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I 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

I 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 ago
It 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 ago
  It 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 ago
    Unless 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 ago
    No 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 ago
    Could 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.
zajio1am 5y ago
Agree that politicians are to blame here, but SESTA / FOSTA laws have bipartisan support, not just from the religious right.
- devmor 5y ago
  Both major parties cater to Christian interests over anything else. The US is a "light theocracy". Until that changes, we will constantly have to defend our industries and personal lives from the intrusion of the church.
  - saghm 5y ago
    To expound on this, we've still yet to have a president who doesn't identify as Christian. I don't think we're particularly close to a point where a self-professed atheist could get elected president either, although I could see someone of another mainstream religion getting elected in the not too distant future.
    - spindle 5y ago
      As a non-American, can anyone please tell me how the media reacts to Tulsi Gabbard not being Christian? (She's Hindu ... and religious, so this is not relevant to the atheist part of your point.)
      - saghm 5y ago
        I actually don't think I was aware of this! Most of the media coverage I've seen on her is about her coming across as fairly unconventional for a Democrat in the debate performances, but I think the field was so large then and then narrowed down quickly enough that she didn't get much extended attention. I imagine if she makes it further into a national campaign, it might end up coming up though.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        Chris Butler's cult isn't Hindu, although they would sure like people to believe that.
darkengine 5y ago
SESTA and FOSTA are certainly DC's doing, but I think it's fair to say there is a serious aversion to sexuality and eroticism among incumbent platforms, that did not require any prodding from US lawmakers. For example, AFAIK, Instagram has never allowed "adult" content, since long before FOSTA; Steam has never allowed "pornography" on its platform, resulting in hundreds of games requiring patches [1] to play in the form the publisher intended. Eroticism being a core component of art going all the way back to literal cave paintings, I am sometimes frustrated at the prudishness of the platforms we use in the contemporary age. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34059662-Uncensor-Patch/ https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34059662-Uncensor-Pat...
- nerdponx 5y ago
  This is a classic case of an industry attempting to self-regulate in order to avoid legal regulation, with teeth. Even inconsistently-applied loose rules are good enough to keep the powerful Christian lobbyist pitchforks at bay.
  - zeruch 5y ago
    This is probably the most pithy distillation of what the actual cause is.
- CPLX 5y ago
  I mean isn’t this a function of all this stuff being ad supported? Brands don’t want ads next to porn. That seems like the core of the issue here.
  - LewisVerstappen 5y ago
    Steam isn't ad supported.
    - echelon 5y ago
      It's Visa supported, and Visa doesn't want sex. There are actually strong, non-"puritanical" reasons for this. An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-related services carry an extremely high rate of charge backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than other categories of goods and services. So while Visa could simply charge more, there are numerous other headwinds that make this tricky. Political will, payments risks, brand risk, and deep rooted family/social stigmas that fuel the rest. They kind of all have to be dealt with at once for this to start making economic and business sense. For proponents, it's going to take generational change to shake all of these network effects out. The first step of which is consumers (Gen Z?) publicly admitting that they see no harm in sex-related commerce and to begin showing this in their purchasing behaviors. John Oliver recently covered this as it relates to sex work. Stigmas and dispositions are changing, but it's slow. A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people.
colpabar 5y ago
My understanding is that the payment processors hold the power here. https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-mastercards-new-porn-rules-should-scare-everyone?ref=author https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-mastercards-new-porn-rules... CESTA/FOSTA definitely plays a part, but why would mastercard wait until 2021 to make these new rules?
- winddude 5y ago
  also advertisers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rkk3 5y ago
> 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. The Religious Right? Nicholas Kristof of the NYT, is probably the most powerful individual sex censor - the guy singlehandedly got Pornhub financially de-platformed!
- devmor 5y ago
  To be fair, getting pornhub punished wasn't hard. They were hosting child pornography.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    It wasn't hard to de-platform them because they are a vice company, not because of what was on there servers unintentionally. By your standard Meta/FB/Insta are much worse perpetrators of hosting child pornography
    - devmor 5y ago
      Those companies don't actively give people money to produce that content though. I'm not denying that being a porn company made it easier, but let's not compare what was going on there to what goes on in the private messages of nearly any website large enough.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  Pornhub's problem wasn't sex. It was revenge porn, authentic rape videos, and all the other content you will host if you allow anonymous uploads. Not seeing that there is a difference between content intended for public distribution and content that is not is arguably part of the problem here. (Or, even worse, considering someone having sex and someone being raped to be morally equivalent.)
  - rkk3 5y ago
    > Pornhub's problem wasn't sex. It was revenge porn, authentic rape videos, and all the other content you will host if you allow anonymous uploads. Meta/FB/Insta/Whatsapp/Messenger were & are responsible for facilitating significantly more of all of the above terrible things. Of course the problem was sex and that they are a vice company, it made them an easy moral outrage target.
rodgerd 5y ago
> I find it weird that "Silicon Valley" is to blame here. Even before FOSTA/SESTA companies like Facebook, CloudFlare, and PayPal have fought far, far harder for the rights of far-right groups than they even have for sex workers.
- TheTester 5y ago
Spooky23 5y ago
It’s a branding and criminal liability problem too. Yak about sex worker empowerment, but companies like Craigslist made themselves unwitting business partners with pimps and other low rent types.
rayiner 5y ago
> 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. The universe of people who “dislike sexual imagery” is a lot broader than the (evangelical Christian) “religious right.” Left-leaning Black and Hispanic Christians, non-Christian socially conservative groups (Muslims, Hindus), non-religious socially conservative groups (many East Asians), and also sex-negative feminists have similar attitudes toward sex and sex work. That’s why these laws have broad bipartisan support. “Sex work is work” is an area where (generally sex-positive) progressives and libertarians agree, but those two groups combined are still a pretty small constituency.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  I agree with this. It’s easy to point to some other group to blame on this but I don’t meet many people in any group in the US who would be okay with children seeing nudity on TV. Contrast my experience with Scandinavia, where nude saunas are the norm and maybe it seems like the US just hasn’t yet progressed to sexual normalization. Is that even a bad thing though? Who’s to say the Scandinavians aren’t messing their kids up with all the nudity? Who’s to say the Americans aren’t messing their kids up with their Puritanical approach to sex? I feel that nobody knows the answer right now and we’re most comfortable not changing anything until we do.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    If the sight of a naked female breast messed kids up, breastfeeding would be a bit of a problem.
greyface- 5y ago
Apple, historically, has taken an anti-porn stance. https://www.wired.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-porn/ https://www.wired.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-porn/
renewiltord 5y ago
That’s normal. Silicon Valley is the only part of America that makes anything or does anything worthwhile. As a result, people have built up an expectation that that is where they should go to get things done.

jdrc 5y ago

It 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 ago
It 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 ago
  Unless 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 ago
  No 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 ago
  Could 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.

zajio1am 5y ago

Agree that politicians are to blame here, but SESTA / FOSTA laws have bipartisan support, not just from the religious right.

devmor 5y ago
Both major parties cater to Christian interests over anything else. The US is a "light theocracy". Until that changes, we will constantly have to defend our industries and personal lives from the intrusion of the church.
- saghm 5y ago
  To expound on this, we've still yet to have a president who doesn't identify as Christian. I don't think we're particularly close to a point where a self-professed atheist could get elected president either, although I could see someone of another mainstream religion getting elected in the not too distant future.
  - spindle 5y ago
    As a non-American, can anyone please tell me how the media reacts to Tulsi Gabbard not being Christian? (She's Hindu ... and religious, so this is not relevant to the atheist part of your point.)
    - saghm 5y ago
      I actually don't think I was aware of this! Most of the media coverage I've seen on her is about her coming across as fairly unconventional for a Democrat in the debate performances, but I think the field was so large then and then narrowed down quickly enough that she didn't get much extended attention. I imagine if she makes it further into a national campaign, it might end up coming up though.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Chris Butler's cult isn't Hindu, although they would sure like people to believe that.

darkengine 5y ago

SESTA and FOSTA are certainly DC's doing, but I think it's fair to say there is a serious aversion to sexuality and eroticism among incumbent platforms, that did not require any prodding from US lawmakers. For example, AFAIK, Instagram has never allowed "adult" content, since long before FOSTA; Steam has never allowed "pornography" on its platform, resulting in hundreds of games requiring patches [1] to play in the form the publisher intended. Eroticism being a core component of art going all the way back to literal cave paintings, I am sometimes frustrated at the prudishness of the platforms we use in the contemporary age. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34059662-Uncensor-Patch/ https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34059662-Uncensor-Pat...

nerdponx 5y ago
This is a classic case of an industry attempting to self-regulate in order to avoid legal regulation, with teeth. Even inconsistently-applied loose rules are good enough to keep the powerful Christian lobbyist pitchforks at bay.
- zeruch 5y ago
  This is probably the most pithy distillation of what the actual cause is.
CPLX 5y ago
I mean isn’t this a function of all this stuff being ad supported? Brands don’t want ads next to porn. That seems like the core of the issue here.
- LewisVerstappen 5y ago
  Steam isn't ad supported.
  - echelon 5y ago
    It's Visa supported, and Visa doesn't want sex. There are actually strong, non-"puritanical" reasons for this. An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-related services carry an extremely high rate of charge backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than other categories of goods and services. So while Visa could simply charge more, there are numerous other headwinds that make this tricky. Political will, payments risks, brand risk, and deep rooted family/social stigmas that fuel the rest. They kind of all have to be dealt with at once for this to start making economic and business sense. For proponents, it's going to take generational change to shake all of these network effects out. The first step of which is consumers (Gen Z?) publicly admitting that they see no harm in sex-related commerce and to begin showing this in their purchasing behaviors. John Oliver recently covered this as it relates to sex work. Stigmas and dispositions are changing, but it's slow. A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people.

colpabar 5y ago

My understanding is that the payment processors hold the power here. https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-mastercards-new-porn-rules-should-scare-everyone?ref=author https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-mastercards-new-porn-rules... CESTA/FOSTA definitely plays a part, but why would mastercard wait until 2021 to make these new rules?

winddude 5y ago
also advertisers.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rkk3 5y ago

> 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. The Religious Right? Nicholas Kristof of the NYT, is probably the most powerful individual sex censor - the guy singlehandedly got Pornhub financially de-platformed!

devmor 5y ago
To be fair, getting pornhub punished wasn't hard. They were hosting child pornography.
- rkk3 5y ago
  It wasn't hard to de-platform them because they are a vice company, not because of what was on there servers unintentionally. By your standard Meta/FB/Insta are much worse perpetrators of hosting child pornography
  - devmor 5y ago
    Those companies don't actively give people money to produce that content though. I'm not denying that being a porn company made it easier, but let's not compare what was going on there to what goes on in the private messages of nearly any website large enough.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
Pornhub's problem wasn't sex. It was revenge porn, authentic rape videos, and all the other content you will host if you allow anonymous uploads. Not seeing that there is a difference between content intended for public distribution and content that is not is arguably part of the problem here. (Or, even worse, considering someone having sex and someone being raped to be morally equivalent.)
- rkk3 5y ago
  > Pornhub's problem wasn't sex. It was revenge porn, authentic rape videos, and all the other content you will host if you allow anonymous uploads. Meta/FB/Insta/Whatsapp/Messenger were & are responsible for facilitating significantly more of all of the above terrible things. Of course the problem was sex and that they are a vice company, it made them an easy moral outrage target.

rodgerd 5y ago

> I find it weird that "Silicon Valley" is to blame here. Even before FOSTA/SESTA companies like Facebook, CloudFlare, and PayPal have fought far, far harder for the rights of far-right groups than they even have for sex workers.

TheTester 5y ago

Spooky23 5y ago

It’s a branding and criminal liability problem too. Yak about sex worker empowerment, but companies like Craigslist made themselves unwitting business partners with pimps and other low rent types.

rayiner 5y ago

> 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. The universe of people who “dislike sexual imagery” is a lot broader than the (evangelical Christian) “religious right.” Left-leaning Black and Hispanic Christians, non-Christian socially conservative groups (Muslims, Hindus), non-religious socially conservative groups (many East Asians), and also sex-negative feminists have similar attitudes toward sex and sex work. That’s why these laws have broad bipartisan support. “Sex work is work” is an area where (generally sex-positive) progressives and libertarians agree, but those two groups combined are still a pretty small constituency.

jimbob45 5y ago
I agree with this. It’s easy to point to some other group to blame on this but I don’t meet many people in any group in the US who would be okay with children seeing nudity on TV. Contrast my experience with Scandinavia, where nude saunas are the norm and maybe it seems like the US just hasn’t yet progressed to sexual normalization. Is that even a bad thing though? Who’s to say the Scandinavians aren’t messing their kids up with all the nudity? Who’s to say the Americans aren’t messing their kids up with their Puritanical approach to sex? I feel that nobody knows the answer right now and we’re most comfortable not changing anything until we do.
- int_19h 5y ago
  If the sight of a naked female breast messed kids up, breastfeeding would be a bit of a problem.

greyface- 5y ago

Apple, historically, has taken an anti-porn stance. https://www.wired.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-porn/ https://www.wired.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-porn/

renewiltord 5y ago

That’s normal. Silicon Valley is the only part of America that makes anything or does anything worthwhile. As a result, people have built up an expectation that that is where they should go to get things done.