Technology has more or less flowed with the proliferation of porn. VHS (over Betamax), bluray (over HD-DVD), online payments and other Internet features rose to prominence because pornographic content helped spearhead their adoption.
That dead woman called Tumblr is still walking with a healthy strut these days, also soaking up some displaced Redditors. Horny shit is slowly but surely returning to Tumblr’s fields, as well.
Tumblr illustrates the problem with porn in general, they didn’t shut it down for no reason, they shut it down because the pedos had decided to use it as a dissemination portal for their vile shit, and the structure of Tumblr made it difficult to moderate away, especially at scale. Thus, Apple threatening to pull them from the app store, for good reason. All they could do was go scorched earth on porno.
So that’s the issue we’re going to have, here, and I’m not sure if the “some guy running an instance for the fuck of it” model is prepared for it.
Yahoo banned porn on Tumblr because Apple found a CSAM image on their platform, banned their app from the App Store, then as a condition for unbanning the Tumblr app, issued them an ultimatum to outright ban pornographic content. I originally thought that Yahoo’s justification was an excuse they used because they couldn’t be bothered to invest the resources needed to purge illegal content from their platform, but apparently Discord have been hit with similarly puritanical demands from Apple and Google, who basically have a monopoly on what apps go on your smartphone,
Nevertheless, Tumblr’s porn exodus is the core reason why Yahoo sold the platform to Automattic for pennies compared to how much they originally acquired Tumblr for. It even sparked a renaissance of lewd artists flocking to Newgrounds - a site that was originally on its knees due to the death of Flash animations and browser gaming.
It’s also worth noting that Automattic have since partially dialed-back the ban. Nudity is allowed on Tumblr again, but graphic sexual content isn’t. Obviously they did this in direct response to Elon Musk enshittifying Twitter. Another reason I think Tumblr is living on is because it was known for three things: porn, niche fandoms and social justice warriors. Musk has notably burned bridges with any Twitter users who oppose hate speech.
God forbid if Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai find out there’s porn on Reddit…
Do you have a source on that? It doesn’t smell right. Every platform (All of them. Every single one. No exceptions) that allows user-submitted images/videos has an issue that some of that content is illegal. CSAM is the most obvious, but not the only one. What made Tumblr different from the 20 million+ instances on Facebook? Source1, Source2 At the time, scrolling through r/All for just a few minutes was nearly certain to show something pornographic, although not CSAM.
The story I heard (admittedly, I’m having trouble finding a source at the moment) is that Tumblr’s tools to remove CSAM weren’t good enough. While they would remove the offending image when it was reported, they did not delete the connections to other users/groups. Which meant it was easy to find more, even after some had been removed. In turn, that meant that it quickly became the platform of choice for anyone uploading this stuff, creating a higher volume and ratio of illegal content.
While I know Apple has long been anti-porn, it seems unlikely that they would take such an arbitrary hard line while ignoring countless others.
The key difference with lemmy is, if that one instance is the one disseminating cp, they get defederated, and so removed from the other normal users, and then if the instance doesn’t shut down, LEO gets involved. The other normal porn-hosting instances can operate business as usual.
I don’t know, law enforcement can be pretty slow. I definitely see a few cease and desists happening before any real action, and as soon as that starts, the sane instances defederate.
Regardless, the point is, they get taken care of in one of a multitude of ways.
One of my required classes in college had a day where the professor just talked about all the times porn determined the newest media distribution standards.
When I browse “all” on here, there is the occasional tiddy in between. I appreciate that. Reddit’s r/all was so much better when nudity wasn’t purged from it.
I’m not sure that’s a valid comparison. Tumblr was overwhelmingly porn, which was its biggest selling point. The only thing dumber was when OnlyFans tried to ban hardcore porn (Fortunately, I guess, they saw the light pretty quick and relented)
While Reddit always had porn, it was never the primary draw.
Just remember how quickly Tumblr fold after they started banning porn.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of horniness in which large part of the internet runs on.
Technology has more or less flowed with the proliferation of porn. VHS (over Betamax), bluray (over HD-DVD), online payments and other Internet features rose to prominence because pornographic content helped spearhead their adoption.
Also early home video recording equipment! (The precursors to which were developed by the military.)
That dead woman called Tumblr is still walking with a healthy strut these days, also soaking up some displaced Redditors. Horny shit is slowly but surely returning to Tumblr’s fields, as well.
Tumblr illustrates the problem with porn in general, they didn’t shut it down for no reason, they shut it down because the pedos had decided to use it as a dissemination portal for their vile shit, and the structure of Tumblr made it difficult to moderate away, especially at scale. Thus, Apple threatening to pull them from the app store, for good reason. All they could do was go scorched earth on porno.
So that’s the issue we’re going to have, here, and I’m not sure if the “some guy running an instance for the fuck of it” model is prepared for it.
Not quite how it happened.
Yahoo banned porn on Tumblr because Apple found a CSAM image on their platform, banned their app from the App Store, then as a condition for unbanning the Tumblr app, issued them an ultimatum to outright ban pornographic content. I originally thought that Yahoo’s justification was an excuse they used because they couldn’t be bothered to invest the resources needed to purge illegal content from their platform, but apparently Discord have been hit with similarly puritanical demands from Apple and Google, who basically have a monopoly on what apps go on your smartphone,
Nevertheless, Tumblr’s porn exodus is the core reason why Yahoo sold the platform to Automattic for pennies compared to how much they originally acquired Tumblr for. It even sparked a renaissance of lewd artists flocking to Newgrounds - a site that was originally on its knees due to the death of Flash animations and browser gaming.
It’s also worth noting that Automattic have since partially dialed-back the ban. Nudity is allowed on Tumblr again, but graphic sexual content isn’t. Obviously they did this in direct response to Elon Musk enshittifying Twitter. Another reason I think Tumblr is living on is because it was known for three things: porn, niche fandoms and social justice warriors. Musk has notably burned bridges with any Twitter users who oppose hate speech.
God forbid if Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai find out there’s porn on Reddit…
Do you have a source on that? It doesn’t smell right. Every platform (All of them. Every single one. No exceptions) that allows user-submitted images/videos has an issue that some of that content is illegal. CSAM is the most obvious, but not the only one. What made Tumblr different from the 20 million+ instances on Facebook? Source1, Source2 At the time, scrolling through r/All for just a few minutes was nearly certain to show something pornographic, although not CSAM.
The story I heard (admittedly, I’m having trouble finding a source at the moment) is that Tumblr’s tools to remove CSAM weren’t good enough. While they would remove the offending image when it was reported, they did not delete the connections to other users/groups. Which meant it was easy to find more, even after some had been removed. In turn, that meant that it quickly became the platform of choice for anyone uploading this stuff, creating a higher volume and ratio of illegal content.
While I know Apple has long been anti-porn, it seems unlikely that they would take such an arbitrary hard line while ignoring countless others.
The key difference with lemmy is, if that one instance is the one disseminating cp, they get defederated, and so removed from the other normal users, and then if the instance doesn’t shut down, LEO gets involved. The other normal porn-hosting instances can operate business as usual.
Law enforcement would probably shut down such instances faster than the rest of Lemmy could collectively defederate them.
Hosting such stuff on the clear web is basically asking for a joint FBI, NCA and other major law enforcement agency raid on your premises.
I don’t know, law enforcement can be pretty slow. I definitely see a few cease and desists happening before any real action, and as soon as that starts, the sane instances defederate.
Regardless, the point is, they get taken care of in one of a multitude of ways.
“I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called ‘Bring Back the Porn’”
One of my required classes in college had a day where the professor just talked about all the times porn determined the newest media distribution standards.
When I browse “all” on here, there is the occasional tiddy in between. I appreciate that. Reddit’s r/all was so much better when nudity wasn’t purged from it.
Dude right? You scroll a bit, read some shit, laugh at some wit, and then there’s a tit. It wa perfect.
The shit.wit.tit frequency index. A true measure of the health of a social media site?
It really is the best fit.
The internet is for porn. Don’t make me link the video proving it.
I’m not sure that’s a valid comparison. Tumblr was overwhelmingly porn, which was its biggest selling point. The only thing dumber was when OnlyFans tried to ban hardcore porn (Fortunately, I guess, they saw the light pretty quick and relented)
While Reddit always had porn, it was never the primary draw.
I came here to laugh, and masturbate