[TheOtherHobbes]

I don't think sex is particularly messianic, but I also don't see why censoring and policing nominally adult content should be Google's business - literally or metaphorically.

This is just one example from a growing list of questionable moral behaviour and outright abuse of monopoly power.

The political reality is that Google has serious trust and credibility issues on many fronts.

The more this kind of thing happens, the more likely they are to turn into antitrust issues.

[Fnoord]

It is also an example of the USA shoving down its morals to the rest of the world. Especially areas where partial nudity is accepted. One of the very first things in life a baby does is searching the nipple (which is darker than the rest of the breast) and sucking on it. Breast are very much part of nature and human life, yet we censor it as if it is something which shouldn't be seen. At the same time, we have no issues with all kind of violent games. Hello double standard! That you wanna have that in the USA is up to you Americans, but let me as European at least apply the norms of my country. You would not expect anything less as American!

But yeah... Civ cultural victory, and all that...

In EU there's already been complaints about Google only allowing their Play Store and hampering 3rd party stores, and Google lost that lawsuit.

[msla]

It's the myth of "Community Standards" or, to be more precise "Contemporary Community Standards", which is a concept in American law and, I'm sure, the laws of other countries, which states that:

> Jurors are the judges of contemporary community standards, based upon their knowledge of the norms of the community from which they may come. The juror must also decide whether the "average person" in applying such standards would find that the disputed material appeals to "prurient interest" or is "patently offensive." Experts testimony may be used to testify about the nature of the contemporary community standards,' but such testimony is not constitutionally required.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/contemporary-community-sta...

Back in the Dark Twentieth, you could maintain the polite fiction that even broadcast media was bound by these standards, as the FCC would go after local affiliate stations, not the mothership, for violating broadcast regulations. In theory, and, to some extent, in practice, local stations could regulate what got shown, so as to prevent what you mention: Distant townies trying to impose their standards on the locals.

This breaks down in the Internet Era, of course, because, while a website may claim to have Community Standards, a website is not a community. A website cannot have Community Standards, Contemporary or otherwise, because the people it has contributing to it are a pseudo-random mix of some vaguely-defined demographic, and, as you yourself show, can and will differ sharply on precisely the kinds of things Community Standards presume a strong majority in a community can agree on.

The Liberalization of the world has ripped a lot of veils off the cultural standards we used to abide by, and turned polite fictions, the kinds of things all the adults in the room could admit privately were not laws of nature but laws of local social norms, into, at long last, simple fictions, as might be found in a storybook. "Community Standards" is one such polite fiction, and it's been replaced by the standards of the platform owners.

We can remove the platform owners by federating and decentralizing, but "Community Standards", as-was, isn't coming back. Communication is far too important to allow the previous geographic segregation to reassert itself.

[partiallypro]

The US has pretty liberal standards on pornography and art...I mean most pornography and such art is produced in the US itself. Tasteful nudity in the US is not frowned upon, perhaps in public, yes...but I don't know of many countries where that isn't frowned upon outside beaches. I'm not sure what you're referring to, or if you are that familiar with the US. The UK on the other hand and some other European countries...and many Eastern countries are battling porn/nudity if not outright banning it. With the UK even requiring you to register with your ISP. The US's FCC does have some stringent guidelines, but their restrictions only apply to OTA. What countries have a more liberal view? France? Germany? Spain, a few small countries here and there, maybe? Otherwise...not many others.

[sangnoir]

> I mean most pornography and such art is produced in the US itself

Most US pornography is produced in San Fernando Valley - I don't think you can generalize porn/nude art across the US so perhaps you ought to have said "California has pretty liberal standards on pornography and art".

Janet Jackson's Nipplegate wouldn't have been a big deal in any of the European countries you mentioned, but Americans were scandalized.

[shams93]

Most porn USED to be produced in the SF Valley, I used to work in the industry. A whole series of new laws forced the industry out of California. My old boss sells insurance now. A lot of modern porn is now produced in eastern europe. Basically no new porn is produced in SFV, only the softcore companies like Vivid are still in business here.

[sangnoir]

I know free porn on the web was debilitating to the industry; however, to my knowledge no US state is close to CA's production, even now; which was my point, it's not like there's a whole lot of (professional) porn coming out of OH, MS or IL

[Fjolsvith]

In Kansas you must have a license to produce porn legally (to do so otherwise is a felony that district attorneys vigorously prosecute), and the state government doesn't operate an office to issue those licenses.

[laumars]

My experience is actually the reverse. USA weirdly conservative about nudity - to the point that Americans often confuse nudity and pornography (as you had done in your post replying to a person talking about nonsexual nudity).

[partiallypro]

I don't believe I confused pornography with nudity, I am merely stating that pornography and nudity are both fairly accepted outlets in the US. I do believe that many foreign people (largely Europeans) believe the US is very conservative in regards to nudity and are just flat wrong...likely because they have very limited experience in the US.

[rjf72]

I see no reason to think this has anything to do with the US. For instance Steam recently decided to allow openly sexualized games. The relevance there being that they've absolutely made sure that they're not going to run into legal issues in the US doing that. And it turns out, they're not.

So this is coming from Google. Their motivation is much harder to discern. Related to advertising? Avoiding store segregation as they expand into e.g. various far more conservative Asian or Islamic nations? Trying to create a 'Disney-Esque' image for Android as opposed to being that naughty back alley alternative to Apple? Maybe it was an algorithm or even human gone awry. Lots of possibilities, and we'll likely never know which it was - even if they choose to respond to this.

[thinkloop]

I think it's clearly advertisers, tumblr and reddit are going through a similar cleanup as they mature. You start with free principled user focused values, grow to a critical mass, then disneyfy for that sweet cash. This leaves a vacuum for a new entrant to go through the same process. Maybe that sweet spot between basement project and corporate success is where ultra freedom is destined to remain.

I think this mechanism is the core of why we feel a vague sadness when sites like github get bought by big corps. You tacitly know it's the beginning of the end on some dimension.

[int_19h]

You can thank SESTA/FOSTA for all this. Past precedents don't matter anymore; there will be heavy-handed policing now everywhere, if only to firmly establish intent should it ever come to court.

[bbarn]

Especially when it's done in such a way that favors the bigger players - he gives two perfect examples in Instagram and Reddit - reddit especially is well known to have nearly as much pornography as the "tube sites" do, and one need only click "I am an adult" to view it.

[writepub]

Just pointing out that Google's not the sole offender here. Apple is known the be stricter on this

[sonnyblarney]

"but I also don't see why censoring and policing nominally adult content should be Google's business"

Google Play is like a shopping mall, a privately owned public space.

There will be standards.

If you put up some questionable ads in your local mall, you'll get asked to have them taken down.

Those spaces are not intellectual zones, or bastions of expression. They are public/common areas and subject to some kind of basic rules of expression.

Your local library has some rules.

So does your school.

So does your University.

There are infinitely url's that you can use to access content according to a different set of norms, you're free to use them at any time.

This thread exhibits one of the failing aspects of intellectual idealism, in that it so often fails to take into consideration the community - you know - 'other people's opinions'.

[colordrops]

Bad analogy. It's a custom shopping mall that is built just for you. If you want a fully uncensored experience you should get it.