> It's sad to me how successful people have been sanitizing the internet.
Not just sanitizing, but sanitizing to US social mores. Showing a naked boob is considered porn and banned on most of these platform while public toplessness is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions worldwide. I guess it's lucky that at least these companies are not based in an even more restrictive society like China or we would see further restrictions become commonplace.
Having grown up in an authoritarian country, then having the internet basically force it to liberalize was a great feeling.
Ironically some liberties offered even less than a decade ago are eroding away because of the new internet overlords, often under the guise of some trumped up reason like "security" or "social" cause.
These day they don't even try to hide their true greedy objectives anymore, as seen in the removal of the YouTube dislike button or manifestv3.
And having grown up in a liberal country, then having the internet and Hollywood dominance basically force it to implement US copyright laws and prudish censorship has been really sad.
I couldn't agree more. It is disturbing how quickly things change in regards to the freedom and the liberal way we see naked bodies.
While my example gas nothing to do with the internet it might still be interesting.
When I grew up nudism wasn't uncommon in the GDR, but after being unified with western Germany not one generation later it is more than fringe.
We only see unified filtered body types and the normality of seeing many different bodies in a non sexual way. While on the other hand even non nude bodies on Instagram often are sexualized beyond belief to maximize engagement.
We denormalized nudity, the regular body but commoditized the stereotypical filtered body.
I don't really know if it supports or opposes you point here, but pornography in the GDR was illegal while in unified Germany it is generally legal. I guess it kind of supports your claims that peoples bodies have become more commoditized, that porn is more acceptable than simple nakedness. On the other hand it kind of shows how the previous regime had its own hangups about human sexuality.
Yes, when growing up watching Hollywood movies my parents always joked that showing a naked body was not done, but insane aggression (eg beheadings / limbs falling off / etc) was perfectly fine. I think that was while watching Total Recall somewhere in the 90s.
> showing a naked body was not done, but insane aggression was perfectly fine.
[1] is a decent documentary about the weird and inconsistent standards applied by the MPAA. But yeah, violence is fine, man-focused sex is passable, woman-focused sex is bad, homosexual sex is RIGHT OUT, etc.
Um, there are a lot more (often gratuitous) sex scenes in US-made TV/ movies than Japanese ones, from what I've observed. And while there's generally far less glorified violence, you only need to watch something like Alice in Borderland to see some pretty explicitly violent stuff.
For the folks downvoting the above comment, it doesn’t necessarily reflect a viewpoint (that you could disagree with) but could simply be a heads up for people at a workplace with policies against viewing that content at work. (A policy that you might also disagree with… but the warning itself is still useful to some.)
I did not and can't downvote, no I have no stake in this.
That said, in my opinion people working in such a workplace reading a post "Why “go nuts, show nuts” doesn’t work in 2022" should be savvy enough to not click links, or read the post in the first place.
Also, ironically, the fact that we have to mark such links (to Wikipedia!) as NSFW is exactly what this particular comment chain is about, no?
You're overthinking it. Well, it's in the name right? Its not safe for work. I'm in a semi-full conference room currently, and opening the link would be a bit awkward, as it would be really out of context for osmeone who have a view onto my screen.
It was definitely a valid remark, and in this case, it was useful at least for me.
I disagree that they're overthinking it, and you haven't addressed (or perhaps you overlooked?) their main point, that if this is true then you should have thought about that before opening _this_ link, instead of the links on this page.
This is more to say that this is a disagreement between you two at the object level, not someone overthinking a simple matter.
Ah, the ol' Hacker News "being a contrarian just to be a contrarian" thing.
Boobs on the screen isn't the greatest look at work or any public location, and I don't really think it requires going any deeper than that. I can appreciate the pointless debate here and there, but this isn't some great philosophical question we have here lol.
Yeah. It's not just a prudish workplace policy thing. There is definitely stuff I wouldn't want on a screen in an office workplace policies notwithstanding because someone could take offense whether reasonably IMO or not. For that matter, there are almost certainly (non-porn) films I wouldn't go out of my way to watch on a plane especially if there were children nearby.
Decency laws prohibiting toplessness were challenged back in the day under Equal Protection and Due Process. Both sexes have nipples, some men have larger moobs than women. There's just not much biological difference, and thus no basis to legislate on other than the sex of the person bearing their breasts - nipples are nipples, basically.
This was all back in the day, long before trans awareness even hit the mainstream.
> I honestly had no idea it was legal anywhere outside of private or 'cordoned off' places.
It generally isn't. The map image in the article colors a state blue for "legal at the State/Territory level". But that's not where the laws banning nudity come from anyway, so it's almost purely uninformative.
"Public toplessness is also legal in most of the United States."
Sort of. Many states don't have laws specifically against it, but some of the ones listed as legal on that map may not actually be (PA should be marked yellow at best). Most of these states also do not appear to restrict localities from enacting their own ordinances (obviously excluding under the jurisdictions where the courts have ruled).
This but much broader. One of the things that really bothers me is the suppression of non-US use of language (or, from the opposite perspective, the incentivisation of US-like language & conformance to US cultural norms).
Take Youtube "content-creators" as an example making a living from ad revenue: Aussie / Scottish other native-English-speaking contributors face "de-monetisation" for presenting their natural selves and instead are asked to present according to US cultural norms in order to use the platform. And this isn't unique to Google/Youtube - the same applies to content-moderation across the internet.
It's a problem in the spanish speaking world. It's a recurring theme saying that you have to conform to your ad-revenue overlord, and that certain topics can't be discussed.
Some people does the content anyway but publish in non-US platforms, or at least somewhere small that can't curate content.
It's a problem in the English-speaking world too. IIRC the reason why YouTubers always say 'the pandemic' instead of 'COVID-19' or 'the coronavirus' is because of the risk of demonetization.
Some channels (e.g. RealLifeLore) even gate their videos on more controversial topics (e.g. war) behind a Nebula or Patreon subscription, with the rationale that they would get demonetized on YouTube.
I remember a guy who got his xbox account permabanned because his username was "kike8572", and the support wouldn't give him his account back even after explaining that kike in Spanish is just a shorthand for the name "Enrique" (his name).
I'm not sure what you mean and imagining people in AU going through accent training to sound like they're from the US... please tell me it's not that bad
One notable difference is the c-word, which is a gendered slur in the US, but not in Scotland or Australia.
I'm self censoring here because this is a US-run site and I'm afraid I'll get shadowbanned if I use it in full. I am not from the US and this word does not carry the same weight for me.
Also, I find it funny that "cunt" is considered a gendered slew in the US (according to one of the parent comments). Being a cunt has nothing to do with gender, and everything with a character.
I see this argument as similar to the idea that 'bitch' doesn't have to do with gender. If that were true, wouldn't calling someone a 'dog' carry the same weight?
There's a bit that comedian Bill Burr does where he observes that referring to someone as "that fucking $XXX" is considered racist while "that $XXX motherfucker" isn't and it has to do with the former talking about the group $XXX as a whole and the latter very explicitly (uh, no pun intended) referring to an attribute of an individual.
Yeah as sibling commenters here allude to, I wasn't referring to accents; that's more about content accessibility and your target audience. You won't get your content taken down because of your accent.
It's more about cultural norms of acceptability - curse words are the obvious example but there's broader & more subtle cultural considerations w.r.t. what's acceptable to discuss and how it should be approached.
Depends on whether you're trying to get a large number of viewers, it's always been the case that you conform to a middle ground to get a large audience, if not many people can understand you you're not going to get millions of subscribers
Yeah that's a "problem" but imo that's more of a life problem (appeal to masses) than one emergent from how man-made online systems have been designed (conformance to arbitrary rules applied by a minority of controlling forces).
Rumble is an "anti-cancel-culture" initiative and cancel culture is really a very separate phenomenon: cancel culture pertains to deplatforming based on political beliefs and impact, rather than based on where you're from or the way you speak.
I have no evidence to support the following, but looking at what causes this problem on mainstream platforms I would strongly suspect Rumble to be even worse. The cause of this problem is socially conservative US advertisers: Youtube's demonetisation algorithms are tuned to language that their advertisers feel it's acceptable to be associated with. My instinct would be that the subset of these advertisers who use Rumble would be more, not less, socially conservative.
If I'm wrong in my guess above, it's likely a result of scale. Rumble being smaller might simply not have reached the scale whereby algorithmic demonetisation is a thing. In which case it's only a matter of time.
> Showing a naked boob is considered porn and banned on most of these platform while public toplessness is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions worldwide
Yep. Im wondering when will countries start preventing US tech platforms from enforcing US laws and US morals on the people of those countries.
What are you even asking for here? Sites like Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr cater to "American laws" (most of these aren't even laws, the US is generally quite liberal on sexual content and nudity; thus producing a significant chunk of the global supply of pornography) is due to their primary target or largest slice of ad revenue coming from Americans[1][2][3]. There's no law forcing themselves to self-censor, they generally do it for financial/accessibility (American traffic) reasons.
What it sounds like you're proposing is, if Denmark has carte blanche topless legality, that websites that want to operate in Denmark must respect their liberalism and allow said content. Which is far more draconian and intrusive. If a site wants owner wants to err on the side of conservative social values, that's their prerogative; create an alternative to fill the niche if you feel it's lacking. OnlyFans filled an entire void in that manner.
3 - "While Tumblr is used worldwide, the vast majority of its users are based in the U.S. Domestic visitors alone account for 42% of its overall traffic." - https://cloudincome.com/tumblr-statistics/
I’m not a libertarian, and straw-manning will get you no where.
There’s also a reason we don’t dictate platforms and content.
We don’t force people to attend or partake in topless/nude beaches despite allowing them to exist. We don’t force people to join political protests despite them being a protected activity.
In the same manner, we don’t force newspapers to publish content against their goal or audience. There’s no difference for a site platform. There’s no reason “ChristianGram” should be forced to host nudity for Danish (and other) Christians, simply because Danes are allowed to be naked if they like.
The fact that you don’t see how that’s equally tyrannical and intrusive is, honestly, terrifying.
> What it sounds like you're proposing is, if Denmark has carte blanche topless legality, that websites that want to operate in Denmark must respect their liberalism and allow said content
That's precisely what I'm saying.
> Americans
The platforms will need to apply a different set of filters and moderation tools to anyone connecting from within inside the US. Just like they will do for those who connect from within Denmark.
What your proposing is forcing a site owner to host nudity/sexual content, obscene speech, etc. Despite their own personal beliefs, due to a random nation. And you literally don’t see how that’s the same as limited content for a nation such as China.
Your entire basic argument is fallacious. If tumblr stopped showing nipples due to US censorship, that’s one thing. There’s no law barring this and no one is bending to the US legal system, the site owner themselves made this choice to appeal to the largest, most valuable chunk of their demographic. And you, as another person, can make an equally capable site minus that restriction. If people demand it (as they did OnlyFans, Twitch, VK, etc), they will switch.
> What your proposing is forcing a site owner to host nudity/sexual content, obscene speech, etc. Despite their own personal beliefs, due to a random nation
Its not a random nation. Its that nation in which that site owner wants to operate. If he or she wants to operate there, s/he has to obey that country's laws when reaching out to that country's people. Its as simple as that.
> And you literally don’t see how that’s the same as limited content for a nation such as China.
I see it. Every country will limit their content per their own laws to the extent they want to do. That's what law is.
> There’s no law barring this and no one is bending to the US legal system, the site owner themselves made this choice to appeal to the largest, most valuable chunk of their demographic.
That means that basically those corporations just complied with the existing social sentiment and laws 'willingly' to avoid persecution. They can do the same, 'willingly' for other countries for 'appealing' to the users in those countries.
...
If you already 'willingly' comply by the legal and social paradigm of your country without the specter of the law coming down on you, you are not 'willingly' doing it in reality. You are doing it because you have to do it. 'Wording it differently' does not change the reality.
> Im wondering when will countries start preventing US tech platforms from enforcing US laws and US morals on the people of those countries.
This makes zero sense. How do you force anyone to not follow a law? Do you, say, force anyone to post nude pics just because a jurisdiction does not allow anyone to post them? How would that even work?
I'd imagine it be an ultimatum - if you enforce another country's laws on our citizens then you're also in violation of our local laws and will be fined, unable to operate in our country, etc
> if you enforce another country's laws on our citizens then you're also in violation of our local laws and will be fined
This makes no sense at all. Unless you're violating your own laws, which is not what you're arguing, then you're just complying with your own jurisdiction. Yo can't possibly be advocating punishing anyone for not violating laws in multiple jurisdictions.
Simple. The platforms would have to enact different filtering and moderation mechanisms for different countries based on the law in those countries. That would make them compliant everywhere.
I don't really think this is about laws, but even in that arena, companies already do their best to avoid those within the US, nevermind internationally. See e.g. recent Patreon controversy for an example of this. There's man others. So I don't really think law is the problem here.
> US morals
This is the real issue and unfortunately these are finely weaved deep inside US corporate culture itself - they're part of culture fit for hiring in US multinationals and are thus highly unlikely to ever be disrupted from within the workforce of those companies.
If companies 'willingly' comply with the existing social and regulatory landscape proactively, that's not something that happens 'willingly'. Its mental gymnastics to claim that they are doing it freely and not out of being obliged to.
That seems... inverse. "Your service is not allowed in the US because there's not enough boobies in it"?
Anyway the opposite is already true, all US based companies that want to operate within the EU all follow the GDPR. It, and a lot of US online moral codes, are IMO good for society as a whole.
If you still want to look at NSFW content, there's plenty of sources for that everywhere.
> "Your service is not allowed in the US because there's not enough boobies in it"?
No, the service will apply the filters and moderation tools to users from any given country separately. If the law in the US allows enough boobs and the US users post boob pictures, that's totally that legal ecosystem and userbase's thing.
And it seems these days, all nudity is automatically treated as pornographic. When I was a child, my parents took photos of me - clothed or not, I might be doing something silly or endearing and those photos were created, whether in the backyard or the bathtub, given to some guy in a kiosk to print, and placed in the family photo album.
I wonder if parents do the same these days, and if they share them online like how they used to pass around the family photo album?
I think quite a lot still do. If not exposing in albums, at least taking a shots. At least I do. It was what parents did when I've been toddler and I'm not going to bend under someone's pointing finger today. Just look at the Totoro movie - a great piece of animation for whole family - and you'll see father taking bath with their children and no one's complaining about it. It's perfectly fine. I'm taking bath with my child as well. Our child saw us naked on multiple occasions and, for us, it's normal. I wish it would be a common sense.
Just be careful not to sync those pictures to Google Photos or some other cloud provider that scans your files, otherwise your account might get blocked forever (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32560361).
Tumblr had an issue with pedos on the platform and was on the verge of getting kicked off the App Store. For some reason they decided banning porn in general was easier than just removing pedos.
Only Fans was about to be kicked off the banking system entirely and would have been ruined but the publicity caused the bank to back down so OF could continue as normal.
> or some reason they decided banning porn in general
Worth noting that the Tumblr "porn ban" was already well into the planning stages months before the AppStore kerfuffle. That just brought it forward, not into existence.
But it doesn't make money for them. No-one's actually losing consumer sales by allowing porn. It's all 50+ CEOs worrying about what other 50+ CEOs will think.
>But it doesn't make money for them. No-one's actually losing consumer sales by allowing porn.
Theory goes like this:
Some platform, be it payment or social allows something unacceptable to people, let's say racism, full nudity for the sake of argument.
People who really, really, do not want anyone to see this, start phone and email botting the companies that place ads using these networks, or take payment using these networks about the issue
The companies that place ads, do not need this headache and ask the platform, wtf? We will move our advertising dollars if you don't do something about this.
Platform, who's sole purpose in life is to make money, says ok!
Now, include very heavy hitters like Blackrock, Vandguard, etc. that control members on boards of 1,000s of companies and a relatively small group of people only need to persuade another relatively small group of people ... that may not even be the people running the platforms!
I think most consumer preference is against co-mingling porn and other content. Porn tends to drive away other content and makes things just kind of weird. Partially, I think, because porn is still one of the moneymakers on the internet so astroturfing/paid upvotes become lucrative and flood anyplace that allows sexual content.
>I think most consumer preference is against co-mingling porn and other content.
I agree, but even with that preference where does it stop? If I make my money via porn (I don't, but as an example) do customers not want to have bank accounts at banks where pornstars bank? How about sharing electricity from the same company that a porn company uses to power shoots? How about using that same kind of iPhone that a pornstar uses?
Of course all of those are absurd, but you get my point. There is clearly a line where commingling is acceptable. Reddit, for example, has some pretty hard NSFW content, yet people still place ads on other boards (or maybe those too, idk). And there is no widespread hue and cry from "consumers".
It is very, very specific people, companies, and groups that seem to be targeted and those tend to be whatever the current popular social-think flavor of the month is or just ones that certain people don't like in general (racism, drugs, bigots, etc). And you will note, that only one of those groups is actually illegal, the others are just distasteful.
> If I make my money via porn (I don't, but as an example) do customers not want to have bank accounts at banks where pornstars bank?
It can be quite difficult for sex workers of all stripes to maintain their bank accounts. They regularly have accounts frozen because they receive payments from porn-friendly payment processors. This is not just "porn stars" but people that do things like OnlyFans.
So yes, sex workers have trouble accessing banking even if all they do is show their titties on camera because prudes go pitch a fit to banks.
Do you want to know the real answer? It's game theory again.
In a world where no one allows smut (or drugs or semi-racist content), the first one who relaxes these rules will attract anyone and everyone with an interest in that particular content. And before you know it, smut is all you have.
It's a self reinforcing process, and the only way to stay out of it is to align with everyone else. The only way to break the process is if everyone relaxes the rules simultaneously.
Absolutely. You saw this in the early days of legalized gambling in the US.
And there was recently an editorial in the Chicago Tribune saying Chicago should shut down its remaining bars licensed to stay open till 4AM (most must close at 2, all get an extra hour on the weekends), because they're too wild. Yet NYC has probably hundreds of neighborhood bars open till 4 without a problem, since 4AM licenses are basically the default there.
This. It's more about avoiding bad PR. And it doesn't have to be porn. It could be guns, vaping, violent movies, gambling, whatever.
If you're selling baby shampoo the last thing you need is some parent posting on Twitter about "Why is this baby shampoo brand advertising on a sight that promote horror movies about human centipedes?"
And they all think about the law, and how hard they will be impacted if it turns out there's too much non-consentual or illegal / underage content on their website.
Pornhub did a panic delete when the credit card companies withdrew because they realized three quarters of the content on their website may have been uploaded non-consentually - or at least, they didn't know there was consent involved. Revenge porn is a big issue, and will be even more now that everyone has an internet connected camera phone from a young age.
And this is the public internet; on top of that is the peer-to-peer internet of whatsapp, telegram etc, and the dark web of tor and co.
There are entire departments devoted to future problem solving. As a near monopoly multinational, are you more likely to be unseated by a competitor that approves of porn when you don't or by a competitor that prohibits porn when you allow it?
The former. Doing the embarrassing thing would be better for your company. But you're a near-monopoly anyway and unlikely to go bankrupt, so why make yourself uncomfortable?
It isn't really morals anyway. Not even those absurd morons would panic at the news "everybody is naked under their clothes, worse yet sex common among majority". Unlike say "majority torture small animals for recreation" or "majority are literally rapists". As usual the puritanism is so incredibly stupid on every level.
Regular-person morals? No, of course not. But the kind of morals that would affect their personal reputation among their social set? That they care quite a lot about.
Of course they are. There is a lot of money in family friendly entertainment. Take movies for example. On average, the more family friendly rating, the more popular. G rated movies are the most profitable while R rated movies are the least profitable.
Have you checked that assertion? Because it didn’t ring true to me based on what I remember (which was that PG-13 tends to be the sweet spot), and it doesn’t match the data I can find, e.g.:
PG-13 is far and away the leader in terms of both highest-grossing films and percentage of box office revenue; R-rated films are actually the second in terms of highest-grossing and, depending on the year, bounce around between second and third. G-rated films, by contrast, are at the bottom across the board.
There is a difference between “family entertainment” and “adults-only” which matters in terms of the discussion around Tumblr’s content. If we’re using MPAA ratings as an analogy, Tumblr’s “no porn” position isn’t “everything must be G-rated,” it’s “nothing can be NC-17.” One can argue about whether the latter is a good stance to take, but it’s important to be arguing about the actual restriction.
You could both ne right. G rated films generally use no-name or d-list actors and aren’t trying to impress for awards in almost any category. They tend to be low-budget/high-profit. If we are talking revenue, PG-13 for sure. Profit? I would put my money on G.
Disney has released something like 5 G-rated movies to the theaters (excepting nature films) in the past 15 years. PG is plenty family friendly enough.
> Not just sanitizing, but sanitizing to US social mores. Showing a naked boob is considered porn and banned on most of these platform while public toplessness is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions worldwide.
The disturbing thing is that the hives of scum and villainy you find there are for the most part no more subversive than reddit in 2010. And they are actually fun which is more than I can say for _anything_ on the regular web.
I find 4chan to be reminiscent of early Internet and makes me feel nostalgic for how the internet used to be before various mega corps scrubbed it clean.
"Not just sanitizing, but sanitizing to US social mores."
I somewhat agree, but might characterize it as meeting the tightest western restrictions. I have tons of cookie pop-ups now that GDPR happened, but that doesn't really apply to the US. So the influence isn't fully unilateral. Considering the companies started in and are headquartered in the US, it makes sense they follow US regulations more closely.
>Not just sanitizing, but sanitizing to US social mores.
Not to US social mores, to some weird averaged out amalgamation of Western social mores. In the US, firearms are very normal and a regular part of life, but try doing a YouTube stream or channel about them and you'll quickly find yourself "sanitized" anyway.
How could you even ask such a question? Never, in the history of human civilization, have babies ever been exposed to the sight of a naked female breast </s>.
I remember a Louis CK bit about a crime serial he was watching where the (albeit fake) ejaculate on a dead woman could be shown but the breasts had to be censored. Of course, he turned out to be a creep and good luck ever finding one bit on that topic considering the massive news coverage of his bad behavior.
But ad hominems aside, he had a point. It's really disturbed when you think about it: the degree to which an influential subculture in America elevates and defends violence while censoring and degrading women's bodies exposes a sick preference for death over life. Even if portions of it claim to be "pro-life" they are, to all intents and purposes, a death cult.
I guess breastfeeding is scarring these poor kids at an early age. I think it’s safe to say adults are the ones with the twisted sensibilities and kids are going to be just fine,
I've actually seen that argument made against breastfeeding in public. Like someone actually said "You can't do that here! There are children present!" without any clue of how absolutely dumb that was.
It seems like the ones who are most concerned about nudity are the ones we should be the most concerned about. I don't know whats going on in their heads, but it must be pretty sick stuff from the way they overreact. I just don't feel like it should be our burden to keep their demons at bay.
I was banned on reddit for sexualizing children. I said that the fact you can show murdered children but not bathing children on US television is a sign of cultural mental illness.
I guess parents in the US make their children wear a swimsuit when bathing them?
I was banned on Reddit for simply calling out a Reddit admin on my own profile. I keep trying to appeal it, but they don't care about my 12 years of good faith contributions to dozens of communities, hundreds of dollars given to their company through premium and awards, no the final straw was me simply calling out an admin who was on a power trip, who is also responsible for a PR blunder relatively recently with their place event.
I've lost so much respect for this company and it's actually made me also take a step back from social media in general. All of these companies can abuse you at any point without any transparency, and I'm not willing to take the risk anymore.
It's a bit more complicated. Murder on TV is pretend, but nudity is real. Even if you think nudity is ok, showing it needs all parties to consent and we decided that children can't give consent to such things.
>It seems like the ones who are most concerned about nudity are the ones we should be the most concerned about.
Moral puritanism in any form seems to be an extremely harmful to any society it shows up in to those who aren't fellow moral puritans. I think most of the post-enlightenment democratic machinery exists to keep moral puritan types in check more than anything else.
A zit-faced lifeguard admonished my wife for publically feeding our child once and she told him off. At a pool! Heaven forbid we expose those last couple inches.
For some reason I wasn't there, and it's a good thing because I'd probably still be lecturing the kid for it.
Idk I'm not an expert in this matters but people talk about exposing kids to anything including nudity is harmful to them. I really don't know but I think there is consensus that kids shouldn't be exposed to nudity.
Evidence means scientific studies, not 'people talking'. A hundred years ago people would have told you that corporal punishment is good for kids, whereas studies now clearly show the opposite. [0]
When dealing with laws and culture, it seems the onus would be on the side wanting to change the status quo. Without a reason, why would they use political capital/effort on this (or anything else)?
There are multiple onuses, determining whether a status quo should change is only one of them. But where status quo is also an expression of power, there can also be an onus to justify its existence. If that scenario arises, generally those demanding change have already met the criteria (at least those available to them). At which point the status quo thing is in the same philosophical position of making a claim and has the logical burden of proof that the status quo itself is justified.
This reasoning is sometimes used hastily in radical-left politics, eg in some forms of anarchism where any power relationship is subject to justifying its existence. But, and I’m saying this no longer an anarchist, you don’t need to be a radical or revolutionary to see it play out.
This is essentially exactly how many cannabis legalization efforts have worked. After decades of dedicated effort to establish plurality support for questioning the status quo of prohibition, the question of whether prohibition is justified becomes scrutinized at a policy level and it the justification isn’t there. The only remaining barriers are weak pluralities and successful counter-marketing. If either of those are absent, the unjustified status quo has been changed.
Which is all to say, the onus isn’t on anyone to unjustify something that’s wrong, the onus is to motivate people to know and care that it’s wrong, and to agree that it matters. From there, the onus is the same as GP said: you’re making the claim, you defend it. Otherwise the assumption is just, like, your opinion man.
"But where status quo is also an expression of power, there can also be an onus to justify its existence."
That's literally every law.
"Which is all to say, the onus isn’t on anyone to unjustify something that’s wrong"
The onus would be to show that "something" is wrong for that logic to even apply. As you said "you’re making the claim, you defend it.". Society already decided that it was wrong and formed a law, so now it's time to hear why it shouldn't be (I'm interested in research on either side).
I disagree. You're essentially claiming that the need to prove an effect is removed once something is enshrined into law and that's not only illogical but dangerous to boot.
"You're essentially claiming that the need to prove an effect is removed once something is enshrined into law"
This is a gross misinterpretation bordering on trolling. I'm not sure how you could even come to this position.
Please show me how what I've actually said is illogical and dangerous. Please remember that in the scenario we are talking about neither side has provided evidence one way or the other. Somebody would need to provide evidence one way or the other to shift the status quo, as shifting that requires flipping the convictions of the population, or at least the leaders.
Jesus H Christ. Stop sowing this absolute garbage. Proof? How about the fact that we didn't go extinct prior to the invention of clothing? How about the necessity of it for procreation, birth, rearing, washing? If you think the very sight of a naked body is harmful, you are a sick fuck, and that's the nicest way I can put that while getting my meaning across. Please get therapy before your anxieties boil over and make you harm others or vote for like-minded idiots.
I'm a little shocked that anybody could claim that viewing a naked body at any age could be considered harmful. There are many cases where children would benefit from seeing a range of naked bodies, and realise that there are many people out there that look just like them. they don't have to look like the photoshop models who do get exposed. Body shame is a real thing, and the only way around it is for people to realise that bodies come in a wide range of shapes and colours, and they have no reason to be ashamed of theirs.
I don't think there is a consensus. Actually I've never heard anyone cite any specific harm at all. There is certainly an appeal to social norms and probably some ingrained racism: "we wear clothes unlike those primitive savages," but real benefit to shielding kids from nudity - what's the hypothesis to test against?
Which is very misguided! My ultimate parenting hack that I have discovered is to answer my kids honestly and in detail. This was born out of frustration when, as a toddler, one of my kids would become distraught when confronting the fact that she wasn't in our wedding pictures because she did not exist. Eventually I said "look, the egg that would become you was in your mother". A few how & whys later and she was fine before we even got into the mechanics of it.
Now I've honed this to the point where my kids just hear me go into that tone of voice and realize that they should drop the subject before the old man goes on another one of his 45 minute lectures. They've got more fun things to do.
I mean legally they shouldn't be with COPPA and all that, otherwise there are far more regulations in relation to their privacy, the two ideas of toning it down for children and not following children's privacy standards would visibly contradict each other. Doesn't stop children though since the most blocking then from registering for most web sites prematurely like that is a text box that might as well say "I am above 13 or willing to claim I am". A more cynical person would say that's by design but there really is no unintrusive to verify that either otherwise such a thing probably would be enforced for legal reasons.
Not just sanitizing, but sanitizing to US social mores. Showing a naked boob is considered porn and banned on most of these platform while public toplessness is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions worldwide. I guess it's lucky that at least these companies are not based in an even more restrictive society like China or we would see further restrictions become commonplace.