It seems that we’re living in increasingly puritanical times, as Reddit and Sony’s PlayStation division have both announced a crackdown on adult content on their respective platforms.
For Sony’s part, it says that games for the upcoming PlayStation 5 system – as well as new PS4 games – don’t allow sexually explicit content within games, or indeed, in some cases, content that’s more suggestive than it is explicit.
“We don’t have criteria in written guidelines or that sort of thing because the policy was introduced kind of suddenly in the wake of the #MeToo movement,” a Sony spokesperson told the WSJ. “Sony is concerned the company could become a target of legal and social action.”
This means that games that previously had a limited geographical release – usually Japanese games that aren’t released in Europe – due to explicit content now can’t be released anywhere in the world at all. It’s also likely to have an effect on big name titles such as the Dead or Alive and Grand Theft Auto series.
In contrast, other platforms tend to allow more adult-oriented games, provided they are appropriately age-restricted in the same way as movies.
Reddit hates porn ads now, apparently
Reddit is perhaps the bigger surprise of these two bits of news, as it has long claimed to be a place for free, legal, speech to take place. Now, however, the company has made some quiet, but major changes to ban all pornographic or adult advertising.
“We are updating our Advertising Policy to disallow NSFW ads and targeting on Reddit. Ads for adult-oriented products and services on Reddit are no longer permissible, and Not Safe For Work (typically referred to as NSFW) subreddits will no longer be eligible for ads or targeting,” the company said.
Any NSFW subreddits will no longer be eligible to run ads, either.
While for now, this is just aimed at advertising, amid a landscape of Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Sony and a host of other companies making steps to move away from anything ‘adult’ oriented at all, it’s hard not to wonder how long it’ll be before Reddit takes it another step further again.
One thing that cutting out adult content does tend to do though is make shareholders happier.
It seems that Twitter is one of the last major social platforms that doesn’t actively discourage anything related to adult industry. Let’s hope that doesn’t change anytime soon though.
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