8 ms·

These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Shou

These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?

techblueberry 2mo ago
> Should every porn site be taken down? I mean, I like porn as much as the next guy, but probably yes?
- sneak 2mo ago
  I’m curious the moral basis for which you have appointed yourself more qualified than the adult viewers themselves about what adults should be able to view in their web browser.
  - techblueberry 2mo ago
    I find it amusing that you think that anyone trying to declare themselves an authority does so on a moral basis.
fivetenpen 2mo ago
Yes they should, but guess what they’re doing instead? Scrolling. Engagement algorithm needs to be made illegal.
tw04 2mo ago
The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. It has distorted many a young man’s ideas of intimacy and sexual relations.
- krapp 2mo ago
  "Playboy magazines" are part of the problem. Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency. Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids, and any site about womens' health issues, because "public morals" tends to consider all of it obscene, inherently pornographic or just "icky."
  - yieldcrv 2mo ago
    Huge blind spot to think that content only affects men’s view of intimacy and sexual relations Explain that one for the class Its a common conception but today is your lucky day to articulate it
    - tw04 2mo ago
      To be clear, you want me to articulate a point that you fabricated and then attributed to me? I think I’m going to pass, but feel free to continue the discussion with yourself about things I didn’t say.
      - yieldcrv 2mo ago
        to clarify, you're suggesting I introduced a strawman argument because your focus on men wasn't mean to exclude anyone else? that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?
      - what 2mo ago
        Psst, he didn’t reply to you. He replied to the person that replied to you.
- safety1st 2mo ago
  One third of porn consumers are women. They are hardly immune.
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - sublinear 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
    - hackable_sand 2mo ago
      [flagged]
  - dqh 2mo ago
    But they are less violent.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      [citation needed] - lesbian relationships have the most domestic violence, and gay male relationships the least.
      - neonnoodle 2mo ago
        This is not true. IIRC this factoid comes from the results of surveys asking people whether they had ever been the victims of domestic violence (not necessarily in their current relationships), and it should come as no surprise that relationships comprised of two women have the highest reporting rates of having been subjected to violence over their lifetimes, and relationships of two men the lowest rates. Within-relationship rates of domestic violence for lesbian couples are not higher than for heterosexual couples!
- mapontosevenths 2mo ago
  > The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.
- Sha1rholder 2mo ago
  In what aspect is Playboy magazines superior?
  - Barrin92 2mo ago
    it contained significantly less extreme content. There's studies on kids as young as 12 routinely being exposed to sexual violence, practices such as choking or degrading activity in porn and viewing it as so normal that young women report being expected to take part in it. Fetishes and kinks that were reserved for adults are now normalized among teens. "In an essay published in The Free Press in August, 16-year-old Isabel Hogben described how, by the time she was in 4th grade, she had seen internet porn featuring “simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism and unthinkable physical violence.” This is not an isolated case: A French government task force on equality recently reported that as much as 90% of online pornography features “verbal, physical and sexual violence toward women.” Playboy wasn't necessarily a beacon of feminism (although sometimes surprisingly it was) but what young people are exposed to is in an entirely different category. https://archive.ph/CPeNz https://archive.ph/CPeNz
    - kotaKat 2mo ago
      To quote Alito, on Pornhub: "Is it like the old Playboy magazine? You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?"
    - SoftTalker 2mo ago
      > it contained significantly less extreme content And I think that's understating it. I have not read a Playboy (is it even still in print?) since I was a teenager. At that time, the pictures showed breasts and maybe some pubic hair. Even the more "hardcore" magazines that were generally available such as Penthouse and Hustler were tame compared to even the front-page thumbnails on Pornhub. There were more explicit magazines produced, but you could only get them in "adult" bookstores and if you were under 18 you could not get in, and if you were over 18 there was a certain fear/shame of possibly being seen there that kept most people away. If you really wanted it you could get hardcore stuff of course, but it was a lot more effort and cost compared to just opening a web browser. It was not something most people had ever really seen, certainly not among young children and teens.
- preg_match 2mo ago
  [dead]
popalchemist 2mo ago
[flagged]
- skeledrew 2mo ago
  However you put it, the parent (if around) is the closest and most frequent point of contact for any child. A parent doing an OK job would be a reliable resource whom the child can approach with any questions arising from weird "discoveries" online or even in the community. A parent doing a splendid job would proactively educate their child about the world and it's messiness so said child is equipped to confidently handle much of what pops up. A child should be able to recognize and avoid predation when they encounter it.
  - shimman 2mo ago
    No, society is allowed to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Acting like trillion dollar corporations do not have a massive influence on American society is borderline mush for brains here. You basically don't want to punish American corporations, which is just frankly odd. American corporations are some of the most destructive and anti-human organizations on the planet. Being pro-corporation means you have anti-human sentiments, and frankly what are yours? That you think people with poor constitutions or mental acuity deserve to feel mental anguish? Like what is it, just say it and save us time. Anyone that fights back against a corporation is always seen as a hero for good reason.
  - dijksterhuis 2mo ago
    you know, i feel like the "it's the parents' responsibility" comments that turn up on submissions like this often tend towards phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..."
    - cromka 2mo ago
      Agreed. It's the same "where were the parents!" shouting, just phrased differently.
  - popalchemist 2mo ago
homeonthemtn 2mo ago
Yes. It's ok to say no to porn and gore. I'm tired of acting like we need it to survive otherwise some dystopian genie will be unleashed. Get rid of that shit.
- sneak 2mo ago
  You are of course free to not view it. Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? How do you know better than they do, what they should or should not be viewing?
  - techblueberry 2mo ago
    > Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? Why not? Some people decide for others on abortion, some driving, some alcohol and drugs. Some people decide how much the government is allowed to steal from us. Why wouldn’t I think I should decide for others?
  - qotgalaxy 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - JKCalhoun 2mo ago
    As I got older I began to recognize that some things are just bad for society at large. My refraining from a thing doesn't fix the societal ill the thing causes.
    - arjie 2mo ago
      I suspect this view is actually the majority. Chat Control, the Great Firewall, Indian VoIP control, the Spanish Cloudflare ban and so on point to many societies finding that many things are just bad for society at large. We’re all just fighting over what things are just bad for society at large. In the US, the first amendment exists but in Germany simply displaying the flag of the Nazi party is illegal. The latter have determined that it’s just bad for society at large. In El Salvador, tattoos on a man are just bad for society at large. It’s true that refraining does not actually solve the problem. Others must be constrained. Sometimes for their own good and other times for the sake of society. Personally, I like the way the US is setup but what is truly adaptive isn’t clear to me. Perhaps indeed it is good that one is bone sawed because the things one is saying are just bad for society at large and I should support that whether or not I have said those things. Only time will tell. I just hope I have some place to live that has something like the First Amendment and that has some of the freewheeling life of the US. Maybe I will only have that if I defend it and if I fail to then by its defeat it will have proven its maladaptive nature.
cromka 2mo ago
Ah yes, the good old "cigarettes and alcohol should be freely available to kids" lobby logic, like it's the 60s and 70s again.
- consensus1 2mo ago
  Cigarettes and alcohol are freely available to kids
  - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
    Not really Some number of people might make these available to kids, but it's certainly nowhere near "freely"
  - ndsipa_pomu 2mo ago
    They're usually covered by age limit laws and also not "free" as they cost money to purchase. In what sense are they available freely to kids?
    - consensus1 2mo ago
      "Freely available" doesn't mean they are free of charge, but that they can be obtained at any time with minimal effort.
      - ndsipa_pomu 2mo ago
        I don't agree that it's minimal effort for kids to get hold of cigarettes and alcohol, though it's probably not too difficult for older teens to do so.
  - mlrtime 2mo ago
    No, they're not. Not in most of the US and not compared to social media/porn. This is disingenuous. The average 13 year old in the US cannot easily get a cigarette or a beer. Not impossible of course, but not as easy as porn/instagram.
crowcroft 2mo ago
I think this is a general misunderstanding of how common law legal systems work. The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence. I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...
bothers 2mo ago
Every porn site that makes money off harm to minors? Yes, and sometimes they are taken down.
- docjay 2mo ago
  I’m very interested in the “harm to minors” aspect of porn. I don’t agree or disagree, I truly don’t understand and I’d really enjoy having someone clearly explain it to me. Where I’m stuck: When asked, people tend to kind of hand wave and say “distorted view of sex” or similar. But what, specifically? And how does it harm them? I’ve tried to think through the pieces myself and I can only come up with things that sound too silly to be the reason. Are we worried they’re going to discover a fetish? Is that bad because it doesn’t align with “missionary sex for the purposes of procreation”? Are we afraid they’ll pick up on the caricature representation of sex and break a leg trying to t-bone their girlfriend? Are we afraid they’ll think they need to slap their girlfriends ass far too much, then get broken up with, become a social outcast, and never get into law school? Are we afraid they’ll get overstimulated and bored with sex as a result, quit caring about hygiene and dating, which will inevitably lead to a population decline and the downfall of society? I honestly couldn’t find anything that didn’t sound as silly as accusing king fu movies of distorting their view of fighting, which would arguably cause more harm when they try to do “crane style” and get their ass kicked. I’m looking for the action->action link, not the “messes them up” headline.
  - everforward 2mo ago
    I think the person above you is referring to CP, which I think is a very different harm than you’re talking about. For what you’re talking about, I’ve heard a couple of explanations. The first is one you pointed out, a largely religious objection to non-traditional sex. They find any sort of fetish immoral and worry porn will push children into fetishes as adults. The second one you missed and I find reasonable, I just don’t see porn bans as the solution. The theory is that porn will make children aware of more “extreme” or “unusual” varieties of sex, but it doesn’t endow them with the ability to have an open dialogue with a partner about wanting to do that, whether their partner is comfortable with it, etc. The fear is that young adults will accidentally pressure their partner into sexual acts their partner isn’t comfortable with. They either see it often enough on PornHub they overestimate how normalized actually doing it is, or they’re young enough that discussing sex with their partner is still uncomfortable. To be clear, this isn’t a puritan stance. It’s not saying that eg BDSM is bad, but that participating in BDSM should be prefaced by a conversation about safe words, boundaries, likes, dislikes, etc. Without the context of having been sexually active, it’s hard to know what parts of PornHub are “normal” and implicitly agreed upon by agreeing to have sex, and what parts really need a separate conversation. To me the solution is mostly sex ed, though. Open communication solves most of this. The only ones I think would still be a bad idea mostly hinge around control. Eg CNC is probably a bad idea because the lack of control is part of the appeal, but it could also cause someone inexperienced to not speak up and say they aren’t enjoying it. Maybe I underestimate the younger folks and times have changed, though.
usernametaken29 2mo ago
This assumes parents aren’t doing their job. As a young kid you don’t have a choice. Social pressure to participate in social media is intense. Either you’re constantly online or you’re out. Though luck being a parent policing this, you’ll only make things worse for your kid and your own. Only a mandated curfew can help.
drivebyhooting 2mo ago
How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict? If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?
- aucisson_masque 2mo ago
  That's why phone are banned in school in France. And you can still regulate what your kid does when he's not at school.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 2mo ago
    Are you helicoptering your children 24/7 when their out of school?
    - aucisson_masque 2mo ago
      Don't need to. There is parental control and much more interesting things to do. The problem with school is that it's boring and it doesn't tire them enough.
- gms 2mo ago
  I know many parents who manage this fine, I don't see why you can't: 1. You control whether your child has a phone and how much they are allowed to use it (Apple provides all sorts of controls for parents). 2. Every child in the school is not an addict. This is (for lack of a better term) a boomer view of the world.
  - intended 2mo ago
    Sure you can argue the nuances, however this is missing the forest for the trees. Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with. Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider. And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule. I have seen a 1 year old, whose parents keep him away from screens and tech, get hypnotized by swiping the screen of an Apple Watch on his aunt’s hand. SV and Tech had the most money, most people, and the ability to test and scale every idea to figure out what would enrapture adult human brains. This is not any sort of fair fight. A competition where the old approaches to family and child rearing win against the Tech that has been created.
bandrami 2mo ago
Meta (née Facebook) hired addiction medicine specialists to work on their platform engagement. It wasn't to make teens use their platforms less.
- aprilthird2021 2mo ago
  But, to be fair, many companies hire organizational psychologists and other such people to make their products addictive and to understand exactly how to make the most money on you and get the most time from you. Even the rewards program at the grocery store near you is tailored in such a way to maximally please you and keep you shopping there
  - intended 2mo ago
    Many companies got regulated to hell and back, as a result. There are no meth companies, the cigarette industry is regulated as far as we can take it, opiates and medication is regulated with punitive damages levied (once evidence passes a threshold). Gambling is highly regulated (and prediction markets will be as well, eventually) I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe even reward programs will have regulations surrounding them. Above all else: What we did with social media, lootboxes and phones, was unprecedented. The safety people brought up the issues in the firms, and the final decision that had to be taken was to ensure shareholder returns.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      By the way there USED to be meth companies, it wasn't even prescription medicine, it was over-the-counter.
    - aprilthird2021 2mo ago
      Yes, but the social media companies WANT regulation. The absence of it creates a no-win situation where self-regulating cedes grounds to your less scrupulous competitors and not regulating leaves you open to head scratcher lawsuits like this which only apply to your industry and not other industries doing the same thing
gmerc 2mo ago
Maybe this business should be impossible. Why should it be possible?
camillomiller 2mo ago
This comment is stupid and it’s because of people like you that evil organizations like Meta can get away with whatever the fuck they want. Shame on you
tbrownaw 2mo ago
> That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down? The age-gate / anti-anonymity laws popping up everywhere are because there are enough people who would answer "yes" to that.

These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?

techblueberry 2mo ago

> Should every porn site be taken down? I mean, I like porn as much as the next guy, but probably yes?

sneak 2mo ago
I’m curious the moral basis for which you have appointed yourself more qualified than the adult viewers themselves about what adults should be able to view in their web browser.
- techblueberry 2mo ago
  I find it amusing that you think that anyone trying to declare themselves an authority does so on a moral basis.

fivetenpen 2mo ago

Yes they should, but guess what they’re doing instead? Scrolling. Engagement algorithm needs to be made illegal.

tw04 2mo ago

The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. It has distorted many a young man’s ideas of intimacy and sexual relations.

krapp 2mo ago
"Playboy magazines" are part of the problem. Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency. Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids, and any site about womens' health issues, because "public morals" tends to consider all of it obscene, inherently pornographic or just "icky."
- yieldcrv 2mo ago
  Huge blind spot to think that content only affects men’s view of intimacy and sexual relations Explain that one for the class Its a common conception but today is your lucky day to articulate it
  - tw04 2mo ago
    To be clear, you want me to articulate a point that you fabricated and then attributed to me? I think I’m going to pass, but feel free to continue the discussion with yourself about things I didn’t say.
    - yieldcrv 2mo ago
      to clarify, you're suggesting I introduced a strawman argument because your focus on men wasn't mean to exclude anyone else? that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?
    - what 2mo ago
      Psst, he didn’t reply to you. He replied to the person that replied to you.
safety1st 2mo ago
One third of porn consumers are women. They are hardly immune.
- somenameforme 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - sublinear 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
  - hackable_sand 2mo ago
    [flagged]
- dqh 2mo ago
  But they are less violent.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    [citation needed] - lesbian relationships have the most domestic violence, and gay male relationships the least.
    - neonnoodle 2mo ago
      This is not true. IIRC this factoid comes from the results of surveys asking people whether they had ever been the victims of domestic violence (not necessarily in their current relationships), and it should come as no surprise that relationships comprised of two women have the highest reporting rates of having been subjected to violence over their lifetimes, and relationships of two men the lowest rates. Within-relationship rates of domestic violence for lesbian couples are not higher than for heterosexual couples!
mapontosevenths 2mo ago
> The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.
Sha1rholder 2mo ago
In what aspect is Playboy magazines superior?
- Barrin92 2mo ago
  it contained significantly less extreme content. There's studies on kids as young as 12 routinely being exposed to sexual violence, practices such as choking or degrading activity in porn and viewing it as so normal that young women report being expected to take part in it. Fetishes and kinks that were reserved for adults are now normalized among teens. "In an essay published in The Free Press in August, 16-year-old Isabel Hogben described how, by the time she was in 4th grade, she had seen internet porn featuring “simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism and unthinkable physical violence.” This is not an isolated case: A French government task force on equality recently reported that as much as 90% of online pornography features “verbal, physical and sexual violence toward women.” Playboy wasn't necessarily a beacon of feminism (although sometimes surprisingly it was) but what young people are exposed to is in an entirely different category. https://archive.ph/CPeNz https://archive.ph/CPeNz
  - kotaKat 2mo ago
    To quote Alito, on Pornhub: "Is it like the old Playboy magazine? You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?"
  - SoftTalker 2mo ago
    > it contained significantly less extreme content And I think that's understating it. I have not read a Playboy (is it even still in print?) since I was a teenager. At that time, the pictures showed breasts and maybe some pubic hair. Even the more "hardcore" magazines that were generally available such as Penthouse and Hustler were tame compared to even the front-page thumbnails on Pornhub. There were more explicit magazines produced, but you could only get them in "adult" bookstores and if you were under 18 you could not get in, and if you were over 18 there was a certain fear/shame of possibly being seen there that kept most people away. If you really wanted it you could get hardcore stuff of course, but it was a lot more effort and cost compared to just opening a web browser. It was not something most people had ever really seen, certainly not among young children and teens.
preg_match 2mo ago
[dead]

popalchemist 2mo ago

[flagged]

skeledrew 2mo ago
However you put it, the parent (if around) is the closest and most frequent point of contact for any child. A parent doing an OK job would be a reliable resource whom the child can approach with any questions arising from weird "discoveries" online or even in the community. A parent doing a splendid job would proactively educate their child about the world and it's messiness so said child is equipped to confidently handle much of what pops up. A child should be able to recognize and avoid predation when they encounter it.
- shimman 2mo ago
  No, society is allowed to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Acting like trillion dollar corporations do not have a massive influence on American society is borderline mush for brains here. You basically don't want to punish American corporations, which is just frankly odd. American corporations are some of the most destructive and anti-human organizations on the planet. Being pro-corporation means you have anti-human sentiments, and frankly what are yours? That you think people with poor constitutions or mental acuity deserve to feel mental anguish? Like what is it, just say it and save us time. Anyone that fights back against a corporation is always seen as a hero for good reason.
- dijksterhuis 2mo ago
  you know, i feel like the "it's the parents' responsibility" comments that turn up on submissions like this often tend towards phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..."
  - cromka 2mo ago
    Agreed. It's the same "where were the parents!" shouting, just phrased differently.
- popalchemist 2mo ago

homeonthemtn 2mo ago

Yes. It's ok to say no to porn and gore. I'm tired of acting like we need it to survive otherwise some dystopian genie will be unleashed. Get rid of that shit.

sneak 2mo ago
You are of course free to not view it. Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? How do you know better than they do, what they should or should not be viewing?
- techblueberry 2mo ago
  > Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? Why not? Some people decide for others on abortion, some driving, some alcohol and drugs. Some people decide how much the government is allowed to steal from us. Why wouldn’t I think I should decide for others?
- qotgalaxy 2mo ago
  [dead]
- JKCalhoun 2mo ago
  As I got older I began to recognize that some things are just bad for society at large. My refraining from a thing doesn't fix the societal ill the thing causes.
  - arjie 2mo ago
    I suspect this view is actually the majority. Chat Control, the Great Firewall, Indian VoIP control, the Spanish Cloudflare ban and so on point to many societies finding that many things are just bad for society at large. We’re all just fighting over what things are just bad for society at large. In the US, the first amendment exists but in Germany simply displaying the flag of the Nazi party is illegal. The latter have determined that it’s just bad for society at large. In El Salvador, tattoos on a man are just bad for society at large. It’s true that refraining does not actually solve the problem. Others must be constrained. Sometimes for their own good and other times for the sake of society. Personally, I like the way the US is setup but what is truly adaptive isn’t clear to me. Perhaps indeed it is good that one is bone sawed because the things one is saying are just bad for society at large and I should support that whether or not I have said those things. Only time will tell. I just hope I have some place to live that has something like the First Amendment and that has some of the freewheeling life of the US. Maybe I will only have that if I defend it and if I fail to then by its defeat it will have proven its maladaptive nature.

cromka 2mo ago

Ah yes, the good old "cigarettes and alcohol should be freely available to kids" lobby logic, like it's the 60s and 70s again.

consensus1 2mo ago
Cigarettes and alcohol are freely available to kids
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  Not really Some number of people might make these available to kids, but it's certainly nowhere near "freely"
- ndsipa_pomu 2mo ago
  They're usually covered by age limit laws and also not "free" as they cost money to purchase. In what sense are they available freely to kids?
  - consensus1 2mo ago
    "Freely available" doesn't mean they are free of charge, but that they can be obtained at any time with minimal effort.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2mo ago
      I don't agree that it's minimal effort for kids to get hold of cigarettes and alcohol, though it's probably not too difficult for older teens to do so.
- mlrtime 2mo ago
  No, they're not. Not in most of the US and not compared to social media/porn. This is disingenuous. The average 13 year old in the US cannot easily get a cigarette or a beer. Not impossible of course, but not as easy as porn/instagram.

crowcroft 2mo ago

I think this is a general misunderstanding of how common law legal systems work. The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence. I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...

bothers 2mo ago

Every porn site that makes money off harm to minors? Yes, and sometimes they are taken down.

docjay 2mo ago
I’m very interested in the “harm to minors” aspect of porn. I don’t agree or disagree, I truly don’t understand and I’d really enjoy having someone clearly explain it to me. Where I’m stuck: When asked, people tend to kind of hand wave and say “distorted view of sex” or similar. But what, specifically? And how does it harm them? I’ve tried to think through the pieces myself and I can only come up with things that sound too silly to be the reason. Are we worried they’re going to discover a fetish? Is that bad because it doesn’t align with “missionary sex for the purposes of procreation”? Are we afraid they’ll pick up on the caricature representation of sex and break a leg trying to t-bone their girlfriend? Are we afraid they’ll think they need to slap their girlfriends ass far too much, then get broken up with, become a social outcast, and never get into law school? Are we afraid they’ll get overstimulated and bored with sex as a result, quit caring about hygiene and dating, which will inevitably lead to a population decline and the downfall of society? I honestly couldn’t find anything that didn’t sound as silly as accusing king fu movies of distorting their view of fighting, which would arguably cause more harm when they try to do “crane style” and get their ass kicked. I’m looking for the action->action link, not the “messes them up” headline.
- everforward 2mo ago
  I think the person above you is referring to CP, which I think is a very different harm than you’re talking about. For what you’re talking about, I’ve heard a couple of explanations. The first is one you pointed out, a largely religious objection to non-traditional sex. They find any sort of fetish immoral and worry porn will push children into fetishes as adults. The second one you missed and I find reasonable, I just don’t see porn bans as the solution. The theory is that porn will make children aware of more “extreme” or “unusual” varieties of sex, but it doesn’t endow them with the ability to have an open dialogue with a partner about wanting to do that, whether their partner is comfortable with it, etc. The fear is that young adults will accidentally pressure their partner into sexual acts their partner isn’t comfortable with. They either see it often enough on PornHub they overestimate how normalized actually doing it is, or they’re young enough that discussing sex with their partner is still uncomfortable. To be clear, this isn’t a puritan stance. It’s not saying that eg BDSM is bad, but that participating in BDSM should be prefaced by a conversation about safe words, boundaries, likes, dislikes, etc. Without the context of having been sexually active, it’s hard to know what parts of PornHub are “normal” and implicitly agreed upon by agreeing to have sex, and what parts really need a separate conversation. To me the solution is mostly sex ed, though. Open communication solves most of this. The only ones I think would still be a bad idea mostly hinge around control. Eg CNC is probably a bad idea because the lack of control is part of the appeal, but it could also cause someone inexperienced to not speak up and say they aren’t enjoying it. Maybe I underestimate the younger folks and times have changed, though.

usernametaken29 2mo ago

This assumes parents aren’t doing their job. As a young kid you don’t have a choice. Social pressure to participate in social media is intense. Either you’re constantly online or you’re out. Though luck being a parent policing this, you’ll only make things worse for your kid and your own. Only a mandated curfew can help.

drivebyhooting 2mo ago

How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict? If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?

aucisson_masque 2mo ago
That's why phone are banned in school in France. And you can still regulate what your kid does when he's not at school.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 2mo ago
  Are you helicoptering your children 24/7 when their out of school?
  - aucisson_masque 2mo ago
    Don't need to. There is parental control and much more interesting things to do. The problem with school is that it's boring and it doesn't tire them enough.
gms 2mo ago
I know many parents who manage this fine, I don't see why you can't: 1. You control whether your child has a phone and how much they are allowed to use it (Apple provides all sorts of controls for parents). 2. Every child in the school is not an addict. This is (for lack of a better term) a boomer view of the world.
- intended 2mo ago
  Sure you can argue the nuances, however this is missing the forest for the trees. Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with. Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider. And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule. I have seen a 1 year old, whose parents keep him away from screens and tech, get hypnotized by swiping the screen of an Apple Watch on his aunt’s hand. SV and Tech had the most money, most people, and the ability to test and scale every idea to figure out what would enrapture adult human brains. This is not any sort of fair fight. A competition where the old approaches to family and child rearing win against the Tech that has been created.

bandrami 2mo ago

Meta (née Facebook) hired addiction medicine specialists to work on their platform engagement. It wasn't to make teens use their platforms less.

aprilthird2021 2mo ago
But, to be fair, many companies hire organizational psychologists and other such people to make their products addictive and to understand exactly how to make the most money on you and get the most time from you. Even the rewards program at the grocery store near you is tailored in such a way to maximally please you and keep you shopping there
- intended 2mo ago
  Many companies got regulated to hell and back, as a result. There are no meth companies, the cigarette industry is regulated as far as we can take it, opiates and medication is regulated with punitive damages levied (once evidence passes a threshold). Gambling is highly regulated (and prediction markets will be as well, eventually) I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe even reward programs will have regulations surrounding them. Above all else: What we did with social media, lootboxes and phones, was unprecedented. The safety people brought up the issues in the firms, and the final decision that had to be taken was to ensure shareholder returns.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    By the way there USED to be meth companies, it wasn't even prescription medicine, it was over-the-counter.
  - aprilthird2021 2mo ago
    Yes, but the social media companies WANT regulation. The absence of it creates a no-win situation where self-regulating cedes grounds to your less scrupulous competitors and not regulating leaves you open to head scratcher lawsuits like this which only apply to your industry and not other industries doing the same thing

gmerc 2mo ago

Maybe this business should be impossible. Why should it be possible?

camillomiller 2mo ago

This comment is stupid and it’s because of people like you that evil organizations like Meta can get away with whatever the fuck they want. Shame on you

tbrownaw 2mo ago

> That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down? The age-gate / anti-anonymity laws popping up everywhere are because there are enough people who would answer "yes" to that.