teh inetrwebz

The acknowledgment “+1” (Google’s version of “Like”) has always helped boost post visibility within the Google+ social network — it’s one of the many parts of the equation that make posts hit the What’s Hot section, for instance. But What’s Hot can be removed from a user’s individual stream. This isn’t immediately obvious for a new feature Google+ introduced yesterday, which amplifies any posts people are “plussing” by sharing them into your stream, whether you follow the people who originally posted them or not.

“If Steve Jobs made a vibrator, this would be it!” tech talking head Robert Scoble told me, adding a few moments later: “The NexusQ team could learn a lot about hardware design from this. The NexusQ was totally over designed. This is not. The NexusQ was way too heavy. Way too large. Was way too complex. The Revel is none of those things.”

Though Facebook sometimes allows renditions of the nude male figure in works of art, they consider it a breach of their standards to share images of the nude male body in relation to research and education. The latest victim is Scientific American, which had the audacity to post a link to a piece about a study regarding factors that contribute to male attractiveness, an article that also included a thumbnail of computer-generated nude male bodies.

Instagram has been “securing” (i.e., suspending) accounts, giving users a deadline to upload a form of valid identification. Many initially suspected this was a phishing scam, but a Facebook spokesperson told CNET, “Instagram occasionally removes accounts due to violation of terms and, depending on the violation, may ask people to upload IDs for verification purposes.” This is another failure on Facebook’s part to handle issues within the photo-sharing site in a way that helps users feel secure.

Once upon a time, you could get adult content when you queried Google Images for obvious search terms like “tits” and “vagina.” In a silent move, Google has turned that ease of search off, so now, unless you search “tits naked” or “vagina porn”, you’re going to get pretty safe for work images of women in slightly revealing tops for the “tits” and medical imagery for “vagina.” Google is silently closing shop on adult content.

In this clip, Josh Robert Thompson imitates the voice of Morgan Freeman while reading excerpts from the popular ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and offering his own commentary. Here’s a sample: “There are some sick people in this world. I cannot honestly believe people read this crap. ‘Do you want the regular, vanilla relationship with no kinky fuckery at all?’ My mouth drops open. ‘Kinky fuckery?'”

The kinky social network Fetlife doesn’t take measures to protect user content and has shown incompetence or negligence in regard to user privacy, all the while prohibiting victims from warning others about predatory behavior in the BDSM community. As users, by enabling FetLife to continue espousing a code of silence and allowing them to spin security issues as “attacks,” we are letting our community become a breeding ground for exploitation.

At a whopping $13 million, sex.com is the most expensive domain to ever be sold. Without a doubt, it was at the center of one of the most interesting sagas of our time. Say what you want about the evils of porn, sex.com defined the way we understand and legally approach digital properties. And yet there it sits, like a Tickle Me Elmo five years after the craze.

Two years ago Twitpic cracked down on nudity. They offered users no options, simply suspended accounts that contained inappropriate imagery. Now Twitter has followed suit, but their effort to clean up is considerably more mature. Instead of censoring users, Twitter is asking that people label their content “sensitive.” By opting in, users enable others to choose whether they want to see such content or skip it.

It’s hard to say how much revenue the porn industry has lost to free porn tube sites. No matter what they do, they can’t seem to bring their sales back to levels before these sites made access to porn so easy. Tired of fighting, adult video production company Pink Visual is joining them.