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Comment by xdennis | Hacker News Reader

> Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed.

Such a silly justification, as if children are using the API to find porn, which is so difficult otherwise.

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Reddit is one of the most-used pornography sites on the internet, mostly because it's mixed in with a much larger amount of non-pornographic content so can't be filtered by the usual domain-blocking tools. Children are certainly accessing porn via both the website and apps that use the Reddit API.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first step towards removing all the pornography off Reddit entirely, for good reason as much of it is very extreme and not something children should be looking at at all really. And even more of it is degrading to women, depicting them just as holes to fuck. It was worse in the past too, with so-called "jailbait" subreddits and pornographic images of dead women, which were only removed after a considerable amount of pressure on the admins. Really makes one wonder what their priorities are.

This is correct.

Where are they accessing porn that doesn’t already restrict all of Reddit? I feel like schools wouldn’t allow either.

Home computers/mobiles with parental controls, for example.

This isn't the first step. The first step was to reduce visibility by removing NSFW porn subreddits from /r/all.

You cannot access NSFW content from third party apps, such as apollo, without logging into reddit.com and changing a setting.

If the goal was to remove porn, then just enforce higher moderation standards. Removing porn from the API doesn't give the impression of "we want to make the site safer to use", it's communicating "if you want your smut, use the official app so we can blast you with ads".

I have my own qualms with the "protect the children" argument that everyone hides behind for their distaste of porn and this is why; it's never about protecting children; it's about controlling other people. If you view reddit's motivation as driving people towards to the official app where they can be monetized, then these actions make the most sense. If you delude yourself into think they are doing this to protect children, then why are they acting so inefficiently? Reddit already has precedence for banning crude subreddits.

Or you could parent your children instead of relying on Big Tech to do it for you.

Will someone think of children?!!

Their mobile web app public feed lets you view NSFW content without logging in, but if you want to view the comments, suddenly you need to verify your age.

3rd party apps have occasionally been denied app store validation because of age-restricted content. Reducing exposure this way will aid developers in the review process.

Or it would if there were any 3rd party developers left.

Why would 3rd party apps have stricter requirements than the official app?

I mean, 3rd party developers could already restrict NSFW content, so I don’t think forcing it on them is much of a help…

They did explain that:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit_he...

> NSFW

> Regulatory environment around NSFW is changing rapidly and aggressively.

> The challenge is regulators and lawmakers (those who fine and sue), who don’t care about 3rd party apps and don’t understand them. They’ll come after us, not the 3rd party apps. Lawmakers don’t look at NSFW with nuance.

> We have work to do on our platform around age-gating and related stuff to be able to keep that content – we will fight for it. Sex is universal.

Sounds more like they're trying to appease Apple's app store policy as they push further into app-first territory.

How does that make sense? Apollo has been serving Reddit's porn to iOS users for years and Apple clearly supports it.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I strongly suspect reddit will crack down on adult content as they approach IPO (and is already being pressured to do so)... it's happened time and time again with community platforms and is one of the major dangers of monolithic app stores and investor driven decision-making.

I don't understand the connection between these two events. Why would an IPO mean that Reddit has to crack down on adult content? We've seen this with many online platforms over the years, again and again, but I just don't understand it. Can somebody please explain?

It shines a brighter light on the platform, meaning advertisers may suddenly pull out because of their ads being shown next to "objectionable content". Reddit could preemptively crack down to avoid this.

publicly traded companies are swarmed with people watching them from every possible angle because they’re trying to profit off of seeing something thing before someone else does

But why are they blocking porn content for third party apps? How does that affect their own app store entries? How does it help them with Apples guidelines? There is no connection here.

Third party apps first to further push users to the first party app. They'll eventually crack down on all of it.

Exactly, it's about consolidation, not about Apples guidelines.

> as if children are using the API to find porn

Yes they are.

> which is so difficult otherwise.

No, it's not.

> Yes they are.

What evidence do you have?

"Trust me bro"

Most of the porn limits on social media sites today are because of non consensual sharing. Porn sites today primarily have to deal with this, and they’re not doing a very good job of it. Pornhub now requires accounts to verify themselves before posting content. The sites which don’t require that are over run by no consensual images. It’s pretty disgusting. Reddit has been cracking down on it but hasn’t quite gone the whole way to eliminating it yet. Mostly they keep just making it harder for lazy, horny people to post things. Verification is the key to stopping this stuff, but it’s hard to safely verify people, especially with todays AI tools which make it almost impossible to verify without actual personal info.

No, the vast majority of social media companies trying to limit porn on their platform are certain conservative religious fundamentalism groups working their ass off to ban all porn, currently by hiding behind the claim of "mountains of child porn" which has a small nugget of truth (child porn most likely gets uploaded to pornhub and other sites every day), but that's just a facade. The same group also goes after sites selling sex toys to consenting adults and makes no attempt to help victims of sexual violence. They are merely a rhetorical tool to justify their awful goals.

Well, I disagree, certain groups and states are attacking porn itself, but most of the lock down on social media recently is due to increasing levels of non consensual sharing.

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