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Comment by ciupicri | Hacker News Reader

> The revolution began with VHS, which moved porn out of the theater and into the home. This made watching pornography private, an advance that created millions of new customers overnight. But to buy the stuff, you still had to venture out to the store, and who knew who you might run into?

But when you buy something online, doesn't the credit card company (or PayPal) know that you went to the store?

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Most people don't care if a corporation "knows" they did something; they care if their neighbor knows.

In many cases people simply don't understand or think about what data is collected and out there. One of my friends at work was shocked when I informed him that our IT department might theoretically be able to check what websites we visited, and probably does. This friend was a software engineer.

Sure, but their point is that paying for non-theater porn was still a public act. Nobody's going to see you walking out of a website.

That's right, but you still don't have enough privacy.

You're describing a value judgement ("enough" privacy) that is different for everybody where the story is describing a transformation in access methods that are the same for everybody.

What rhizome said and most people don’t care whether their credit card company knows which porn they enjoy. As long as said company doesn’t write a letter to their boss or spouse or friends or parents detailing recently bought porn the knowledge of the company is inconsequential for the one who bought porn.

It's always possible to use a prepaid credit card to pay for those things, especially if you don't want your SO to find out...

I thought about this too, but is there a site offering this option? Besides that, I doubt that an US based company would be able to sell them in Europe or in Asia.

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