For instance, both the Reddit and Apollo apps are rated 17+. There's nothing "adult" about them, except that it can access adult subreddits.

So by banning adult channels, Discord is likely looking to drop the age rating on their app. A 12+ or 9+ would be more appealing and potentially allow them a broader audience, especially when trying to target the teen crowd which may have parental filters enabled on their phones.

As a parent, you can add screen time restrictions to your child's phone that prevent them from accessing apps that are above a certain rating. This is a very powerful feature, that's really hard (impossible?) to bypass without social engineering.

It's possible that discord is concerned enough with this so as to block out nsfw servers. Do they have a lot of teenagers on their platform?

It's never about the actual thing haha. Americans (averaged and skewed by power) are really weird about sex

As a parent, it's 100% about the actual thing. Whatever the additional motivations are for Faceless Multinational Corporations to be thoughtful about it, I'm glad they are.

Before the cries of "censorship", this is about kids not stumbling about NSFW/NSFL content before they're equipped (by parents, educators, etc.) to deal with it. When they want to find it, they will be able to.

But it's not just kids who use Discord (and other platforms). If you're concerned about kids accidentally discovering adult content, by all means add a parental control setting somewhere that hides any NSFW content. Then everyone else who is of legal age and equipped to deal with such content can, if they wish to do so.

For sure! And thank you for the response — I just realized I must've skimmed over this very important detail (emphasis mine): "Additionally, all users on the iOS platform (including those aged 18+) will be blocked from joining AND ACCESSING NSFW servers."

Okay, that's stupid.

Life of a teenager is much better with internet, including ability to access porn anytime, our predecessors were sharing erotic journals and other images with each other, just because they didn't know any better.

kids who have no interest in content like that shouldn't have unrestricted access to computers anyway, and if your child is old enough to manage his time playing games, he is old enough to figure out sex on his own the same way his parents did

I think we'll probably have to agree to disagree that it's universally ridiculous to guard children from any kind of porn. As a parent, I'm trying to help the children I'm responsible for to develop informed, healthy attitudes about sex. Unfettered access to the deep end of the internet porn pool won't help me help them do that.

Sort of like official "I swear she was 18, officer".

Wow. That's an excellent and very telling point.

What is the point of IOS's endless restrictions and censorship of free speech?

Is the point really to protect users from exercising their own intelligence or guarding their own kids, or is it to protect users from alternatives to Apple's own products?

It's kinda like Gatekeeper on Mac OS; you cannot (easily) install apps that aren't from the App Store. Was this only to protect you from malware? Really?

It's like all of these restrictions have a dual purpose on Mac OS: the stated reason, and an unstated reason: to increase Apple's control over you.

I'm actually surprised that Apple even allows web browsers at all, or third party mail apps, or anything that lets people access things outside their walled garden.

It's not credible.

That's rather impolite. And I'm absolute surprised that Apple hasn't already eliminated the real web -- just like AOL and Microsoft (tried to subvert with MSN and IE), because full and unrestricted access to the web is full of negatives for Apple's business model.

> the last decade has been all about the iPhone and its pervasive and elegant access to literally millions of sources of content that is "outside Apple's walled garden".

No idea what this means. Are you talking about how the iPhone provides "pervasive and elegant access" to.. the web?

o/w, "Safari supports parental controls" argument is BS.

EDIT: Getting downvoted. Is this incorrect?

1) The distinction if browsers ship their own engine or just embed system provided WebKit is ultimately irrelevant to the question at hand. I can go on the App Store and download "Chrome" or "Firefox" and use those applications to access websites.

2) Browsers do have age ratings on the App Store. It's 17+.

That said, this decision makes no sense unless Discord is being influenced by a third party, and like OP, my first and only suspect is Apple. Yeah it would be inconsistent for Apple, but it's just as inconsistent for Discord and there is at least precedent for this inconsistency on Apple's app store (eg Amazon getting preferential treatment for in-app purchases). There is also precedent for Apple not allowing app developers to explain how app functionality had to be altered to comply with Apple's whims (eg Facebook getting in trouble for publishing information about Apple's 30% cut on in-app purchases).

My best guess is that Apple thinks of Discord as a platform which is more popular with children than Reddit, so they are trying to get ahead of parental complaints by eliminating access to NSFW content via Discord's iOS app altogether. I have no evidence for this, though, so I guess we'll wait and see.

No, it's not different at all. Plenty of people see porn as "manipulating people's persectives to harm"; in fact Apple is doing it almost precisely because that's the mainstream opinion.

I think the dominant problem with the burgeoning pro-censorship crowd here on HN is that they still haven't grappled with the fact that they aren't going to be picking what gets censored. No matter how confidently you look out at the current landscape and think only they will be censored, you're never more than one power shift away from being the censored one, and more of you than you realize are zero power shifts away, as everetm has now just discovered.

Dysfunctional to the point of being unusable indeed.

Increasing comfort with censorship of a larger range of views will also translate into increasing comfort with stronger measures taken, because of course if you are running around saying censorable things you should get higher interest rates or it should show up on your credit report. But... are you sure you're going to be the ones in charge of what gets censored? Because you aren't.

Advocating for less censorship and less consequences for censorship, not no censorship, is a sensible Nash equilibrium to pursue for everyone. Advocating for more censorship and more comfort with censorship will empower people who will eventually censor you. Those who are using the gestalt's comfort with censorship (and equivalent comfort with censorship elsewhere) are only using the censoring of things you agree with today as a cover for the acquisition of power. Once they have it, what you want it for will not be something they're too worried about. They're going to use it for themselves. It is wiser not to give that power up just because they're promising to use it for things you like today.

(Among the ways in which censorship is a continuum are the size of the community in which it is taking place (HN is fairly small), and the nature of what is being censored (most of what gets nuked from HN is for tone or outright trolling, though I do not assert all). It isn't even remotely hypocritical to be comfortable with that, which is rather minimal and functional, while being uncomfortable with the increasingly political nature of censorship being advocated for in the largest forums. I'm also on record as being skeptical as to whether something the size of "Facebook" can ever be "a community": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20146868 )

I like your point about Facebook's size. They've been unable to define global rules in part because large segments of their user base hold directly opposite values to the point that stating their beliefs, genuinely held and of majority opinion in their communities, would be deleted under common sense trolling rules in other parts of that user base. Facebook has three options: leave everything controversial up, delete all of it, or take a side. They've done all three of these at various points and they've all been disastrous.

At FB scale their moderation started with "you can hide it if it annoys you" (aka not bothering) - the easiest technical solution. Doesn't actual address the problematic content, but perhaps doesn't feed the trolls.

Going beyond that to any kind of action requires determining whether something breaks any rules, and also faces the issue that reporting is used as a weapon, so simply deleting everything (mass) reported doesn't work either... And figuring out if it breaks rules just falls back onto rules which are imperfect.

As you sum up well, they're at such a scale that they have complete polar opposites on the platform. And in a sense, perhaps what we need are more subdivisions, not fewer - maybe what we are seeing here is the symptom of existing tensions, albeit exacerbated through being able to reach an audience that disagrees in real-time.

And yet somehow you found this site, where you claimed the uncensored internet was a fantasy.

HN is heavily moderated. Try turning on showdead in your profile and reading the trash that dang and co. delete from here. I doubt you'll come away with the conclusion that it should all be left up.

This includes things like removing duplicate links and changing upvoted stories from tertiary sources to primary ones. Is it "censorship?" Yes. Does it make the site better? Yes.

How?

As far as I can tell, the so called slippery slope fallacy came and went. We decided in favour of censorship -- but if you can censor one type of content, expect many more to be added to the list.

If I had the choice, I'd much rather have the completely free and open internet we used to have but that ship has sailed as you mentioned.

Also, I’m not a “we” and neither are you. Stop hiding behind some imaginary hive mind.

And this wouldn't be the first time Apple doesn't apply its rules equally to everyone.

Don’t worry our corporate friends will let us know what is trending, what topics we should discus, and keep us safe!!!

Will stick to Android and hopefully root to add privacy instead.

Privacy is a different concern. The mail app pre-installed on my Samsung phone wanted me to agree to a EULA that lets them process any of my mail. I also find that unacceptable, so I found a different mail client I liked and I did the same thing with the entire phone, basically. It's possible, but it's just no annoying and not something I really want to be dealing with. It seems like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

(Yes, I am well aware of the Librem and other such noble efforts, but I can also begrudgingly admit that I'm just not willing to put up with their flaws either.)

I used to love tinkering, but my phone has become nothing more than a tool and I need it to just work. If I forego Magisk and other root-related tools, can I expect mobile banking and such to just work?

EDIT: Seems I can't reply to a reply to this. (Does HN have a depth limit?) I am aware, Cyanogen hasn't been a thing for some time, hence my question: has the situation genuinely improved since then? I would like to avoid buying a phone just to see if it would work for me.

However at some point an update to my bank's app made it refuse to run citing insecure device - it's not rooted so this was a little surprising. I don't know how common that is, no experience with other banks.

If you're so worried about privacy on Android that you'd consider jumping to closed source Apple iOS, consider buying a OnePlus (or other supported) device and then installing LineageOS or another fully open source OS. You don't have to use stock Android and many of the custom OS / ROMs have 0 ties to Google / don't install Google service / etc.

I prefer the real world.

Same here. I'm tired of Android's wonkiness but this is a showstopper.

Although I have made a living in the mobile industry for years and years now, I am personally quite happy at the moment to be middle the move from Android and iOS to PinePhone.

Nobody controls my content on that device but me.

It might be rocky, but the minimalism of Pine and its ecosphere represent, is refreshing - in light of the endless, endless tracking, deceit and plain uselessness of iOS and Android apps, in spite of it all.

It might be time for us all to reset our expectations and go back to a 100% open, compiler-onboard platform. I think PinePhone, and others just like that, are ripe for the attempt ..