Sex censorship killed the internet we love • Hacker News Board

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#121

Post by kome » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #78

The sex-bad-violence-good meme confused me at least since I became aware of its existence aged about 14. I was 16 when I got a letter published in a UK national newspaper on this topic, pointing out the absurdity that deliberate murder could be shown in a cartoon aimed specifically at young kids (i.e. BBFC rating Uc), but people “my own age”[1] couldn’t see pictures of uncensored sex even though we could legally[1] p…

that's the most frustrating thing about being an european in a internet dominated by American "puritan" tech giants...

Linguistic and cultural imperialism are a thing. I don't know how to fight back. Those companies have a lot of money.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#122

Post by odiroot » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #43

What's interesting to me is how Americans don't bat an eye on all the violence exposed in movies, music and games, but then become prudish when it comes to sex. And these are the traits of the exported American culture. In my European country it is perfectly normal to have pictures of your children naked. It's also OK for them to see a nude body now and then, like at the beach (and yes I am aware that I'm not talking…

> So as a citizen of an EU country that's not prudish about sex, why do I have to suffer from the censorship of US companies?

Conversely, I found out after travelling a lot in Europe, making foreigner friends and moving to another state it's not about being prudish about sex but about nudity.

From my (admittedly limited) experience Americans are much less prudish about sex than Europeans (especially Western EU countries) but leagues more prudish about nudity.

I actually find it more reasonable coming from Poland. We should keep nudity private and at the same time be able to let ourself go and be free when interacting intimately with another human.

Again, from my experience, Germany (my new country of residence) is extremely open about nudity while at the same time being similarly repressed about sexuality. This actually made me understand why Slavic people consider Germanic people to be "cold" or "passionless" (no offence intended).

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#123

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #104

I don't see this for Google, using a German IP. But I do see it for Startpage, until I turn off the family filter. Searching for "porn start suicide". First hits: Google: Fifth porn star dies: Drugs, suicide factors in deaths - The Mercury News " rel="nofollow">https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/fifth-young-porn-star... DDG: Fifth young porn star dies: Drugs, despair, suicide factors ... " rel="nofollow">https://…

[deleted]

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#124

Post by ilkkao » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #14

foolfoolz wrote: post #7

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…

Cloudflare is by far not the best example I think. They proxy thepiratebay.org after all.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#125

Post by scottlocklin » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

black-tea wrote: post #81

I wonder how long this woman spent finding the next thing to complain about. Her real gripe is quietly dropped in the third paragraph where she claims porn is about "women". Porn is made by men for men on the whole. I despise porn personally and while I don't support censorship I certainly don't want to use a service where I constantly see news about porn. Porn is not about "people". It's just something almost every…

She's a bay area sex writer, and is probably kind of butthurt that work and fame ain't what it was some years ago. The internet actually was much better when "Violet Blue" was a bigger deal, but it has little to do with the number of porn search results in google news.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#126

Post by eloisant » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

stinos wrote: post #66

There's nude art subreddits, no? And Vimeo has a bunch of channels featuring nudity on stage, nude art performances etc. It's video though, and maybe not super popular on a global scale, but just mentioning this to counter the 'all is lost' feeling the article sometimes gave me while reading through it. For the rest though I wholeheartedly agree: the input (keyboard) and in between (servers) and output (search result…

It's shrinking. Tumblr is down. How long do you think reddit will resist?

Also you can launch a website like Nerve if you want, I'm sure you'll find servers to host it.

But who will know about it if you're not in Google's search results, and Facebook doesn't allow linking to your articles?

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#127

Post by marcus_holmes » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy.

Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject.

I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religious, specifically more Christian, and the Christian Church has always taught that sex should only be for procreation. Enjoying it is a sin, apparently. Though I can't find that anywhere in any of the commandments, or the new testament. Plenty of instruction about not murdering people, though, but that didn't seem to get through...

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#128

Post by OkGoDoIt » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #85

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few red flags here for me. Libr has the signatures of a well known political movement who have a penchant for censoring anything they don't like under the claim of hate speech. Or you're just marketing to the Tumblr user demographic.

Ah yes, anti-harassment tools are automatically censorship; next you're going to tell me every feminist has blue hair, hunting men at tech conferences (you know, it's sort of a game, who can break the highscore?).

Often anti-harassment tools are literally censorship, it’s just censorship people have collectively agreed is morally worthwhile. I feel like the Internet has shown society enough examples where free speech can have negative consequences that many people are unsure whether completely free speech is really a good thing. I’m not going to add my personal opinion to this about whether it’s good or bad, but let’s at least agree on a technical level that it is censorship by definition.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#129

Post by barrkel » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:17 AM UTC

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #21

Since I heard about Tumblrs new policy a week before it was implemented, I've been hard at work building Libr ( https://librapp.com ) to replace it. A large amount of art that isn't porn, but that qualifies as "adult content" under the new policy has been all but purged from the internet. It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art. Libr is about…

Make it easy to report child porn, clearly illegal content. Tumblr actually made that tedious - multiple clicks, copy and paste after searching for the report page.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#130

Post by marcus_holmes » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #21

Since I heard about Tumblrs new policy a week before it was implemented, I've been hard at work building Libr ( https://librapp.com ) to replace it. A large amount of art that isn't porn, but that qualifies as "adult content" under the new policy has been all but purged from the internet. It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art. Libr is about…

I had the same idea :)

But to make it sustainable, it needs to generate money. Advertisers don't like seeing their brands next to pr0n, so they won't come to your site. Unless, of course, you open it to adverts from people selling sexeh stuff, who can't get an ad to appear anywhere normally.

Of course, you could charge for it... but people have been trained to expect internet services for free. Hopefully that's changing, because it needs to.