As a follow-up to my previous post on this topic: Steve Jobs on "Freedom from Porn," with more details filled in from the biography Steve Jobs:
The pornography ban [in the App Store] also caused problems. "We believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone," Jobs declared in an email to a customer. "Folks who want porn can buy an Android."
This prompted an email exchange with Ryan Tate, the editor o the tech gossip site Valleywag. Sipping a stinger cocktail one evening, Tate shot off an email to Jobs decrying Apple's heavy-handed control over which apps passed muster. "If Dylan [one of Jobs' idols] was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?" Tate asked. "Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with 'revolution'? Revolutions are about freedom."
To Tate's surprise, Jobs responded a few hours later, after midnight. "Yep," he said, "freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is."
Pin his reply, Tate offered some thoughts on Flash and other topics, then returned to the censorship issue. "And you know what? I don't want 'freedom from porn.' Porn is just fine! And I think my wife would agree."
"You might care more about porn when you have kids," replied Jobs." It's not about freedom, it's about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users." (Steve Jobs, pp. 516-517).
Anyone who stops to take a moment and look at what pornography truly represents will realize what an anti-woman and anti-loving industry it really is. Pornography's only purpose is to turn a human being (often but not always a woman) into an object instead of a person, and to give some other individual a selfish pleasure.
There is nothing about pornography that helps family, helps loving relationships, or helps society. I think Steve undertstood that, and wanted to try to help society by removing one place the porn industry could dump its garbage.
Comments
Steve Jobs was a buddhist and thought religion was silly. He did LSD and denied the children he had for many years.
Rejecting porn was a business decision, because most people don't want to see porn spamming up the marketplace.
As far as I can tell, he never said anything about religion being 'silly,' though he did dislike a lot of the tendencies and behaviors 'religious' people displayed (as do I, sometimes!).
And I really don't think the porn was purely a business decision; in the tech world, being against pornography is probably one of the greatest sins. I think he probably got a bit of flak about not being 'open' with the App Store, and had to stick by his guns.
But you may be a better judge than I; I've just completed reading Steve Jobs, and I base my judgment on that book, and many features on Jobs' life I've read through the years; he's not one to make good 'business' decisions... he usually just does what he thinks is right.
Finally, while Jobs did partake in a lot of drugs in his life (mostly in his youth), and was more of a Buddhist than anything else (though he wouldn't admit to any religion), I think that's more of an ad hominem than anything else :-/
God bless Steve Jobs for this strong conviction against such degeneracy.
Reading his biography-he was a complex and morally tumultuous character, but this interesting detail gives me great respect and, I think, gives us a glimpse of a man perhaps more slightly noble that we might gleam from the rest of his antics.