CW: Brief child sexual abuse mention.
Is anyone else worried about this? Tumblr banned porn in 2018, and recently they’ve begun to restrict content even further. GFYCat banned porn. Imgur is also banning porn. Reddit doesn’t allow you to use it to host images on NSFW subs, and I’ll bet you anything they ban porn entirely within a year or so.
Where does that leave people who even just want to discuss adult content? Even if you think porn should disappear from society–and I would hardcore disagree with that–that’s not the only thing that’s getting caught up in this wave of censorship. On Tumblr, if you were sexually abused by an adult as a minor, you can no longer discuss this. Literally any reference to child sexual abuse by an adult is now banned on Tumblr. Even if you’re recounting something that happened to you. Hell, even if it’s fictional.
Where are you supposed to go now to discuss adult topics? Twitter is a fascist hellhole, but soon it’s going to be one of your only options, at least social media-wise. And even outright porn is getting harder to find. Your options now are basically the mainstream porn sites and the shit you have to do deep googling for, with nothing in between.
I find this very worrying. Even the vilest, most no-redeeming-social-value porn doesn’t deserve to be banished from the internet entirely. As long as someone gets something out of it and no one is harmed in its creation, porn has its place. But while decentralized alternatives are cropping up to replace social media, nobody seems to want to step up and make a place where we can all be horny without corporate influence.
Or maybe I’m just bitching that I don’t know where to find the good porn on Mastodon. Who knows. Regardless, I think there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had about the scouring of the internet of too risque for advertisers.
Edit: You know what, this person articulates it better than I ever could: https://devonprice.medium.com/mourning-porn-on-imgur-mourning-trans-kinky-history-64de2eaaa6ce
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I’ve heard the idea that one of the biggest issues of the web is the homogenization of user spaces. When I was a kid, I could get on Club Penguin, Webkinz, Disney and Nick’s websites for games. I think AOL even had a kid’s oriented network I might’ve used once or twice when dial was still around. When I got into my teen years, I started joining user forums and message boards where I knew that it was mainly adults, so I did my best to act mature (and failed, lol), and if I got called out for being too young and not fitting in, I either got ran off or banned. Now that I’m an adult, even in non-NSFW internet spaces, I don’t really want to interact with kids, but rules and culture are dictated by the need not to expose children to unsavory content because we just let them run around.
I’m sure it’s the responsible thing to do, because I saw stuff I never should have, browsing 4chan, adult content, and other really nasty stuff as a kid. I definitely don’t want kids to be subject to that, but damn I hate that the presumption that kids might see something be a strike against users when adults want to discuss mature topics.
Is anyone else worried about this? Tumblr banned porn in 2018, and recently they’ve begun to restrict content even further. GFYCat banned porn. Imgur is also banning porn. Reddit doesn’t allow you to use it to host images on NSFW subs, and I’ll bet you anything they ban porn entirely within a year or so.
yeah, in broad strokes. i don’t think porn is at any risk of being completely eradicated—actually, i don’t think it’ll ever even really suffer. it’s a big constant of the internet and too many people have an interest in it because most humans have an appreciation for sex.
what i do think is at risk is anything that isn’t, for lack of better wording, “normie” and NSFW. queer NSFW spaces, weird porn communities, sex work, and other stuff like that? that’s the stuff i’m really worried about; which gets disproportionately policed; and which doesn’t have the institutional backing of porn websites or ordinary people to fight back when they’re threatened.
sex workers, for example, have had it really bad since SESTA/FOSTA. Apple (and the payment processors behind them) have made it basically impossible for a website wanting to accommodate NSFW content to have an app. my main social media site of choice, Cohost, doesn’t have one specifically because it would otherwise be subject to this issue, since it allows a lot of queer content, porn, and sex workers. that really sucks in a lot of ways! and unfortunately, i’m not sure what can really be done about that short of the exceptional step of building payment processors which aren’t so puritanical.
That’s a big part of what I’m worried about too. Normie shit will always exist, even if it has to go underground. But what about the rest of us? We should be allowed to enjoy being horny too, dammit. And sex workers should be allowed to make a living in peace.
CW: mentions of child sexual exploitation in this bit
You mention Cohost, but I actually left in disgust after they announced they were banning porn of underage fictional characters. I don’t even really consume that content, but I will die on the hill that pretending fictional characters have the same rights as real people is puritanical nonsense. Drawing or writing any porn, no matter how morally reprehensible the content, harms no one (assuming you aren’t referencing real people in your art). Even indie sites that should really know better fall prey to this nonsense. And comparing sexualizing heavily stylized pixel characters to real-world child sexual abuse is incredibly insulting to survivors.
That’s a good point about the payment processors. :(
Sex work should have been fully legalized years ago, imo. And destigmatized. I hope the future is brighter, eventually.
Well, guess my first comment on this site is going to be about porn.
My thinking, beyond any of it, is that pornography drives a lot of media. If you can’t get porn on it, then it’s not going to be as popular. Imgur is big enough that it doesn’t need porn, but I’d be interested to see some statistics from before and after that policy change. Tumblr, well I’m pretty sure 75% of Tumblr’s usage was porn, ban that and self-destruct. GFYCat never seemed like a good place for porn anyway, so I’m not sure what to think about that.
So, what I mean is these platforms are cutting off a portion of their userbase. In this respect I’m less concerned about accessibility to pornography, but the engagement on the platform.
Also, indeed I have observed things migrating to paid services. Lot of things are moving that way, gotta pay another subscription (and have that all over your credit card statement).
I heard a joke when I was younger. “The internet is 99% porn, if we got rid of it, the only site left would be bringbackporn.com”
“And even outright porn is getting harder to find”
Haha. What? It’s never been easier to access free porn since the Internet began. There are tons of free porn sites on the net. Why do you need social media sites for that kind of content? Don’t those sites have their own forums and comment sections too?
Do you know how goddamn hard it is to find anything more specific than “straight, BDSM” on those websites? There’s barely any way to filter or save shit, and certainly not both at once. And god forbid you want to create porn and post it yourself, especially of any variety other than “two real people having sex on video.” Plus there’s no equivalent to the common thing on Twitter/Tumblr where people will collaborate on porn, often by one person giving another a prompt. Also, their comments and forums are dogshit, and allow you minimal curation of your identity and interactions. You can no longer, say, have a blog that sometimes posts porn and other times posts different things.
Basically, if you prefer your interaction with porn to be anything other than “watch a video of two real people fucking,” the internet sucks right now.
