Comment on People Are Using AI to Create Influencers With Down Syndrome Who Sell Nudes

• alekwithak@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You’re probably right, but this feels an awful lot like a ‘violence in video games will lead to violence in real life’ argument.

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  • alaphic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    While I don’t disagree with you, what if the violence in the game in question was specifically against people with Down’s Syndrome? I think that may bring it a little closer to being equal - in terms of the analogy, anyway. I don’t think the big problem here is the AI porn necessarily, so much as the fetishization of not just a minority, but one with an impairment. (Which I think is only further compounded by said impairment being largely cognitive/developmental in nature, as well.)

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m fairly sure it’s not legal to create cartoons of children having sex with adults in the USA, so why should it be any different for humans who are mentally children?

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    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Because of legal loopholes I’m certain. They aren’t technically creating images of someone that is legally a minor, despite the fact that those extremely innocent people happen to be older than 18 y/o physically, while being a bit younger mentally. The law is generally extremely slow to close such loopholes, and for good reason. You’re seeing in real time what happens when someone tries to close all the loopholes that they care about. Drumpf just happens to care about loopholes that no one except fascist billionaires care about.

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    • DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We might as well just ban porn altogether.

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  • shani66@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s the same argument. Even if this is a wild new kinda distasteful it’s not going to have any real affects in the real world.

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• Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  While I do wholeheartedly agree that promoting fetitization of marginalized people who are vulnerable is despicable, evil, and just about any other pejorative you can think of, it’s a thought crime.

  It’s not illegal to create digital art (even the disgusting kind) which depicts fictitious grown adults doing grown adult things.

  I would argue that if any such subclass of degenerate exists they already exist. You’re not creating this subclass and any claim of expansion of such a subclass would be anecdotal at best and bullshit at worst. If they’re out there they’re out there. It’s a chicken and egg problem. Which came first, the pornography or the degenerate?

  We have a constitutionally protected right in this country to freedom of expression and that right cannot be infringed simply because you believe that it could lead to more people being taken advantage of. The right to that expression must be protected regardless of repugnant you believe the resultant actions are. As history is shown any number of times the restriction of any right is a slippery slope in any capacity.

  As a society we need to strongly condemn these actions, and we need to ensure that the most vulnerable among us are absolutely protected. But as soon as you start making thought crimes illegal you open the door to any number of machinations. How long before the extreme right use that precedent to start prosecuting individuals for other thought crimes? I would bet my last dollar it wouldn’t take very long…

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m going to take your comment at face value and go with the charitable interpretation that you have sincere beliefs and are sharing them, but I’m also going to explain why doing so is difficult for me and hopefully addressing your points.

    It’s not illegal to create digital art (even the disgusting kind) which depicts fictitious grown adults doing grown adult things.

    True, but someone with a developmental disability in which they remain very much a child for their whole life is clearly a different thing. I am fairly sure that in the US at least, creating digital art of children being involved in sexual situations is illegal, and as such, I believe by extension that since a developmentally disabled person cannot be considered a “grown adult” that arguably the same should be true for them.

    I would argue that if any such subclass of degenerate exists they already exist.

    And I would argue otherwise. There are many, many ideas that I was exposed to throughout my life that had never entered my mental lexicon until the idea was presented to me. Nobody can know everything, and so I don’t actually think this is a chicken and egg problem at all. When someone previously has no idea such a thing even exits, and then is presented with such an idea, definitively, one of those things came first.

    We have a constitutionally protected right in this country to freedom of expression and that right cannot be infringed simply because you believe that it could lead to more people being taken advantage of

    Not everyone lives in the USA. Secondly, that “constitutionally protected right” has literally been hijacked by “free speech warriors” to infiltrate our government with explicit intent to control speech. That’s literally happening right now. Elon Musk is a particularly egregious example of someone deeply hypocritical about this subject, who claims he is a “free speech extremist” and claims that he would never ban any type of speech on his social media… yet does exactly that, literally constantly. I don’t feel the need to show as much here because it’s well documented elsewhere. He also is literally one of the people infiltrating our government and using keyword filters to delete US history from government websites, so extremely that we lost evidence of the Enola Gay and the Navajo Code Talkers. So while in charge of Xitter, it can be argued he isn’t an arm of the government and not restricting free speech on his own website (it can still be argued that his stances don’t match his actions) in his position at DOGE, he is literally an arm of the government screeching about “free speech” while simultaneously banning ideas he doesn’t like.

    Once again in regards to not everyone living in the USA, Europe has many different countries which have very strict speech laws, and none of those countries are facing the same loss of human rights and access to historical information that the US is under a so-called free speech supporting government administration. Germany has long has strict rules against Nazi imagery and Nazi speech since the end of World War II and I would not consider Germany to be slipping into fascism because of it. It’s arguably something that has held the tide of fascism at bay by refusing to let people try to rewrite history, as Musk regularly uses his free speech to do in regards to World War II, like claiming that Hitler didn’t kill anybody, he only ordered others to kill people, and so it’s really the evil bureaucrats who followed his orders who were at fault. The man who gave the orders and the bureaucrats are all at fault, in reality. Free speech advocates often hide behind it to split hairs and attempt to repaint history in vile ways and I don’t personally think having laws that prevent things like, say, holocaust denial, are bad in and of themselves.

    How long before the extreme right use that precedent to start prosecuting individuals for other thought crimes?

    The extreme right are happily using free speech as a shield to do that literally right now and we are literally in a constitutional crisis because of it. Wake up.

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    • Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      True, but someone with a developmental disability in which they mentally remain very much a child for their whole life is clearly a different thing.

      Thinking and behaving like a child because of a developmental disability is the not same as being a child. Even if a person has the mentality of a child they’re still an adult. They have adult rights, and adult responsibilities. The mentally infirm deserve more protections under the law (and they get them) than the average person, but you can’t charge people who crime against those who have developmental disabilities as if they crimed against children. That’s pure and unadulterated insanity and denies reality.

      You seem to be stuck in the idea that those who think like children should be protected like children. And I don’t necessarily disagree with that at face value. But it’s more nuanced than you’re giving it credit for and not something you can do in our legal system because even criminals have rights, and deserve to be charged with crimes appropriate to their crime–as fucked up as that sounds, its how our legal system works. Attempting rape is not the same crime as rape. Even if said criminal had every intention to actually rape, if they didn’t actually rape then you can’t charge them with rape.

      In the same fashion, you can’t charge a person who sexually assaults a person with a disability with child based sex crime simply because the person who was assaulted has the mind of a child. That’s not appropriate and infringes the rights of the criminal. We already have separate laws which address the disparity in the mentally ill’s inability to protect themselves within our laws–and these laws are very important. A sex crime against a woman, and a developmentally challenged woman are already two different crimes, the latter of which can be significantly worse because of the victims inability to protect themselves.

      The extreme right are happily using free speech as a shield to do that literally right now and we are literally in a constitutional crisis because of it.

      They’re trying. Yes. But we still have the constitution. They can try all they want, that doesn’t mean they’ll be successful. They’ve been trying for decades and decades to make being gay illegal, and they haven’t gotten anywhere with it. None of this is new. The issue would be giving them precedence to go off of. If they have that, they can make the case that you actually can make being gay illegal–and you’re going to want to avoid that at all costs.

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    • 3dogsinatrenchcoat@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      someone with a developmental disability in which they mentally remain very much a child for their whole life

      Adults with down syndrome are not “mentally children”. Some people with down syndrome are able to live and function independently, and even among those who don’t, they are disabled adults with higher support needs, not children. Being disabled doesn’t stop time from passing, disabled people still fucking age.

      and you know what else? People with down syndrome are perfectly capable of having consensual sex. Because they’re grown fucking adults who can think for themselves. To declare them children does them a disservice and robs them of their autonomy

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  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s not illegal to create digital art (even the disgusting kind) which depicts fictitious grown adults doing grown adult things.

    In the US and Australia, it actually is illegal to create art of children in sexual situations. I’m sure other countries have similar laws. Some people with Downs are able to provide consent, but not all of them. So it is a murky area whether creating art around people who are unable to provide consent (as opposed to creating art about people who did not consent) is in the same boat as children.

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    • Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      In the US and Australia, it actually is illegal to create art of children in sexual situations.

      I very specifically took the time to include “grown adults doing grown adult things.” Why you chose to overlook that, and post anyways as if I didn’t explicitly exclude anything involving children is beyond my understanding.

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      • atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Because a lot of the reason that child sexual abuse is so horrific and wrong has to do with their developmental age and understanding of what’s happening and ability to give consent. To understand and make an informed decision about what it even means to give consent. And a potentially developmentally challenged adult may not be able to do that. Nobody is overlooking the adult part. They are saying that adult in form doesn’t equal able to act as and make decisions as an adult. You are the one ignoring this to further your argument.

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      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Simmer down. I never said you said anything about children. I was giving a related law that could be invoked in the case of people with Downs syndrome. You said grown adults doing grown adult things in a conversation about AI generated images of people with Downs syndrome. I was saying there are existing laws SIMILAR to what you are talking about but involving children. Many grown adults with Downs are not able to legally give consent and don’t have the capacity to understand what is being done in certain situations, which is the same reasoning for laws around sexual images of children.

        I mentioned all of that in my reply to you. Why you chose to overlook all that and focus only on one sentence is beyond my understanding.

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• PeteZa@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What a fucked up day to be literate.

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• SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Either it’s “violent videogames don’t create serial killers” or “disabled porn causes disabled fetishes”

  You can’t have both old man.

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• Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If it’s illegal as fuck I’m going to be so relieved. It’s so distractingly horrible that I can’t even think clearly

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s not illegal to take advantage of amputees, but it’s definitely illegal to groom and have sex with the mentally disabled, who are classified similarly to children.

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