[inDigiNeous]

Well, censoring porn is one of the things I would happy to be censoring.

Although this leads down a steep road easily to censor other content also, yet for a long time I have wondered why is it so easy to find porn, and why is nobody doing anything about it ?

Porn is probably one of the major addictive behavioural and thought changing things in this world currently. It takes under 3 seconds to find porn if you want it, probably from any device from anywhere around the world. Is this what humanity wants to optimize for ?

Porn causes distortions in how you think about women, how you sexualize over them and what kind of thoughts you have about women generally. It is very addictive, and leaves you with an empty feeling afterwards.

It can be violent, disturbing, abusive to the people involved and can cause mass scale feelings of not being enough, not being good enough to compared to the people showing you how "sex" should be had.

And yet almost everybody just silently accepts that porn is okay, and nothing should be done about it.

We give 5 year olds smartphones which can lead to the most disturbing porn scenes by just googling a couple of words, within a minute you could be watching somebody just abusing young women violently, and yet this is accepted.

I am all for free speech and that, but I think we have a blind spot here. Probably it is because we are addicted to this as a nation, as a species.

I wish the big players would decide to ban porn, or at least make it substantially harder to find it. It's just a freaking stupid idea that we give our children these devices at very young ages, and almost nobody is doing anything about filtering or limiting what kind of content is available to them in this manner.

Don't you agree ?

[sixhobbits]

Well, banning kitchen knives is one of the things I would be happy to see.

Although it could lead to bans of other useful equipment in future, I've always wondered why it's so easy to find kitchen knives and no one is doing anything about it.

Kitchen knives are probably the most dangerous equipment in the world. Whether at home or travelling, most people can get their hands on one in minutes.

People harm themselves and others with knives. Whether it is a planned domestic murder, a break in and robbery, or someone seeking to end their own life, knives can always be found and used.

They're often kept in drawers or on counter tops where even 5-year-olds can reach them.

I am all for home cooking, but I think we have a blind spot here. Probably because everyone needs food.

I wish the big players would ban knives or make it substantially harder to buy.

I know we could also teach people the dangers of knives from a young age and train them to use them safely but this just doesn't seem worth the tradeoff.

Don't you agree?

[zer00eyz]

Wait till you hear about "Glassing" in UK pubs.

[sterlind]

I'm a woman. I watch porn. I've made porn (well, I've posted nudes online.) I definitely don't think it's twisted the way I see women (or, like, myself.) I'm pretty done with men deciding what's in my best interest though.

[za3faran]

There are women on board with this as well, it's not just men. That narrative doesn't work.

[Majestic121]

This is not about you, or keeping you from doing whatever you want with your body. It is about an addictive behavior impacting the life of millions of men : https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/miscellaneous-resources/star...

[inDigiNeous]

What about the predatory nature of the industry ? 18 year olds being hunted down to "act" in these pieces, mostly by older men who are just using these women for their own pleasure and financial benefits.

Is this okay ?

[sterlind]

People have agency. Set an age of majority and treat those above it like adults. It's a hell of a lot better than infantilizing women and chauvinistically "protecting" us from exploitation.

I feel like I'm finally starting to understand how burqas took off. This kind of moral panic. Keeping us safe from the lecherous eyes of men.

[za3faran]

You can read up about Islamic and pre-Islamic Arabia from authentic (Muslim) sources regarding the Hijab and Niqab. No one is moral panicking.

[dns_snek]

> What about the predatory nature of the industry ? 18 year olds being hunted down to "serve", mostly by older men who are just using these young men for their own political and financial benefits.

Your complaint could just as easily be applied to the US army and the consequences there are often much more severe. Food for thought.

[brabel]

How do you know how these actors get into the business? Have you watched that BBC documentary about the porn industry? If anything I came out with the impression there's a huge supply of young girls and men willing to come for auditions anywhere... have you ever been young? I don't know about you, but if I had the chance to do porn at a younger age, I would've totally done it.

I think you may be actually believing those "exploited girl f*s for acting job that doesn't exist" are actually real LOL??

[defrost]

Sounds like good reason to better educate young people in general about the predatory nature of others and the many way in which they can be exploited without them realising.

[zer00eyz]

Is this okay?

No

But neither is chocolate, coffee, minerals mined in Africa, Gulf oil. You know child labor, slavery, exploitation.

We can talk about saving the 18 year old who should know better after we spend the day slapping cell phones and mocha caps out of people hands in front of Starbucks.

Then we can try to save 18 year olds, Im fairly sure that a good number of them are going to tell us to fuck off were poor with their only fans money.

[tennisflyi]

Average age is closer to early 20s. Look at any agency and their roster…

[albertopv]

"We give 5 year olds smartphones"

Well, maybe don't do it? Maybe not until they are 12yo or something like that? My feeling is many parents don't want to parent at all and so they delegate to smartphone, tablets and TVs. Parents should go back to be more...parents.

We don't have an ipad exactly because otherwise my 6yo would like to play with it (her friends have one) instead of going out and play outside. In my opinion children should not have a smartphone, do tangible stuff and games.

[inDigiNeous]

Well, I dont do that.

But what are you going to do about the majority of people doing this ? And children looking at their phones. I've heard of tales of second graders looking at porn together while on recess, that is the world we now live in.

There should be some good defaults. I agree with you totally, it makes no sense to give under 10 year olds smart phones.

[brabel]

> But what are you going to do about the majority of people doing this ?

What the hell, why do you care what other parents do or not do?? How about we let them make their own choices?! Geez, what kind of authoritarian mindset is this kind of argument coming from?

[alienicecream]

Do you have children?

[MandieD]

Because unless I want to be one of those snotty mothers who will only allow my child to associate (play, do sports, go to school) with the children of other parents who don’t allow their children unsupervised access to mobile devices, my child will effectively also have unsupervised access to mobile devices. Probably not when he’s 6 or 7, but definitely by the time he’s 9, if one of his less-supervised classmates has a smartphone, my kid will be seeing all sorts of things I’d rather he not see before he’s in his teens.

I’d like for my kid to grow up with kids from all backgrounds, not just the children of those of us who have been exposed to tech for so long and so deeply that our concern for its downsides on our kids outweighs the temptation (which is less when your life is easier) to shove a mobile in a fidgety toddler’s hand or pay 10 EUR/mo to give a primary school kid a reliable distraction.

[ako]

I’d prefer if we’d start by censoring violence and religion. Religion is just a big lie to manipulate people.

[fsckboy]

> I’d prefer if we’d start by censoring violence and religion. Religion is just a big lie

you are in favor of censoring violence from video games? you're not lying? and you said "start by", so you'd be on board censoring pornography too so long as it started with censoring violence and religion?

I have a sense you didn't mean any of that.

[CommanderData]

Religion controls people. Whether you think it's a lie is up to you & subjective.

Laws are based on someone else's ideas and those ideas control you.

[jemmyw]

Well given religions are all different and only one could be true, it's more correct to say they're all a lie. One might be true. However, as old ones have died away and new ones will be created and the current ones evolve it's not even possible to say that any one religion is subjectively true to itself.

[barrysteve]

They have different beliefs, but it's all the same God.

You can't know enough in this lifetime to judge them to be objective or subjective lies. Just getting through the magisterium is more reading than one lifetime, let alone the other old judeo-christian 'usual suspects' faiths.

Replacing your category of God and religion with 'its all a lie' is very dangerous and distasteful to read.

[jemmyw]

The inside and outside perspective. (1) If you're religious and inside then it's so important to you, it makes no sense to casually dismiss the ideas that are ingrained in your life about the ideas of God and religion.

(2) If you're like me, on the outside and not religious, can you understand that I can shrug those off and call them a lie very easily, because they don't matter to me at all? From the outside it is like people getting upset that you've insulted something in Harry Potter books.

Face to face with people I'm more mindful and just don't talk about this kind of thing unless its with like minded people. On a technical forum like this, I'm not going to hold back with my real opinion though. You have a choice to read or not, and to consider (2). I do not wish to offend you by writing off your beliefs. But to an atheist who does not think about religion much at all, it is a bunch of nonsense.

[barrysteve]

Engaging in blunt conversation on here is valuable to me aswell. It can be difficult to summarize a topic like religion (so much to say) that I know exists, but isn't directly my faith. Protection from offense is not something I need in my faith, though I understand sensitivity to offense is common in American-focused websites.

You are free to say whatever you want and I love that freedom. I want it too.

I believe saying that God and religion is a lie, is something you can do as an atheist and be fine.

But if taken as a statement of truth about God and a foundational axiom, you can end up in nihilism and a 'bad place', speaking loosely, quickly.

In discussing porn and the way we all have to live together in society, I'm not willing to casually throw away the moral implications of porn and the moral logic of the conversation about porn.

Making porn a matter of faith, religion, atheism or belief is a policy mistake to begin with. If it has measurably damaging outcomes to our youth, the case should be much clearer about the boundary between freedom and delayed gratification.

My blunt(-ish) $0.02.

[marak830]

Reading someone defending religion is distasteful to read, yet here we are.

Edit: I shouldn't have posted this as I was not adding to the conversation, just defending the GP's position. I'll leave it anyway though.

[barrysteve]

No, you're right. I was glib and mildly judgey. I made a mistake too.

[GoblinSlayer]

Some laws were lobbied through lies too.

[rhn_mk1]

By this logic, we could decide to censor violence, religion, social media, subcultures, sugar, the study of chemistry, and perhaps coffeine. I don't think it's a blind spot. It's a deliberate decision not to be overprotective. Should it be the government's responsibility to censor anything that people easily get into with bad consequences?

[midoridensha]

>By this logic, we could decide to censor violence, religion, social media, subcultures, sugar, the study of chemistry, and perhaps coffeine.

I totally agree: "coffeine" should definitely be banned or restricted. Caffeine from tea, however, is fine.

[inDigiNeous]

I'm not saying it should be the governments responsibility.

And governments are already heavily censoring and trying to kill child pornography, religion and certain political views, so why would this be so different ?

It should be our responsibility as humans and parents to protect our children. If we are not thinking about our children and protecting them from content that could be potentially life changing and addictive for the rest of their lives, why are we not stepping up to the plate and doing that ?

[rhn_mk1]

The government's responsibility is that the government passes the laws to censor things, not that it does the dirty work of actual censorship.

Censoring religion and political views is regarded as a violation of human rights, so while this is different, I do agree that it should be treated the same.

I agree with the need to protect people from bad influences, but the government is not the only entity that's capable of protecting. Traditionally, that role has also been fulfilled by the social network and the person in question themselves. I don't see the urge to shove it all off on the government, except in cases where the social network is failing to protect, e.g. in the cases of crime.

There's a balance to be hit between the ability to take risk and the negative consequences. Best example is personal vehicles which cause life changing consequences when they go wrong, sometimes ending lives altogether, and doing this reliably to thousands of people every year.

[GoblinSlayer]

>why would this be so different ?

That's literal slippery slope. What is different?

[marak830]

"And governments are already heavily censoring and trying to kill child pornography, religion and certain political views, so why would this be so different ?"

Child pornography: of course! Religion: ... What ? Which ones? Certain political views: of course we ban Nazis... That's what you meant right?

[inDigiNeous]

I did not mean Nazis. Have you even followed the censorship in Twitter for example and the situation that is unraveling now ?

We already ban certain views, but yet, pornography: no. It's not important enough, and as seen here by the downvotes, many people are addicted to it and cannot understand what I tried to message.

[sacnoradhq]

Mind your own business. It's not your place to decide what other people watch or do.

[kergonath]

> Although this leads down a steep road easily to censor other content also, yet for a long time I have wondered why is it so easy to find porn, and why is nobody doing anything about it ?

Why should we do anything about it? I’ve never seen a cogent argument. It always boils down to “I don’t like it” and “but the children”. Other people don’t have to care if I like something, and the children would benefit much more from true sex education, so that they get the knowledge they need from more valid sources than entertainers. Same as with abortion, really. If you don’t like it, then prepare your children to make enlightened choices and avoid problematic behaviour.

> It can be violent, disturbing, abusive to the people involved and can cause mass scale feelings of not being enough, not being good enough to compared to the people showing you how "sex" should be had.

Then we need to prosecute instances of actual abuse and exploitation. But that would mean actually listening to victims (including, yikes!, women). Exactly like we do with violent content: who cares if you post yourself shooting your AR-15 on YouTube? But shooting your school mates is crossing a line. Why are we so mentally defective as soon as sex is involved?

[GoblinSlayer]

> We give 5 year olds smartphones which can lead to the most disturbing porn scenes by just googling a couple of words

If you want something done about it, use parental control.

[Xylakant]

And maybe don’t hand smartphones to 5 years olds unsupervised.

[LispSporks22]

You do you. Leave everyone else alone.

[inDigiNeous]

By this logic we should not try to even protect our kids from anything.

[CommanderData]

People freaking out here seem to not have kids.

I don't know a parent in the real world that would allow their child access to any porn.

[raincole]

> Don't you agree ?

No.

[thriftwy]

Going to the bathroom is nasty, poop is icky, smells are highly unpleasant and there's often crap in the streets (it can also be used for revenge or abuse)

Let's discourage defecation by banning toilet paper.

[midoridensha]

I don't see a problem with this actually. Toilet paper is nasty and should be eliminated. If toilets all had washlets, you wouldn't need TP, except for drying yourself, but that could be done with a blow-drier added to the washlet.

In civilized countries, washlets on toilets are normal and standard, even in most public restrooms.

[M5x7wI3CmbEem10]

[deleted]

[mahkeiro]

No as it's almost impossible to attribute these effect to porn as porn is too widely spread among women and men, and most of the "porn behavior" existed before that porn was universally consumed. Strangely most of these studies talked about men behavior when women consume a lot of porn.

This is the same kind of things you hear about gay, role playing games, metal music, video games, rap music that are all rotting the brain of young people.

[GoblinSlayer]

Prudes having permanent hysteria is not what I would call healthy social interactions.

[inDigiNeous]

I understand the censorship argument also, and to be honest expecting also people defending their right to watch porn, the addiction is real.

Porn is like a thought virus, if you watch it enough you will start to think about all these things you see visually about the women in your life and people around you. Many people might not want to admit this, and will just spew out silly comments defending porn, maybe they are addicted to it and like to watch it.

Then go ahead, I'm not saying you should not be able to watch porn. I'm saying _by default_, things like porn should be more harder to find and access.