Olives @olives@qoto.org

Reposting for #ukpol, although it wasn't written for that tag. Despite the scant / non-existent evidence for porn being such a bogeyman, it keeps getting cast as a scapegoat which is quite frustrating, so I am going to have to go over this... Again.

Even if online porn "might" be "problematic" to someone out there, it would not be anywhere remotely near proportionate to engage in censorship (or privacy intrusive measures, which among other things might pose a security risk), especially as it can be free expression to someone, and expression which someone might casually share as part of their more general interaction / engagement with others.

Sometimes, restrictions can lead to services becoming inaccessible entirely, rather than simply limiting them to people over a particular age.

A typical recommendation is sex education (perhaps, teach someone about respecting others boundaries?), not censorship (which is harmful in it's own ways). I don't mean criticizing someone for telling an offensive joke.

The science isn't really showing porn is this awful thing:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2015.1023427
https://psyarxiv.com/ehqgv/
Two studies showing porn is not associated with sexism. One carried out by German scientists, another carried out by Canadians.

https://qoto.org/@olives/110462274531891870
American scientists carried out a meta analysis of 59 studies. They found porn isn't associated with crime. A meta analysis is a study where someone studies studies.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31432547/
Nor does it necessarily seem this is the case among adolescents (the meta analysis also points to that). Here, the minors who used more porn engaged in less sexual aggression.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault
https://qoto.org/@olives/110400288665794817
There are even studies (across the United States, Japan, Finland, and more) showing that porn is associated with less crime, even among criminals.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31042055/
While an older Dutch study showed there might be worse levels of "sexual satisfaction" among adolescents using porn, a Croatian lab failed to replicate that.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637
This is a meta analysis on sexualization in video games. It finds that studies tend to pick cut-offs where it's difficult to distinguish signal from noise. This increases the number of false positives.

There are also results which contradict the theory of sexualization being harmful. In the end, it fails to find a link between this and sexism, and this and mental well-being.

I'm also usually sceptical of apparent links, as the "scientific pile on effect" (as one described it) drives people to go looking for "links" between porn and "something bad" however tenuous it might be, or methodologically flawed an approach it might be (and later, that something is debunked, or the "link" is a phantom due to methodological limitations).

I could add it doesn't matter if they're "child-like" or "fictional children", (this is far, far more likely to hit someone good than someone bad who don't need it, and a bad actor could still do bad things)*. This necessarily excludes involvement of abuse or invasions of privacy. If it were actual real children, I'd oppose that on ethical grounds (though, I still wouldn't want to burn down the Internet / sites, because of unwanted bad actors). This is covered above but it is also kind of common internet sense.

While I'm not making a point about anything in particular, to inoculate you against potential problematic arguments, it's worth mentioning the basic precept that correlation does not imply causation.

Let's use ice cream as an example. Everyone loves ice cream, right? Well, I like ice cream. This also happens to be used as a classic example by others for this sort of thing.

Anyway, ice cream is correlated with crime. No one would say ice cream causes people to go out and commit crimes though. Just because there is a "correlation" doesn't mean it is meaningful. And that's not the only way in which correlation might not imply causation. For instance, warm weather is a far more compelling explanation for this phenomena. That might come in useful somewhere...

Here's a couple which were added for auspol:

https://reason.com/2015/07/23/despite-all-the-panic-millennial-teens-h/ U.S. data shows teens are having less sex with each other (in a world with more porn).

Misapprehensions about porn can be more about expressions of sexual orientations than porn. In fact, we've seen an Australian news outlet specifically singling out "anal sex" as a negative thing not that long ago, who would that disproportionately impact? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29702013/ Also, moralizing can be harmful (and ineffective).

Typically, responsibility is put on individuals to behave in a manner that is reasonable to them, instead of looking for a scapegoat whenever someone behaves in a manner which could be argued to be negative. This isn't to discount external factors (i.e. socioeconomic ones) entirely but there isn't always something sensible which can be done. People live their own lives.

We might also want to look at how alcohol is handled. We tend to look at this through the lens of personal responsibly, that someone is reasonable for consuming it responsibly, and not behaving inappropriately. Now, alcohol is not the same thing as porn, it is an actual substance, not some pixels on the screen. It further illustrates though how strange and unusual the idea of censorship here is.

Quite a few things which might get blamed on "the porn" are actually general mental health issues which could be dealt with more normally, and crucially, without conflating it with porn (which might even detract from dealing with someone's actual issues).

In fact, online censorship has increased in quite a few ways over the past few years and it doesn't appear to be any sort of panacea. It has, however, created a number of harms in it's own right, including even murder by practically forcing some sex workers to work with more dangerous clients. It also provides a space for abusive bigots to dwell in.

An addendum (from another post which might be useful to add useful context, we won't delve too deeply into this section):

An additional bit on why "porn censorship" (perhaps, even some themes) is bad.

Some points about censoring fictional content there (censorship is a bad idea):

It might fuel someone's persecution complex, especially in the context of *. The idea of a dangerous world where people are out to get them. Feeds anxiety, alienation. It's happened a fair bit. It doesn't seem to do anything positive.

Someone might be more inclined to see someone as an idiot or crazy (that's not wrong, lol). In any case, it poisons the well as someone is not seen to be credible or competent in these matters at all. Promoting distrust doesn't seem like a positive outcome.

It violates someone's free expression. People have these things called rights, that's important. This point comes from the original post, I'm aware I've covered this here more generally, still there may be value in reaffirming it.

Bad people don't need it. They could still do bad things. Good people are who'd suffer.

It violates the Constitution. Multiple constitutions.

Punishing someone because they resemble someone unpleasant isn't good. Also, due process still applies, in any case...

Can be a coping mechanism.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/may/22/more-than-half-the-world-cannot-speak-freely-report-finds
"Half the world’s population cannot freely speak their mind according to a new report on freedom of expression.

In its annual report, the advocate group Article 19 found the number of people facing a “crisis” in freedom of speech and information was the highest this century after a sharp rise from 34% in 2022 to 53% in 2023."
#FreeSpeech

"keyword lists"

I wanted to cover this, because I'm seeing a bad faith British individual talking as if this is some sort of silver bullet or panacea for society's ills. In practice though, if you actually have familiarity with how systems work, you will know that this will run into a mountain of issues and be of questionable efficacy.

One classic issue someone might run into is the Scunthorpe Problem (which is ironically coined after an algorithm kept finding apparent "profanity" inside the names of locations in the U.K., such as S|cunt|horpe (Scunthorpe) and Penis|tone (Penistone), the | is there to make it easier to see how the algorithm read the words). One incident in the U.K. even had the mail filters of MPs reject emails discussing legislation regarding *sexual offenses*.

Another infamous example was when the abbreviation for Combat Power (CP) in the popular game, Pokémon Go, was presumed by an algorithm to mean Child Pornography (CP), and content was subsequently censored.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScunthorpeProblem
You can read more about the general issue here.

Naturally though, you have people wandering in, ignoring all these past issues, and thinking they know better, complaining about why someone hasn't done something supposedly "simple" (which is not necessarily effective).

Someone also has to think of the context. Someone has to be able to discuss a subject without being at risk of being arbitrarily censored.

There is also silliness where someone gets mad at websites which deal primarily in fictional content without actual actors because of some silly keyword. Also, there was one where a weirdo at an American finance firm looked through the lens of his machine translator reckoned someone's joke about "abuse" in a foreign language must mean that something evil is going on and entire foreign equivalents to YouTube need to be shutdown.

#FreeSpeech

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/03/04/indiana-u-abandons-plan-spin-part-kinsey-institute
"The Indiana University Board of Trustees unanimously agreed Friday to jettison a controversial proposal to spin off part of the #Kinsey Institute as a nonprofit.

The proposal came after the Republican-dominated Indiana General Assembly passed a state budget in spring 2023 banning the historic sex research institute from receiving state funds."

"But faculty members publicly expressed fears that such a change might mean losing their affiliations with the institute and could threaten, among other things, the institute’s extensive sex, gender and erotica collections, which span more than 2,000 years of history."

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211949718/the-kinsey-institute-faces-possible-separation-from-indiana-university

"Indiana University trustees will decide whether to partially sever the University's long standing ties with the famous organization."

"Defunding became a reality earlier this year when freshman Republican Representative Lorissa Sweet pushed a successful amendment to cut any state funds for #Kinsey. She claimed that Kinsey researchers are conducting sexual experiments on children."

"Democrat Matt Pierce, who represents the district where Indiana University is located, said those false claims have long been debunked."

I'll put this on hashtags (someone requested that) but I don't think they're active.

#sexology

I covered this before in part but I'm not really a fan of third party URL shortener type services.

It's hard for a user to know where any particular link goes.

There *is* a way for a computer to dereference the link to figure out where it goes (I'm not sure if this makes requests or not to the server after a link service's server, I haven't looked into the technical details of it, I know such tools exist though), but a user would not only have to know about that tool, they would also have to manually put the URL into the tool to figure out where the link goes. That's not very user friendly.

Also, links appear to drift over time. One possible cause of this is the link expiring. That can theoretically be a security risk where a user encounters an old link and it points somewhere unexpected. Even without that case though, it's not a good experience for users.

A short URL also doesn't really add value. I have never seen a situation where someone has a shortened URL and I think "gee, this short URL is a great idea, I always have a bit of irritation as I can't immediately figure out where on earth the thing goes.

These things might also constitute a #privacy risk...