Chinese Gamers Are Using a Steam Wallpaper App To Get Porn Past the Censors (technologyreview.com) 36
If you have been on Steam, the world's largest PC gaming platform, you might have noticed an anomaly on the chart of the top 20 most popular apps: Wallpaper Engine. The software is pretty cool -- it lets you download animated and interactive wallpapers for your machine's monitor -- but it's hard to explain why an obscure wallpaper app consistently ranks alongside global blockbuster franchises like Counter-Strike or Dota. From a report: The epiphany will come when you begin to read Wallpaper Engine's many reviews. More than 200,000 of them are written in Chinese, stretching from 2016 to 2022. And these reviews almost all talk about one thing: porn. Or more specifically, about using the software as a cloud drive and a video player for exchanging adult-only content.
Online porn is banned in China, so people there have to get creative to access it. Steam is one of the only popular global platforms still available in the country, and its community features, international high-speed servers, and increasingly hands-off approach when it comes to sexual content have made it an inevitable choice. Chinese users now make up at least 40% of Wallpaper Engine's global user base, MIT Technology Review estimates. Last year, users in China suddenly needed to use VPN services to access certain Steam services. As the reviews show, now they are afraid they may soon lose this rare community, either because of platform content moderation or the possibility that China might block Steam altogether.
Online porn is banned in China, so people there have to get creative to access it. Steam is one of the only popular global platforms still available in the country, and its community features, international high-speed servers, and increasingly hands-off approach when it comes to sexual content have made it an inevitable choice. Chinese users now make up at least 40% of Wallpaper Engine's global user base, MIT Technology Review estimates. Last year, users in China suddenly needed to use VPN services to access certain Steam services. As the reviews show, now they are afraid they may soon lose this rare community, either because of platform content moderation or the possibility that China might block Steam altogether.
Um...Sagan was wrong.. (Score:5, Funny)
Sagan was wrong...
It's porn that finds a way...
Re: Um...Sagan was wrong.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because people here care more for their own humor than the Chinese people's well beating. :^)
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It's a total footgun by any government that wants to control what their population sees and hears to also ban pr0n, because that immediately incentivises a large chunk of your population to figure out how to get around any blocking measures to get their pr0n fix, and once they've bypassed the blocking they may as well stay and read all the stuff the government doesn't want them to.
If you want to do this right, have an official policy on pr0n being banned because it saps and impurifies all of your precious
Sneakernet? (Score:2)
You can get a quarter-terabyte USB drive for $20 in China.
Seems like most young Chinese men could copy data between drives, with much less effort than using a Wallpaper app as a VPN.
priorities (Score:4, Informative)
Porn is banned, but government officials cheating on their wives, having multiple mistresses, and stealing billions from the people with corruption...that is not banned.
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Wish someone had told Bernie Madoff [wikipedia.org] that.
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His problem was that he was fleecing too many rich people.
If you want to stay out of trouble, you have to steal from the poor and give to the rich
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As the man said: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.
Political leaders engaged in hypocrisy (Score:2)
News at 11.
Civilization in China goes back a long time. Government officials in the West have been doing this for hundreds of years whereas officials in China have been this way for thousands of years.
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If they've been doing it for thousands of years, then they have plenty of experience fighting corruption (and yes, China does have a long history of fighting corruption, giving them plenty of experience. It's just that the current leaders don't want to apply that experience).
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Also for thousands of years, vital government officials in China were also often eunuchs.
Re: Political leaders engaged in hypocrisy (Score:2)
Re: Political leaders engaged in hypocrisy (Score:2)
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It's officially banned, and if they don't play the game just right, they'll get in trouble for it too.
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I see what you did there.
Porn, shmorn. Those are illicit messages. (Score:2)
Sending banned political news and content embedded in steganographic images
Steam-y (Score:2)
It's in the name.
"increasingly hands-off approach" (Score:2)
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"No touching!"
Everything always revolves around sex (Score:5, Interesting)
The wars between VHS and BETA was settled over porn.
The wars between HD-DVD and BluRay was settled over porn.
The wars over freedom and censorship will one day be settled over porn.
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Why are they banning porn in China? (Score:2)
I mean, the Chinese government is authoritarian and immoral. But usually they are not _this_ stupid...
Re: Why are they banning porn in China? (Score:1)
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So no actually good reasons and a few bogus ones. Got it.
Re: Why are they banning porn in China? (Score:1)
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Re: Why are they banning porn in China? (Score:2)
About on thing, Porn (Score:3)
As the reviews show, now they are afraid they may soon lose this rare community, either because of platform content moderation or the possibility that China might block Steam altogether.
If you were so worried about they taking access away, then why the F did you leave a review explicitly saying that you use it to share porn?
You ruined it for everyone
way to blow their cover.... (Score:2)
narcs!