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Tag: adult

  • Google’s YouTube Kids App Isn’t That Kid-Friendly According to Consumer Groups

    Google’s YouTube Kids App Isn’t That Kid-Friendly According to Consumer Groups

    In April, a group of consumer advocate groups including The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Center for Science in the
    Public Interest, Children Now, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, and Public Citizen called on the Federal Trade Commission to open up an investigation against Google’s YouTube Kids app. The main point of that complaint involved the intermixing of “commercial and other content in ways that are deceptive and unfair to children and would not be permitted to be shown on broadcast or cable television.”

    Basically, these groups alleged that the YouTube Kids app was showing ads to kids.

    Now, CCFC and CDD are reporting that an additional review has surfaced even more disturbing things about the YouTube Kids app – pervasive adult content.

    According to the groups, they were able to find Explicit sexual language presented amidst cartoon animation; Videos that model unsafe behaviors such as playing with lit matches, shooting a nail gun, juggling knives, tasting battery acid, and making a noose; A profanity-laced parody of the film Casino featuring Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street; Graphic adult discussions about family violence, pornography, and child suicide; Jokes about pedophilia and drug use; and Advertising for alcohol products.

    To drive the point home, the CCFC and CDD made a video:

    Is YouTube Kids A Safe Place for Young Children to Explore? from CCFC on Vimeo.

    They’ve sent a letter to the FTC to update their complaint.

    Google claims that YouTube Kids was “built from the ground up with little ones in mind” and is “packed full of age-appropriate videos.” The app includes a search function that is voice-enabled for easy use for preschool children. Google says it uses “a mix of automated analysis, manual sampling, and input from our users to categorize and screen out videos and topics that may make parents nervous.” Google also assures parents that they “can rest a little easier knowing that videos in the YouTube Kids app are narrowed down to content appropriate for kids.”

    Google does not, in fact, “screen out the videos that make parents nervous” and its representations of YouTube Kids as a safe, child-friendly version of YouTube are deceptive. Parents who download the app are likely to expose their children to the very content they believed they would avoid by using the preschool version of YouTube. In addition to the unfair and deceptive marketing practices we identified in our initial request for an investigation, it is clear that Google is deceiving parents about the effectiveness of their screening processes and the content on YouTube Kids.

    A YouTube spokesperson has issued a statement, reiterating that parents can turn off search inside the app.

    “We work to make the videos in YouTube Kids as family-friendly as possible and take feedback very seriously. Anyone can flag a video and these videos are manually reviewed 24/7 and any videos that don’t belong in the app are removed. For parents who want a more restricted experience, we recommend that they turn off search,” says YouTube.

    While it’s true that parents can disable the app’s search function, it is enabled by default.

    And as YouTube’s statement reiterates – much of the content moderation is done by fielding manual reports, at which point Google then yanks offending videos from the app.

    From the get-go, Google admitted that some stuff could slip through the cracks.

    “When your child browses the app’s home screen, they’ll find a vast selection of kid-appropriate channels and playlists. When families search in the app, we use a mix of input from our users and automated analysis to categorize and screen out the videos that make parents nervous. And for added peace of mind, parents can quickly notify YouTube if they see anything questionable directly from the app,” said Google back in February, upon launch of the app.

    Google said this new YouTube Kids app is just a first step – the “first building block in tech for tykes.” We’ve heard for a while that Google is getting more serious about building products and services for kids. If this is the goal, content filtering is going to have to get better.

    Sure, Google presents YouTube Kids as a way for parents to feel safer about their kids watching YouTube.And it’s clear that Google has failed to prevent some adult-themed content from appearing inside the app. But parents can turn off the search function (maybe Google should have it switched off by default?) and in the end, parents should know that no content moderation system is 100% foolproof.

  • Twitter: We’re Not Blocking Porn on Purpose

    Twitter: We’re Not Blocking Porn on Purpose

    Twitter, one of the last refuges for uncensored, explicit content in the realm of social media, appears to be blocking certain sexually explicit search results for certain keywords.

    Searches for words like “porn,” “boobs,” “pussy,” f*cking,” and more currently yield no “Top” results.

    If you select “All” results, however, you’ll see plenty.

    There is also a peculiar lack of photo and video results for these sexually-themed searches:

    Hm. That doesn’t seem possible.

    Not likely.

    Of course, this immediately raised concern on the site. Not only would this be very bad news for the adult industry, who promotes its content heavily on Twitter, but there’s also this angle:

    But it looks like you shouldn’t worry just yet. Twitter is saying this is all a mistake.

    “We recently made some changes to improve the algorithm that fetches the most relevant content for Top Tweets in search results.” a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed. “A bug was discovered that caused us to aggressively filter some content from Top Tweets inadvertently. We’re working to correct the issue.”

    So, if that’s true, we should expect to see boobs all over the “Top” results soon. As of the writing of this article, however, there is still a shocking lack of “top” and multimedia results for many adult-themed searches.

  • Google Isn’t Banning Porn on Blogger After All

    If you post your own sexually explicit content on Blogger, Google’s gonna let you do you. Just don’t use blogger as a hub for commercial porn.

    Google has reversed a decision it made earlier this week to ban adult content on its Blogger network.

    “This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy. We’ve had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities,” says Jessica Pelegio, Social Product Support Manager at Google.

    “So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.”

    In 2013, Google cracked down on blogs that monetized from adult ads, but allowed bloggers to continue to post adult content as long as it was marked as such. But earlier this week, Google announced that it would ban “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity” effective March 23. It would do this by making all that content private on old accounts, and disabling new accounts that posted adult content.

    Apparently, after thinking this through (and likely receiving some unhappy feedback), Google has decided it best to let people express themselves on Blogger.

    You do, however, still need to mark your blogs as “adult” if necessary.

    Google product forums via The Verge

  • Google Bans Porn on Blogger, Effective March 23

    If you like to post sexually explicit content on your Blogger blog, you might want to think about making the switch to Tumblr.

    Google has announced that it is banning “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity” on its Blogger platform, effective March 23. According to Google, if you operate a blog with sexually explicit content, your blog will be made private on March 23. Google’s not going to remove your content, but your blog will only be viewable to you, other admins, or users you share it with specifically.

    If you want to keep your blog from going private in a few weeks, Google says you need to start cleaning it up. Any blogs created after the March 23 cutoff will be up for removal if they contain adult content.

    There is one exception to this – and it has to do with the context of the nudity.

    “We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts,” says Google.

    Of course, this will no doubt lead to some bickering between Google and its bloggers, as the line between pornographic and artistic is rather undefined at times.

    In 2013, Google cracked down on blogs that monetized from adult ads, but allowed bloggers to continue to post adult content as long as it was marked as such.

    This decision could drive bloggers elsewhere – most likely Tumblr. If you’re not familiar with Tumblr, it’s a porn free-for-all. As long as your Tumblr blog is properly marked as NSFW, then you can “go nuts, show nuts, whatever” (those are Tumblr’s actual words).

    At one point a couple years back, Tumblr was accused a removing adult content from blogs – but it turned out the site wasn’t really removing content, just changing search settings and making it a little harder to find.

  • “My Boobs Are More Important Than The Law” – Model

    Sophie Dalzell is a 20-year-old topless model from Manchester, England, whom in which skipped a court date where she was charged of drunkenly assaulting two female police officers when flying to Belgium to get breast augmentation surgery back in January.

    “My boobs and my appearance are more important than the law,” Dalzell, whose job it is to appear on late night, adult TV programs, told The Manchester Evening News.

     “My career depends on it.”

    Dalzell already has 11 convictions stacked up against her, charges concerning various assaults and vandalism.

    The self-proclaimed glamour model is protesting her court-ordered 400 hours of community service. Her reasons being that picking up trash is “too hard and tiring.”

    For Dalzell, her workload consists of two workdays per week, of which she is paid $850 per photo shoot, “and the rest of the time I just chill out.” “It’s not fair”, she said, in regards to the court forcing her to clean up trash and rake leaves for free.

    The weight of carrying out community service for Dalzell is too much; she says “I hate everything about it,” and “it’s a waste of a full day and it’s just too hard for me.”

    Picking up litter is a no go for Dalzell – she instead plans to spend her summer on the resort island of Ibiza, and “deal with the consequences when I get back.”

    Dalzell already completed half of the 400 hours she was ordered to perform in 2012 for that drunken assault pre-boob job. Now that she’s over the hump, the remaining 180 hours are chipping away at her tolerance for order.

    Despite her convictions, Sophie says “I haven’t done anything wrong,” and that the courts are “just jealous” because she escaped the rural county of Cumbria and has “done something with my life.”

    Image via Twitter

     

  • Tumblr Isn’t Removing Porn, Just Making It a Hell of a Lot Harder to Find

    Imagine someone baked you a cookie and promised you that you could have it whenever you wanted. “You promise not to take it away?” you ask them. “Yes,” they say. “I promise. Even though your dad doesn’t really want you to have cookies, I promise that I’ll leave the cookie in your house for you.”

    Then, let’s imagine that they put it in a box and hid it from you. Sure, you can find it – but it’s really hard to find and almost not worth the effort. At that point, would you say that they have basically taken your cookie away from you?

    With that story in mind, know that Tumblr has just released a new set of guidelines for NSFW and Adult blogs that basically puts your porn in a box and hides it from you.

    “Tumblr welcomes and encourages all forms of expression. However, we have to be sensitive to the millions of readers and bloggers from different locations, cultures, and backgrounds with different points of view concerning mature or adult-oriented content. There are a lot of people in our community who would rather not see this stuff and could even get in trouble if they did,” says Tumblr on their new NSFW and Adult blogs guideline page.

    With that, Tumblr is asking blog owners to help protect those who do not wish to see adult content by tagging their blogs as either NSFW or Adult, if applicable. NSFW means that your blog has some occasional nudity – maybe an artful nude photograph or a breastfeeding photo. Adult means that your blog contains a substantial amount of nudity and adult-oriented content – which means full on porn, I guess.

    Of course, if blog owners don’t do this on their own, they could be flagged an given either a NSFW or Adult tag automatically.

    Now, if your blog is tagged as NSFW, it will no longer appear in tag pages and searches for logged-out users. Your content will also not appear in the streams of users who don’t follow you.

    The big hit here is taken by Adult blogs, however. Adult blogs no longer appear in search engines like Google or in Tumblr search results.

    Tumblr isn’t removing adult content – they’re just making it really hard to find.

    When Yahoo announced its Tumblr acquisition back in May, Tumblr users threw a fit. Part of their concern stemmed from the fact that they believed Yahoo’s influence would lead to Tumblr censoring all of the adult content on the site. And as we know, there’s a hell of a lot of it.

    Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer assuaged some fears when she said that Yahoo is not interested in restricting content on Tumblr. And just this week, Tumblr CEO David Karp echoed that sentiment, saying,

    “Look, we’ve taken a pretty hard line on freedom of speech, supporting our users’ creation – whatever that looks like. It’s just not something that we want to police.”

    Despite that claim, it appears that the porn crackdown is here. In with the ads, and out with the porn.

    Of course, this is a bigger blow to blog creators that frequently feature adult content. The average Tumblr user will be fine – they can find porn and other adult content anywhere. But this decrease in visibility will most likely hurt tons of Tumblr blog owners.

    Tumblr is hiding your cookies. The question is, will users look for another baker?

  • Facebook to Pull All Ads from Pages with ‘Violent, Graphic, or Sexual Content’

    Starting next Monday, if you operate a page or group that contains any violent, graphic, or sexual content, you’re going on Facebook’s blacklist for ads.

    In an effort to assure advertisers that their ads will no longer appear next to any unsavory content, Facebook is going to vastly expand the list of ad-restricted pages and groups.

    “For example, we will now seek to restrict ads from appearing next to Pages and Groups that contain any violent, graphic or sexual content (content that does not violate our community standards). Prior to this change, a Page selling adult products was eligible to have ads appear on its right-hand side; now there will not be ads displayed next to this type of content,” says the company.

    It’s not really clear how many pages and groups this will affect – Facebook has a pretty strict policy on sexual content. But there’s obviously enough pages that fall into this Facebook grey zone to warrant such a move.

    Facebook says that they are already vigilant in protecting marketers from possible bad PR situations, but that this will help them be even more effective.

    “We know that marketers work hard to promote their brands, and we take their objectives seriously. While we already have rigorous review and removal policies for content against our terms, we recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action.”

    The review and removal process will start slow – real life humans will make the decisions. But in the near future, Facebook says that they will develop an automated system to make sure ads no longer appear next to this questionable content.

    This move is likely a response to the choice by some advertisers to yank their campaigns from Facebook after some of their ads appeared next to misogynistic content.

    Just earlier this week, Google announced that they too would be restricting ads that service adult content blogs on their Blogger platform.

  • Google Makes Changes To Improve SafeSearch

    On Thursday, Google released a list of 65 changes it made during the months of August and September. 5 of the changes are related to SafeSearch, Google’s filter feature that allows you to search without having to see adult content.

    Those changes are listed as follows:

    • Maru. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch to improve the handling of adult video content in videos mode for queries that are not looking for adult content.
    • Palace. [project “SafeSearch”] This change decreased the amount of adult content that will show up in Image Search mode when SafeSearch is set to strict.
    • #82872. [project “SafeSearch”] In “strict” SafeSearch mode we remove results if they are not very relevant. This change previously launched in English, and this change expanded it internationally.
    • Sea. [project “SafeSearch”] This change helped prevent adult content from appearing when SafeSearch is in “strict” mode.
    • Cobra. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch algorithms to better detect adult content.

    You would think Google would have this down by now, and with these changes, you would also think Google has gotten even better at SafeSearch. It’s hard to say whether or not it really has, but before these changes were announced, Search Engine Roundtable shared a story of an instance where Google was failing at SafeSearch, and even failed to make the necessary changes once notified (though it’s possible that they will still be made).

    Have you noticed whether or not SafeSearch has improved in recent months?

  • AdamEve.com Argues Over America’s Adult Content Viewing Habits

    We do a lot of articles about a certain company with an Apple as their logo. This is not the one we usually report about. AdamEve.com claims to be America’s most trusted source for adults products. The company is well known for not shying away from asking questions about sexual behavior, so it shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise that in a recent release, they are questioning the statistics regarding how much time Americans spend watching adult content.

    According to the information in question, 33% of American adults say they never view adult content and 20% claim only to view it once or twice a year. 22% say they view it once or twice a month, 16% admit to once or twice a week, 6% view it daily, 2% more than once a day and of course 2% refused to answer.

    When Adam and Eve Facebook followers were asked the same questions, 53% said they viewed adult content every day, 32% said they enjoyed the material every week, 5% said more than once a day, 3% said every month, 3% once a year and 4% answered never. The web-based survey, conducted by an independent third party survey company, of over 1,000 American adults age 18 and above, was sponsored by Adam and Eve to study sexual preferences and practices.

    According to Adam and Eve’s resident sex expert Dr. Kat Van Kirk, “We’re all visual creatures and utilizing erotic movies can be a great way to explore our sexualities individually and as couples. It can be a fantastic way to break the monotony in a relationship and even learn a few new tricks. Plus there are many full length DVD movies that have stellar production values, plot lines and acting, which can have a wider appeal to a female audience.” Dirk Diggler would be proud. “Sex Chat with Dr. Kat” and “Daily Sex Tips from Hawaii” can be found on podcasts through iTunes or on www.drkat.com.

    @DrKatSexChat
    Dr. Kat     Sex Toy 101 – How to Choose Your First Sex Toy – http://t.co/fIGCYOOv via @AdamandEve 7 days ago via shareaholic app ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Chad Davis, Adam and Eve’s Director of Marketing adds, “Adam and Eve sell millions of adult DVDs each year, as well as adult toys and novelties. Someone is definitely enjoying the materials we provide, even with the amount of free content available online.”