| ▲ | ben_w 7 days ago |
| > Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. The claim isn't "we don't like it", the claim is "this is damaging to society". I don't agree with such things in many cases (and many people disagree with me when I'm the one saying something is damaging to society), but it's important to note the difference or you will always be arguing against something other than their claim. > No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. It's kinda the job of the government to decide such things; but an automatic extension of that is, it's not the job of the payment processors… and I think they should be banned from doing so because it's damaging to society to let them take on this role. |
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| ▲ | fenomas 7 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The claim isn't "we don't like it", the claim is "this is damaging to society" That's their framing, it's not what they actually do. If Collective Shout was a group that studied which things caused harm, and then campaigned against those things, then the point you're trying to make could stand. They're not. They've campaigned to ban rap artists, GTA 5, "50 Shades", lingerie ads, whatever random thing is around at the time - always under the pretext that it harms someone, but never with any evidence or substantial arguments that it does. In practice groups like this campaign against whatever they don't like, so it's correct to refute them on those grounds. |
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| ▲ | calf 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If a special interest group is acting in bad faith, then it is still incorrect and confusing to frame it as "they just don't like that thing". We should just be saying they are acting in bad faith, weaponizing arguments, etc. Why they are against something also is explainable, so ideally we could also state their real motivations (they are racist, fascist, reactionary, etc.) | | |
| ▲ | fenomas 7 days ago | parent [-] | | It's a description, not a claim. If a group tries to ban a thing, it obviously follows that they don't like the thing in some sense. Referring to them as "trying to ban stuff they don't like" describes their behavior, it's not a claim about what their motivations are or aren't. |
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| ▲ | GoblinSlayer 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The root cause looks more like financial oligopolies abuse Steam, because it's easier for them. | |
| ▲ | phire 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | throwawaysoxjje 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > They don't give a shit about individuals, just society as a whole. No they say they give a snot about society a whole. I can say a lot of things too. | |
| ▲ | fenomas 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ...ok? My comment didn't say anything about the distinction you're drawing here. | | |
| ▲ | phire 7 days ago | parent [-] | | My point is that it's not just a framing, an excuse to push their likes and dislikes on everyone. If anything, it's actually the other way around. Their puritan views of what makes a healthy society is what informs their likes/dislikes. They are legitimately fighting for what they legitimately think will make a healthier society. If you assume otherwise, you will misjudge them. | | |
| ▲ | fenomas 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's an imagined difference. Picture two people, each working to get a particular book banned. One is a petty moralizer trying to impose his likes and dislikes on everyone, and the other is legitimately fighting for what he believes will make society healthier. How do I tell which is which when their actions are identical? | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > petty moralizer This defines them as identical. Morals are what people think makes society better, and their absence worse. There's lots of other ways to dislike something besides morals. For example, I don't like spectator sports. It's not a moral issue, just taste, so me not watching sport is genuinely sufficient. Conversely, I think analytics tracking is harmful to society even though I also find it interesting to see the results, and should be banned. Me simply not using it isn't enough. Anti-porn people? I disagree with them. If they are motivated by religious fundamentalism, then I disagree with the foundation of their worldview. But this is how it is not simply enough to respond with "if you don't like it, don't buy it". |
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| ▲ | jMyles 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > They are legitimately fighting for what they legitimately think You've indicated two things here which you assert are legitimate: * Their fight for their goals * The thinking underlying these goals On the latter: Nobody except the people doing the thinking can (at least with current technology) truly know. And it may be entirely unimportant. My best guess is that u/fenomas has it about right; their aesthetic seems to have informed a manufactured narrative about societal impact. It may be that these people have personal unresolved sexual trauma which is activated by these subjects. Surely no matter their reasons, they deserve to be treated with compassion. But I don't think that u/fenomas is being illogical here, or failing to steelman their position; I think that it's perfectly reasonable to question someone's basis for advocacy of censorship. However, on the former, I more strongly disagree with your use of the word "legitimately". Using the heavy hand of the state (including the unfortunate configuration in which payment processors need its anointment and good graces and are thus vulnerable to political pressure) to censor the internet - a resource characterized chiefly by its cross-cultural and cross-political availability and unity - is not a legitimate tactic. The internet does not seem to tolerate this variety of censorship; in every instance, the Streisand Effect, May 35, and similar phenomena have quickly and decisively punctured the erected walls. Whether these people truly view these materials as likely to harm society or not, their legitimate avenue of change is through voluntarily persuasion, not censorship by way of force. | |
| ▲ | jajko 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Its their opinion, nothing more, nothing less. Opinions are like farts or some related body parts - everybody has them, so what? Just that I and bunch of folks around have some opinion doesn't mean we have the right to push it to the rest of society. That's inferiority complex pushed into moral superiority feeling. All just emotions of unbalanced/uneducated people who should know better but clearly don't. No place for such behavior in truly democratic society, their rights to decide what should be happening and what shouldn't generally end at the door of their house (and even that just within legal framework). Otherwise lets give some room for neonazis too for example, they certainly have a vision about how the society should look like and behave. They are at the end just bunch of folks who want to change society for what they consider a better one, right? |
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| ▲ | gchamonlive 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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| ▲ | wormius 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ganging up to enforce your political will is only bad when it's "the woke mob" but totally cool when it's my mob. And idiots eat that shit up thinking fighting the woke mind virus is the real censorship, jumping straight into the arms of moralistic fascists like this. I wish I knew how we failed. (I am "woke" but I disagree with mob tactics, and think it's done more harm than good, and there are a lot of disingenuous abusers of said ideology to boost their personal cred, chasing online clout over any substance. And plenty of the right-wingers will notice this, and "fight it" but fail to notice the same thing in their own side; because to them it's not about a principle it's about "punishing the bad guys" who don't like what I like). "Cancel culture is bad akshully unless I'm the one cancelling you (c.f. bud light, etc...)" |
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| ▲ | Telemakhos 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > It's kinda the job of the government to decide such things; In some countries, maybe. In the US, there were concerted attempts (like the First Amendment to the Constitution) to prevent that from being the government's job, because of the fear that government would use that job to suppress dissent and coerce opinions. If payment processors are picking up that job, and doing so in a coordinated manner that doesn't allow porn companies to simply say "use these payment rails to do business with us, not those ones," it is not unreasonable to suspect that they are doing so not for their own business interests but as a proxy for powers that the government is denied. Someone should be taking a long look at whether the US-based payment processors are becoming a tool of censorship and, if so, how that censorship is being coordinated. It's not like Visa and Mastercard come up with these things independently and on a whim. |
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| ▲ | wutwutwat 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > that government would use that job to suppress dissent and coerce opinions. Thank baby jebus that this sort of thing never happens. Can you imagine if our government were to, for instance, threaten to deport our own citizens, publicly, for disagreeing with the government. That would be a fucking shit show! Thank you, first amendment! |
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| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's pretty wild that people think that porn is more damaging to society than censorship. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think the issue would be more that people don't accept this is censorship - the surface level here looks like companies negotiating who they will and won't do business with which is actually encouraged. If companies have a moral objection to something then they don't have to be involved. In theory stopping a flow of money takes a lot more than some crazy from Australia getting upset. The real censorship here is that a system has been constructed where payments must be funnelled through a small number of blessed companies and it has been set up that way to ... promote censorship. Authoritarianism in general, really. If it wasn't for anticompetitive regulations one of these game devs could just branch into banking. We've actually seen that dynamic play out in most of our lifetimes - in the early phase of crypto it was mtgox.com [0] that triggered the transition from cool nerd curio in the internet backwaters to a billion dollar market. So we know the pipeline there would work fine in the absence of KYC regulation. [0] Magic The Gathering Online eXchange | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent [-] | | and those companies aren't heavily regulated. In Europe they regulated exchange fees down to something like 0.3%. They just said the fees shall be low and lo, they were low. They could also easily regulate that credit card networks can't block obscene content. |
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| ▲ | dahart 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Some people think porn is worse than censorship. Some of those people even feel that censorship is good, not damaging at all, and should be mandatory. I’m not one of those, though it does seem like there’s a possibility that some of the things we’re doing a lot of in society today, like porn and also social media and AI, are changing society in ways we don’t understand yet and don’t have control over. I don’t think it’s wrong to have fears about that. Anyway, some people wouldn’t even call it censorship if private businesses disagree and decide not to do business, for any reason, even if it’s public pressure. Should private payment processors be free to choose whose money they process? If not, why not? Be really careful with your answer, because taking away their freedom to choose is a type of censorship, and possibly a worse one because it would be a public/government censorship and not a private transaction censorship. Steam and Itch.io do still have the right to ship all these games, they’re choosing not to. They also still have the right to use other payment processors, and/or create their own. I’d be willing to bet the payment processors in question would rather not be forced to cut off business, and do not care whether people pay for porn. They are simply trying to avoid public backlash and avoid being blacklisted by a large number of people who happen to believe porn is damaging. | | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > Should private payment processors be free to choose whose money they process? We shouldn't have private payment processors. Access to the economy should not itself be a product that you have to buy and then worry about whether you own it or it owns you. | | |
| ▲ | dahart 6 days ago | parent [-] | | What’s the alternative? How do you propose to fix it? | | |
| ▲ | haneefmubarak 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Notionally, opening new banks and/or buying an existing one that lacks current customers is feasible. Presumably once you do that, you could easily plug into FedWire/FedACH/FedNow, which would allow you to process electronic payments on behalf of whomever you choose to bank, as long as you comply with all the KYC/AML and other finance regs. You might not be able to process visa and mastercard, but virtually any of your customers' customers presumably still have financial accounts that are enabled on Fed rails, which will not be as likely to discriminate. Requiring end-customers to initiate payment (push) as opposed to doing pull, would also reduce transaction reversal risk. I don't really the ultimate purpose of the position taken by either side here, but it does seem to me that there's a path by which both can coexist, even if difficult. | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think blockchains are the way forward, but the crypto people had one thing right: The incentive towards providing storage/compute/connectivity for transaction settlement should be built into the protocol, not provided by some corruptible institution. The idea that coins would be mined by the people providing the compute has unacceptable consequences, but it did solve the problem that it set out to solve. So we need something like that, but with fewer problematic side effects. If I were to take a stab such a protocol, it would live on a web of trust that kept track of interpersonal debts. So if Alice owes Bob, and Bob owes Charlie, then Charlie can "pay" Alice by instructing Bob to cancel both of those debts. In this case Bob is the clearinghouse. Some network connectivity is needed (Alice, Bob, and Charlie all on the same network) but it still works if the internet partitions. We incentivize Bob to keep his device available for this by creating a new debt when the transaction settles: this time it's one where Alice and Charlie owe Bob for having been the transaction processor. If Bob didn't want to act in this capacity, he wouldn't have trusted Alice and Charlie to begin with. Charlie would then need to find a different path to Alice if he wanted to use the network to pay her. (Presumably they don't trust each other directly, otherwise they'd be creating new debts instead of cancelling transitive ones). In this scenario I suppose Bob would be acting as "censor" but his capacity to do so is not greater than any other user of the network. For Charlie to be fully denied the ability to pay Alice, one of them would have to be behaving so badly that everyone refuses to trust them. That's a desirable outcome, if we must have something like censorship, it should not depend on the feeling of some guy who owns a bank but is otherwise unconnected with the parties of the transaction. It should be decided by the people who are near to Alice and Bob on the trust graph and therefore have to deal with the real world consequences of Alice and Bob's behavior. If they want to collectively prevent those two from doing business, that's their right since it's their community that that business is happening in. One imagines this featuring in cases where some rich foreigner wants to set up mining operations that would poison the drinking water. The locals can collectively prevent that foreign money from buying local groceries, thereby limiting the ability of the foreign actor to harm them. So that's my harebrained idea. But I'm not making up fictions and asking people to treat them like money. The people involved with USD are. If they want us to continue participating in their harebrained idea, they should recognize that giving us a system with problematic properties represents a risk that they might lose their privileged position. My point is just that it's on them, the designers of the system, to figure it out how to make it all work--we need only accept or reject it. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent [-] | | The Circles white paper is something like this. (I heard the Circles project went off the rails, but the original white paper is still there) | | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, circles was the inspiration. I decided to deviate from the Circles design because I want partition tolerance--and you can't do token-issuance-on-a-schedule in a partition tolerant way (no way to agree about what time it is). | | |
| ▲ | immibis 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Sure you can, if you can resynchronize the time whenever partitions reconnect. Some clock drift might even be ignorable. I say it's 5:00 and I have 100 tokens, you say it's 4:55 and I only have 99. Doesn't matter, I'm only spending 5 tokens anyway. | | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 4 days ago | parent [-] | | But how do you decide, when they come back together, which side was right? I'll confess to sort of making this up as I go along, so I don't have any sources to cite here, but when I sit down and think about it I come to the conclusion that partition tolerance means that when you come across a disagreement of this kind, you can't just let the more powerful partition win (We already have that, both in banking and in blockchains. Snore.) Consensus has to come from the circumstances of the transaction. What's the intersection of the people I trust with the people you trust? Are there transitive trust pathways between us? Calculate the consensus value based on those pathways. It comes not from whether one of us is backed by a bigger bully, but rather because we've both personally chosen to trust the people that we have, and we've provided incentives for them to continue to be trustworthy. |
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| ▲ | patmcc 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They may both be damaging, but currently we have a lot more porn than censorship, so it looks like it's causing more damage. If we flip to having a lot more censorship we'll feel that damage more clearly. Or we won't, depending how successful the censorship is. | | |
| ▲ | jennyholzer 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > we have a lot more porn than censorship How do you know what you're missing? IMO media platforms are heavily censored in comparison to ~10 years ago, to the severe detriment of American pop culture. | |
| ▲ | _bent 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > it looks like it's causing more damage what damage is it causing? | | |
| ▲ | drdeca 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I can say that I think my past use of pornography has harmed me. I haven’t used it in over 2 years, but I still on a daily basis observe the effects it had on me. Others might argue that it is only because of my views that the effects are “harmful”, but I think they are wrong. | | |
| ▲ | supplied_demand 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Can you clarify how it “harmed” you? You didn’t quite answer that question. | | |
| ▲ | fipar 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m against censorship, well, except for stuff that would already be illegal. But as to the potential harm, I recommend “Homemade” by Sebadoh. Example verse:
“There’s still pictures in my mind. I’ve been addicted all this time. It taught me everything I know. Tell me girl, did it leave me cold?” We don’t need to ban porn. We need better sex ed, ideally starting at home. | |
| ▲ | drdeca 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | https://xkcd.com/598/ (Except, remove the last panel) | | |
| ▲ | toomanyrichies 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It sounds like you're saying porn either "gave" you a fetish, or uncovered a latent fetish you didn't know you had (and /or preferred not to know about). If that's an accurate read, can I ask what harm it causes you to have a fetish? Provided it doesn't harm anyone else, what's wrong with liking what you like? | | |
| ▲ | drdeca 7 days ago | parent [-] | | I don’t buy the “revealed a latent fetish” explanation. I don’t think people are born with a fetish baked into their soul. Like, the people with the “blueberry expansion” one, you really think they were born with that? No, of course not, that would be dumb. I think the main reason people put forth the “latent fetish” explanation is in order to argue that pornography is harmless. As for why it harms me? The purpose of sexuality is for relations with one’s spouse. On average, I expect it to be counterproductive in that regards. Most women wouldn’t find it appealing, and looking for specifically women who would find the idea appealing would substantially restrict the pool to search among. Also, most of the versions of the fantasy I have violated conservation of energy, and therefore cannot be physically achieved. Why would I want to want something impossible? And, generally, lust promotes lust. | | |
| ▲ | toomanyrichies 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I don’t buy the “revealed a latent fetish” explanation. I don’t think people are born with a fetish baked into their soul. There’s a 3rd explanation: fetishes aren’t inborn, but they’re not instilled by porn either. Instead, they develop through a complex interaction of psychological, developmental, neurological, and cultural factors. One theory is that, if a person repeatedly experiences sexual arousal in the presence of a specific object or situation (even coincidentally), the brain may begin to link that stimulus with arousal (classical conditioning). Or if the experience isn’t repeated but it is intense, it can become imprinted as erotically significant. In both cases, the fetish can be considered “latent” in the sense that it existed prior to one’s encounter with porn related to that fetish. Porn simply revealed what was already there (and showed the viewer there are others out there like them, too!). So-called “normal” sexual behavior is just the median of millions of data points. There is not one person who fits that median in all respects. Even if you can’t find a partner who finds your specific fetish “appealing”, there are plenty of women out there who won’t specifically judge you for it either. Failing that, just enjoy the fetish in your own mind and don’t divulge it to your partner. You’re entitled to an inner life, after all. Just as we have a biological imperative to procreate, we also have one to eat. But I’d disqualify any potential partner who thought less of me for liking tacos. Again, as long as one’s fetish doesn’t harm others, why should sex be any different? | | |
| ▲ | toomanyrichies 5 days ago | parent [-] | | To add: I had never heard of the "blueberry expansion" fetish before. But that sounds like it fits the above explanation. Five bucks says people with this fetish had a childhood experience where their parents sat them in front of a TV, put on "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", and went to make love in the next room. The kid probably figured out what was going on around the same time Violet Beauregarde turned into a blueberry. There's probably a greater-than-zero number of people who had that experience, and there are probably similar fetishes around chocolate rivers, pneumatic tubes, and little orange people. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I've heard of expansion fetish before; my immediate hypothesis was that it's about mental wiring normally related to pregnancy (the same way foot fetishes are hypothesized to be related to wiring meant for your genitals). I've never heard of someone specifically wanting to be a giant blueberry but it's not hard to guess that once the general pattern of a fetish exists, specific details could be impressed by various conditioning processes. I can't think of an analogous reaso someone might like chocolate rivers or pneumatic tubes. There probably are people out there who really like little orange people but by a totally different mechanism. | | |
| ▲ | drdeca 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I think it is mostly consumed by men wanting to watch a woman turn into a giant blueberry, not women wanting to turn into a giant blueberry? But I’m not sure, haven’t talked to anyone who was into it. |
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| ▲ | supplied_demand 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | == I think the main reason people put forth the “latent fetish” explanation is in order to argue that pornography is harmless.== I think the main reason people blame their fetishes on porn is in order to avoid confronting their inner compulsions. == Also, most of the versions of the fantasy I have violated conservation of energy, and therefore cannot be physically achieved. Why would I want to want something impossible? == I’m not sure, but it’s probably something you should unpack with a therapist. Blaming porn is the easy way out. Exploring why you are personally drawn to it is the hard work. | |
| ▲ | gosteinao 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The purpose of sexuality is for relations with one’s spouse. Says who? | |
| ▲ | GoblinSlayer 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If that was true, everybody who watches porn would have anal fetish, because anal in porn is regular, but instead anal fetish has geographic distribution. | |
| ▲ | wormius 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Sex is an older institution for marriage. Or are there all these lizard weddings I've never seen. "Sexually reproducing animals, plants, fungi and protists " Man, I can't wait to get invited to the next fungus wedding, seeing a little penis shaped mushroom with a little tophat, and the brides dress, why it must be a literal carpet on the forest floor so long and stretchy. LOL this doesn't harm you int he slightest. You should like, read a(actually man, from diverse positions, and not just your little right-wing fundie) psychology book and get out of your bible-thumping bubble. | |
| ▲ | mandmandam 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The purpose of sexuality is for relations with one’s spouse That's not actually true. That doctrine has been used to guilt-trip people and control their lives for many hundreds of years - but it isn't true. People are complex. We're not self-replicating machines whose sole purpose is to breed. | | |
| ▲ | drdeca 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Where did I imply that our purpose was to breed? I don’t believe that. I didn’t even say that the relations were specifically to be reproductive. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Why do you believe the parts you believe but not the other parts? |
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| ▲ | justanotherjoe 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I would say all knowledge have that effect on us. Kinda the inherent drawback of it. Lessens enjoyments somewhat. | |
| ▲ | GoblinSlayer 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Good for you. IME porn is very standardized and can't be arsed to include my fetishes. |
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| ▲ | cortesoft 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What were the effects? |
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| ▲ | throwaway283185 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | for me it really hurts life satisfaction. my porn tastes are basic. i like beautiful women in their 20s. when i was in my 20s that seemed fine, but i got older and my tastes did not change. coincidentally, my wife also got older. she is awesome, and very responsive in the bedroom, but she is no longer a beautiful woman in her 20s. if i've been watching porn in the last month or so, my satisfaction with our sex is much lower. if i haven't, i'm happy. there is also a lot of stuff that seems default in porn, like choking or anal. when i watch porn, i want those things. when i do not watch porn, i don't. my wife does not enjoy those things, but will do them if i ask. but they honestly do not make the sex any better for me. you will say, "well don't watch porn then." but it isn't easy to not watch it. it has a powerful draw. i enjoy watching it in the moment. and it is always just a few taps away on the phone. it takes willpower not to watch it. if all the tube sites were banned, my life would be better. the damage to me is small. i do not have an addictive personality. i do have a lot of willpower. other people might not be as lucky. | | |
| ▲ | overfeed 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > it takes willpower not to watch it. if all the tube sites were banned, my life would be better. Now imagine if this was done for different proclivities: alcoholics, speadfreaks, over-eaters, game-addicts. Do you want the government limiting those activities for everyone because a minority lacks self-control? | | |
| ▲ | throwaway283185 6 days ago | parent [-] | | regulating drugs, highly processed foods, and addictive games sounds good to me. they all exploit vulnerabilities in the human brain. if your product triggers a dump of dopamine, it is suspect. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | What thing do humans do that's not an exploit? Isn't HN also a dopamine exploit? Would you ban it? In other words how do you distinguish between a dopamine exploit and just dopamine? | |
| ▲ | overfeed 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > regulating drugs, highly processed foods, and addictive games sounds good to me. "Regulating" and banning/limiting intake are 2 different things. What's the limit of sucrose you can buy/consume? |
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| ▲ | winrid 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It raises your dopamine tolerance - part of why people tend to get into more and more crazy types of porn to get the same fix (see randy in south park :) ). Also, since your dopamine tolerance is higher, you enjoy real life less, which is bad mkay | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, but that's also true for video games, board games, social media (HN included), and yummy food. Pretty much everything anyone ever enjoys, actually. The difference is that some of them (like, I'm assuming, board games) are associated with other outcomes you want (real life socialization) I am writing this from the tail end of a 4-day techno music festival. I haven't taken any mind-altering substances, but I've enjoyed dancing to the music. Should it be banned? | | |
| ▲ | winrid 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not of the opinion it should be banned. Demonize it, yes. Also I think the repeated daily dopamine spikes, which are also much higher with porn, is much worse. It also probably has an adverse affect on young men that would normally better themselves to find a women. |
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| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't think there's a good way to compare the amounts of these things. I think the best you could do is ask how many bits would be flipped/added/removed had the thing not existed/happened. Porn might involve large media files which gives it an up-front advantage re: "more", but it doesn't create shockwaves the way censorship does. Remove a porn video and the world stays largely unchanged. Undo an act of censorship and, well, maybe the world stays unchanged, or maybe everything is different. | |
| ▲ | gitt67887yt7bg 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I would say we are already pretty severely censored. We no longer have social tools to vet misinformation. We can't publicly insult dumb people and their wrong ideas to their faces. There are people -professional trolls- who, while they should not be deplatformed, should have their ideas publicly scrutinized and yes, humiliated. But we can't do that, because it's cyber bullying, or whatever. Irl, if a crazy person gets on a soapbox and starts shouting at everybody, then people can shout back.
Online, anybody who flamebaits is protected by the platforms and can censor the responses. They delete opposing comments, shadowban users, harsh language usually gets automatically deleted by the platform - and all that shouting-down is actually just counted as "engagement" which algorithmically boosts and spreads the bad idea further. The argument just directly profits the person with the bad idea, and incentivizes them to come up with even worse ideas to make everybody even madder. This kind of censorship is causing a whole lot of problems right now. | |
| ▲ | 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | vitaflo 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can’t have a free market without censorship. It’s one or the other. | | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Maybe that's true of intellectual property, but are you claiming something more general? |
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| ▲ | innocentoldguy 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In some ways, porn is more damaging, isn't it? For example, there's a lot of sex trafficking going on in the porn industry, but not so much in the censorship industry. I strongly oppose censorship and believe that payment processors and banks should be prohibited from engaging in it. Still, I have to admit that porn can be extremely destructive. | | |
| ▲ | swiftcoder 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > there's a lot of sex trafficking going on in the porn industry, but not so much in the censorship industry [citation needed] I'll grant that there is sex trafficking going on at least in the fringes of the porn industry - but that's at least in part because of censorship. If porn production was widely legal and appropriately regulated, there'd be significantly less market for the edgy stuff filmed in Eastern European basements (i.e. the exact same argument as for marijuana legalisation). There are also a bunch of regimes around the world who love censorship, and also engage in a bunch of human trafficking. For example, the UAE is notorious for both widespread censorship, and an entire class of foreign workers in various forms of indentured servitude (which for women is often prostitution)... | | | |
| ▲ | __loam 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There's no evidence in actual psychological literature that porn is harmful to people beyond making some religious folks feel a little more shame than normal. Porn addiction isn't an actual psychological condition. I question the bit about sex trafficking. From my perspective a lot of consenting adults are making a lot of money by willingly participating in the industry. If someone is abusing that and forcing someone to participate, that's already a crime that should be prosecuted. It's not an excuse to shut down commerce between consenting adults. | |
| ▲ | wutwutwat 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | anonzzzies 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or guns. Or payday loans. Or credit card debt. Or credit score. Etc. | |
| ▲ | tempaccountabcd 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | MangoToupe 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Tbh I lost track of what people thought "censorship" is, especially as a pejorative, many years ago. Not only is censorship good, but information is more free than it has been at any point in history. Just pirate the games ffs. | |
| ▲ | ivape 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | One can make a very strong argument that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn. You only need to type any random sexual thing and find any explicit subreddit you want, that’s how pervasive the porn is on even an allegedly non-porn platform. Every other game has basically stripper-level female characters now days. We’ve literally gone crazy. Holistically, you’re talking about a hyper sexualized society where the content and ideology are available at high density and velocity from a pretty early age until the day you die. It’s a problem. The truth is one side is not wrong forever. The Christian right is wrong about so much, but the progression of our society has finally made them mostly correct on this issue. People need to take a deep hard look at what hip hop did to a generation of youth (both the violence and sexuality permeated deep into the culture). None of this shit is a joke, the kids end up fucked up. | | |
| ▲ | southernplaces7 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Take a good look at the world around us, and note especially how the countries in which sexual expression and by extension porn are heavily censored also coincidentally have some of the most sexually repressive and hostile attitudes towards women and consensual intimacy between adults of any kind in real life. People being allowed to express sexuality in sometimes crude and commercialized ways is not what you should be pointing at if you want to mention a dangerous progression of society toward violent attitudes around sex. | | |
| ▲ | ivape 6 days ago | parent [-] | | There are many paths to a fallen society. I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. The answer is always in the middle. I think we've gone pretty far with the proliferation of commercialized sex in the West, and they have gone pretty far with regards to repression in the East. AI is the first time as far as I can remember where just about everyone is considering the ethical and societal implications of it. We really didn't do that for porn, video games, and social media. We're late to the discussion, but a discussion about "how much sex exactly?" is always a discussion that needs to be had. I'd say the same for "how much money exactly?". How much comfort, how much wealth, how much power, how much, how much, how much? |
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| ▲ | redpill12345 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the original days of TheRedPill one of the first things recommended was to drop porn IIRC (also workout and get paid more) The manosphere is probably a very large umbrella of all kinds of views only united by one common trait - being a man. Although you're not wrong that society is hyper sexualised and dating has become increasingly transactional | | |
| ▲ | ivape 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Recommending one drops porn indicates porn a problem for one. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Many things can sometimes be problems. Porn. Video games. Tacos. One time I made myself nauseous by dancing too much (low blood sugar probably). Let's ban dancing, yeah? (Let's ban dancing, I wanna ban dancing with you, all night dancing (it's a reference to a music track)) |
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| ▲ | dontlaugh 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I was with you until the last two paragraphs. There’s nothing inherently wrong with hip hop. | |
| ▲ | gosteinao 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > One can make a very strong argument that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn. This has no bearing in reality. The "manosphere" is mostly neo-conservative guys who are sometimes even performatively against porn. > Every other game has basically stripper-level female characters now days. This used to be a lot more pervasive 20 years ago than now? Altogether with the "hip hop" thing, just feels like prejudiced, outdated arguments without data to back it up. | |
| ▲ | ants_everywhere 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn.... The Christian right is wrong about so much, but the progression of our society has finally made them mostly correct on this issue. I have news for you my friend, the Christian right is fucking people up way more than porn. So is the NoFap/incel movement. There are some pretty fucked up people who see women as breeding machines. This is tied pretty closely to the great replacement conspiracy theory and similar white nationalist conspiracy theories. People who believe this junk promote the idea that porn is bad because they want young men desperately horny so they breed with women either with or without their consent. This is the same reason it was a major priority for them to deny women's rights to their own bodies. | |
| ▲ | __MatrixMan__ 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your characterization of hip hop shoots the messenger. It's the stories of an oppressed people, if you don't like the violence in their stories, blame their oppressor. It's the same with porn and the Christian Right. If people feel incomplete and try to fill that gap with a porn habit, the porn is an indicator of a problem, not the problem itself. Filling that gap with right wing propaganda doesn't address the problem, it just changes it into something that can be used for political advantage. You're missing the root causes here. |
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| ▲ | pstuart 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > the claim is "this is damaging to society" There is some truth to that, but if one were to operate at that level then Facebook would be illegal. Porn is a convenient thing to weaponize anger in your constituents (just like babies not being born). It pushes emotional triggers and riles people up and then they're waiting to be told what to hate/attack next. |
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| ▲ | bobthepanda 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The real debate is which is worse to society, its existence or attempting to ban it. Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea and if anything they have some of the worst gender toxicity. | | |
| ▲ | gitt67887yt7bg 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The real debate has nothing to do with porn. The only reason this started with porn, is because they knew they would get away with taking over the world while everybody is distracted by an unrelated debate. The debate is weather or not credit card providers should ever be able to blackmail independent companies, for any reason they feel like. I say no. | | |
| ▲ | omarspira 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Should the government be able to blackmail credit card companies? Do you really think the credit card companies care where you spend your money? All they want you to do is spend more. They are trying to get out ahead of your own fellow citizens (and their government) who agree with more "censorship" and, at least in this regard, more state control. Unless you have a solution for this strain of American politics focusing on credit card companies is, in this situation, missing the point. | | |
| ▲ | FirmwareBurner 6 days ago | parent [-] | | >Should the government be able to blackmail credit card companies? It's called regulations, not blackmail, and yest the government should, because it's accountable to its people, meanwhile CC companies are not. Everything all companies are allowed to to is regulated by the government. Companies only exist at the mercy of the government, otherwise angry mobs can break in and ransack the place. > Do you really think the credit card companies care where you spend your money? Obviously they do care, when you see their rulings on this matter they care very much(did you not read the articles before commenting?), otherwise they wouldn't be pushing censorship rules on sellers. Or more specific they care about activists complaining how CC companies let you spend your money. |
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| ▲ | godelski 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea
Yet, there's a lot of porn there too. A whole lot of voyeur porn too. As well as prostitution, which is also illegal.Making something legal or illegal is just signaling. The real part is how it actually is implemented in practice. And as you imply, things are pretty complex. We really need to be careful about our own tendencies to want things to be simple. It always backfires... | | |
| ▲ | simplify 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Not being 100% effective isn't backfiring. No law is ever absolutely effective. But making something illegal objectively makes it more difficult to obtain, and is certainly effective at reducing access, even if it's not 100%. | | |
| ▲ | vunderba 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In many cases, bans can have unintended side effects which might make the means of acquiring/distributing/producing "banned X" far worse (aka the cure is worse than the disease). | |
| ▲ | bobthepanda 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | At least in the case of South Korea, all porn is treated equally illegally, so the country has a really high incidence of secret cameras peeping in places like women’s bathrooms, because that’s just as illegal as a scripted porn film. | |
| ▲ | godelski 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're the only one who asserted a percentage. So allow me to clarify, when I wrote that comment I had no belief that a law need be 100% effective for it to be a useful law. I also believe there's a lot of room between 100% effective and "backfiring". I don't believe this is a binary situation but there's a spectrum (that isn't one dimensional) I hope with this added context that my previous comment will make much more sense and you can interpret it closer to what I intended. I'll just add, I don't think most people work in those absolutes. So I'd be wary of jumping to the extreme interpretation. People might interpret you as being disingenuous and using the logical fallacy "logical extreme" or "reductio ad absurdum". But I'm pretty sure you're not doing that because then I'd be grossly misinterpreting you, right? | | |
| ▲ | simplify 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I misread your "It always backfires" comment as making something illegal always backfires, rather than the desire to make things simple always backfires (note that "always" implies 100%). So now I see all you're saying is "be careful", which is fine. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 5 days ago | parent [-] | | This is just how people speak. Sometimes qualifiers are critical, sometimes they are a bit of exaggeration. But always doesn't mean always because only a sith deals in absolutes. |
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| ▲ | pstuart 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | My comment about some truth was to specifically about: * It models unrealistic and possibly unhealthy notions about sexuality
* It can be exploitive of its subjects (yes, sometimes empowering too)
That's kind of it. I don't think it should be banned at all.I believe that "free speech" is critical to a well functioning society, but we need to recognize that it can have negative impacts. A key example is the right-wing Hate Industrial Complex: decades of right wing propaganda have conditioned tens of millions of Americans to consider their fellow citizens as non human. I don't have an answer for how to address this, but you can't fix a problem until you recognize the problem and that it needs fixing. |
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| ▲ | simplify 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > if one were to operate at that level then Facebook would be illegal. Sounds great, where do I sign? Sure ban porn, but IMO ban social media first. Or at the very least, mandate educational materials on it. Kids grow up thinking it's important and it ruins their lives. Brainrot content deadens their sensory inputs. Same thing needs to happen with AI; we seriously need some required education in these spaces. | | | |
| ▲ | Lerc 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You then have to ask, "In what way is it damaging?" Some porn is exploitative, but also so are other things. Why is the attack being made upon porn and not exploitation? If the things being criticised appear in many areas, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that they chose their target because it involves sex, and that is what they have a problem with. | | |
| ▲ | mystraline 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > Some porn is exploitative, but also so are other things. Why is the attack being made upon porn and not exploitation? If we are to talk about exploitation, then capitalism itself is subject to be attacked and prohibited. If we work for a living, we sell our bodies to someone else for a time (40h a week or more). Does it really matter if we work on a factory floor doing parts, sitting and coding at a desk, or having sex in front of a camera? Labor is labor. Sure its the christian 'sex is bad' in various stripes (puritanical to catholic to baptist etc). But in reality, its just different labor. Now, capitalism in exploitive in that you generate X value, and you get a small percentage of your labor's output. Some owner is who collects the surplus. So if exploitation is the problem, then its time to start looking at worker cooperatives, unions, banning shows like Shark Tank, and all the capitalist propaganda. But no, its just 'sex icky'. We won't actually look at the root of exploitation. | | |
| ▲ | simplify 7 days ago | parent [-] | | You're framing of "sex icky" is a common reductionist approach to remove all humanity from the topic and try and make it purely logical. But that's always been a ridiculous way to argue. The human experience has never been pure reason. A picture of a naked person will have wildly different effects than a picture of a dog, even though you could technically say they're both "just pixels on a screen". Reductionism doesn't get an argument anywhere; it's too commonly an intellectually lazy defense of the vulgar. | | |
| ▲ | mystraline 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Remember, that the SCOTUS judgement of what obscenity is defined as, is "I'll know it when I see it". I prefer reductionist rather than the current standard of 'whatever 9 fucks think of it'. | | |
| ▲ | simplify 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Of course you prefer reductionist, because that fits your interest of doing nothing, rather than seeking a solution to the very real destructive consequences of the genre in question. That's what I mean by intellectually lazy. Porn is way easier to define than obscenity, so I don't see that being a problem. |
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| ▲ | throwaway_l33t 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > one were to operate at that level then Facebook would be illegal. This shows a fairly low level of engagement with the sorts of people that are pushing to ban porn. It’s not uncommon for them to be anti-screens, social media, etc. for similar reasons. The movement is often as much an attempt to get kids outsides and reduce the influence of smartphones and the internet on society as it is an attempt to ban porn. |
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| ▲ | themaninthedark 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the exact claim of "hate speech" as well. Often both sexual content and hate speech get added to the same clause. |
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| ▲ | spixy 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Except having virtual sex and threatening to kill/hurt someone in real life are two different things. |
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| ▲ | godelski 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > it's important to note the difference or you will always be arguing against something other than their claim.
I think this is critical insight and applies to a lot of topics. I think it is true for pretty much every heated topic.The mistake we often make is that we believe that the other side is not optimizing correctly. Instead, it is often that they are optimizing but under differing constraints. If we don't pay attention to these differing constraints we'll just end up with infuriating arguments as it will ,,sound like'' we're talking about the same thing, but actually aren't. It's one of the major difficulties of communication: we have to make a lot of assumptions to interpret the other person. Importantly, there's no way to convince the other person that they're wrong unless you are able to understand their model. It's easy to assume you do, but if your model boils down to "they're dumb" or "they're evil" then all you can do is fight. You have to understand your enemy and all that...[0] [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17976-if-you-know-the-enemy... |
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| ▲ | stevenAthompson 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > they are optimizing but under differing constraints Most often this doesn't happen because one side fails to understand the other, it happens because one side is dishonest about their motivations or goals. In this case, the censors would like you to believe that they think pornography is harmful. The reality is that they're religious zealots who feel the need to prevent other people from making their own choices about something their religious leaders have told them is evil. They can't admit their real goal though, or people will realize it's just westernized Sharia law and stop taking them seriously. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 6 days ago | parent [-] | | IME it doesn't help to villainize the other side, it only escalates things. You're right that there are bad actors, but I don't think this is accurate for the majority of people. You need to differentiate the people leading a group from the people within a group. Leaders may be highly manipulative bad actors, but that doesn't mean that the people that they duped are. It may not be good logic, or even self-consistent, but everyone is always using some logic. I'm saying "find it if you want to convince them." Very few people see themselves as evil, or more accurately intentionally choosing evil. And I say this as someone who was once a member of a religion that has its own state. You're not going to pull people out of that by acting like they're evil. They're trying very hard to be good, just misguided. There's an saying that I believe was popularized during the Cold War. I think you should consider it. The difference between you and me is smaller than the difference between us and our respective leaders.
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| ▲ | stevenAthompson 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree with most of what you said, and it was well said. However, I disagree in two ways. Firstly, while villainizing them is unhelpful convincing them is utterly impossible when religion is involved. It doesn't matter if we learn to understand their perspective, especially as logic/reason often doesn't apply and they aren't being honest about their goals and motivations. I think the best anyone can hope for in such cases is for all parties to agree that we all have belief structures, and that we don't get to force those beliefs on others via the law. IE - "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." It's the only rational basis for a society in which different belief systems coexist. The United States used to understand this, but we seem to have forgotten. Secondly, I do agree that it might be easier to reason with folks the further you get from the top of the ladder. The "true believers" who fly airplanes into buildings or who want to outlaw eating candy because it might lead to smiling on a Sunday didn't start down that path last week. The issue with the bottom up approach is that the folks on the bottom seldom have any real power, and for good reason. If pawns were allowed to move backwards they would kill their kings. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > utterly impossible when religion is involved
If that were true, I wouldn't be where I am and we'd be having a very different conversation. I can tell you it wasn't impossible for me | | |
| ▲ | stevenAthompson 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I was going to argue that you seem like a bit of a rare creature, but I suppose you would know better than I. I didn't bring it up because I didn't want it to sound like a personal attack or something. Do YOU feel that it's common for folks to change their minds about such deeply held beliefs? I've met a few over the years that I know of. Maybe there are more, and I just don't realize it. |
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| ▲ | cindyllm 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | lofaszvanitt 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| No, this is killing revenue streams for people. You should be under a company to earn money. The problem is, more stupid the general populace is, more stricter rules will be introduced, otherwise you cannot keep the herd together. |
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| ▲ | docmars 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The other common (valid) argument is that it's easy for children to access this content because they're already using Steam and unless they have mature content filters enabled, it's already trivial to bypass age gates by lying. That said, I don't agree with censorship and especially by payment processors of all groups. The slippery slope is very concerning for adults who would enjoy any other category of content that are targeted by activist groups. Collective Shout has a history attacking media falling outside the porn bubble. |
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| ▲ | globalnode 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Even if thats their claim, I doubt it has evidence. What if its actually beneficial to society? |
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| ▲ | willis936 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We regulate speech based on its damage to society? Well, sounds like a certain canidae TV network ought to be regulated out of existence. |
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| ▲ | FabHK 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Not to mention Facebook and YouTube. | |
| ▲ | mouse_ 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | yeah but that network benefits the rich and powerful people who orchestrate our society |
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| ▲ | melagonster 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They are talking about games, right? Somebody drew/built all of them, unlike porn. |
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| ▲ | Rapzid 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > and I think they should be banned from doing so In general though outside protected classes business can, and should IMHO, have a lot of discretion over who they choose to do business with and how they do business. Unless we want a carve out for payment processors. Treat them as a utility of sorts? Sounds like an interesting idea TBH. To me it's critical though that society has room to moderate itself where the government can not and should not. Something we've lost with social media is the ability to collectively ignore the guy at the bar nobody likes talking to. All the guys from all the bars are on the internet now being very loud. |
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| ▲ | sitharus 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > Unless we want a carve out for payment processors. Treat them as a utility of sorts? Given that there are two payment processors that have about 90% global market share (excluding China) and your bank chooses the payment processor for the most part, yes we should regulate them and force them to process payment for any legal business. They have the ability to effectively determine what we can spend our money on when we can’t get cash to the vendor in person, and almost every alternative processor has to deal with them and is also subject to their rules. The only way around this is via informal networks. Cryptocurrency isn’t an option for many as it’s very hard to obtain, due to the duopoly coercing banks and governments to keep people on their systems. I don’t live in the US, and where I live has a local electronic non-credit card payment system which has been around since the 80s. It’s less popular now because only the card networks support contactless payments instead of swipe/chip and pin. All the systems support contactless use, but banks won’t enable it because it has no interchange fees. | | |
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