Your Adult Content Policies Are Broken / Slantist
Written by A.V. Flox. Originally published on March 9th, 2015 for Slantist.
“Every time a tech company enacts a new policy around adult content, I warn people about the consequences for freedom of expression, and every time I do it, a handful of voices will respond in chorus that I’m overreacting, that no one is banning anything that’s actually important. They’ll tell me, “relax, they’re just banning porn.”
It almost sounds like a favor. Put that way, the word porn brings to mind all those god-awful sites from the 90s with the busy backgrounds and the centered text filled to bursting with multi-colored links and banners and a billion popup ads, besides. Who defends bad design, popups and endless banners that lead to even more bad design and popups? No one.
But that’s not what policies against “adult” content do. These policies do not actually address (or even acknowledge) that maybe you, personally, don’t want to see porn (or violence) sometimes — or ever. These policies simply make it so no one is allowed to post “adult” content — ever. Or advertise it. Or make money with it. Or link it. Or broadcast it. Or store something about it in the cloud. Or some other thing they haven’t thought of yet.
But they don’t define it. They can’t define it. And because they cannot define it, everything from Leonard Nimoy’s Full Body Project to ads for safer sex are at risk.”
Read more the censoring of adult content in the media here!
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