Censorship of content in digital versions of printed media; I’m blaming FOSTA

s275ironman
Detroit
Every Wednesday is the release of the latest issue of Detroit’s weekly alternative newspaper, the Detroit Metro Times. It is free for everyone, and they offer a digital version you can read right off their website, which is also free.

The best material is usually in the pages towards the back. Among the material on those pages is advertisements for adult businesses, including strip clubs. When I looked in the online version of this week’s issue, I noticed something strange. All the ads for strip clubs were there, but the ads for the other adult businesses were gone.

At first, I thought maybe the staff at the Metro Times decided they will no longer print such advertisements because of FOSTA. Upon further examination, I followed the page numbers and noticed 2 pages were missing from the online version of this week’s issue. I had a good idea what was probably on those 2 missing pages.

To confirm my suspicions, I made a trip to the nearest Barnes & Noble to pick up a physical copy of this week’s issue. When I looked through it, I found the 2 pages missing from the online version, and they were all the advertisements for the other adult businesses.

To sum things up, FOSTA is causing news publishers to censor some of the content that makes it into their publications if they provide a digital version over the internet.

4 comments

Latest

san_jose_guy
7 years ago
Interesting

SJG
Papi_Chulo
7 years ago
Perhaps the print-edition was distributed prior to them making a decision to do away w/ escort-ads - going-forward I'd think the print-edition escort-ads will also disappear - I can't see it being print vs digital as some kinda loophole that will be allowed to stand - just my guess.
Dominic77
7 years ago
I think that’s a FEATURE and NOT A BUG as we like to say.

Personally I would suspect the true backers of this FOSTA/SESTA legislation— Hollywood and the old analog pre-internet computer companies — all actually want legislation that creates a filtered internet. It was just up until now, the powers that be tried to piggy back these censorship controls before but they were picking things (porn, bit torrent, mp3 music downloads, etc) that were all POPULAR with they constituency. It was just dumb luck that hey could attach it to an anti-sex trafficking bill this time.

That’s my take. They want a filtered internet sort of like how cable tv was. I mean, look at the attempts of mainstream media (MSM) to censor and delete popular youtubers and youtube channels. They don’t want us publishing our own stuff.
s275ironman
7 years ago
The digital version of this week’s issue is also missing 2 pages. It appears there is a print vs. digital loophole. There are ads in the printed version that are no longer able to be in the online version due to FOSTA.
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