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Cingular Filtering Porn From Wireless Web?
Atryn writes: "Cingular Wireless is reportedly blocking its customers from accessing 'objectionable material" via the Wireless Web.' The spokesman mentioned in the story disclaims knowledge of any blocking -- can any Cingular customers reading this confirm it?
If I were a cellular provider, I would encourage people to download large files, since they pay by the byte! Greedy, greedy, greedy!
No ifs, ands, or buts. Censorship is just a bad thing. If they have bandwidth problems, they can rate limit the users. That's an entirely different concept than limiting them based on the content of the traffic.
11*43+456^2
How would I know if I was downloading porn or not? Kind of hard to see details in that tiny little screen. Lets see....white dot surrounded by a lot of black dots. Hey! Thats a .... oh, nevermind, it was a picture of mickey mouse.
But this does pose an interesting question--what URL's are easily memorable, and are optimized for entry via telephone keypad as alpha?
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
For some reason I keep getting a Proxy error on my Cingular phone when I visit a lot of sites...INCLUDING THOSE ON CINGULAR'S SITE!!
"Cannot display malformed content" is one I get on some parts of Cingular's site...
It looks like some of the other sites I visit are okay now, Slashdot's site came up for the first time...I was using it to get an error and I can't get an error on any webpage anymore...(something about upstream content to the proxy)...Looks like it was fixed...Now time to go find some pr0n!
See, this here is what I don't understand about the state of the telecoms world.
Your statement:
See, my immediate and overriding thought is: I'm the CUSTOMER. I give you money, you give me bandwidth. How I use it is up to me. I've bought - BOUGHT - bandwidth from you, and now you're putting all these restrictions on me because you didn't do your sums correctly and you're making a loss from insufficient service provision.
The same applies in spades to all the cable modem, ADSL, and prepaid dialup plans we see getting post-hoc restrictions placed on them. To me, this looks like the service provider is an incompetent cretin that can't do their sums, work out how much capacity they've *bought*, how much they *need* to service their paying customers, and charge appropriately right off the bat.
Seriously, folks, is the corporate world so seriously screwed up that no-one is capable of this?
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Thats a very good question, but don't they provide access to PDAs?
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
That said, how many people are out there looking at porn on a cell phone? Besides the obvious limitations of an image on a black-and-white LCD screen, do some people really need their fix of pr0n so spontaneously that they can't get to their computer or local magazine stand?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Even if this is true, its NOT A CASE OF CENSORSHIP. People on Slashdot tend to throw that word around far too freely. When a company stops you from doing or saying something on their equipment (even if you pay for it/lease it), that's not censorship...If you don't like their policy, use a competitor. If the GOVERNMENT mandated that cell phone web access couldn't include smut, THAT would be censorship.
Given the size of most cell phone displays perhaps they are doing a public service by blocking pr0n by saving people from unneeded eye strain. Ok, so I am reaching....
I'm just waiting for a voice over IP chat application on my cell phone. I think this will be the killer app for internet enabled cell phones. Imagine the convenience of being able to have a voice conversation on your internet enabled cell phone with another internet enabled cell phone user.
'Same speed C but faster'
I don't pay by the byte for my cellular service, through Sprint PCS. The Cingular plans didn't look like they worked that way either - it's mostly by the minute.
Ham packet radio and even CB are subjected to the FCC's rather stringent requirements against profanity and obscenity. I remember this being a big deal when I daydreamed about setting up a packet-radio ISP link in the early 1990s -- even sort-of-innocuous newsfroups like rec.nude could get you into trouble. I'm not sure what's different now with 802.11b.
You don't buy bandwidth. You LEASE access to the ISP's equipment. They are free to block whatever they want. If you don't like it, get another ISP, but ultimately that's the way it works.
We're not talking about legality here. I know Cingular *can* do whatever it wants. But censorship is still a bad thing, and like any other bad thing and I don't have to be OK about it. It seems you're taking a very market oriented approach, and even though that's not always a suitable approach, I'll use it anyway and still make you look like a fool.
One requirement to have perfect competition and a perfectly efficient market (something you seem to be *assuming* exists) is that the consumers have perfect knowledge. According to theory in aperfectly efficient market, everyone must know everything there is to know about the product to ensure they are making an informed decision. That, coupled with the fact that theory assumes that everyone who takes place in the market is rational (not true, but lets assume it anyway), then we are simply complaining and creating a ruckus so that people know what cingular is doing.
Just as a side point, this is from the company whose ad campaign exclaims that we all have a right to free expression.
Yeah, you're entitled to freedom of speech.
Yeah, you're endowed with certain inalienable rights.
But, last I looked, Cingular isn't the Government (tho they probably do own a chunk of it.)
Check your service agreement for those nasty little phrases like, "Cingular reserves the right to ...", which give them all the clout they need.
All the clout you need is to go find someone who doesn't have those little phrases in the contract and subscribe to their service. You probably have that right, as, last I looked, no bills have passed the House binding you to indentured servitude.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't even think of saying "redneck"... it's offensive.
I've seen the future, it's not free, open 802.11b, it's people using WAP phones playing games, paying 20 cents to get the high score on a round of a trivia game, ending up huge phone bills. Just think AOL before they went flat rate.
There's money in pay per click.
Press SEND to get high kharma (for only 20 cents)
--Mike--
Unfortunately, most ISP's provide for a maxiumum bandwidth in their contract, and nowhere is there a guarantee of minimum bandwidth.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Sounds like a market-based solution. When they sell bandwidth, they should assume it will be used, and prepare their infrastructure accordingly. This sounds just like the crap that was pulled by many an ISP over the years of selling more bandwidth than they actually own. Basically an ISP would sign up a ton of 56K customers, but not own enough bandwidth to provide more than a fraction of them with the amount of bandwidth they'd purchased at once. If the fraction is small enough, then they can get away with it. If not, then their customers will experience problems. This is not the fault of the customers, it is the fault of the ISP for overestimating its ability to handle the simultaneous demand for the bandwidth it sold. The customers are simply using what they paid for.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
And there was me thinking that you're billed by the megabyte.
Follow me
Why is pr0n 'bad' for kids? When I was a kid, I looked at pr0n out of curiosity of what the big deal was. From puberty on, I looked at pr0n because of raging hormones. I wasn't sexually active as a teen, but sure looked at a lot of pr0n. It didn't turn me into Osama bin Laden.
I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans. Most everywhere else in the world porn and sex aren't that big of a deal.
You can't really censor out pr0n; when I didn't get it from BBSes there was always my dad's magazine collection. It's just not worth the effort, except for stamping out child porn. I mean, really, can anyone demonstrate that pornography is bad for kids?
I tried three and couldn't get through, but that doesn't mean they're blocked, necessarily. Here's what I tried, and what I got:
www.porn.com - Reply unknown!
www.sex.com - No server access!
www.fuck.com - File format unknown!
www.slashdot.org - No server access!
Looks like they're blocking Slashdot, too, shucks.
(Test performed on a Nokia 3360 cell phone. Note that I could easily use the phone as a model with my iPaq, then browse all sorts of porn using my regular dial-up ISP.)
most... but there's speakeasy.net :)
They are in a "no-need for license" free for
all location in the microwave spectrum. This was originally set aside expect only the military to use it but then cordless phones, 802.11b, and bluetooth appeared. They are perfectly legal in this band as long as the broadcasting power is under a certain limit. Since each device doesn't require an independent license, they don't fall under the same FCC laws that radios and other communication devices do.
I use sprintpcs and the minutes just get deducted from my pool of minutes... which I have a LOT of. But the thing is... its a 14.4k connection. What masochist is out there downloading porn through that? It would take a minute for a boob to show up. Jeez.
The reason the cable providers got their pooch screwed was based primarily on two flawed assumptions. One, that people would use the same total bandwidth that they used over 56K, only in shorter bursts. And secondly, that the market was infinite and exponential growth would continue indefinitely.
Of course, the average person was using more than their allocated amount of bandwidth, but due to a massive influx of users, new lines were being laid all the time, so there was always more bandwidth than was needed. Until they slowed down with the infrastructure development that is. Then the overbooking of bandwidth came back to bite them in the ass and left them with little choice, either raise the prices, or restrict the bandwidth.
From their point of view, restricting the bandwidth, especially upstream, made more sense. Of all of their customers 95% of them probably used the service as expected. A little email here, a little web surfing there. Download the occasional mp3 and keep it connected all the time. Its the remaining 5% that created all the problems. And we know who they are. The bandwidth caps and other restrictions probably didn't even affect most of the other 95%, so if they lost some customers, better the 5% that were more or less abusing the network rather than lose over 50% of their customers due to a price hike to afford 5% of the users.
Yes, they probably should have assumed that this abuse would have taken place. And it would have made even more sense from their point of view to simply track down and kick off the worst abusers.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Please take this into account for testing. So far, looking over the web, I've found no supporting evidence for the story.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
News for you: The customer is not always right, and Cingular's customers don't own the network. Cingular does (or it leases the network, nitpick, nitpck). Cingular does have the right to filter "objectionable material," and you, if you don't like that, have a right to do business with another company.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Now compare this old business-week article
And this USA today article:
What may have happened is that the sources tried to get to porn sites, didn't work, and then concluded that those sites were being banned in specific. But it could be a general compatibility problem affecting many sites.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Just send it all to me.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
All right, now this is getting slightly off topic, but possibly still just slightly, so: in response. Let me preface this by saying this is anecdotal personal experience.
In my early teen years I used to be all about the porn, "raging hormones" and whatnot. Then I came to the realization that looking at porn affected my view of women. No, it didn't completely desensitize me to their feelings and needs, but I did think about them in a purely sexual context more often when I was regularly looking at porn. Now that I consciously avoid pr0n the amount of time that i spend thinking about women in a sexual context has greatly decreased.
I'm not saying that the viewing of pornography is necessarily bad, but especially at the very impressionable stages in a young boy's life (or girl's life, although girls seem to have less of a propensity for pornography), viewing pornography could cause a boy to view the opposite sex more as objects, and less as equal humans.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Excellent point, and one I wish our government would heed (oh, if it would only protect the consumers in this day and age of much-needed CFR!). This issue crops up all the time, whether you are talking about hidden stuff in Windows XP, opt-in versus opt-out issues, and even labeling of GM foods.
./ is turning into just another 'toy review' website, I'm afraid, because 'everyone has to make a buck', and you apparently cannot 'buck' consumerism as the be-all and end-all arbitator of Truth and Trend.
The marketplace, bottom line, is no longer free. It has been usurped by those who would fund their congresscritter to keep the playing field non-level.
Thus Slashdot becomes one of the few last bastions of Freedom in this day and age. Serious. Of course,
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I've got news for you -- this is standard fare. Check the TOS for your ISP, and I bet that if they provide web space, then they also dictate what can be stored in that space.
:)
Well, most will say, it's their server. True. I work for a data center, and we don't allow spam generators nor pornography, even if it's accessed through your own domain. Why? Because we don't want it on our floorspace. It can always be tracked back to us courtesy of ARIN or a similar service, which can be bad for business if someone finds out.
There are responsible adult sites out there -- danni.com and playboy.com come to mind -- but by and large the sites that are out there are questionable at best. It's our equipment, our floorspace, our circuits. Therefore, we dictate what can go on them.
Incidentally, though I see the logic in the TOS we use, I don't entirely agree with it. If Playboy or Danni.com wanted to move to us, I wouldn't personally have a problem with it, since they are reputable, profitable (well, Danni.com is, anyway), and would represent a nice chunk of change, some of which would end up in my bonus check. I think it should be case-by case, with a 30-day cancellation option on our end if we deem the site objectionable from a business-practices point of view. But that's just my opinion, and I'm not the owner.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's easier to use with one hand than your Workstation?
Or to sneak a quick peek in the weekly team status meeting?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This analogy clearly fails. Your's is a logical fallacy known as a bait-and-switch.
The original question was: "Does my use of cel phones to look at porn over the web harm anyone else?" You tried to compare this to hosting loud parties in your apartment -- a completely different scenario. If I hold loud parties in my apartment, it degrades the apartment-dwelling experience for my neighbors. The people upstairs can't sleep at night with the noise, the people downstairs have beer cans thrown on their porch, and its all just a big mess.
What data I download, however, regardless of its (im)moral content, is irrelevant. Whether I download email containing the four byte string "CAKE" or the four byte string "F***", the load on the network has been the same. If I'm a businessman who downloads some eighty-odd messages to my cel phone every two hours, that's 30 Kb of data. 30,000 bytes.
If I'm a guy who likes looking at nude pictures once in a while, a 30,000 byte GIF image is still 30,000 bytes. The load on the network has been the same.
ISPs have no right to regulate the content trafficking its network based on "moral" or any other perceived "value." The information in the bytes is irrelevant to the performance of the network.
To further pick at your argument, you state that "those who watch porn are less likely to pay the bills." If they don't pay the bills, they get disconnected. Simple as that. How does blocking porn from their network improve the financial value to the ISP? I fail to see the connection.
On a tangent, as long as I'm in the comment box. If the network does claim some "moral value" to the content on its network, and polices incoming data, I'd say that this would leave them in a dangerous legal quandry. Do/did Al Quaida operatives use Verizon cel phones in the USA? Just because it's not porn doesn't make it moral. If they are going to start denying packets based on their moral value, they'd better examine their ability to feasably do so, before they find themselves in some sort of lawsuit regarding discrimination, IMO.
(#include<std/disclaimer.h>, IANAL, etc.)
Later, Marketing discovers that their estimates and assumptions were off, but Engineering's already ordered the hardware so they've made their investment and can't go back. Management asks Marketing to raise the price to cut demand, and Marketing says "We're at the bend in the curve: If we charge a tiny bit more we'll lose so many customers that the whole thing will be a total failure."
So Management does the next best thing to raising rates for everyone: They change the TOC (limit bandwidth) enough to drive off the few high-cost customers while keeping the vast majority of customers, whose bandwidth is well within their capacity. Predictable, really.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
>You LEASE access to the ISP's equipment
Back in the "bad old days" you leased the phone from Bell. You still lease phone lines from the phone company.
Did/does Bell block you from phoning 900 numbers?
Did/does Bell block you from phoning _any_ numbers?
If Bell did block you from certain phone numbers, was it because you were breaking the law in some way?
If not, did you sue?
Now you see where we're heading with this.
Heck, does the airline say how you have to sit in their seats on the plane?
Does the bus driver tell you not to stand up on your leased seat on the bus?
Does a nightclub owner tell you how to dance?
Apart from safety/legal restrictions, no. If there's any other restrictions (like no torn jeans at a club) you are politely informed prior to entering the club that it isn't acceptable.
>If you don't like it, get another ISP, but ultimately that's the way it works.
Normally when you are discriminated against due to your thoughts clashing with those of another without prior warning or them having a good solid legal reason to stop you from accesing/doing certain things, the lessor may be on the hook for a lawsuit.
Depends where you are and how severely they decide to restrict you.
EG: If you leased an apartment and decide to bring a leather sofa in it and the landlord stopped you, it had either better be in the lease agreements (specifically) or be a fire hazard, because otherwise its expected you can put furniture in an apartment.
Now, if you decided to bring a box of bongs in the apartment the landlord would have good reason to stop you.
Since most pornography is legal in the USA I don't see how the phone/cable company has a right to censor unless they wrote "We will censor anything we want, such as pornography, at any time" into your agreement.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You don't buy bandwidth. You LEASE access to the ISP's equipment. They are free to block whatever they want. If you don't like it, get another ISP, but ultimately that's the way it works.
Yup, and once you start blocking based on content, you most likely lose any "common carrier" status that you might have had before, and start becoming liable for content that you don't block.
-jerdenn
"If you don't like the agreement, find another provider. It's their bandwidth."
There are two problems with this. First, most people with Cingular have signed some sort of contract. They don't have the option to leave, unless they pay some big fine, for something that wasn't in the contract when they signed. Second, the users pay for the bandwidth. If the phones run at 14.4 K, Cingular should have provisioned for users using 14.4 K. You can use up just as much bandwidth at amazon.com as you can at xxx.com over a 14.4 connection.
Finally, you all have forgotten the most important issue. If a company like Cingular starts censoring what people can see over their phones using bandwidth that they bought and people let it happen, it opens the door for other types of censorship. This is just like opening the can of worms (not like it hasn't been opened before but....)
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
MaxPower (2263)
"I got it from a hair dryer."
Technology, censorship, wireless, evil company and PRON!!
Now rather than just putting it on vibrate and sticking it in your pocket and calling yourself (not that there's anything wrong with that)
You can now have naked pictures on the phone AND have it in your pants when you call yourself.
Us geeks are one step closer to not even needing bio versions of the ellusive other gender.
and the fact that the companies are run by total morons should be my problem :) I was on a 12 month contract with pac-bell when they re-did the news groups. It took a photocopy of my contract but I was payed off for the remaining time and they acknowledged that they broke the contract. I kept the equipment and got money back...read those contracts :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Cell phone signals, like broadcast television and radio, travels through a medium owned by the public and that, to me, limits what they can censor (and it is censorship.) Unlike the phone line, it isn't really coming to the requestor over wires, but through a public medium. Yes, the questionable content does come to their equipment before it can be transmitted, but, by the time they know it as questionable it has already touched their equipment. If they choose not to send it back to the requestor, it is like a 'bleeped' television spot only on a private telephone call. I don't believe a telephone company has the right to that kind of control. There is a reason the Bells can't do it and I don't think a cell phone is that much different.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
This is more of a specialized service than a standard ISP is. They're broadcasting your content to a large section of geographical area, where theoretically someone else could see it.
If they don't want porn casted over the airwaves (which is illegal according to the FCC) it's their right.
Because you can have the joy of searching for monochrome porn like this:
6628255544433#766677786266#6688333 (natalie portman nude)
...it's almost as stupid as AOL instant messenger on wireless web.
But will they let you out of the contract early w/o the penalties if you claim that's the reason you have the phone in the first place?
This isn't sensorship. It's merely an agreement....
This isn't sodomy. It's merely an agreement....
If you substitute "USA Today' site" for "porn site", you'll find out damned fast from their lawyers that it IS censorship.
Preach it, brother. Preach it.
Well does it matter what they are downloading? What about huge amounts of sports pictures?
They are free to block whatever they want.
Except the little problem that once they block something, they are liable for blocking any material that anyone finds objectionable.
"Population 1,656"
My quip about pr0n not turning me into Osama bin Laden was simply a comment that looking at pr0n as a kid doesn't turn that kid into a maladjusted adult.
Quite the contrary, sex education that promotes responsible sex - both gay and straight - without moralising about it results in healthy, well-adjusted adults. It reduces unwanted pregnancy and transmission of STDs. Compare the percentages of Dutch kids having unwanted pregnancies versus American kids, infection rates, and so on. The policies of "protecting kids" does just the opposite, yet admitting it undermines the entire "moral" underpinnings of education. It's simply insane.
You may be sick of hearing it, but Americans are prudes. Horrific violence on television and in cinema is quite acceptable, while curse words and nakedness are taboo. When's the last time you've seen a cock on TV or film, even rated "R". Breasts are fine on pay channels, but other "naughty bits" are left to "adult" channels. In America, apparently only adults are allowed to have sex or exposure to sexuality.
Now, totally OT, but picking up on the tangent:
The reason many other countries are pissed off at America because of its foreign policy, not because of strip clubs and pr0n. America is like a spoiled schoolyard bully and its "allies" his gang. Most other kids are relieved that America just steals them blind and doesn't beat the crap out of them. As the Japanese are fond of saying "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down", thus the reluctance of most countries to tell America to piss off.
Why must entertainment have redeeming social qualities? Does "The Terminator" have redeeming social qualities? Entertainment comes in many different forms; if you don't find pornography entertaining, don't watch it. But don't interfere with the right of others to do so.
The objection to pornography on the grounds that it objectifies people as sexual objects is ridiculous. People lust after other people, regardless of whether or not they're acting in a skin flick. Whether you see other people selfishly as only objects of sexual desire says more about a person's lack of character than it does of the pornography industry. I'm quite able to have non-sexual interactions with other people - that consists of most of my interaction with other people. Can I have a strong non-sexual relationship with someone I'm attracted to? Sure. Can I have a strong relationship with someone I'm NOT sexually attracted to. Yup.
As to the question of why I'd look at pictures of sex when I can have sex - well, I wouldn't. When I can have sex, I have sex. When I can't have sex, I don't have sex. I think that's true of most people.
Regarding a partner. First, you assume I'm straight, and yes it's a correct assumption. No, I'm not married and have no desire to get married; I don't believe in the institution of marriage.
Yes, I've had loving, intimate relationships that have lasted longer than most marriages. Nor do I believe that intimate relationships must necessarily be sexually monogamous; that depends on how you and your partner feel about it.
Do I find my girlfriend sexy and think she's great? Sure. Just because I look at pornography or have sex with other women doesn't mean that I don't love her and find her satisfying. Just because you love steak doesn't mean that you won't eat chicken. Sex is an appetite. By the same standard, I don't get bent out of shape when she looks at pornography or has sex with other people.
Obviously, I don't subscribe to the puritanical view of sex that you describe. I just don't find pornography self-degradating or degradating of others. The reason that women are viewed as objects aren't because people lust after them after seeing pornography; it's because Western culture has historically treated them as property at worst and second-class citizens at best.
As to the right to do stuff: yes, it's my right to view porn. And yes, just because I can do something doesn't mean that I should. For example, just because I have unfiltered internet access at work and CAN view porn at work doesn't mean that I should view porn at work. I don't. Of course, that's not what you meant. But I can't think of another context where I'd find it wrong to look at porn.
What happens to a person who's one reason for signing the three year contract was to be able to read Slashdot on his mobile phone... then one day the phone company decides that all these /. people are bandwidth hogs, reloading the main page all the time and downloading those HUGE banner ads and those even bigger JonKatz articles... they filter slashdot. Then is eliminated the reason this person had for using the service, now he is stuck paying for 3 years of something he doesn't want.
Now wether it's porn or slashdot, filtering based on content is wrong, filtering based on bytes.... that is a better way to do it.
Here's the difference: When an airplane overbooks a flight, they say "We fucked up and overbooked, so anyone who wants to can skip this flight in return for some additional compensation". If they did it the way ISPs like to, they'd instead pick fat people at near random and kick them off first (yes, strained, but close).
All you people defending cingular because you think this is about bandwidth need a fucking clue. Porn doesn't take any more bandwidth than anything else. If they don't want people clogging the networking and dragging down service, they need to implement rate caps and other measures - blocking porn won't do it. As far as I'm concerned, I am the only important Cingular customer. QOS for other customers is not my problem. Cingular is free to implement QOS controls, but content filters are NOT QOS controls, and they better make them clear up front.
In other news, SprintPCS has determined that overweight black women make calls that last much longer than other people, and have instituted a policy where all overweight black women cannot make calls longer than 2 minutes during peak hours. Certain blindered fuckwits on the internet applauded the decision, saying "If I used a cell phone, which I don't, I'd want these fat black women to only make short calls so circuits are free for me. They shouldn't make long calls on cell phones anyway, they should do it from thier home where it's meant to be done. Afterall, Sprint pays for it's circuits, and if fat black women are tying these up, they should be kicked off".
That is because Cingular doesn't sell content. They sell access. There also is no conract with a retailer, whereas you do have one with Cingular. Althought cell agreements are almost as bad as EULAs as far as your rights go, and I wish companies would actually compete on that issue. Except that nobody actually cares and a company that does attempt to guarantee access would probably go bankrupt. *sigh*
Now let the rant begin:
<rant> :)
Hate to burst your bubble, but I'm an American - I was born here and currently live here. Hopefully I won't die here.
You're right that the average Jane and Joe Sixpack have dick to do with American foreign policy. We vote, there's election fraud, a coup, and we have a White House full of nutball right-wingers and an Attorney General who's such a prude that he shelled out US$8k for a curtain to cover Lady Liberty's bodacious boobs. Now that dude is a prude AND a dick. But I digress...
I've spent quite a bit of time overseas --- thanks to Uncle Sam --- and was quite distressed to be lumped in with knee-jerk right-wing Americans. I was more distressed to get beaten down because I'm an American and my hosts took exception to our military presence (I wasn't in the military at the time).
Sweeping generalisations are not applicable to everyone, of course. However, it's accurate to say that Americans are generally very prudish. Not all Americans, of course, but most of them are, especially in the South.
When an adult store/tat parlor opened in town there was quite a row. There were no lewd displays, kids were verboten, and the "adult" section of the store was segregated within the store. But people screamed because it was - well, lewd to have such a store.
Once it opened there was an outcry and quick legislation by the Police Jury (aka City Council) forbade another such business to open within a certain distance from schools, churches (hoo boy, do we have a lot of those), residential areas, and so forth. In addition, special licensing was required for any SOB (their unfortunate acronym meaning Sexually Oriented Business).
Needless to say, the hue and cry gave the shop an enormous amount of free advertising and business boomed. The owners of the shop were delighted at the overreaction which essentially ensured they would have no competition. Since the American Constitution forbids ex-post-facto laws, they're grandfathered in as long as the business remains alive.
The whole affair was terribly amusing.
This is a single example, of course, that can't rightly be extended to include the sum of American society. However, having lived in America most of my life, empirical evidence says most Americans are prudish souls. Many of these same people are hypocrites who go surfing for porn after church. </rant>