You may have heard of Ning, a sort of white label social networking service set up by Marc Andreesen, the founder of Netscape. It lets you build ad hoc social networks for specific groups, events or interests.

What you probably didn’t know is that some of its heaviest users are in the adult entertainment industry. Or, at least, they were.

In a post on the Ning blog, CEO Gina Bianchini says that the company is going to drop its support for adult networks (what they call the “Red Light District”) from next year and comes up with a series of explanations as to why.

# Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight.
# By having legal adult social networks on Ning, we’ve seen a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks.
# Adult social networks on Ning receive a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices creating additional work for our team.

It’s a roundabout way of saying “porn costs us too much money” and even “this just isn’t what we wanted Ning to be used for, and we don’t like it”. So why not just say it straight?

Because that would involve a moral decision – something likely to insult the influential gangs of techno-libertarians who reserve the right to do whatever they like online; even when you’re the one paying for it.