Live data from Hacker News

Sex censorship killed the internet we love

engadget.com

11–20 of 520 posts

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#11

YMMV... For me, the last straw was having to click away 2-3 banners that cover the content on every website and then often being slapped in the face with a subscription box. This is simply conditioning me to expect disappointment and hence to stop clicking on links. Even on HN I find myself clicking straight on the comment links to get an idea of what the link is about.

Your unwillingness to click on a popup is nothing compared with the systematic censorship that has been sweeping the web.

This is one of those cases in which I wished for the first comment I’m seeing to not be so shallow.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#12
"Google News shows one lonely result for "porn," an article that is 26 days old."

Must be a regional thing. Gives plenty of fresh (less than a day old) articles when searched in Estonia.

Edit: this is for Google search "news" tab. If I go to Google News (https://news.google.com) and search from there, get no results.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#13
post #5
post #2

>Now Tumblr is a sex-free haven for white nationalists and Nazis. reminded Matt Damon's character from Dogma : Loki : ... If I had a dick, I'd go get laid. We can do the next best thing. Bartleby : What's that? Loki : Well, let's kill people.

Now Tumblr is a sex-free haven for white nationalists and Nazis. Is the author basing this on anything other than checking to see if white nationalists and Nazis are simply using the site as some sort of electronic forward operating base such that it's worth calling Tumblr a "haven" for these groups? Asked a better way: if you go looking for group x on just about any website, isn't it fair to say you're probably goin…

Many people think nazis are objectively much less acceptable than porn. Particularly the type of softcore "artsy" porn one would expect to find on Tumblr before the crackdown.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#14

This doesnt make sense to me. Core internet community experiences to me have always been about smaller sites, message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, voice chat groups, etc. Seeing large corporation websites like tumblr, reddit, facebook crack down on content doesn't stop any of that. it just means you need to get out of your internet bubble.

The problem is that platforms and web hosting services are engaging in censorship too.

The article gives Cloudflare as example. Hosting porn content, even if it is art, can get very expensive because most services have an explicit no porn policy.

Also without Google Search and without presence on a big social network, you’re essentially invisible.

The situation for mobile apps is even worse, as Apple doesn’t allow porn content in its App Store and Google started banning such content as well.

Also the article mentions the by-law censorship of articles in which sex workers are interviewed due to FOSTA-SESTA.

So the smaller websites you’re talking about are being pushed off the web ;-)

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#15

YMMV... For me, the last straw was having to click away 2-3 banners that cover the content on every website and then often being slapped in the face with a subscription box. This is simply conditioning me to expect disappointment and hence to stop clicking on links. Even on HN I find myself clicking straight on the comment links to get an idea of what the link is about.

Your unwillingness to click on a popup is nothing compared with the systematic censorship that has been sweeping the web. This is one of those cases in which I wished for the first comment I’m seeing to not be so shallow.

> Your unwillingness to click on a popup is nothing compared with the systematic censorship that has been sweeping the web.

Excuse me for not caring much about Tumblr porn, nor seeing all this supposedly rampant censorship on the web among all the hate speech and political propaganda. Perhaps you’re just expecting wrong content in the wrong places?

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#16
I think the author brings up a good point, but most of those are simply due to us using Google's services instead of other services.

>In 2014 Google Play banned sex-themed apps

This point, however, I think is slightly different. It's difficult for the average user to get apps on their android phones without the app being on the Play Store. On the other hand, people go to great lengths for sex stuff so I'm surprised there aren't very popular alternative app stores for android.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#17

This doesnt make sense to me. Core internet community experiences to me have always been about smaller sites, message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, voice chat groups, etc. Seeing large corporation websites like tumblr, reddit, facebook crack down on content doesn't stop any of that. it just means you need to get out of your internet bubble.

The problem is that platforms and web hosting services are engaging in censorship too. The article gives Cloudflare as example. Hosting porn content, even if it is art, can get very expensive because most services have an explicit no porn policy. Also without Google Search and without presence on a big social network, you’re essentially invisible. The situation for mobile apps is even worse, as Apple doesn’t allow po…

I think you bring up some very good points and frankly, it's quite depressing. A decade or two from now the internet will be exactly like cable TV.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#18

This doesnt make sense to me. Core internet community experiences to me have always been about smaller sites, message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, voice chat groups, etc. Seeing large corporation websites like tumblr, reddit, facebook crack down on content doesn't stop any of that. it just means you need to get out of your internet bubble.

There are some portals listed on this similar recent hn thread, in which I added to a similar comment, ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040384 ) - basically that for many people the internet is google, and for many, especially in other countries from what I have read, 'the internet' is facebook. It appears many people do not know how to use urls or ask people about other portals. If facebook censors it, they…

> Heck people put google.com into the box and search for it rather then enter a url and hit ctrl-enter.

Not even that. They google directly from the address bar. Once you could google without going to google.com, anecdotally I started to notice most people would google everything, including URLs they obviously knew

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#19

Whats the point of this article? Tumblr is supposed to be monetized. You can't monetize porn content, so tumblr has 'no pron' policy now. Sorry, this is how the world works. Boo. Meanwhile, any kind of porn is plentiful if you go to the different url. Enter any keyword and have porn catered to your interest, in a good quality, abundant. Seriously, this was unimaginable 15 years ago, and yet author claims that someone…

The problem is that it's not just the sites that don't get funding, but it's hosting providers and pretty much the entire chain of services that you use that won't do business with you if there's sexual content involved.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#20

Whats the point of this article? Tumblr is supposed to be monetized. You can't monetize porn content, so tumblr has 'no pron' policy now. Sorry, this is how the world works. Boo. Meanwhile, any kind of porn is plentiful if you go to the different url. Enter any keyword and have porn catered to your interest, in a good quality, abundant. Seriously, this was unimaginable 15 years ago, and yet author claims that someone…

I don't understand why the corporate monoliths refuse to slap their ads on porno. Porno has got to be the most popular kind of content on the internet. Why cant my porno be brought to me in part by pepsi cola?
Post reply on HN