Have you ever wondered how downloading sites such as the Pirate bay or whatever downloading or streaming sites look like without ad-block?
They look like this. A gif of a young woman being fucked from behind and some provocative manga.
The Pirate Bay Porn
Why am I pointing this out? Because most nerds who say “don’t censor the internet” are already censoring the all ads on the Internet with an opt-in adblock filter. This gets rid of provocative advertisements on webpages such as the Pirate Bay, and other annoying ads on normal news sites and what not.
However, not everyone are aware that it exists or how it functions.
There is a prevailent argument about porn in this “protect the children” debate on the Internet, made by anti-porn/pro-child-safety activists: ‘Some webpages are forcing pornography or provocative images to our children…’ and elaborating that this is or can be harmful for children and teenagers as it does not present sexuality in a positive way, promoting consensual sex, use of protection and what not.
Nerds don’t see those advertisements. Because they, more often than not, use adblock. Angry moms who are vehmently against pornography, are referring to those advertisements, the ones that the nerds don’t see. So when they are asking to censor the internet, they don’t need one big mega filter. They need ad-block, but nerds say, no you can’t censor the internet.
But the debate about porn and internet censorship is usually like this:
Anti-porn: “Let’s put up a filter to censor the porn on the internet!”
Anti-censorship: “No you can’t censor the internet, it’s wrong”
anti-porn: “But porn is harmful!”
Anti-Censor: “But censoring is harmful!”
This debate is not really useful, because two not too well terms are being put forward, without trying to understand where people are coming from and what the problem actually is.
Of course there is a wide range of how far people will go in wanting to censor pornography — however, the nerds, who are usually quite vocal on not censoring the internet in my experience, are already censoring parts of it. The ads. They do not realize this.
So, to raising the debate to another level it is more constructive to try and figure out what it is they want to block. Is it that there is, in fact, porn advertisements on the websites they or their children frequent? In that case you can mention that you filter those out with adblock.
Is it that you’re worried about your son or girl watching hardcore porn? Well, I’m not the parent, but whitelisting is definietly possible on your router.
If they have problem with the porn industry as it is, well. Then adblock won’t help you, nor a megafilter.
So: Ad-block is a form of censorship which can be used to minimize expose of crude ads you do not wish to see. Use it and help people to use it, cause even if there’s a time and place to watch porn, you don’t necessarily want to be exposed to it whenever you download a car.
Accidentally... 