Reddit CEO Says Platform Doesn't Plan To Ban Pornography (axios.com) 76
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in an interview that the company supports pornography on its platform, as long as it's not exploitative. From a report: "You can look at [porn] as exploitative. And, indeed, much of it is. And that's not the content that we want on Reddit," Huffman told Axios. "But there's another aspect that's empowering. And these are people sharing stories of themselves, pictures of themselves. And we are perfectly supportive of that. "There are difficult decisions to make in this sphere, but we think they're worth making, as opposed to saying, you know, 'No sex at all,' for example," he said. Huffman also spoke to Reddit's involvement in the GameStop frenzy. He told "Axios on HBO" he was proud of r/WallStreetBets, the forum on Reddit that was largely responsible for making GameStop's stock go haywire. "That community exposed a gap between those who have access to the financial markets and those who are on the outside," Huffman said. "In WallStreetBets you see a community, among many things, that is breaking in or trying to break through into that establishment."
I hadn't heard of this... (Score:3)
I hadn't heard of this, but now that I hear about it, I'm confident it's just a matter of time before reddit bans porn. When did reddit ever make a free expression argument it didn't walk back?
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Re: I hadn't heard of this... (Score:2)
You are telling me girls showing thier titties on the internet for karma isn't about free speech? It's like you are a facist and anti-religion which gets to the whole point of the orgination of this thing you call "free speech".
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Reddit has been the face of porn since it's inception that isn't going to change that's where the money is.
They learned from Tumblr (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's exactly what I was thinking, Tumblr essentially made itself irrelevant.
Whenever a forum attempts to change its purpose it runs a real risk of alienating the existing userbase that made it successful while simultaneously not managing to attract new users. Even Slashdot is guilty of this, there was a period where an intermediate owner tried to make this an all-purpose news aggregator and the old userbase dimished greatly, it seemed like there were all of a dozen regulars commenting in threads to the p
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What's Tumblr? Is that like some kind of a porn free version of www.bdsmlr.com? (yes real link, obviously NFSW)
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If it was free than why force registration? Take your bullshit somewhere else.
Nuance is life... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad to see that someone, somewhere, is standing up to something.
Typically you would expect this story to go like this...
Reddit CEO: "We'll take a nuanced stance on this. Not all naked pictures are porn."
Cancel Culture: "You're exploiting everybody! You care about no one! How dare you!"
Advertisers: "Not touching this with a 10 foot pole."
Reddit's Owners: "We need the advertising money. Anyone showing skin is bad if its hosted on our site. Our new policy.. "No Burka's, No Bikini's." Is that nuanced enough?"
--
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. -- Oscar Levant
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You have a flaw in your argument.
Normally the single person if not fully indoctrinated into a particular ideology, will have a more Nuanced answer to a complicated issue.
While your counter groups are a group of people who create a general combinations of Crazies and just over simpleminded responses to an issue.
It is easy for a group to be vilified, harder for an individual. As a group is filled with a bunch of people with often conflicting view will just kinda stand for an over simplified idea. The worse
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This is about cash, Onlyfans made it work and the technological jump from subreddit to onlyfans features is minimal.
Twitter already announced they are doing it with their super-twits, how long before for-pay private subreddits?
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This is about cash, Onlyfans made it work and the technological jump from subreddit to onlyfans features is minimal.
Twitter already announced they are doing it with their super-twits, how long before for-pay private subreddits?
They don't need to do that so long as users that are consumers of the content "buy gold" or whatever they're calling the financial reward that goes to Reddit and lists a reward icon next to a content-poster's username. Arguably making for-pay subforums would harm this business model and would force Reddit to directly take on a direct moderating role. Right now they get the cash and push-off the burden to initially police the content to the unpaid subforum mods.
$cash$ (Score:1)
Agreed. Smut is a big traffic magnet. Half the population is ruled by their own wanker.
Define "exploitative"? (Score:3)
How do you define "exploitative" in concrete terms that allows you to make the decision whether or not an image is "exploitative" and hence should not be allowed on the site? And how does a website vet any given image?
For example, a pic of a naked person may seem reasonable. But how does the site know whether or not the pic was taken with that persons consent?
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But how does the site know whether or not the pic was taken with that persons consent?
The site doesn't know. So things probably don't get blocked until it is requested to be removed. Unless it is obvious due to media coverage of the image or admitted illegal status (labelled as being from hacked iCloud account, for example).
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The site doesn't know. So things probably don't get blocked until it is requested to be removed
So posting pics of my naked sunbathing neighbor are OK because she doesn't read reddit, and will never know that she needs to request the pics that she never knew were taken of her should be requested to be removed? Because that's the epitome of an exploitative image.
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Right, it's hard to draw the line.. It doesn't mean there isn't one. The fact that it's hard to solve doesn't mean we don't try.
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There's nothing working with saying the line is hard to define. There's a lot wrong with not realizing or ignoring that the line exists.
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Only in the same way that robbing a bank is OK if you don't get caught.
Re: Define "exploitative"? (Score:1)
It's just a convenient thought-terminating clichee, used as a tool, by puritans, to sneak in their agenda through the backdoor, just like they do with little boys.
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How do you define "exploitative" in concrete terms that allows you to make the decision whether or not an image is "exploitative" and hence should not be allowed on the site?
If the person in the picture hasn't given permission to have the image on the site, then it's exploitative. Reddit needs to keep records for all the models
(ie, people) pictured on their site.
If they are underage, it's exploitative.
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If the person in the picture hasn't given permission to have the image on the site, then it's exploitative. Reddit needs to keep records for all the models
(ie, people) pictured on their site.
It is legal to take pictures of people in public places without their consent and use those pics for non-commercial purposes (note that's a simplified explanation). Thus not all photos will have or need any records from the subjects in them.
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non-commercial purposes
It's hard to define non-commercial when a free-to-use site allows you to post images, while that company earns ad revenue on all the traffic you generate.
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I've wondered about this. If an illegal picture is found, what should happen to the earned ad revenue for that picture while it has been up?
To me it sounds illegal to earn money from an illegal picture.
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Oh, I was referring to porn specifically. That has different regulations that must be followed.
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"If they are underage, it's exploitative."
You're confusing "exploitative" with another word when they're underage. I remember a time when I didn't have to make these kinds of comments. I miss those times.
Lets make you and others upset, including me. It's legal to take pictures of people of all ages on some, not all, nudist beaches and other locations where nudity happens.
Should you post these pictures on internet, hell no! It's creepy AF to even take the pictures of unknown people! But it's still legal.
Back
It's all about the $$$ (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, it's a GDPR violation, and they also haven't mentioned this anywhere in their privacy policy, where they are required to explain under what legal basis this data is being collected/processed/shared. I imagine most people have reported this to their DPAs by now, so now it's just wait-and-see.
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That would be a lovely thing. Reddit should be made an example of. Reddit got destroyed since they went nuts. So sad. As they say "With greed comes corruption, censorship, hypocrisy and double standards". Basically a mine field.
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Why not a 'nsfw' subdomain at least? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of useful stuff on Reddit so I don't want to filter it outright - but I do wish they would at least move the porn stuff to a subdomain so that it can be filtered. Yes, I agree that if a kid wants to find porn* hard enough, he will - but on Reddit it's WAY too easy to do, unless you block the site completely.
*Honestly, it's not "porn" I'm so concerned about. It's the more extreme stuff, plus the NSFL death/gore videos - things that can easily be stumbled upon accidentlally over there.
Re:Why not a 'nsfw' subdomain at least? (Score:4, Funny)
It's the more extreme stuff, plus the NSFL death/gore videos - things that can easily be stumbled upon accidentlally over there.
I suspect I don't want to Google that, but what does 'NSFL' stand for? Not Safe for Football League?
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My reaction to this story was, "Porn, on Reddit?" I've never ran across pornography of any kind on Reddit. My use of Reddit is only for very specific topics, usually hobby- or work-related, and I've never gotten even a hint that porn exists on the platform.
You learn something new every day.
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The porn reddits have a tag on them, and you can exclude them on your profile settings.
That doesn't mean no one can post porn in another reddit, but the ones focused on the subject are labeled and filterable.
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but I do wish they would at least move the porn stuff to a subdomain so that it can be filtered.
Errr Reddit is a collection of subs. Porn pretty much already is limited to subs specifically for that purpose. Porn hosting subs are marked 18+ and you get a warning when visiting them. Additionally you have the ability to filter NSFW content in your settings.
All the tools are there for you just waiting to use them and I can categorically say despite having wasted a good deal of my life on Reddit I've not "stumbled upon accidentally" 18+ content, at least not that which wasn't blurred out.
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Do you think a blurred-out warning is going to stop a kid?
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You're joking right? I thought you were worried about accidentally tripping up. Thinking you can do anything to "stop a kid" is a delusion bigger than the stolen election fantasy. Get ahead of it and educate. That's your only effective weapon. Preventing kids from accessing pornography is one of those things that belongs in the bottom of the too hard basket. We'll get to that after solving world hunger, fixing global warming, and teaching the entire human race to be kind to each other.
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I just block the entire domain. With Reddit's current setup, I see no other option.
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That's the same fantasy as those people who proposed moving all adult content on the internet to .xxx
Good luck filtering. Though I think it's less luck and more divine assistance you'll require.
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What?! Reddit allows NSFL death/gore videos? This is news to me. I've never seen it when surfing around randomly on reddit.
And for gods sake don't be an American prude that gets flustered when a female nipple is discovered. Grow the fuck up! (I rarely swear so let that sink in). Kids don't need to do any hard work to find porn. That's just fact. Heck, wikipedia have a collection of female and male genitalia to show how different and normal they can be.
Back in the day the only giggles we could get is to look
Nobody outside the US and Shariah gets it anyway. (Score:2, Interesting)
Why sex/porn, but not, let's say eating/cooking, or sleeping/relaxing? All equally normal human activities.
OK, we know it's because of that apple/snake story from 5500 years ago, and puritans and religion still being a thing in certain relgions of the world. But come on, this is 2021, not 921 or -2521. We got a solid foundation below the scientific method. We know religiousness is a (mass-)schizoid illness. We know that obviously, seeing sex does not harm anybody. Because we all did it, when we were young.
W
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It's because sex is a risky activity (potential to get pregnant or STDs, as well as exploitation etc), which is why there are age of consent laws.
Children are protected from all kinds of things that require informed consent, because psychology and experience tells us that they can't be fully informed. They are also protected from things that they have not developed the mental tools to deal with, like horror movies.
Religious prudes and anti-sex dogma are a thing, but not the main reason why sex is treated di
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For crying out loud! In civilized countries (NOT America) there's something called sex education which includes how to stay safe, identify STDs and what to do if you get one AND that it's not shameful to get one AND not shameful to get treatment for it, etc. Students even have access to free condoms. It's in a place that's unmonitored so no awkwardness. You can easily grab some and go and no one will no.
In America were sex education is non-existent, sex is considered shameful and religious sexually represse
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(Compare: An averagd American's reaction to tits, versus an average European's reaction: If you see it all the time, it just becomes ... normal.)
Reminds me years ago the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson scandal, I don't follow football much but was with friends watching that Superbowl incident. I recalled at the time the biggest controversy was the lopsided score of one team over another leaving no suspense of who will win the game. I had no idea there was a wardrobe malfunction. Then next day it was like a nuclear bomb exploded with the uproar and FCC threatening to send a scathing letter (huh? I thought they abandoned enforcement to focus on sellin
It’s there if you want it (Score:5, Insightful)
Reddit (Score:1)
Not even once.
Porn is a complex topic. (Score:2)
Because of the Taboo Nature of Sexuality in the United States. Porn makes an interesting gray market area. Too much of a Taboo topic for regulations, as most politicians don't want to approach the topic with a 10 foot pool, thus leads to abuse. But it is also something that is a big economic driver, where a lot of people are making a lot of money and putting it into the economy.
So a lot of the people that you see in your porn feed, may be people who are part of human trafficking, Slavery, and being treate
A crime is a crime, stop the bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
So a lot of the people that you see in your porn feed, may be people who are part of human trafficking, Slavery, and being treated like crap. Are suffering without any recourse for help, and you can say companies that make posting such content cheap and easily, being complicate in these actions. But they are also people in the porn industry who are actually empowered by it, where they can be making a lot of money during the prime of their life, where when they are ready to settle down after retiring from Porn, they have a good nest egg, that will allow them to finally get the education and a more traditional job. And not worry about paying off that mortgage or car payments, while they begin a new career. As they got a lot of money first.
Oh, fuck off with that nonsense. They're not sex slaves. Human trafficking is a crime. There's already law enforcement routes for dealing with it. Don't shame people who want to jerk off to naked women with your nonsense about them being victims of human trafficking. It's like saying we should bad eBay because goods may be stolen. The vast majority of stuff sold on ebay is legit and when it's not, the police have jurisdiction to investigate. Banning eBay won't stop people from stealing. I am confident every woman I follow on reddit is not a sex slave. They're women who either enjoy showing off their body for free for the sake of the thrill or they are trying to earn cash with an onlyfans page. It's no different than uber.
Let's go down this rabbit hole...are you certain the person who bagged your groceries isn't a victim of trafficking? Are you sure the person who served your food isn't? Why not demonize both?
Look, you aren't into sex...it's OK. Porn is gross and scary for some. I feel the same about gin...gross as shit, but I don't want to deny the world's gin drinkers their drink of choice. Just enjoy your porn/sex-free life and let us enjoy ours responsibly. There's nothing wrong with being asexual, but don't demonize us for enjoying sex and paying beautiful women to put on shows for us. It's natural and healthy. Stop spreading this anti-sex nonsense.
Why attack porn: a simple secular answer (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's just get this out of the way:
Sex and porn are fungible in the sense that "playing football" and "playing Madden 2020" are fungible.
In other words, basically not the same thing. There is nothing "sex-positive" about being pro porn everywhere. There is a ton of new, secular research showing that streaming porn is highly addictive and even corrosive to the sexual performance of the viewer over the long run ranging from desensitized genitalia.
I mean FFS, we're seeing a spike in ED among otherwise healthy young males (ie 18-25). Is this sex-positive? Of course not.
Stop living in 1997 where you were mainly defending dudes hiding in their bedroom with a Playboy/Hustler or 56k modem. It's now easy for people to sit there drooling over 1080i and greater quality video, clicking quickly from video to video like a lab animal getting stimulated.
Your ED is not related to porn (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean FFS, we're seeing a spike in ed among otherwise healthy young males (ie 18-25). Is this sex-positive? Of course not.
Jerking off reduces your chance of ED. Erectile Dysfunction is purely a circulation issue. It's not related to porn. If you can't get it up, especially at that age, you're NOT healthy. I get erections all the time when I am not horny, to this day, and I am old...and I definitely fall in your porn addict category.
There's no such thing as porn addiction! It's just OCD. It's not like porn made them an addict. They are compulsive people. If they weren't obsessing or escaping through porn, they'd do i
You're wrong about ED (Score:1, Troll)
ED can also be caused by repeatedly training the brain to get aroused to pornographic stimuli
Hey, a million heroin users are wrong because one Harvard professor has written at length how he safely uses it regularly for wor
Heroin is not porn (Score:2)
Hey, a million heroin users are wrong because one Harvard professor has written at length how he safely uses it regularly for work-life balance without longterm consequences.
First of all, ED means you're horny, but cannot get an erection. It's not ED if you're not horny, by definition. If you are not aroused, you shouldn't have an erection (not counting morningwood), thus it's not dysfunction. If you're so jaded by internet porn that a real woman doesn't do it for you, that's OCD and psychological issues, not ED. The most important part is that in that equation, porn is a symptom, not a disease. Those people have addictive tendencies and chose porn. If they didn't choos
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Is porn exploitative compared to a min wage job? (Score:5, Insightful)
Life is exploitative. If you think getting naked for money is exploitation, I think you've lived a charmed life. You've probably never worked a minimum wage job. I'd rather my daughter be a "performer" and make 3x the money than be treated like human garbage working at McDonalds (and I've worked there in high school, it's a very dehumanizing experience).
The overwhelming vast majority of porn pics on reddit fall into 2 categories: 1. A performer hoping you'd subscribe to their onlyfans page, which I am fine with...if you're hot and want to make extra cash, seems like a decent way to do it. I don't know why driving an uber is that much better. 2. The other category is successful people who love attention. They WANT you to get excited by them. I have had conversations with them. It's a sexual thrill and they're very much in control. Most do it to boost their confidence. From what I can tell, they have successful lives, are usually older, are married, and their spouses are very supportive of it. If people wanted to see me naked, I'd do it myself. I'd get a thrill from having men and women get off looking at me. Some people want to be sexually validated. They felt ugly growing up or ignored by their spouse or just get thrills from the power they exert by turning on strangers. I imagine many of the onlyfans people feel that to some degree as well.
I normally side with feminists, but this is where they got it wrong. Porn is neutral. It's not evil. Those women aren't being exploited. Anti-porn crusaders are simply people who are uncomfortable with sex. It's this huge party that gives everyone thrills and they can't understand it. Not sure why, but they need to demonize those who do enjoy it. In my life, I don't enjoy golf or marijuana, but instead of demonizing people who do, I simply wish them the best and don't want anything to do with either. I want them to have fun in ways that seem boring or terrifying to me. I wish anti-porn feminists would do the same. Sure, you don't like sex, that's OK, but most of us do. Please don't hate us for wanting to enjoy it. I know it makes you uncomfortable that women volunteer to do things you find terrifying...but leave everyone alone and stop being so narcissistic. Some things are not about you. Don't push your personal tastes onto us and pat yourself on the back in the name of feminism. The women in (legal) porn, engage in it of their own free will and it typically leads to more money than the alternative. Go enjoy your sexless life and let us enjoy our horny fun between consenting adults. You have no right to control this activity between consenting adults and you're a bad person for demonizing those of us who enjoy it.
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People who create an OF or just go solo...yeah good for them, I don't think that's exploitative at all.
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Some porn is exploitative. Girls who for one reason or other, enter the industry and then are pushed to do things they're not necessarily comfortable with
..like working the night shift at the drive-thru, right? They were told that they'd always get the best shifts, but since Sandra joined it's all about those nights.
..like crunch time at EA, right? They were told that they'd turned over a new leaf and crunch time was a thing of the past. Then the new engine on FIFA just had so many problems that there was no other choice.
..like that promise that the university wanted to really develop their archaeology department, but that was three years ago and now budgets
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I normally side with feminists, but this is where they got it wrong. Porn is neutral. It's not evil.
I'd say there is some porn that is evil. Something like "woman wants a few extra bucks doing softcore, producers push her into extreme hardcore".
The thing is places like Reddit, OnlyFans (or even Backpage) give sex workers the ability to do that job without the producers, pimps and other evil people pushing them into work they did not want to do. You don't need a porn production company to distribute the video when you can post it to something like OnlyFans, so a scumbag producer can't make you do somethi
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I'd say there is some porn that is evil. Something like "woman wants a few extra bucks doing softcore, producers push her into extreme hardcore".
I think all careers are like that. Someone wants to make some money with their sewing skills, but employers push them into sweatshops. Someone else wants a IT job, but they end up on 24x7 pager duty. There's always someone with a roll of cash trying to lure you into more than you wanted.
I believe you are correct on the cure - the fewer middlemen you have between the performer and receiver of a service, the happier everyone is.
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My girlfriend is a massive feminist (as am I) and neither of us know wtf you're talking about with your comments regarding feminism and porn.. What's the point of having/recognizing agency if you can't choose what you do with it, including porn? What's the point of having/recognizing agency if you just want to shame women back into burqas? Yes, there are nutjob feminist fringe groups (see "all penis in vagina sex is rape") but I would contend they are an extreme minority overall in the feminist movement. Ex
Those are crimes, not porn (Score:2)
Is all porn exploitative? No. Is *some* porn exploitative? Absolutely. Revenge porn is exploitative. Kid porn is exploitative. Porn made with trafficked persons is exploitative. Some of these things are incredibly hard to police as to intent and the like. I don't think anyone wants a porn free-for-all, so something must be done to curb the ability of assholes to try to skirt the rules to post that stuff. And for many sites, it just became "fuck it, it's too expensive to allow porn, so we're shutting it all down." Mostly because of the goddamned assholes who fuck it up for the rest of us.
Sorry, that's not porn. Revenge and kiddie porn, as examples, are illegal...not the same category. Everyone agrees that crime is crime and bad. Feminists, especially in the 60s-80s have long publicly tried to ban pornography and claim all porn is rape and violence and other hyperbole. It was a mainstream position of the mainstream feminist community that porn is exploitation, misogynistic, and so much more.
With internet porn, I think most have softened their position because their position was based
Exploitative (Score:4, Interesting)
Pornography exploits males, taking advantage of hardwired reactions and stimulation of pleasure centers, usually for monetary gain. Also used in advertising, and career-building.
Three reasons (Score:2)
For three reasons:
a) They don't want to deal with kiddie/revenge porn lawsuits,
b) They don't want to deal with religious/feminist/SJW fanatics creating negative publicity,
c) They don't have to censor pages pages in Asia/Middle East, where public displays of nudity are illegal.