Zoom claims it uses AI to stop sexytimes
People in lockdown are still horny, so they’re organizing virtual videoconference orgies, which is absolutely in keeping with the historic early adoption of technology by the sex industry.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/virtual-orgy-sex-party-zoom-nsfw-982785/
Some of these are mutual affairs, others are performances put on for money by sex-workers.
People are getting really good at videoconferencing, and that’s fuelling the boom, because they’re good at staging, lighting, sound, camerawork, etc.
But Zoom is really upset about this. They say it violates their terms of service and claim they’ve written a nudity-detecting AI that monitors all your video streams and will shut down ones that they think have nudity in them.
This is the same Zoom that keeps going back and forth on whether they have end-to-end encryption (the definition of e2e is that it can only be decrypted by the endpoints, that is, the participants, and not the company that provides the service).
Some of the companies that sprang up to make these services available are now folding because they’re being blocked from using the major streaming platforms.
Some users are also concerned that their fellow participants could be recording sessions, either using Zoom’s recording facility, OS-level screen recorders, or by pointing a camera at their screens.
Some users are also concerned that their fellow participants could be recording sessions, either using Zoom’s recording facility, OS-level screen recorders, or by pointing a camera at their screens.
Before I go, I want to talk a little about why it is that the sex industry is so active in technology. Like you, I grew up being told that somehow, sex goes hand in hand with technophilia.
But John Gilmore explained what was really going on to me and it was a revelation.
The thing is, when a new communications technology comes along, the people who have the most incentive to figure out how to use it are the people for whom the existing technology channels are NOT working.
Using the thing that already works is free, whereas figuring out something new costs you time and energy. But if you CAN’T use the thing that already works, then expending the effort to learn to use the new thing is a bargain.
Why was porn the first industry to adopt Betamax and then VHS? Because distributing porn movies was much harder than distributing nonpornographic movies. Going to a dirty movie house was stigmatized, and many cities and towns straight up BANNED these theaters anyway.
That’s also why porn adopted 8mm film, Polaroids, etc etc. It’s why porn came early to BBSes and Usenet, to 900-line phone numbers, and to the Web.
It’s also why everyone else whose communications are disfavored, surveilled or blocked adopt technology.
It’s what political radicals, kids, religious extremists, terrorists, conspiracists, and criminals all have in common: using the established communications channels is expensive for them, so it’s worth expending the effort to master the new ones.
I think that Zoom is probably bullshitting about using machine learning to catch nudity. ML is terrible at this (see: Tumblr). But the reality is that Zoom asserts the right to decide what subjects you can discuss in your private conversations.
That has serious implications, and not just for the people whose conversations are disfavored today.
