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18 votes
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Brazil's top court threatens to suspend X (formerly Twitter) by Thursday night if Elon Musk does not comply with regulations
23 votes -
Digital apartheid in Gaza: Unjust content moderation at the request of Israel’s cyber unit
14 votes -
Has sexual content invaded too much of the internet?
Something I have been thinking about lately is how sexual content online seems to be proliferated and normalized much more than it used to be. I'll give a couple of examples. While I do not use...
Something I have been thinking about lately is how sexual content online seems to be proliferated and normalized much more than it used to be. I'll give a couple of examples.
While I do not use the big social media sites (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) very often, I've seen questionable content while others are scrolling, as well as conversations both online and offline with others who do use them. Nearly all of these sites contain profiles of people who are primarily there to market an OnlyFans account or similar. And these profiles are pushed to various demographics, seemingly moreso to males.
Reddit has a very questionable history with this type of content. But outside of that, any subreddit that allows submission of photos of people will often include these models trying to promote themselves, and they frequently make it to the top of the subreddit. (Some reddit users make fun of this in subreddits such as r/UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG, which stands for "Upvoted Not Because Girl, But Because It Is Very Cool; However, I Do Concede That I Initially Clicked Because Girl").
Twitch is a livestreaming platform that primarily hosts streamers who are playing video games. Streaming other events or "just chatting" has grown in popularity, which I have no complaints about. But there has been a lot of controversy about sexual content on the platform. To address this to some degree, Twitch added a "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" category for people who are streaming in that specific context. But OnlyFans models do not stick to that category, and can easily be found in "Just Chatting." And I can personally say that regardless of how many times I select "Not Interested" on these streams, I continue to get suggestions for them.
Even generic chat applications (such as WhatsApp and Discord) are plagued with bot accounts that are either representative of an actual model or part of a scam, but in both cases, try to lure users in with sexual content.
I do want to say I have no issue with adult content when it is in the appropriate venue. Sites dedicated to pornography are completely fine for consenting adults. What I take issue with is how this content has expanded far beyond dedicated sites.
Society has reached a point where we hand off internet-connected devices to children at a very young age. Chromebooks are used in schools very early in education, and smartphones are given to kids early in life. It already seems to be common knowledge that social media use results in self-image issues in youth. These issues will likely be accelerated by social media not only showing a false image of how people live their lives but also the lengths they go to appear sexually appealing.
I'm not proposing some overreaching "save the children" censorship legislation is needed. But it's hard to imagine how this trend can be turned around. It produces a ton of clicks, which is all these user-posted content sites (and advertisers) care about. Is there anything that can be done, or is this just the new internet?
46 votes -
Goldfish memories - most of China’s early websites have disappeared
30 votes -
Once more with feeling: Banning TikTok is unconstitutional and won’t do shit to deal with any actual threats
24 votes -
A startup allegedly ‘Hacked the World.’ Then came the censorship—and now the backlash
27 votes -
The most dangerous Canadian internet bill you’ve never heard of is a step closer to becoming law
34 votes -
So you’ve been no-platformed? (2016)
20 votes -
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, kiwifarms, death, harassment: a critique
58 votes -
France’s browser-based website blocking proposal will set a disastrous precedent for the open internet
49 votes -
The King of Jordan approved a cybercrime bill that will crack down on online speech deemed harmful to national unity
18 votes -
The AI moment of truth for Chinese censorship
6 votes -
Brazilian supreme court Minister to take legal action against Telegram
3 votes -
The Vietnamese military has a troll army and Facebook is its weapon
8 votes -
Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
8 votes -
Pakistan blocks Wikipedia for 'blasphemous content'
5 votes -
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company does not have plans to stop selling the antisemitic film that gained notoriety recently after Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving tweeted out an Amazon link to it
8 votes -
Leaked documents outline DHS’s plans to police disinformation
4 votes -
Propaganda, censorship, and surveillance are all inherent attributes of information monopoly
10 votes -
How the SOPA blackout happened
5 votes -
China unleashed its propaganda machine on Peng Shuai’s #MeToo accusation. Her story still got out.
19 votes -
Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
15 votes -
Facebook cracks down on discussing ‘hoes’ in gardening group
12 votes -
WeChat deletes Chinese university LGBT accounts in fresh crackdown
16 votes -
Judge tears Florida’s social media law to shreds for violating First Amendment
16 votes -
China's censorship is far reaching. Searching for "tank man" on some image search engines brings up zero results.
For example: Bing DuckDuckGo Baidu obviously doesn't show tank man, but rather an assortment of random tank images Yandex and Google seem to show the results no problem. Would be curious to know...
For example:
Baidu obviously doesn't show tank man, but rather an assortment of random tank images
Yandex and Google seem to show the results no problem. Would be curious to know for you Tilderinos outside the US if the same results apply to you?
25 votes -
Florida has passed an unconstitutional law to allow suing and fining social media companies (except ones that also own theme parks) for censoring users or de-platforming politicians
20 votes -
Censorship, surveillance, and profits: A hard bargain for Apple in China
4 votes -
Florida bill would fine social media platforms for banning politicians— with exemption for Disney
14 votes -
"Why is this subreddit private?" or why some large subreddits are protesting the censorship of discussions about a reddit admin's ties to pedophilia.
38 votes -
A comparative analysis of security, privacy, and censorship issues in TikTok and Douyin, both developed by ByteDance
5 votes -
Encrypted messaging app Signal blocked in China
29 votes -
Signal ignores proxy censorship vulnerability, bans researchers
11 votes -
Why is Big Tech policing speech? Because the government isn't: Deplatforming President Trump showed that the First Amendment is broken - but not in the way his supporters think.
12 votes -
The scary power of the companies that finally shut Trump up
25 votes -
Navigating China’s censorship and India’s apps ban, Tibetan refugees rethink their dependence on WeChat
6 votes -
Belarus is trying to block parts of the internet amid historic protests
9 votes -
Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth
9 votes -
Lawyers demand US Military stop violating free speech on Twitch
10 votes -
Trump, Twitter, Facebook, and the future of online speech - The debate over censorship and Section 230 is thorny, contentious, and, above all, outdated
8 votes -
YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer, and more for hate speech
18 votes -
Terrible, dangerous EARN IT act set to move forward in the senate; attack on both encryption and free speech online
27 votes -
Copyright blocks interview of protesters because Marvin Gaye's 'Let's get it on' was playing in the background
17 votes -
The Russian doll of Putin's internet clampdown
12 votes -
In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the US was wrong
6 votes -
Internal TikTok policies instructed moderators to suppress videos featuring unattractive, disabled, or poor people so they wouldn't scare off new users, as well as to remove specific types of content
21 votes -
The uncensored library: A digital library containing suppressed articles, built inside Minecraft to bypass internet surveillance and censorship
16 votes -
WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app, has been censoring keywords relating to the COVID-19 outbreak since at least Jan. 1, according to a new report
10 votes -
Censored contagion - How information on the coronavirus is managed on Chinese social media
9 votes