Photo sharing sites such as Flickr and social networking sites such as MySpace have also been used to share amateur pornographic photographs – usually nudes but also hardcore photos. Starting in the 1990s, pornographic images were shared and exchanged via online services such as America Online (AOL).
It has also been argued that in the Internet age it has become more socially acceptable to make and view amateur porn.
These have enabled people to take private photos and then share the images almost instantly, without the need for expensive distribution, and this has resulted in an ever-growing variety and quantity of material. One of the more significant increases in amateur pornographic photography came with the advent of the internet, image scanners, digital cameras, and more recently camera phones. The introduction of Polaroid cameras in 1948 allowed amateurs to self-produce pornographic photographs immediately and without the need for sending them to a film processor, who might have reported them as violations of obscenity laws.
