[ih] Porn on the net

[Dan Cross]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 3:13 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> I'm starting my 3rd book, which will mainly cover the 90s and the dot-com
> boom, and a friend Chris told me a story that I want to use. I wonder if
> any of you have similar stories?
>
> Chris was in an elevator in the *very* early days of the Internet (before
> widespread adoption), and this sleazy-looking guy (bad looking, open collar
> shirt, chains around his neck) got in, and told him he was going to put
> PORNOGRAPHY on the Internet!
>
> Chris was shocked & amused. Nudes on the net! He wondered if that would
> work?
>
> So I know Usenet had its alt.sex.* groups forever, and I remember that in
> the *very* early days, "pornography" was the one monetization case that
> everyone could agree might work. Maybe the only one. When did you first
> hear of someone doing this for money?

In the 90s sometime; probably towards the end of the decade.  It all
seemed (more than) a bit sleazy, as your friend mentioned.

I've heard that the long-term impact of pornography online is likely
remarkable; apparently it drove a lot of demand for both bandwidth
and robustness.  Specific rumors I remember hearing rumors that
porn sites would start up running on Windows and IIS, and then
switch to FreeBSD+Apache a month or so later (told to me by
someone at the Naval Research Lab!).  Apparently lots of bugs have
been found by SRE-type folks at those sites.

When I started working at Google, I vaguely recall having to sign a
document stating that I understood that I may come into contact with
pornographic material as part of my job responsibilities (though I
personally never did).  At the time, some engineers were still doing
manual quality control for search results, and a team had a "porn
rotation" where the designated engineer had to manually enter a
bunch of queries and see if the results were relevant; apparently
they had to put a little moveable tent-like apparatus around their
workstation.  This was just to try and shield their coworkers from the
content; the people who did this said it was anything but titillating.

        - Dan C.