Not just sanitizing, but sanitizing to US social mores. Showing a naked boob is considered porn and banned on most of these platform while public toplessness is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions worldwide. I guess it's lucky that at least these companies are not based in an even more restrictive society like China or we would see further restrictions become commonplace.

Ironically some liberties offered even less than a decade ago are eroding away because of the new internet overlords, often under the guise of some trumped up reason like "security" or "social" cause.

These day they don't even try to hide their true greedy objectives anymore, as seen in the removal of the YouTube dislike button or manifestv3.

While my example gas nothing to do with the internet it might still be interesting.

When I grew up nudism wasn't uncommon in the GDR, but after being unified with western Germany not one generation later it is more than fringe.

We only see unified filtered body types and the normality of seeing many different bodies in a non sexual way. While on the other hand even non nude bodies on Instagram often are sexualized beyond belief to maximize engagement.

We denormalized nudity, the regular body but commoditized the stereotypical filtered body.

[1] is a decent documentary about the weird and inconsistent standards applied by the MPAA. But yeah, violence is fine, man-focused sex is passable, woman-focused sex is bad, homosexual sex is RIGHT OUT, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated

But, it’s worth realizing the two categories are different, and they are regulated differently (either legally or socially) for good reasons.

Sexual images have a propensity to make you horny.

Violent images do not have propensity to make you violent. At least not as acutely.

As an aside, it turns out my phone dictionary does not contain the word "nudity".

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topfreedom_in_the_United_State...

That said, I found it very interesting. I honestly had no idea it was legal anywhere outside of private or 'cordoned off' places.

That said, in my opinion people working in such a workplace reading a post "Why “go nuts, show nuts” doesn’t work in 2022" should be savvy enough to not click links, or read the post in the first place.

Also, ironically, the fact that we have to mark such links (to Wikipedia!) as NSFW is exactly what this particular comment chain is about, no?

It was definitely a valid remark, and in this case, it was useful at least for me.

This is more to say that this is a disagreement between you two at the object level, not someone overthinking a simple matter.

Boobs on the screen isn't the greatest look at work or any public location, and I don't really think it requires going any deeper than that. I can appreciate the pointless debate here and there, but this isn't some great philosophical question we have here lol.

Like it or not, there are plenty of jobs that would be very unhappy with you viewing said images in an office setting.

This was all back in the day, long before trans awareness even hit the mainstream.

I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me? [Meet the Parents]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation

It generally isn't. The map image in the article colors a state blue for "legal at the State/Territory level". But that's not where the laws banning nudity come from anyway, so it's almost purely uninformative.

Like it or not, in some US workplaces, a background shirtless man isn't probably a big deal.

A front and center topless lady in a thong probably is.

I'd make the same declaration if it was a front and center pic of some dude in a banana hammock.

I'm making no judgement on laws or society, just trying to give a heads up to folks who might not expect that from a wikipedia link.

Sort of. Many states don't have laws specifically against it, but some of the ones listed as legal on that map may not actually be (PA should be marked yellow at best). Most of these states also do not appear to restrict localities from enacting their own ordinances (obviously excluding under the jurisdictions where the courts have ruled).

Take Youtube "content-creators" as an example making a living from ad revenue: Aussie / Scottish other native-English-speaking contributors face "de-monetisation" for presenting their natural selves and instead are asked to present according to US cultural norms in order to use the platform. And this isn't unique to Google/Youtube - the same applies to content-moderation across the internet.

Some people does the content anyway but publish in non-US platforms, or at least somewhere small that can't curate content.

Some channels (e.g. RealLifeLore) even gate their videos on more controversial topics (e.g. war) behind a Nebula or Patreon subscription, with the rationale that they would get demonetized on YouTube.

Better one hundred guilty people go free than one innocent be convicted wrongly. Something is horribly broken about our current system.

I'm not sure what you mean and imagining people in AU going through accent training to sound like they're from the US... please tell me it's not that bad

I'm self censoring here because this is a US-run site and I'm afraid I'll get shadowbanned if I use it in full. I am not from the US and this word does not carry the same weight for me.

Also, I find it funny that "cunt" is considered a gendered slew in the US (according to one of the parent comments). Being a cunt has nothing to do with gender, and everything with a character.

Surely you see, though, how it could.

Let's stick with 'asshole'.

Context matters. Intent matters.

Google has fired many an engineer that mentioned that.

It's more about cultural norms of acceptability - curse words are the obvious example but there's broader & more subtle cultural considerations w.r.t. what's acceptable to discuss and how it should be approached.

I have no evidence to support the following, but looking at what causes this problem on mainstream platforms I would strongly suspect Rumble to be even worse. The cause of this problem is socially conservative US advertisers: Youtube's demonetisation algorithms are tuned to language that their advertisers feel it's acceptable to be associated with. My instinct would be that the subset of these advertisers who use Rumble would be more, not less, socially conservative.

If I'm wrong in my guess above, it's likely a result of scale. Rumble being smaller might simply not have reached the scale whereby algorithmic demonetisation is a thing. In which case it's only a matter of time.

Yep. Im wondering when will countries start preventing US tech platforms from enforcing US laws and US morals on the people of those countries.

What it sounds like you're proposing is, if Denmark has carte blanche topless legality, that websites that want to operate in Denmark must respect their liberalism and allow said content. Which is far more draconian and intrusive. If a site wants owner wants to err on the side of conservative social values, that's their prerogative; create an alternative to fill the niche if you feel it's lacking. OnlyFans filled an entire void in that manner.

1 - "Two hundred twenty-two million users live in the US, which makes up 48% of the Reddit community." / https://thrivemyway.com/reddit-statistics/#Reddit-Usage-Stat...

2 - "The United States of America has at least 83.4 million active Twitter users" - https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats

3 - "While Tumblr is used worldwide, the vast majority of its users are based in the U.S. Domestic visitors alone account for 42% of its overall traffic." - https://cloudincome.com/tumblr-statistics/

That will enforce less monopoly in social media, I am perfectly fine with that.

tl;dr: your last point didn't add anything to discussion, but is likely to offend

There’s also a reason we don’t dictate platforms and content.

We don’t force people to attend or partake in topless/nude beaches despite allowing them to exist. We don’t force people to join political protests despite them being a protected activity.

In the same manner, we don’t force newspapers to publish content against their goal or audience. There’s no difference for a site platform. There’s no reason “ChristianGram” should be forced to host nudity for Danish (and other) Christians, simply because Danes are allowed to be naked if they like.

The fact that you don’t see how that’s equally tyrannical and intrusive is, honestly, terrifying.

> The fact that you don’t see how that’s equally tyrannical and intrusive is, honestly, terrifying.

I don't think you know what tyrannical means.

That's precisely what I'm saying.

> Americans

The platforms will need to apply a different set of filters and moderation tools to anyone connecting from within inside the US. Just like they will do for those who connect from within Denmark.

Your entire basic argument is fallacious. If tumblr stopped showing nipples due to US censorship, that’s one thing. There’s no law barring this and no one is bending to the US legal system, the site owner themselves made this choice to appeal to the largest, most valuable chunk of their demographic. And you, as another person, can make an equally capable site minus that restriction. If people demand it (as they did OnlyFans, Twitch, VK, etc), they will switch.

Its not a random nation. Its that nation in which that site owner wants to operate. If he or she wants to operate there, s/he has to obey that country's laws when reaching out to that country's people. Its as simple as that.

> And you literally don’t see how that’s the same as limited content for a nation such as China.

I see it. Every country will limit their content per their own laws to the extent they want to do. That's what law is.

> There’s no law barring this and no one is bending to the US legal system, the site owner themselves made this choice to appeal to the largest, most valuable chunk of their demographic.

That means that basically those corporations just complied with the existing social sentiment and laws 'willingly' to avoid persecution. They can do the same, 'willingly' for other countries for 'appealing' to the users in those countries.

...

If you already 'willingly' comply by the legal and social paradigm of your country without the specter of the law coming down on you, you are not 'willingly' doing it in reality. You are doing it because you have to do it. 'Wording it differently' does not change the reality.

This makes zero sense. How do you force anyone to not follow a law? Do you, say, force anyone to post nude pics just because a jurisdiction does not allow anyone to post them? How would that even work?

I'd imagine it be an ultimatum - if you enforce another country's laws on our citizens then you're also in violation of our local laws and will be fined, unable to operate in our country, etc

This makes no sense at all. Unless you're violating your own laws, which is not what you're arguing, then you're just complying with your own jurisdiction. Yo can't possibly be advocating punishing anyone for not violating laws in multiple jurisdictions.

I don't really think this is about laws, but even in that arena, companies already do their best to avoid those within the US, nevermind internationally. See e.g. recent Patreon controversy for an example of this. There's man others. So I don't really think law is the problem here.

> US morals

This is the real issue and unfortunately these are finely weaved deep inside US corporate culture itself - they're part of culture fit for hiring in US multinationals and are thus highly unlikely to ever be disrupted from within the workforce of those companies.

If companies 'willingly' comply with the existing social and regulatory landscape proactively, that's not something that happens 'willingly'. Its mental gymnastics to claim that they are doing it freely and not out of being obliged to.

Anyway the opposite is already true, all US based companies that want to operate within the EU all follow the GDPR. It, and a lot of US online moral codes, are IMO good for society as a whole.

If you still want to look at NSFW content, there's plenty of sources for that everywhere.

No, the service will apply the filters and moderation tools to users from any given country separately. If the law in the US allows enough boobs and the US users post boob pictures, that's totally that legal ecosystem and userbase's thing.

I wonder if parents do the same these days, and if they share them online like how they used to pass around the family photo album?

I promise you.

Only Fans was about to be kicked off the banking system entirely and would have been ruined but the publicity caused the bank to back down so OF could continue as normal.

Worth noting that the Tumblr "porn ban" was already well into the planning stages months before the AppStore kerfuffle. That just brought it forward, not into existence.

Theory goes like this:

Some platform, be it payment or social allows something unacceptable to people, let's say racism, full nudity for the sake of argument.

People who really, really, do not want anyone to see this, start phone and email botting the companies that place ads using these networks, or take payment using these networks about the issue

The companies that place ads, do not need this headache and ask the platform, wtf? We will move our advertising dollars if you don't do something about this.

Platform, who's sole purpose in life is to make money, says ok!

Now, include very heavy hitters like Blackrock, Vandguard, etc. that control members on boards of 1,000s of companies and a relatively small group of people only need to persuade another relatively small group of people ... that may not even be the people running the platforms!

I agree, but even with that preference where does it stop? If I make my money via porn (I don't, but as an example) do customers not want to have bank accounts at banks where pornstars bank? How about sharing electricity from the same company that a porn company uses to power shoots? How about using that same kind of iPhone that a pornstar uses?

Of course all of those are absurd, but you get my point. There is clearly a line where commingling is acceptable. Reddit, for example, has some pretty hard NSFW content, yet people still place ads on other boards (or maybe those too, idk). And there is no widespread hue and cry from "consumers".

It is very, very specific people, companies, and groups that seem to be targeted and those tend to be whatever the current popular social-think flavor of the month is or just ones that certain people don't like in general (racism, drugs, bigots, etc). And you will note, that only one of those groups is actually illegal, the others are just distasteful.

It can be quite difficult for sex workers of all stripes to maintain their bank accounts. They regularly have accounts frozen because they receive payments from porn-friendly payment processors. This is not just "porn stars" but people that do things like OnlyFans.

So yes, sex workers have trouble accessing banking even if all they do is show their titties on camera because prudes go pitch a fit to banks.

In a world where no one allows smut (or drugs or semi-racist content), the first one who relaxes these rules will attract anyone and everyone with an interest in that particular content. And before you know it, smut is all you have.

It's a self reinforcing process, and the only way to stay out of it is to align with everyone else. The only way to break the process is if everyone relaxes the rules simultaneously.

And there was recently an editorial in the Chicago Tribune saying Chicago should shut down its remaining bars licensed to stay open till 4AM (most must close at 2, all get an extra hour on the weekends), because they're too wild. Yet NYC has probably hundreds of neighborhood bars open till 4 without a problem, since 4AM licenses are basically the default there.

If you're selling baby shampoo the last thing you need is some parent posting on Twitter about "Why is this baby shampoo brand advertising on a sight that promote horror movies about human centipedes?"

Pornhub did a panic delete when the credit card companies withdrew because they realized three quarters of the content on their website may have been uploaded non-consentually - or at least, they didn't know there was consent involved. Revenge porn is a big issue, and will be even more now that everyone has an internet connected camera phone from a young age.

And this is the public internet; on top of that is the peer-to-peer internet of whatsapp, telegram etc, and the dark web of tor and co.

Some sure, but most would likely say “if it’s legal and makes me money, it’s a go”.

https://stephenfollows.com/which-mpaa-rating-earns-the-most-...

PG-13 is far and away the leader in terms of both highest-grossing films and percentage of box office revenue; R-rated films are actually the second in terms of highest-grossing and, depending on the year, bounce around between second and third. G-rated films, by contrast, are at the bottom across the board.

There is a difference between “family entertainment” and “adults-only” which matters in terms of the discussion around Tumblr’s content. If we’re using MPAA ratings as an analogy, Tumblr’s “no porn” position isn’t “everything must be G-rated,” it’s “nothing can be NC-17.” One can argue about whether the latter is a good stance to take, but it’s important to be arguing about the actual restriction.

Ironically, that set of jurisdictions includes all US national parks... See, for instance, https://www.tripsavvy.com/visiting-limantour-beach-1478617 - it's a lack of federal laws against public nudity.

The disturbing thing is that the hives of scum and villainy you find there are for the most part no more subversive than reddit in 2010. And they are actually fun which is more than I can say for _anything_ on the regular web.

I somewhat agree, but might characterize it as meeting the tightest western restrictions. I have tons of cookie pop-ups now that GDPR happened, but that doesn't really apply to the US. So the influence isn't fully unilateral. Considering the companies started in and are headquartered in the US, it makes sense they follow US regulations more closely.

Not to US social mores, to some weird averaged out amalgamation of Western social mores. In the US, firearms are very normal and a regular part of life, but try doing a YouTube stream or channel about them and you'll quickly find yourself "sanitized" anyway.

Probably because a lot of kids use these platforms aka social networks.

Naked humans are too scary for us.

But ad hominems aside, he had a point. It's really disturbed when you think about it: the degree to which an influential subculture in America elevates and defends violence while censoring and degrading women's bodies exposes a sick preference for death over life. Even if portions of it claim to be "pro-life" they are, to all intents and purposes, a death cult.

It seems like the ones who are most concerned about nudity are the ones we should be the most concerned about. I don't know whats going on in their heads, but it must be pretty sick stuff from the way they overreact. I just don't feel like it should be our burden to keep their demons at bay.

I guess parents in the US make their children wear a swimsuit when bathing them?

I've lost so much respect for this company and it's actually made me also take a step back from social media in general. All of these companies can abuse you at any point without any transparency, and I'm not willing to take the risk anymore.

Somehow I doubt Americans will be any more ok with this pretend nudity than actual nudity.

Moral puritanism in any form seems to be an extremely harmful to any society it shows up in to those who aren't fellow moral puritans. I think most of the post-enlightenment democratic machinery exists to keep moral puritan types in check more than anything else.

For some reason I wasn't there, and it's a good thing because I'd probably still be lecturing the kid for it.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/

but if you know any relevant studies claiming that nudity is not harmful for kids, please show them to me.

This reasoning is sometimes used hastily in radical-left politics, eg in some forms of anarchism where any power relationship is subject to justifying its existence. But, and I’m saying this no longer an anarchist, you don’t need to be a radical or revolutionary to see it play out.

This is essentially exactly how many cannabis legalization efforts have worked. After decades of dedicated effort to establish plurality support for questioning the status quo of prohibition, the question of whether prohibition is justified becomes scrutinized at a policy level and it the justification isn’t there. The only remaining barriers are weak pluralities and successful counter-marketing. If either of those are absent, the unjustified status quo has been changed.

Which is all to say, the onus isn’t on anyone to unjustify something that’s wrong, the onus is to motivate people to know and care that it’s wrong, and to agree that it matters. From there, the onus is the same as GP said: you’re making the claim, you defend it. Otherwise the assumption is just, like, your opinion man.

That's literally every law.

"Which is all to say, the onus isn’t on anyone to unjustify something that’s wrong"

The onus would be to show that "something" is wrong for that logic to even apply. As you said "you’re making the claim, you defend it.". Society already decided that it was wrong and formed a law, so now it's time to hear why it shouldn't be (I'm interested in research on either side).

This is a gross misinterpretation bordering on trolling. I'm not sure how you could even come to this position.

Please show me how what I've actually said is illogical and dangerous. Please remember that in the scenario we are talking about neither side has provided evidence one way or the other. Somebody would need to provide evidence one way or the other to shift the status quo, as shifting that requires flipping the convictions of the population, or at least the leaders.

I agree that seeing a range of nude people [in completely non-sexual contexts] is good for one's personal development.

Now I've honed this to the point where my kids just hear me go into that tone of voice and realize that they should drop the subject before the old man goes on another one of his 45 minute lectures. They've got more fun things to do.

Unless you have an ironclad way to verify the identity of every poster, you'll get a bunch of illegal stuff anyway. And if you're a "utility", then who is responsible for removing that from your service?

What you're really suggesting is "common carrier", but the difference is most common carriers carry the content in a point to point way, not publicly (FedEx, UPS, your telephone provider). For the common carriers that do have public broadcast (radio, TV, cable) they either have to moderate all their content and are responsible for it (TV, radio) or they have to provide an unmoderated but public access section where they know exactly who the content provider is (cable TV, who gets to choose which channels to carry as long as they have a public access channel).

Wouldn't all payment processors and Cloudflare qualify for this in certain ways?

Cloudflare notably has not been legally forced to take the positions it has. You can be a common carrier as much as you want

>Cloudflare notably has not been legally forced to take the positions it has.

True they flip-flop depending on how the winds of Twitter are blowing, but they are quickly positioning themselves in such a way that someone could earnestly claim there is not reasonable alternative and that they are "required" to run a business. Then what?

We have to think up an entirely different model for the newer technologies we are using.

You can be as independent as you want if you don't care about getting paid. If you want to run a small web site with handwritten HTML hosted on a server in your house that gets a few hundred visitors a month, you can still do that. (I'd be willing to bet it's easier now than it was in the 90s!) If you want to have ten million customers and a staff of full-time employees, then you'll be integrating with the rest of society whether you like it or not. I'm not sure that's unreasonable in and of itself, although I do agree that the way we treat porn (and sex in general) in the US is pretty bizarre.

It is also very telling that when independent discussion platforms do start to reach critical mass (4chan, voat, wherever else) there is often collusion or pressure to take down their hosting or stop payment processors from working with them.

It used to be that fringe opinions were expressed on street corners on literal soapboxes and never got much further unless they had a certain level of credence. Now with the likes of Twitter and Facebook, these individuals have a global stage to broadcast to where they'll find a massive audience regardless of how bizzare and unfounded they may be, thanks to the legitimizing effect of the "communities" around these ideas. In the hands of someone charismatic this can be dangerously destablizing to society, because it's the perfect recipe for cultivating a following that believes almost anything imaginable, including ideas which directly conflict with demonstrable reality.

I don't agree with some of the things the internet has collectively decided to clamp down on but I do think it makes sense to not give just anybody the grand stage and spotlight.

This is a common fear. But nobody is really worried that some charismatic guy who believes that aliens are secretly draining humans of their precious bodily fluids is going to take over the world.

Those in power are always concerned about maintaining their power. Somebody who shows up and says, "hey, these people in power are saying things that are not true and are engaging in damaging and dangerous practices," well, it's quite easy to cast that person as a Dangerous Individual Who Is Secretly A Lunatic. Everybody has some nutty idea, so you focus on that nutty idea, and presto, you have a bona fide nutcase who can be shut down for "misinformation".

I get the argument. But the practical working aspect of it is it puts great power into the hands of already powerful people. That's fine, if you want to have a technocratic/political aristocracy. If you do not, then there isn't many other options other than open discourse.

I think reasonable people are worried about exactly that. Enraged violent people managed to get a few meters away from a room full of Congresspeople validating an election, in support of their charismatic guy who believes much worse.

Q-Anon has believers currently sitting in Congress, and is predicted to gain more seats this year[1].

1: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-36-qanon-supporters-runn...

Enraged violent people rioted and burned cities, and a lot of the same Congresspeople cheered them on.

The two are not at all equal. A sitting congressperson supporting BLM protests is not the same thing as a sitting congressperson openly encouraging and even participating in overthrowing a free election.

No matter how much the right wants it, the two situations are not even close to being equal.

Kamala Harris encouraged people to donate to the MN bail fund, which was used to bail out rioters.

>No matter how much the right wants it, the two situations are not even close to being equal.

You are correct: the Jan. 6 protests were far less deadly and less damaging than the BLM protests.

Sorry, that is a far more uncomfortable situation, whether you know it or not. Perhaps you are hoping that mainstream social media sites can be forced to allow the type of content found in voat or 4chan. It is equally more likely that a government will, at some point, disallow the content found in voat or 4chan everywhere, if that angle is opened, IMHO. It, of course, will depend on who is in charge.

China, for instance, currently has heavy influence on exactly what kind of content is allowed within social media, complete with a Great Firewall and large armies of censors to enforce this policy. Their social media has been shaped many times based on the whims of Xi Jinping. China heavily moderates gaming and politics, and outright bans things like porn. I doubt a 4chan or voat in Jinping's China would get very far. In the Western Internet, there are big social media sites with various content moderation policies that some people may not like. But alternative sites exist.

At present, social media sites are relatively free to moderate how they wish. A few social media sites have semi-monopoly power, and that is a big issue. The payments processing duopoly is even more of a problem. But don't confuse monopoly power issues with "censorship". The government is not telling what the social media companies to do, in general.

That feels like a non-sequitur. People can both use mainstream platforms for work/school and create/find their own platforms for other parts of their life.

The problem is that you have to 'integrate with this very short list of megacorps, and if they don't like you you are not allowed to operate'.

At any substantial scale at all, these are true:

- If Cloudflare doesn't like you, you can't have a website.

- If Google doesn't like you, you can't get discovered.

- If Visa and Mastercard don't like you, you can't get paid.

We never elected these corporations; they power they wield is illegitimate.

Sure, that's $$$$$, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that operating "at substantial scale" is any sort of entitlement. Or that "investing to build the systems and services that tens of millions of people have chosen to use" is "illegitimate." You think "legitimate", political-backed power is would be better? Of the "Shut the internet down when people are protesting something the government does?" variety?

There's negative vs positive spin you could put on this, you know. Things like Twitter let people be heard to a much larger extent than they would've been in the past. Good or bad, it definitely has consequences, and one of them is that some powerful people listen to people who would normally be outside their circle.

Getting paid is more interesting, this is probably easier than it was in the past - there were always pretty limited options, but crypto is a new interesting one.

No, but that's not an argument against the thing you're arguing against. It's a false dichotomy. "Three or four unelected rich white dudes should not have this power" does not mean three or four elected rich white dudes should either.

There are a number of other CDN vendors. Akamai, AWS, GCP, Azure come to mind. Besides, Cloudflare doesn't have any problem with porn anyway, the only thing they do not want is CSAM or explicitly illegal stuff such as material violating copyright or unauthorized releases ("revenge porn").

Sure we did. We voted with our wallets. I'm not sure why you believe it would be any different if we _had_ elected these companies with votes.

In the current policital landscape in much of the western hemisphere has lots of people arguing for restrictive policies around speech or access to healthcare.

At least with the megacorps there is the potential to build a competitor. If they were heavily regulated good luck getting your account reactivated when the government sanctioned monopoly decides it doesn't like you.

Give an equal alternative to Google or cloudflare? If I can't get a comparable product from someone else whose views align more with my own, than I can't exactly "vote" with my wallet can I? They are essentially "running" unopposed.

It's also very convenient that the voting system is "whoever can spend the most money wins" when we're dealing with corporations who have more money than entire nations. We need something a lot better than "deposit cash to cast vote" when it comes to choosing who controls what we're allowed to see and hear.

No one stops people from going to Trump rallies.

There are plenty of ways to get your message out if people want to hear it. It’s work. But it can be done.

Rallies? Trump had like a hundred million Twitter followers. The total number of people who even can go to a rally is like 30,000 at extreme scale. Even if he had a massive rally daily (impossible) with no repeat visitors (absurd) in a year he still wouldn't get to 1/10 of the people he could reach via Twitter. And he'd be able to reach them each once. Plus he'd never get any casuals or outsiders like me - people who go to rallies are already committed. Rallies are not a substitute for the entire edifice of modern social media.

A hundred million twitter followers isn't worthless or meaningless. If someone you liked was ever silenced like that, you'd be up in arms and rightly so.

Conservatives love the free market until it’s not working for them. If the situation had been reversed, they would be the first ones screaming how regulation prevents innovation.

Trump is listed as one of the 400 richest people in the US, he really can’t get his message out there? I live in the South, I assure you that if he did some advertising and started heavily promoting Truth Social it would be successful.

Trump supporters: we are being treated unfairly and we can’t get our message out because of Twitter and Facebook, how will we ever Make America Great Again? Life is so unfair.

The civil rights movement: we are being beaten, we are being lynched, attacked by police, jailed, spit on just for trying to send our children to school, etc. Let’s start a grass roots organization.

There are definitely more MAGAs in proportion to the population and they are better funded than there were people working toward civil rights during the 60s. Maybe it’s not a matter of being persecuted it’s just incompetence when it comes to leadership?

Trump supporters overwhelmingly consider themselves Christians. If they really want to organize, they can do the same thing MLK did - go into the churches.

Not to mention he has a ton of media, sycophants and critics immediately amplifying every little toot he makes.

I used to agree with you, but watching Kiwi Farms get cut off from the internet has been pretty sobering.

> On September 6, 2022, The Daily Dot confirmed that VanwaTech was providing content delivery network services to the site, hence bringing it back online.[60][61] Other websites running on VanwaTech infrastructure experienced availability problems as a result, including The Daily Stormer and 8chan.[62]

Also keep in mind that Kiwi Farms was only blocked because of the massive backlash Cloudflare received. If your site only gets a few hundred visitors a month, you're not going to get this backlash.

(Not to mention, porn is considered much more acceptable than doxxing and targeted threats, relatively speaking)

They now are struggling against a constant stream of DDoS and targeted hacks due to a lack of protection previously provided by CloudFlare.

Not just in a porn way. Looking back at archives of the old internet just seem way more risque. For example, take the hacker magazine phrack. Maybe its a bad example because a hacker mag is always going to be out there, but the early issues included all sorts of stuff around making improvised bombs. Its hard to imagine anything like that on the semi-mainstream internet now a days.

I can confirm this is false. First page Google already showed naughty secrets.

The black-box nature of search becomes less and less satisfying as time passes.

For all that it's been cleaned up and nerfed, it's still a delightful time capsule of an earlier Internet.

I also randomly run into write up a out how to steal cars and how to put spyware into someone else's phone.

None of that stuff is hard to find. It is just that mainstreami mainstream is not interested and it would be absurd to blame them.

Nonetheless, content sanitization has become more and more prevalent. It's disturbing to think, of the influence of social bubbles, and algorithmic driven content proliferation. How much of this mix of content moderation + appealing to a bigger audience affects our own thoughts/opinions.

I understand that a lot of it should be sanitized. But this thought is terrifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvK7V7U5Mck

There was a brief period at the dawn of the web when things were both more accessible and wilder, it's true. It was in retrospect a transitionary period.

I find the mechanics of guns and firearms fun and interesting, that doesn't make me any more dangerous than someone who has no idea how guns work.

I genuinely dislike the current trend. I personally played with all sorts of chemicals in my dad's garage ( he was a mechanic ) and these days my interest would be at best seen with suspicion.

I might be misreading this, but to me this sentence reads as 'this information does not belong anywhere where normal people roam'. It is possible that "shoulnd't be available" is making me read it this way.

"<<I struggle to see how that's a bad thing. Most people don't need to be coincidentally picking up bomb-making information.

I might be misreading this, but to me this sentence reads as 'this information does not belong anywhere where normal people roam'. It is possible that "shoulnd't be available" is making me read it this way. "

I will attempt to translate your argument and hopefully clarify mine. Please correct me as needed.

You seem to be arguing that while no one is arguing that the information should not be 'somewhere', one should not be able to simply stumble on it. To that my obvious question is 'why not', because we sure seem to have a lot of otherwise offensive items that one could stumble upon by chance ( for example, some would object to a tattoo magazine being readily available in public view ). Why is personal mutilation ok and applied chemistry is taboo? Why one can be picked up coincidentally and the other not? Can you give me the line that allows for that decision to take place?

And although the question is qualified with "most" and "coincidentally", the verb 'need' clearly indicates that you do not believe it is information that should be available. The previous sentence indicating struggle how this could be a bad thing only reinforces that impression. This forces me to interpret this message as "I do not believe it is a valid need that should be available, say, at a local kiosk."

Hence my real question: who gets to decide what is kosher ( and if it is not kosher )?

I would not dream of suggesting it is me, because my tastes are not that of the general population.

And honestly the lack of serendipitous baby Pygmy hippos is a much bigger problem than the absence of bomb making instructions.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a free society any more. Much of this information has been suppressed and is hard to find. That said… for those curious, here’s a whole book on making explosives:

https://archive.org/details/saxon-kurt.-fireworks-explosives....

Here’s a whole video on making a bomb:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxGX5F5SXg

Im a pacifist and don’t condone any violence against another human ever. But I also like fireworks

And because they don't need to, we should censor this kind of information?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM_31-210_Improvised_Munitions...

And if you wanted that on paper - or on your Kindle - Amazon is happy to oblige:

https://www.amazon.com/Improvised-Munitions-Handbook-TM-210/...

Similarly, for homemade guns, there's e.g. FOSSCAD (and there are many forks of that repo on GitHub even):

https://fosscad.org/

Or for something more oldschool, search for "expedient homemade firearms". I got my paperback a few years ago from Amazon, as well (sadly gone now, but some derivative works are still around if you look).

They've effectively become the highest authority on what is "legal". The worrying thing here is that of course they don't implement any form of democracy (other than share holder voting). They are deciding for us but we don't get to be involved in that decision process.

Credit card companies are doing the same. They are telling people what they can and cannot spend on and they are telling businesses what they can and cannot use their payment systems for. Effectively they are discriminating between businesses they like and businesses they don't like based on criteria that they define. Discriminating people is illegal. But discriminating against companies (which in a legal sense are regarded as persons) is fine. Maybe it shouldn't be?

The solution is breaking monopolies like that and forcing competition to happen. Apple and Google own app stores. That's fine; good for them. But banning other people's app stores isn't. If they don't want to sell something, somebody else will happily take that business.

In the same way you can use any credit card you want as long as it is Visa or Mastercard. None of the other ones matter anymore, which is weird. Effectively Visa and Mastercard monopolized online payments and are re-enforcing their position through anti-competitive moves. And of course Apple and Google have payment solutions too that are actually based on those. So, we're talking about an oligarchy that controls payments and online distribution of content that only consists of a handful of companies. They decide what's legal and isn't legal. And they profit from all transactions that happen. And they are fiercely defensive of their exclusive control as it is highly profitable. So, competing with them is one of the things that they've simply decided is illegal.

No it isn't. Discriminating against certain classes of people is illegal. It's perfectly legal to discriminate against individuals based on their behavior.

I think the blame is displaced. It’s not these nice companies that decide what you are and what you are allowed to see. It’s you. Or more generally - we, the People, ourselves.

Indeed: Gab is not using Amazon or Google cloud services, Visa and Mastercard do not serve Gab - it has to rely on checks, money orders and crypto. Gab does not have an app… actually it has, in a way of a web link, copied to your home page - btw I have never seen an app that was better than a web page for the same company, have you? Gab has even launched GabPay, its own payment processor open to others. Gab explicitly promise not to delete anything unless it is found illegal by a court.

Still, you the People are not using Gab, you are using Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Why are you not using Gab? Last time I’ve checked it was because Gab… does not delete the content that you the People find objectionable!

A cherry on this cake was the decision of some state GOP party committee to delete their Gab account because Gab refuses to censor anti-Semitic content.

So, please - do not blame this nice long list of the evil companies. You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there.

I use Twitter because the people I like are on there. They often get banned for dumb reasons, and I'd prefer they didn't, but the general network effect of Twitter is strong enough that people will just make new accounts and/or avoid posting stufff that trips the censors.

Plus, as some other comments mention, Gab does not in fact "not delete anything unless it is found illegal by a court", their TOS[0] says they can ban you for posting obscenity. Why would I want to go on a website full of white-christian-nationalists if I can't send them goatse?

[0] https://gab.com/about/tos

My wish list for such an ideal Gab would be:

- only illegal content should be banned and by legal process only;

- the moderation should be decentralized and placed in each user’s hands. My blocking you should mean I won’t see you, but all others will.

That way you may post all goatses you like, but the “suprematists” (and me) wouldn’t see them. Unless you’ll post some clever things from time to time, not only goatsees, then I would rather read you. But my decision to see or not your posts should not affect other readers.

I would even pay for such a platform.

"When you vote in favour of a person, you are making that person a moderator for yourself, regardless of whether they win the vote or not.

There is no such thing as becoming a candidate. You just flip the mod switch on from Preferences. This will enable the mod UI in your client, and you can start modding. This will generate moderation graph entities originating from you. These will only be valid for you, and the people who chose you as a mod (i.e. voted for you) in that community. This will also make your name appear on the elections list. From there, people can check your past actions without applying it onto their own client first, and your reasonings for them (Mod actions provide an optional ‘reason’ field to be filled in). If they like what they see, they will vote for you, and for the person voting, you will become a mod. That means your mod actions from that point on will start to affect what that user sees.

Election makes it so that the people who come into a community, who have not chosen or disabled that particular mod by themselves, will use the mod list shaped by the elections. If a user has explicitly chosen a particular person to be a mod in that community, that takes precedence. Likewise, if a user has disabled a mod, that person will never be a mod for that user, regardless of the results.

That is all being a mod is: some people liking your curation enough that they decide to apply your curation to their own view as well."

I don't think this is the reason. I've never used Gab but Reddit 10-15 years ago was a lot more free than it is today and it was great. I'm sure there were some people who were displeased with moderation, but in general, most users enjoyed the freedom and diverse(in the real sense) communities that existed there. The change on Reddit and similar websites came from the top. There is no way to be sure about how they did it, but I'm certain it wasn't freely chosen by the users.

Why don't such sites have a similar fear that the measures that they consider to apply to appease the press will scare away users/visitors?

Be obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic. Note that mere nudity e.g. as a form of protest or for educational/medical reasons will not fall foul of this rule.

And in exchange for that, you get to deal with inconvenient access.

Yeah, of course it's shunned. Based on what you've said, it doesn't represent any kind of practical improvement over the status quo, so the question of whether or not it's associated with / frequented by distasteful people doesn't even factor into this.

Gab created a shit platform for shit people to post shit content and you're blaming everyone else for its failure.

In contrast, Reddit was plenty successful long before they started censoring to appease their corpo-overlords. The difference was that A) shit wasn't the only content available and B) average users weren't automatically subjected to the shit content that they were hosting.

I absolutely loved your hate speech. I do not agree with it but will always defend your right to say it.

Let me clarify just a couple of points.

1. Here’s what Gab’s founder tells about the purpose of Gab: Gab’s mission is to be the home of free speech online. It seeks to export American values and freedom to the maximum extent permitted by American law to Internet users around the world. Gab concurs with the Committee’s view that these values protect offensive and unpopular speech, but not illegal speech, such as threats. Unlawful speech is not and has never been allowed on Gab.

2. I am pointing at Gab as an example of definite *success*. It survives and functions despite being no-platformed and banned by 25+ service providers over the years including both App Stores, multiple payment processors, and hosting providers. The example of *failure* in this context is another free-speech platform… forgot it’s name - it was deplatformed in 2020 and stopped functioning for a long period of time. Very unprofessional.

(Edit: Parler of cause. Parler was deplatformed by Amazon and both app stores - and immediately went down. That’s what failure looks like)

So, you may think that they are shit people. Ok. But you’ve failed to silence them, despite trying heavily. Doesn’t it provoke your professional interest - how they managed to do it?

In that sense, that makes Gab a failed platform. But you're right; the fact that it is up and running, in spite of getting blacklisted by big corpo, could be seen as a sort of success. I'm all for technology that can't be taken down by overzealous governments.

You kinda got me wrong too. I'm not for silencing anyone. I'm just explaining why no one is using Gab. Again, its not because its uncensored (as you bemoan). It's because Gab doesn't offer anything people want. Time and time again its been proven that users simply don't care about privacy / censorship / decentralization / some-other-high-minded-ideal. They care about convenience and content.

According to this Buzzfeed article from around the time Parler started, that is not the case.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/new-soci...

No.

> Because that Buzzfeed article very much supports my statements about Gab

Please expand on that.

> and doesn't mention Parler at all

I know, and it doesn't need to for it to be a valid response, so you might check my comment again in light of that.

> To quote sabergirl278 (the only commenter on that page)

Why is the quote from a commenter relevant? It's not, not in any universe where logic holds sway.

"...but Gab.ai is attracting conservatives as an alternate social platform."

"At the moment, Gab feels like a conservative chatroom..."

"It also appears that Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative writer who was permanently suspended from Twitter in July after his attack on actress Leslie Jones, has joined Gab."

"... Gab’s early, ideologically-narrow success plays into a larger trend in social media..."

> Gab (like Parler) was created in direct response to the deplatforming of white supremacists.

and you say that the article backs that up. Now you have provided quotes, let's see.

> The article used a picture of Pepe the frog as Captain America

Not a good start, as this is utterly irrelevant, for many reasons which I would think are as blindingly obvious as why using a comment beneath the article is irrelevant.

> ...but Gab.ai is attracting conservatives as an alternate social platform.

conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

> At the moment, Gab feels like a conservative chatroom...

conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

> It also appears that Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative writer who was permanently suspended from Twitter in July after his attack on actress Leslie Jones, has joined Gab.

- conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

- Even if Yiannopoulos is or was a white supremacist, Gab was launched *before* he was kicked off of Twitter and was no doubt in development beforehand.

> ... Gab’s early, ideologically-narrow success plays into a larger trend in social media...

ideologically-narrow here meaning conservative. Drum roll, please…

conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

What I'd like to see from you is something that evidences your claim. For example, one of the founders saying they set it up to help white supremacists, or they had a secret meeting with white supremacists about setting up Gab for them and it was leaked… not some specious nonsense that conflates conservative with white supremacist, or points to the choice of image that some sub-editor chose to go along with the article. Is that too much to ask? Just a crumb of factually accurate, relevant, evidence that isn't based on redefining basic terms or smearing entire groups of people - massive groups - as being something they are clearly not.

Can you manage that? Because this is HN, not Twitter, so I'd appreciate that you put in the effort.

No, because that's not the hard part. Anyone can host a niche community "off grid" and make it profitable. It being niche is what enables that. It's not hard to get 2000 dedicated people to fuck around with crypto and side loading apps. It's basically impossible to get a critical mass of average people to do it.

Visa and Apple control their platforms by "offering" usability to the average person (mostly by taking away other easy options or out competing them with a moat). The only way the current crop of sites can fail now is if it becomes so bad that the censorship itself is more inconvenient than the difficult steps to work around mainstream infrastructure.

If something like Gab got to like 20-30% the size of Reddit and 99% of it's userbase was normal people doing normal people stuff then I'd be interested. Because before that point we're not going to see any real effort from the incumbents to stop them.

As far as I can tell, Gab is still losing money and not gaining users (100,000 estimated active as of now, despite 6 years of existence), so it's hard to call it a success. It, like previous alt-right responses to mainstream platforms such as Parler, will likely die the same death for the same reasons: not enough money or users to be sustainable.

>I absolutely loved your hate speech.

It's the opinion shared by a significant part of the population, and the content is crap. I tried each of the "alternative" platforms, and on each one am bombarded by the stupidest scams, "buy gold" idiots, and such ignorance and stupidity I dropped each one.

The userbase trends far-right so most people will never join unless the userbase is more central, which will not happen. The CEO has engaged in the most nonsensical anti-semitic screeds on Twitter and elsewhere, having to repeatedly delete his own content. It's no wonder people don't like the platform or it's content.

Researchers, analyzing random samples of millions of posts on the site, find many multiples of hate speech more than other platforms, find the majority of posts are political (and right leaning), that people moving to this site after being banned elsewhere increase in toxicity because Gab lets them (as long as they have the "right" viewpoint), and on and on. The academic literature on the platform content and behaviors is spot on in my opinion. These are empirical reasons that most people will not join. Want some good reading on what the site actually has? Look no further than Google Scholar [1]

If most people did not share the opinion that the content is bad, more people would use those platforms.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=gab...

And my guess is based on some observations. I named one - GOP branch deleting their account.

Here’s the second observation, if you wish. Even more bothering to me. Not so long a go there was a mass protest at SF medical center. About a thousand of hospital workers were demanding that Zuckerberg’s name (paid by him at $25 mln) was removed from the plates. Reason - he is not doing enough to censor Facebook posts.

I was born and grown up and have a nice “living experience” in a totalitarian country. This popular demand for more censorship looks to me like people asking authorities to hang them - and bringing their own ropes and soap to the execution site. Not a nice picture to watch.

So, you will use only a platform that does not provide a safe space for white supremacists/conspiracy theorists/whatever ?

But also yes, I’m not a fan of white supremacists and I won’t voluntarily use a platform that caters to them. Just like I wouldn’t eat at a “Hitler was great”-themed cafe.

a) have some users who've been censored elsewhere

b) be accused of catering to them, as you have done

c) meanwhile, the majority continues to use censored platforms

Whereas if you and the majority used an uncensored-yet-legal platform:

1) White supremacists would be a tiny minority

2) Everyone could speak freely

3) That would not be catering to white supremacists

Or would it? Based on what you've written above it seems you might claim it would be catering to them by not censoring them.

You've created a circular argument and a vicious cycle on top of it. That does support censorship and it shows that the majority does prefer censorship. Freedom of speech will necessarily entail having speech the majority don't like being around. That's the price of it but it's better than the alternatives.

I was also banned from Twitter, and I’m not out crying about it as nothing of value was really lost there either.

I've no idea if Gab censors or not as I don't use it but that's different to your argument holding water. I also wonder that if you're banned from Twitter and Gab then you're the one with the problem, and this thread might be a clue as to why.

I never said white supremacists were censoring me. I said Gab is full of them and that as a platform, they too censor views that dissent from their majority. So it’s not some free speech wonderland like OP implied. He suggested it as an alternative. I said it’s not really an alternative. The content of what I said to get banned from Twitter or from Gab is irrelevant to my point.

I wasn't suggesting anything of the sort, but your belligerence and unwillingness to accept any other point of view is what I was suggesting, along with the bannings you've brought up.

> I never said white supremacists were censoring me.

Really?

> Did you not see where I said they censored me? > How are they not catering to white supremacists

If you didn't write it then you suggested it to the point where to now claim anything else undermines your argument, as does the goalpost moving.

So, which is it? They're catering to white supremacists or Gab isn't really a free speech paradise. Once you've picked one then perhaps you can form a cogent argument for it. Let me know.

Also, if I’m belligerent for disagreeing with you, then clearly you are also belligerent for disagreeing with me. You can accuse me of moving goalposts or whatever makes you feel better about it, but i am not meaning to. English is not my first language and it sometimes my point does not shine through the way I would like.

Let's get this out of the way, I wasn't suggesting you're belligerent for disagreeing with me, there's plenty of belligerence from you in this thread long before I commented.

> English is not my first language and it sometimes my point does not shine through the way I would like.

As an immigrant who struggles with the local language where I am, I sympathise, I genuinely do. Still, I'd be amazed if I could reach the level you have. Shall we resume disagreeing now?

> I think people who saw a way to make money by catering to that demographic are not practicing the “free speech paradise” that they preach

I'm not sure who censored you now, I've heard talk of community moderators on Gab, was it them? It was not white supremacists that censored you but they're catering to white supremacists? Wouldn't that just cater to conservatives? It's strange because research (from Pew) shows that those on the American left, at least, are less likely to tolerate opposing viewpoints on social media[1].

You also seem to conflate banning with censoring, which it can, but to go straight to a ban seems strange to me - does Gab ban people straight away for left wing comments? I'm almost tempted to post one there and see what happens.

This Forbes article[2] mentions Parler (which is also being accused of catering to white supremacists elsewhere on this page):

> One reason that conservatives may feel at home is because the service has been quick to ban those who joined just to "troll" or otherwise harass those with right-leaning views.

At the moment, regardless of language skill, that would appear to explain your anecdote very well.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-...

[2] One reason that conservatives may feel at home is because the service has been quick to ban those who joined just to "troll" or otherwise harass those with right-leaning views.

Edit: typo

Like you said, you can always go to Gab.

Then they came for the internet registrars, I did not speak out because I didn't have a website.

Then they came for the payment processors, I did not speak out because I didn't have an online business.

When they came for my bank account there was no where left to speak.

Give me your car. I want to key some stuff into the side of it. If you don’t you’re censoring me.

Now, the constitution of California provides positive right of speech to it’s citizens: Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. See this dot here? no exception for Zuckerbergs. Or your car.

Then, there is courts’ interpretation of this right. It was as following (by memory): if you created a public forum, then you can’t remove people from it for their speech contents only . That’s why California malls can’t remove beggars soliciting money (you car is ok, it’s not a public forum).

Now, as in now, California becomes a one-party state (feels like home, sometimes). The same Supreme Court (but with nowadays judges) decides: is Facebook a public forum? You can guess the answer.

Nice. I’ve got my knife. Let’s meet up! Afterwards, we’ll swing by the television station and make them broadcast us live, free of charge or control, a six hour lecture about our novel interpretation constitutional law.

Otherwise you'd be making an argument in bad faith.

Also, since you seem to be new I'll let you know. This isn't bad faith. It's reductio ad absurdum.

Yes, I can see why your argument is absurd.

Moderation is probably needed. But it should be decentralized.

Malign activity (bots and trolls) are organized and at scale, the only way to fight back is at the same scale. Individual users would be helpless.

Why can't I, for example, set a filter that removes bots based on some confidence value? Or that orders my feeds in the order of my choosing?

Right now I have to use ridiculously blunt instruments and trust in moderation that is well known to be biased and, frankly, useless.

This is pretty obtuse as a response to the comment above you:

>>>>>> You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there.

What could "Not enough censorship there" mean other than that people want more censorship than Gab provides?

There's normal people on Gab as well. It's nice if you want to talk about taboo topics during controversial times like lockdowns, certain laptops, certain vaccines, etc..

Basically if you want to escape western propaganda.

They are all lumped together in the mind of your average CNN viewer as "white supremacy" unfortunately. Sometimes there are weird glitches in the issue lumping, like when people say that Trump is anti-vax even though Trump has been an advocate of the vaccines.

He tried to argue that without the millions of illegals in California, taking atleast a million housing units, rent would be cheaper. But everyone was shocked he could even say that.

Things are getting comical. As if the actual race or color of the millions of people taking up housing is the actual issue.... Not their legal status. If they were a different color or race he's be ok with it?

The skin color thing was always a strawman. There's slightly different physiology, behavioral tendencies like cultures, which may simply be different (intelligent adaptations by group from their geographical origins).

Nobody thinks an albino African is "White". And when the Tanzanian albino gets chopped into a potion by his non-Albino brothers -- an actual crime predicated upon skin color alone -- would we call it a racial hate crime? We barely even talk about that issue internationally.

they do put in a serious effort though because of how ostracized they are, i can't help but think it will come in handy someday

Me scrolling through gab won't make visa more accepting.

https://help.gab.com/article/gab-pay-overview

- no fraud protection

- no e-commerce integration

- a couple months old

Maybe it'll catch on and grow, but this is not currently a solution.

Hate speech is not speech, banning it is not censorship.

What does sex have in common with the actively and directly harmful Garbage that people go on Gab for? Nothing if you're not a troll.

You're welcome to argue that not all speech is good and some deserved to be banned by censoring it. But please at least be honest about what you're trying to do.

But when I call for censorship, I don't pretend that it's something else.

Now, I want to be clear. While many people when they give the examples of blasphemy and heresy, they mean those as things that they think are actually good, but which people in power in the past thought were bad and therefore censored/punished. That’s not how I’m thinking about these. Blasphemy and heresy are things I view as actually bad.

As such, what I’m not saying is not “you supporting restrictions on hate speech is just enforcing your own dead dogma over an actual critical eye!” . No, that’s not what I’m saying.

So when I oppose censoring blasphemy/heresy, I am opposing censoring some things which I think are actually bad.

Likewise, even though e.g. racism is bad, I don’t conclude that expressing racist fact-claims is “not speech”. It is clearly speech, just bad speech. And as speech, it should be permitted(in some senses of the term “permitted”) in some venues.

(Whether the use of slurs needs to be permitted, when there are ways to express whatever claims without using slurs, may be a different question, due to it being a restriction on how something is expressed rather than on what is expressed. However, on the other hand, I do find the definition of “slur” to be, hm, something to ponder? Something that can be initially confusing.)

Though, of course, there should also be venues where it is not allowed, just as there are venues where spouting heresies can get one banned.

What on Earth makes you think so??

For instance : https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/hate-speech-is-not-free-...

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. That was said in 1750s. My “living experience” of growing up in a totalitarian society tells me that it is not only true, but vital - vital for having a free and prosperous society.

American Fathers agreed with Voltaire. But my feeling (which I do not like) is that an easily observable slice of native Americans have forgotten what exactly makes their country so nice to live in. “The lubricant oil is stinky and greasy - let’s get rid of it, car rides will be much more pleasant”.

Let me ask you a question in my turn. Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them.

> Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them

Glad you asked. The presence of racists on Gab makes me unwilling to be "guilty by association" (in the eyes of others) for being on the same site as them. Simple as that. This is a reality in the world, and until you find a way to stop people from instinctively applying the "guilty by association" principle, I'm unwilling to be on the same site as Nazis. Sorry.

That is also false. It is a majority that chooses. The majority , also called a mob , has figured out that it's more profitable to weaponize their votes rather than increase human dignity.

1. Most people like censorship, or at least certain kinds of censorship. They don't use Gab because Gab doesn't censor the things they want censored.

2. Most people don't want to be in a forum that's all crazy evil people all the time. They don't use Gab because they think most of the people on Gab are crazy and/or evil.

3. Most people just want to use whatever social network their friends and family use. Maybe also other people they admire or find interesting and want to follow despite not knowing them. They don't use Gab because hardly anyone they know or admire is on Gab and everyone they know is on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever.

You are claiming it's all about #1. I actually suspect #3 is much the most important effect. The other two may look alike but they are different and I think #2 is much bigger than #1.

A hypothetical version of Gab that didn't censor white supremacists, QAnon groupies, people who think the COVID-19 vaccines will enable Bill Gates to control you with 5G networking, etc., but that somehow wasn't (perceived to be) dominated by those people might actually be pretty attractive. It probably still wouldn't get much use because everyone's on other social networks and no one is on Gab, but it would be in with a chance of success.

But, of course, if everyone else is running full-scale witch hunts and you make a space that doesn't do that, then all the witches will go there, whether or not that was your goal. I think in Gab's case it was actually their goal, though. They may say that they're all about freedom of speech, and maybe they believe that, but I'm pretty sure that what motivated the creation of Gab was wanting freedom for certain particular kinds of speech.

(Note: wanting a space not dominated by X is the same thing as wanting X to be censored, even if it turns out that not censoring X inevitably leads to the space being dominated by X. Someone who leaps off a tall building because he delusionally thinks he can fly doesn't want to fall to the ground and die. Someone who tries to avoid accidental death and fatal diseases doesn't want to suffer gradual decay as a result of aging. Etc.)

Anyway: if you want to argue that Gab's lack of success shows that people want censorship, you need to show some actual evidence that it's #1 rather than #2 and #3 that causes it, and so far you haven't.

It's far more complicated than that and looking at the complicated details is useful to understand the bigger picture.

Here are some examples...

1. It's now that far more things are on the Internet than there used to be. Some things that used to be huge are now a smaller percentage in an immensely larger space. In some cases they are bigger now than they used to be.

2. Sex slaves and porn are a thing and a problem. There's both more of it and more awareness of it. In many places there are laws about this that companies who process money have to take in to account.

3. Kids and the Internet. About half the 10 year olds I know (which is more than a few) have phones with no filters on them. Kids running wild. If more things were more easily accessible than the culture around screens and handling that with kids will need to change. Kids are ready for different things at different ages and the way they view things during their formative years impacts the way they view and treat others.

I use these to just illustrate that it's more than money, power, and control by the wealthy. Sometimes (like in the case of #2) it's about the most vulnerable.

This is on parents (and how they are educated around parenthood) IMO. Notice the comment about Reddit, even with all the sanitization it's ridiculously easy to find very hardcore (in every sense of the word) stuff.

In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street, you cannot expect the internet to be a safe place. As a parent you have the responsibility here.

Different times. Needless to say, I don't think I will be able to try the same approach.

Growing up my father believed playing the GTA would be detrimental to my development. He banned them from our home and told the parents of my friends not to let me play those games at their house, if they said they wouldn't enforce that rule I wasn't allowed over.

Didn't matter, I played the games to completion at friend's houses because their parents didn't really give a crap.

Looking back, I think the only way my father could have reasonably stopped me from playing these games would have been to isolate me from my friends and wreck our relationship. Now luckily, we're pretty sure no harm was done in this case, but the point is that there's not actually that much parents can do to limit access to content if other parents aren't similarly vigilant.

Almost all parents think that, COD included. But I think recent studies said that video game violence does not influence kids and teens to commit real life violence. At least kids and teens today play Minecraft and Roblox which are to lesser extent violent than GTA and COD.

Ah so that's why GameStop Stonk meme happened :)

> In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street

This logic isn’t scale dependent and I know you have a line somewhere before “it totally fine to have landmines in random patches of grass — parents responsibility!” Where is it?

Your alternative I presume is just to treat everyone like a small child equally so that nobody can see anything potentially painful or commit any thought crimes (the ends etc etc). Certainly the internet is very hard to regulate with children but maybe they just shouldn't be spending so much time on it. It's much harder to keep track of 15v hours of usage a day vs 1 or 2. But again that's a personal responsibility thing. If a child gets hit by a car we examine the circumstances surrounding it, the logical conclusion most people would assume is not to sue the car manufacturer to prevent the operation of their vehicles. There's definitely a balance between corporate and personal responsibility but I'm strongly against the childification of the internet and apps that is occurring. It doesn't matter that most people don't understand something, if you prevent them from observing or utilizing it you're effectively enforcing that ignorance.

We should not be enforcing such restrictions. Any restriction may benefit some children, but will rob everyone of the ability to learn how to discern good from bad. We should not be training total reliance. Encountering difficulty is an essential part of human existence

I was confused by how your comment related to what you were replying to, until I realized you just assumed that a child can't possibly be deserving of any autonomy at all, or even be considered a protagonist.

It's super wild to me that there are so many people who parenting as "I own this child" and not "I am the proximate caretaker of this independent person."

One uses it as a justification for the sanitizing of the internet and the other thinks it should be the parents job.

Don't pretend to champion some sort of bigger faith in children, that was never the point of the discussion

In the united states, this stopped being socially acceptable sometime time in the past 20 years. Letting your kids walk to school before high-school (13/14) is considered child abuse by many. Not everywhere, not everyone. But there has been a huge shift in views around what kind of out-of-the-home-unsupervised activity is seen as normal.

It might be other extreme. But it does seem to me that if you are not letting them navigate world until 13, you are probably harming their development.

Here's a recent episode of the podcast 99% Invisible, about the Japanese TV show about toddlers running their "first errand" alone (which has become popular in the USA via netflix, perhaps because it seems so wild in the US?), and comparing US (and apparently Canadian) physical landscapes for children. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/

The episode touches on the fact that in Japan dropping off your children to school by car is generally prohibited, with a principal explaining why. I have heard this is true in Germany. It is definitely not true in the USA -- and the US physical and social landscape has been built in such a way it would be largely impossible. It's a disaster.

Honestly, this was not different in my youth. When we found access to the internet, we of course looked for weird stuff (for those who remember: for example rotten.com; I was rather disturbed by it and learned my lesson that you shouldn't click on every link that you see on websites).

I can tell you how this transformed me: if you have seen the early free spirit of the early web in your formative years, you become deeply suspicious of the political attempts to censor the internet - for example to "protect the children". This is what the authorities really fear: that people don't believe that this is all for their best.

I played Doom as a toddler, in my dad's lap. I had early and unfettered access to all kinds of porn. I listened to insanely homophobic, sexist, and generally antisocial music (Eminem, D12).

If you wiped my brain and gave me amnesia and asked me if those things will mess a kid up, I'd say yeah -- how couldn't they?!

It turns out they had no negative effect on me that I can notice; they were just fun. As an adult, I don't do drugs, I've got all the fashionably cosmopolitan social views, etc. :p It's anecdata, but I think the biggest factors for how kids end up are "did you come out screwed up already" and "are your parents emotionally and financially-supportive while vaguely indicating the glide path they think you should follow, with stuff like off-handedly remarking on how racism is pretty bad at some point and generally forcing you to do well in school and putting you through college".

Citation needed. Unless you're taking about CSAM shared on the dark web, I seriously doubt that sex slaves account for any significant portion of pornography. The only way I can see this being true is with a very wide definition of "sex slave" that includes someone doing porn to pay for rent.

#3 was no less true in the 2000s - I can attest to that myself.

It looks the same as “normal” stuff. You can’t tell from watching it.

I know of one instance [1] of criminal porn production, and it involved deception and fraud rather than kidnapping women - which, to be clear, is still terrible and should be prosecuted. And it ended with the people in charge getting convicted and imprisoned.

I am not at all convinced that a substantial portion of legal pornography involves organized crime. Again, the logistics of producing content that also serves as video evidence of a crime is difficult to overcome. If there is evidence that this is more widespread, it'd be good of you to share it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GirlsDoPorn

As with most laws, the level to which they are enforced correctly and complied with varies.

I’m trying to persuade you to be skeptical of claims that it is approximately zero.

Let's be real. Even the largest pr0n sites have had a shit ton of cases come to surface, which should've put them out of business for good. And yes, some of it is about sex slavery.

The pr0n industry is all rotten. Great to see legit, humane alternatives gaining traction, don't get me wrong. But, most of it, is just pure misery.

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

For a very loose idea of "sex trafficking" that includes people deciding to work in porn to make ends meet - but at this point you could say your janitors are being trafficked because they wouldn't do their job if they didn't have to pay rent.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028286

https://theexodusroad.com/porn-and-human-trafficking-the-fac...

https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-porn-sex-traffick...

https://exoduscry.com/articles/here-are-the-biggest-cases-of...

https://nbc-2.com/news/2021/01/12/heres-how-your-porn-habit-...

https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/the-relationship...

Instead, the articles either focus on anecdotes (e.g. "California Substitute Teacher Filmed and Profited off of Incest") or broad statistics non-specific to pornography, (e.g. "By some estimates, 4.8 million people are trapped or forced into sexual exploitation globally.) Nobody doubts that there are instances of non-consensual pornography. But 50 people out of 13 million is a small, small percentage.

They are two different things. Did you mean "sex slaves in porn"?

Also, any kind of slave is a problem. You don't need to qualify it.

Either you believe in an open internet or you don't. Either you're with us, or you're against us.

And they're wrong. I'd agree that perhaps there should be guardrails, but for those who want to leave the safe-zone, it ought to remain without filters.

It's about the same argument as general computing. Should it be illegal to have root access on your devices? Do you think it's a fair compromise in order to be able to have convenient streaming entertainment?

I rooted my android phone and now I can't access Netflix (well, not without putting in effort I don't care to). Fair trade for me, I prefer to actually have control over my devices.

Either you think of the internet as a utility where everyone is equal, like a telephone, or you think people should be "nudged" into harmonious behavior, where it takes on the worst aspects of a broadcast medium.

The problem with "nudging" people is there's an equal and opposite reaction through the cybernetic system. For instance, adding fact check labels to every sensitive topic, COVID vaccines for instance, will lead people to think that it's all part of a larger conspiracy and they'll get a hit of dopamine when they "follow the qlues."

The phone company doesn't de-platform "literal nazis" simply for being "literal nazis."

> Either you believe in an open internet or you don't. Either you're with us, or you're against us.

Your argument has to account for the fact that Twitter is more like public radio than a phone and that WhatsApp is more like a phone than radio.

Why? As a child who grew up either the free Internet of the early 2000s I can tell you it does far less harm than thing like going to school where a teacher dislikes you. If you're worried about kids getting an inaccurate impression from porn that take them aside and show them real sex tapes.

Sure, I got myself into sketchy situations, but I wasn't at risk of getting murdered. The worst that would have happened is being emotionally scarred or going to juvy. A good exchange, for me.

I think point 1 is key - the internet is a bigger place, which also means things get more specialized and separated. You dont stumble across specialized content as much anymore, you have to go looking instead.

And whose responsibility is that? People start treating the internet like TV and radio, so we have to start sanitizing it like TV and radio?

Says who btw. Does that include 3D porn ? AI generated porn? American prudishness is the problem, as well as all the backwards religious societies which are now more dispersed around the world than ever and support it. I think it's important to remember that liberalism is what brought technological progress to the west, not the inward-looking repressive attitudes. And that includes bodily liberalism as well.

The big boys make it harder and squash the heads sticking out, but people are acting like you won't find ungodly things the moment you turn off the safety filters and pick your words a little recklessly.

Including Google.

that relies on many small vendors and one big vendor

It's hard to run your own porn business even if you are a major company.

People act extremely sensitive about their fetishes and think they are connoisseurs. but the reality is that 1000 porn movies in the 70s and 80s could satisfy jackoff habits of the whole global population for the forseeble future.

The marginal value of more porn being produced is essentially zero

OnlyFans is very present in culture and has a monstre evaluation, but if you look at revenues you'd be looking at the sum of some 300 big gas stations. Also OF is not a porn website it's an online GFE service.

99% of everything is crap. Most new movies or books are awful or entirely pedestrian and completely unoriginal to boot, and most don’t turn much of a profit.

But people still make them for a huge variety of reasons.

How many programming languages is optimal?

Marginal value lol

Whoever did the 'sanitizing' of the web should get charged a fine for doing a shoddy job.

I know, college textbooks are prime content to illegally share.

All of this action came down to child porn.

Seems the main point of the article was that it is being made highly impractical to build any system that allows you to get paid for it, short of using crypto, which (15 years later) still has an abysmal UX.

Seems like an opportunity for some ShadyBank to make a new payment scheme, with KYC (not get busted), small transactions only (not attractive to money-laundering), and transfer from customers to vendors, but building the anti-fraud infra from scratch would likely kill it.

People are way overthinking this.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...

    The whole point was to be decentralized, and now we 
    have Visa, Mastercard, Apple, Google, Amazon and Cloudflare

Currently, for most of the world, that means you need to take credit cards.

It's also crucial for us to note that Visa and MC don't care about porn for puritanical reasons; they're not the root cause of this particular issue. They care only about money.

People buy adult content and frequently dispute the charges, which is a headache and eats profits.

Doesn't matter what they set their fees to. If a jury decides that Visa/MC is liable for the exploitation of a minor, they will be instructed to assess punitive damages, and the whole point of punitive damages it to make it hurt for the losing party. No tweaking of the transaction fees will prevent that.

    I have to conclude that this is more than just a profit consideration.

It’s possible that a “choose to be utility or publisher” world would have an extremely polarised internet. On one hand, “utility” services with a lot of illegal content and the police playing whack-a-mole. On the other hand, “publisher” services with liability and therefore intensely risk averse, allowing only the most anaemic content.

This is not exactly true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/26/ice-pri...

>The whole point was to be decentralized, and now we have Visa, Mastercard, Apple, Google, Amazon and Cloudflare deciding what we are and are not allowed to see, read and buy. And virtually in lockstep, they are becoming increasingly prudish.

I mean, yes and no. People have been successful in sanitizing the mainstream internet, the pop culture internet, the one your grandparents like to visit. There's plenty of internet out there beyond what is commonly used.

'Funny people' on Reddit still post links to NSFW in SFW spaces. Googling something angsty can be interpreted as a search for XXX. Twitter isn't exactly safe either, and can teach a few people NSFW words to get curious about. R34, DeviantArt etc. are all alive, and anything hentai related is far more prominent and mainstream than before. People interact on these sites and suggest enough to instill curiosities.

It's not as on the nose as old flash game sites showing a highlighted "18+" with a shitty age verification or a random ad sending them into the rabbit hole, but it's still very much there.

Aka user-generated content.

Conditioning liability limitation on being hands-off will only go so far. For one thing, most platforms are basically unusable if you try to turn them into the verbal equivalent of 2b2t[0]. You need to do spam filtering at the least, and that implies making editorial judgments as to what users to take on. It is also possible to use free speech as a censorship tool - say, by harassing or doxing users as reprisal for speech.

Even if we walked this back to "utilities must have consistent rules and users can sue for unfair application of them", this is still historically lenient in terms of intermediary liability. The law does not chase pointers: with literally any other field of endeavor, we don't accept the idea that someone can facilitate a crime without being liable for it. That would be a massive loophole. But we accept it for defamation and copyright law because we convinced Congress to accept the propaganda of the Internet[1].

Under current law, Visa and Mastercard cannot disclaim liability that Apple or Google can. This is why the anti-porn campaigns have been so successful at killing amateurs in that space. Apple might be prudish about not having porn in their app, but they can at least accept filters on the app[2]. And, as we've seen with cryptocurrency, letting those companies disclaim liability would be an absolute nightmare. Cryptocurrency has been an absolute boon to ransomware and scam enterprises that otherwise would not be able to take payments. So you will never convince Congress to carve massive, gaping loopholes in banking law the same way we did to defamation and copyright law.

A decade and change ago our biggest worry was that Comcast would try to turn the Internet into a series of cable TV packages. Now, we have forced so many people to effectively immigrate to the Internet, that they are in a position to demand that it does actually work like cable (in that things they don't like can be sued into oblivion or taken down). The old Internet cannot exist in a world where it can be used against itself to destroy itself.

[0] The oldest anarchy server in Minecraft.

[1] For the record, I am not opposed to CDA 230 or DMCA 512. But we still need to recognize that these liability limiters have massively harmed the ability for plaintiffs to prosecute legitimate defamation or copyright cases.

[2] I am aware that Tumblr got smacked down for this, but this is not because Apple refuses to accept filtering on social networks. They got smacked down because they are absolutely terrible at filtering anything, and an app reviewer saw CSAM.

Have they really though? I guess plantiffs might find it easier to get damages out of Facebook or Google, but it still seems to be very easy to get stuff taken down.

The reason why it's very easy to take down things is directly downstream of this. Social media companies will trip over themselves to take down content, and the standard for what constitutes a legitimate takedown notice is hilariously low. Remember how Bungie had to basically yell and scream at Google to get them to reverse an illegitimate takedown request an angry fan made to tarnish their reputation? Google didn't want to lift a finger, because all the processes heavily encourage passing the buck. Likewise, social media likes to use content recommendation algorithms because it also lets them get around the law. If you use humans to recommend or curate content, then you're a publisher, you get full copyright liability, and you become the big copyright punching bag[0]. But, if you write an algorithm to make the same decision you would have made as a human, then you're in your safe harbor and there's nobody to sue.

And plaintiffs don't want easy takedowns, they want to sue a big company for lots of money... so that they'll settle and agree to a licensing deal. That's how copyright is supposed to work. When someone with money doesn't pay for the thing, you get to use the law to smack them until they pay for the thing. Nobody wants to sue individuals; it's expensive, time-consuming, and makes you look like an extortion artist.

But that doesn't work under DMCA 512, because there isn't a big company anymore. There's just an online service provider doing things "at the request of" billions of individual users.

We as hackers, myself included, love to complain about copyright. The problem is that copyright only inconveniences those who want to play by the rules. We get angry about it because we want to be told "yes" and will never, ever afford to actually pay to be told "yes". But if you don't care, it's quite easy to evade the system. Register new accounts, use a VPN, lightly disguise your infringement, and you make yourself far harder to sue.

[0] See Mavrix v. LiveJournal. This is the only part of law that I can think of where being willfully blind to abusive conduct is actually rewarded rather than being punished.

Even if a monopoly is not legally enforced, it can still dominate through quality or market forces or numerous other avenues.

CloudFlare is not s monopoly even by HN commenters weird definition.

But if you define “dumping” as “selling a product below what it takes to turn a profit”, every unprofitable company funded by YC is doing something illegal.

Offering a sustainable free tier isn't dumping. Funding a free service with profits from a different business is.

> But if you define “dumping” as “selling a product below what it takes to turn a profit”, every unprofitable company funded by YC is doing something illegal.

Some of them have sensible unit economics and just need investment while they scale up. But yes, intentionally or not there is absolutely a whole lot of antitrust violation going on in silicon valley VC.

You really think a company can’t legally enter a new market by funding the division from another market?

Was Amazon engaging in “dumping” when it was using the revenue from Amazon to build out AWS? And no “AWS wasn’t started by Amazon selling excess capacity”

Is the “HomePod mini” a line of business? Would it be sustainable if it weren’t subsidized by the rest of Apple?

Are you starting to see how meaningless your definition is?

5 out of the 6 companies you mentioned are only involved in how you consume goods and services.

Not being able to buy something is not the same as the web not being centralized.

Also, the reference point you're using as a paragon for decentralized web is also a point in time when people were not able to buy goods and services from any of these companies.

Consumerism and free speech are not the same thing.

They're targeting the wrong layer. Regulate ISPs, and maybe big hosting companies like AWS and Cloudflare.

https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud/amazon-shocker-ceo-jas...

There is no “monopoly” on running servers and connecting them to the internet.

Although at present, what you say isn't completely true, because ISPs are not common carriers. Fixing this should be first priority.

While net neutrality is not strictly the same thing, you can easily imagine where ISPs are forced to act as common carriers, but are not forced to prioritize it.

Fascism was alive and well in Yerp before WW2 started in the form of old aristocrats who lorded over the soon to be new aristocrats, who had yet to claim total control of public institutions. So with that in mind the “solution” is public control of life preserving logistics networks, and tribal, de-centralized DIY social media for fluffing our imaginations. Ogling punsters, memes is hardly a universal preference.

Decentralized filter bubbles are getting easier and easier to host; Docker and k8s via private Wireguard networks anyone?

There’s a lot of chatter about new protocols needed for decentralizing. Other than email, I have been self hosting a long list of personal services via Docker for years. I am shocked other hacker types are bought into all the service subscriptions. New protocols will be taken over by old social forces.

Tech workers have been told to dog food products as if they’re pets. As a society we once made shopping at the company store illegal. Monopoly busting is about avoiding a minority guiding species agency at scale.

Did you miss this part?

> There are lots of new rules around verifying consent and age in adult content. The rise of smartphones also means that everyone has a camera that can capture pictures and video at any time. Non-consensual sharing has grown exponentially and has been a huge problem on dedicated porn sites like Pornhub – and governments have rightly been expanding laws and regulations to make sure everyone being shown in online adult content is of legal age and has consented to the material being shared. Tumblr has no way to go back and identify the featured persons or the legality of every piece of adult content that was shared on the platform and taken down in 2018, nor does it have the resources or expertise to do that for new uploads.

I can't think of a single policy in which they disagreed or were not in lockstep. So it's like we have a single cabal, not 6

> how successful people have been sanitizing the internet.

When you accumulate money, your interest is to protect it, not to make more

Since Pornhub could not guarantee they had 0 underage content, the credit card companies decided to withdraw.

Because if the law finds out the credit card companies dealt with Pornhub, and Pornhub was hosting underage people's explicit content, then the credit card company would end up in real trouble. Human trafficking and child pornography laws are no joke.

I'm confident Reddit and Twitter will be targeted and announce a crackdown on adult content soon enough.

The shock stuff, edgy humour and 4chan-line shenanigans are still out there, even on mainstream social media like TikTok. It's just that most of 30 year-olds don't know about it any more because we're out of the loop. We're square.

It's different now. I've been on 4chan a long time. It's a more sinister and hateful place than it was when I was a teenager.

I know that's the case for me.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-reins...

[2] https://freespeechunion.org/about/

The auto-mask feature in ios16 will do shirtless men, but not shirtless women.

I’m a photographer who shoots a lot of nudes, and I don’t use iCloud at all.

This is the local, on-device software editorializing over my art.

Second, I don't find it worthy of contemplation if such laws would help, because if they would — they just wouldn't be passed, simple as that. The same way as there's no real point to invent a perfect cryptocurrency, because if it would actually enable things that crypto is supposed to enable — it would be basically shut down, like Monero.

For the most part (leaving aside harassment, actual crimes) there's nothing stopping you from setting up a personal website to post photos of your nuts on the internet.

But all of these platforms are about making money selling ads, so they are going to make policies that are advertiser friendly.

If you want the internet of 1996, you can still have that, but you're going to have to run your own server. Most of the "hackers" on this site are not prepared to do what the old-school web required.

In some cases the laws are front-running the tech companies, and in other cases it's the reverse. The problem (hand-waving warning) is the vocal minority of the easily-offended enforcing their sterile worldview on a political class too scared of being seen to be permissive of anything less than that which would paint them as puritanical.

Despite the realities these laws and policies are incompatible with.

Having said all that, yes, it _should_ be laws that address these things.

Nowadays you have to take active measures to disconnect.

I'm not sure what to do about this.

Would absolutely vote for this assuming it starts when the company reaches some size.

Sometimes they win, sometimes their effort backfires like that elderly lady with a cliffside beach house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Websites with content moderation should be allowed to exist.

Be the change you want to see and stop using normie, silo'd sites

In theory yes, but maybe envision the lawmakers as a monopoly with vested interests and no accountability then project the result.

It's always people who produce zero meaningful creative content who complain most vociferously about Internet censorship.

It would be better for the average content creator if porn were blocked. I also think things like virtual slot machines should be banned from the App Store. I think conspiracy theorists should be banned.

Why do we tolerate ads? A branded video game doesn't have to make money, so it can focus on being fun. There are fun branded games. The budgets are bigger. You don't give a fuck that it's a fucking cereal or cookie or whatever, it doesn't really matter. Chex Quest was a branded video game. And nobody is forcing a creative person to make games sort-of promoting junk food. Like everything it has tradeoffs.

But seriously, it's the same people who say "sanitizing the Internet" as the ones who pay for literally nothing new. They are the mouth agape neckbeard guys clutching a fistfull of dollars for a 30 year old gigantism IP, only paying for Star Wars and Game of Thrones, and if it was something that Hollywood hasn't yet said is good, they just do not care. They don't pay for porn. They complain about it being not in the App Store and then they don't pay for it. They are the worst audiences!

All this crummy stuff drains audiences away from more substantive cultural endeavors. I understand it is stuff people want, and is high engagement, but honestly, who the fuck cares? So what. What comes next? Engagement is not meaning. But audiences have a finite amount of time. You will reduce meaning if people spend all their time on meaningless things. That's just common sense.

And if you actually knew a single talented creative person in your life, you'd learn that they yuck people's yums all the fucking time. It's an essential reason they are successful - they have opinions about good and bad.

A certain Twitteratti demand Apple show the nipples and Netflix, in the opposite direction, ban the saucy comedians. In service of what? For really dead end, lame, seriously unfunny and uninteresting teenage-depth narratives about sex. Seriously, again, who the fuck cares.

And these companies you mention are getting wrongfully blamed.

It’s must simpler, it’s just the digital equivalent of a brick & mortar business saying “no shirt, no shoes, no service”.

Additionally, there’s regulatory requirements for some of these companies to not do business in certain circumstances. You can’t fault them for refusing service in order to comply with laws.

Why do you say this?

The whole point of the internet was for distant parties to be able to communicate. That's it. Parts of it were implemented in a decentralized fashion because neither the nodes, nor the links between nodes were considered reliable.

You can still do all that communication in a decentralized fashion, you're just unhappy that all the value-add services built on top of that substrate don't share the initial design constraints of the network.