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Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

I would also blame religion if not that here in Sweden we went from accepting sex and censoring violence to accepting violence and censoring sex, within about the span of almost just 10-20 years. The norm just changed and its very noticeable in movies if one compared those made before 1990 and those made after 2000.

There is no corresponding change in the religious demographic. If anything that demographic went down until 2015, where for other reasons it started to go up.

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That's the Americanization of the world. If most of one's movies, songs, tv shows, social media control, search engine biases, etc, come from a single country, with its cultural stickups, that's what you get.

I would hypothesize that it is due to the greater influence of feminism. I realise that not all feminists would agree, but many feminists have been against the objectification of women's bodies in pornography, sexualized advertising and media.

Feminist, here. I disagree! :)

There's big difference between using women's bodies to sell products (film franchise included) and permitting the open expression of nude bodies.

I resent the former, and respect the latter.

There is almost too much ridiculousness in these two sentences to unpack. From the notion that American hegemony suddenly began post-9/11, rather than 70 years ago. To the assertion that Google is deliberately biased toward violence over sex.

The "America == bad, anything I don't like about my country == also America" mindset is a disingenuous rejection of agency. There are a lot of things going on the world today. If gender dynamics and sexual mores have shifted over the past decade where you live, it MIGHT be more closely related to that, rather than Tumblr fizzling out.

> There is almost too much ridiculousness in these two sentences to unpack. From the notion that American hegemony suddenly began post-9/11, rather than 70 years ago.

That's when online streaming started picking up steam. I think the OP is spot on that American culture influence would shift social mores, because mostly youth consume this content and then 10-20 years later, they're adults directing policy.

Edit: fixed typo.

Social moors would be either an open field for gathering or friendly Muslims from the Mediterranean region about 800 years ago. You might mean ‘mores’.

Thanks!

did they say american hegemony began post-9/11 or that google's biases are deliberate? those claims would certainly be ridiculous.

i think you may have a point but i'm not clear on it. you're saying that there are other factors besides US cultural hegemony which would've contributed to the shift in sweden's media norms?

We are in a sub-thread, about Sweden's changing trends in censorship over the past 10-20 years. To claim that American hegemony is the cause, one must claim that American hegemony grew drastically stronger in that timeframe (a.k.a. the 9/11 era).

Put differently... you have to claim that the Marshall Plan and a half-century of Hollywood exports had no effect, but YouTube and Facebook did cause a reversal. I think you have to be very young with a limited perspective for such a premise to even occur to you.

If anything, American hegemony has dramatically WEAKENED over the past 20 years. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars were such folly, the Norwegians welcomed Barack Obama with a Nobel Peace Prize for no tangible reason other than him NOT being George W. Bush! Disgust over Tony Blair's role as U.S. collaborator reshaped British politics for a generation. Weakened U.S. clout emboldened Russia to annex Crimea, and prevented any effective international response to the crisis in Syria. And can anyone say with a straight face that U.S. has more soft power influence on the world stage since Donald Trump's election?

Beyond political hegemony, its cultural counterpart seem weakening also. Large American films are now constructed to appease Chinese state censors, for access to their market. Back in the 1990's, it was routine in online web forums to act as if other countries don't exist. Today, that is routinely challenged.

As for the U.S. imposing sexual puritanism on the Internet... YouTube might be headquartered in the U.S., but so is PornHub. If there were really a huge market for something like YouTube, with a more relaxed TOS, then why hasn't a French startup created it? Unlike China, there is no Great Firewall in the U.S. that could squash its competition.

To answer your question, I cannot speak with certainty on why Sweden's censorship practices have shifted over the past 10-20 years. If indeed they truly have, then I might suspect immigration trends and a changing role for women (the same reasons commonly attributed to European nude beaches being in decline). I can only say that the idea of American hegemony in these past two decades growing stronger rather than weaker is absurd.

or the gradual buildup of US influence of cultural media norms reached a tipping point over the last 10-20 years and it became more acceptable to watch a murder than to watch sex in Sweden. These things take time, and generations, to shift attitudes.

> cultural stickups

*cultural hangups, but I understood you.

He actually meant that people are literally being robbed of their culture at gunpoint, due to hostile American influence. That's what government-enforced censorship is, after all.

Others in this thread think that's the influence the USA has had via their multinational tech companies.

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