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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3089 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 3, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Two problems:

Pedophiles are out there, one of their common hobbies is collecting huge amounts of kiddie porn. We think this is bad, so we spend effort investigating it and jailing people we find processing it or producing it. When we find collectors, we lock them in jail for a while and probably mark them on a sex offender registry.

Moderating big social media sites is a headache. People post huge amounts of kiddie porn and gore and other such things, and they all employ moderators to review reported content. Many of those moderators end up mentally disturbed due to viewing huge amounts of this stuff in the course of their job. Many complain about needing therapy, never being the same again, etc.

Obvious and possibly stupid solution:

When we find people collecting kiddie porn, we make them be social media moderators (of that particular type). They shouldn't mind seeing the kiddie porn since they like it. We let them keep anything they find in their private collection as long as they never share it, in return they work at checking whether reported social media posts really are or aren't kiddie porn.

What could possibly go wrong?

Related is Aella's suggestion that we make AI generated kiddie porn (I think the original suggestion was 'old cp from adults who now consent', but AI is easier) available to people who want it. This way, there'll be no incentive to create or look for new kiddie porn.

While I think most negative reactions to this aren't well considered, I'm not sure how valuable it is. My sense is that some child abuse is actually caused by demand for images, but it's a very small percent of all abuse. And I strongly suspect the 'people see more child porn so they want to offend more' effect is either nonexistent or tiny, but now we're comparing two small things. Maybe some law enforcement agency should flood the dark web (more realistically, the twitter/reddit/facebook pages where people exchange ids for platforms with encrypted dms) with fake accounts selling AI stuff.

And I strongly suspect the 'people see more child porn so they want to offend more' effect is either nonexistent or tiny

I eh, disagree emphatically with your suspicion. If cp doesn't make people into more vigourous paedophiles, then we have to assume also assume the whole wild explosion of paraphilias and perversion that's come out in the past 20 years has just, by remarkable fluke, happened to co-incide with the ubiquity of online porn. I don't think the evidence supports that position, and I think wider availability of cruelty-free fairtrade child porn would likewise increase paedos' appetite for real-world abusing.

My intuition is based on 'did rape porn make rape more common'? Child sexual abuse (both of prepubescent and post-pubescent, the latter is much more common) was common before porn existed, so I think it's closer to rape, where I don't think the availability of porn made it more common. Also, 'loli' is readily available on the web and quite popular among people who enjoy anime-style porn, whether drawn or animated, and I don't think that's translated to real offenses against children.

Could be wrong though, hence 'strongly suspect' instead of a statement.

there'll be no incentive to create or look for new kiddie porn.

Oh there still will be. People would exchange "organic" cp images, just because it's the "real thing". Yes, it'd be dangerous - so what, it's dangerous now, it doesn't stop them. If somebody's brain is broken in this particular way, it's what they'd do.

With sufficiently good AI art, it won't be possible to tell the difference. If nothing else, it craters the value for anyone who would create the real deal for money. People would still exchange verifiably older images sure, but crushing the creation of new stuff is the goal.

With sufficiently good AI art, it won't be possible to tell the difference. If nothing else, it craters the value for anyone who would create the real deal for money.

I don't know that it wouldn't have the opposite effect. We won't be able to tell the difference just from the pixels, but the pixels aren't the only way to tell the difference. If there's enough demand for the real deal, then people will provide the requisite verification and certification of the unethical sourcing, and that extra status - compared to all the unverified images that could very well be AI generations where the viewer can't be sure that no child suffered to produce it - could very well allow them to demand more money.

With sufficiently good AI art, it won't be possible to tell the difference.

It's not the point. I'm pretty sure there are copies of famous paintings that are so good only the topmost experts using advanced methods of analysis, including radiocarbon dating, spectroscopy and other exciting geek stuff, can tell the different. Yet, as soon as it is known it's not the original, its value becomes a minuscule part of the original. I'm sure it's reasonably cheap to order a copy of any famous painting that would look like the original to a casual observer. If somebody does that and pretends it's the real thing, they'd be laughed at. In fact, among the real connoisseurs, nobody would likely even dare to do something so low-class as to exhibit a copy. Either you own the real thing, or you own nothing.

I understand, of course, that the comparison is not exact, and in a way the comparison is kinda offensive to art collectors, for which I apologize. But the point is that the history of an item matters, or at least it matters to some people. Some people would be fine with a fake. But there always would be those that aren't. And among those, the value of the real thing would not crater - it would, in fact, raise greatly, comparable to the danger and the exclusivity of owning it.

I don't doubt that what you and @07mk is true, but it's worth acknowledging that a situation where 1Cp gets sold for 100X is far better than a situation where 100Cp get sold for 1X. I don't doubt some will continue to want real stuff, but the point is that it would be possible to reduce the amount that is produced.

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