NYC Halts Free Curbside Internet Browsing After Too Much Public Porn-Watching
If you don’t live in New York City, you are missing out. For months, little kiosks have been popping up on the streets. Marquees flash across their screens, announcing that there are USB ports and WiFi services available to everyone. Not only that, but the kiosks have little tablets anyone can use to get online! Or, rather, they used to. That feature has been disabled. Let’s go over why.
Maybe the creators of LinkNYC thought people would use the WiFi to watch funny videos or learn new information. Maybe the creators of LinkNYC thought Mr. Businessman would use the tablets to email his wife and say that his phone was dead but he was on his way home. Maybe the creators of LinkNYC thought tourists would use the tablets to pull up a subway map. Maybe the creators of LinkNYC live in a naive utopia inside their own minds.
From 2009 to 2010, 13% of web searches were for erotic content. Porn, not cat videos, rules the web. It makes sense, then, that porn, not cat videos, would be heavily searched at the LinkNYC kiosks. Porn that doesn’t leave a little footprint on the computer and Internet account associated with someone’s name is probably even better than porn consumed in the privacy of a person’s own bedroom.
Amazingly, the sweethearts at LinkNYC do not agree! They do not want people using their generous devices to look up things that are unholy. They are pulling the plug on the tablets’ web-browsing service, although they are also maintaining that “other tablet features—free phone calls, maps, device charging, and access to 311 and 911—will continue to work as they did before, and nothing is changing about LinkNYC’s superfast Wi-Fi.”
They’re framing the decision to yank the web browsers as one that was made in response to people — especially homeless people — hogging the tablets for “personal use.”
Okay. ;)
[image via Jim Henderson]
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