This is frankly getting ridiculous. I don't use any NSFW Discord servers nor do I intend to, but the level to which Apple (tries to) moderate user generated content is concerning. What's next? Is Apple Mail going to helpfully filter any email it deems NSFW?
I currently use an Android phone and wanted to go back to iOS, because I just preferred the overall experience, but this might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me.
Reddit has switch for NSFW content and I can browse porn reddits from the app just fine. I don't see why Discord should be different. Unless there's more to this story, that decision was made by Discord, not Apple.
My guess is that because it's possible to access adult material, Apple requires a higher age rating on the App Store than Discord would like.
For instance, both the Reddit and Apollo apps are rated 17+. There's nothing "adult" about them, except that it can access adult subreddits.
So by banning adult channels, Discord is likely looking to drop the age rating on their app. A 12+ or 9+ would be more appealing and potentially allow them a broader audience, especially when trying to target the teen crowd which may have parental filters enabled on their phones.
I think there's some misinformation in your replies about how this rating can be used.
As a parent, you can add screen time restrictions to your child's phone that prevent them from accessing apps that are above a certain rating. This is a very powerful feature, that's really hard (impossible?) to bypass without social engineering.
It's possible that discord is concerned enough with this so as to block out nsfw servers. Do they have a lot of teenagers on their platform?
I distinctly remember being able to find "adult content" at the age of 12. If I was 12 today I don't think Apple's iOS moderation would stop me either.
As a parent, it's 100% about the actual thing. Whatever the additional motivations are for Faceless Multinational Corporations to be thoughtful about it, I'm glad they are.
Before the cries of "censorship", this is about kids not stumbling about NSFW/NSFL content before they're equipped (by parents, educators, etc.) to deal with it. When they want to find it, they will be able to.
But it's not just kids who use Discord (and other platforms). If you're concerned about kids accidentally discovering adult content, by all means add a parental control setting somewhere that hides any NSFW content. Then everyone else who is of legal age and equipped to deal with such content can, if they wish to do so.
> If you're concerned about kids accidentally discovering adult content, by all means add a parental control setting somewhere that hides any NSFW content.
For sure! And thank you for the response — I just realized I must've skimmed over this very important detail (emphasis mine): "Additionally, all users on the iOS platform (including those aged 18+) will be blocked from joining AND ACCESSING NSFW servers."
I think this was brought up somewhere in a sibling thread. It would be great to have a more granular content restrictions framework that allowed for exactly this. But how to do this in a reliable, verifiable way sounds like a real challenge.
i've heard some weird stories from people just a little older than me who didn't have access to internet at the age of puberty.
Life of a teenager is much better with internet, including ability to access porn anytime, our predecessors were sharing erotic journals and other images with each other, just because they didn't know any better.
kids who have no interest in content like that shouldn't have unrestricted access to computers anyway, and if your child is old enough to manage his time playing games, he is old enough to figure out sex on his own the same way his parents did
I think we'll probably have to agree to disagree that it's universally ridiculous to guard children from any kind of porn. As a parent, I'm trying to help the children I'm responsible for to develop informed, healthy attitudes about sex. Unfettered access to the deep end of the internet porn pool won't help me help them do that.
It's not about stop. It's about showing that you tried. Do you think those "click yes if you're 18" are there to stop you? Nope, it's about protecting your ass in case some concerned patent starts complaining.
Sort of like official "I swear she was 18, officer".
Parents are generally both more worried than they should be and less equipped to act on their concerns than they need to be. In other words, it’s an annoying waste of time.
Legitimate question: Could Discord produce two apps, e.g. "Discord Safe" and "Discord Unsafe", where the only differences are the age rating and whether the NSFW switch can be flipped? Is there anything in the rules prohibiting this?
Firefox, Firefox Focus, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Duck Duck Go, Brave (all reskins of Safari, essentially) are all rated 17+, which is nuts, but consistent with this policy at least.
But the pre-installed Safari is okay? All browsers on iOS are just Safari skins, so why isn't iOS as a whole rated 17+? All those web filters for adult content don't work. You might not be able to access pornhub but there are millions of other websites with pornography.
> But the pre-installed Safari is okay? All browsers on iOS are just Safari skins, so why isn't iOS as a whole rated 17+?
Wow. That's an excellent and very telling point.
What is the point of IOS's endless restrictions and censorship of free speech?
Is the point really to protect users from exercising their own intelligence or guarding their own kids, or is it to protect users from alternatives to Apple's own products?
It's kinda like Gatekeeper on Mac OS; you cannot (easily) install apps that aren't from the App Store. Was this only to protect you from malware? Really?
It's like all of these restrictions have a dual purpose on Mac OS: the stated reason, and an unstated reason: to increase Apple's control over you.
I'm actually surprised that Apple even allows web browsers at all, or third party mail apps, or anything that lets people access things outside their walled garden.
Please don't pretend to be surprised about that when the last decade has been all about the iPhone and its pervasive and elegant access to literally millions of sources of content that is "outside Apple's walled garden".
That's rather impolite. And I'm absolute surprised that Apple hasn't already eliminated the real web -- just like AOL and Microsoft (tried to subvert with MSN and IE), because full and unrestricted access to the web is full of negatives for Apple's business model.
> the last decade has been all about the iPhone and its pervasive and elegant access to literally millions of sources of content that is "outside Apple's walled garden".
No idea what this means. Are you talking about how the iPhone provides "pervasive and elegant access" to.. the web?
Well, just to answer the question very directly, iOS as a whole isn't rated 17+ because it can't be. Obviously. It's not an app, it's not present in the App Store, and it has no age rating. So that takes care of that.
Yes, but parents can turn on content filtering within iOS onto Safari, as well as allow or block websites individually. Other browsers do not implement this filtering.
I know you said "can't" but just to confirm, is there no iOS API to get parental control info to block stuff like this? If not, I wonder why Apple doesn't provide that option.
o/w, "Safari supports parental controls" argument is BS.
Probably the same reason why other browsers can't use adblock addons while Safari can or why other browsers had crippled JavaScript performance until recently. Apple is afraid of losing Safari market share, so they're making preferential treatment to it whenever possible.
Last I knew there was only one browser for iOS (Safari) which can neither be removed nor replaced, just reskinned. If that's still the case, it would be pointless to even give it a rating.
I haven't personally downvoted you, but I would assume it's for one of two reasons:
1) The distinction if browsers ship their own engine or just embed system provided WebKit is ultimately irrelevant to the question at hand. I can go on the App Store and download "Chrome" or "Firefox" and use those applications to access websites.
2) Browsers do have age ratings on the App Store. It's 17+.
Is there a reason not to split the app into SFW and full versions? I am surprised I haven't seen this in other places, but it seems like the right solution here.
There is: discoverability. If you search in the App Store you’re going to find those two versions and then they’ll have to prominently explain “this is the version of the app you can look at porn with” and “this is the kid-safe version”. They’d probably choose different wording, but that would be the message. And you don’t want to advertise adult content on your platform in any way, that just doesn’t end well.
Would't that make internet browsers like Safari and Chrome 18+ as well? Or any content provider (Spotify, Netflix, iMessage, etc.) in general? If not, it seems like a double standard.
Maybe Apple needs a granular content rating framework that platform apps can apply internally rather than the rating being entirely an umbrella policy.
Discord really should explain themselves if they are able.
That said, this decision makes no sense unless Discord is being influenced by a third party, and like OP, my first and only suspect is Apple. Yeah it would be inconsistent for Apple, but it's just as inconsistent for Discord and there is at least precedent for this inconsistency on Apple's app store (eg Amazon getting preferential treatment for in-app purchases). There is also precedent for Apple not allowing app developers to explain how app functionality had to be altered to comply with Apple's whims (eg Facebook getting in trouble for publishing information about Apple's 30% cut on in-app purchases).
My best guess is that Apple thinks of Discord as a platform which is more popular with children than Reddit, so they are trying to get ahead of parental complaints by eliminating access to NSFW content via Discord's iOS app altogether. I have no evidence for this, though, so I guess we'll wait and see.
This is almost certainly being done to placate Apple, because there's no mention of Android. My guess would be that Discord is being leaned on to "clean up the NSFW problem" or be de-listed. Discord is already rated 17+ (the maximum age rating) according to https://apps.apple.com/us/app/discord-talk-chat-hang-out/id9.... I don't see how rating it 12+ would ever be possible given the description at https://apps.apple.com/sa/story/id1440847896?l=en.
Reddit recently started censoring all nsfw nudity subreddits from r/all ever since the mentions of an IPO.
You would need to actively subscribe or visit that subreddit directly. This isn't anything new. Reddit activitly censors all kinds of subreddits from r/all. Now you only can discover the content they want you to see.
The level of censorship across the internet of the smallest things is getting depressing.
I do see the need to censor things that manipulate people's perspectives to harm but this is different.
"I do see the need to censor things that manipulate people's perspectives to harm but this is different."
No, it's not different at all. Plenty of people see porn as "manipulating people's persectives to harm"; in fact Apple is doing it almost precisely because that's the mainstream opinion.
I think the dominant problem with the burgeoning pro-censorship crowd here on HN is that they still haven't grappled with the fact that they aren't going to be picking what gets censored. No matter how confidently you look out at the current landscape and think only they will be censored, you're never more than one power shift away from being the censored one, and more of you than you realize are zero power shifts away, as everetm has now just discovered.
Since everyone and their mother got access to it, the internet needs censorship to function. Imagine HN, the App Store, any Discord server or subreddit, or any forum ever with no moderation. They'd be dysfunctional to the point of being unusable (and often are, it's not like examples are lacking). If you agree with any of that, this is not an absolutist debate but a question of degree and picking a spot on the slope that isn't too slippery.
I'm not sure what your point is here. If everything notable on the internet is moderated, it's functionally equivalent. I don't support what Apple is doing or the increased heavy-handedness of recent years, but advocating no censorship of anything is a fantasy and a cop-out.
I didn't advocate for 'no censorship'. Censorship is a continuum. It is more-or-less a fact that zeal for censorship has gone up in the HN gestalt, and I assert the HN gestalt is making the mistake of thinking they or people friendly to their views will be the ones deciding what gets censored.
Increasing comfort with censorship of a larger range of views will also translate into increasing comfort with stronger measures taken, because of course if you are running around saying censorable things you should get higher interest rates or it should show up on your credit report. But... are you sure you're going to be the ones in charge of what gets censored? Because you aren't.
Advocating for less censorship and less consequences for censorship, not no censorship, is a sensible Nash equilibrium to pursue for everyone. Advocating for more censorship and more comfort with censorship will empower people who will eventually censor you. Those who are using the gestalt's comfort with censorship (and equivalent comfort with censorship elsewhere) are only using the censoring of things you agree with today as a cover for the acquisition of power. Once they have it, what you want it for will not be something they're too worried about. They're going to use it for themselves. It is wiser not to give that power up just because they're promising to use it for things you like today.
(Among the ways in which censorship is a continuum are the size of the community in which it is taking place (HN is fairly small), and the nature of what is being censored (most of what gets nuked from HN is for tone or outright trolling, though I do not assert all). It isn't even remotely hypocritical to be comfortable with that, which is rather minimal and functional, while being uncomfortable with the increasingly political nature of censorship being advocated for in the largest forums. I'm also on record as being skeptical as to whether something the size of "Facebook" can ever be "a community": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20146868 )
Reasonable and well-put. I think we agree except in semantics--I see being for traditional forum-type policing as still pro-censorship on some level, and the debate as on finding what level is acceptable (e.g. more nuanced than "less").
I like your point about Facebook's size. They've been unable to define global rules in part because large segments of their user base hold directly opposite values to the point that stating their beliefs, genuinely held and of majority opinion in their communities, would be deleted under common sense trolling rules in other parts of that user base. Facebook has three options: leave everything controversial up, delete all of it, or take a side. They've done all three of these at various points and they've all been disastrous.
I think the other key issue around scale is that at FB scale, you simply can't realistically get consistency of moderation - or even a person reading each post.
At FB scale their moderation started with "you can hide it if it annoys you" (aka not bothering) - the easiest technical solution. Doesn't actual address the problematic content, but perhaps doesn't feed the trolls.
Going beyond that to any kind of action requires determining whether something breaks any rules, and also faces the issue that reporting is used as a weapon, so simply deleting everything (mass) reported doesn't work either... And figuring out if it breaks rules just falls back onto rules which are imperfect.
As you sum up well, they're at such a scale that they have complete polar opposites on the platform. And in a sense, perhaps what we need are more subdivisions, not fewer - maybe what we are seeing here is the symptom of existing tensions, albeit exacerbated through being able to reach an audience that disagrees in real-time.
HN is heavily moderated. Try turning on showdead in your profile and reading the trash that dang and co. delete from here. I doubt you'll come away with the conclusion that it should all be left up.
This includes things like removing duplicate links and changing upvoted stories from tertiary sources to primary ones. Is it "censorship?" Yes. Does it make the site better? Yes.
As far as I can tell, the so called slippery slope fallacy came and went. We decided in favour of censorship -- but if you can censor one type of content, expect many more to be added to the list.
I agree. Also, I was intentional vague. When I wrote it I was thinking of more extremest discussions around people glorifying mass murder. Which doesn't necessarily fall under a nsfw tag.
If I had the choice, I'd much rather have the completely free and open internet we used to have but that ship has sailed as you mentioned.
You’re actively arguing for revving up the engines and setting out while defending that decision as if it has already taken place. While plenty of people are disagreeing with the potential decision.
Also, I’m not a “we” and neither are you. Stop hiding behind some imaginary hive mind.
I find this unlikely. Discord has an interest in keeping as many communities as possible on its platform. If they had moral concerns with NSFW content on mobile devices they could have made the same change on Android.
And this wouldn't be the first time Apple doesn't apply its rules equally to everyone.
It contains unmoderated user-generated content, of course some users will post absolutely any kinds of content including porn. There's even official pornhub server.
Was thinking of maybe giving an iPhone (ideally jailbroken) a go in the future because of all the work they are doing for privacy, and then they pull this. Definately too controlling for my liking (not that I use Discord NSFW servers but it's a slippery slope).
Will stick to Android and hopefully root to add privacy instead.
I used to Jailbreak any of my iOS devices, but I found that iOS has gotten good enough, that I really don't needed any of the tweaks and what not anymore. Overall I really really like the iOS experiences.
Privacy is a different concern. The mail app pre-installed on my Samsung phone wanted me to agree to a EULA that lets them process any of my mail. I also find that unacceptable, so I found a different mail client I liked and I did the same thing with the entire phone, basically. It's possible, but it's just no annoying and not something I really want to be dealing with. It seems like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
(Yes, I am well aware of the Librem and other such noble efforts, but I can also begrudgingly admit that I'm just not willing to put up with their flaws either.)
I might, but I've had mediocre experiences with custom images in the past, even with officially supported Cyanogen versions. Something would randomly break and only a reflash would fix it. Has this gotten better?
I used to love tinkering, but my phone has become nothing more than a tool and I need it to just work. If I forego Magisk and other root-related tools, can I expect mobile banking and such to just work?
EDIT: Seems I can't reply to a reply to this. (Does HN have a depth limit?) I am aware, Cyanogen hasn't been a thing for some time, hence my question: has the situation genuinely improved since then? I would like to avoid buying a phone just to see if it would work for me.
LineageOS has been great for me, many OTA minor version upgrades and at least 3 major version upgrades have all gone smoothly.
However at some point an update to my bank's app made it refuse to run citing insecure device - it's not rooted so this was a little surprising. I don't know how common that is, no experience with other banks.
If you think iOS lockdown is bad on adult stuff, wait until I tell you what they do to web browsers (must just skin safari webkit, not have their own engine), emulators (not allowed in app store), launcher apps (not allowed in app store), etc.
If you're so worried about privacy on Android that you'd consider jumping to closed source Apple iOS, consider buying a OnePlus (or other supported) device and then installing LineageOS or another fully open source OS. You don't have to use stock Android and many of the custom OS / ROMs have 0 ties to Google / don't install Google service / etc.
If you go Android, definitely take a look at userspace firewall options. I like and use NetGuard, it's open source, and all done through the local VPN API (no traffic leaves device) - gives you control of which apps can go online. If you install it from GitHub (rather than the play store, no root required either way), it can do local DNS host blocking too.
If Apple made an iPhone version with 3.5 jack, i'd throw my Samsung out of the window (literally) in a second. I have no interest to replace my 300euro or so headphones with their Bluetooth garbage.
A 3.5 jack to lightning connect converter cost maybe $5. I have a set of mixed devices, some with and some without a 3.5 jack. I bought a few of these converters and just toss them in the headset cases (of which I also have a few).
I currently use an Android phone and wanted to go back to iOS, because I just preferred the overall experience, but this might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me.
Same here. I'm tired of Android's wonkiness but this is a showstopper.
I concur that Apples culture-grasp is really disconcerting.
Although I have made a living in the mobile industry for years and years now, I am personally quite happy at the moment to be middle the move from Android and iOS to PinePhone.
Nobody controls my content on that device but me.
It might be rocky, but the minimalism of Pine and its ecosphere represent, is refreshing - in light of the endless, endless tracking, deceit and plain uselessness of iOS and Android apps, in spite of it all.
It might be time for us all to reset our expectations and go back to a 100% open, compiler-onboard platform. I think PinePhone, and others just like that, are ripe for the attempt ..
It is against Apple policies to tell the truth.. How is this not market manipulation? They are purposefully misleading the market on a grand scale.
The whole "you are free not to buy from someone else " doesn't work if you are being lied to. I believe that my rights as a consumer are being violated by this practice.
It is manipulation - Facebook were not allowed to disclose transparently the 30% Apple tax.
There's now enough antitrust cases against Apple that I'm hopeful they're going to lose in a few serious jurisdictions and be forced to change their ways.
The risk of this is already in their SEC filings, so they know it might happen. Funny they disclose the whole truth when it's legally required, but don't let others tell the truth when it's inconvenient.
At some point, some large app needs to stand up against Apple. Fortnite was a start, but that's a game; it doesn't "hit home" in Silicon Valley culture.
I still have hope that Facebook will pull something major in response to the ATT changes. To be clear: I support the goals of ATT, and I think Apple is in the right on it. But I think freedom of distribution on iOS is more important than this, and when choosing between Freedom and Privacy (or as our forefathers would say, Freedom and Safety); I will choose Freedom, every single time.
Apple should not be forcing users to choose. There do exist non-resolvable dichotomies when one has to choose, but this is not one of them.
> it doesn't "hit home" in Silicon Valley culture.
Are people in SV not aware? I was under the impression that they are acutely aware but are being paid gigantic sums of money to put aside any concerns and opinions.
Still ongoing, and epic are getting some good documents out through discovery, which should help their case, as well as other overseas antitrust investigations.
Cut the gordian knot. Discord should just release the iOS application themselves and bypass the Apple walled garden.
It is time to end corporate feudalism and the first step is installing applications the way they were meant to be installed instead of through one specific corporate gateway.
How do you suggest they do that? Any enterprise certificate they use to sign the .ipa would be revoked within hours, probably minutes. Telling users to sign it themselves (and re-sign it every 7 days) just isn't feasible.
The only alternative would be not to have an iOS app, but that would also be a significant blow to their business. I can't, in good conscience, blame them for complying here.
They should maintain 2 branches for iOS. The full featured branch that users who have rooted their iPhone can download and install and a Apple-Safe gimped version for the iOS app store.
On non-jailbroken iOS devices the only way to install apps is through the App Store or through some convoluted methods which involve having a developer account (which you must pay yearly for), and I believe the % of jailbroken iOS devices is much much lower than the % of people willing to install Android APKs outside of Google Play, anyway. Sure, they _could_ do that for few people who have jailbroken iPhones, but doing that is pretty much like giving up on their iOS app altogether.
That expire after seven days, just like if you signed them with XCode. And you can only install two or three apps at once, and the wireless linking rarely works.
Apple just needs to have a version of "fastboot oem unlock" (or, for that matter, "csrutil --disable") where I can sideload applications with a big warning on the lock screen/splash screen that says the device is not secure. Besides, as long as the code is running inside the sandbox, who cares?
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.
It's always sad to watch these apps go through the phases of their lifecycle that seem like inevitable steps at this point. It's all fun and games in the early days, but eventually the incentive structures that watch over us begin to deteriorate user experience and increase hostility, whether it's via more advertising, invasive privacy measures, or worsening content restrictions and censorship. It seems inevitable that these things start getting worse as an online ecosystem scales up to massive numbers of users.
It often reminds me of platforms that try to stand out and be different from the others by empowering users in various ways, and this works at the start, but as they get millions of users they realize the other platforms acted as they did not out of choice, but out of force. You have to comply with app store guidelines, payment processor requests, banks, various world government(s), profit models that actually work, and so on, and before you know it you've become the very thing you sought to disrupt and are no different than every other major social platform with >100M users.
I don't know why, but for some reason I'm reminded of the Fermi Paradox after wondering why all of the technological process and app degradation is all happening now in a very recent timespan of a few decades. As in, why was I one of the people who was alive to witness the birth of the Internet, a massively influential point in human history, only a few decades ago? Maybe it's because when communication methods are discovered, humans inevitably want to perfect them, and the attempts to reach perfection have various consequences in a short period of time. There might not have been anything that could have prevented the creation of Facebook and such if humans discovered that it was possible to create such things.
I have this weird thought (from a fictional standpoint) that maybe all the adware and other bloat is rapidly converging on an inflection point that will cause some kind of technological collapse where we will have to start over from some earlier reference point, due to sentient AI or something. But I wouldn't know how, exactly.
It might make for a mildly interesting SF plot point.
You are right, and that is why niche, tightly coupled communities will always remain superior in UX and content over the "mainstream/lowest-common-denominator" ones.
Unfortunately, these smaller communities have more churn to them as the bedrock contributors fall out for various reasons, and then its on to next. But at least we now know the cycle of life, and more importantly, what to stay away from.
Isn't this exactly what happened to Tumblr back in 2018? It feels a little different since Tumblr is one big unit and Discord has its content shared by servers so it's not like you're immediately able to find NSFW content with Discord without explicitly searching out and finding a server to add.
I applaud apple for their work towards making iOS secure, but I still just can't get on board since they can decide at any time I don't have the ability to choose for myself what software I want to run. There's a reason my first iPhone was immediately jail-broken and I left the platform almost 10 years ago.
Yes, from a technical perspective you are right. However, from a conceptual perspective, you can't see any of the content in a server without being specifically invited. There is no global search. You are clearly either "in" or "not in" a server unlike, say, a Tumblr tag.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. What is going on at Apple where they dictate what you see and do online. I'm sure the discord app is already rated 18+. Will reddit clients be next since they have NSFW content and subreddits? Will they start banning purchases from "certain" places if you use your apple credit card? Sorry, can't buy ammo, alcohol, or tobacco with your Apple card starting today!
I mean the Obama administration already tried to de-platform the gun industry with operation choke point. I just see this as more fuel to the fire for side loading and antitrust towards Apple.
There is a simple solution. Stop relying on apple's walled garden and install applications the normal user directed way instead of the corporate-loading-walled-garden way.
Yes. Every iOS user should demand they have control of their phone but I don't think that is required is it? If you literally can't install any application except from the app store then things are even worse than I'd heard.
edit: This is apparently true. I can't believe anyone puts up with that. Welcome to the Apple 1984 commercial in real life.
The knives can be used to cut or pierce things. And while cutting living humans tends to kill them, there is a lot of other things, cutting which would actually be beneficial for many, many human activities unrelated to terminating human lives.
The guns can be used to throw a small piece metal at great velocity in a somewhat precise direction, the goal being of piercing the target at the distance with the said piece of metal. And... and to be frank, it's really hard to imagine any other use of them different from "wounding/killing animals (including humans) from somewhat safe distances". Well, in most countries, hunting weaponry is perfectly legal, that was the case even in the Soviet Union -- which actually produced several models of hunting rifles.
We've got that in the UK. Most (all?) cell service providers require you to call them up and ask them to unblock your access to "NSFW" sites over mobile data.
I recall the Vodafone customer service rep very distinctly asking me, "Sir, are you aware that this will mean you will be able access websites of an adult nature?" and replying with a resounding "Yes, I look forward to it, please go ahead!"
I've no doubt btw that the language and the strident tone used by the rep are meant to nudge (perhaps even shame?) the customer away from enabling this option. Joke's on them!
The UK did not go through with the porn block. You can perfectly well set up an account without any NSFW filtering, and as far as I can remember, it wasn't even 'opt out'. I'm with Virgin--oh the irony--and have never had any filtering.
If it happened to you, perhaps you just happened to set up your ISP when there was _talk_ of the bill, but ultimately it didn't pass.
The GP was talking specifically about cellular (mobile) data. Three[0], Vodafone[1], EE[2] and O2[3] all have an adult content filter enabled by default for mobile data.
No joke, I created an iOS app a few years back that had a web view with a built in search bar and was told I needed to mark my app as 18+ because users could search for inappropriate content. My appeal was denied.
This meme needs to die. Yes you can’t have alternative browser engines on iOS but outside of nerds in HN that’s an implementation detail that doesn’t really matter to end users. The stuff around the engine — the chrome — is the identity of the browser. Firefox gutted their rendering engine with project Servo. Chrome abandoned WebKit for Blink. Are they different browsers now? Of course not!
Apple can’t just enable content blocking because that would potentially break apps that use webviews for non-browser type activities.
I have to disagree: Apple certainly could block content in a selective way that avoids breaking apps (not that Apple is particularly averse to breaking existing apps).
Beyond that, the browser engine may be an irrelevant implementation detail to the end user, but at the ecosystem-level, iOS's Safari lock-in has many harmful effects that are already well known and widely discussed.
Imagine you bought a BMW car and a year after you bought it they pushed an update that limited the speed to 90 mph, the car refused to drive through a 'bad neighborhood' and refused to take fuel from non-approved fuel stations? There would fucking riots in the streets.
Yet somehow this behavior is tolerated when it comes to this industry. The whole parade is being run by greedy wankers with no respect for individual liberty.
Agreed in principle, but note you never bought anything in the first place when you're using SaaSS: at best you're merely renting. So a better example could be Hertz asking you to please not drive through these neighbourhoods.
An example of actual purchase would be a fully free/libre and open source software.
The problem is that all physical items we have now come with software: phones, cars, watches, home appliances, etc.
So everything in your life becomes SaaS and subject to change at anytime because management of XCorp had a brainfart
Stuff like this is what will divide the internet into national fiefdoms. We’re already seeing it with India, Russia, and China. It’s only going to accelerate when creating a FaceGramTube clone becomes easier and easier.
If you’re running a Western startup and think the open internet is a noble idea, please, check your morality at the door.
I'm not endorsing censorship in any way, but I think a lot of people in these comments fail to understand what an average teen's discord experience is like:
- Join tons of servers, where the friends/lolz are
- Many run popular bots
- Many popular bots have porn commands, for example the popular Dank Memer, which is a general utility/games bot
-- /black posts BBC content
-- /group posts group sex pics
-- /xmas posts christmas themed porn?!
- Its not uncommon for people to post nudes of themselves or friends
Sometimes the content stays inside of channels labeled NSFW, but often it pops up elsewhere. If you're hanging out in many discord servers, it can be pretty difficult to fully avoid porn in your feeds, or its always 1 click away.
Its mostly left to server admins and mods to enforce those rules.
Do with that what you will, but its based on that basic set of information that Apple and Discord are approaching these issues.
I help make one such Reddit client. There’s an invisible rule that you can’t show users the NSFW toggle or even mention that it’s on the website. We had a toggle that only lets you turn it off if it’s on, and that alone was too much.
We also got rejected once because the top post that day had the word “fuck” in it. That was a fun one.
Telegram has it that you have to log in to the web one and switch a toggle which will unblock content on the iOS app. Everyone just assumes iOS the app doesn’t allow it so the setting is spread via word of mouth. It’s honestly insane.
Yep I think this is influenced by the potential/likely sale to Microsoft. The timing makes more sense.
So to clarify for people who don't use Discord or don't understand the article. What Discord is announcing is that now they will start marking entire SERVERS as NSFW. Keep in mind that server owners have been able to mark CHANNELS within a server as NSFW for a long time now and the iOS app has respected that (when you enter an NSFW channel you must be logged in, not a guest, and must explicitly agree each time you enter). So the blocking of NSFW content in the iOS app has been around for a while. A server that is full of NSFW content would simply have an NSFW block on every channel. This would meet Apple's censorship requirements and Discord has been meeting it for a while. Nothing new here on the Apple front.
What is new is that Microsoft is interested in Discord. Recently Discord has made the news for fostering violent or NSFW content (most publicly from Wall Street Bets, which was the first time lots of Wall Street investors had heard of Discord). This change to internally-dictating NSFW servers seems like a way to make Discord more attractive to companies like Microsoft in a sale. Someone like Microsoft doesn't want to be looked at as fostering or promoting bad content, so these protections are ways to heal that image.
Again, the change here isn't the introduction of an NSFW blocker. That has been around for a while. The change is that now Discord themselves will flag entire servers as NSFW. Previously it was up to server admins/owners to mark the individual channels on their server as NSFW. Now Discord is taking a lead to control/censor/block this content.
Very serious question here — where can we have 18+ discussions of NSFW topics? There are very real reasons to do this; somewhat mundane things like LGBT communities and sporting firearms competitors are having a very hard time using common communication platforms on the Internet because the vagueness in the definition of “NSFW” and the policing of subject matter.
Life is full of wonderful people of varying shades of weirdness. Freezing the people at the fringes out of mobile platforms does a disservice to everyone.
This is why I never want to get into "apps". It is literally controlled by Google and Apple Duopoly. Yes we still use web browsers that are controlled by 2-3 companies but at least we have the flexibility there to an extent. I worry for the future when they start doing shit like this on web browsers.
> Additionally, all users on the iOS platform (including those aged 18+) will be blocked from joining and accessing NSFW servers. iOS users aged 18+ will still be able to join and access NSFW communities on the desktop and web versions of Discord.
What?! Is this an accurate interpretation of Apple’s policy? I know you cant have specifically NSFW apps but I didn't think their policy applied to user generated content. It’s certainly not the status quo to ban all NSFW user content on iOS on other platforms.
“If your app includes user-generated content from a web-based service, it may display incidental mature “NSFW” content, provided that the content is hidden by default and only displayed when the user turns it on via your website”
Join the community through the web link and you should be able to access the content, I’m not sure why they are blocking accessing as well as joining...
The key word here is "incidental", and helps connect the dots for why specific nsfw channels are ok, but entire nsfw servers are not, in Discord's view anyways.
(I don't necessarily agree or disagree with Discord's interpretation, but a lot of folks are glossing over "incidental", so.)
The moralistic decisions shaping parts of the internet and technology are getting pretty ridiculous. I'm not interested in making any grand statements or drawing parallels to Orwell or what have you here.
But sometimes I really just want to indicate my situation by pointing an emoji gun at my emoji head, or respond to a friend with a GIF some might consider offensive, and I really think anyone who can be trusted to use the internet should also be trusted to handle that ability somewhat responsibly, and eradicating it from our communications repertoire like this really does not serve anyone in my view.
Before people get all worked up. This is certainly so that discord can maintain it's current rating "T for Teen" on the app stores. Apple likely got POed since Discord could be used as a work around for parental controls, and here we are.
The right long term policy might be to have multiple apps or a feature to restrict NSFW access within the Discord app akin to Netflix, but to address the issue immediately, this is a reasonable short term policy.
Don't forget an enormous user base are kids from 13-17, so this, in my view, is entirely reasonable until they sort out a longer term solution.
Everything I've seen so far today could also be summarized as "Discord chose on their own to interpret the published App Store rules without seeking comment from Apple", which would be quite a different story from the one that's popularly assumed. I wish that I could find a missing piece of evidence to contradict or confirm that. So, then:
Has Discord confirmed that they discussed their intentions with Apple prior to publishing these changes?
(If they did not, then that opens the door for many more uncomfortable questions for Discord.)
"Sorry about this, but App Store rules say you can’t join age restricted servers on iOS. Please use the desktop app or website to join this server."
This does not clarify matters, as both of the following three contradictory statements all agree with it:
1. "Our lawyers informed us that the app store rules prohibit this, and we chose not to discuss or contest our lawyers' interpretation with Apple before proceeding."
2. "Apple both informed us that the app store rules prohibit this, and we chose not to appeal that ruling with Apple before proceeding."
3. "Apple both informed us that the app store rules prohibit this, but we exhausted all avenues of appeal before proceeding."
What is going on with this comment section? Pointing fingers at Apple because discord wants that 12+ flag seems pretty unprofessional. If discord doesn't offer a second "17+" app, they just left a gap for a competitor to fill the void. That's all.
The louder you scream "iOS is blocking adult content", the faster iPhones will approach 100% marketshare for kids, because parents buy those devices and they like some little help for managing content.
If age based feature access is part of the platform it should be a content maturity permission whose access level can be set or restricted via parental management tools just like network access or screen time can. Requiring a different version of the app to manage each combination of allowed privileges makes things far too complicated and ends up having undesired side effects.
Maybe they want to lower it to 12+? If not, this change makes no sense. Aren't youtube & reddit clients also able to access nsfw content from within iOS apps?
And with that, I am out of the iOS and Apple ecosystem. Back to Android for me. Big brother is here. Will be rocking linux + a pinephone and/or android.
well this sucks—the server one of my friends set up & we all use to communicate, coordinate video game nights, share recipes, and such, is marked as NSFW. I'm not sure why, it might've just been a joke early on, but no NSFW materials get posted there. now we have to go through a manual appeal process just so the few of us (not me) with iPhones can continue to access the server with iPhones? pretty ridiculous!
I don't see any clear reason why Apple wouldn't, on this basis, start filtering emails within the Gmail or iOS email apps for explicit or unpalatable content.
This is the real reason this is happening. Other apps have no problem with hiding NSFW content by default (i.e. Reddit, Twitter). Discord has a burning need to lower their age rating for some reason.
If Apple was consistent with this I wouldn't mind as much. To be consistent they'd have to ban twitter, reddit, safari, chrome, firefox, Apple's music service, all the other music services, the Podcast app, other podcast apps, iBooks, Amazon reader, and basically every app that lets you access NSFW content.
As it is, banning just some means Apple is (a) choosing the winners and (b) being hypocritical
I wonder what it would be like if browsers were invented today, if the underlying standards (http, html) were already set.
I do not like this climate at all.
Is Discord going to be banning 1-to-1 or small group (not server) conversations that have NSFW content as well? This is obviously a move to placate Apple, but even with taking this step it seems to me that they may still get into hot water by allowing private chats.
Nope, apparently that's just what the font called "Whitney" that's installed in my computer looks like. I have no idea why. I'll try to replace it with a proper version.
Samsung should have some fun with this. Find some discord servers that are marked NSFW that have content that is considered non-controversial and show that Apple phones have those blocked. A lot of people with iPhones and pacifiers om their mouths should get the message across.
Apple is very quickly driving toward an inflection point, and it feels like they're asleep at the wheel; either unaware of what this is going to do to their App Store business, or so full of themselves that they don't care.
One can argue that decisions like this are driven by valuation, revenue, and stock price; but I don't think so. If I were a major Apple shareholder, I'd be majorly concerned. From every possible angle, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot by crossing their arms and saying "no, we won't work with you, you work with us." Its unsustainable; developers can be pushed, even quite far, but eventually they will snap back, and Apple can't afford to acquire all of them before they do.
Apple, and the iOS platform, physically cannot sustain the combined push-back from all the areas they're experiencing it; from revenue cut, to alternate payment processors, to the game streaming ban, to gagging developers from telling their customers why they have to do what they do, to their stance on naked humans, to their app tracking transparency changes... these are all stances you can take when you've got a few million customers, but they're the sole source of executable code for a billion devices around the planet.
Its absolutely and totally unacceptable and untenable at this point. Ethically, sure. Legally, very likely. Even economically! Apple's short-sighted App Store policies are primed to substantially hurt that part of their business, and that pain will echo throughout their tight ecosystem. If I can't play Xbox Game Streaming or Fortnite, maybe I don't buy an iPhone. If I don't buy an iPhone, I definitely don't buy an Apple Watch, nor likely a Mac either. I may pay for Apple TV+, but certainly not Apple Music, or Fitness, or iCloud Drive.
Why are their shareholders putting up with this? It baffles me. History has demonstrated one thing, with the clarity of polished glass: We do better when we work together. Countries who isolate their economies inevitably falter. Markets which isolate perform worse. Open source projects gain more traction than similar proprietary ones. Working together, with each other, is always the way forward; its better ethically, morally, legally, and economically. But Apple refuses to work with anyone else.
They're choosing to fight wars on ten different fronts. No one forced them to. Tim Cook has adopted the likeness of Ghengis Khan, trying to secure Apple's legacy for the next century by forcing anyone who Thinks Differently to instead think like Apple, or be destroyed. It won't work, and Apple will be irrevocably hurt in the process.
The government needs to get involved. Not only to protect consumers; but to protect an otherwise strong, amazing American business. They're destroying themselves for no reason. I don't want to live in this reality Apple has plotted for the world, but I also don't want Apple to return to their status of the late 90s; there's a middleground where they remain a force for legitimate good in the domains of privacy, security, and ease-of-use. I miss that Apple, and I'm fearful that Tim Cook's legacy won't be the highly successful Apple of the 2010s, but instead what happens to them in the 2020s: a growing list of companies who refuse to do business with them, sophisticated customers leaving by the handful, and overblown government intervention.
From the link: "Owners of communities designated NSFW by Discord will have to submit an appeal if they wish to have the NSFW server-level designation removed."
That doesn't sound like self-designation is the only path to being marked NSFW.
The way I understood it, you can designate your server, but if the admins come across a server that should be NSFW, they will mark it. I imagine it comes from user reports of content.
Sounds like it will be punitive. You need to enable content filter (non negotiable) to enable community features. Content filter does not apply to NSFW channels. What will likely happen is that if content filter keeps "detecting" NSFW content in your channels in which it operates (non-NSFW channels) it will eventually tag the whole server as NSFW.
Even that advantage is fleeting. I can't access NSFW content on Reddit through Chrome on my Android, it wants me to login with the app. The only way around it is to request the desktop site. Who knows how long that will last.
It galls me to be 'required' to use an app to browse a website.
Has anyone pointed out to them that teens generally don't work? Although some do - so what does being 18 years old have to do with work? And if it's NSFW, it may still be perfectly safe for teens, like a Discord about poop jokes. And is artwork considered NSFW? Or is it safe for teens, and not safe for work?
This whole thing seems so poorly implemented. They should just call it the "don't show kids pictures of boobies" rule and drop the "work" pretense.
My whole point is this is not well understood. It's not pedantry, it's basic miscommunication.
One small group of people think they know what it means. Meanwhile they are conflating two entirely different groups of people (people at work, and teens), and disregarding the cultural conventions of the rest of the planet. It makes them look stupid.
I'm actually not mad at Apple for enforcing this. Discord, and many other social media apps offer massive amounts of liability. Let's say your ex posts some compromising photos of you in one of these NSFW.
You could very well attempt to sue Discord and Apple.
Call me a prude, but it wouldn't be a horrible idea to have Discord and Discord NSFW as separate apps.
Just wait until they decide what you can or can’t see with Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. This isn’t a slippery slope, that is exactly what is happening here: a company is telling you what you are allowed to read and see, and they have the power to enforce it.
I currently use an Android phone and wanted to go back to iOS, because I just preferred the overall experience, but this might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me.