this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Cool man, fyi generally you want to avoid projecting assumptions on people and listen instead to their actual point. You're not arguing with caricatures, you're arguing with other people who might know as much or more than you do, so the preachy tone isn't doing you any favours in trying to convince people.
A big argument against this type of blocking is giving up private information to private entities to access content that can be tracked back to them is a huge risk for privacy, it doesn't matter if it's porn or something else, you can see it in the UK too where speech about Palestine is being blocked by the same ruling that is "protecting children". Someone else here also raised a good point, why is it on these websites to implement age verification and not on the state, when many of those websites aren't hosted in Florida?
But no you're not interested in a good debate, you just see a political choice that aligns with your views and anyone who has issues with the implementation, consequences, or any other issue (including a porn ban in general) is treated like the worst of the worst. "Surely this is a morally good thing, so all who oppose must be morally abhorrent", except this is exactly why the lawmakers prey on when they implement surveillance type shit all in the name of "protecting the children", they make it so arguing against it is seen as protecting abusers when the same resolution could be reached in a way that doesn't infringe on people's privacy.
It's entertainment and it's been the backbone of technology evolution like it or not, read more here: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/617469885 and I think people who enjoy to be part of that content (where legal and not abusive) deserve a platform to share it with like minded people.
I do agree that the abusive content should not be allowed on platforms, but that's already illegal in most places. Further policing is just infringing on people's rights of doing what they want with their bodies. "My body my choice" isn't just about pregnancy it's about anything a consensual adult should be able to do without being judged for it.
Fundamentally though it doesn't matter what the excuse is, prohibition never works (see war on drugs and the actual prohibition period in the US) and it leads to more people finding this type of content on websites that are not under the eye of the law, which are more likely to host abusive and illegal content. Sex and masturbation are normal for people, and have been part of culture and art for hundreds if not thousands of years. There are ways to enjoy it ethically (as we have for decades before OF) and we should pursue that, but consider for a moment that the problem is not sex and pornography itself (because we've had erotica in anything from medieval paintings to fine art photography), but the economical factors that push platforms to highlight it more and more and people to get into it for a quick buck because it sells and makes them money. Social media is nowadays full of onlyfans creators advertising their profiles, and who can fully blame them when the economy is in shambles? But really that has a way bigger impact on male loneliness than porn itself, they just bombard you with ads and ads to see explicit content even when you don't want to, and that's rewiring people's brains.
Because, and I'll entertain your puritan view for a second, where does it stop if we block porn outright? Is nude photography illegal now? showing a nipple? Uncovered belly or feet? How far will we have to go for the brain addled vices of a few people? And this is all just bandaids, because as I said before, the issue is not porn, it's those taking advantage of it to sell as much of it as possible even at the detriment of people's mental health. There is space for nuance.
Sorry I forgot kids get distracted quickly, I'll use fewer words next time