Posted on 06/20/2009 4:46:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
Pornography is no longer a poison creeping into the crevices of our popular culture. It is part of the very fabric. One sensation at a recent Apple conference for new and developing applications in San Francisco was the "iPorn bikini girls" advertising free X-rated films for your iPhone. It sounds like a whole new reason to fear people using their mobile phones while they drive.
Free porn sites are all over the Internet now, with zero restrictions or minimal electronic barriers against curious children who might be in for a very crude shock within seconds, just with the still photos on the home page. Even the most mainstream of video sites are inundated with pornography and its promoters. YouTube touts itself as the world's most popular portal for Internet videos. It has become so big it's even promoting a new technology called YouTube XL to put its videos directly on your big-screen TV.
A new study by Matthew Philbin and Dan Gainor of the Culture and Media Institute (CMI) found that YouTube is stuffed with porn videos. But a search for the word "porn" found more than 330,000 results. Out of the 157 "porn" clips that received more than 1 million views, almost two-thirds (101) advertised themselves to be actual pornography. Those 101 videos had 438,318,147 combined views -- or 1.38 views for every man, woman and child in the United States.
YouTube claims it's "not for pornography or sexually explicit content." It's just not against it, either.
Pornographers of all kinds exploit YouTube to drive traffic to their sites and products. Twelve percent of those 101 videos mentioned porn stars by name or were obvious clips from porn movies. In addition, there were thousands of videos and repeated comments that served only as advertisements for hardcore-porn sites, "dating" and escort services, and phone sex lines.
Particularly troubling are animated videos listed under "porn." Several videos put profanity and sex talk over classic Disney cartoons, like one called "Aladdin Porn." (Disney ought to be the first powerful player putting a stop to that.) Fans of Japanese anime cartoons can find the animated porn called "hentai," and skip over the 18-plus barrier or gravitate to hard-core sites the same way they could access live-action sex clips.
CMI also found that gay content, including pornography and ads for gay escort services, are rampant. There are 11,900 gay channels on YouTube, including 459 "gay porn" channels. A search for "gay porn" returns 52,700 individual videos. YouTube even promotes homosexuality on the home page. On the night of June 17, one featured video was a promo for a cheesy new British movie called "Lesbian Vampire Killers."
YouTube tells parents that its site is not appropriate for children under 13, but few videos are age-restricted. Some objectionable videos are flagged by users as adults-only. But all that's required is to register and state that you're over 18. That's not encouraging when nearly half of boys and a third of girls ages 13-17 name YouTube as one of their top three favorite websites, and they can watch it anywhere on laptop computers and cellular phones with Web browsers. Computers are commonplace in public schools and libraries that may not have much adult supervision.
Besides, is YouTube seriously suggesting that porn is inappropriate for 13-year-old children but it's okey-dokey for them at age 14?
After the Parents Television Council complained last December, YouTube implemented some reforms. Take profanity. Without parental supervision, every imaginable obscenity, including graphic sexual language, is rampant on the site. The F-word alone appeared in the titles of some 169,000 individual videos. YouTube recently offered parents a tool for filtering out dirty words (and even hiding all comments on video clips), but that protection only comes when vigilant parents look for it.
Last year, the search an innocent child would make for Disney Channel pop stars like Hannah Montana drew not only profane comments but inappropriate advertisements for horror movies. A search for Hannah Montana today finds only advertisements for J.C. Penney and other Disney child stars, so that's an improvement.
But as the CMI study insists, YouTube must construct "a far more formidable barrier" than its easily entered 18-plus category to protect children from graphic sexual content that parents wouldn't want their children to view. Just as a parent wouldn't let their child wander through a seedy neighborhood of sex shops, it's now impossible for parents to avoid watching their children carefully negotiate the Internet. Isn't there anyone in the corporate power structure at YouTube who worries about what their own children can find on their creation?
Most parents are far outmatched by their thirteen year old computer skills when it comes to protecting them. Probably take them all of thirty seconds to get around any filtering program.
Heck, my four old grandson has more computer skills then some adults I know.
For my house, we have a Linux box for a gateway, firewall, web proxy server, and email server.
There is a white list of web sites that the proxy will allow. Web sites outside of that list are NOT accessable. Needless to say, YouTube is NOT in the white list.
Only my oldest at-home daughter has a cell phone, and it’s JUST a phone. No camera, no texting service, no web access. When I get her bill everymonth, I check to see that I know the telephone numbers or I check out the numbers to see who they are.
All email that comes and goes through the email server is copied to my account.
The web is a VERY dangerous place.
Oh' the humanity No texting !!! Depriving her of teenager life's essentials
< / s>
BTW, good for you
Moral Absolutes Ping!
>>>> YouTube must construct “a far more formidable barrier” than its easily entered 18-plus category to protect children from graphic sexual content that parents wouldn’t want their children to view <<<<
While I sympathize with the problem, telling YouTube that it “must construct .. a barrier” is really quite absurd.
YouTube doesn’t have to do one darned thing with the free service it offers to Internet users in order to suit any particular user’s desires and demands.
If ya don’t like it, start your own version of YouTube. Call it HappyTube or FamilyTube, but don’t leach off the YouTube offerings and then demand it be made more to your personal liking.
Just ridiculous.
That's actually a great idea for someone with skills!
Angkor’s right ya know. If ya want wholesome family content ya can’t change the rest of the world to get it. Realizing that mass media is nothing more than a vast open sewer is the key. You ain’t gonna tap that thing for clean water no matter if it carries pure mountain spring water in it’s stream - pollution is pollution. Alternatives or doing without are the choices. Think back just ten years, was life better or worse without YouTube? There is no power in these things unless it is given to them.
If you have a traffic accident, are the cause of it and you were on the phone, then you should lose your driver’s license for 10 years ... PERIOD! When my phone rings in the car, I let it go to mail. At the next convient place,I pull over and call the person who called me. NO PHONE CALL is more important than being a safe driver! (But what about emergency calls? How many are there, what are the odds of it being an emergency? How far away is the next place you could pull over and call back ... 500 feet?) I’m tired of dodging people on the phone. Go ahead and talk and drive, but if you cause an accident, then you should pay DEARLY!
The BEST filter for anything is a responsible adult sitting next to you. (even a virtual one) What a great job you are doing!
I agree, though talking on a cell phone while driving a stick-shift in the city is rather cumbersome as well. A hands-free setup is great for that.
I think that if there were a phone number display up near the speedometer and a set of thumb paddle-buttons on the steering wheel for scrolling ones' phone list, dialing a call would be pretty safe as well.
My idea of a steering wheel / keyboard for us touch-typists probably wouldn't go over so big. :-)
Why is this author finding porn on You-Tube. That has always made me wonder what perverts are they to search for porn and then write a story about it. Conservatives should not even search for this. How disgusting.
this story is laughably directed to/about “youtube”....with no mention that youtube is owned and operated by the lefty Google. Ach...the writer prob never knew, right?
BS ... and if you can't see the dif, then you're one of them!
>>>> Why is this author finding porn on You-Tube.... Conservatives should not even search for this. How disgusting. <<<<
That’s kind of my reaction as well. In recent weeks I’ve seen lots of stuff on YouTube including George Harrison music vids, news/politics commentary, some silliness and humor, and similar stuff.
But I’ve not encountered one single porn vid/clip/imaage or even anything that might be called “racy.”
I guess you have to be looking for it.
So after reading this article by Brent Bozell, I have to ask “Why are you looking for that junk?”
Weird. Mommy state. “Why are conservatives looking for porn on YouTube?”
I’m a lifelong conservative, and I think this article is strangely repellent.
Nanny-statist Ping!
......... and you are one of the cell phone haters and probably can’t tolerate them anywhere.
One night at the movie someone down in front of me cell phone made one tiny sound (chirp). A man behind me started to snarl and cuss. A few minutes later the same cell phone made another tiny sound. At this point the snarling monster behind me started climbing over the backs of seats to get to the offending cell phone owner, who was a doctor on call.
The cell phone didn’t disturb my enjoyment of the movie but the snarling cell phone hater about scared me to death. Was that you?
Moral Relativity, would be a better way to identify it.
Morality is what you and secular society define it. The 700 Club did a survey among College age students, asking them to list the Ten Commandments and the first chapter in the Bible.
Only 1 in 20 could list just one Commandment, and one out of 50 could list the first biblical chapter. (One baffled young man thought that “Testament” was the first chapter.)
But it was found that over 9 out of 10 could list the names of the last 3 winners on American Idol.
The brainwashing of our youth has been very complete
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