I think card companies and the related businesses have too much power. I am a board member of a BDSM club operated by a volunteer organization (we are legally a non-profit). We want to implement card payment on our website for membership and event tickets, but when applying for the service that would be the best option in our country, their payment processor rejects the application citing that they don't allow things like strip clubs, sexually oriented massage parlors, escort agencies or "any sexually-related clubs or services". I get that a BDSM club would easily get caught by this wording, but it's a social arena where our members can hook up and play, and we don't sell any sexual services.
Adding insult to injury, the company behind the service loudly markets that they support Pride every year. The payment processor has pictures on their Facebook of employees attending the Pride parade... We're not a commercial entity, our activities are legal and we also march under the same (rainbow) flag.
Oh, and there is no reasonable appeals process. We initially applied for a different product a while back and got rejected since they had run our web page through Google Translate and determined that we were involved with "public group sex". Asking the service to get is in touch with the payment processor to clear up the misunderstanding was not possible, they just said there was no way to appeal and our best bet would be to contact them ourselves through their website.
This was all going in the right direction of freedom of speech == sexual freedom == censorship free internet.
Then Steve tried to market the appstore as a walled garden and wanted to keep 30% of the revenue so he branded everything as "safe" including no-porn. I don't think this was his intention but it snowballed into this.
I hate crypto with a vengeance but when I hear stories like this I totally get why people are so much into it.
> The anonymity offered by 4chan lead, perversely, to a uniformity of tone, as users conform to the zeitgeist of the site, unable to build a name for themselves as an individual.
Unmoderated (or minimally moderated) forums inevitably stabilize to the lowest common denominator participants.
Sites like 4Chan end up with a uniform tone because trolling, immaturity, and vulgarity will cause anyone with higher standards to quickly self-select away from the site. The content trends toward a sort of stability around content that repels people who don’t want to see it. Bad behavior is essentially rewarded by reinforcing the echo chamber.
Similar patterns occur on alternative sites created to escape moderation on popular platforms: Voat was created to escape perceived unfair moderation on Reddit, but quickly became an echo chamber of all the terrible content that Reddit wouldn’t tolerate. A similar story is playing out with the new TheMotte website that left Reddit, which is systematically collecting all of the people with terrible, racist opinions who weren’t welcome on the Reddit equivalent.
> Unmoderated (or minimally moderated) forums inevitably stabilize to the lowest common denominator participants.
Self-/unmoderated ideals always reminds me of this:
> The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
Anonymity also lowers the barrier to contrarian attitudes that go against the zeitgeist. There are no downvotes or upvotes and if someone insults you what they're insulting is a mask you put up. 4chan posters are insulated from identity attacks.
So if most people want to be sheep they can and will, but it isn't an inherent property of the medium.
Anonimity and conformity are important features for most boards; even though users can choose not to be anonymous by using what is called a tripcode others will call you a "tripfag" and ignore or deride your posts.
> But the App Store isn’t just a store, it’s also the only way of installing software on the most popular smartphone in the world, and the company’s decisions about what businesses it wants to support have a way of warping the entire culture.
In the case of porn this is not much of an issue, but the fact that these companies have that kind if power I find really scary. As stated in the article Apple (and Google too one would think) have the power to shut down many businesses for whatever reason they see fit.
Google allows sideloading of apps. Of course if you start on the play store and get kicked off that can kill your business, but if you build your audience elsewhere it can work out just fine. There's a pornhub Android app, and an ecosystem of dating sims, visual novels containing erotic content, etc. Patreon is probably responsible for a couple of million dollars a month in Android app "subscriptions".
This is probably only viable when your entire category of business is forbidden by the two big app stores. That is to say, it's possible to survive as "the big porn service", but not as "the mainstream social network that doesn't ban porn" (unless you're Twitter/Reddit and you're too big to ban).
While this is a technically correct statement, it is also hiding the truth. Android makes up 70% of the smartphone market still, but the phones are made by different companies (hence why the iphone is the post popular smartphone, just not the most popular OS). So 70% of phones can still sideload.
>As stated in the article Apple (and Google too one would think) have the power to shut down many businesses for whatever reason they see fit.
And the situation is even worse when you factor in AWS and Cloudflare. When "free markets" are controlled by a few powerful gatekeepers they cease to be free markets.
OR, they should be on the hook more if they're going to exercise this degree of control; ie, a common carrier rule (though its inability to actually get applied to social media leaves me less than hopeful). IF they want editorial capacity on what gets allowed, and what doesn't, then they should be taking on liability for harms caused by businesses they support (ie, going after Visa for lung cancer because they support purchasing cigarettes). On the other hand, if that sounds draconian (it should!) then they should have the option to avoid this by acting as dumb pipes.
If they're saying they want to pick winners, they should be responsible for the harms those winners they pick create. Otherwise, let the police do the policing.
What's banned is marking a data page as executable (which happens to be required if you want to build a competitive javascript engine).
The practical upshot of this is that nobody has bothered porting a browser engine to iOS, since it's javascript performance would be unacceptably slow.
Porn is a product designed to draw in consumers, and with social media the business is either targeting marketing to the pool of consumers, or getting the consumers to sign up for some kind of paid monthly plan. Generally speaking, everyone agrees that there should be some kind of regulation of products for various reasons. With porn, the main issue is that the only performers should be consenting adults. The fact that some buyers of social media ad services don't want to be affiliated with porn content is a market issue, not a regulatory issue.
Note also this is hardly the only controversial class of content. Consider two others: the manufacture of weapons and explosives, and the manufacture of drugs. These also break down on the legal/illegal boundary.
For example, with weapons, what's allowed? YT is full of videos on how to reload gun ammunition, for example, but when it comes to home synthesis of gunpowder needed to reload those cartidges, using the well-known historical recipe (charcoal, saltpetre, sulfur), it seems those are all taken down under 'YT community guidelines'. Curiously, automatic weapons or machine guns (including disassembly and repair) are also all over YT, even though owning such weapons without a license is about as illegal as home synthesis of explosives is.
Another example: drug chemistry. Aspirin is common household medication and is synthesized by the reaction of salicylic acid (from willow bark) with acetic anhydride (basically, dehydrated vinegar). There are no shortage of detailed walk-through videos on how to do this reaction on YT. However, if we simply replace the willow bark extract with opium extract (i.e. morphine), we are now making heroin, diacetylated morphine. No such hands-on walk-through videos seem to exist on YT, or for say, the conversion of coca leaves to cocaine sulfate paste to cocaine hydrochloride or freebase cocaine (i.e. crack). There are of course, no such restrictions on videos about the fermentation of agricultural products and the distillation of the result into strong liquors (does YT block this in Muslim countries?). Growing cannabis is currently a kind of grey area.
It seems that social media companies want their user-uploaded content to be in line with the regulatory norms of their viewer's host government (and perhaps more fuzzy concepts like local social norms), but those norms, globally speaking, are all over the map.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that notices these sorts of odd contrasts… and all I’ve ever been able to work out is that Its exemplary of current social norms in California and the wider USA more generally because things like pot growing becoming a grey area coincides with changes to laws and trends in these places.
This article has the same 'checksum' as people talking about how their artistic college-roommates would clean their dirty artwork up so that they could cultivate a CV that Disney would approve.
I'm wary for the day ML de-anonymizes a popular non-de-plum - someone carefully disguising their artwork to release their passion under one name, and their day-job art under another. Written and visual both seem susceptible to this as we follow the arrow of time.
What happens to art when you literally cannot hide your name?
> I'm wary for the day ML de-anonymizes a popular non-de-plum - someone carefully disguising their artwork to release their passion under one name, and their day-job art under another. Written and visual both seem susceptible to this as we follow the arrow of time.
Using the correct spelling of words would be a start in defending against such models
I'd really like to see more online sharing migrate to decentralized technologies. ActivityPub, used by Mastodon, PixelFed, Friendica and others provides a similar social networking experience without a small set of gatekeepers controlling what kind of content is allowed or a small set of algorithms dictating what gets popular.
The technologies to do this are already adequate (though there's always room for refinement), but the marketing and onboarding to make it mainstream aren't there.
This can be better explained by demographics. The people who were in their 20s in the 2000s are now in their 40s and 50s and more conservative overall. If GenZ had control of the internet (which the GenXrs had) you wouldn't let your children and your grandma near it (and it would be a Good thing)
Absolutely not, and I really find this summary kind of thinking dangerous. It's quite obviously "follow the money" and not "People, en masse, drastically and simplistically change their reactions to sex as they get older."
Now, back to my Facebook group of 40-50 year olds who trade dirty memes and use getting temp-banned as a jokey "sign-of-honor" :)
I hope i m wrong. But it's not the Z that controls the internet, their parents do and they are the ones that go along with 'protect the kids' crusades. Is discord or reddit sanitized? FB IG YT, everything is
I kind of feel like the controlling factor isn't "parents" or "kids" at all, really -- but "capitalist nanny state habits" that are weirdly re/distributed. Like, the radio is way "dirtier" than it used to be, you've got this odd flavor of "empowerment" that means female hypersexualization that's oddly not about the men at all, for better or worse.
Regardless, I don't feel like "active participation/commentary by this generation of older people" is a big factor?
Isnt this based on the assumption that what 'you'underwent in your 20s as natural and healthy? Maybe you are the outlier and others are natural and healthy.
Oh, generally speaking, I think they're a better generation than mine (I mean, I'm black, they're WAY more tolerant. So called "wokeness" is mostly a good thing). Kinder, more compassionate, etc.
But they "party" less? And it could absolutely be the case that they're content at home with videogames over Discord. I suppose there's something special about my 20's that -- hey, maybe they don't feel like they're missing anything at all -- but e.g. "incel" and "incel-adjacent" feels like it could be something that could be improved.
The point was that there’s no consistent characterization that people have in mind for “new Puritans,” which makes it especially pointless to label an entire generation that way.
Just a small case in point: Gen Z is the most openly queer/non-traditional generation in US history. There are entire segments of our population that consider that nature to be sexually deviant and want to control it with social restrictions. So why are Gen Z the “puritans”?
I think it’s because they have a religious zeal about themselves generally speaking. An inquisition like air that permeates many aspects of culture they are involved in. fundamentalist attitudes abound and an inability to consider alternatives blended with a constant appeal to authority.
In essence, an extremely conformist and neurotic generation.
Or, alternatively, they’re passionate kids with priorities that are different from yours and you’re out of the loop.
I haven’t seen any evidence that they’re particularly conformist, or more neurotic than most people I’ve talked to. This comment in point: what’s more neurotic than saying that an entire generation has an “inquisition like air”?
Yes, zealots tend to be passionate. Passion isn’t by itself a good quality. Especially when you’ve acquired no wisdom at all.
I think they’re a group of people with too much knowledge but nearly no wisdom. They mistake knowledge for knowing something. Again, generally speaking.
I don’t think it’s their fault. We have infantilized them and never let them out of the cage. We were so scared of them failing that they’ve picked up on it and have packaged it as compulsive neuroticism. They’ve been overloaded with information from dubious sources for years now.
Saying that there’s a lot of great kids out there.
> Yes, zealots tend to be passionate. Passion isn’t by itself a good quality. Especially when you’ve acquired no wisdom at all.
Sure, but this is not a particularly new phenomenon. Nobody expects a generation of children and young adults (at the absolute oldest!) to be wise beyond their years. I'm in my mid-20s, and even I'm too old to be a Zoomer.
People accused Gen Xers of being coddled and "smart without being wise." They called them zealots when they burned their draft cards and tied themselves to trees, engaged in mass strikes, etc. Passion in young people is not new, and neither is "but this generation is different."
For what it's worth, I actually do agree that helicopter parenting (among other things) have a deleterious affect on kids. But that's a 40+ year old phenomenon, one that's not unique to gen Z. And of all the people I know online, Zoomers are the least susceptible to fake information (if only because so many of them are nihilistic).
I think you’re confusing Boomers with GenX. GenX is notorious for not caring and for slacking and for cynicism. It’s why there’s so many great comedians from that generation working today. Not much was taken too seriously. I’m sure some tied themselves to trees though but not group strikes.
GenX has very suspicious of group identity and “selling out”. A corporation pandering to their values would be mortifying. Very much the opposite of todays kids. Which makes sense as it’s their kids.
Yeah, I got things a little twisted. But the point stands: Boomers were originally lambasted for being soft and idealistic, as the first post-war generation. They’re now the ones, if we’re painting broad strokes, posting reactionary screeds about the younger generations.
> GenX has very suspicious of group identity and “selling out”.
The Pepsi Generation is suspicious of selling out?
i d classify it more as 'fear'. There is a pervasive attitude that every space has to be 'safe' for everyone everywhere all the time. That's infantilizing, rather than radicalizing, and it s very prominent.
I think more plausible explanation is just plainly not many companies wanting to put their ads on porn, so hosting porn is significantly less lucrative per viewer than SFW content
Probably worth noting that two of the most prominent advertisers on Tumblr even today are Adam and Eve (sex toys) and Manscaping (genital grooming). Also I still see plenty of what I'd consider porn via people abusing tags, though admittedly it's only at about the Penthouse/Hustler level. So some advertisers at least know that porn still exists on Tumblr, and actively try to tap that market. It must work, too, even though most Tumblrites are somewhere between eye-rolling and actively making them the butt of jokes.
and then , i remember back in the days of TV there was soft porn or adult talk shows on TV late at night. They did have ads, and not the cheap kind (cigarettes, alcohol etc). TV was somewhat self-correcting, because kids are usually asleep past midnight so the ads matched content . On the internet it's nigh impossible to keep kids outside of content, so maybe that's a reason why adult content is unfundable and why the default for censorship is to make everything kid-safe. But maybe there is a way to make that work, i dont know
It's not the porn-friendly era. It's the free speech-friendly era. It's not only pornography that is banned. The wrong thoughts are banned from the app store as well.
Platforms such as Telegram have to make it impossible to access certain channels/groups/bots when you use an iphone or they risk getting deleted from the app store. nsfw channels on discord are also inaccessible from iphones.
Apps such as gab were banned completely for not complying.
This is just a few examples of apps that I know of (I don't use that many) --- there probably are many more examples that I'm not aware of.
There are a lot of other NSFW topics, like gore, bondage, gambling, organization of union activity or illegal protests, etc. Apple only specifically bans porn though, because of American puritan morals, I guess.
> I don't see the meaningful distinction between NSFW content and porn.
Abstract: Pornography is reasonably well-understood by honest adults. "NSFW" is a bullshit term that's expanded based on how criticism-averse the host is, and how effectively the assholes can come out to shit on minorities.
Queer content is often marked "NSFW" simply for being queer, even if it isn't pornographic as a rational adult would understand the term.^1 Saying "NSFW" or "inappropriate" content is being removed is a typical content-free claim from companies that don't know, and don't care, how much queer content will be removed and how much will never be created due to the chilling effect.
Of course, add to this the usual tactic of people insisting that the very existence of queer people is "inappropriate" or "NSFW" and the host is opening itself up to a shitstorm it is likely to resolve by increasing its content controls and doing further damage to queer expression on the platform.
I've heard about this phenomenon before. While ultimately I wish I had found a better way to phrase this in the comment you quote, I'll make my clarifications here.
A) I'm not defending the outright removal of porn/NSFW content from Apple App Stores or other sources.
B) I don't see a meaningful distinction in the way the terms are USED. LGBTQ relationships are typically seen as more sexually explicit and thus, more pornographic (as your source attests). Calling that material "porn" or "NSFW" is ultimately meaningless.
EDIT: Thank you to the commentor who chose to prove my point as I was writing it. :P
I'm perfectly okay with removal of whatever from the app stores. The issue is locking a device to one particular app store in the first place. For some reason people keep giving these lunatics money -- but perhaps if they overplay their hand and get more restrictive of what content they allow, a sane market response can provide the more sensible solution.
Google has the Play Store, and it doesn't allow content it doesn't agree with, but at the end of the day, I can go grab it from F-droid or wherever else it may be hosted. The idea that you have to force your users into your walled garden, rather than offering it and treating them like the adults that, you know, OWN the device, is despicable. There are plenty of things about iPhones that at times appear superior (such as not relying as heavily on the advertising model), but at the end of the day, this persistent hostility towards customers is why I will not buy a single thing from this company.
It feels like your definition of "wrong thoughts" combines the legal content discussed in the OP with calls for political violence and intellectual property violations. While I agree both are removed by Apple I think the author's choice to separate legal content from illegal content was intentional.
In my experience, when someone talks about "political ideas that are censored" they mean:
1. Ideas that are directly trying to silence others or obscure empirical reality.
2. Ideas that actually can be said but are marketed as being "censored" or "counter culture" to give weight to a narrative.
3. Vague gestures to some other idea that is supposedly neither 1 or 2 but is unable to provide any evidence
I would love to add a fourth entry but in the same way it's inaccurate to assume this is 1 (Apple's "victory", apparently), it would be equally inaccurate to not categorize your views in 3 until you were able to provide specific evidence.
What Hegel might have called the cunning of reason at work.
Porn has had and is having an extremely destructive and deranging effect on people, especially the young and especially men, especially given its ubiquity and accessibility today on the internet. It corrupts their ability and motivation to seek out and develop healthy relationships with others. I'm sure it plays some role in the demographic crisis. Whereas Gen X and even Gen Y (Millennials) were first exposed to pornography in very limited ways (the odd Playboy magazine), Gen Z has been practically raised on porn having been exposed to indefinite amounts of it on their smartphones.
I welcome the withering of "porn culture" and the crippling of this depraved industry of exploitation and corruption. It destroys individuals and rots societies.
Arguably, the phone itself as an object of instant gratification seems more the issue here than the porn being accessed on it. Sure, easily available porn may short circuit some normal sexual interaction, but the phone as an alternative to actual social interaction seems surely the more pervasive problem.
Humans can do just fine without much in the way of sexual interaction, as evidenced by centuries of communities across a variety of cultures that take oaths of celibacy. I'm not so sure the same can be said of large groups of people sharing resources in common without having social skills.
