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.
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.
> Jurors are the judges of contemporary community standards, based upon their knowledge of the norms of the community from which they may come. The juror must also decide whether the "average person" in applying such standards would find that the disputed material appeals to "prurient interest" or is "patently offensive." Experts testimony may be used to testify about the nature of the contemporary community standards,' but such testimony is not constitutionally required.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/contemporary-community-sta...
Back in the Dark Twentieth, you could maintain the polite fiction that even broadcast media was bound by these standards, as the FCC would go after local affiliate stations, not the mothership, for violating broadcast regulations. In theory, and, to some extent, in practice, local stations could regulate what got shown, so as to prevent what you mention: Distant townies trying to impose their standards on the locals.
This breaks down in the Internet Era, of course, because, while a website may claim to have Community Standards, a website is not a community. A website cannot have Community Standards, Contemporary or otherwise, because the people it has contributing to it are a pseudo-random mix of some vaguely-defined demographic, and, as you yourself show, can and will differ sharply on precisely the kinds of things Community Standards presume a strong majority in a community can agree on.
The Liberalization of the world has ripped a lot of veils off the cultural standards we used to abide by, and turned polite fictions, the kinds of things all the adults in the room could admit privately were not laws of nature but laws of local social norms, into, at long last, simple fictions, as might be found in a storybook. "Community Standards" is one such polite fiction, and it's been replaced by the standards of the platform owners.
We can remove the platform owners by federating and decentralizing, but "Community Standards", as-was, isn't coming back. Communication is far too important to allow the previous geographic segregation to reassert 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.
So this is coming from Google. Their motivation is much harder to discern. Related to advertising? Avoiding store segregation as they expand into e.g. various far more conservative Asian or Islamic nations? Trying to create a 'Disney-Esque' image for Android as opposed to being that naughty back alley alternative to Apple? Maybe it was an algorithm or even human gone awry. Lots of possibilities, and we'll likely never know which it was - even if they choose to respond to this.
I think this mechanism is the core of why we feel a vague sadness when sites like github get bought by big corps. You tacitly know it's the beginning of the end on some dimension.
I love my iPhone to bits but the fact that I’m prevented by a US company from buying apps with sexual content is grating in the same way. Why is a nipple considered harmful to children while graphic displays of violence aren’t? I will never understand that norm. I wouldn’t have to grapple with it, except that my own phone enforces your nonsense moral code. It’s super aggravating.
it's easy for me to see almost no connection between viewing violence and people commiting violent behavior. It's much easier for me to see a connection between sexy media and sexual behavior with consequences like teen pregnancy and STDs.
I watch a violent movie yet I don't want to commit violent acts after. I watch a sexy movie and I do start to desire to have sex.
it seems therefore reasonable to argue that violent media has no consequences but sexy media does.
No idea in reality if sexy media has real world consequences.
You've been tangoed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV8zGNe7Ebg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement)
> The advertisement features an orange man slapping a Tango drinker across the cheeks, a wacky metaphor for tasting Tango, and was intended as a reaction against the norm of "cause and effect" television advertising at the time was largely focused on scenarios where peoples lives were improved by the product being advertised. Orange Man caused controversy after reports of injuries when children began copying the events of the advertisement in school playgrounds, and was subsequently banned, with two other versions of Orange Man replacing it, both showing different scenarios aside from slapping.
I don’t necessarily agree that game/movie violence leads to violence in real life, such a claim requires proof, however at this point we can see an obvious correlation.
American culture prefers violence in movies/games, while banning nudity and waging an expensive war on drugs and yet it has some of the highest rates of violence, teen pregnancies and drug addictions among the western countries.
IMO you should rethink your assumptions. When it comes to stats and trends, this isn’t about you or your preferences.
Second: if we're going to go by anecdotal evidence, then we'll definitely have to ban anything remotely violent, as kids imitate that. While anything but overt depictions of sexuality are fine, since kids tend not to imitate them.
Oh, and we should also ban the Teletubbies. Some kids started to hug their oversized tv sets ("big hug!"), causing it to topple and hurt the children.
Alternatively, we could try standards not based on anecdotal evidence or one small group's moral views.
Nudity can lead to sex, but it can also contribute to sexual education (which reduces teen pregnancy and STD risk). It can also change you body image in negative or positive ways. It depends a lot on the content, the environment and the person.
In any case, America's war on the nipple is in no proportion to the risks.
In otherwords it's possible violent media has little consequence, sexy media has consequences.
This is a response as to why some cultures are okay with violent media and not okay with sexy media.
Sorry, I just cannot take you seriously after that. Dude, people used to have kids even younger than that, when media didn’t even exist.
If you really want to rationalise current mores, you could try looking at how kids might have to use or face violence earlier that they get any sexual instinct, so they should be trained right away. But it’s still a baseless theory to justify a state of things mostly driven by arbitrary religious taboos.
I think 16yr olds watching pornhub with gangbangs and other extreme sexual behavior leads some 16yr olds to seek that out. Something my parents for example had zero exposure too when they were growing up in the 50s. Where would they have seen that kind of stuff at 16?
https://qz.com/849487/they-go-into-a-different-world-and-we-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-36527681
Note: I'm an in no way suggesting going back or banning anything. I'm only responding to the very common argument
> Q: Why is a sexual media considered harmful to children while graphic displays of violence aren’t? I will never understand that norm.
A: Sexual media has measurable consequences, violent media does not (so far)
Decentralized networks such as what? Usenet? SMTP? BGP?
Facebook and Google need to adapt to our laws. Yes, they are allowed to be more restrictive than our laws (till some extend), but not less.
The "just don't use Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook/Amazon" mantra gets old very quick. I do use Apple, but only macOS. I do use Android, but not GApps. I don't use Facebook. I use a local alternative to Amazon. I don't use Microsoft. Anyway, it is a chicken egg problem due to the network effect, and on top of that Europe could not win this even if they wanted to because the NSA does economic espionage as well which furthermore complicates the problem.
Google Play is like a shopping mall, a privately owned public space.
There will be standards.
If you put up some questionable ads in your local mall, you'll get asked to have them taken down.
Those spaces are not intellectual zones, or bastions of expression. They are public/common areas and subject to some kind of basic rules of expression.
Your local library has some rules.
So does your school.
So does your University.
There are infinitely url's that you can use to access content according to a different set of norms, you're free to use them at any time.
This thread exhibits one of the failing aspects of intellectual idealism, in that it so often fails to take into consideration the community - you know - 'other people's opinions'.
There seem to be these possible answers: a) Everyone agrees to one narrative and moral standard. b) Everyone sticks to their little bit of the world and guards it with walls c) Live and let live and do not feed the trolls, cause haters will hate. So be it.
Any one of a) or b) put to extremes wouldn't make a nice world to live in.
It would either come with a global harmonization effort that will feel opressive. (This is what you are feeling in this instance)
Or it would be a world comprised of iron curtains. With whatever harmonization and opression going on within each region.
In any way, c) seems to me the most favorable outcome. But I have no idea how to get there since a) and b) appear to be the popular choices nowadays.
If you resolve to stop it, then you have to deal with that problem that everyone thinks different things are harmful.
Some people honestly believe that porn is harmful to society and the individuals within it. It's not enough to just say "it's not harmful" because they believe it.
And I can't even say that it's not. Promiscuous sex transmits diseases that absolutely do harm people, and there are psychological aspects that I'm not even knowledgeable enough to start giving an opinion on.
Secondly, the human race will die out pretty fast without sex.
Food may kill you too, yet it's still needed so we can live™.
So clearly this isn't an useful criterion.
Has the choice not already been made with westphalian sovereignty?
how is reducing ourselves to animals running around naked with no impulse control "progress"? Is pleasure your only goal in life? The hard work and years of effort to make scientific breakthroughs sure as hell isn't fun, but the results are beneficial
>If we want to transition from a society of repression and suffering to one of liberation and bliss
"repression" is what makes society possible. If every one is free to do what they want and seek their own pleasure with no societal control, your only rule is might makes right.
Pretty much every religious rule you're criticizing was for the benefit of the weak. The strongest can just crack your skull and do as they please without any rules holding them back
Edit: Reading further, it's saying that public topless-ness was common in Japan until the American occupation after WWII, so there's a more recent example as well.
For example, Sayyid Qutb - the grandfather of modern Salafism - became radicalized after visiting US in 1940s, and observing its culture. Here's how he describes it in his writings:
"The American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs -- and she shows all this and does not hide it."
"They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire."
Going back to the nudity example, have you ever been to a topless beach? As an American who grew up in the religious south, my first trip to a topless beach in Europe was interesting for a bit but then just became normal. There was not any growing 'sexual tension'.
I have friends who are nudists and they say the same thing. It becomes normal quickly, and then it's not even a thing.
It's a bit stronger than that, because not only all successful cultures banned public nudity - also all cultures that tried public nudity failed.
Re: topless beach - going to a topless beach once a while vs living in a society where everybody around you is naked all the time are two different things. Imagine a workplace where your female colleagues (if you're a straight male) are naked. There's a reason why some of the best schools in the world still separate pupils by sex.
I just imagined that - and indeed, you're right that the possibility is quite offensive to my personal taste, and even frankly disquieting. But whereas you might try to explain this as the result of "too much sexual tension", I would instead place the blame on its very opposite. (And the fact that the colleagues might be of the gender I'm occasionally attracted to does not improve things one bit.)
Your position is nice, but it's academic.
We could even disagree on the academic points, but it would be futile: topless women and men with their dongle's hanging out are not going to be in Google Play, just like you won't see them on street signs or in shopping malls in the US, Germany, or most other places frankly.
I don't buy any of the historical (i.e. religious) or national (i.e. USA) arguments: in the UK and Sweden, they are banning scantily clad women in ads on the basis of 'sexism' for god's sake. And even if they weren't, you're not going to find men with their dongle's in your Taxi ad anytime soon either - anywhere on earth basically.
In reality, there will always have to be a line drawn somewhere.
Tumblr became a porn haven, and for whatever reason, they didn't want that, so they moved it.
If there were no recourse, then I think there'd be an issue here, but there are basically infinity recourses. All you hav to do is type a url into your browser to get your 'Heavy Metal' avatar.