
Google Takes Down Artstation Android App for Explicit Content - apersona
https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-artstation-android-app/
======
laser
The suppression of the viewing of the human body in its natural form,
especially in art, is one of the deepest perversions of society. It seems so
intrinsically tied to the suppression and control of pleasure by institutions
seeking dominance over human life. When you control access to the natural
pleasures of life, you have control over the motivations and operations of
that life. In prior times, when religions were the most powerful rulers of
society, taboo ensured obedience to a system that enabled the powerful to
rule, while as we so frequently see- violating the taboos beyond reason in far
more perverse ways than unrestrained impulse motivates. Now that corporations
have so strongly supplanted religion in the ruling of society, the suppression
has moved from a place of religious principle, to one of purely pragmatic
continuance of the dogma that maintains the status quo. Because why should
Google have any philosophical position about the progression of society at
all? It has under the conditions of the status quo become dominant, and so
perhaps believes that its best interest lies in passively supporting the
current system, no matter how fundamentally perverse it may be. But, this is a
mistake. I know that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as half of Google,
run around naked in the Nevada desert every year, enjoying the beauty and
freedom of the human body. So, to command the most powerful corporation in the
world, and to know that our natural liberty is better than upholding millennia
of repression, yet maintain it for a convenient profit without controversy, is
if not evil, at least extraordinarily cowardly. If we want to transition from
a society of repression and suffering to one of liberation and bliss, there
are fewer more fundamental places to start than in the acceptance of our own
natural bodies and the pleasurable practices in which they engage.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I don't think sex is particularly messianic, but I also don't see why
censoring and policing nominally adult content should be Google's business -
literally or metaphorically.

This is just one example from a growing list of questionable moral behaviour
and outright abuse of monopoly power.

The political reality is that Google has serious trust and credibility issues
on many fronts.

The more this kind of thing happens, the more likely they are to turn into
antitrust issues.

~~~
Fnoord
It is also an example of the USA shoving down its morals to the rest of the
world. Especially areas where partial nudity is accepted. One of the very
first things in life a baby does is searching the nipple (which is darker than
the rest of the breast) and sucking on it. Breast are very much part of nature
and human life, yet we censor it as if it is something which shouldn't be
seen. At the same time, we have no issues with all kind of violent games.
Hello double standard! That you wanna have that in the USA is up to you
Americans, but let me as European at least apply the norms of my country. You
would not expect anything less as American!

But yeah... Civ cultural victory, and all that...

In EU there's already been complaints about Google only allowing their Play
Store and hampering 3rd party stores, and Google lost that lawsuit.

~~~
partiallypro
The US has pretty liberal standards on pornography and art...I mean most
pornography and such art is produced in the US itself. Tasteful nudity in the
US is not frowned upon, perhaps in public, yes...but I don't know of many
countries where that isn't frowned upon outside beaches. I'm not sure what
you're referring to, or if you are that familiar with the US. The UK on the
other hand and some other European countries...and many Eastern countries are
battling porn/nudity if not outright banning it. With the UK even requiring
you to register with your ISP. The US's FCC does have some stringent
guidelines, but their restrictions only apply to OTA. What countries have a
more liberal view? France? Germany? Spain, a few small countries here and
there, maybe? Otherwise...not many others.

~~~
sangnoir
> I mean most pornography and such art is produced in the US itself

Most US pornography is produced in San Fernando Valley - I don't think you can
generalize porn/nude art across the US so perhaps you ought to have said
"California has pretty liberal standards on pornography and art".

Janet Jackson's Nipplegate wouldn't have been a big deal in any of the
European countries you mentioned, but Americans were scandalized.

~~~
shams93
Most porn USED to be produced in the SF Valley, I used to work in the
industry. A whole series of new laws forced the industry out of California. My
old boss sells insurance now. A lot of modern porn is now produced in eastern
europe. Basically no new porn is produced in SFV, only the softcore companies
like Vivid are still in business here.

~~~
sangnoir
I know free porn on the web was debilitating to the industry; however, to my
knowledge no US state is close to CA's production, even now; which was my
point, it's not like there's a whole lot of (professional) porn coming out of
OH, MS or IL

~~~
Fjolsvith
In Kansas you must have a license to produce porn legally (to do so otherwise
is a felony that district attorneys vigorously prosecute), and the state
government doesn't operate an office to issue those licenses.

------
Lazare
There is a uniquely annoying feeling you get when you see someone powerful
being utterly obtuse and wrong in a way that is damaging to others, but can't
readily be challenged.

Everything about this story is just so fundamentally wrongheaded. They're
enforcing a deeply misguided policy in a way which is both inconsistent and
unfair, yet also inept. There's just so _much_ wrong here, it's hard to even
know where to start. They're looking for stuff they shouldn't, in the wrong
places, and doing a horrible job of it. There's no _reason_ they should be
cracking down on the scourge of random cartoon nipples, but even if there
were, they should give content providers who are making good faith efforts to
flag content the benefit of the doubt, which clearly they did not for
ArtStation. Meanwhile they're incorrectly flagging content, but even worse,
they're _not_ applying this policy to, you know, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram
or, you know, Google themselves. Even if we needed to protect people from
occasional nudity (and again, we don't), this isn't even achieving that. It's
like deciding you need to do something drastic to prevent yourself from
starving, so you set your couch on fire, while having a fridge full of food.

It's all downside; it makes the world a worse place, helps no one, and Google
will pay (effectively) no penalty for it.

Merry Christmas to us all.

~~~
washadjeffmad
Google is unable to scale its ability to moderate its platforms with its level
of growth, and we're seeing the effects of its implementation of "zero
tolerance" in this uncontestable, absolutist decision making that customers
can only have addressed by stirring up a potential PR stink.

Just like in many governments, it's significantly easier to address the
immediate concerns of a few powerful entities and just the outcome of
elections of the masses, except when they organize.

Google, for good or I'll, has truly become a model virtual nation.

~~~
benologist
Pretty funny how their cash hoarding can scale to $100b+ but they can't
provide _any_ level of support or recourse to Play Store developers at all.

------
pmlnr
In the Tumblr ban threads, people mentioned that all of these companies should
simply make their progressive web apps and give the finger to the puritan
idiots calling these decisions. I agree.

The questions, however, are: how much growth can be achieved without play
store/ios app? Is it viable? If yes, how? Can art be more important for a site
(and it's investors), than immediate, quick growth?

~~~
DanBC
Tumblr was sharing images of child sexual abuse, not just regular porn. It's
only when they discovered the images of child sexual abuse that they took
action. They'd left user generated porn content alone for many years.

That's not "puritan idiots", that's people who are aware of the harm caused by
the distribution of images of child sexual abuse to the survivors of that
abuse and to their business from law enforcement activity.

~~~
yulaow
The problem is, their solution just destroyed whoever used nude art or in
general their bodies as a mean of expressing themselves while doing nothing to
abusers (especially pornbots are still active just as before)

~~~
DanBC
Sure, but they're not responding because they're puritan idiots, they're
responding because not doing so risks their business. Specifically, they
risked being added to European block lists in use by almost all EU ISPs. Of
course there are ways around this, but no business wants to tell its users to
install Tor Browser Bundle to visit a website.

~~~
fulafel
Do you have a reference for this block list rumor? Sounds worrying.

~~~
pjc50
Most ISPs use the "Internet Watch Foundation" blacklist. I'm not convinced
that there was any real risk of Tumblr being added to it _en masse_.

(I believe there was an incident a few years ago where an image of an Iron
Maiden album cover on wikipedia got flagged, though)

~~~
msla
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia)

NOTE: The image is on the article above the fold.

> On 5 December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a British watchdog
> group, blacklisted content on the English Wikipedia related to Scorpions'
> 1976 studio album _Virgin Killer_ , due to the presence of its controversial
> cover artwork, depicting a young girl posing nude, with a faux glass shatter
> obscuring her genitalia. The image was deemed to be "potentially illegal
> content" under English law which forbids the possession or creation of
> indecent photographs of children. The IWF's blacklist are used in web
> filtering systems such as Cleanfeed.

You can see from my note how much long-term effect this had on Wikipedia.

~~~
DanBC
The block on that page was for four days. Of course that had no impact on WP.

------
pram
Serious question: why is Twitter left unscathed? There’s tons of pornography
and illicit activity on it. Is it ignored simply because of its size and
clout?

This feels unjust because the enforcement is seemingly completely arbitrary.
Why has Google/Apple decided to be puritanical with some things and not
others.

~~~
buboard
Serious answer: they will be, probably soon. There doesnt seem to be a
reversal of the trend towards Victorianism, so every tech is going to graduate
to its "Professional" self. It probably signifies the end of an era for
expressive media and a lot of progressive users are going to call them out for
what they are:dinosaurs .

------
fencepost
This seems like it could be applied to any app designed to display user-
generated content on a single site or family of sites, obviously including
Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. since I'm pretty sure
it's possible to find nudity on any of those just with some casual browsing.

Should also probably be applied to Messenger, Hangouts, Skype, Duo, WhatsApp,
etc. since I'm pretty sure there's nudity and sexual content on those as well,
and you can likely find it pretty easily.

For that matter, I'm pretty sure I can find explicitly sexual content in
Chrome running on Android. Has Google considered what a potential disaster
this could be for them? Perhaps they should remove Chrome and other general-
purpose web browsing apps, or define what it is that makes those applications
different from the ones they do ban.

On a different note, can this be applied to reverse some annoying things? Does
Reddit allow access to "adult" areas in the mobile app and if not do they play
the annoying "wouldn't you like to use the app instead" in those areas on
mobile browsers? Can you bypass that by marking your subreddit as "adult" if
you don't have a significant volume of under-18 readers?

Edit: "Google Android: Like AOL, but with less porn! And we have Candy Crush!"

~~~
therealdrag0
There's a pretty obvious separation though between public and private media
apps. I doubt private chat apps will get heat like this.

~~~
fencepost
I've never used WhatsApp so I'm not sure how public vs private it is, but
apparently it has a child porn problem:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/20/whatsapp-
pornography/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/20/whatsapp-pornography/) (also
see many results for "whatsapp child porn" with different variations of
related info). Would that be one of those private chat apps?

------
pmlnr
Dear corporations,

As an european adult, I'm ok with adult and explicit content.

Leave art alone.

~~~
Freak_NL
A good part of their customer base (i.e., the advertisers) are not okay with
explicit content, for a variety of reasons. Fear of their brand being
associated with sex, puritan principles (their own or those of their
customers), or just plain convinced that advertisements don't have the same
impact when the content it is served with is arousing.

That is to say, the corporations don't care, and will grant you a scant
allowance of nipples only in imagery of breastfeeding and classical paintings
if and when enough high-profile people complain about it vocally to warrant
some leniency.

~~~
village-idiot
I don’t think that’s quite it.

I remember back in the 1990s lots and lots of pearl clutching about various
companies using sex to sell their products, especially beer. The idea that now
advertisers are afraid of sex doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.

What I really think it is is that most adults are pretty meh on the whole
thing one way or another. Most of us look at some porn, but aren’t heavy
users. There are however a very vocal minority who _hate_ all adult content,
and I think they’re being very successful in pressuring companies to take it
down.

------
mattnewton
I think it’s messed up as a society that women’s bodies are more taboo than
shooting people; people are more squeamish around cartoon pictures of breasts
than cartoon pictures of people using rifles, and that’s scary to me.

I think this is just google enforcing US cultural norms, but it would be great
if there was some kind of US public framework companies could use instead of
having to make these calls on their own.

Disclosure: male google employee in an unrelated part of the company with no
insider info. My opinions are my own.

------
MountainJack
The same rules obviously do not apply to all players. As there are only two
mobile platforms, maybe we need antitrust governance.

~~~
seniorivn
Maybe you shouldn't use programs, devices and platforms that don't meet you
criteria?

~~~
idle_zealot
That only works if there's a reasonable alternative. If you want to make a
mobile app and the content gets you kicked from the Apple and Google stores,
you're SoL.

------
buboard
I can't imagine how harsh it is to take down the entire app because of this.
Adsense will also sometimes find sexually suggestive CGI stuff in our website
(they re good with virtual nipples!), but they will allow you to appeal and
fix it. Tying your entire livelihood in their walled garden has gotten
dangerous.

------
Abishek_Muthian
>Google’s Vision API doesn’t even flag one of the images as violating

We have used AWS's Rekognition API for moderation in our dating platform for
over 200,000 images per month. As far as nudity detection is concerned;
Rekognition performs optimally.

I tested it against the Hell Girl image by TB Choi & it detects the nudity[1]
& also detects the weapons under general Object/scene detection[2].

But I would warn against using Rekognition for anything related to gender as
it is very biased and would behave indifferently towards people with colored
skin. I have raised concerns about the bias in the Rekognition data set with
AWS team & also other media outlets have covered it at length.

With that being said, I feel sad that we are in a state where such beautiful
art should be moderated where as applications exploiting children are being
given a free run.

[1]:[https://imgur.com/a/FyJ5V56](https://imgur.com/a/FyJ5V56)
[2]:[https://imgur.com/a/LlfS7wO](https://imgur.com/a/LlfS7wO)

------
rayalez
Somewhat unrelated - ArtStation has a browser extension that randomly opens a
random artwork every time you open a new tab, and I highly recommend it, it's
one of my favorite extensions and a great way to see some stunning artworks,
it always brightens my day.

On topic - dumb decision, nothing new, not very surprising, waiting for PWAs
to get to a point where arbitrary Apple/Google rules don't matter anymore.

~~~
Tempest1981
The extension sounds cool. Have you found it SFW?

~~~
rayalez
About as SFW as the front page of ArtStation, which is, in my opinion, very.
Though who knows, I guess you might see an occasional elf boob or something.

------
manfredo
There's a growing class of apps that are clearly intended to be used as image
boards, but don't actually advertise themselves as being intended for any
specific website. One common pattern are apps that require that the user type
in a certain domain in order for them to work. Most *chan browser apps in this
way. You manually specify a domain and board code, and only then does the app
function.

I can see this type of scheme increasing, as it puts a degree of indirection
between the app itself and the objectionable content. There's a stronger
element of deniability: the user is the one that's navigating to a separate
website that hosts objectionable content. The app itself is "clean" so to
speak (even though it's obviously not the case in practice).

~~~
ReptileMan
Hmm... Isn't this app called web browser? There is not much more than it is
needed when it is for consuming content.

~~~
manfredo
Yeah, it's a web browser in essence. But the UI, scrolling behavior, etc. are
all handled by the app rather than the website. The result is often a much
cleaner experience, especially compared to the average website's mobile web
experience. There's also often extended functionality, like saving entire
galleries of images, saving threads, etc.

What I'd imagine Artstation doing is releasing a "generic art showcase app"
(or exposing APIs to let 3rd parties do so themselves), where users can
manually specify www.artstation.com. The app would provide all the features
that the Artstation app did.

~~~
lozenge
And how will they include ads? API users can just not display those.

~~~
manfredo
Maybe when it pulls a gallery of photos from the API, it injects a few ads. Or
the ads could be served by the app itself.

------
fulafel
There's a lot of Wikipedia content that would match forbidden content in this
policy too.

------
diminish
Apple or Google don't ban URLs or websites on their Safari or Chrome browsers.
Is that due to historical reasons or are there any laws regarding this?

~~~
tehbeard
I think it's due to how they cultivated the image of their walled garden app
stores as curated and moderated against "bad stuff" like adware etc and now
you have people with a puritan/sex-regressive stance leaning on that image and
sesta / fosta bills to "protect us all".

With the recent push for PWAs, it will be interesting to see if communities
like artstation use these instead.

~~~
simion314
I am wondering why are not just tagging this apps, then by default not allow
you to install unless you confirm on an alert box and put your password. Seems
a win-win, you keep both camps happy and probably spend less on attempting to
filter your content so not to trip over AIs detection algorithms and bad
moderation from the stores.

------
CamperBob2
_Any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a
government._ \-- Anonymous

Or, apparently, from a church.

~~~
gaius
It’s very strange wording that they use, they don’t want anything to be
sexually “gratifying”. Like if it’s explicit content but you don’t find it
“gratifying” they’re OK with that? It’s as if they don’t care about the
content itself they just don’t want you to enjoy it.

~~~
laumars
I think the point of that is to distinguish between stuff that is nudity but
not of a sexual nature (like Aphrodite of Milos[1]) from stuff that could be
deemed as corrupting young kids? But I’m guessing there.

As a European I do think the Americans get far to uptight about nudity.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with nakedness, it’s not automatically
sexual. Yet I’m constantly amazed how much casual violence is in family TV
(Simpson’s, Tom and Jerry, etc). I find it weird that cutting a persons limbs
off is more acceptable than a naked form. But I guess that’s a cultural thing.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> nudity but not of a sexual nature (like Aphrodite of Milos)

Pretty strange to call this "nudity, but not of a sexual nature".

She is literally the incarnation of the concept of sex.

~~~
laumars
The point being that is art, not pornography.

Re the people who voted me down, I’m curious if you’ve done so because you
consider that statue porn or because you don’t consider it art? Are you able
to elaborate please :)

~~~
thaumasiotes
The statue is overt sexual content. See my sidethread comment,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745277)
.

~~~
laumars
“Overt sexual content”? She’s just stood there. That’s not a sexual pose,
she’s not engaging in sex. Even if I take your point about the figure it
depicts, it’s about as subtle a sexual icon as it gets.

~~~
thaumasiotes
She's just standing there... naked. That is not the norm for a statue of
Aphrodite. It derives from the tradition of the nude Aphrodite of Knidos,
which... made huge waves for titillation value:

> According to an account by Pliny the Elder, Praxiteles sculpted both a nude
> statue and a draped statue of Aphrodite. The city of Kos purchased the
> draped statue, because they felt the nude version was indecent and reflected
> poorly on their city, while the city of Knidos purchased the nude statue.

> The statue [...] was so lifelike that it even aroused men sexually, as
> witnessed by the tradition that a young man broke into the temple at night
> and attempted to copulate with the statue, leaving a stain on it.

(
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_of_Knidos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_of_Knidos)
)

Just how strongly can we connect the Venus de Milo to the Aphrodite of Knidos?
Well, it's a naked Aphrodite in a similar pose. Similar enough that it was
originally attributed to Praxiteles. Aphrodite of Knidos is just standing
there too, about to take a bath.

Imagine me posting a photo to Facebook showing a woman caught in the act of
getting into her bathtub. She's not engaging in sex! Then again, videos of
this exact subject matter are common on porn sites.

Imagine arguing that a still of Marilyn Monroe's dress getting blown up around
her hips is about art, and not about sexual titillation.

~~~
laumars
Re the bath tub example, that’s an interesting example because it’s quite
common to have pictures of children playing in the bath or at the beach and
obviously that’s not porn. We also have communal changing rooms in gyms and
some swimming pools. Some Northern European countries have communal steam
rooms where the etiquette is full nudity; and that’s not a sexual thing either
(well, not to anyone who actually uses them anyway). There are nudist colonies
and all sorts. Again they aren’t a sexual thing. What about breastfeeding?
Women should have to hide away in toilets to feed their babies and there’s
nothing sexual about feeding a child.

Thus the issue is really more of sensibilities than anything. Nudity isn’t a
big thing in Europe like it is in the US. It’s common for women to walk the
beaches topless; and frankly they should be allowed to since it’s perfectly
natural and men do it too. The whole “the statue is topless so it’s sexually
explicit” comment is really weird to read in the context of European attitudes
because we differentiate between nudity and sex (as the earlier examples
demonstrate). Which is probably also why America needs the “free the nipple”
(and similar) campaign if people like yourself consider any form of nudity to
be sexually explicit regardless of context. I mean we are all born naked -
it’s so weird to read someone say that the form we are born in is indesent and
worse imagery than violence. I just can’t fathom that logic. Sorry :-/

------
kyriakos
How about giving users a choice? Proof of age maybe? They could allow apps
with questionable content after being warned and proving the users age.

~~~
atticmanatee
These companies should already have that info. Just filter the apps for
underage users, that simple.

------
dsamarin
Something to note: Reddit is rated M and Instagram is rated T for teen. What
was Artstation rated as?

~~~
pmlnr
> Instagram is rated T for teen

Because people in barely any clothing are never sexually suggestive? Ah,
sorry, the word is gratifying.

------
ReptileMan
The users can at least sideload it. Unlike appstore.

~~~
pmlnr
That is if you find the .apk from a source you trust, and this is not a simple
trick.

~~~
askvictor
F-droid is generally trustworthy, and has put a lot of effort into this.

~~~
qwertay
Fdroid is the only 3rd party source of APKs I trust.

------
Waterluvian
I love that they call out Google's BS. Especially the AI that simply doesn't
work.

------
amelius
But what do you see when you type "sexy naked woman" into Google Image Search?

------
thinkingemote
Let's hope that this story reaches someone at that company who can actually do
something about it, as it seems as if the organization has grown so large that
only a few higher managers can affect things.

------
scoot_718
They better take down every camera app and internet browser app.

~~~
qwertay
I can picture a future android release scanning the galleries on phones and
deleting photos that violate Googles ToS.

~~~
pjc50
I can see this being driven by some combination of moral panic over teen
sexting and FOSTA.

Or the creepy version: photo app "oversight" that automatically notifies
someone else (parent, abusive controlling partner) if nudity is detected in a
camera photo.

~~~
ytqaz
If I was the parent of a teenager I would pay good to have this.

~~~
AlexandrB
If I was your teenage child, I would hate you. The greatest gift my parents
gave me was their trust.

------
nottorp
Hmm looks to me that besides Google spying on us, it's even more dangerous
that the only two platforms for mobile apps are censored by people with Disney
morals. Or American puritan morals, whatever you call them.

There are tons of people now whose only internet device is a censored cell
phone... looks like we need a third option that is not based in the US.

------
Lectem
Looks like ArtStation didn't bribe Google like the rest of the big apps like
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter... I'm surprised people forget that Google now IS
evil and corrupt, and are just squashing "small" companies in favor of buying
or destroying them

~~~
KMag
I didn't downvote you, but I think with better tone and a bit more detail, you
could have made a well-received comment out of this thought.

------
ccnafr
They're making a good point about the comparison to the Reddit app. Their app
is harmless.

------
ashleyn
I advise Google stop pissing off both conservatives _and_ liberals, or
antitrust action will rain down pretty easily.

------
gaius
I wonder why the other app showing identical content didn’t get banned, maybe
it is a bigger revenue earner for Google?

And yes, there is far more of this on Insta.

------
maxhedrome
Don’t be evil, we have decided some art is evil, so we have removed it so you
don’t have the temptation to be evil.

-Google

------
amelius
HN title should contain NSFW tag.

~~~
ilrwbwrkhv
lol... the article is lost on you isn't it?

------
RedPandaTronics
They are crazy at Google. They banned my game TrumpTweetTrumps, because they
said it was pornographic. It contained a mini-game called 'Make Ivanka Come',
the objective of that mini game was to ring a bell and make Ivanka come to the
desk, so her father can get his daughters advise on making policy. Just a
comment on the nepotism seen in the current US government, nothing
pornographic. Apple are even worse though, they censored like half of the
game's content on the AppStore, including an actual tweet from Trump. A tweet
he sent out on an app he downloaded from the AppStore, i.e. Twitter. And that
is accessible through an app promoted in their AppStore, i.e. Twitter. Grab-a-
pussy mini-game was also banned and many more, I think on AppStore like half
of the 8 mini-games in the App had to be removed or completely changed. I
could go on complaining about this forever, but I can't be asked to type it
all up again, there's so many messages being sent back and forth between me
and Apple employees on their stupid resolution centre. To sum up, f __k Google
and Apple, your thoughtless policies are not applied consistently (basically
if you profit from an app, anything is allowed for that app) and they have a
bad impact on society as a whole. Satire can have powerful impacts on people
and drive them to do good things. Satire is essential!

