuck with me.” Is this satire?
- TeaDrunk 5y agoI would note that, despite its presentation as new activisim-- sex workers advocating for safer work conditions and more societal acceptance has been a fight ongoing for many decades, potentially centuries. It might be taking a new front as the internet involves as increasingly important to sex work but this is not a new fight.
- Bandeau 5y agoAs a moderator of multiple NSFW subreddits a factor not accounted for in this article is spam. The subreddits I moderate do most permit content from commercial (eg OnlyFans) accounts. These types if accounts constitute the bulk of our removals. Being sex positive doesn't mean you need to let your community become overrun with commercial solicitation. In communities without OF rules, you see the some content spammed across dozens of subreddits. There is no engagement with the community. If this behavior is left unchecked it leads to the erosion and eventual death of the community.
- thunkshift1 5y ago> In it, she argued that “[t]he increasing presence of women’s skill and success represents a challenge to tech culture” and that “[w]omen’s success and agency are in direct conflict with an industry culture that caters to the priorities—and egos—of males.” Her words resonated and stuck with me. Couldn’t get myself to read beyond this point.. someone please do it and tell me if the article was worth it