A trial program conducted by Pornhub in collaboration with UK-based child protection organizations aimed to deter users from searching for child abuse material (CSAM) on its website. Whenever CSAM-related terms were searched, a warning message and a chatbot appeared, directing users to support services. The trial reported a significant reduction in CSAM searches and an increase in users seeking help. Despite some limitations in data and complexity, the chatbot showed promise in deterring illegal behavior online. While the trial has ended, the chatbot and warnings remain active on Pornhub’s UK site, with hopes for similar measures across other platforms to create a safer internet environment.
Non-paywall link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240305000347/https://www.wired.com/story/pornhub-chatbot-csam-help/
There’s this lingering implication that there is CSAM at Pornhub. Why bother with “searches for CSAM” if it does not return CSAM results? And what exactly constitutes a “search for CSAM”? The article and the linked one are incredibly opaque about that. Why target the consumer and not the source? This feels kind of backwards and like language policing without really addressing the problem. What do they expect to happen if they prohibit specific words/language? That people searching for CSAM will just give up? Do they expect anything beyond them changing the used language and go for a permanent cat and mouse game? I guess I share the sentiments that motivated them to do this, but it feels so incredibly pointless.
Lolicon is not illegal, and neither is giving your video a title that implies CSAM.
That begs the question, what about pedophiles who intentionally seek out simulated CP to avoid hurting children?
Simulated CP is legally considered the same as ‘actual’ CP in the UK
Which is, imo, pretty dumb. If it gives these people an outlet that literally hurts no one, I say they should be allowed to use it. Without it they’ll just go to more extreme lengths to get what they need, and as such may go to places where actual real life children are being abused or worse.
So while it’s still disgusting and I’d rather not think about it, if nobody’s being hurt then it’s none of my business. Let them get out their urges in a safe way that doesn’t affect anybody else.
I imagine the concern is that it would look identical to the real thing. Which blurs the lines. Kinda like how governments really hate when toy makers make toy guns look too real and why I have to tell airport security that I would like my bag searched now since there are homemade looking electronic devices in it.
I guess in theory some government could make a certification system. Where legal simulated cp has like some digital watermark or something but you know that would involve a government paying someone to review child porn for a living. Kinda hard to sell that to the taxpayers or fill that role. Maybe the private sector would be willing to do it but that is a big ask.
I am not sure I agree with you or disagree with you. Maybe all of us would be better off if there is a legal and harmless way for pedos to get what they want. Or maybe it is bad to encourage it at all even in a safe way, like if they consume that stuff it will make them more likely to seek out real children.
Definitely isn’t a great situation be great if the condition is cured some day.
This covered a lot of my concerns and thoughts on the topic. I want these people to be able to seek help and possibly even have a legal outlet that is not harming anyone, i.e. not even someone who has to view that shit for a living, so maybe we get AI to do it? IDK. It’s complicated but I believe that it’s similar to having an addiction in some ways and should be treated as a health issue, assuming they haven’t hurt anyone and want help. This is coming from someone with health issues including addiction and also someone who is very empathetic and sympathetic to any and all struggles of folks who are just trying to live better.
I can’t even imagine the amount of money it would cost for someone to pay me to watch and critique child porn for a living. I have literally been paid money in my life to fish a dead squirrel that was making the whole place stink, from underneath a trailer in July and would pick doing that professionally over watching that filth.
Depends on the jurisdiction. Indecent illustrations and ‘pseudo photographs’ depicting minors are definitely illegal in the UK (Coroners and Justice Act 2009.) Several US states are also updating their laws to clamp down on this too.
I’m also aware that it’s illegal in Switzerland because a certain infamous rule 34 artist fled his home country to evade justice for that very reason.
I imagine high exposure (for individuals who are otherwise not explicitly searching for such material) could inadvertently normalize that behavior IRL.
Like how video games supposedly normalize violence? Are you going to go shoot a bunch of people because GTA exists?
Ffs guys what year is this? Thought we were past this silly mindset.
Deciding that you’re going to pull someone out of their car and clap them with a rocket launcher has a significantly higher situational barrier than finding yourself in a close relationship with a child who trusts you enough that you can abuse it in a moment of impulse.
You think abusing a child is easier than, say, punching someone in the face as you would do in video games?
Dude if you genuinely think that I’d recommend reaching out to someone…
In all seriousness tho, way to take the most extreme video game example possible to dismiss my point. Video game violence can have an extremely low “situational barrier”, but that doesn’t mean that video games will make you do those things.
Nobody is saying that porn ‘makes you’ do or become anything. But the stories told in video games are clearly fiction in form and content - you’re a soldier in the future fighting aliens, you’re a member of an elite group of time-traveling assassin’s, you’re an aspiring ex-convic with unlimited lives and pockets to carry an entire arsenal of weapons in a tanktop and shorts - whereas porn is written to make the fantasy seem just plausible enough so you can place yourself in as the subject (which is why the situations are always so contrived in pornography)
The situations wherein you might plausibly choose to sexually exploit a child aren’t nearly as implausible as one where you could violently assault someone without immediate risk and consequence. Just look at how often porn dialogue waves away the likely objections; “we’re not actual siblings, you’re just my STEP brother”, “I won’t tell anybody”, “I just turned 18, I don’t want to be the only virgin in college”, ect.
Like exposure to gay people and gay content makes you gay? (/s if it wasn’t obvious)
no very different, but if someone hasn’t come out then having gay media will normalize being gay and id assume they could come out with less stigma but this is a painfully ignorant and insulting comparison
Only if you condemn the disposition and not its inacceptable form of execution. From where I stand being attracted to children is as acceptable as men being attracted to men. Abusing children is as inacceptable as men raping men. If it is, in your book, fine to condemn pedophiles for being pedophile, then christian fundamentalists are totally fine hating homosexuals for being homosexual. Don’t get me wrong, I’m neither condoning nor encouraging the (sexual) abuse of children. Unlike you I’m just not a hypocrite about different sexual orientations/preferences that nobody chooses. The only qualitative difference is that in one case one side cannot consent and needs better protection by society. The only point I am (consistently) trying to make here, is that I find it highly dubious that the measures described in the article have any impact on said required protection, and that the article completely fails to provide any shred of evidence or even indication that it does.
TW: discussions about sexual abuse
spoiler
Fetishizing an abusive sexual behavior is not the same as same-sex attraction. We would be having the same conversation if we were talking about rape porn between adults: it’s the normalization of the abusive behavior that we’re primarily concerned with, not the ethics of watching simulated abuse in general.
While I don’t believe that banning simulated material would be helpful, it is completely reasonable to suggest that cautioning individuals about the proximity of their search to material that is illegal - and the risks associated with consuming it - would be preventative against future consumption.
Especially considering Pornhub is only placing cautions around that material and isn’t removing that content generally. It’s hard to read your objections as anything other than pedophilia apologia.
And I did not even hint at anything even close to the contrary.
Which is exactly the comparison I made.
I wasn’t talking about the normalization of anything anywhere. You inject a component, that wasn’t the subject in our conversation before, to defend a point I wasn’t questioning (red herring).
Another topic which we could discuss, but which - again - you just injected.
And again: I’m asking for qualitative and quantitative proof of that. It is the one and only thing I was and am questioning about the article.
The point to our discussion being what?
You seem to have major trouble with text comprehension and staying on track with discussions.
spoiler
No, you were comparing pedophilia with homosexuality. You attempted to distinguish between the attraction from the behavior, suggesting that pedophilia specifically was harmless, but could be abusive in certain contexts (i.e. sex is fine between consenting adults, but non-consensual sex is rape). I was pointing out that acts of pedophilia are definitionally coercive (a child cannot consent to something they do not understand, with someone who wields outsized influence over them). There is no room for an ethical sexual relationship with a child.
There are plenty of examples of proactive messaging impacting behaviors, take your pick.
While casting careless comparisons and writing CSAM apologia.
That the potential benefit of preventative messaging is largely harmless, and you haven’t justified your objection just yet.
“Pedophilia is the same as (or similar to) homosexuality” - You, definitely not minimizing the harm caused by CSAM.
Minor complaint: try to get an empty paragraph between the spoiled text and the non-spoiled text whenever possible - makes it easier to read.
Regarding the discussion, you’re both right at the end of the day. Limiting exposure to illegal and immoral-adjacent material is obviously in society’s interest, but at the same time the implication that a glorified ad for a mental illness helpline is a good solution is ludicrous - it’s at the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to the kinds of issues we should be working on.
I’m actually not sure how to get another linebreak in there, I tried adding multiple but the markdown kept collapsing it.
And I happen to agree that a ‘surgeon general’s warning for CSAM’ isn’t doing much to solve the problem, but I do think alerting users to the adjacency is a good idea. OP seemed to be complaining about censorship, but this practice didn’t even amount to that. The article is mostly just marketing slop.
pedophilia is usually caused by a neurological disorder or a power fantasy, would you call rape a sexual orientation? its a preference at best and its not a sexual orientation as that is tide to gender and not age.
as to condemning of pedophiles, i dont condemn them unless they act on they’re urges. i however fully support seeking help
Would you call rape that isn’t happening rape?
Up until this point everything you said read exactly like you would. Seems we’re finally on the same page?
that is cnc (consent non consent), and no i wouldn’t call it rape but i also wouldn’t class it as a healthy outlet, and practicing cnc or viewing cnc normalizes rape. most people practicing cnc have been through abuse themselves and others again are seeking a power fantasy.
same page in one sense although i disagree with some of your previous post. I will not call an attraction to children acceptable, like i wouldn’t say pedophilia is a sexual orientation, these terms and ideologies normalize something that isn’t normal i am however aware of the nuance and blaming someone with trauma or neurological deficiency is not helpful, they need to seek guidance like anyone with an urge to inflict suffering on another.
How so? If CP and things adjacent to it (drawn stuff, “teen” porn, catholic schoolgirl outfits, etc) content is going to
make peoplepromote and encourage people to molest children, why wouldn’t gay porn promote and encourage homosexuality?Like this is one of those things that feels a lot like picking and choosing based on preference. I suspect violence in media being a historic right wing talking point is the only reason it’s not on the bad list like sexy women and loli stuff.
this is an entirely different discussion. My point and issue is with the comparison being in poor taste, like I said previously I’d be equally annoyed if someone made a comparison with heterosensuality and beastiality one is normal and the other is morally wrong.
Edit: my mistake I thought you replied to a different comment.
We are products of our environment. I do believe that we are effected by the things around us, I’d imagine we’d have a lot more pedophiles if cp was on TV. Look at any industry built on abuse, people don’t go in thinking they’ll be the bad guy and fuck up someone’s day, they themselves are introduced to it through environment.
Not exactly a fair analogy. First off it is willful exposure to cp not incidental. Secondly the concern isn’t that someone is oriented towards children the concern is the action. We can’t and should never ever attempt to police a person’s mind we can however as a society demand that adults don’t rape kids. Homosexuality is not the same, the vast majority of western society is fine with the action. So even if you could demonstrate a link between watching gay porn more and being more willing to have gay sex it doesn’t matter.
Nice rephrasing of what I said (mostly). Homosexuality - and heterosexuality, and any sexuality for that matter - are only acceptable as long as there is consent. The only difference is, as I’ve pointed out, that with pedophilia there is no scenario which can have consent. That doesn’t matter though, as long as it stays in somebody’s mind or the virtual realm.
If you strictly distinguish between desire and action, it is an absolutely fair comparison. I do, and I do so explicitly. Some people don’t, ignore that I do, and then get wound up about what they think I said.
I’m going to go ahead and treat this as if it’s an earnest comparison because there shouldn’t be any room for ambiguity:
Fuck right off with that analogy. Pedophilia and the sexual behaviors that result from it are immensely damaging to children - who cannot meaningfully consent to sexual relationships -, whereas the sexual behaviors between consenting adults are not.
I don’t really care if you were speaking in-jest. If you were, i’d recommend you delete that comment before someone takes it seriously.
Yah … I already answered that: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/9541949
Pedophilia is defined by it’s “inacceptable” (what a strange way of spelling ‘abusive’) behavior, homosexuality is not.
Like hydrophile, right? Those damned immoral water molecules *shakes fist at heaven*
You use some weird definitions.
Only a very, very small percentage of paedophiles are exclusive paedophiles. This is more like a bi person becoming more gay (or straight) by exposing themselves to more gay (or straight) porn. People can focus in on particular aspects of their sexuality or ignore others, and that’s before fetishisation comes into play where the mind projects sexual meaning onto stuff that’s not primitively (as in instinctively) sexual.
Yes. Even if you’re a 110% straight dude, if you set your mind to it, with enough practice, you can learn to enjoy sucking dick, or at least having your dick sucked by a cute femboy. At the same time mere exposure to gay porn doesn’t do the same and that’s not a contradiction as your usual 110% straight dude has no interest whatsoever to setting their mind to learn how to enjoy sucking dick, there’s neither inclination nor reason to, the porn is just going to go straight past them. 90% straight? Much more likely. Neither is going to lose their original attraction to women, though, the most you get is nothing happening on that front because they’re occupied elsewhere. And that’s exactly where we want the sexuality of paedophiles to be: Occupied elsewhere.
EDIT: I’ll assume the downvotes come from people not realizing just how plastic our mind is and not random reactionaries. Not on my lemmy.
I completely agree with that.
And I think that is complete nonsense. If it had any merit, the reverse would also be true and could be used as an argument for conversion therapy. I think we can’t proactively develop our sexuality, only discover it. Expressive nuance is happenstance that can be enforced, but is not a deliberate decision. If I see foot fetish stuff it is an instant turnoff and has been for 30 years. My dislike of foot fetish stuff is certainly not due to lack of exposure.
Possibly. When it comes to sex I’m pretty visually fixated. If a femboy satisfied all the visual cues I see no problem in getting going by a femboy’s blowjob. Though, I have a thing for really big natural tits, so I think that’s rather unlikely.
Same as above. I don’t think you can consciously shift your sexuality. You can only force yourself to act against your sexual nature, but not change it. If you could, conversion therapy would have merit. If you had a heterosexual “life style” and then discovered that you enjoy some homosexual interaction, it would be just that: discovering the predisposition that was already there.
Almost agree. I think it’s naive to assume that you could reliably prevent people from exploring their sexuality by keeping them (pre-)occupied with something else. The mind wanders, and where it goes there are no barriers. What I wonder is if barriers in real life (like the ones described in the article) are the best way to handle pedophiles’ desires or if it wouldn’t be more effective to guide them on a prepared way that makes them steer clear of harming others. We’ve seen how well sexual supression works out with church celibacy. I’d say we should at least explore/research options for pedophiles to “express” their sexuality without harming others.
For what it’s worth, you got my upvote, because I think this is one of the most coherent and reasonable comments in the discussion - even if I do not agree with every point.
The reverse isn’t really true as repressing innate desire requires neurosis, while learning to enjoy something you don’t instinctively enjoy very much doesn’t. You can’t go down the road of neurosis open-eyed and that “setting your mind to it” bit requires insight into your own mind so the two are at odds with each other. If it happens then that’s ordinary repression, not a voluntary choice.
And even if it was true then conversion therapy would still be psychological torture: Nothing about conversion therapy is “setting one’s mind to it”, just like setting out to not dislike cleaning the toilet is not the same as someone flushing your head.
Or, differently put: Don’t shove something down someone’s throat that they don’t already enjoy inhaling. SCNR.
And then of course there’s the whole issue of why. Why change that stuff? Of course people might have individual reasons (which might be as simple as learning a psychological circus trick for the heck of it), but that doesn’t mean that a social norm to have a particular sexuality (short of consent issues) makes any amount of ethical sense.
You valued it negatively all those years and presumably never tried to do the opposite, it’s no wonder you continue to dislike it. And why would you, there’s no reason to.
All I’m saying is that the plasticity is there, not that it’s particularly common that people use it.
Nothing is 100% reliable, and the purely sexual can only be a part of the overall solution. Additional things include making affected recognise the impossibility of consent, the amount of damage their behaviour would cause, and if that alone doesn’t convince them that they should gladly distract themselves there’s some ways to get a bit of a handle on dark triad traits though TBH the bigger bully argument works most reliably: Criminalisation. OTOH it would be naive to only crack the whip of criminal law without offering people aid in how to avoid it.
If heterosexual people could learn to enjoy homosexual stuff why shouldn’t homosexual people be able to learn to enjoy heterosexual stuff? In your words: they only have to put their mind to it.
There’s solid evidence that homo-/heterosexuality in men strongly correlates with androgen hormone levels of the mother during pregnancy. Of course that is not binary. But if you are on either end of the spectrum you will not learn to enjoy the other. For women homosexuality is not as well (medically/biolgically) understood. But all research I know points to there being a deciding predisposition just like in men. Now, if of course you’re on one side but not an end of the spectrum and have not had exposure/opportunity to discover that you might enjoy something that runs contrary to your perceived sexuality, it might feel like you’re making an active effort to change/expand on your sexuality when the opportunity arrives and you decide to take it. The truth is, that for a substantial amount of men you can predict with 100% certainty that they will either be exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual simply by measturing their mothers androgen hormone levels during pregnancy. Again, you can discover, and also nurture and develop, your sexuality, but you cannot change it; only repress it.
I don’t think so. Somebody repressing or hiding his (for example) homosexuality doesn’t require neurosis. “Only” an environment that’s out to kill them for it, like parts of Africa.
I think our main issue might be language. You keep talking about learning and I keep talking about discovering. I never made a decision to like big tits. I didn’t “learn” to enjoy them. Thanks to the internet I was presented with a buffet of almost all the porn industry has to offer. I saw everything, but big tits particularly appealed to me, so then I saught out that content deliberately. No doubt reinforcing that taste of mine, but the wiring was already there, before I knew it. You might say that I learned to love big tits. And to that I’d say: wrong. I discovered that I like big tits! Learning requires intent, and there was no intent whatsoever in me realizing I like big tits.
That’s too esoteric for me or I do not understand at all what you’re trying to say here
Yes.
I guess I agree? I don’t see how this relates to anything I said, though.
Exactly my point. Predisposition and discovery. SCNR ;-)
See, I’d say that’s the wrong question. At least to begin with. Is change possible? If the answer is no, there’s no point in asking why you would want that change.
I fear you’ve lost me again. I really don’t know what you’re trying to convey here.
You’re missing the point. Out of the wonderful bouqet of pornography I picked what I liked. That way I found out what I liked. I am absolutely sure that even if I tried to like foot fetish porn I would fail. The “set your mind to it part” is nonsense in this context. That’s not how sexuality works.
I agree to some extent. Everybody has some basic sexual wiring (read orientation) whithin which one can take different routes to develop ones own sexuality. The end result could be very distinct but the way to it is not a conscious process. You can consciously choose to try something new, but you can’t choose whether you like it or not.
Partly to mostly agree. I think we’re on the same page that criminalizing being pedophile helps noone, though. CSAM already is illegal. Long arc back to the beginning: I doubt the measures described in the article have any meaningful impact.
That’s not what I meant by “reverse”, I meant in in the learn to enjoy vs. learn to not enjoy sense.
That sets a baseline instinct, it’s not the end-all be-all of sexual attraction. It sets an attraction, not a repulsion, and just as you don’t need to be genetically attracted to carpentry, as long as you’re not repulsed by it to a degree that can’t be humanely overcome you can learn to enjoy it.
But the answer to whether it’s possible or not is not dependent on whether we want to use that possibility, or whether evangelicals could use it as an excuse to torture people.
Basically that it’s not society’s business who you choose (or not) to be attracted to, as long as it’s all consensual. If you have a Yogi and they want to be aroused by eating spaghetti then that’s their business.
Choosing whether we should like things or not is our largest degree of freedom. The ancient Stoics knew it, and modern psychology picked up on it (CBT is directly influenced by Epictetus). The capacity to do that is, for most people, buried under layers and layers of conditioning because learned helplessness is great if you want to rule people but that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
And, of course, don’t get me wrong, the capacity is not limitless, things like gender dysphoria are on a deeper level than the mechanisms of pursuit and avoidance. But if you agree that it’s possible to learn to enjoy cleaning the bathroom for someone who really dreaded it before: What makes sucking dick so different that it becomes an impossibility?
Even if the impact is small, even if it’s basically zero, it’s still worth doing because there’s no harm in it.
Also: “they actually track that I was searching for something illegal, let me rather not do it again”.
Like anything on the internet wasn’t tracked. If need be people will resort to physically exchanging storage media.
But having that tracking shown to you has a very powerful psychological effect.
It’s pretty well established that increasing penalties for crimes does next to nothing to prevent those crimes. But what does reduce crime rates is showing how people were caught for crimes, making people believe that they are less likely to ‘get away with it’.
Being confronted with your own searches is an immediate reminder that the searcher is doing something illegal, and that they are not doing so unnoticed. That’s wildly different than abstractly knowing that you’re probably being tracked somewhere by somebody among billions of other people.
And where is the quantification and qualification for that? Spoiler: it’s not in the article(s) and not one google search away. Does Nintendo succeed in stopping piracy with its show trials? If you have a look around here, it more looks like people are doubling down.
I mean, I know Google has been shitty lately, but Wikipedia isn’t hard to find: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(penology)
I’d wager Nintendo has put some fear into a few folks considering developing emulators, but that’s the only comparison to be made here. The lack of any real consequences for individuals downloading roms is why so many are happy to publicly proclaim their piracy.
Now, I bet if megaupload added an AI that checked users uploads for copyrighted titles and gave everyone trying to upload them a warning about possible jail time, we’d see a hell of a lot less roms and movies on mega.
It would simply obsolete megaupload. Sharing platforms come and go. If one distribution channel stops working, people will use (or create) another.
Obviously, most of Mega’s traffic is piracy, they have no interest in doing that. The point is it’s an actual comparison instead of the nonsense you brought up.
Of course no individual site is going to singlehandedly stop criminal acts. Glad you agree it would be exactly as effective as I suggested.
Btw, you might want to read that wiki page in full yourselves.
One will never exceed the bandwidth of a semi loaded with hard drives
If for no other reason than it doesn’t have to be either/or. If you can meaningfully reduce demand for a “product” as noxious as CSAM, you should expect the rate of production to slow. There are certainly efforts in place to prevent that production from ever being done, and to prevent it from being shared/hosted once it is, but I don’t think attempting to reduce demand in this way is going to hurt.
Does it reduce the demand though? Where are the measurements attesting to that? If history has shown one thing, it is that criminalizing things creates criminals. Did the prohibition stop people from making, trading, or consuming alcohol? How does this have any meaningful impact on the abuse of children? The article(s) completely fail to elaborate on that end. I’m missing the statistics/science here. What are the measuring instruments to assess any form of success? Just that searches were blocked and people were shown some links? … TL;DR: is this something with an actual positive impact or just an exercise in virtue signaling and waste of time and money? Blind “fixes” are rarely useful.
It might not reduce demand in individuals already seaking out that material, but it would certainly reduce introduction to it and demand in the long-run.
I wonder where you take that certainty from. I’d like to have that in my life.
Then maybe you could benefit from being alerted when you’re about to make a potentially harmful decision.
Fuck off with your insinuations.
Maybe liability or pretending to help? That way they can claim later on “we care about people struggling with this issue which is why when they search for terms related to it we offer the help they need”. Kinda how if you search for certain terms on Google it pops up suicide hotline on top.
Ok Google just because I looked up some stuff on being sad in winter doesn’t mean I am planning to put a gun in my mouth.
Yah, this feels more like a legal protection measure and virtue signaling. There’s absolutely no assessment of efficiency or even efficacy of the measures. At least not in the article or the ones it links to and I couldn’t find anything substantial on it.