A lawsuit filed by more victims of the sex trafficking operation claims that Pornhub’s moderation staff ignored reports of their abuse videos.
Sixty-one additional women are suing Pornhub’s parent company, claiming that the company failed to take down videos of their abuse as part of the sex trafficking operation Girls Do Porn. They’re suing the company and its sites for sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and human trafficking.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, includes what it claims are internal emails obtained by the plaintiffs, represented by Holm Law Group, between Pornhub moderation staff. The emails allegedly show that Pornhub had only one moderator to review 700,000 potentially abusive videos, and that the company intentionally ignored repeated reports from victims in those videos.
The damages and restitution they seek amounts to more than $311,100,000. They demand a jury trial, and seek damages of $5 million per plaintiff, as well as restitution for all the money Aylo, the new name for Pornhub’s parent company, earned “marketing, selling and exploiting Plaintiffs’ videos in an amount that exceeds one hundred thousand dollars for each plaintiff.”
The plaintiffs are 61 more unnamed “Jane Doe” victims of Girls Do Porn, adding to the 60 that sued Pornhub in 2020 for similar claims.
Girls Do Porn was a federally-convicted sex trafficking ring that coerced young women into filming pornographic videos under the pretense of “modeling” gigs. In some cases, the women were violently abused. The operators told them that the videos would never appear online, so that their home communities wouldn’t find out, but they uploaded the footage to sites like Pornhub, where the videos went viral—and in many instances, destroyed their lives. Girls Do Porn was an official Pornhub content partner, with its videos frequently appearing on the front page, where they gathered millions of views.
read more: https://www.404media.co/girls-do-porn-victims-sue-pornhub-for-300-million/
What the actual fuck Pornhub. That’s like watching an action movie and finding out later that they really murdered the actors. Never go long on that site again.
Yeah it’s fucking disgusting. I just googled what is it in google images because I used to watch a lot of porn in the past probably from that brand too. I seen those faces, those women that probably some of them at least were forced to do it…
Nowdays I don’t enjoy consuming mainstream porn at all because like it’s… violent in a way. Consensual or not it always looks like something is seriously off, wrong like someone is waiting with a gun behind the camera you know. Like they just treat the girl like a doll and throw her around, cum, then away. Guys are ugly as fuck
There is this bellesa stuff, amateur vids, lots of things that seem more enjoyable for everyone and of course old good hentai
Honestly, nothing beats two consenting adults enjoying eachother and sharing it with the world. Professional porn is disgusting imo
Well, except sex IRL with someone you love amirite
Well yeah duh
Professional has better lighting
I like looking for couples. It also seem they know and enjoy each other more.
The real question is: can consent be bought?
Do you go to a job you hate every morning? Then, yes, consent can be bought.
It’s messed up when people go to sex work out of desperation, but way too often recognizing this is used as an excuse to ban sex work, when it should be a reason to provide everyone with basic living conditions.
Banning sex work often makes the situation of those people even worse because they are driven into shadier environments rather than having any amount of protections.
The people who run said shadier environments usually support banning sex work so they can get cheaper labour force :). Capitalism runs even behind the scenes.
Yeah, as someone who has done survival sex work, the illegality is a plus for the Johns’s. “Officer, the man that was supposed to pay me for a sex act changed his mind afterwords!” Or removed the condom mid act, or “oops, wrong hole!” Or the fact that if you get murdered it’s not really a big deal - are you going to ever talk to cops?
I think sex work is a hell that no one should have to go through. Maybe you can run an OF or sell feet pics without trauma, but I don’t have nightmares about working fast food or retail like I do the sex work. The illegality makes the hell worse though.
That’s exactly the point.
How much of our lives can money buy?
What if I wanted to sell my whole remaining time for the benefit of the ones I love, in the form of organs?
Should we allow money to buy anything? Or should we actually make people less desperate so that they are not willing to sacrifice all they have for peanuts?
I’m glad you brought this up, because yeah we’re all selling our bodies and time. I wouldn’t say this means we consent, though. We don’t need to change what consent means to make capitalism sound better than it is.
If you’re “incentivized” (e.g will be starved and punished otherwise) by a system to do something you hate, you can’t call that consent.
If you had a system where women were raised and then presented with the option of either having sex with you & being allowed to participate in modern society, or being discarded in the wilderness, not being allowed to even build anywhere/make it on your own because all the land is owned by either private individuals or the government, then those women aren’t free.
As we agree, just by changing the demand from “have sex” to “do manual labor” or “rent out your mind so someone else can own the product of your thoughts (IP)” doesn’t change whether or not it’s consensual.
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I never last that long anyways
Is there a good porn site alternative?
Amazon still sells Milo & Otis
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It’s quite simple honestly, if you profit off something, you have the responsibility to make sure it’s legal. We all like platforms like YouTube where you can find anything you want, but the truth is that they’re currently unsustainable when forced to comply with the law.
With the advent of AI there’s hope for improved systems for detecting violations, but it doesn’t seem to be there yet.
I agree that pornhub, et al, should be liable for abuse their platform distributes, but how on earth is AI meant to help in sex trafficking?
A lot of people have this very naive view that if we just build AI overlords to monitor all human activity, we can somehow automate good behavior and make the world a better place.
Really we’ll just end up with RoboCop.
Roko’s Basilisk
That seems like an excellent idea, we should all make everything possible to make sure such AI overlords are built.
Please don’t hurt me, or an eventual future indistinguishable facsimile of myself…?
But robocop was the good guy.
ED-209 was the bad guy.
He looked much cooler, but he was kind of a dick. And bad at stairs.
AI will help with sex trafficking by generating all the porn so humans won’t need to be involved at all.
In the future the equivalent lawsuit will be from the victims of hackers who used people’s PCs to generate porn.
That’s like saying professional porn got rid of amateur / “real” sex porn. It didn’t.
There will always be a demand for real humans actually doing the thing depicted. While I’m sure there will be very popular AI production houses, similar to hentai, etc, if you think AI generated porn will completely remove the desire for humans from performing, then you do not understand why people watch porn.
Edit: I said “ideally,” as in utopian. In practice, corporations, governments and overall greed are in the way.
Ideally, sci-fi style, an effective AI can sift through all the reports and take down the videos that are clearly suspicious (as opposed to popular and well-known videos of porn stars that could be found elsewhere, for example, in dvd format.) It could message the reporter asking for more information, for example. Then it could message an actual human for the videos it is not confident to deem as abusive.
It may even try to contact the victims and offer them options to report the perpetrators to the authorities. Or lead them to a safe house, etc.
It could do this without never being tired, never being hungry, never feeling shocked.
In practice, we’re not there yet. Close, but not there.
Close? Pull the other one.
And that’s long before we get the ethical quandary of sourcing training data, and implicit biases.
Not a hot dog.
True. I guess close was a bit of a stretch.
quite distopian, no thanks
I know what you mean.
My scenario was ideal, from the point of view of my 80s kid self looking forward to a promising future.
That future is now, and I hate it, because governments and big corporations ruined it for all of us.
This is why I can’t jive with idealists. They put forth a proposal because “ideally…” and get people to thinking “yeah he’s right,” but he conveniently left off the fact that due to human nature it is basically an impossible pipedream and you’re more likely to find true gnosis than for that to become reality.
The funny thing is that I’m a realist. But if course I like to think about what the supposed scenario is.
that’s for the bad guys to figure out in prison after being arrested
It’s not magic.
As soon as you open anything to user generated content you run the risk that they’re going to do something dodgy with that access. More than a decade ago I remember they added the emblem creator to Call of Duty and people were making swastikas within minutes.
Well here’s the question, is an AI detection software legal if it’s trained to identify this material? Strictly speaking, unless it is 100% free, selling the AI software would be profiting off the illegal material that you used to teach the AI.
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It’s quite simple honestly, if you profit off something, you have the responsibility to make sure it’s legal.
Morally, yes, in practice that’s not how our economy generally works, this is a gigantic can of worms from cobalt mines to work safety in Asian textile factories and back and forth and into a gazillion places. Germany has recent legislation about this but AFAIK it’s the only such legislation in the world.
Well, countries’ laws, with some exceptions, only have authority within their own borders.
The German version is kinda only a proof of concept and saying to the rest of the EU “we’re serious about this shit”.
The actual goal is a EU-wide version which is in the pipeline, actually stricter (because Parliament wills it). It will apply to any company >250 employees with a net turnover of 40M in the EU (or world-wide for EU companies). And it’s very hard to ignore the EU when you want to make money at scale, see the Brussels effect.
Yes, but how far does due diligence go in a matter like this? If company A is buying things they get from company B and company B gives company A all the proper paperwork, is it company A’s responsibility to make sure company B didn’t do anything illegal to obtain what they had? Was there a reason for company A to suspect company B was illegally obtaining something that many other companies legally and legitimately acquire?
I don’t think so. I think in that case it would be completely company B that is at fault 100%.
I think it starts to become also company A’s fault when it can be shown that they were aware of company B possibly obtaining things illegally or that company A started getting complaints about what company B was illegally doing. This here is more like what pornhub has done. They seemed to have purposefully understaffed the review and complaints department in order to more or less ignore complaints. Up until that part I don’t think PH would be responsible.
If you re-sell for example stolen goods, your proceeds from those sale may be taken from you together with whatever stolen good you have on stock, and if you are found to be aware of the illegal origin of those goods, then you are an accomplice and are charged accordingly.
That’s why buyers of used items have the difficult task of ascertaining whether those items are stolen or not.
In the case of pawn shops, the money made if the item is already gone does not get claimed back. If the item that was stolen is still there, then the item is returned to the owner and the store is out whatever it paid the thief.
However this is a perfect example of what I’ve said. In the above scenario, the pawn shop is under no legal trouble at all unless it was discovered that they were knowingly buying stolen goods. It is the thief who stole the items that will be in legal trouble.
Maybe that’s how it works in your country, but not in mine
I always hated GDP videos cause the girls never looked like they wanted to be there, now I know why, they didn’t. There’s a lot of porn out there where the girl is very clearly not enjoying it or just laying there, I don’t know how anyone finds that hot.
Honestly I’m running into that a lot with women, especially younger women. They all want to be “dominated” and it does nothing for me.
Consensual non-consent is also surprisingly common with younger women as well. Makes me very uncomfortable.
Under no circumstances would I be comfortable if someone wanted me to simulate rape or being overly dominant.
Its at best not what I’m into and at worst a way to catch a court date if the other person is an especially shit human, never mind how it throws clear communication straight out of the window.
No I’ve done it. Done properly it’s with full communication, clear limits, safe words and usually pre-setup and post aftercare which has been very cathartic and important time for my partners.
It’s totally fine if it’s not something you are into but done properly it’s not something that is outside of communicated carefully and shouldn’t be causing court issues cause it’s definitely not something to just do without precise communication.
I get that isn’t always reality but I just don’t want people to think it’s something that’s inherently only harmful.
Being done properly and with clear communication would fall under my “at best” scenario with it just not being my thing, but your comment is important. I never meant to make it sound like BDSM is inherently “dangerous” or whatever.
It’s fine, yeah I just saw the upvotes and the “no clear communication” thing and knew a partner who would want to write notes afterwards and had a full document of pre agreements and could feel her spirit telling me to not let that go unchallenged
Oh yes, I know someone that would have been the same way. She was adamant about clear expectations and establishing boundaries.
Right. The BDSM world has very strict rules. If you’re ever with a partner who “wants to try bdsm” without multiple conversations beforehand, then walk away. Aftercare is also a huge and important part of BDSM.
Been there, uh, didn’t do that because it’s fucking creepy. Also no hitting or calling me “daddy”, which is super creepy IMO
Rapists.
Rapists find it hot.
Like the rapists that ran GDP.
Or, like, half of the BDSM community who enjoy when this is roleplayed, like what everyone watching these videos thought it was.
Unless you think anyone who plays video games with guns only find it fun cause theyre murderers?
Many of these women did this consenually. Read the article: it says they were told it wouldn’t be posted on online. These women were more than happy to have sex on on film for money, they are just unhappy others found out about it. That is breach of contract but it isn’t rape.
It says some of the women were violently abused which is totally fucked, that potentially is rape, but this suit includes both those groups and the difference is important. And the offenses are a world of difference between them.
Firstly, Sex by misdirection is rape, flat out. If you agree to have sex with someone with a condom and take it off without their knowledge, you raped them. Saying “lets shoot a video that will never go public” is the same thing.
Secondly, youre glomming onto one detail and ignoring all the other tactics they used to coerce and rape these woman. They would fly them out to an unfamiliar city for “modeling jobs,” and then demand thousands in payments if they backed out of doing porn. They would sometimes take nudes “for the modeling contract” the threaten to send them to friends/family/etc if they didn’t do porn. Other times, they directly used force and violence, locking them in rooms to kidnap them, or forcing them to do sex acts they dodnt consent at all to, even under duress.
Then they would say “this video will never be public so if you just do it you get paid and all this goes away.” They then would upload the videos to pornhub. If im not mistaken, the owner of GDP, also ran a website with the girls real info on it.
On top of it all, Wolfe admitted that GirlsDoPorn co-owner Michael James Pratt, 39, whom authorities are still searching for, operated a website called pornwikileaks.com with identifying information and social media accounts for some women being filmed.
They were ugly, brutal fucks.
The owners were not convicted because of a contract “trick.” They brutalized 100s of young women in every way possible. Read the DOJ sentencing document for a full picture of what they did.
I’d say the condom thing is also because it raises the risk level considerably, not just because it was dishonest. It’s not just the act they didn’t consent to but the risk of unnoticed m unprotected sex.
BUT, by that token the risk level of having your sex-acts put on the internet for potential millions to see - including family members, potential employers, etc - is still considerable. It can ruin lives in different but still very significant ways.
These scum deserve to be stuffed in a cell.
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Not sure if I would label uploading the videos after saying not to as rape, it feels more along the lines of mental torture but with a better word for it. I guess that rape is a form of torture at the end of day, so still the same?
Secondly, youre glomming onto one detail and ignoring all the other tactics they used to coerce and rape these woman. They would fly them out to an unfamiliar city for “modeling jobs,” and then demand thousands in payments if they backed out of doing porn. They would sometimes take nudes “for the modeling contract” the threaten to send them to friends/family/etc if they didn’t do porn. Other times, they directly used force and violence, locking them in rooms to kidnap them, or forcing them to do sex acts they dodnt consent at all to, even under duress.
This is rape.
The sex trafficers lied about the public uploads, never used the company’s actual name, had fake “previous models” that vouched for the vidoes being private, and even had the cameraman say that he would never shoot “public” porn. They would lie to the models about what was in the contracts, and never gave them copies. They often got them drunk/high before shooting while having them sign releases that said they were not high/drunk. They also specifically targeted 18-20yr olds to make sure the women were as naive as possbile.
The founder also had a separate website that published some of the victims real names publically.
Coercing/lying/tricking/forcing someone into a type of sex that they otherwise would not have had willingly is cut and dry rape. These women were sex trafficed, which the DOJ confirmed.
Gdp?
Gross Domestic Product
To be fair, it really was.
Girls Do Porn
Wanna make a wild guess based on the title? lol
Even science documents with studies as their title never leave acronyms to assumption.
Even??
Given their videos were so highly ranked, the prevalence of coercion in the industry, and the fact that it’s often impossible to tell if someone’s been threatened behind the scenes, it’s highly likely that most people reading this who have watched porn online have also watched plenty of videos of actual rapes.
This is a simple fact, but one which a lot of people would rather deny, rather than admit their part in perpetuating it, while wondering why watching porn makes them sad. Partly, I suspect, because deep down they know the truth of it.
I wonder how many products you’ve bought in your life were made by child labor.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Which is why I dislike people who attack those critical of capitalism’s excesses for being hypocrites.
In the real world, most of us are hypocrites and part of the problem. That doesn’t mean we can’t try to be better or be critical of things that are bad about society.
Complaining about a system you’re stuck in doesn’t make you a hypocrite for being stuck in it
But there is something circular and self-serving about saying “it’s not me, it’s the system, and I can do nothing about that system.”
Notice how this offloads all the responsibility and blame elsewhere, forever, while requiring no change whatsoever of us?
That doesn’t sit well with me. There’s some truth in it but there’s also a lot of convenience in it.
Everyone can try to change the system, and you will need a lot of people to follow you to make that happen, which is not easy. So saying that “I can do nothing about the system” may not always be so untrue.
I would say, if you can’t do it alone, then start swaying others. But the reality is that anyone who wants to get involved will find the world is full of organizations already off the ground and doing important work. Find your fit and make your contribution.
“But I can only do a little - I’ll never be able to solve ALL the problems”
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
I’ll eat meat that comes from large scale animal torture, my taxes have paid for bombs to kill civilians, I’ve spent money on countless products that exploit an untold amount of people. My country is one that benefits from resource extraction of the third world.
I get to live in relative opulence while billions have a fraction of the quality of life I do.
At the end of the day, I just accept these things and continue to live my life.
I’ve always seen myself as a good person. But I figured I can’t be a good person and do all that. That mismatch in identity caused me to re-evaluate my position. Turns out I’m not actually willing to give up anything from above. So I’m probably a bad person.
That way there’s no hypocrisy.
The Bible actually brings this up in an interesting way. Rich man goes up to Jesus and asks how to get into Heaven. Jesus says sell all your belongings and give the proceeds to charity. Then follow me. Rich man cried.
We’re all going to hell.
We’re arguably all evil, yeah. If you let a kid drown, you’re evil. If you let a kid drown 5000 miles away, because you’d rather buy a pc game or something you don’t really need, than donate to charity, that’s also evil. If you donate 50 bucks at christmas, to prevent one kid from drowning, that doesn’t mean you’re not evil if you let another 100 drown during the rest of the year.
People have a really hard time accepting that they’re not good. Vanity is the Devil’s favourite sin.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to be better. It’s not because you and I eat meat, that we should also go kick a puppy to death. That puppy does matter. Stop kicking puppies to death!
Of course, I agree with you. I would never initiate an action with the intention of causing harm - like kicking a puppy to death.
I also try to help when not too inconvenient for me. I typically give spare cash to homeless whenever they show up in front of me. I try and tip service workers well. I donate to a few non-profits, although they are mainly open source projects and is admittedly more ideologically driven than ethically. I try to be kind and polite and compassionate to the people in my life.
I’m just not about to dedicate my life to feeding the homeless or caring for orphans. I don’t care enough besides giving a few bucks here and there. I’m simply just more concerned about myself and my family.
Having said that, of course we can do better and we should try. For example the animal thing. If lab grown meat was at a comparable quality and price, I would prefer it every time. If I can choose the option of less harm without lowering my quality of life I would in a heartbeat. But I actually won’t lower my quality of life, at least not significantly.
It’s a similar story with environmentalism. The only real way to lower carbon emissions to a level where the climate isn’t at long term risk is for billions of people to stop using so much energy, stop eating so much meat & carbon heavy foods (almonds, avocados, etc), stop driving cars, stop using A/C, stop buying items that get sent on cargo ships all across the world, etc.
We can reduce it with renewable energies and plastic substitutes and reducing personal usage, carbon taxes… whatever. But nobody is actually willing to go back to the 18th century. Any modern society at such a scale that we have will inevitably change the climate. The Unabomber had it right 50 years ago and nobody wants to admit it.
For example even renewables. To build solar panels requires a supply chain with a massive amount of carbon being released into the air. You can’t escape it. Just like I think you can’t escape evils against humans in our society. The machine is cold and uncaring. The gears will not slow down just because a child (or a million) gets caught inside of them. It will keep spinning unrelentingly as if nothing happened, crushing without feeling.
Maybe I’m just cynical, I don’t know.
I like that quote you give, vanity is the devil’s favorite sin. Question, are you a believer? Do you believe in a God? The Christian God?
The first honest comment I’ve seen here.
The main problem with criticisms of capitalism Is that they don’t include “trying to be better.” As in: practical solutions. I think many of us use “capitalism” as a dark hole we can shove all the blame into. But no one ever has any realistic suggestions for change. There are plenty of fantasy ideas. Anarcho-syndicalism will save us if we overthrow the world order tomorrow!
I understand it’s a deeply embedded system and not simple to do away with. But just using it as a scapegoat constantly without any actual plan or will to depart from it is in fact an empty approach.
Eh, I think that’s just hivemind talking. Every discussion I’ve ever had about the ethics of capitalism has some talk of how you, as an individual, can be better. Buy less, live humbly, vet sources, and if you’re in the position to make an actual IMPACT, do what you can.
For the individual, pretty much the only real effect we can have is doing what I just said, and spreading the idea to anyone who will listen.
Indeed. You can know that your own life is dependant on the exploitation of others whilst working to make that less so.
I have to. The alternative is death.
I find this word brought out all the time and used as a scapegoat for us to pile all our sins onto and then stone it to death. It’s not us, it’s capitalism!
It’s not about piling your sins on a scapegoat, it’s about being realistic. One CANNOT live ethically if you consider the sins of whatever company they’re buying from the sins of the consumer.
The broader goal of saying there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism is saying, “hey this system is flawed, and we’re all perpetuating it. Let’s acknowledge that so we can work together better it.”
I have seen this argument a few times lately but I’m not sure i understand it completely.
Is the argument that person 1 trades with company 1 which is seemingly run ethically. Company 1 trades with company 2, 2 with 3 etc.
And then eventually company x trades with x+1 which is some human rights breaking company. And then all seemingly ethical companies have this link or trail of trade partners which eventually end up at some unethical company?
Pretty much. The idea is that capitalism forces companies to create goods at the cheapest possible price. Eventually, this means the company will rely on outsourcing labor to a country with less-than-stellar human rights conditions. For instance, we all know how shit most Chinese factory labor conditions are. Now think of just how many things you find are “made in China” stamped.
At the most undeniable level there’s that. You can also take the approach that any kind of profit that a company is making, they’re only making off the labor of their workers. That profit, thus, should belong to them, not the capital owners. This position is a bit tougher to argue, but it’s also valid.
Alright, that makes sense, thanks for the info :)
We have likely bought many, often after lying to ourselves about it.
Do two wrongs make a right?
Also:
Tu quoque (/tjuːˈkwoʊkwi, tuːˈkwoʊkweɪ/;[1] Latin Tū quoque, for “you also”) is a discussion technique that intends to discredit the opponent’s argument by attacking the opponent’s own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with their argument, therefore accusing hypocrisy. This specious reasoning is a special type of ad hominem attack. The Oxford English Dictionary cites John Cooke’s 1614 stage play The Cittie Gallant as the earliest use of the term in the English language.
Of course two wrongs don’t make a right, but get off the high horse and join your fellow man against the proper targets instead of fighting people who should be allies. That’s the point they’re making with their tu quo que.
I guess it would depend on if the person wears clothing or not
I practice ethical nudism 😎
Not to mention the animal suffering we’re all responsible for with all our soaps and cosmetic products being sprayed into their eyes and rubbed into their skin to make sure it’s safe for us. And while I believe animals can be raised for meat humanely and ethically, they’re very often not.
I avoid this by not watching porn that makes me sad. There’s plenty of consensual, happy, joyful sex-positive porn out there.
While your point is valid about this particular situation (which is horrible and criminal on multiple levels), your overbroad generalization of porn and the implied assumption of guilt in the viewers is what’s led folks to react negatively to your statement.
On a larger level, this kind of statement plays into the puritanical doctrines towards sex that paint it as a negative force, and subsequently leads to the twisting of a positive, creative act into a negative expression of power and rape in those that accept those doctrines.
Porn is not at fault here, nor are its viewers. Those at fault in this crime are the producers and publishers, who were well aware of the abuses happening under their watch, and deceived their viewers into believing they were observing consensual performance acts. I hope that these women get every cent and more, and it would be excellent to see a class action suit from Pornhub’s subscribers arise in tandem to and in support of their complaint.
Exactly, it’s not too hard to find videos where you can see by their faces and sounds that they’re having a good time. If they’re not then it’s a turn off
That works for you but a lot of people get off on the “dominating” side of things, especially women.
I’m like you, I hate that kind of stuff so I’m pretty sure I’ve never gotten off to it, but it’s popular for a reason.
This is why I stick to hentai. No traficking or coercion or questionable consent there, just a bunch of nerds doing what they love.
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You joke, but I remember an author who apparently had a popular series on nhentai (might be getting it mixed up) about a guy with 2 girlfriends. Anyways, she (the author) committed suicide, allegedly due to the working conditions, and the publishing company gave a very blank face statement about it.
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Sure there’s content out there that depicts nasty abuse. But if it’s animated, then it’s fiction.
I feel like whether the content is enjoyable/good is a personal opinion and the fact that anyone thinks it’s wholesome enough or not is irrelevant.
It’s a difficult area to research because it is impossible to know the direction of the causal arrow; predators may seek out the most violent porn, or sexual violence might be normalised by viewing it, and quite likely a bit of both. But you can’t just say that the production didn’t involve real people therefore no one is harmed.
This is from an anti-porn site so clearly not neutral: Is There a Connection Between Violent Crime and Watching Porn?
Very little of the evidence they cite tries to distinguish between violent porn and any porn but there are some snippets worth taking seriously [numbers in brackets are the references]:
Not surprisingly, the more violent the porn they consume, the more likely they will be to support violence and act out violently. [18] In fact, one study found that those with higher exposure to violent porn were six times more likely to have raped someone than those who had low past exposure. [19]
…
A large portion of the porn consumed by millions of people every day is reinforcing the message that humiliation and violence are normal parts of what sex is supposed to be. [20] It’s wiring the minds and expectations of the upcoming generation, making it harder for many young people to prepare for loving, nurturing relationships [21] and leaving both women and men feeling like they can’t express the pain it’s causing them. [22]
I don’t have the answer. I am not against porn in general. I am obviously against porn where performers have been coerced or mistreated (most of it, tbf) and I do think it is healthier to seek out porn which is explicitly consensual.
Men who are interested in having real, consensual sex could probably do themselves a lot of favours by seeking out female porn directors who are making woman-friendly porn. And, given the link between watching sexual violence and doing sexual violence, whatever the direction of the causal arrow, if you don’t want to be that guy avoiding violent porn is probably a good idea.
There’s a ton of wholesome consensual adult-angled 2D stuff out there. Like a ton. The concept of hentai as all underage rape fantasy is a myth. Plus if I stumble across some unmoderated creepy stuff when I’m browsing new, I can just close it and move on without the burden of knowing I saw a real thing that happened to a real person.
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Drawing shotacon, as Zeus intended.
But what is the prevalence of coercion in the industry? Is that known? Can it be known?
Most people I’ve heard speak about their experiences in the porn industry say this type of coercion is rare. GDP was a unique situation. Virtually everyone knew (or should have known) they were bad news for years before law enforcement got involved. I remember arguing with people about this. And actually one of the things people said was “who cares, this kind of thing is everywhere in the industry, they know what they’re getting into.” So I actually think that not only is there no evidence to support that, but this idea can even be harmful by painting the better behaved studios with a broad stroke, and giving the fewer bad actors cover to keep operating.
I think the best way to help sex workers, if this is something that concerns you, is to treat them with respect, call out the hateful stigma against their work, and support efforts to organize for worker protections. Despite the fact that most studios are not out there raping people left and right, like most industries, there is often a power imbalance between workers and owners and this sometimes leads to exploitation.
I am a regular consumer of online porn. And I’ll admit, I loved their videos. Now knowing what was going on, that’s on me to do some thinking, i have probably watched a rape and helped the perpetrator make money from that act. That’s hard on the conscience. I don’t know what to think about it.
The fault lies squarely on the shoulders of the producers. You hold as much guilt for that action as anyone who has ever purchased a cell phone has for the conditions for the workers are subjected to. Which isn’t to say 0, but it’s so small that it may as well be.
Really? You don’t know how to feel about jerking off to rape? I know how to feel about you. POS.
Cool, I know what to think about you. Irrational and judgemental.
You’re really going to place blame at a dude who just saw what was, presumably, some good, legal porn on a legitimate source, freely available to anyone? Rather than the producers? Or in anywhere near equal measure? Enough to call them a piece of shit? Man I’m glad I don’t know you.
Not all.of us see porn as necessary or useful. Let alone a right. Yall are pathetic addicts in my eyes. And you are absolutely responsible for ensuring that the porn you watch is adult and consensual.
And you’re a raging social deviant in my eyes, willing to attack someone trying to do better around something society deems acceptable. We can do this all day, sling mud, and shout into the void, or we can have an actual dialog.
Also that’s ridiculous. Anyone manufacturing anything is the responsible party for ensuring their stuff is safe. Or have you never heard of a manufacturer recall? It’s the same principle. They made bad porn, they get the trouble.
Yes i am a social deviant.
They made bad porn because people want it. People did this.And they make computers and cell phones with slavery because we want it. It cuts both ways. Help people be better or sit down.
And you are absolutely responsible for ensuring that the porn you watch is adult and consensual.
Well… no. But even if viewers were, how do you go about ensuring that it’s abuse free? It’s not like you can just google the production company. There are plenty of times where there aren’t any publicly available allegations so you can never be sure. When it comes to amateur porn, how do you know if their partner is forcing them into it or not? There’s no way to prove anything for sure unless there is a public record of allegations.
Charitable comment of the decade right there.
Noticed how they said “what to think”, not “how to feel”?
Jeez. I know how to feel about the act itself. It’s awful of course. What I don’t know is how to deal with is knowing that I did that. I can’t change what I did and I can try my damnedest to not do it again. But how should I deal with knowing what I did and the guilt and shame post facto.
For the record my guy, eatthecake is a raging lunatic. Keep doing better. No one’s perfect and realizing that some of the things you may have thought were ethical, aren’t is a good first step.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. Everyone makes mistakes, and the true harm was already done when the film was shot. Your contribution to the harm is minimal.
Maybe you should think about your actions more in future. Look into the consequences. Donate some money to a shelter. If you’re actually sorry then you can try and contribute to helping the people you hurt. Kudos for recocgnising that you hsve caused hurt and caring.
I doubt they have empathy, i also doubt the average porn watcher has empathy. Women have been screaming for years that the sex industry is abusive but we are howled down by the sex positive marketing industry. Its all about the money and men will pay for rape happily.
Funny hearing you of all people say anything about empathy.
Ok, i feel for the victims so that means i have no empathy right? I really do think tbe rapists and violent assholes can die in a fire. So i should die in a fire. I get it.
You’re only extending empathy when it’s convenient. I feel for the victims, the unknowing consumer, all of the other rape victims in the world, and you as well.
You know “average porn watcher” includes a very large percentage of women too, right? Every single comment of yours is filled with hateful nonsense.
Bollocks, you think women cant be rapists?
Hate their videos, most of the girls always look bored or not into it, which is now clear why. That’s why there’s a rise in homemade, Indy models and couples putting up the best videos recently, cause you can tell the people involved are actually into it and enjoying it.
These things move in cycles.
People want amateur porn.
Companies don’t.
Amateur porn rises until it gets purged, then a few years later it rises again.
I think the bigger problem is, you as a consumer have no way of knowing. And it’s SO prevalent, that yeah, you almost certainly have. But I can’t really know, or do much as a consumer. Don’t make it like the people just watching are the ones perpetuating the problem instead of the ones who are producing this shit.
I can always kind of tell. Half those videos the girls look straight up scared and not enjoying it
I can’t say for sure if I’ve ever seen any of these videos, but I have seen some with similarly bored looking models. I tend to avoid them just on the basis of them being boring, but now I’ll reevaluate and… Frankly I don’t know what I can really do with the information, but we’ll cross that bridge another time.
Sounds like 99% of the Asian porn I run into. Big turn off.
Alright, get rid of your phone. And whoa, if you have an iPhone, you might as well be pushing those Foxconn employees over the edge to their death. Everyone who bought a diamond is evil too. Do you love chocolate? You monster! Children most likely collected that. Clothes? My dear boy, you are supporting the exploitation of third world poors. Did you buy cheap veggies? Bloody psycho, you might as well be standing with a gun over the hordes of immigrants picking most of those for unliveable wages. Go to the cinema, watch a video on youtube, or listen to music on spotify, or vote for a conservative? How dare you support industries that have known child molesters, wage slaves, lobby for worse living standards, donate to hate groups, and and and?
“Oh, but that’s involuntary, I need those to survive”. Do you? Do you really? Did you need to buy a new phone? Is chocolate really necessary? Why don’t you pick your own fruit? Music, video, and other pleasures aren’t necessary to survive either.
Do you have an argument other than a tu quoque?
That’s a lot of words for “I know, but I really don’t want to give up my porn 😭”
Nice way to justify buying another iPhone.
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So you’re fine with the fact that you’ve almost certainly, essentially guaranteed to have, masturbated to a woman being raped? What the living fuck is wrong with you?
“Fine with” is probably too far. I think they’re pointing out that, for example, your phone contains cobalt which was likely mined unethically, perhaps by a child, perhaps resulting in their death. Is therefore buying a phone inherently wrong? Not essentially. Nor is porn inherently wrong. The abusers in these scenarios are in the wrong, not necessarily the end consumer.
It could even be argued that rather than being some sort of monster for being unknowingly subjected to footage of a sexual assault, that the viewer is also now being harmed themselves.
Furthermore, I’m not familiar with the “Girls Do Porn” channel/company/whatever but it sounds to me that the concept was porn created by women. Wether sound or not logically, the intent seemed ideally to be a safer porn environment, like reduced patriarchy flavored porn. So in this case the company responsible actively preyed on people trying to find a more consensual and equitable pornography.
There is definitely a crime here, but it isn’t the horny guy cranking away in the privacy of his home.
Thank you. This is exactly the point I was making.
Its not impossible to research the porn you consume to ensure that you’re not getting off to someone being sexually abused or raped.
My cell phone is something I require to access society. I cannot work without one, I cannot be a functional adult in society without one. I go every day without masturbating to women being sexually abused, and there is no reason whatsoever someone has to do that. It’s not the same at all, and its telling that men see “Please stop masturbating knowingly to women being raped” and immediately compare doing that with unethical consumption in general. It’s not comparable. I’m sorry, there really is nothing comparable to sexually pleasing yourself to a video of a woman being sexually abused. It makes me literally sick to my stomach that so many men are clearly totally fine with doing that.
Again, the porn is not the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with making or watching porn. The predators are the problem.
Two things to consider:
One, I guarantee you have watched and will watch again, a major Hollywood movie featuring victims of abuse by directors, producers, other actors. Even child victims. Hollywood is widely recognized for being a dark and evil place with imbalances of power and open secrets about exploitation. But watching movies is not inherently evil. The best you can do is be deliberate in your choices and try your best to not support the bad guys.
Two, where does the moral imperative end? Ok, so you’ve decided that entertainment in the form a sexual performance is fundamentally different than movies/tv/theater/music. You abstain from participating because you believe it is unethical. Do you then believe in censorship? Surely if it is categorically wrong it should be made illegal? Better safe than sorry. But who gets to control the terms of censorship? What about the woman of color who is making enough doing porn to empower themselves in a society that is essentially constructed to deprive them of power? Is it right to take away that power due, ironically, to the actions of the same type of bad guy that limits their power in the first place?
Prohibition does not work. Not for drugs, not for alcohol, not for porn, and of the three I listed it is arguably the healthiest pastime. The solution is openness and oversight. Stop forcing porn talent to exist in some walled off dim corner of the internet. Eliminate the stigma. Give me that new Netflix Original porn with credits and funding. But it still wont be perfect. But that still doesn’t make it fundamentally wrong.
Some regulation for the porn industry would be nice, how about auditors and some method of government vetting to ensure the rights of sex workers in general.
I will not consume it for many reasons, I’m a woman and porn is written and filmed to be exploitative of bodies like mine. Thats not and never is going to appeal to me. Erotica exists, drawings exist, forms of ethical sexuality exist from which I can consume.
Note that porn itself is not some godly byproduct of open-minded sexual liberation. A large portion of it is sadistic fantasy of abusing women, and I strongly question the long term impact of exposing teenage boys to content depicting women being victimized - even in a consensual context. What are the long term ramifications of hyper sexualizing women in pornography? What is the effect with regards to perception of women, with regards to the proliferation of misogyny?
And why is porn so infantile, so pseudo-pedophilic? Why all the teen shit? Why all the jailbait shit, the barely legal and so on. Am I supposed to ignore this, and pretend that the existence of this industry has no tangible impact on my life? Am I supposed to believe that the porn industry played no part in creating my rapist, in creating a culture whereby raping women is seen as desirable by men who do not empathize with women?
I think banning ogranized commercial pornography and instituting universal basic income would pretty readily solve this problem, even for the sex workers who can now choose to produce their own pornography for non-financial non-survival reasons if they want to. Anything less than that doesn’t adequately address the way this industry exploits women, both within the industry and outside of it.
And your cell phone was, at least assuming you live in a developed country, most likely replaced before it was necessary. You, and I, and every other consumer, caused that cobalt mine to have to produce a little more, which caused another chain of human suffering. Now do something about it. Oh, you can’t because you’re one powerless voice going against some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Make friends, fight together, and collectively something may change.
Thats all fine and well, but you don’t have to masturbate to women being sexually abused. At the very least you can vet the content you’re consuming to be as sure as you possibly can be that you’re not doing that. Otherwise, as I stated in another comment, you see masturbating to women being sexually abused as an acceptable consequence of consuming pornography.
What happens when the producers actively deceive people? You can vet all you want, these companies -gasp- lie so that they can make more money
Research on stuff you consume is a good habit, but most people don’t make time to check every source, even on things they use daily like a phone (or people would all buy Fairphones).
I think most sane people do not like to masturbate to something when they believe it actually causes harm. That’s why this is a news item, porn for most people is not about abuse and they are not fine with it (although I agree much content is often extremely aggressive). As for many it’s supposed to be a window of letting sexual frustration out; porn is about sex, which is one of the core drive factors of most existing species and one of the main reasons we exist today. Not everyone feels as strongly about it, but one cannot deny the human urges surrounding it.
For many people porn in general can fulfill a need, and therefore it’s quite easy for them to overlook the dark side of porn out of habit, just like eating animals is culturally acceptable to most, as well as buying the latest phone every two years while child labour is likely involved. People get their dopamine hit by different things and may look away from questionable parts. I’d figure that includes us, perhaps on different subjects.
I think we should all critically look at our own behaviour. We’re all bad and hypocrites in my perspective, but not on purpose per se. Most discussion in this topic I see is about some people trying to admit they’re confused and defending their past behaviour without wanting to give it all up and others that claim to have the moral highground while ignoring any nuance.
I think it’s good to look at ourselves and our own shortcomings. Everyone has different flaws, some might be equally morally questionable. Let’s acknowledge that and share our views. And together make sure that we strongly form a bond on that practices like in this news post will not happen again. This is a lot easier if we can understand the consumers of porn related services and work together to weed out the dark while acknowledging existing needs.
I still take great issue with the equivalence of deriving sexual pleasure from watching women being sexually abused, inadvertently or not, and me using a cell phone. As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, my cell phone I own to access society. It serves a purpose beyond child labor. I’m not deriving sexual pleasure from watching child labor or unethical companies operating. In the case of watching porn of a woman being raped and masturbating to it, the rape is the commodity you’re consuming. The rape is the thing that you’re getting off to.
So, if we are openly aware that these videos exist and that you will come across them while masturbating to porn - then you have accepted that you will masturbate to a woman being raped. It is acceptable that that happens so that you can continue to masturbate to porn. You do not have to watch porn. Porn has only existed for the last 130 years based on our present knowledge of early works. That means that only for the last 130 years have sex acts being performed on women been recorded, and thusly only for the last 130 years has deriving pleasure from a woman being raped in a video format been a possibility. The entirety of human history this has not existed and we have all gotten off just fine, many people continue to get off just fine today no porn involved. Watching porn is a choice, it is a want and not a need. You have to accept that you will get off to sexual abuse at some point in order to continue to consume it. That shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone who has any actual empathy for women. In essence the least that someone could say is they will go as far out of their way as possible to only consume content they are absolutely certain is not depicting sexual abuse. If you’re not researching the actors you watch, the studio that produced it, the film crew that worked on it, then you’re openly accepting that youre going to get off to porn depicting sexual abuse and that it’s okay for that to happen and not worth going to every length possible to ensure it doesn’t.
It’s just telling again and again that men see “inadvertently masturbating to a woman being raped” as equivalent in some manner to “using a cell phone who’s resources were gathered unethically”. And somehow the nuance that owning a cell phone for other reasons is not the same as consuming rape porn. It isn’t, no matter how hard you try to frame it that way it isn’t and never will be. Just to reiterate, so that we hopefully don’t go in circles on the same point again, in the example of the cell phone the child labor or unethical business practices is not what I am consuming. In the example of accidentally getting off to a woman being raped the rape itself is what is being consumed, a direct video of that sexual abuse is the commodity that is being consumed.
I understand that you are frustrated, but in my opinion you are using a lot of black/white arguments. Let’s try to work this out, as I think definition differences and perspective are confusing things.
A. I’m not saying porn is the only way out, I’m saying it’s an outlet of existing (sexual) urges. Watching porn is as necessary as eating meat, both are not needed to survive and have not been accessible to people in the past per se. It’s an urge you can act on, purely for pleasure. Just like toying with one’s new iPhone can be considered a pleasure, while we might want to look for a more sustainable alternative that is not build on workforce abuse of all ages. But indeed, not all phones are bad, there is nuance and most people will need one. Just like not all food is bad, but we’ve got some pretty nasty stuff done to our fellow-earthlings. But there is nuance.
B. Porn can be consensual stimulating graphic imagery, for example in the form of a couple sharing part of their love life, a photoshoot of a nude model, but it can also be found in ancient paintings and has been common in books as old as time itself as texts (figuratively speaking). This distinction is important in the argument.
Perhaps we need to define the term porn better; as I understand it you mean the non-consensual form of real people in sexual situations in media.
And if I understand you correctly, you say that if you look at any of the forms of porn I’ve described above than you are masturbating to rape. But that’s strong generalizing in my opinion.
What I do get though, is the part when what you find online is questionable and you can’t see the difference. I’d say let’s rule out all the porn that does not have an approval certificate of actual consent by an official authority.
C. 130 years ago iPhones did not exist either, the context made them useful, but I think I get what you mean with that argument. Just to keep things in balance, perhaps the amount of sexual abuse was higher as well then, as there was less of an outlet for sexual frustration / less regulation. I don’t think we can get factual records on that, as sex has always been a bit of a taboo subject. What I’m sure of though is that sexual imagery has been around for far longer than 130 years.
D. In my opinion the Fairphone alternative (fairtrade, relatively expensive, sustainable) to an iPhone now (forced -child- labor, relatively cheap, marketed as 2 year object) is on an abstract level like the nuance discussion between consensual porn and nonconsensual. Most people do not know the difference even after some research. It is both extremely hurtful for real people, downright sadistic even, hurtful for the environment and just surfing in a wave of lustful dopamine. In both cases most people do not care enough to pay a bit extra, even do research.
In both cases people might throw the subjects under the bus because they do not see the relevance, while they’re both supported by extreme human suffering in the bad scenario. They do not want to see similarities between suffering if it does not support their story.
- What I mean with all my responses, there is nuance in this topic.
- What you mean with your responses, there is pain in this topic.
And I say yes, there is pain, and it is gutwrechingly terrible. So are humans, I despise all of us for existing. But the truth is just that we are bad at looking at our own flaws and good at pointing out others. We still want things to change? We must work together and that starts with nuance.
I acknowledge the downsides of porn, I do not ask of you to acknowledge an upside, only hope to instill a bit of nuance in the definitions we’re talking about.
I think that’s where most of this triggers emotions and confusion.
Its not impossible to research the porn you consume to ensure that you’re not getting off to someone being sexually abused or raped.
You do understand that abusers can lie about what they’re doing, right? And that victims of abuse will often not come out in fear of retaliation from the abuser. You’re saying that the viewer should be required to prove that something doesn’t exist. It’s an impossible task.
You can do the best you can, check actresses pages check out studios research film crew. You can do a lot to try and determine whether the content you’re consuming was consensually filmed or not.
Can you ever be 100% sure? No, you can’t. And that’s why I do not watch it and never will.
It’s a legitimate criticism. Evil exists in every aspect of life. Direct your vitriol to the people who are actually responsible - those doing the raping, the nonconsensual filming, the other vile things that happen in the industry, and not the people who just consume. It’s for all intents and purposes impossible to guarantee as the consumer that ANYTHING you’re consuming is ethical. From sweatshops making your phone and clothes to scumbags doing vile shit to make porn.
No one reasonable is comfortable with any of that. But I’m not going to bash the dude who’s just consuming rather than the top dogs making. It’s the same principle as climate control. It does NOTHING to target the consumer, they’re responsible for a negligible amount of the problem, and yet so many people are quick to point to “you didn’t do your part! You threw away instead of recycling! You drove a gas car!” Aim where it matters.
I will bash the dude knowingly consuming porn when he is aware that a non zero amount of is literally rape. I will also bash the rapists making it. Consuming porn isn’t like wearing clothes, or eating food. You do not need to consume unethical pornography.
Ok and I’ll bash you for using an electronic device and wearing clothes. Both of them are as coercive and damaging to people as consuming unethical pornography.
Or we can get to an actual middle ground of understanding, realize that the world we live in is the way that it is, and do some actual work changing it, from both sides. I dunno, one of those seems way more productive.
You know, as a rape survivor myself, I have to say that no wearing clothes and using a cell phone to access society are not comparable to masturbating knowingly to women being raped. Rape is not equatable with unethically using a cell phone that I require to exist in society at all. Again, you can just not masturabate to unethical porn. You do not have to do that. I go every day without doing that. You’re defending knowingly masturbating to rape. To a woman being raped. No, no, no I’m sorry if you’re not willing to stop doing that then there is no possible middle ground that exists here.
Whoa what? Who said it was knowing? I’m pretty sure every comment I’ve read in this thread has been “oh God, I didn’t know that studio did this shit, I feel disgusted!”
I’m legitimately sorry you’ve been raped. You also have to look around that lens and see the actual truth of the situation, not take it out on the people who are very much with you on this thing.
Rape is not equatable with unethically using a cell phone that I require to exist in society at all.
What are you talking about? My father doesn’t have a phone. Does that mean he doesn’t exist?
Your argument is only based on emotions. What if I told you that I had relatives who died working in the mines for the minerals in your smartphone? What if I told you the money you paid for nigh every product in your life was used to keep people from my country in shit? That you (specifically you) helped pay a company to fuck up the political system of my country?
Well, I guess it’s bashing time now, because I have the moral highground, right? I mean, yes, you were raped, but my relatives were killed; forced to work in inhumane conditions and die before you even could leave highschool. I had to flee a war with my parents where more of my relatives were killed all because of the consumerism of you, your parents, your friends, relatives, and your country. I should hate everything about you. There’s no middleground here - you and people like you are evil.
My anger is greater than yours, so my argument is more valid. Only somebody who had it worse than me can have an opinion that is “more valid”. Only they can be the arbiter of morality since their suffering is greater than mine.
Hopefully you get the point. Obviously I don’t hate you and do I understand why you’re triggered, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.
Since we’re discussing reasonable mitigation factors, when was the last time you got a new cellphone? And the time before that? Were they absolutely unable to be used? Sure,you practically need both to be a member of society,but they don’t have to be fancy or new. How about your clothes? Did you wear them til they’re threadbare, barely holding together? Coffee? Chocolate? You ever consume those from non-fair-trade sources?
It’s absolutely ridiculous to place the blame for all of those things on the consumer. You do your best, and you make Boise about the shit the manufacturers and producers do, in whatever way you can bear. I don’t care about what’s worse between rape and slavery, that’s a fuckin dumb discussion they both suck. Do your best to limit your impact, but know that your impact alone, and mine, and every other person in this threads, is MINIMAL. Form allies, and together we can deal with the actual problems.
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Wow the downvotes are really telling. You’re totally right — I’ve gravitated to supporting the girls directly with OF, I know that’s not perfect but it’s hopefully a safer direction.
I just can’t get behind (heh) OF personally. evey video I’ve ever seen has just looked like a tiktok/insta “influencer” having sex and it is just a massive turnoff for me. the lighting is just so off all the time. looks more produced than actual produced stuff. just doesn’t do it for me
Unfortunately, we can’t know for sure that OF models aren’t subject to similar abuse either, but its likely a safer bet.
I have never watched porn. Some would say that makes me inhuman but it can be done. Those of us with experience in the sex industry would never say ‘sex positive’.
Save your fucking houlier than thou attitude for yourself.
I don’t understand, are you saying that not being okay with watching porn of a woman being raped is somehow a pretentious position? What are you on?
Your comprehension is 0
Note they’re not attacking your argument at all, merely calling out the fact that you’re being a pretentious twat. Completely valid, both can be true. No tu quoque. Also it’s quite sophomoric to call out logical fallacies as a gotcha in an argument.
You don’t actually have a “holier than thou” sentence in your comment, but
one which a lot of people would rather deny, rather than admit their part in perpetuating it,
Sure does come close. I think this is the reason why there are such negative reactions to your top level comment.
Meh. It’s cognitive dissonance and vanity. We’re all narcisstic to a certain degree.
We all lie to ourselves that we’re good people doing our best. Tell someone they’re not, point out the specific ways that they’re horrible (because they’re human), and they’re forced to reconcile these two contradictory pieces of information. Invariably people act emotionally and lash out.
You’ll get similar reactions if you criticise people for eating meat, for their role in pollution, buying crap rather than donating to a charity that saves lives, ignoring child labour, etc.
I think we all need to lie to ourselves at least some of the time, or we’d kill ourselves. Lie to yourself too much, and you become president.
Joking aside, we could all do with being a bit more honest with ourselves, so that we can become better people. If you’re never honest, you can’t grow as a person.
What if I told you you can gently lead people to conclusions rather than trying to bash them over the skull with them? You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you want to do any good with your words, a more gentle approach will get you further.
The emails allegedly show that Pornhub had only one moderator to review 700,000 potentially abusive videos(…)
Well that’d be an interesting job to put on a resume
Can we have AI generated porn now ?
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Just pictures. Stable diffusion type models have huge problems with flickering right now for videos. No consistency.
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That seems like it would defeat the humane purpose, but maybe. Perhaps use a rough cg as the base layer?
This is the way. For other content it works reasonably well (especially if you properly mask image zones/depth), so I don’t see why 18+ content would be different.
Time for even more impossible beauty standards!
Most beauty standards are held by women tbh
Assuming that were even true - so what?
I get that Some people don’t get depressed lounging around in Cheeto sweatpants all day; but a lot of people take care in their appearance for self esteem.
You’ve got it backwards. People take care of themselves because they have self esteem. Depression takes that away.
Please don’t treat depression like it’s a choice. Nobody chooses to be depressed.
You can always tell the people who have had good lives, by the utter contempt they casually display for people who struggle.
Thinking depression is just choosing to lounge around in sweat pants eating cheetos, What a fucking twat.
I did sit around in my sweatpants eating cheetos while depressed, but I do it now too.
That’s a pretty big assumption, and as with many things in life, repetition and discipline make up 90% of success. You’re never going to start looking at goals as attainable if you’ve resigned yourself to the mentality of “they had a better hand”
Does self esteem lead to self care or vice versa? Both are true. The only constant is action.
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Does self esteem lead to self care or vice versa? Both are true. The only constant is action.
Not everyone has the same capability to self heal through action.
You are right, that if you are capable of doing that, you should, you shouldn’t just “sit on the sidelines” when it comes to your personal health, but not everyone is built that way.
That’s the point that others were trying to get you to understand, that it’s not just a choice one can always act on to self correct.
what will hot singles near me do for money though?
I can envision a world where the search bar is an AI prompt. What a time to be alive that will be!
I wonder if we can also browse other peoples’ prompts. That would be cool.
Oh… oh no…
Microsoft edge/bing is already a search bar that is an AI prompt now
Why take jobs away from people? There are plenty of porn actors who are not being abused. Why would we want to centralize it all more than it is with an automated “AI” tool?
Ew the other replies to this are so weird. Fuck people really not seeing how having someone like Meta in charge of generating all porn could be a really fucked up thing because it’s better for humans to do nothing at all? Christ that is a bleak fucking idea of a utopia.
Just because you nerds can’t handle the idea of sex doesn’t mean it should just all be generated.
Taking jobs from people and replacing them with automation works towards the utopia we want of having to work less so long as the labor is directly to benefit the people and not the ruling class
so long as the labor is directly to benefit the people and not the ruling class
There’s a hell lot riding on that caveat. Personally I’m not as hopeful in that regard.
We can make it so the labor benefits the workers. I’m just saying it’s not inherently a bad thing to replace jobs with automation, like many default to
That’s the ideal but you know that’s not how it works at all in our current society. Replacing workers with automation just leads to workers needing to find a new job.
Businesses replacing them yes obviously but that’s not what I’m referring to. We shouldn’t assume automation or loss of jobs are inherently bad, we should strive for worker-benefited automation. Many people don’t even consider it at all but it directly opposes capitalistic systems in a very meaningful way
I know what you mean. You’re talking about an ideal reality. In the real world, people get fucked over when they’re fired, and ai will put a lot of people out of work. Before we can get near what you’re talking about we need widespread labor movements to ensure worker’s rights and to fight for worker-benefited automation among other things. It doesn’t look like we’re close to being there yet, unfortunately. I just don’t see how you can say that automation putting people out of work is moving towards that goal. It just fucks people over because workers have no protection.
AI image generators don’t really lead to centralization - quite the contrary in fact. While there are your DALL-Es and ChatGPTs behind closed doors, there’s also Stable Diffusion and its many variants, along with various open-source Large Language Models and several other projects from hobbyist developers. I’ve seen a lot of people make and post their own AI-generated porn with Stable Diffusion, and some who make money out of it. So while some porn actors/actresses may lose their jobs because of AI, this technology is also creating opportunities for other people.
And the same can be argued about any kind of automation, so how far should we go with this idea? Should mechanical looms be banned to bring back manual weaving jobs? Should automated filters on social media be removed to create more jobs for content moderators?
I don’t think AI/automation is the problem. A world where most jobs are automated isn’t a bad thing - a world where money takes precedent over humans and people are punished if they’re out of work (i.e. capitalism) is.
Should automated filters on social media be removed to create more jobs for content moderators?
Maybe not removed but we absolutely need many more people moderating online platforms. We have just so many problems from automated content moderation systems that are caused by the lack of humans reviewing content. Including this very situation, where the site let a lot of sex abuse material in.
I don’t think AI/automation is the problem. A world where most jobs are automated isn’t a bad thing. A world where money takes precedent over humans and people are punished if they’re out of work - i.e. capitalism - is.
Yes, but consistently advances in automation come with promises of better lives for people that do not materialize. There have been decades that people talk that we have means to make it so everyone can work less hours a day and less day a week, instead people get fired and we have even less people employed, overworked beyond the limits that worker movements had achieved before.
Will AI really help people or will it just make it even harder for the people who do willing sex work? Given how twisted this industry is, maybe a little of both, it could turn out to be a net positive, though it’s hard to judge that. But other fields are probably only going to get the hardship.
Lets be honest, the whole point of automation is to do more work than what it replaces, so it never creates as many jobs as it takes away. Even worse, AI in particular is already primed to replace the same tech, service and artistic jobs that previous forms of automation freed us to engage with. We will not get the same amount of jobs from AI.
What then? Back to sweatshops, to try to undercut the automation we can’t outperform? We can’t keep at this “oh well, Capitalism still didn’t change ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”.
I will say that unlike the horse and buggymakers or the barrel makers or the candlestick makers who have all lost their jobs I do admit…
None of those are as inherently human as sexuality is.
Capitalism makes a great cell phone. Capitalism is terrible when it takes precedent over humans and people.
My hope is that this will kill off the makeup-crusted dead-eyed fake moan human doll bullshit that is mainstream porn.
AI can’t fake all the randomness and idiosynchracy of two real people having real sex. Maybe that’s what human porn will coalesce around.
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But that would be immoral… 🙄
Why, you need rape porn?
Such a reductive take. Maybe they want porn that isn’t borderline, or questionable. Something where there’s zero potential for abuse. Unless you yourself are privy to the inner workings of each company and the story of each model individually, then you’re running into a risk of stuff not being kosher just by nature of the content.
Plus, yeah, what about people who are into more extreme things? May as well let them have an outlet for their desires that doesn’t actually have anyone getting raped.
Maybe they just want blue alien people.
Something like 2/3 of all women have rape fantasies.
It’s really not that extreme
I dotn know if you meant to reply to me, I’m kinda in agreement with you lol
I was just responding to the “more extreme things” part
Gotcha. I think it’s pretty fair to say rape fantasies are “more extreme” than vanilla porn, even if it’s pretty widely sought by both genders. Doesn’t really matter either way past semantics
That’s fair, I didn’t interpret what you said that way but now you explain it, it makes sense. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
May as well let them have an outlet yeah? Some of us dont want to live on that planet. I dont even want to live on the essential porn planet. As if men need more stimulation. Can the penis not be the center of the universe? Nope? Well fuck off then and take your porn requirement with you. I dont know know why your penis needs are foisted on people like me. Im just searching the internet but i have porn forced on me because of you. Rape porn, child porn, disgusting shit i never want to see but apparemtly its popular with dickbrains. Bugger the lott of you.
While I agree that some types of porn are pretty abhorrent, you also can’t just ignore that some people have a deviant nature inherently, and having safe outlets is better than having none.
You’d do better taking a more moderate stance that might actually change monda than trying to bludgeon an entire population with your vitriol and frankly, sexism. Direct your anger at the people making, not the relatively innocent people just watching.
The safe outlet thing is an asumption. Noone will agree with me but at least i can get it off my mind. The rage will never end because there will be no justice. Your relatively innocent people will ensure there is no justice.
You know, I’ll give you this much - there’s not much evidence on either side that it is a safe outlet. Until there is, the only metric we can really use is what level of harm is a thing existing , doing? And in the case of AI generated porn of ANY kind, it’s no one. I’ll accept that it may cause long-term societal harm, once I see proof.
Ok, i beleive that the acceptance of rape porn is the same as the acceptance of rape. If you say its cool to get off on raping children in your head then making it real is no big difference. I genuinely dont see the difference, your intention to hurt and pleasure fron causing hurt is no different, your desire is no different .
Porn already is controleld much more than it ever has been in the history of the world.
Yes “the Victorians” or “the Puritans” took a dim view of erotic material more than we do, but access to materials just needed you to walk to the bad part of town, where you’d engage a (likely trafficked, likely underaged) sex worker.
I agree that porn can, in some circumstances, under some conditions, to certain demographics, be both a negative thing (and in other ways a positive).
However, you’re never going to rid the world of horniness without chemically castrating the entire population of the world, and then there might be paraphilias that evolve even if you do.
So it’s very much a case of what is freedom of speech, literature, art. Is The Birth of Venus porn? Could you make an argument for ancient portraits of babies with their weewee out being child porn? What about crudely drawn murals from antiquity? What about bathroom poetry? What about people having sex on a mountain (you know like we all used to do 100,000 years ago). Is Game of Thrones porn? Is 1984 by George Orwell porn? Is 120 Days of Sodom, which contains a LOT of disgusting sex and child rape, but was written to criticize/expose the aristocracy, not intended to arouse people, porn? What about Chuck Tingle, who writes to satirise porn not truly arouse?
if all of this stuff is foisted on us by existing should anything be allowed to exist?
I’m also not saying that porn is inherently good, nor am I saying nothing should be banned, but I am saying you haven’t adequately defined which porn should be banned, and without doing so you end up with a Diagenes’ plucked chicken: behold! a pornographic image!
Yeak, bottom line is humans are disgusting vicious and cruel. So porn is a given. Doesnt mean i have to take part. The fact that people like you try you try make humans look good is just embarrassaing.
Don’t cut yourself on that edge
I wouldn’t say my reply is attempting to make humans look wholly, completely good without exception.
I wouldn’t even say it’s trying to argue pro-pornography. I’m saying that although I am probably more ban-happy than some on this site (I think there should be zero-tolerance for Nazis for instance), I think that rules about banning “material designed to arouse” becomes very quickly “ban anything I don’t like” especially as the Lemmy audience skews white-male, minority voices would effectively be silenced.
Porn is the first and last bastion of speech, and no conversation about freedom is complete without countenancing it.
If you encounter that much porn and sex on your daily internet usage, you should be using https://swishcows.com. They have a built in protection that disables potentially nsfw searches.
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Removed my comment as the subject has been discussed fully by others with you already.
Honestly this response says more about you than anything else.
Yeah i hate rape, kill me
Bud if thats what you think you said, you need to go back to school and relearn english.
You don’t. The people down voting you can’t make the distinction between pseudo non-con (which is actual consensual) and illegal actual rape porn.
If the allegations hold up in court i hope aside from the victims to be properly compensated that multiple heads go to prison. Being the head of an organized crime ring that is trafficking and rapeing people for profit, in this case at least all C levels of Aylo, should get a life sentence and all assets seized.
Imagine a world where you read the article and learned that they’ve already been federally convicted. It was in the first paragraph.
The direct company doing it. But Aylo who partnered with them and promoted the content should also be held criminally liable.
Was that hyperbole on which paragraph for effect? It was the 5th paragraph btw. I do agree though, people should read articles before commenting, but that’s not in the instant gratification world we live in now.
Imagine a world where you did not get mixed up about which company had been federally convicted.
This is strictly a civil lawsuit against Pornhub (Aylo) AFAIK
I guess stuff could turn up in this trial that leads to criminal charges, but from what I understand nobody at Aylo was involved with the GDP activities. They were simply a popular channel on the site.
The people behind GDP did get charged and convicted with a long list of criminal charges including rape, sexual assault, fraud, sex trafficking, etc. Some got charged with like 20 years. Pratt, one of the founders went on the run and was on the FBI wanted fugitive list. He was arrested by Interpol in Madrid eventually.
Pornhub was/is a video hosting platform and the lawsuit is because they didn’t react quickly enough to remove the videos. Legally speaking, they aren’t responsible for the content assuming they make a good faith effort to remove it should it be found out it was illegal.
The law exists in this manner because otherwise social media sites wouldn’t exist. At any point any user can post something illegal and then the website would be liable for criminal charges.
They had 1 moderator responsible for checking 700,000 videos. The plaintiffs are claiming that this means they weren’t making a good faith effort to remove these videos.
IANAL but I think they have a legal argument although we’ll have to see what happens. It’ll be interesting to see how the ruling goes. Other social media websites are definitely watching with interest.
tryptamine
his case at least all C levels of Aylo, should get a life sentence and all assets seized.
I get not reading the article but did you even finish the headline lol?
Aylo wasn’t the one raping people. They’re the parent company of YouTube for porn. A video hosting platform. If you’ve ever watched porn on it, that means you unwittingly helped in perpetuating these videos too.
Aylo is going to pay heavily no doubt. But there’s a reason why this is a CIVIL lawsuit.
Was this after PH removed all content from non-verified accounts? If so, one might wonder how much it actually helped.
For the full scope of what these sick fucks at GDP did to hundreds of women, read the DOJ sentencing document for the main actor/recruiter
Think the free and open internet dream is dead.
Corporations are going to rule the world.
The amateur porn glory days are gone.
62? what about hundreds more vids they had just like that? add the fact that most of the people who watch porn just skip past the interview so they seldom see the consent of the actors involved.
OP article says 61 women, just as a polite heads up.I think you’ve got a title edit to make maybe, if you care.
The article mentions 61 unnamed victims and one named one (Kristy Althaus).
There it is ok, thank you. Idk why this bothered me so much. Also I’m pretty sure it’s an ai written (structured, or expanded using) article becuase I’ve noticed I have a very hard time reading a lot of the ai written stuff for some reason. I don’t follow it properly somehow.
The phrasing of the first paragraph definitely implies that , I think ai might be a good guess. I’m guessing it read both “62” and “61 unnamed” dropped the adjective and got confused.
I hate the AI could be such a fucking awesome thing for Humanity and we’re just going to use it to shove disinformation down people’s throats in manners that they can’t discern readily. I know it’s not the case here and it was probably an honest mix-up but you know it’s on the horizon if not already here.
I think it’s an error on their part then because if you click the article the headline still says 62, but over a 1 person error I won’t change the title for the post it is close enough
Oh wierd. My bad
I think you’ve got a comment edit to make maybe, if you care.
Lmao
Originality score: 0
Porn is bad
what they did was clearly terrible, but at the same time, this is what happens when you make the age of consent for this stuff 18. you could make the exact same argument about military service, they use all the same tactics. I hope they win and get some money and a piece of their dignity back, but what’s done is done. raise your kids right, and don’t normalize objectification of women, teach your daughters to be strong, and they’ll never have to respond to a sketchy ad about “modeling” in the back of some city rag.
It’s time to ban all pornography, literally nothing good comes from it.
