MetArtScroll's recent activity

  1. Comment on Denmark launches children's TV show about man with giant penis – critics condemn idea of animated series about a man who cannot control his penis, but others have backed it in ~tv

  2. Comment on 2020 year in sports review in ~sports

    MetArtScroll
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    Cricket: A look back at the year 2020 by ESPNCricInfo A standout story for me is also one of the last major cricket events before COVID restrictions started: Women's T20 World Cup in Australia,...

    Cricket: A look back at the year 2020 by ESPNCricInfo

    A standout story for me is also one of the last major cricket events before COVID restrictions started: Women's T20 World Cup in Australia, whose final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground was played in front of more than 86 thousand spectators.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Statistics on bans and transparency in ~tildes

    MetArtScroll
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    As for the current number of Tildes users, there is the fantastic https://ts.bauke.xyz/ by @Bauke I totally agree with you as for the Tildes bans.

    As for the current number of Tildes users, there is the fantastic https://ts.bauke.xyz/ by @Bauke

    I totally agree with you as for the Tildes bans.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on Australia romp to victory after India's lowest total in Tests in ~sports

    MetArtScroll
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    Australia 191 (Paine 73, Ashwin 4-55) and 93 for 2 (Burns 51*) beat India 244 (Kohli 74, Starc 4-53) and 36 (Hazlewood 5-8, Cummins 4-21) by eight wickets Player of the Match: Tim Paine...

    Australia 191 (Paine 73, Ashwin 4-55) and 93 for 2 (Burns 51*) beat India 244 (Kohli 74, Starc 4-53) and 36 (Hazlewood 5-8, Cummins 4-21) by eight wickets

    Player of the Match: Tim Paine (Australia)

    Note: the last wicket in India's record low 36 was retired hurt.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
    Link Parent
    Deleting content, i.e., making it unavailable in a particular place, is not the same as content getting lost, i.e., becoming universally unavailable forever, and it is the latter that, IMHO, has...

    Deleting content, i.e., making it unavailable in a particular place, is not the same as content getting lost, i.e., becoming universally unavailable forever, and it is the latter that, IMHO, has been implied in the discussion above.

    I think some is spam, some useless, some actively misleading.

    What is spam and/or useless in one place can be relevant in another place, and actively misleading content should IMHO be preserved in dedicated places so that people learn to deal with such stuff.

    At the very least, it takes up space and clutters search results.

    Space is not a problem now in 2020 (unless it is a zettabyte video of white noise), and search algorithms are getting increasingly improved to demote trash to below the 10th page of results.

  8. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
    Link Parent
    Here we are specifically dealing with PornHub videos. The desktop front page of PornHub has some 50 thumbnails, and I daresay any unverified video that would appear there would be from the pirate...

    One percent of ten million is ten thousand videos. Is that not a "significant number"?

    Here we are specifically dealing with PornHub videos. The desktop front page of PornHub has some 50 thumbnails, and I daresay any unverified video that would appear there would be from the pirate category (and many adult content producers tacitly tolerate some degree of infringement as this brings new paying customers in the long time). Thus, while there could have been some myriad of problematic videos on PornHub, it was necessary for a user to know what to type in the search bar.

    Also, I'd appreciate a citation for that number. I strongly suspect those are lower bounds, and the vast majority of the 10M unverified videos have never been meaningfully evaluated.

    Both the article linked to in the topic and the NYT article linked from there and from one of the comments here claim that PornHub had “thousands” of videos featuring underage persons. I think that if there had been tens of thousands, they would have definitely said so.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
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    This is exactly my point, which applies to SFW and NSFW alike. Right, I was not strict enough. If any legal [important!—this word cannot be omitted] video is lost, then no one gains and there are...

    The value of a larger selection isn't that you can consume more content, but that you can find things that are increasingly specific and obscure.

    This is exactly my point, which applies to SFW and NSFW alike.

    But you seem to think that everyone loses if any video is lost, and I think that's an exaggeration? I can't really take it seriously.

    Right, I was not strict enough. If any legal [important!—this word cannot be omitted] video is lost, then no one gains and there are some who lose so the overall outcome is definitely negative.

  10. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
    Link Parent
    I agree that involuntary content (not just porn) is a problem. However, I am not sure that 10 million items should be removed for the sake of “thousands,” or, if we include all illegal content,...

    I agree that involuntary content (not just porn) is a problem. However, I am not sure that 10 million items should be removed for the sake of “thousands,” or, if we include all illegal content, tens of thousands of violations.

    The fact that it took… strong-arming by CC companies

    I stand behind my argument that credit card companies are essential services like water and electricity. If a platform willingly supports (rather than does not delete “sufficiently” speedily) illegal content, then the platform should be sued (willing support = Section 230 does not apply) in court rather than strong-armed by essential service providers.

    6 votes

  11. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
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    Slippery slope: why should any unverified content be allowed? What is the real difference between an involuntary nude photo and an involuntary non-nude photo, or a photo of someone's pet without...

    Why should unverified porn be allowed to be uploaded and distributed?

    Slippery slope: why should any unverified content be allowed? What is the real difference between an involuntary nude photo and an involuntary non-nude photo, or a photo of someone's pet without the owner's approval, or a photo of someone's house without the owner's approval (viz. Google Street View in Germany), etc.?

    I definitely agree that if there is a valid reason for any content—SFW or NSFW—to be taken down, then it should be taken down. However, it this particular case we deal with AuthRight groups using the existence of such content (not the content itself) as a leverage against adult entertainment in general.

    9 votes

  12. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
    Link Parent
    [i.e., copyrighted content uploaded illegally] I would say that this is observer's bias. While I would concur that most of the unverified content appearing on the first pages of “Top” searches in...

    (My personal observation is that almost all unverified pornographic content, on Pornhub or elsewhere, is in the first bucket.)

    [i.e., copyrighted content uploaded illegally]

    I would say that this is observer's bias. While I would concur that most of the unverified content appearing on the first pages of “Top” searches in adult entertainment sites indeed does fall into this category, there are literally millions of amateur videos with less than a hundred views that are perfectly legal. As for the argument that such content is not of “significant artistic value” or “not… major intellectual works,” this argument can be as well applied to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit,… to justify the removal of more or less 90% to 99% of their content—I agree that the content is not objectively extremely valuable but not with the removal of this content for this reason.

    but I do see compelling evidence… that there are significant numbers of videos in the second bucket

    [i.e., illegal porn]

    less than 1‰ of the total for the stuff featuring minors, hardly more than 1% if involuntary stuff is added. In serious adult entertainment sites like PornHub, such content (as well as pirated content) gets constantly reported and removed by both the community and third parties, and the problem is that it has been soo far too easy to re-upload it.

    The NYT article linked from the topic article and form one of the comments below blames PornHub for allowing the users to directly download videos, unlike YouTube. Given the recent scandals around youtube-dl, how long would it take for pornhub-dl to appear should PornHub disable downloading?

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
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    Edit: “before the Internet” is not the best benchmark. I do not agree with giving up something the world has achieved today while being consoled that the outcome is still better than a longer...

    It’s still a lot more variety than was available before the Internet?

    Indeed, let's compare everything with 1491. EVERYTHING would look better today.
    Edit: “before the Internet” is not the best benchmark. I do not agree with giving up something the world has achieved today while being consoled that the outcome is still better than a longer while ago.

    I am wondering who really loses in that case, when the variety of porn goes down.

    IMHO, if the variety of anything legal goes down (and the vast majority of the unverified PornHub content was perfectly legal, i.e. voluntary and not involving minors), then everyone losesEdit: strictly speaking, no one gains and there are some who lose.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
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    That tweet is indeed straight up disinformation, and this tactics is extremely common from those groups. N.B. On Reddit, those groups regularly suggest to ban all nudity because Reddit does not...

    That tweet is indeed straight up disinformation, and this tactics is extremely common from those groups.

    N.B. On Reddit, those groups regularly suggest to ban all nudity because Reddit does not have age verification for such content, i.e., since it is not possible to verify that an NSFW-nudity post does not contain “child porn,” then, they claim, all NSFW-nudity posts are bad.

    8 votes

  15. Comment on Pornhub purges ten million videos after losing credit card support in ~tech

    MetArtScroll
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    Summary: in order to remove alleged “thousands” of problematic videos, PornHub has been forced to remove 10 million of legal ones. Major Problem 1: Moderation. It is well-known that perfect...

    Summary: in order to remove alleged “thousands” of problematic videos, PornHub has been forced to remove 10 million of legal ones.

    Major Problem 1: Moderation. It is well-known that perfect moderation at scale is not feasible economically. At some point it becomes inevitable that some content (less than 1‰ in this case) on a platform violates rules—whether the local law or just the platform's rules. There are very few options that are better than Notice-and-Take-Down (e.g. ContentID to prevent the same offending video from being re-uploaded), but those options are still very imperfect and often extremely expensive.

    Major Problem 2: Market Power Abuse. There are several services essential to the Internet, such as cloud services, security certificates, payment processing systems, etc., that are provided by oligopolies or even monopolies like DNS. I believe such services should be treated like other essential services such as water and electricity. In particular, claims that such service “support illegal activities” are as nonsensical as similar claims with respect to water and electricity suppliers.

    Minor Problem: “child porn” and “sex trafficking” are used as a leverage against adult content in general. The article cites that

    [PornHub] went on to claim its two biggest critics, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and TraffickingHub, have right-wing ties and are actually focused on abolishing pornography and commercial sex work.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on 'Flexing their power': How America's richest zip code stays exclusive in ~life

    MetArtScroll
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    A great illustration: https://twitter.com/juliagalef/status/955942192614273024 I especially want to draw your attention to this:

    A great illustration: https://twitter.com/juliagalef/status/955942192614273024

    I especially want to draw your attention to this:

    A resident reported a large light in the sky. It was the moon.

    10 votes

  19. Comment on Implement a feature that allows users to flag and challenge exemplary labels on comments they find undeserving in ~tildes

    MetArtScroll
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    I support the idea of dividing the labels into “major” and “minor” ones. I even suggest that in the course of time groups might have their own group-specific labels—both“major” and “minor.”...

    Eventually, I'd like to split Exemplary and Malice out of the labels and make them into their own mechanics that could behave differently

    I support the idea of dividing the labels into “major” and “minor” ones. I even suggest that in the course of time groups might have their own group-specific labels—both“major” and “minor.”

    However, in the case of the Exemplary label, which can only be used sitewide once in 8 hours, I would not call it a misuse unless two or more accounts belonging the same user are involved (though other, especially those “minor” labels might indeed be misused e.g. a malicious user marking every comment in a topic, or even all comments by another user, Joke or Noise or Offtopic).

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Implement a feature that allows users to flag and challenge exemplary labels on comments they find undeserving in ~tildes

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    I must say I do NOT support the suggestion. IMHO, when a user decides to award a comment with an Exemplary label, the user in question expresses OWN opinion—provided that there is no misuse such...

    I must say I do NOT support the suggestion.

    IMHO, when a user decides to award a comment with an Exemplary label, the user in question expresses OWN opinion—provided that there is no misuse such as two alts Exemplarying each other. So unless there is a very reasonable suspicion of misuse, the Exemplary labels (and other labels as well) should stay.

    13 votes