How could American politicians be so against pornography, when so many keep getting caught with prostitutes?
Typical. Rules for thee I guess.
How the American war on porn could change the way you use the internet
Submitted 3 months ago by BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240723-how-the-american-war-on-porn-could-change-your-internet
Comments
JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
simplejack@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They pander to the Christian nationalists for their votes. They just want power, they don’t actually hold those values.
Cuttlefish1111@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Neither do Christians, it’s the Billionaires
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Because we live in a ravenous corrupt oligarchy barely able to keep the appearance of a functioning democracy.
radivojevic@discuss.online 3 months ago
And kids
Virkkunen@fedia.io 3 months ago
There's probably a name for this just like the "author's barely disguised fetish". Usually when you see politicians campaigning this hard on topics like those, it's probably because they themselves are doing it
PineRune@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They’re against pornography, not prostitutes. There’s a difference, I guess.
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They are also against prostitutes. Sex work is work! Criminalizing it only serves to endanger those who are most at risk.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Pornography and prostitution are different.
One is information, allowing you to dream (maybe of stupid things), another is in the physical world.
I don’t want to think a lot of these parallels, but I’ve noticed that people close to actual government bureaucracies are in general very sceptical of imagined things against physical.
Among other things, consuming pornography doesn’t make you feel powerful, while a prostitute is a real human working for you.
Also 30s’ propaganda had traits clearly aimed at, eh, sexually dissatisfied youth.
So maybe it’s just about feeling their own power, and maybe it’s about returning that device of affecting minds. I dunno
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
It’s entirely about loyalty and institutionalized stratification. Laws are meant to constrain those outside the party, while those within the party are given a lot of latitude.
samus12345@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Bind, not protect, protect, but not bind.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
because they’re conservative, and that’s a thing cons do for some reason. google “i know it when i see it” to get some history on how batshit insane it gets.
masquenox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
when so many keep getting caught with
prostitutessex workers?FTFY. If you’ve ever worked for a living, you’re a prostitute - just like the rest of us.
StaySquared@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You just answered it… ban pornography. It doesn’t ban prostitution.
Kiernian@lemmy.world 3 months ago
For those wondering about the upswing here:
If the age verification movement goes unchecked, it’s possible that you could be forced to tie your government ID to much of your online activity, Gillmor says. Some civil rights groups fear it could usher in a new era of state and corporate surveillance that would transform our online behaviour.
“This is the canary in the coalmine, it isn’t just about porn,” says Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group. Greer says age verification laws are a thinly veiled ploy to impose censorship across the web. A host of campaigners warn that these measures could be used to limit access not just to pornography, but to art, literature and basic facts about sex education and LGBTQ+ life.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Yup, and this is exactly why I plan to use a VPN once my state starts enforcing this law. There’s no way I’m going to show ID to any website unless they absolutely need it. There are very few websites where that’s necessary, so I’ll just use a VPN to a neighboring state (or even to Canada) instead of complying with that nonsense.
I already have to worry about identity theft, I don’t want to make that even easier…
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
i’ve been toying with the idea of hosting deep web porn front ends. Not sure how legal it would be. But morally, you’d be on pretty good grounds.
I mean what 13 year old is using tor browser lmao.
toynbee@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I don’t think there’s any website where it is necessary, excluding ones that adhere to unjustified laws.
m4xie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
It’s not a canary in the coal mine for censoring LGBT information and community, most of the proposed bills outright state that any LGBT related content is covered.
Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’m going to link my ID and look up the most mind blowingly vile, while remaining legal, porn. If they want to talk to me about it, then I am going to make them describe each video before I “remember” what I saw, after which point I will refuse to acknowledge it as porn.
Sure, it’s dumb, but it’s fun dumb.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
it’s not a war on porn; it’s a war on lgbtq people and content. the people pushing for these bills have straight up said that.
BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s a war on both, but especially on LGBTQ people. The fundamentalists are anti-porn in the same way that they are anti-sex in other ways, like opposing sex education.
But it is absolutely part of their strategy to define anything LGBTQ-related as sexual or pornographic, and therefore to criminalize any public visibility of LGBTQ people.
Persen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s a war on any free speech, they don’t like. They could just add more restrictions for certain people.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Exactly. They want to know who is saying what, which is why they’re making these services ask for ID. It’s about control, and “protecting children” is the excuse.
It’s the same reason they’re trying to ban cryptocurrencies like Monero (private, non-traceable transactions), end-to-end encryption, copyright circumvention tech, etc. They want backdoors to access all the information under the guise of “security,” but really it’s about control.
Screw all of it.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
and also a war on porn, the war on porn is the secondary knock on effect of hating queer people.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s not a war, it’s a safari.
I mean, other than surveillance and control, this allows them to feel their power.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Going after the low hanging fruit are thry?
verdantbanana@lemmy.world 3 months ago
eventually men will be charged with murdering millions of kids
Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.
iiGxC@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
Royce dupont on the truth about god and porn: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeeR38i2QqY
paddirn@lemmy.world 3 months ago
From my cold, dead, lubricated hands!
Petter1@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Luckily we have lemmynsfw.com 🥳
dan@upvote.au 3 months ago
Aren’t they going to have the same issue though?
Petter1@lemm.ee 3 months ago
We will see 😁
boatsnhos931@lemmy.world 3 months ago
MAKE PENIS AND VAGINA ILLEGAL!!!
SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 3 months ago
MAKE POINTY FOODS ILLEGAL
(I think it was “penis shaped” in the original version)
snooggums@midwest.social 3 months ago
Armpit and foot fetishists are clearly behind this ban!
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 3 months ago
“If they removed porn from the internet, there would only be one website left and it would be called ‘bringbacktheporn.com.’”
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
We had these kinds of debates when I myself was a minor (in the late 2000s). I would have thought it would be over by now and people would have realized that allowing teenagers to watch porn isn’t actually very harmful to them at all. Seems not, humanity doesn’t get smarter over time.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Idk, I think teenagers watching porn is harmful, but preventing them from watching it is more harmful. As a parent, you want your kids to come to you with any questions or problems, and locking down everything breaks every ounce of trust you might have with them.
My state is doing this crap, so I’m installing a VPN on my wifi to a state w/o these stupid laws so my kids can make their own choices.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Humanity is smart, those making such laws 1) want the information collected by identifying people, not to forbid porn, 2) just hate autistic people. Because non-autistic teenagers will find something. But then, TBH, autistic ones too.
Dempf@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
It was already settled long ago by the Supreme Court, but evangelicals are trying to use private action as a way around it, and I bet they’re hoping that one of several current lawsuits makes its way up to our new and corrupt court.
ColdWater@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
So USA slowly becoming China now? What’s next VPN users will face jail time?
MehBlah@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Not Americans in the sense I see it. Flag pissing regressives is what they are. A minority that gerrymanders their way into power and pushes their childish backward thinking on the real Americans. May the rot in their closets from which they only emerge every four years to crash grinder.
RustyNova@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Why are they even in war against porn?
/j lust is just the second layer, try doing something about worse stuff like greed or gluttony
tal@lemmy.today 3 months ago
How the American war on porn could change the wat you use the internet
looks slightly annoyed
I’m not particularly enthusiastic about such state laws, but the UK spent the last several years having committed to mandate age verification itself prior to eventually abandoning it, and I didn’t see Voice of America trying to get people in the US riled up about British law.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Proposed_UK_Internet_age_verif…
And if I recall, they had some follow-up effort, which I assume is what is briefly referenced in the article.
looks
Yeah.
…org.uk/…/guidance-service-providers-pornographic…
Implementing the Online Safety Act: Protecting children from online pornography
This is the second of four major consultations that Ofcom, as the appointed online safety regulator, will publish as part of our work to establish the new regulations under the Online Safety Act (2023).
Currently, services publishing pornographic content online do not have sufficient measures in place to prevent children from accessing this content. Many grant children access to pornographic content without age checks, or by relying on checks that only require the user to confirm that they are over the age of 18.
The Online Safety Act is clear that service providers publishing pornographic content online must implement age assurance which is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a user is a child to prevent children from normally encountering their online pornographic content.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 months ago
3 boats of Puritans and we still all have to suffer.
kokesh@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If I was a teenager, I would find a way.
Eggyhead@lemmings.world 3 months ago
A side thought: what would the world look like if you needed to be 18+ to make a social media account?
schlegelt1@lemmy.world 3 months ago
First they came for the porn.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
This should give the dems all they need.
“You do what you need to do in that voting booth, we don’t judge”.
ICastFist@programming.dev 3 months ago
No doubt this is all BigVPN’s fault!
~/s~
thorbot@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Don’t care I just generate my own anyway
synae@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
laughs in california
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 months ago
"Could" is the important word here. In other contries, we long have laws making age verification mandatory. It's just that it's a popup asking "Are you over 18?" And you can click whatever you want. Also the companies are in different jurisdictions, don't comply with local law while the internet spans the globe. I don't see any substantial difference here.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 months ago
That’s irrelevant. This argument assumes that age verification laws will reduce children’s consumption of porn. The war on drugs has shown us that prohibition of this kind of stuff doesn’t reduce anything and only ever males it woese. All that will happen is children (and adults) will now go to worse/less moderated websites which will on average have more CSAM and other real sexual abuse.
GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 3 months ago
True. But the people advocating for these laws don’t want to deal with nuance and compromise on what it would take to have a society where you educate people on sex in a healthy and positive way. These prohibitionists see the world as either bad or good - nothing in between. Good (how ever they decide to define it) must win no compromises, and the weapon that they use is unfounded fear of the bad and it works.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I think the part about IDs is what’s important. They are not against porn, it’s just a good excuse to account for another part of your activities. Which may be used to classify you or even blackmail you, but I think knowing your preferences is enough. It may allow secret services to predict whom you may like or may not.
Naturally it will allow to track you.
There are many factors affecting energy spent on doing something.
I personally think that this timeline is fucking bullshit and we got there by always choosing the lesser evil, so libertarian (you may make it left-libertarian, I genuinely don’t care about left-right division because it’s mostly traditional and imaginary) revolutions in all the civilized countries are long overdue.
Not even libertarian, maybe the Empire at War: Forces of Corruption game was onto something. Maybe the left-right and libertarian-statist distinctions are obsolete for our time just like Roman optimates-populares distinction. Maybe we need some new line, formalist-naturalist (as in formal law versus natural law) or something. Where the former part would be existing political mechanisms and the latter part would be saying “no” to fools, thieves and bandits.
skaffi@infosec.pub 3 months ago
If you were a teenager, back when online porn were all pay sites, and so you were using Kazaa/Limewire instead, then you know.
collapse_already@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
That’s not Jenna. That’s a snuff film.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
That was never a thing. I grew up in the 90s and I could easily find free porn websites. My main limitation was dial-up internet, not knowing where to find it…
sentientity@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Pretty sure the normalization of sexual violence and harmful attitudes came from the adults in my life. If parents and teachers adequately teach kids to identify those things and know that they are unequivocally wrong, then teens who see unhealthy stuff in porn will notice and be critical of it. Probably indignant, too, since no one is more justice focused than a teen who has just learned something about the world.
The issue is backward ideas about relationships being reinforced by adults, either through active misogyny or just never talking about it. This argument boils my blood because the porn itself is not the problem. Awful attitudes about relationships and women start very early and they often come directly from parents themselves.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 months ago
Interesting. Maybe it’s projection about the porn THEY watch?
Lightor@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The word “can” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. A lot of things “can” have negative effects.