Hacker News Reader

Comment by zxcmx | Hacker News Reader

Users everywhere have had to put up with U.S law for a long time. The laws and norms of the USA are more or less "fully baked in".

Try posting a nipple or copyrighted track, for example.

If Facebook had come from a different place, all songs and body bits might be Ok but perhaps discussion of government would be banned. I can't tell if that would actually be a better facebook than the one we got.

View on HN

I think you don't give American companies enough credit when it comes to appealing to various countries laws and opinions. It is disingenuous to say Europe or the rest of the world does not care about copyright when they have historically and increasingly laws that are as strict if not stricter than the US' when it comes to preventing copyright infringement. [1][2]

Nipples do reflect American sensibilities although it is understandable that many companies do not want to go down that road as it could lead to becoming distributors of porn. I think you will find that many countries outside of Europe agree or don't think that these rules go far enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_... [2] https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/06/33f524714d35-japa...

> It is disingenuous to say Europe or the rest of the world does not care about copyright when they have historically and increasingly laws that are as strict if not stricter than the US' when it comes to preventing copyright infringement. [1][2]

Those laws are to some extent pushed through by the US in international treaties on behalf of american copyright holders.

They're the obvious tariff required in every "free trade" treaty.

Equating nudity with porn is maybe understandable as a business minded precaution ; It's not less revolting to do so. The fact that many non-european countries would like to deny the freedoms hardly won decades ago is not something that american companies should be happy to share value with either. Cultural relativism will have you banning much more than a nipple if you decide to go that way. Good for business, but not what we should thrive for.

There are several US based sites which allow nipple posting, if that's your thing.

There is a big difference between “treated as porn” versus “this part of anatomy is specially evolved to be inserted into the mouth of an infant, so we don’t care if you show pictures of that exact scenario”.

I agree bans on images of nursing are absurd, but I am not sure you can make an appeal to evolution - genitals also are 'specially evolved' but also not postable in many places...

If my sentence had just been “nipples are fine because they evolved”, that would be a reasonable counter; it is what they have evolved for that makes it weird to censor them as they are censored.

You can post nipples all day long on Facebook. They just have to be cleverly blended with the rest of the photograph when you do

Are you uploading the nipple to an American site?

Also, most sites ban nudity as a term of service, not as legally required.

Many people got banned the last months for promoting masks or talking conspiracies. Imo i would not assume facebook to actually enable free speech.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com