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Comment by gtaylor | Hacker News Reader

I wish software companies would stop trying to play moral police like this. It's so entirely subjective, and as you mentioned, moral standards vary wildly.

But whatever. I'm sure this is going to keep kids from seeing "graphic" material, right? None of us ever went around our parents to see something we shouldn't have...

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I doubt Google cares about keeping people from seeing nudity or porn. They probably care a lot more about the legal consequences of distributing porn apps, and the market consequences if religions try to get everyone to boycott Chromecast because it's sinful.

"and the market consequences if religions try to get everyone to boycott Chromecast because it's sinful."

I doubt Google cares about that. We live in a heavily secularized world today.

I am not religious but that does not mean I think its fine to watch porn. Much of the porn out there is absolutely disturbing (rape and what not) and the people who produce that grabage are the worest of the worest. Not all of it is that way of course but even the "classy" stuff is unhealthy in my opinion. I don't think the goverment should ban porn or anything but I have zero problems private companies banning it on their platforms.

Banning porn is not the same as banning rape.

I hate the racist materialism of the Disney Channel, and the ecologically abusive NASCAR. Let's have Google ban that, shall we?

I don't usually do this but...

> I think its fine to watch porn.

and

> ... but even the "classy" stuff is unhealthy in my opinion.

Seem to be directly contradictory. Unless you're saying its a-okay to do unhealthy things every so often [which is also valid].

The original quote was "but that does _not_ mean I think its fine to watch porn" (emphasis added).

It's especially strange on platforms that provide a full web browser. Apple won't let you sell a porn app on the App Store, but nothing stops you from using Safari to look at all the porn in the world.

Chromecast lets you display arbitrary browser tabs, right? If so, same thing here.

It seems that it's not so much trying to play moral police as just not wanting to be to blame. People know that a web browser is just a conduit and that the device maker isn't responsible for what you browse. People don't have the same attitude toward apps, even though there's nothing fundamentally different.

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