Internet News

Julie Bindel is a British anti-porn campaigner. She has had a whinge about OnlyFans website in the Spectator. She writes:

OnlyFans.com (OF) is the latest kid on the block to be billed as a safe, consequence-free way of selling sex and home-grown porn that empowers women. The social media site is similar to Instagram, but users pay to subscribe to creators' feeds.

The top earners on OF are women whose subscribers are male. These men pay between £5 to £20 a month to view images considered too pornographic for Instagram. Subscribers can also direct message women and pay tips to get personalised videos or photos, depending on his individual sexual tastes.

OF is a huge money machine and is doing extremely well during the Covid-19 lockdown. It now has around 17.5 million users worldwide and over 70,000 content creators, who have received over $150 million (£119 million) since its launch. Content providers keep 80% of their income, while the company takes the remaining 20%.

OnlyFans' subscription-based model has led some to claim that it is somehow empowering women. Outlets like the New York Times say it has put X-rated entertainment in the hands of its entertainers and means content creators perform fewer sex acts. Others think that because OF has reduced physical sexual exploitation, it does not put women in danger.

But of course Bindel disagrees, and should you want to read her see article from spectator.co.uk

Twitch has evolved from streamers commentating on games they are playing towards something more about entertainment, personalities, and sexiness.

The website has been trying to reign in this latter attributes and its latest move is to rework its dress code. Twitch explains in a blog post:

We are shifting from a garment-specific policy to one based on a standard level of coverage, with exceptions for certain situations. We've outlined these minimum levels of coverage to increase clarity on expectations, so you're not left guessing what is or is not acceptable.

We don't permit streamers to be fully or partially nude, including exposing genitals or buttocks. We do not permit the visible outline of genitals, even when covered. Broadcasting nude or partially nude minors is always prohibited, regardless of context.

For those who present as women, we ask that you cover your nipples. We do not permit exposed underbust. Cleavage is unrestricted as long as these coverage requirements are met.

For all streamers, you must cover the area extending from your hips to the bottom of your pelvis and buttocks.

For those areas of the body where coverage is required, the coverage must be fully opaque - sheer or partially see-through clothing does not constitute coverage

After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered into a nationwide shutdown, reports out of that country indicated that at least some of the hundreds of porn sites blocked there since October of 2018 were quietly coming back online .

AVN.com reported that though there was no official lifting of the porn ban, PornHub quietly became accessible to Indian internet users just a day after the stay-at-home order went into effect, albeit via the site's .org address.

Locked-down Indian citizens have been accessing PornHub content at a record rate since Modi's shutdown order, according to a report by India's Free Press Journal. Pornhub has reported a staggering 95% increase in traffic from India as of late last week.

The tube site xHamster reported a 20% rise in Indian traffic over the first three weeks in March .

Some online commenters theorized that the government had quietly relaxed the national porn ban as an added incentive to keep Indians in their homes during the scheduled 21-day lockdown.

The UK culture secretary is to order social media companies to be more aggressive in their response to conspiracy theories linking 5G networks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Oliver Dowden plans to hold virtual meetings with representatives from several tech firms next week to discuss the matter. It follows a number of 5G masts apparently being set on fire.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport told the BBC:

We have received several reports of criminal damage to phone masts and abuse of telecoms engineers apparently inspired by crackpot conspiracy theories circulating online, Those responsible for criminal acts will face the full force of the law.

We must also see social media companies acting responsibly and taking much swifter action to stop nonsense spreading on their platforms which encourages such acts.

Several platforms have already taken steps to address the problem but have not banned discussion of the subject outright.

It is not really very clear what the rumours are based upon beyond a correlation between big cities becoming SARS 2 hotspots and big cities being selected for the initial roll out of 5G. But surely denser housing and the larger households found in big cities provides a more compelling reason for big cities being the hotspots. One could ask why western countries seem too being hit hardest when the housing density argument would seem to make mega cities in the developing world more logical centres for the largest contagions, which doesn't seem to be happening so far.

Ofcom's unevidenced refutation

5th April 2020. See article from ofcom.org.uk

Ofcom has imposed a sanction on Uckfield Community Radio Limited after a discussion about the causes and origins of Covid-19 on its community radio station Uckfield FM was found to have breached broadcasting rules. The broadcaster must broadcast a summary of our findings to its listeners.

On 28 February 2020, Uckfield FM broadcast a discussion which contained potentially harmful claims about the coronavirus virus, including unfounded claims that the virus outbreak in Wuhan, China was linked to the roll out of 5G technology. Ofcom's investigation concluded that the broadcaster failed to adequately protect listeners and had breached Rule 2.1 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code.

Given the seriousness of this breach, Ofcom has directed the Licensee to broadcast a statement of Ofcom's findings on a date and in a form to be determined by Ofcom.

Web 3 is about rethinking the way we access data online. One of the important new Web 3 protocols which make this possible is IPFS.

IPFS is a protocol which allows you to store data on the web without having to rely on a single server or specific cloud service. How does it work? Instead of asking the network for a file using it's location, the browser can ask the network for a file using its cryptographic hash (unique to the file). IPFS then takes care of delivering the file to the browser, wherever it is stored. Each network node stores only the content it is interested in, plus some indexing information which helps figure out which node is storing what.

When looking up a file to view or download, one asks the network to find the nodes that are storing the content behind a given file's hash. One doesn't, however, need to remember the hash as every file can be found by human-readable names using a decentralized naming system like Unstoppable Domains or the Ethereum Name System (ENS).

This means that files, as well as websites, can be stored in a decentralized and secure way and accessed without relying on a single server 203 a truly cloudless form of storage similar to BitTorrent. Opera has worked directly with Protocol Labs, the main actor behind the development of the IPFS protocol, to integrate this experience into Opera for Android. 

Charles Hamel, Head of Crypto at Opera, commented:

Browsers have a critical role to play in Web 3 and we believe that integrating these new protocols into our popular browser will accelerate their adoption, said