Reddit is still accessible on mobile via browsers though, so even if Apple imposes rules on the native app it's easily worked around. AFAIK the discord webapp only works on desktop, so for iOS users wanting to access NSFW discords on their mobile device they are shit out of luck
> Reddit is still accessible on mobile via browsers though
Barely. They’ve aggressively pushed the app on mobile users for years, and they keep moving more and more of the mobile site behind a login screen. For example, you must now make an account to view more than the last few comments on a post on the mobile site.
Can anyone explain why all these sites seem to be cracking down on adult content? I don't get it. Adult content is the cherished underbelly of the web. If you want to find it, it shouldn't be up to a corporation to decide whether or not you can
Probably the real reason would be to have mechanisms to block any content deemed unsuitable/politically unpalatable or whatever and NSFW is vague enough that you can block and let the issue blow over and then make it look like a genuine mistake was made. Also, hard for most people to bat for NSFW content because it makes you look like a pervert.
I always felt like the hardest position to uphold is "Anti-Kink-Shaming", A) it's embarrassing, B) there's some... questionable kinks out there, C) the amount of adhoms you'll get in response is absurd
NSFW is the catch all phrase paving the way for censorship
Corporations fundamentally exist to make a profit.
A startup that cares only about growth at all costs doesn’t care too much about moderation. If it’s a tiny startup whose product isn’t very popular, they are free from any regulation.
Once the product gets popular, the startup morphs into a “regular” corporation and is now under all kinds of scrutiny to improve its image.
So any product that you use and like which gets really popular will suffer the same transformation as it becomes more mature and more adult.
This is Apple's walled garden, not the web. Parents, and hence Apple, are OK with kids installing Discord so they can chat about Roblox, but they don't want them to stumble into that underbelly of furry scheisse porn etc.
Not defending Apple at all here, but it's not too difficult to escape in this case: use Discord on a computer or an Android phone. The walls of the garden are around your iPhone, and the way to escape is to use something else.
Why do they allow Reddit with it's countless porn subreddits? Why do they allow Safari since it can be used to browse porn content (as well as Discord btw)?
It's completely hypocritical, and you and others must stop defending their stupid authoritarian and honestly abusive decisions.
Most people don't really want to deal with the 'cherished underbelly'.
Also, there's 'adult' and then there's stuff that goes way beyond that, that even freedom types would not want to be randomly confronted with, even if they reasoned for it's right to exist.
iOS is a Shopping Mall "No Porn Stores Here Please".
If this were a question of governmental or bans in the web, that would be a different kind of question entirely.
> iOS is a Shopping Mall "No Porn Stores Here Please".
Most shopping malls I go to don't block me from entering any malls that they don't own.
It astounds me how many people are willing to give Apple a free pass on this inexcusable behaviour. Microsoft got the crap sued out of them just for pre-installing IE on a bunch of computers, imagine if they also tried to make it impossible to install any competing browsers, and tried to claim that it was illegal to wipe the OS and install Linux instead!
Yes, if Apple allowed people to download apps that would change the narrative completely.
I'm not defending Apple's behaviour, I'm explaining it.
If we assume as a starting position that they want a 'closed universe' then their content policy is sensible, even if the 'closed universe' policy is not.
You're overlooking the fact that tons of people around the globe (in different jurisdictions) just label their content 18+ by default just in order to not be liable for anything that could be construed as "not for minors". And I really mean anything completely tame by most of civilized countries standards, let's say swearing or pixel blood.
Of course this isn't a great solution but if you don't create your content to cater to the mass market by default, but just to put it out there, it's suddenly not your problem anymore if anyone under 18 clicks through the "I am over 18" banner.
Yes, it's stupid but my point is - just because it's labeled NSFW this doesn't really mean there is anything that sensible adults would deem NSFW.
Say what you will about the crypto & blockchain scene, but I can't fucking wait for us to move over to it more & start adopting more tamper-resistant decentralization standards... One can hope
Because there are some technical solutions to some societal problems. Are there technical solutions to the ones we are discussing? Possibly, possibly not, you don't know until you look.
the societal problems are solvable only through technology. At least that is the main premise of Das Kapital - the progress in the tools and means of production is what drives societal progress.
I dare you to name a societal problem which was solved independently of the technological advancement state of the time, i.e. a problem that could have been solved the same way with a significantly regressed state of technology when at the time of its actual solution.
i don't understand what societal problem you do you mean here - the prohibition or the alcohol. If you mean that the societal problem was the prohibition then we do know that it was solved by the bootlegging at a massive scale which relied on using cars and machine guns with modern communication of the time - telephone - playing a significant role too. If you mean that the problem was alcohol - i don't see where and when it was solved at all.
Bad laws become "bad" and get repealed when they become untenable to maintain. Cars, boats, planes, guns, drones, global financial system, crypto, social media, scientific development of our understanding of addiction - it all leads to the untenability of the current drug regime and the resulting progressive decriminalization we see.
Clearly that's incorrect though. We're only seeing legalization of socially acceptable drugs. Tech has nothing to do with it.
Nobody is fighting for meth, cocaine and heroine to become legal in the US. We also have plenty of prostitution going on thanks to technology but that won't be legal anytime soon either. It will happen when people decide they're OK with it, not because technology makes it easy.
History and the trends suggest that we are moving to more centralized and controled systems. Prior to social media, a mere 10-15 years ago, there were far more blogs and self hosted sites in proportion.
But there's no reason to believe this is unidirectional and self reinforcing. There are plenty of trends that went on long enough that whole generations were born with them as the status quo, only for them to be reversed or changed. Feudalism went on for hundreds of years.
There are financial large incentives to centralize though. That needs to change, look at the infra that is hosted on the cloud and what depends on that.
This was Steve Job's personal vendetta actually, he exchanged quite a bit of emails with bloggers/journalist asking why R18+ stuff wasn't allowed on the app store.
Walled garden apologists here come out in droves whenever Apple is mentioned. People still strongly support them through the multiple app/update bans (Hey and others), the Epic lawsuit, EU investigation, US Senate hearings, Spotify/Facebok fights and more.
After all this the same people cry about excessive online moderation, porn bans and internet freedom. I'm sorry but internet freedom is dead. You killed it with your own wallet.
Every small community I'm on on Discord (meaning the majority of the servers I regularly interact with) sets every channel to `NSFW`, and some mark the server itself. They do this because everyone involved is known to be 18+ (Usually higher than that) and they want to be able to have the same discussions they'd have in person.
These communities are not about porn, are not about anything "distasteful", but the flag is set there so that if a topic comes up we can discuss it without risking a ban.
In other words these communities are meant to be a Third Place[0], or an extension of a physical Third Place, particularly recently thanks to COVID.
The content here is literally no different than the content that could show up in a long-running group chat in the Messages app on iOS. I expect a ban for that to be coming in short order as well.
How do Apple users feel about being restricted like this?
If Google does something similar, discord could just host the apk on the official website.
And I can effortlessly install it. Like I do with NewPipe.
They like being restricted like this, I guess. Watch the debate about external app stores, many don't want them. But most iOS users chose this walled garden.
I'm happy to use Android and not being restricted to what I can install on my device :D
I frankly wish they just had same parental controls instead of blocking whole apps. All they have to do is install a switch saying you can/can’t see 18+ content. You could have the have apps hook into that setting. It’d be really nice actually to say not be able to interact with under 18s in public channels — the liability risk (both legally/socially) of interacting with minors in any semi-adult context often is too high. I’d rather have a wall.
They are “protecting the brand” in their eyes but frankly nobody thinks of an app on the App Store as “Apple”. At the same time I understand their want to not be known as a place you can find porn, but they ship a /web browser/ so it’s not like they’re preventing anything.
Idk why there isn't an iOS API for parental controls that can block NSFW content. Apps can see "is NSFW allowed, yes/no" and make decisions based on that. Blanket bans are almost always dumb.
I understand the desire to offer a child friendly device but it’s pretty insane how they go even further and prevent adults from viewing this content.
But I don’t believe discord has done the best they can here. Telegram has a similar restriction but you can log on to the web version and flip a toggle and the app becomes unblocked as well.
Apple seems to be fine with secret settings on external websites.
Serious question: when does it come to web browser restrictions? I am fully expecting that’s the best target, and that it’ll happen simultaneously on browsers across all platforms.
You know, upon seeing your comment, the kneejerk joke I came up with internally was:
How long until websites have to apply to get onto Google/Apple's whitelist-from-scratch for Chrome/Safari to allow browsing to them?
I just realized I'd be less than surprised if something not unlike this to come to be.
On a separate note, so much for all the third-party clients that Discord has rained down on. I otherwise would have figured a lot of the void could be immediately backfilled via the Discord API.
I really expected to read the article, or the post by Discord themselves, and find out that the headline here was overly sensational, but nope. I don't use Discord much, or on iOS, but this feels a bit puritanical, and hope Android does not follow. That said, I can download apps however I want on Android, so it's not that big of a deal. For iOS users, Apple decides for them that this is what they want. At least on my mac I still more or less have control over it as a platform.
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