The juxtaposition is really pretty amazing and, ultimately, frustrating to see.
You can see the far-reaching impact of the odd "Violence yes! Sex no!" American morality in so many places. One recent example that struck me: GTA Online, a game rife with violence and destruction and even sex (surprisingly for an American game), but the chat has a profanity filter that filters words that are otherwise present in the game's scripted dialog and soundtrack left and right.
Oh come on, Europe has been just as permitting of violence as the USA. It's not like Italian giallo and zombie flicks don't exist, or french horror torture porn like Martyrs. Spain had quite the horror film industry with plenty of violence too, like Paul nashy films. Hammer horror in the UK was not shy at all with bloodshed, and even scandinavian horror films were quite the little genre from a bit ago.
European self-righteousness is getting annoying on this forum.
The juxtaposition present in the US is what I'm getting at, not that it's the only country with violent media. The US is A-OK with graphic violence, but try to show a nipple and you've got an uproar on your hands. The imbalance is astounding to me. I'm not European, by the way.
I think the difference might be that war violence is a public event and sexual intimacy is a private one.
Or it could be even simpler and more practical than that, most children don’t have weapons, but they do have human bodies.
Perhaps Apple thinks that the risk of seeming prude is worth it to prevent some kid from falling into sexual abuse and the bigger risk of mom and dad not letting them shop freely for apps.
Where I grew up nudity and swearing was never censured, but violence was always restricted. In the US it is quite the opposite, which is annoying.
Northern Scandinavian language can be quite "colourful", and mid-day TV with full on nudity was normal.
But also why I was not allowed into the cinema to see "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" when it was released as it was a 13 due to violence, and I messed up my birthyear when the cinema ticket seller asked when I was born (I was 11)...
Considering how quick people are to jump on the morals of other countries, specifically their not accepting what we decide is good, its not like this is a fight anyone is going to win.
I really would prefer the ability to choose the content I want through each app. Perhaps they could have a country of interest drop down. I certainly don't want someone to just up and decide but in today's social and litigious environment I can see why some companies are making the choices they do.
The US is one of the top 15 countries to visit PornHub. And the LA area is one of the top porn producing areas in the world. There’s plenty wrong with this country, but I don’t think we’re particularly more against porn than other countries.
What people privately do (browse porn, of course they do, being people), and what is produced in one of the most liberal places in the entire country, has very little to do with the public mores and norms of the country as a whole. Of course taboos are always fetishized more than more mundane things. The Victorians, famous for their prudity, were privately… not quite that. And really, why would anyone produce porn in a place as expensive as the LA region if they could reasonably do that anywhere else?
> And the LA area is one of the top porn producing areas in the world.
The US has the largest porn industry and its popular culture is full of sexual suggestiveness, but there is a very strange undercurrent of immense fear of realistic portrayal of sexual relations or even naked bodies. Not the cartoonish porn bimbos with huge plastic tits, not the endless comedic stream of inadequacy jokes (Al Bundy etc) - but meaningful and enjoyable sex and nudity.
If you ever take a deep dive into the French or Italia cinema, one of the things you'll discover is the extreme immaturity of how intersex relations are depicted in American popular culture. It's very rare to see sex depicted as a natural part of a healthy relationship, and not an achievement, a reward or a proof of masculinity.
Ask PornHub what bank accepts their business or what payment provider they are using. They can't accept paypal for one. Lots of moral censoring going on by private businesses for things that are actually legal (Guns, Weed, Porn etc).
America's cultural dominance means on many issues, you can criticise America from either side.
Pornography? America. Religious conservatism? Also America. Unrealistic body image, photoshop and actors on steroids? America. Highest obesity rates? Also America. Nazi flags as a constitutional right? America. Safe spaces and twitter mobs? Also America. Most powerful copyright lobby? America. Piracy software and the copyleft movement? Also America.
>Can we please stop having US morality controlling Internet?
Citation? I don't see anything in the announcement that indicates this is being driven by "US morality". Given the US has one of the largest porn industries on the planet, I think it's a bit of a leap to make that claim without some proof.
>What about Discord blocking servers full of war scenes and car chasing with shootings?
What about it? They're a private company who may choose to not be associated with that content. If you tried to post raw war footage on HN it would be immediately removed and you'd likely face a ban if you kept doing it repeatedly. Is that "US morality" or just a choice about what content they want to host/link to?
> Citation? I don't see anything in the announcement that indicates this is being driven by "US morality".
Right, 'cause Apple (presumably; otherwise this restriction would apply to Android and desktop as well) imposes such rules for gits and shiggles.
Those of us living in the United States and subjected to the inconsistently-applied puritanical moral code that permeates throughout it witness and experience said permeation daily. You want a citation? The article's a citation; it's literally an American company imposing this restriction. Tumblr banning "pornographic" content entirely is a citation. Google making it literally impossible to disable SafeSearch is a citation. The continued existence of rules around profanity on TV and radio is a citation.
> What about it? They're a private company who may choose to not be associated with that content.
I think the point of that remark is that Discord does currently allow "servers full of war scenes and car chasing with shootings", and hardly anyone bats an eye at this, yet the moment anyone shows so much as a boob it's suddenly an outrage.
>Those of us living in the United States and subjected to the inconsistently-applied puritanical moral code that permeates throughout it witness and experience said permeation daily.
So it's puritanical code. The same code that believes homosexuality is a sin. And you think the gay CEO of Apple is basing his decisions on that code. But there's no record of him saying or doing so and it logically makes absolutely no sense.
>I think the point of that remark is that Discord does currently allow "servers full of war scenes and car chasing with shootings", and hardly anyone bats an eye at this, yet the moment anyone shows so much as a boob it's suddenly an outrage.
And those servers are 18+... and banned from the iOS platform, and are part of this announcement. So I still am not following the logic.
> Citation? I don't see anything in the announcement that indicates this is being driven by "US morality".
Do you live in the US? I’d say it’s generally pretty well known that American culture glorifies violence, yet are very prude and puritanical about sex.
So you don't have a citation to this being driven by "US morality"?
I do live in the US. I would not say that's pretty well known, and turning on the TV I find sex pretty much everywhere. Outright nudity is banned, but that's about it. The only place people are "puritanical" about sex is the bible belt, which is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the US population.
See Patreon for example. Or see the sex games that get banned from Steam, vs the ones that stay. NSFW is sorta allowed, but there's no real consistent rubric. Once you start actually organizing or tagging kinks, pretty much everything outside of vanilla pisses someone off. It seems like not really advertising kinks is the way to go for now.
And that 'someone' is usually the payment processor (paypal, mastercard, etc. etc.). So I recognize it's not Patreon fault per se (which is probably why it's so inconsistent).
Some of the most sex-negative people in my social circle are atheists btw. Sex negativity is shared on both the left and right.
And strangely enough, some religious people I know are strangely sex positive. (See the myriad of gentlemen's clubs in the south). It's not so cut and dry as just blaming religious groups on this one. Yeah, Church and sexuality don't really match up but its not like everyone believes 100% what the various churches preach.
The citation is all the media produced by Hollywood and Netflix that gets exported to the rest of the world. It's a lot more obvious to see if you have a different culture that doesn't glorify violence as much or is more open about sexuality.
The point was that it looks very clear to be a restriction coming from Apple (which is why it's about restrictions specifically on the iOS platform and nowhere else). Apple is forcing these rules onto other apps like Discord.
What about Discord blocking servers full of war scenes and car chasing with shootings?