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> I really wish law enforcement would enfoce laws, and payment processors would process payments. I'm usually on the same page. But it is really hard to feel s

> I really wish law enforcement would enfoce laws, and payment processors would process payments. I'm usually on the same page. But it is really hard to feel sorry for Pornhub, they're not Good Guys. The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. OnlyFans is a relationship simulator for lonely men and as such exploitative. Using the gray corporate term "sex work" mis-characterises the soul-sucking debasedness of it all. It turns everyone into a consumer along its path, and the effects it has on gender relations and family formation are devastating. But I'm fully aware this is a minority opinion on HN.

pas 6y ago
> The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. Sources? Also you seem to let's assume unintentionally mixing porn with its production modes, its ecosystem, all of its problems, plus the mental health problems of rich men, and so on.
deftnerd 6y ago
You could make the same argument about so many different things. E-cigarettes or junk food is not a net win for civilization. What about addictions to video gaming? Donating to political parties that you think are against progress? It boils down to the fact that you're wanting to let opinions on "how things should be" steer availability of core economic infrastructure, rather than relying on the legal system which is more properly setup to come to these conclusions.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  Nah I just said its hard to feel sorry for them. I don't think payment providers should be politically partial. EDIT Oh PornHub is now implementing the following measures: a.) allow uploads only from verified users; b.) no downloads; c.) improvements in moderation Maybe I'm actually for this then. Apparently this is what it takes.
Miner49er 6y ago
Yeah, sex is just another thing to be commodified. Eventually it might be difficult to have sex without someone making a profit.
- krapp 6y ago
  To be fair, sex has been a commodity since... probably before humans evolved sapience, since sex trades exist among other primate species. There's a reason the "world's oldest profession" is what it is.
joe_the_user 6y ago
The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation It doesn't matter. Or rather, if the only idea you have for solution to the situation is repression, it doesn't matter what you think of the impact of porn because you're not going to stop it, you're just going to create "porn and repression, together" just like the war on drugs created drugs and repression together. Guns and small pox weren't net wins for a lot of societies they were introduced in but once things start with certain processes, you kind of need to find mitigation, not a heavy handed repression. And sure, a better for people to relate together than exists currently would be great but shoving the genie back in the bottle isn't going to it.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  It is interesting that you equate the consumption of porn to a physically addictive substance. Also, that you equate the existence of the porn industry with a virus such as small pox, and claim that it is equally impossible to get rid of. I don't think either of these is true. Why do you think it is? You also paint the picture of a new porn-DEA. I don't know what to say to that, except that I don't favour Sharia Law. I posit that the ever expanding scope of liberalism with regards to intra-sex dynamics is the (or, at one of the) causes of much despair and grief, because they inhibit pair-bonding, family formation and are deeply non-lindy for various reasons. We see this in the number of older women taking anti-depressives, we see this in levels of male celibacy unprecedent since the middle ages, and collapsing populations all over the western world. None of these questions and dilemmas are new, they are as old as time. The idea that the rules have suddenly become invalid is naive at best, and destructive at worst. This will be non-obvious if you approach this from the viewpoint of enlightenment philosophy. It will become quite obvious if take the historical perspective on human behaviour and how societies function.
elric 6y ago
Paying for porn is a good thing. Platforms where money goes directly to content creators are the best way of going about that. But even PH is pretty good at paying artists who use their platform. What PH is really bad at is content moderation. Should they improve that? Absolutely. Is this grounds for legal action? Maybe it is. Is this a good reason to boycott them as an individual? Go for it! But is this a reason for a payment processor to get involved? I think it's not. But you're free to disagree. As for "soul-sucking debasedness", please stop imposing your sense of morality onto others. Yes, there are some people who are forced into porn for various reasons, and we as a society should try to prevent that -- just like we should try to prevent all kinds of abuses. But there are many people who enjoy working as porn stars. Don't judge them.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  > But there are many people who enjoy working as porn stars. Don't judge them. If tolerance is the highest value, you have arrived at the end of values itself, because everything must be acceptable. I do not subscribe to that point of view. I do not applaud that which I find to be destructive for a world worth living in.
iloveitaly 6y ago
This is a minority opinion, but I very much agree. https://fightthenewdrug.org https://fightthenewdrug.org has the data. I'd be curious to understand data or reasoning that makes a compelling argument for the contrary ("porn is great or neutral for society").
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. Is porn/sex work really being "normalized" in a historically contextual way? Outside of about the last seventy years (maybe less), prostitution and sex work were extremely common, and, compared with the modern era, basically not criminalized. I'm not aware of a body of research that demonstrates a causal relationship between the consumption of porn and any social ill. I'm also not sure if I feel like I'm in a position to decide if OnlyFans customers would be better off without that outlet.
- philwelch 6y ago
  Video content that people can consume in the privacy of their own home has only really existed for 50 years or so.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    The theory being that video porn is substantially more harmful than actual use of prostitution services? It doesn't seem impossible, but I'd want to see some stronger evidence.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      It’s certainly different in some relevant ways. Actual use of prostitution services requires money (which limits how much you can consume, unlike online porn), requires interacting face-to-face with other human beings and sometimes even leaving the house. There’s also a dynamic where people quickly get bored with porn and start consuming increasingly extreme or fringe porn to get the same satisfaction which I think is new. To clarify, kinks aren’t new, but just like political extremism, the internet is much better at radicalizing people into them. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, and I’m somewhat libertarian on the issue if only out of resignation, but I think that online pornography is extremely new and unprecedented and may indeed be very detrimental to society.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
standardUser 6y ago
Yes, sex work can be "exploitative", "debasing", "soul-sucking" etc. So can all work. And more importantly, it doesn't have to be any of those negative things. Sex work and pornography can be enjoyable for people on all sides of the equation. The fact that it often isn't is a problem to fix, not a reason to brutally narrow our perspective on what's acceptable in the realm of sex and sexuality.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  > Sex work and pornography can be enjoyable for people on all sides of the equation. Yes. This is not the limit of my criticism, far from it. There is a world of difference between sleeping with 15 truckers a night, ie physical prostitution, and a middle-class student selling nudes on OnlyFans. The problems with the middle-class version of prostitution are the second order effects. I briefly touched on those in another reply in this thread.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    The "difference" you are describing is loaded (LOADED) with your own biases and narrow point of view. There are young students selling nudes online and feeling tremendous shame and grief about it that could cause them significant harm later in life. There are sex workers plowing through 15 truckers every night and considering it a hard night's work, but it's a living! The profound diversity of human experience should never can sometimes be unimaginable, but I encourage you to try and imagine.
    - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
      > There are young students selling nudes online and feeling tremendous shame and grief about it that could cause them significant harm later in life. 1. They don't feel "tremendous shame and grief about it", you're just projecting. They wouldn't be doing it in the first place if that was the case, at least for the middle-class ones that I'm talking about. 2. The "significant harm later in life" does not stem from the (imaginary) shame & grief, it comes from the discovery when they inevitably hit The Wall that no high-quality mate wants to marry them, and that they have tarnished their reputation forever for a short-lived boost in income and attention that is guaranteed to fade one day. The progressive culture and their friends will tell them about "sex positivity" and that prostitution is just "sex work" like any other work, which it isn't. You will not agree to that of course, "I don't own her body haha". If there is one thing to take away, let it be this: look at the people around you and their relationships, and observe what works and what doesn't. Don't theorize, don't moralize, don't judge, just observe and make up your own mind.

pas 6y ago

> The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. Sources? Also you seem to let's assume unintentionally mixing porn with its production modes, its ecosystem, all of its problems, plus the mental health problems of rich men, and so on.

deftnerd 6y ago

You could make the same argument about so many different things. E-cigarettes or junk food is not a net win for civilization. What about addictions to video gaming? Donating to political parties that you think are against progress? It boils down to the fact that you're wanting to let opinions on "how things should be" steer availability of core economic infrastructure, rather than relying on the legal system which is more properly setup to come to these conclusions.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
Nah I just said its hard to feel sorry for them. I don't think payment providers should be politically partial. EDIT Oh PornHub is now implementing the following measures: a.) allow uploads only from verified users; b.) no downloads; c.) improvements in moderation Maybe I'm actually for this then. Apparently this is what it takes.

Miner49er 6y ago

Yeah, sex is just another thing to be commodified. Eventually it might be difficult to have sex without someone making a profit.

krapp 6y ago
To be fair, sex has been a commodity since... probably before humans evolved sapience, since sex trades exist among other primate species. There's a reason the "world's oldest profession" is what it is.

joe_the_user 6y ago

The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation It doesn't matter. Or rather, if the only idea you have for solution to the situation is repression, it doesn't matter what you think of the impact of porn because you're not going to stop it, you're just going to create "porn and repression, together" just like the war on drugs created drugs and repression together. Guns and small pox weren't net wins for a lot of societies they were introduced in but once things start with certain processes, you kind of need to find mitigation, not a heavy handed repression. And sure, a better for people to relate together than exists currently would be great but shoving the genie back in the bottle isn't going to it.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
It is interesting that you equate the consumption of porn to a physically addictive substance. Also, that you equate the existence of the porn industry with a virus such as small pox, and claim that it is equally impossible to get rid of. I don't think either of these is true. Why do you think it is? You also paint the picture of a new porn-DEA. I don't know what to say to that, except that I don't favour Sharia Law. I posit that the ever expanding scope of liberalism with regards to intra-sex dynamics is the (or, at one of the) causes of much despair and grief, because they inhibit pair-bonding, family formation and are deeply non-lindy for various reasons. We see this in the number of older women taking anti-depressives, we see this in levels of male celibacy unprecedent since the middle ages, and collapsing populations all over the western world. None of these questions and dilemmas are new, they are as old as time. The idea that the rules have suddenly become invalid is naive at best, and destructive at worst. This will be non-obvious if you approach this from the viewpoint of enlightenment philosophy. It will become quite obvious if take the historical perspective on human behaviour and how societies function.

elric 6y ago

Paying for porn is a good thing. Platforms where money goes directly to content creators are the best way of going about that. But even PH is pretty good at paying artists who use their platform. What PH is really bad at is content moderation. Should they improve that? Absolutely. Is this grounds for legal action? Maybe it is. Is this a good reason to boycott them as an individual? Go for it! But is this a reason for a payment processor to get involved? I think it's not. But you're free to disagree. As for "soul-sucking debasedness", please stop imposing your sense of morality onto others. Yes, there are some people who are forced into porn for various reasons, and we as a society should try to prevent that -- just like we should try to prevent all kinds of abuses. But there are many people who enjoy working as porn stars. Don't judge them.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
> But there are many people who enjoy working as porn stars. Don't judge them. If tolerance is the highest value, you have arrived at the end of values itself, because everything must be acceptable. I do not subscribe to that point of view. I do not applaud that which I find to be destructive for a world worth living in.

iloveitaly 6y ago

This is a minority opinion, but I very much agree. https://fightthenewdrug.org https://fightthenewdrug.org has the data. I'd be curious to understand data or reasoning that makes a compelling argument for the contrary ("porn is great or neutral for society").

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. Is porn/sex work really being "normalized" in a historically contextual way? Outside of about the last seventy years (maybe less), prostitution and sex work were extremely common, and, compared with the modern era, basically not criminalized. I'm not aware of a body of research that demonstrates a causal relationship between the consumption of porn and any social ill. I'm also not sure if I feel like I'm in a position to decide if OnlyFans customers would be better off without that outlet.

philwelch 6y ago
Video content that people can consume in the privacy of their own home has only really existed for 50 years or so.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  The theory being that video porn is substantially more harmful than actual use of prostitution services? It doesn't seem impossible, but I'd want to see some stronger evidence.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    It’s certainly different in some relevant ways. Actual use of prostitution services requires money (which limits how much you can consume, unlike online porn), requires interacting face-to-face with other human beings and sometimes even leaving the house. There’s also a dynamic where people quickly get bored with porn and start consuming increasingly extreme or fringe porn to get the same satisfaction which I think is new. To clarify, kinks aren’t new, but just like political extremism, the internet is much better at radicalizing people into them. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, and I’m somewhat libertarian on the issue if only out of resignation, but I think that online pornography is extremely new and unprecedented and may indeed be very detrimental to society.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

standardUser 6y ago

Yes, sex work can be "exploitative", "debasing", "soul-sucking" etc. So can all work. And more importantly, it doesn't have to be any of those negative things. Sex work and pornography can be enjoyable for people on all sides of the equation. The fact that it often isn't is a problem to fix, not a reason to brutally narrow our perspective on what's acceptable in the realm of sex and sexuality.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
> Sex work and pornography can be enjoyable for people on all sides of the equation. Yes. This is not the limit of my criticism, far from it. There is a world of difference between sleeping with 15 truckers a night, ie physical prostitution, and a middle-class student selling nudes on OnlyFans. The problems with the middle-class version of prostitution are the second order effects. I briefly touched on those in another reply in this thread.
- standardUser 6y ago
  The "difference" you are describing is loaded (LOADED) with your own biases and narrow point of view. There are young students selling nudes online and feeling tremendous shame and grief about it that could cause them significant harm later in life. There are sex workers plowing through 15 truckers every night and considering it a hard night's work, but it's a living! The profound diversity of human experience should never can sometimes be unimaginable, but I encourage you to try and imagine.
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    > There are young students selling nudes online and feeling tremendous shame and grief about it that could cause them significant harm later in life. 1. They don't feel "tremendous shame and grief about it", you're just projecting. They wouldn't be doing it in the first place if that was the case, at least for the middle-class ones that I'm talking about. 2. The "significant harm later in life" does not stem from the (imaginary) shame & grief, it comes from the discovery when they inevitably hit The Wall that no high-quality mate wants to marry them, and that they have tarnished their reputation forever for a short-lived boost in income and attention that is guaranteed to fade one day. The progressive culture and their friends will tell them about "sex positivity" and that prostitution is just "sex work" like any other work, which it isn't. You will not agree to that of course, "I don't own her body haha". If there is one thing to take away, let it be this: look at the people around you and their relationships, and observe what works and what doesn't. Don't theorize, don't moralize, don't judge, just observe and make up your own mind.