Part of the monetization issue, at least in the United States, is that banks are under pressure to not do business with those involved with pornographic content, via those who want to stamp out such things. The banks seem to be the weak link; they'll disconnect from other payment gateways that do allow such content, etc.

That's not true. Banks charge more for porn vendors because of high chargebacks and fraud. No one boycotts banks over porn.

at the risk of begging the question: who's pressuring the banks and why do they want to stamp out such things to begin with? Is there some hidden financial incentive or is it a pure political interest happening from a different place of power than the usual government system?

I assume it's because Western civilization is based on Judeo-Christian morality, where sex outside of marriage, sexual self-gratification and sex for pleasure are considered immoral by many people, so any company associating itself with pornographic content through advertisement will be considered immoral by association. East Asian countries, being based on a different cultural and religious framework altogether, likely don't consider most forms of human sexuality to be taboo.

It's not West; it's Anglo and Puritan. Germany isn't afraid of sex.

Just checked. Most adverts are for paid porn and toys, not other goods and services. Is this not the same in the West?

I’m more referring to sites like Pixiv as an example, which, while they are not in the business of pornography, do in fact host a fair bit of it.

One difference is that Pixiv requires you to be logged in to see NSFW content, much like the new Imgur changes, but I suspect this is for other reasons. I haven’t checked to see if doing that actually shows different things in terms of advertisements.

OTOH, I’ve never heard of any advertisers pulling out of an entity due to pornographic content in Japan.

Just tried Pixiv.. Hit the OAuth with Google button, and after OAuthing, it then asks for your Google password... That isn't how OAuth is supposed to work...

It does what? Are you sure??

I haven’t tried OAuth on Pixiv but they have a fairly good engineering culture and would be surprised if they are asking for your Google password.

Edit: I just tried. The password it’s asking for is the one that will be associated with the Pixiv account that is created. Whether that is how federated login should work is arguable, but it’s a fairly common pattern.

America is still trying to come to terms with expressing sexuality. Give it another 50 years and we might get there.

It's been more prevalent recently and I think it's just part of a larger fear of guilt by association. Some other comment mentioned banks/payment gateways being a part of it, but I don't think it's just that.

A more reputable company just might not want their ad displayed on a site that might have porn or questionable content. Look at how YouTube ads and monitization have changed in just the past few years. There were real issues with major ads getting displayed on popular but questionable videos.

We're heading into a much bigger issue of call-out culture. We're seeing academics, programmers, CEOs, authors and comedians being told they need to resign from positions or be ousted for single political comments or a single donation to one cause made years ago. Then people go back through history and pull up every questionable thing that person has done or said.

I don't think it's tangentially related; and that it's affecting the business of Internet advertising.