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South Korea has jailed a man for using AI to create sexual images of children (cnn.com)
78 points by Jigsy on Sept 30, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 177 comments



> For years, deepfakes – highly convincing fake videos made using AI – have been used to put women’s faces into often aggressive pornographic videos, without their consent. The videos often appear so real it can be hard for female victims to deny it isn’t really them.

Isn't the better approach to make deepfake technology so ubiquitous that everyone can plausibly deny that it's really them?


> make deepfake technology so ubiquitous that everyone can plausibly deny that it's really them

This seems inevitable given the march of technology. Doesn't this also give plausible deniability to real child porn? This makes child porn laws unenforceable in many cases. Unless fake child porn is also illegal. What trade-off do we want there as a society?


CSAM markets will get flooded by fakes: no one will know what's real and what's not, and the fake abuse will be easier and cheaper to make. So real CSAM will have plausible deniability, but there's no reason outside of exhibitionist motivations to even produce it. Genuinely not sure how that shakes out in terms of net CSAM production (I suspect the exhibitionistic motivations are significant, though even then, if no one is watching your CSAM because they're all watching the fake CSAM, does it still scratch the exhibitionist itch?), but it seems like the inevitable end point, regardless of what laws are passed.


> and the fake abuse will be easier and cheaper to make

Sadly, doubtful. It requires a lot of knowledge and expensive hardware, compared to literally only buying some $20 camera to film.

The people who will win the most from such normalization is people who like CSAM, and people who will lose the most are the victims.


Even if nobody believes the images are real, it's going to be traumatic for a 13 year old girl to discover her peers are passing around fake nudes of her. This shit needs to be illegal.

We have libel laws, even though everyone knows the written word can be lies.


> it's going to be traumatic for a 13 year old girl to discover her peers are passing around fake nudes of her. This shit needs to be illegal.

This scenario is very much illegal in the US. The bar to clear is photorealistic; if you Photoshop a kid's face onto a nude body, you have in fact produced child pornography. Possessing or distributing that image are also crimes.


It's probably the only solution but that doesn't make it a good one.


Plus it kills the demand for real child porn. But people would rather get rid of the ick than stop child rape. Take away the emotional fog, and humans understand this, such as the effort to create fake rhino horns to make poaching uneconomical: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/10/fact...

*I don't buy the tortured logic in that article that "such production would create opportunities for laundering real wildlife products as cultured products" - if the fake horn is cheaper to make, that's like laundering blood diamonds as coal, at coal's price point.

"Another concern is that the fake horns could drive up the demand for real horns. The status that came with owning a real horn would increase as fake horns become commonly available to everyone" likewise doesn't make sense. How could one tell something is indeed a real horn, and not a fake? And why do fakes make real horns more desirable than they were before? Does Rolex encourage counterfeits, to raise their own prices? It also talks only of "ownership", when horns are used for medicine, not just status. I get the impression they worked backwards from their conclusion to find this logic.


If the experience from what normally happens to new drugs is anything to go by, the dealers eventually start producing their own fake horns, sell them as real, to the point where there's hardly anyone left who knows how a real one looks like.

Eventually poaching for real horns becomes too expensive and not really worth the trouble.


The fake horn project isn't very successful so far, so perhaps that's not the greatest comparison.

The easy availability of generated porn does increase the chances of normalising abhorrent behaviour. AI is also restricted to pictures and writing at the moment, you can't generate videos.

If the demand of CSAM does actually go down, I'm all for AI generated CSAM. However, we have little indication that it does, other than "it makes sense that it would".


> However, we have little indication that it does [...]

Probably because it's one of those things that nobody wants to find out. Especially in countries that have "for-profit" prison systems.

The UK is probably a great example of this. They - the government - fired their drugs advisor because he returned an answer they didn't want to hear.


Or you'll get more people hooked on the worst porn, and those with less impulse control will enact their desires. Desire for Rhino horns is nothing like pedophilia, which leads to arguably one of the worst consequences on society.


I was thinking about this a while back about how people claim it needs to be based on CSAM/CSEM in order for it to generate these kind of images, which I don't buy because that would make every single model illegal to possess by default.

However if we take something like bestiality for example, the AI is going to know what a naked woman looks like and what a dog looks like all without having to be trained on bestiality.

But if you're to generate those two words in a sexual context it suddenly becomes illegal (at least in certain countries) because of... flimsy reasons.


Shortly after DALL-E 2 launched, social media was flooded with images from DALL-E mini that just showed weird combinations of things that shouldn't be combined. This is exactly what AI is good at, so it definitely doesn't need to be trained on child porn to produce it.


Entire topic is so much more complex.

I had to explain to my wife, many times, that it is absolutely not a good idea to send me nude pics of my own kids playing while bathing. I had to explain that context (the photo in man's photo library vs the photo on mother's phone) is in fact important and can cause a lot of problem for me.

We are asking to clearly delineate on problems that real people can't already do.


But it shouldn't be a problem for you. (Not saying it wouldn't be / is not, but should not be).

As a single Dad of two elementary aged children, I'm now used to getting the weird glances from other parents on the playground, when I'm either sitting on a swing/bench keeping tabs of them ripping around a playground or in fact playing with them on the playground itself.

I shouldn't immediately be eyeballed with the obvious skepticism of others, but I am.

On a similar note, in a VERY small town, one isn't able to just go into the school office to talk to the secretary, you likely have to be "buzzed in", and or have the chat via intercom system. It isn't welcoming, and feels more like a prison, honestly.

Again, this is in a very small town,bin a very unpopulated state.

We are so afraid of the dark that we're causing a whole new world of problems for everyone, and at the same time barely making a dent in the horrible articles that plaster "the news".

Sorry, a bit of a ranting, but man the path we are headed on is so damn bleak.


Putting up a poster of a gorilla is legal, putting up a poster of a black man is illegal, but photoshopping the man's face onto the monkey is hate speech. Laws don't care how you got your illegal material, they just care about what you have and how you got it.

The AI isn't the one under arrest here, so I don't think it matters what the AI "knows" in this case.

Legislation and ethical considerations often come years after new technology gets released, but in this case I think AI companies went too far too quickly. If you put an image generator online and you can't answer the question "how do you prevent people from generating pictures of <insert vile topic here>" then you either lack ethics, or decided that leaving the ethical question unanswered is less important than serving your own bottom line. The genie is out of the bottle now, but this could've been prevented.


Why is this illegal? The case I am making: 1. There are people who are broken and attracted to kids 2. These people have urges that they want to fulfill 3. It is clearly better if they fulfill said urges without any kids involved 4. So give them AI-generated kiddie stuff to fulfill their urges 5. Having seen AI-produced bee-pug hybrids I don't think the training data needs actual kiddie stuff 6. Seems like a simple, free of suffering solution for a nasty problem 6. I don't see any valid alternatives except for sterilization, which is not ideal either What am I missing?


What is sterilization supposed to achieve?


probably they ment castration :)


It's crazy disturbing and uncomfortable topic and it kinda remind me of the the interview with a company that creates realistic dolls that can be "hurt", they bleed etc... that changed my opinion about this topic. Do I wish that this stuff did not exists? Yeah, but if somebody find this as a safe ventil for his disturbing urges without inflicting any harm or trauma on others? I would say that this is worthy.

And I am not buying the argument about the this could enable people to move to the "real" stuff we have the same arguments in case of violent video games, movies and music.

But Jesus live and people are sometimes disturbing.


There's a similar case ongoing in Spain [1], where some teenagers (13-15) created explicit images of some of their classmates and distributed them among friends. IMO it's pretty terrible stuff.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/spanish-prosec...


I could see a plausible argument where that would constituted as rape. A sexual crime against the body, but ultimately sexual violence against the mind.


You're getting downvoted, but I do see this argument more often in non-tech circles. I don't buy it myself, but people do feel very hurt about photoshops and other alterations based on their likeness.

I think there's an argument to be made that these pictures provide plausible deniability to blackmail victims, but if the end result is the same (bullying/exclusion/name calling/reputation damage) regardless of whether the images are real or generated, that doesn't really matter. "I will send hundreds of pictures of [someone who looks exactly like you|an AI model of you] unless you do x" is a pretty convincing threat regardless of the origin of those pictures.

So far, the general public lacks understanding about the technology and what it can and can't do. That understanding is a crucial step in getting any benefits from the technology.


As a parent I would like to know which approach demonstrably reduces the harm done to children.

Is there any reliable data on that?


There really is no ethical way to run the experiment that would give us that data.


Just like stopping any representation of smoking in movies, preventing the spread of CSAM, even AI generated, should reduce the consumption.

Would you leave your kids for the night at the house of someone who enjoys making AI CSAM?


I'm not interested in the "should". I want to know if there's an approach that has actually been tried that yielded any effect.


It's well known by psychologists working with child molesters that CSAM consumption leads to action. Given that we're talking about child rape, which is probably the most destructive thing for society, even a "should" is enough to take action.

I'm astonished about the level of precaution here. What's next? We have no clear data about what would happen if we offered nuclear ICBM to Zimbabwe, so why not do it?


It's equally well demonstrated that child psychologists can create CSAM and by your reasoning that will lead to rape.

https://www.kidspot.com.au/parenting/australian-child-psycho...

I'm astonished about the level of precaution here. What's next? We have no clear data about what would happen in the future so why not ban all child psychologists?


if you keep posting the same thing in every reply to everyone in this thread, it won’t help.

we can have a nuanced conversation about how you support making thought-crimes illegal, and how we alreasy know videogames dont cause violence, but somehow because children are involved we have to ban every single thing possible


What nonsense are you talking here?

The comment you replied to was the first comment I made in this thread and the only comment in which I wrote that content, this is my third comment in this thread.

Are you always this confused and misguided?


Are you running of arguments? Is it complex? Don't create, own nor distribute CSAM. Why is this thread full of pedo apologists? lol next comment like this I'm going to send money to the EU MPs that want to scan all devices for CP.


Given this is my first comment in this thread and given I've been having forum discussion since pre-WWW usenet the answer is 'No, I am not "running of arguments" '.

> Is it complex?

Your trite CSAM --> pedo's "argument"?

No, that's hardly complex, more overly simplistic and unbacked by actual data.

> Why is this thread full of pedo apologists?

Gosh, is that weak shade directed at myself?

For the record I've no love for pedo's, I've worked with law enforcement to track pedo's, etc.

What I dislike is weak, soft brained, unjoined up thinkings that lack sound data backing .. which this thread is also full of.

Consider, for example, the despicable and depraved Brother Paul Francis Keaney, MBE, ISO (5 October 1888 – 26 February 1954).

Well known paedophile offender, famously gave weight to the expression "Christian Buggers", oversaw a concentration camp dedicated to the perpertration of systematic rape of children, etc.

Not once associated with CSAM.


> It's well known by psychologists working with child molesters that CSAM consumption leads to action.

Do you have a study on that that you can link to?

I feel like so much of what is done in this space is based on what someone thinks would work, not what actually does, making us all waste time and effort. Very much like the "videogames cause violence" argument.

Paedophiles existed before such materials became widely available. Arguably it was more common back then. What's the reason and how to stop it?


> Would you leave your kids for the night at the house of someone who enjoys making AI CSAM?

Probably not, but social ostracization and targeted bans by law (makes AI CSAM = cannot be a teacher) could stand in for a full legal ban.

Less importantly, your smoking in movies analogy is not very applicable because smoking is legal and smoking in movies is legal. Also, there are ads for smoking in public, like at gas stations.


Smoking is an example among other, Cinema has been a great way to advertise things. Would you say that video advertising doesn't work? Exposure to CSAM content can be a trigger in some individuals with predisposition.

FYI, many countries ban smoking in movies and in advertising (which should be the norm), for this exact reason. For instance, in France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_%C3%89vin

Also, one has to explain to me why the right to own CSAM is so important in their society. Why should the rights of people having a child rape fetish be protected and enforced? How about the rights of the children (and their parents who would like not to live in fear of such individuals).


> The images were not distributed

How did they find him?


From what I've heard elsewhere, he was being investigated for something entirely different.


Isn't all porn banned in South Korea? Is the child aspect actually relevant to the case here, or is it just socially relevant?


I don’t think I have a strong opinion on whether computer generated CSAM increases or decreases actual child abuse (could see it going either way or even different ways depending on the time scale).

That aside, sometimes we have laws that exist not just for their direct good or bad effects but because they exclude someone we think should be excluded. And if you’re picking people to exclude, people who constitutionally want to rape your kids doesn’t seem like the worst choice.


Is it illegal to draw child porn in South Korea?

What I'm curious about is how this will play out in Japan, where there's already a thriving industry of animated cheese pizza.


Had to truncate the title slightly because it was too long.


The guy who ran one of the most fucking disgusting CSAM websites I've ever heard reported on ended up getting less prison time than AI dude. Seems like at least up until late 2020, South Korea had been legally very lenient on this type of material, which is truly mind-boggling.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Video_case

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/tracers-in-the-dark-welcome-to-v...


I'm open to being convinced to change my mind here because I'm obviously in the minority. I don't understand why this is illegal. Yes, I agree it's incredibly creepy and weird and uncomfortable but there is no victim here. I'm cool with non-ai CSAM being illegal because it implies the existence of a real victim who was severely harmed and then continuously exploited. If it's all AI-generated though, then who's getting hurt? I don't think it should be illegal just because it's weird


You need to fine tune generative models on actual CSAM to get the most realistic looking images. The victims are children in the original images on which the model is being trained. There are guides on the darknet that teach you how to fine-tune on CSAM and model weights can be found quite easily. The prosecutors noted how lifelike and realistic the images were:

https://news.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230925000652 https://thereadable.co/korean-man-charged-for-creating-ai-ge...

You can't do that without fine-tuning on actual images of children.


> There are guides on the darknet that teach you how to fine-tune on CSAM and model weights can be found quite easily

I can find no proof of this in the articles you linked.

> You can't do that without fine-tuning on actual images of children.

You definitely can. That's like saying "you can't generate images of a dog with wings without fine-tuning on actual images of dogs with wings".

Any AI image generation algorithm generates realistic, life-like images. I'm not going to prove my point by generating this shit, there's not a doubt in my mind that you can generate these images without any fine-tuning.


Even though it is possible to generate such images without training on real-life examples, do you deny if an AI were trained on those examples it would be better at this task? Combine that with the fact that it's hard (if not impossible) to tell after the fact whether an AI model has or has not been trained on any one specific image, and it seems like by allowing this you could be unintentionally creating a way to launder real-life CSAM through generative AI.


Of course the output would be better, but it's not even remotely required to have such training data.

Spending hundreds of thousands training an AI model to generate CSAM sounds like a terrible way to smuggle it across the world. You could feasibly add hidden activation keywords to enable CSAM generation mode without the public noticing, but you could also just put an encrypted file in a model exported as .pickle and it would take years before anyone notices.


I said launder, not smuggle. If such models are legal then you can openly sell access to them; even advertise their capabilites. No need to hide anything other than the training data.

And because these models would be naturally superior to models not trained on the real thing (as you yourself just admitted) then they would outcompete those models, thus indirectly funding real-life CSAM.


> Even though it is possible to generate such images without training on real-life examples, do you deny if an AI were trained on those examples it would be better at this task?

Nobody is denying that, but that's not the only way to make it better at this task.

> seems like by allowing this you could be unintentionally creating a way to launder real-life CSAM through generative AI.

There's no way to launder real-life CSAM. If there's a victim, it's a crime, regardless of whether the victim's images went through a ML model or not.


> There's no way to launder real-life CSAM. If there's a victim, it's a crime

The point is with an AI-generated image you don't necessarily know whether there's a victim or not. You can take an image that wouldn't exist without training data sourced from countless victims, and credibly claim everything is perfectly legal and that there wasn't any victim. That's the danger I'm referring to.


1) I think you're absolutely wrong and there's no need to use images of people that look like children to fine tune.

2) There are adult porn actors who resemble children (and many of those build their porn career on that), you can fine tune on their images.


I don't think so. Generative AI is pretty good at interpolating between data points; generalization is the goal in training a model. When you have input which is a continuum of ages, body sizes, body featues and so on, the model can triangulate to hypothecate things it has never seen.


> There are guides on the darknet that teach you how to fine-tune on CSAM and model weights can be found quite easily.

There are guides on the regular net that teach you how to fine tune on anything, and there is nothing at all that would need to be added or altered in those instructions for fine tuning on CSAM material. I'll take your word for the results of your searches of the darknet for CSAM model weights; I've never done that, as I have no need for CSAM model weights or, really, any other reason to explore the dark net.

> You need to fine tune generative models on actual CSAM to get the most realistic looking images.

I’m not going to spend time trying to create simulated CSAM images to test this, but my experience with using Stable Diffusion in oother contexts says that’s probably not true, though its probably (ignoring the issue of sourcing training imagery) the obvious and straightforward way. But the ability of models to generalize and combine concepts means you don’t generally don’t need to fine tune on the specific combination of concepts you are generating images of. A general purpose model can often produce photorealistic representations of concepts its not trained on when conditioned with a LoRa trained purely on, say, anime representations of the concept.

> The prosecutors noted how lifelike and realistic the images were

Nothing in those articles refers to the darknet, CSAM-specific models, or fine tuning on CSAM imagery. It just says the guy was arrested for using an AI generator to produce imagery that resembled CSAM imagery that was never distributed, under a legal framework which had also allowed that for sexually explicit animations of fantasy subjects that resemble adolescents, and that the prosecuting authorities claim that the imagery was particularly lifelike. As support for your claim of requiring actual CSAM to fine tune to produce realistic CSAM-resembling imagery, it is perfectly circular, resting entirely for its essential premise on the conclusion it is offered to support.

> You can’t do that without fine-tuning on actual images of children.

Not all actual images of children are CSAM, and most models are trained on actual (non-CSAM) images of children to start with. Heck, there are common recommendations for prompt patterns to steer clear of generation with SD1.x-derived models (which probably apply to other models, excluding the ones that are so aggressively self-censored as to make it difficult to even intentionally produce nude imagery of adults, like the SD2.x base models) to avoid producing conditions in which models may combine concepts to produce CSAM-resembling images without user intent. [0]

[0] common ones including avoid “young”, “girl”, or “boy” (the latter outside of the established pattern on which many models are trained of using 1girl/1boy/2girls/etc. to identify number and gender of subjects without regard to age) with prompt terms calling for or leaning toward nudity, sexualized clothing or appearance, poses or other compositional features which would take on an inappropriate character with children involved, and, a fortiori, explicit sexual concepts.


How can someone who likes viewing this look at a child on the street and not see them as a sexual object?

The thoughts/fantasies you harbor while viewing images on a screen do not magically turn off when you step outside. It sticks with you and shapes how you view the world.

It encourages the moral decay of our society and puts our kids (and the future of society) at risk.


> How can someone who likes viewing this look at a child on the street and not see them as a sexual object?

You have causation backwards. They look at it because they see children sexually, not the other way around. If it worked how you propose, then homosexuality could be changed to heterosexuality simply by viewing the right porn - and vice-versa.

If you think gender is different than age, try making yourself attracted to 70+ year-old women by viewing porn featuring them.


Its not backwards. It may be circular. They view it because they want to, but viewing it doesn't satisfy the craving long term. It reinforces it.


Current evidence suggests that it is not - as the availability of porn grew, incidence of rape fell [1]. Perhaps child porn is a special case where it works the opposite, but I know of no evidence to suggest this.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-sunny-side-of...


There are ample studies that show that porn use does increase rape. The results are mixed. Declaring that "current evidence" says otherwise is false.

Update:

See studies referenced at https://fightthenewdrug.org/violence-and-rape-connected-with....

The source the parent provided does not claim what the parent claims. The article starts with a caveat stating "for most people".


There are plenty of studies that show that more porn has lead to less rape, in many different countries.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601...

This has been studied for decades. Please provide some evidence to support your claims.


PsychologyToday is a pro-porn outlet that likes to cherry pick badly designed studies.

Anyone familiar with porn can only see that creating porn involves sexual violence in most cases. There is a wealth of litterature showing that watching violent porn will induce more violent sexual behaviors. See for instance the litterature review here:

https://psyarxiv.com/cw24q/download/?format=pdf

Also: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

In general, I find the idea quite simple that showing a behavior in an enticing form to someone will lead to an adoption of the behavior. Otherwise you ought to explain this to advertisers, I'm sure they'd be happy to save hundred of billions in tv ads in the US.


>In general, I find the idea quite simple that showing a behavior in an enticing form to someone will lead to an adoption of the behavior.

Again, the same "violent video games cause violence" nonsense is being used here to justify your personal (but wrong) feelings about pornography.

>Otherwise you ought to explain this to advertisers, I'm sure they'd be happy to save hundred of billions in tv ads in the US.

Is this a reference to "sex sells"? Sorry but so far as we know, nobody ever raped someone because they saw a suggestive television commercial. But please go ahead and find some evidence of that.

>PsychologyToday is a pro-porn outlet that likes to cherry pick badly designed studies.

You can say that but your opinion doesn't make that statement true, and you yourself are cherry-picking one out of many other studies that contradict what you want to be true.

>Anyone familiar with porn can only see that creating porn involves sexual violence in most cases.

That's false, that's your opinion and it is quite divorced from reality. There are many studies showing quite the opposite of what you think is going on.

- While one study shows 88% of porn depicts violence against women, *five other studies estimate between 2% and 36%*.

- Studies on the amount of violence against women in porn vary widely because some count consensual BDSM as "violence" while others don't.

- If 2% of porn videos depict violence against women, it could be said that porn depicts less violence against women than TV cop shows.

Yes, I'm using this site again because your personal opinion of the site means absolutely nothing given you're using your feelings to assert a falsehood:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201606...

"New research findings published in the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse suggest there is no connection between pornography consumption and sexual violence"

https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-cri...

Since the availability of internet porn, rape rates have steadily declined over time.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvsv9410.pdf

Women enjoy watching porn too, in case you're too puritan to realize that. Sure it's easy to find studies that agree with your world view, because other people use their feelings more than evidence too. You want to believe it's true, so you find others that have the same bias. But there's far more studies and evidence that porn does not cause sexual violence, and most porn produced isn't violent in nature although the classification of "violence" can mean different things to different people, and in your case it seems like any sexual act that is filmed would count as "violence".


No. There are ample studies that show that men who rape, are interested in porn. That doesn't indicate whether porn substitutes for the desire to rape, or leads to the desire.

Studies that look at availability of porn vs rape do indicate that porn is a substitute for rape among those inclined, and not a cause of further desire. There are still flaws because of the existence of confounding factors. But it is the best that we have.


Parent comment posted a source with their claim. Do you have any for yours?


The source they posted doesn't conclude what they claimed. It starts with "For most people".

See https://fightthenewdrug.org/violence-and-rape-connected-with... (it links to many different studies, sources at the bottom of the article).


> The source they posted doesn't conclude what they claimed.

I wrote: "as the availability of porn grew, incidence of rape fell"

The article I linked stated: "The same goes for other countries: as access to pornography grew in once restrictive Japan, China and Denmark in the past 40 years, rape statistics plummeted."


Porn induces fetishes and behavior.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

The mere fact that facial ejaculation is mainstream is good example of this. Inducing taste for CSAM in the mainstream will have devastating consequences as many people won't have the impulse control to refrain from satisfying their fetishes and the victims are powerless.


You can induce fetishes and sexual tastes to someone by repeatedly showing him enticing pictures. This is why alternative sexual practices have exploded as porn got mainstream, or movies/books like 50 Shades of Grey (aptly called "Mommy porn") got mainstream.

People aren't born with a set of fetishes in their head. I'm not either arguing for a "think of the children" line or reasoning, creating AI generated CSAM content is a niche activity, so forbidding it won't affect our freedoms significatively.


There is no evidence that fetishes could be "induced".


https://psyarxiv.com/cw24q/download/?format=pdf Here check the litterature review. Also the simple fact that alternative practices have boomed with porn being mainstream is a simple case of induced fetishes. We see very few amateurs of latex parties or shibari in Amazonian tribes for some unknown reasons.

[Edit] better paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"


The first paper in the literature review and its citations argue how popular tv shows like "The Twilight Diaries" and "Riverdale" normalize rape and violence against women, I can't take it seriously.


It's so tiresome. How do you explain that facial ejaculation, which is a specific porn move, has become something common nowadays, while 100 hears ago, not even prostitutes would do? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/


[NSFW]

"… I show them my prick, then what do you suppose I do? I squirt the fuck in their face… That's my passion my child, I have no other… and you're about to behold it."

- The 120 Days of Sodom, 1785

"My dick will go through the middle of boys and the middle of girls, but with bearded men it will aim only for the top."

- An epigram of Priapus from 1st Century AD.


- Checked the french (original) edition, this is not in Sade's book. I'm sorry that your pedo quotes from goodread are wrong.

- Yeah, Greeks had such tendencies. They had slaves too. What is the meaning here? Since we're discussing ancient greek culture, did you know that the real meaning of Oedipe's myth was that you'd be handsomely punished for being a pedophilic rapist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laius


Apparently quoting this kind of literature is not allowed so at your own peril you can see the original in french here.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5454984c/f108.item


The assertion is not that this isn't a sign that a person might harm somebody regardless of their access to the images, or that looking at these images increases their likelihood of harming somebody. Those are big arguments and I have no idea what the data says.

There's a separate issue, which is that it's highly uncivilized and dangerous to imprison people for what is essentially thought crime (the important caveats here being that he did not distribute the images and that they were not produced by harming anybody), but also his behavior is highly disturbing because of the emotional nature of the crime that it might indicate a preclusion to. Those two factors come into very strong conflict.

Personally I think codified punishment of being "disgusting" or "appearing to want to do something illegal" is a vastly greater evil than looking at fake child porn, both morally and practically. Of course, ultimately the people constituting a society decide (indirectly) what is illegal, and their morality-emotions will unavoidably be expressed in laws as far as their framework allows (e.g. the constitution).

However, if enough members of the society align on the same morality-emotions, you can reach a critical mass that allows for changing the framework, which is the real terror I feel when I see stories like this.


You mean TV advertising is useless then? This is probably one the most researched question of the modern world and you know the answer.


Studies have been looking into this effect (whether media consumption leads to more violent behaviour). They did not find anything. Death metal does not turn people into church-burning Satan worshiper, Doom did not cause Columbine, Hollywood movies did not increase homicide rates, and there hasn’t been an explosion of rape cases as porn became ubiquitous.

Stop moving the goalposts and your transparents appeals to emotion all over the discussion. If you have data or sources, show them.


https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

Also, would you argue that culture has no effect on behaviors? What a strange take.


No causation, only correlation.

Hey here’s one for you: Every porn addict, pedophile, and rapist drinks water.

If you drink water then you’re a rapist!!!

See how ludicrous your statements are… all over this thread. You keep repeating the same correlative results as causative and the causation has been debunked by the entire world’s scientists.

Doom didn’t make kids shoot up a school. Mission impossible didn’t create an entire generation of super spies. And porn didn’t create rapists.

Quit with your complete BS, @kretinsky


For the same reason as has already been cited on this thread, that is the same argument as videogames violence etc.

Do you not have any kinks?

I have a fair amount and the ones I like in porn, I don’t like in real life. The ones I like in real life I don’t really like in porn.

So, specifically concerning your first sentence, which in my opinion is intended as an argument, even though it’s just a question and doesn’t offer any backing, the answer is no.


This is South Korea, you know where they popularize this with at one point less than 14 year old girls:

https://www.koreaboo.com/lists/kpop-idols-youngest-currently...

(and she's now slightly over 14, and I do mean slightly. Long way to her 15th birthday)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2_5AZjAoMi0 (you might want to watch this one in incognito mode. I mean it's youtube, so it's "not sexual", but calling it SFW is lunacy. you'll see what I mean)

At least she looks like she might be 16 ...

In short: I feel like this society is long past the idea of sexualizing kids being perfectly OK.

Obviously, I have kids, I'd like this guy to stop. But I do think, uh, could this whole young girls KPOP thing stop too, the whole thing? Obviously it is creating guys like this. In fact the guy is at least not using, and not hurting, real girls.

Because yes, KPOP has lead to suicides by the "artist" girls, whereas this guy (correct me if I'm wrong) so far has not hurt a fly.


Police should just execute the plan they already had prepared and planned (I think it was a US federal agency) of releasing massive amounts of CGI CP to the dark web, absolutely flooding the market to such an extent that consumers can’t realize which is which. Which, at the same tine, makes it pointless for someone to pay for it when the “fake” one is equal and legal, and more in quantity. Also even if your fetish is so grotesquely immense that it has affected you to the extent that you need the REAL REAL one, the seller will probably just resell you one of the police fake ones for 0 risk and profit off of you being a dumbass.

There’d be 0 reason to produce or share real one anymore or even sell it.

Important thing, you can generate CGI or AI images without them being trained specifically by the thing you want.

Like you need banana cake just train them with bananas and also cakes. The equivalence of what “bananas” and “cakes” are for this argument, are left to the reader of this comment, who I assume intelligent, as I think it’s gross and unnecessary to make it explicit.


This is not much different from cheerleaders (including the outfits and age groups) commonly found in Europe as well as US.


Many alternative sexual behaviors have been popularized by porn. Smoking was made glamour by movies. How is it hard to understand?


Please provide some evidence. How is it hard to understand?


https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"


Since you like copying and pasting the same irrelevant drivel…

No causation, only correlation.

Hey here’s one for you: Every porn addict, pedophile, and rapist drinks water.

If you drink water then you’re a rapist!!!

See how ludicrous your statements are… all over this thread. You keep repeating the same correlative results as causative and the causation has been debunked by the entire world’s scientists.

Doom didn’t make kids shoot up a school. Mission impossible didn’t create an entire generation of super spies. And porn didn’t create rapists.

Quit with your complete BS, @kretinsky


I want to agree with you. However, controlling thoughts is not only impossible and futile, it is a greater moral wrong in my opinion. The day we get to society trying to control our thoughts (and not just our words) is the day I want to go hide in the woods and pray for society’s salvation.


You absolutely can and should control your thoughts. It's not futile. It's not societies job to control anyone's thoughts (neither am I arguing that society should try--that sounds like pure evil), however it is each individuals job to do so.


Obviously, given the context, the person to whom you replied meant that it would be bad to give the government the power to punish people for their thoughts. It's willfully obtuse to bring an individual's monitoring of their own thoughts into the equation.


> You absolutely can and should control your thoughts.

Don't think about Mickey Mouse.


I can't stop a bird from flying over my head, but I can stop it from making a nest there.


So because you can stop a bird from making a nest over your head, now that means that we should stop thinking about things you don't think we should think about?? You're making a mess of this comment thread.


it's possible to train yourself to resist against intrusive thoughts. If you indulge in them, your resistance goes down and they reappear more often and stronger. It's like a muscle.


>How can someone who likes viewing this look at a child on the street and not see them as a sexual object?

Is this a crime? Things that are inside your head, who else can say what can exist there, other than you yourself?


It is not a crime to keep things in your head, however, because there's a strong risk that one with pedo tendencies enact on it, we shouldn't feed this sexual desire.


> The thoughts/fantasies you harbor while viewing images on a screen do not magically turn off when you step outside

Thoughts are not crimes.


> Thoughts are not crimes

I disagree, Neo. Everything starts with a decision.


> How can someone who likes viewing this look at a child on the street and not see them as a sexual object?

I get what you are saying, but this quote could be changed to reference viewing adults as sexual objects. Thus eliminate all porn.

*But*, I believe people who use child porn have some "wires" crossed in their brain. Too bad they could not voluntary get treatment in a good facility as opposed to being sent to prison.

Also, IIRC, current medical research says people using child porn will eventually act-out, so if there was a place they can go and not have their name revealed, maybe things will get better.

But I doubt that will ever happen, just about all Mental Diseases have stigma attached to them and this is the most stigmatized condition to have.


Ah, ye olde moral decay! Won't somebody stop them from thinking of the children!

Just contemplate the long, long history of moral decay panics and what they were panicking over. That's why that is no longer taken seriously.


Well as long as one keeps their mental rot within themselves, I don't see how its anyone's business. Thought policing is much more dangerous for society (and the children) than someone's private nonsense.


And if he doesn't ? It's a bit like drunk driving, as long as someone doesn't hit another car while drunk, it's ok?


Drunk driving is not the right example. A vehicle is basically a weapon and society regulates whether you can use it or not. A computer and some software for personal consumption is much more private. Unless society decides that computer usage must be regulated and needs a license, comparing these 2 is wrong.

Understanding that people deal with some dysfunction or the other is the cost of living in a free society. Everyone struggles with some inner demons. Some much more than others. But we largely trust that they can keep these impulses in control. I don't advocate at all that we must empathise with those having this sort of disorder but we must allow people to deal with these issues privately.

Better, more vigilant policing is the answer. The impulse to stop crime from happening at the point it takes root in someone's mind is just the road to the worst kind of tyranny.


If he plays a race car game while drunk, yes, it’s ok, because is not real. The same with the computer-generated images that look like children but they are not more real than the cars in the game


The exact same thing could be said about all pornography. It is a very interesting discussion to have.


You're confusing cause and effect.

We certainly don't know what drives sexual attraction in our brains. But we do know that it is darned hard to change. People can't choose to be straight vs gay. Gay people remain gay people even when they hate themselves for it, and even in places where they face the death penalty for it. (True, bisexual people do wind up choosing to only act on heterosexual interest in such places. But again the wiring does not get affected by society's approval.)

There have been decades of research into pornography and sexual violence. As https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-cri... says, the overall conclusion is that pornography does not increase sexual violence.

So to this topic. I no more believe that people have a choice about being pedophiles than I believe that people have a choice about being gay. The significant difference is that gay people can be consensually gay with other gay people. Pedophiles cannot consensually abuse children.

Disclaimer. This is a personal topic. I was homosexually abused as a child. I deeply understand the importance of the topic. Which is why I care that people think clearly about it.

Because I value clarity of thought, I consider arguments about encouraging moral decay, or encouraging pedophilia to be complete and utter bullshit. Arguments should be rooted in reality. Those arguments just use revulsion to shy away from the painful truth.

Here is the painful truth. Some fraction of (overwhelmingly) men have a strong sexual interest in children that they struggle with acting on. Nobody really knows what makes someone have that interest. It almost certainly is an orientation that is fixed before puberty. We know of no way to change it. Therefore we have the same four rational choices that we do with every other such "unnatural sexual desire".

1. Kill those men. 2. Lock those men away permanently. 3. Accept that they are among us, protect ourselves in some ways, and only punish those who prove unable to resist their impulses. 4. Make what those men want as normal.

While many of us would be OK with the first two options, as a society we've chosen the third. With gays, opinion has swung over my lifetime towards taking the fourth option with gays. (I'm for it, but this is definitely a change.)

Given that we're choosing the third option as a society, this jailing makes no sense to me. The guy found a harmless outlet for his perverse desires. Yay him? Don't let him work in childcare, but let's save jail for, I don't know, someone who actually ACTS on his desires?


Sorry but there is a link between pornography and sexual violence.

See the litterature review here: https://psyarxiv.com/cw24q/download/?format=pdf

Or here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

Also, "people are born gay" is quack science. If it's true, what else are people "born" into? Yes, sexual suggestion exists, either through social circles, or through culture, or advertising. Alternative sexual behaviors have exploded since porn went mainstream - did we experience a major genetic change?

Anyway, just like you can entice people to smoke by showing Marylin Monroe smoking on the screen, you can entice people to develop an taste for pedophilia by showing them enticing CSAM. And because the consequences of pedophilia are one of the worst things for society, CSAM is forbiden.


Sorry, but that's crap.

Your first article is not so much a "literature review" like you claim as an article claiming that the following theories imply the following conclusion without any data of their own supporting that conclusion. The strongest result was that cultures which normalize violence against women also normalize sexual violence against women. Yes, we can change how people behave towards their objects of sexual interest. We don't change who they are interested in when we do.

Your second article is an example of what I discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37718038. It proves a correlation between being interested in both porn and sexual activity. It does not show causation. The result is exactly what we should expect if people come wired with certain interests, and therefore does not qualify as evidence for or against those theories.

On "people are born gay" being quack science, we literally are discovering the genetic linkages to being gay. https://theconversation.com/stop-calling-it-a-choice-biologi...

We're also finding factors that set sexual orientation in the womb, independent of culture. https://www.thehastingscenter.org/womb-gay/

Since porn went mainstream, and acceptance of homosexuality went up, we've seen more openness to teenage experimentation. But do you know what we haven't seen? We haven't seen a significant shift in adults that claim that they are gay in polls. Research on pedophilia is harder to do, but I doubt that has changed either.

In short the thing that, based on available evidence, actually is quack science is your claim that, "Anyway, just like you can entice people to smoke by showing Marylin Monroe smoking on the screen, you can entice people to develop an taste for pedophilia by showing them enticing CSAM."

We have zero data supporting such a conclusion.


Of course we have data. You can't brush it off with "correlation =/= causation". Why? Specific practices invented by porn are now mainstream among people who watch porn. This is a prime example of causation. Facial ejaculation didn't exist 100 years ago, even in France, which was Europe's prostitution capital. Now it's mainstream (see study). Why? Porn culture infused the sexual culture.

> we literally are discovering the genetic linkages to being gay

Well you should have read your article, which says: "With multiple gene candidates being linked to homosexuality, it seemed highly unlikely that a single “gay” gene exists."

Intelligence is determined at 80% by genetics, and polygenic. All of this says that there can be a predisposition toward homosexual tendencies ("gay" is related to american homosexual culture and is a prime example of cultural imperialism), however no one is "born" homosexual. Some people with the related genes may end up becoming so, others may mary women, some may just remain alone. This is a strange, calvinist projection on human existence. Would you say that people are born criminal too? There are genes for this as well. Or let's talk about race? So yeah, sorry, this is quack science.

> we've seen more openness to teenage experimentation

This sounds really like what an enabler would say to help sexual predators targeting young people. Teen years are not a good time to "experiment" too much things in sexuality (doesn't mean it's not possible to have sex), as consequences are long-lasting and they are very easily influenced and vulnerable.

> We haven't seen a significant shift in adults that claim that they are gay in polls.

Given that "gay" is the number one thing being advertised and promoted in the US lately, especially at the vulnerable youth, yes that's not very surprising. But I think we're past self-determination now anyway, and more in some kind of weird propaganda. Same goes with transgenderism, with devastating effects (castration of fertile people among others). The US has also currently a mental health crisis, with no sign of stopping, so "data" currently shows that your remedy is either ineffective, or destructive.

Anyway, I'm not suprised here to see the crossroads between gay, porn and pedophilia. The connection is documented and quite old actually: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.13...

All of this disgusting thread makes me pretty happy to live away from the US to be honest.


You have confirmed my low opinion of your reading skills.

The bit you quoted said that multiple gene candidates are linked to homosexuality. You failed to understand that this implies that we are finding gene linkages. You instead focused on no single gay gene. And then jumped to intelligence, where we ALSO have found no single intelligence gene. Without noticing the flaws in your logic.

You simply ignored the evidence that sexual orientation is influenced by conditions in the womb. Specifically that large families mean greater odds of gay sons. Instead you latch on to a phrase like "teenage experimentation" and accuse me of being a groomer. Which, of course, I am not. I merely happen to know that gay children are more likely to never try to pretend or experiment with being heterosexual. However the age at which teens first have sex has gone later. And the more "liberal sex ed" they get, the later that they start having sex! (Conservatism breeds hypocrisy...)

Your comments about "haven't seen a significant shift in adults that claim that they are gay" suggest you read that sentence as the exact opposite of what I actually said. If I'm wrong, then you're arguing against your own position!

Your article about historical alliances due to legal discrimination notwithstanding, there is little link between pedophilia and homosexuality. As https://www.zeroabuseproject.org/victim-assistance/jwrc/keep... says, to the extent that pedophiles have adult sexual interests, they are heterosexual. Even if they pursue boys. That certainly was my experience. That is also the case in countries where such abhorrent practices remain, like Afghanistan's "dancing boys".

I've not looked for the statistics, but I'm sure that the figures change for post-pubescent victims. Still, far more heterosexuals than homosexuals focus on porn categories like "barely legal". Not homosexual. Other than the coincidence that homosexuality and pedophilia involve sexual interest in biologically inappropriate targets, there is no particular connection between them. Which is there is no contradiction in my being OK with homosexuality, but not pedophilia.

There appear to be only three things that we agree on. That pedophilia is bad, that the current radical transgender ideology is pushing bad ideas, and that we're both glad that you live away from the US.


Stop feeding the troll.


> The bit you quoted said that multiple gene candidates are linked to homosexuality. You failed to understand that this implies that we are finding gene linkages. You instead focused on no single gay gene. And then jumped to intelligence, where we ALSO have found no single intelligence gene. Without noticing the flaws in your logic.

It's exactly what I said, intelligence is polygenic (not a too complex word for you I hope). Intelligence is a proxy here for the general mind. Homosexuality tendency is probably the same, which means it's not "on" or "off" as you initially said. You are not "born gay", there is 0 evidence that a one day newborn is homosexual. Epigenetics also probably play a role here. Twins studies, which are the golden standard, are not conclusive on this matter.

Large families have mean different education environment, which could mean different outcomes toward sexuality as well. All of this evidence is non-conclusive.

> And the more "liberal sex ed" they get, the later that they start having sex!

haha this made me giggle - I went through those horrible classes, really borderline traumatising, removed all the fun and erotic aspects of sex yeah. Sad by the way that they don't teach stuff about fertility to women, who now flock into fertilty cliniques in their late 30's.

> Your comments about "haven't seen a significant shift in adults that claim that they are gay" suggest you read that sentence as the exact opposite of what I actually said. If I'm wrong, then you're arguing against your own position!

You're right, I misread, probably because it's false: https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick... Also, 20% of zoomers identify as LGBT, totally an organic movement only determined by genetics and not the current liberal kulturkampf.

> Your article about historical alliances due to legal discrimination notwithstanding, there is little link between pedophilia and homosexuality. As https://www.zeroabuseproject.org/victim-assistance/jwrc/keep... says, to the extent that pedophiles have adult sexual interests, they are heterosexual. Even if they pursue boys. That certainly was my experience. That is also the case in countries where such abhorrent practices remain, like Afghanistan's "dancing boys".

There is an extensive culture of ephebophilia among homosexuals, ancient Greece being one of the oldest recorded example. I do agree however that it's less clear-cut, as many sex offenders are bisexuals too.

> Still, far more heterosexuals than homosexuals focus on porn categories like "barely legal".

There's an extensive supply of specific content, such as "twink" that caters to the homosexual public.


It's exactly what I said, intelligence is polygenic (not a too complex word for you I hope). Intelligence is a proxy here for the general mind. Homosexuality tendency is probably the same, which means it's not "on" or "off" as you initially said. You are not "born gay", there is 0 evidence that a one day newborn is homosexual. Epigenetics also probably play a role here. Twins studies, which are the golden standard, are not conclusive on this matter.

Here is a clue-by-four.

Find where I said that it is "on" or "off". Find where I indicated that I thought people are necessarily "born gay". Find where I indicated that epigenetics can't play a role.

Good luck. I said none of those things. I said nothing indicating that I believe any of those things. And I actually don't believe those things. As should be obvious from the fact that I identify "bisexual" as a category.

You're right, I misread, probably because it's false: https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick... Also, 20% of zoomers identify as LGBT, totally an organic movement only determined by genetics and not the current liberal kulturkampf.

The headline figure there is that 7.1% of adults classify themselves as LBGTQ.

https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical... gives various historical polls. Hunt in 1974 found that 7% of men had spent at least 3 years in a homosexual relationship, and about 2-3% of men are exclusively homosexual and under 1% of women. Let's see, that's around the same that are LBGTQ today, and about the same percentage that are gay today!

You can compare with other polls over the decades. Depending on how the poll was done and who did it, you get different percentages. But they are all in the same range.

Also, 20% of zoomers identify as LGBT, totally an organic movement only determined by genetics and not the current liberal kulturkampf.

Most zoomers have not actually had sex, and most of the ones that I know have been walking back their trans declarations. So I don't take that figure seriously. Let's wait and see what they say when they are 30.


But isn't "enticing" in the eye of the beholder? Or is it something that is hard-coded into our brains? If former, then your argument is invalid, if latter, then better jail us all.


Evolution has made men excited at the sight of sexual material. The hormonal flow creates a lot of pleasure and a positive reinforcement loop associated with habituation.

This is why porn tends to produce ever more harcore content, to satisfy the ever increasing cravings of the watchers. Just look at a 70's porn movie and the average one today. Much more enticing and hardcore.

As a result, allowing people to develop a taste for CSAM is pandora's box we shouldn't open.


You do realize that countries (Denmark, Sweden, etc.) used to legally make CSEM back in the 70s, right?


Do you feel that viewing something influences behavior to the point of tangible effect with all visual depictions, just pornographic depictions, or just drawn children?


> The images were not distributed, and have been confiscated by police.

I was actually happy this guy got arrested and sentenced until I read the images were not even distributed. Now I'm conflicted about it, and lean towards this being repressive and wrong. I mean, how did the cops even find out about this? Seems like a privacy violation has occurred in order for the arrest to happen in the first place.


> I mean, how did the cops even find out about this?

In most cases, like many other pedo arrests: by going through his devices for a separate criminal concern.

Maybe he was caught downloading CSAM, maybe he was being investigated for fraud, who knows.


It's illegal because it's obscene material and South Korea doesn't have a First Amendment. Most countries don't have anywhere near the free speech protections that the USA has because most human societies have an interest in restricting what people can express, to a greater or lesser extent. The mores that gave rise to the First Amendment are NOT universal.

As a comparison point, New Zealand has made it illegal to possess or distribute the anime Puni Puni Poemy for sexualized gags involving child characters; and owning lolicon manga can get you arrested on child porn charges in Canada. South Korea is not breaking new ground here, even among industrialized democracies.


re: Puni

Nah. You're citing old data. "On 8 June 2021, the Classification Office re-classified Puni Puni Poemy R16 after granting a request from a member of the public to reconsider the classification of the series."

Here's a screenshot of the current NZ classification board's website regarding it, 16+. https://i.imgur.com/aXHtsVd.png

Search for yourself: https://register.classificationoffice.govt.nz/

Here's a list of where it is/isn't legal to have lolicon. There's notable countries on both sides of the line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...


The poster asked why. Your answer amounts to "it's illegal because the law says so".


That's... kind of how laws work. They don't actually need justification, except that they were duly passed.


>It's illegal because it's obscene material

there is a lot of stuff that is obscene at face value but not disallowed by SK law.

most depictions of gore and violence would be considered obscene by definition, yet 'realism shooters' are hugely popular and legally allowed most anywhere.

it's illegal because it's illegal. I don't know enough about SK law reformation to tell you how that came about, but 'obscene' isn't the bar to judge from; plenty of legal obscenity exists most everywhere you look.


This is illegal in America too.


Since it’s completely fake, they should add the disclaimer that alt.sex.stories users sometimes did: All characters depicted are aliens 1000+ human years old that only appear human-like.

But I agree. Let’s stick to attacking real crime instead of fictional content whether porn or first person shooters. Just sounds like moral panic over Doom rehashed.


Imagine an impossible study of 1000 pedophiles: half get access to AI-generated CP, the other half don't. If the first half was found more likely to engage in sex crimes with minors, that would be a good reason for this to be illegal IMO.

Of course we can't run that study, so it comes down to a judgement call. I am perhaps more conservative in nature and feel that a government which allows AI-generated CP is sending a disturbing message. However, I recognize the difficulty in assessing which policy would actually have the best (or rather least bad) outcome, so I don't hold this view strongly.


But the same argument applies to good-old-fashioned porn too. Porn in which men spit and slap women (and worse) are super common on every porn site. Does watching such porn make men more abusive towards women? We don't know because we can't run the studies because inducing abusive behavior in test subjects would be extremely unethical.


> conservative in nature and feel that a government which allows

One of us misunderstands what “conservative” means here. I was under the impression that it meant the government shouldn’t meddle in private affairs if it doesn’t have to.


Modern conservatism has no such ideology. They may say those words when they think it will win them votes, but they often do the exact opposite.


Historically conservatives support the maintenance of tradition and social hierarchies including by state power.

Libertarians being called conservatives is a peculiar US Cold War phenomenon stemming from the fact that both found themselves opposing Marxism. Libertarians really belong on the left.

Todays National Conservative movement is largely about breaking this alliance and rejecting small government conservatism/libertarianism in favor of something closer to Viktor Orban. Ron DeSantis is an example.


Conservative means they want to conserve an old way of life, as opposed to progressives who want progress. Modern conservatives are in favor of heavy government regulation of stuff like lgbt rights


I meant conservative as opposed to classical liberalism, the latter ideology generally shunning social policies.

I typically favor liberalism from an analytical perspective of which ideology yields better outcomes, but perhaps the emotional weight of this particular topic makes it hard for me concede.


It appears that the Latin legal term for this reasoning is malum prohibitum.

It does violate the principle of "where there is no victim, there is no crime" (which seems to derive from malum in se).

Perhaps modern reasoning might be that becoming desensitized and attracted to such imagery would lead to the same in the realm of real action.

"'Public welfare offenses' are a subset of malum prohibitum offenses as they are typically regulatory in nature and often 'result in no direct or immediate injury to person or property but merely create the danger or probability of it which the law seeks to minimize.'

"...Examples of offenses that are generally regarded as mala prohibita include disorderly conduct, gambling, possession of a controlled substance, prostitution, public intoxication, resisting arrest, speeding, and vagrancy."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum


This has been debated in the past in the case of Second Life. afaik it was not ruled illegal but nevertheless secondlife bans it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/may/08/secondlif...


Generative models are still trained with real data. That output isn't really synthetic, it contains patterns from existing images of victims. Making that legal to share doesn't sound right.


This is not how these models work at all. They’re not just advanced copy-paste machines, just like you wouldn’t need to see a house made out of watermelon to imagine it.


I said patterns, not literal parts of images.


I don't think generative model requires an image of a victim to create an image of a victim. It could take an image of a nude non-victim child and transform it.


No it can't, not without adding adult features that ruin it for pedophiles. You can't even use NSFW terms on the public Midjourney API - you need to get your own fine tuned model weights.


But you can imagine proliferation of models where you can use NSFW terms or where you can cause the model to produce what you want without using NSFW terms.

There is no technical reason the models could not in principle produce child porn from non-victim material. And if it is possible I bet somebody will do it.

What I was responding was the argument about why AI-child porn should be illegal, and I think the argument is false.

And please, don't construe it as me saying whether it should be legal or illegal. AFAIK, in most of the world, the depiciton of child sexual acts is illegal, regardless of the form. So a drawing or animation is also considered illegal, regardless of how it was produced.


> No it can't, not without adding adult features that ruin it for pedophiles

The software was downloaded to his laptop, so I doubt the Midjourney restrictions are relevant here. It was probably your run-of-the-mill Stable Diffusion UI with one of the many pretrained models available online, trained on normal (legal) porn.


Perhaps because it enables behavior that could eventually lead to a victim? Not a perfect answer and it doesn't mesh with how laws typically work, but this isn't a typical situation.


I read decades ago that pornography, in general, reduced rape. 2011:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-sunny-side-of...

I'm guessing a lot more research needs to be done, but it seems possible that pornography of all types reduces the need for certain behaviors. Given society's current anti-science bent, I don't hold out any hope this research would be done or followed, if it yielded a correlation.


If, to the best of our current knowledge, porn reduces rape, that is equivalent to saying that its absence increases rape. So we must ask ourselves: how many additional child rapes, per year, are we wiling to tolerate, to maintain a ban on fake child porn.


Porn influences sexual behaviors. The mere fact that facial ejaculation, a practice invented by porn, is now mainstream proves it.

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

This thread has made me lost my faith in humanity.


Reading your posts has made me lose faith in your reading comprehension, so humanity is probably fine.

You don’t seem to care about facts, only spreading misinformation.

Repeat after me: Correlation does not equal causation; ever. Never-ever.


I find it hard to get a good source on this (looking online for anything paedophilia related will mostly list activist websites and research done by activists). However, I do remember encountering some research that indicated that porn normalises the deviant lust these people feel, which is obviously bad.

There's a lot of research necessary on this subject, but very little of it is ethical. You can't take two large groups of paedophiles and let them go unchecked to measure how many kids they abuse over the years.

What doesn't help is that the general population is very much of the opinion that all paedophiles should be killed/locked up for life; no paedophile not already under treatment will ever partake in these types of research. If you show up at a random university study and come in saying "Hi, I'm Bob the paedo", you're going to be arrested.


> Perhaps because it enables behavior that could eventually lead to a victim

Are there any studies that prove this?

To be honest, this sounds like the whole “violent video games cause more violence”, which has clearly been debunked.


"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/


this is just another flavor of 'Doom enabled Columbine', but it's about such a taboo topic that the public somehow allows this kind of logic for this topic, but basically wholeheartedly ignored it with regards to video game violence.

much like any digital experience, I have a hard time believing that it is somehow a practicing ground.


"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/


If this were true we'd all be screwed with the things we're exposed to on the internet and just popular media in general. Video games, books, music, movies, the list goes on.


[flagged]


> What other stuff are they up to? What actions would these people take to the next level? This isn't a hill to die on. These people are sick, antisocial depraved and likely predators.

That’s literally not how any legal system works but ok.

You don’t jail someone because you’re concerned of “what else they might be up to”.


Why are you deflecting away from people are are taking steps to further their fetish of minors?


Is there a precedent for locking people up for being victimlessly deviant? Maybe drug use?


Why are you deflecting away from people are are taking steps to further their fetish of minors?


> What other stuff are they up to?

I see in another comment that he was found out while under investigation for something else entirely.


To think the top-voted comment is one approving of child porn, and your comment is getting downvoted... we've truly come to a bad part of the slippery slope.

To answer the grand-parent: the victims of this behavior are yourself and the society you live in. The answer to "what happens to my virtue and my relationships if I indulge in AI-generated child porn?" is not "nothing", and the society which tries to experiment with this will reap the whirlwind.


> the top-voted comment is one approving of child porn

Fake child porn. Or do you think the real victim of child porn is morality, and the abused children are such an insignificant detail it's not even worth distinguishing between fake and real child porn?


How does one train an AI model for this? What the heck is your defense for someone engaging in this?


How do you train an AI model for making a cabbage with the face of a man? This is tangential however - South Korea bans all fictional child porn, not only that generated by AI.

https://old.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/16w12j8/just_a_...


Let me make it clearer then: Children are the ultimate victims of sexualizing children.


Wow, an even broader category! First it was putting raping children and filming it, and generating fake pixels, in the same bucket, and now you put both of those, and countless other things, under the vague description of "sexualizing children".

Why is this bad? Well, let's look at how one might fight child abuse: find lots of CSAM online, put it through facial recognition and other digital forensics, try to find the children involved, or see if the IPs sharing it are plausibly involved with children, or use sting operations where police pretend to be children online. Then use regular policework to follow up. In the end you may end up saving a child from a very bad situation.

Now how do you fight "sexualizing children"? I don't know, awareness campaigns? Go after porn artists drawing young characters? Make a classification office, such as in New Zealand, to decide which media gets censored... maybe eventually you'll catch someone actually abusing children, but your target is so vague, your efforts so unfocused, most of your manpower is wasted.

To give an analogy: In a campaign to ban dumping toxic waste into rivers, you are the person saying "actually this is the fault of capitalism, we should fight that instead".


of course the category of victims of watching the sexual abuse children (ai generated or otherwise) is broad. It's a terrible thing.

You definitely do not fight sexualizing children by normalizing the production of child sexual abuse material. Come on now.


I question the motives of people who wax philosophic about this subject matter. Of all the gray areas of the law - one thing any normal person would find revolting is someone's attraction to minors. Now I've opened the door to people who will say "it's ok in X country because minors are 8 and younger" or some shit. Only on HN would this be controversial, what is it about this? Not the first time this debate has happened here with a similar refrain "but no actual children were harmed!". Ok, if you ignore how this source material is generated, predatory behaviors these people exhibit otherwise. It's a severe for of antisocial deviant depraved behavior - normalized here on HN.


There’s a difference between “approving of” something and thinking it shouldn’t be a crime. What’s your feeling on the first amendment? Do you approve of hate speech?


Laws have to be taken in the context of the culture in which they exist. If the culture is one in which it is normal to produce and watch the sexual abuse of children (ai generated or otherwise), then that culture should definitely not have a law that enshrines the tolerance of this behavior.

And yes, if you allow for the spreading of child porn, you approve of it with your silence. If, on the contrary, you believed it were wrong, it would be your duty to do something about it, such as making it a crime.


I don't even care - the HN crowd is uhhhh, how do I say... quite on the spectrum. Jumping to defend RMS, saying it's totally ok just because he's autistic. Didn't really expect much to be honest given past discussions here, just a lot of enablers and fetish pushers. There was even a ton of support for some caught in Thailand with underage people, and jailed in Australia I believe, people jumping to defend him here because he wasn't in Australia to break Australian law (really, they were just gas lighting their own deviances)


Pornography normalises sexual behaviour that would otherwise be less prevalent. Totally cool amongst consenting adults. It’s a genuine concern for parents though that kids get a lot of ideas about sex from porn. Making any kind of child porn even without harming children normalises sexual abuse.


If you think that's true then you probably also believe that violent video games lead to violent behavior, but that is also something that we have not seen but some people like to feel is true. "Think of the children" has been abused so many times to try to restrict rights for no actual benefit.


Of course I don’t believe that. Violent video games aren’t real violence in any manner at all. But people do copy and get inspired from all sorts of media. Whether it’s following a recipe on YouTube or replicating a sex act from porn or a taking part in a viral craze on TikTok. Those are all real things normal people do so we should recognise nothing is as straightforward as “videogames cause violence” or “media has no impact on people’s behaviour”. Jumping from videogames with violence in them are positive for society therefore porn can’t be negative is a non-sequitur.

As you’re presenting no evidence you’re also just relying on what you ‘feel’ to be true.

Thankfully the sibling comment to this one shows that porn can and does actually influence behaviour.

And whilst “think of the children” is often used in a pearl clutching manner it doesn’t obviate the need to sometimes think about the impacts of the adult world on kids.


Seeing a man (or a woman) slap a women (or a man) in a porn video is not going to influence someone or cause someone to slap a woman during intercourse in real life. If the real life people are into that, and consenting, then there is nothing wrong with a little rough sex - they can do what they want. If it is unwelcome, then the relationship was not meant to last anyway, and the people made a bad decision to be together. It's really as simple as that. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for some people here to understand.

The sibling comment is also completely wrong, suggesting that "porn invented the facial". I commented with a citation demonstrating how that is false.

>And whilst “think of the children” is often used in a pearl clutching manner it doesn’t obviate the need to sometimes think about the impacts of the adult world on kids.

You're pearl clutching. If you don't want your kids watching porn, then maybe be a more attentive parent and don't let them watch porn. This really isn't about children though, because I am not responsible for what your kid watches. There is nothing wrong with an adult watching a video of two consenting adults having sex. You're just trying to make it seem wrong because you're too prudish to want to watch it yourself, so you think nobody else should be able to watch it either. Sorry, but the world doesn't work the way you want it to.


https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32081698/

"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant."

How do you explain the fact that facial ejaculation, which has been invented by porn, is now mainstream, if not due to porn being itself mainstream?


>How do you explain the fact that facial ejaculation, which has been invented by porn, is now mainstream, if not due to porn being itself mainstream?

This was not "invented by porn" and to suggest so is beyond ridiculous.

>Predating the modern age of pornography, facials were described in literature. As an example, the French aristocrat Marquis de Sade wrote about performing facials in his work The 120 Days of Sodom, written in 1785. One passage of the novel reads "… I show them my prick, then what do you suppose I do? I squirt the fuck in their face… That's my passion my child, I have no other… and you're about to behold it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_(sexual_act)

>"Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant."

Most women would be lucky to have a partner that learned a few techniques to please them in bed, it doesn't really matter where it came from. Or they could just have missionary only for the rest of their lives?




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