6 ms·

Yeah I'm sure those upstanding pornographers always have the kids at heart first.

dsr_ 14y ago
What they usually have is a business model that includes reduction of legal risk. If a minor change such as including specific tags or keywords can keep them out of court, that change will be made.
- reader5000 14y ago
  How many times have pornographers been brought to court for distributing to minors? Getting minors addicted at a young age would be very important strategically for the porn industry, ensuring both future customers and cultural mainstreaming. Compare with the tobacco industry.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Substance addiction and physical attraction to other members of your species are wildly different topics. (With rare exception,) physical attraction is something you acquire during maturation through natural brain chemistry changes induced internally. Even if we reject that, you are still failing to take into account a very important difference between tobacco distribution and online pornography distribution: accurate age verification is far easier in meatspace where lies about your age have to have some semblance to reality. In fact, the meatspace sale of pornography provides a nifty little counterexample to your thesis: guess how fast a minor would get kicked out of a sex shop. (answer: faster than you could possibly believe.)
    - reader5000 14y ago
      Pornography is a (digital) substance that induces comparable if not identical neurological changes as traditional addictive substances such as nicotine. It has already been established the internet generally is sufficient to induce addiction-related neurological changes. I don't disagree that it is easier to implement age-based restrictions in real life versus online, but the fact remains that every single porn site distributes to minors, with obvious benefits to the industry.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        > Pornography is a (digital) substance What a silly thing to say. > induces comparable if not identical neurological changes as traditional addictive substances such as nicotine Show me the peer reviewed studies. Nicotine is a drug which alters brain chemistry, pornography merely facilitates naturally occurring brain chemistry phenomenons. It absolutely defies reason that these could be identical. > but the fact remains that every single porn site distributes to minors Already refuted bullshit.
jlgreco 14y ago
I would need to see some evidence suggesting that pornographers don't before I was willing to make statements like that. I think adults caring about the welfare of children is a rather reasonable default assumption.
- reader5000 14y ago
  Evidence: every single porn site is currently directly accessible to minors.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Absolute rubbish, I wonder if you have ever even viewed pornography online... Just about every (maybe just every?) porn site which I am aware of verifies the users age before allowing them to proceed. Furthermore, a very significant portion of the pornography industry does not give their product away; in those cases payment walls prevent involuntary and voluntary viewing. Futhermore, I reject the assertion that a site which is accessible to minors who chose to lie about their age is run by somebody who does not care about them. If they are attempting to trick minors into visiting then that is one thing but merely failing to preventing minors from voluntarily accessing the site by lying is not enough to assert that they do not care about children.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
fusiongyro 14y ago
Kids can't make purchases, so they are at best leeching. This isn't much like Photoshop; they don't stand to gain much by getting people hooked early in the hopes they'll convert monetarily later because this market has perfect competition. This is on top of the PR disaster it would be to be caught intentionally giving it to minors. So it looks to me like there are more and better incentives to participate in age restrictions voluntarily than to give it away to kids.
- reader5000 14y ago
  The evidence against this theory is that every single porn site distributes to minors.
  - andypants 14y ago
    I'm not sure you understand how the Internet works. Any publically available website is open to... well, the public. At best a public website can ask the user to verify their age, which is hardly reliable.
tomjen3 14y ago
The porn companies I frequent all have big warnings that it is 18+. The most hardcore even had a 'here is how to block us in netnanny (and other software)' page with extremly prominent links from the front page.

dsr_ 14y ago

What they usually have is a business model that includes reduction of legal risk. If a minor change such as including specific tags or keywords can keep them out of court, that change will be made.

reader5000 14y ago
How many times have pornographers been brought to court for distributing to minors? Getting minors addicted at a young age would be very important strategically for the porn industry, ensuring both future customers and cultural mainstreaming. Compare with the tobacco industry.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Substance addiction and physical attraction to other members of your species are wildly different topics. (With rare exception,) physical attraction is something you acquire during maturation through natural brain chemistry changes induced internally. Even if we reject that, you are still failing to take into account a very important difference between tobacco distribution and online pornography distribution: accurate age verification is far easier in meatspace where lies about your age have to have some semblance to reality. In fact, the meatspace sale of pornography provides a nifty little counterexample to your thesis: guess how fast a minor would get kicked out of a sex shop. (answer: faster than you could possibly believe.)
  - reader5000 14y ago
    Pornography is a (digital) substance that induces comparable if not identical neurological changes as traditional addictive substances such as nicotine. It has already been established the internet generally is sufficient to induce addiction-related neurological changes. I don't disagree that it is easier to implement age-based restrictions in real life versus online, but the fact remains that every single porn site distributes to minors, with obvious benefits to the industry.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      > Pornography is a (digital) substance What a silly thing to say. > induces comparable if not identical neurological changes as traditional addictive substances such as nicotine Show me the peer reviewed studies. Nicotine is a drug which alters brain chemistry, pornography merely facilitates naturally occurring brain chemistry phenomenons. It absolutely defies reason that these could be identical. > but the fact remains that every single porn site distributes to minors Already refuted bullshit.

jlgreco 14y ago

I would need to see some evidence suggesting that pornographers don't before I was willing to make statements like that. I think adults caring about the welfare of children is a rather reasonable default assumption.

reader5000 14y ago
Evidence: every single porn site is currently directly accessible to minors.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Absolute rubbish, I wonder if you have ever even viewed pornography online... Just about every (maybe just every?) porn site which I am aware of verifies the users age before allowing them to proceed. Furthermore, a very significant portion of the pornography industry does not give their product away; in those cases payment walls prevent involuntary and voluntary viewing. Futhermore, I reject the assertion that a site which is accessible to minors who chose to lie about their age is run by somebody who does not care about them. If they are attempting to trick minors into visiting then that is one thing but merely failing to preventing minors from voluntarily accessing the site by lying is not enough to assert that they do not care about children.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

fusiongyro 14y ago

Kids can't make purchases, so they are at best leeching. This isn't much like Photoshop; they don't stand to gain much by getting people hooked early in the hopes they'll convert monetarily later because this market has perfect competition. This is on top of the PR disaster it would be to be caught intentionally giving it to minors. So it looks to me like there are more and better incentives to participate in age restrictions voluntarily than to give it away to kids.

reader5000 14y ago
The evidence against this theory is that every single porn site distributes to minors.
- andypants 14y ago
  I'm not sure you understand how the Internet works. Any publically available website is open to... well, the public. At best a public website can ask the user to verify their age, which is hardly reliable.

tomjen3 14y ago

The porn companies I frequent all have big warnings that it is 18+. The most hardcore even had a 'here is how to block us in netnanny (and other software)' page with extremly prominent links from the front page.