Its wild that in the current year we are still allowing prehistoric puritan "ethics" to make decisions for us. I dont use twitch and never have but our societies sexual repression is so pervasive its shocking.
Advertisers do not want their products advertised next to adversarial content. The exodus of advertisers on Twitter/X is a great parallel - flood a user generated content platform with content that does not bode for positive brand associations, and brands stop paying. You can argue that it's "puritanical ethics" at play here if you'd like, but I see this more as wanting to associate their brands with mass market appeal.
Secondly, the moment you cross into pornographic content, your payment processors start bailing. This, in my opinion, plays more into your perception that mass standards for acceptable content influence the decision. I can't think of a major payment processor that permits their service to be used to pay for pornographic content, and that is because it's high risk. It's high risk because it's rife with chargebacks. Things like claims "I didn't pay for this!" when a partner happens to see a charge for a pornographic product, buyer's remorse as the truth of a parasocial relationship plays out to an unsatisfying conclusion, whatever the reason, payment processors just don't want to be associated with it.
You don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, but in a sense, this is companies choosing what markets they want to serve.
I think part of the sexual repression I was talking about is a big reason why porn is so popular and why: "Things like claims "I didn't pay for this!" when a partner happens to see a charge for a pornographic product, buyer's remorse as the truth of a parasocial relationship plays out to an unsatisfying conclusion, whatever the reason" are so prevalent.
It is a sad thing and something that I really wish we could address as a society but corporate owned streaming sites/other social media are really not the place for this type of conversation because of the inherently ad revenue based structure of these sites.
Imagine there was a special type of a payment card that would work with only adult-content provider websites (aka porn). It would function sort of like a debit card, you can load up money on it from other sources, you can withdraw money from it at any time, etc. However, no chargebacks allowed (which are already not really a thing with regular debit cards anyway, it is mostly a credit card feature).
For bonus points, you can have some sort of a verification (maybe requiring 2FA, maybe something else) that would kick in every time you load money on that card, but NOT when you use that card to pay for anything. So adult content providers won’t need any verification to do on their part (aka you won’t need to give them any of your identifying info).
I guess what I am describing is literally just a quirky kind of a debit card/account that attempts to resolve issues that stem from the whole “chargeback of shame” scenario, thus making the transactions less high-risk for payment processors/providers. Which would, conversely, make payment processing less of a problem for the adult-content providers and, therefore, customers.
P.S. do adult-content providers currently have any issues with debit cards as the payment source? Asking because if chargebacks were the main concern for the payment processors (which would refuse to work with adult-content providers due to chargebacks making it high-risk), then by that logic they should have no problem with debit cards, since they feature no chargebacks. The only thing my proposal adds on top of that is the verification/dispute with the bank/card issuer would be done not on the level of each individual transaction for an adult service, but on the level of loading up that “adult-only” card (and what happens from that point on is not accessible to your bank). Which also makes the situation a bit less “embarrassing” for the customer too.
Right. When I stated that puritan morality existed 2000 years ago, that totally means that there were no displays of nudity at all back then. Everything has to be 100% one way or the other after all. The idea that different kinds of morality could exist among different groups of people, even across individuals, in the world in the same time period is just absurd isn't it?
I am sorry I thought that you meant that puritan morals have existed for over 2000 years not that they could have existed over 2000 years.
The fact that modern interpretation of Puritanism may have existed at any point in time is proof positive that pornography as currently defined is bad and should be banned
Yes, we can be wiser than all the generations that came before us. The premise that all morality and ethics were solved before humanity even learned to smelt iron is absurd.
People will be people with or without religion, no need to make the leap and claim the reason for the season was to retain all the horrible practices you describe.
A good analogy that comes to mind is what triggered WW1. Sure, we all know that it kicked off due to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. One thing I remember vividly from that time period being covered in my history classes is the teacher going very in-depth on all the tensions and confilcts between the sides piling up for quite some time before the assassination, and how those countries were all already at their throats itching to get into a fight. The teacher spent multiple lessons going into all of this, which made it rather plain obvious that if it wasn’t for the Archduke’s assassination, it would’ve been for something else.
That’s one thing from that teacher that stuck with me forever, the teacher’s explanation of how major the difference is between a cause and a reason, despite people using them synonymously often. Archduke’s assassination was the cause/trigger for the start of WW1, but it was not the reason for it. Causes/triggers are direct, quick, simple, interchangeable, standalone, and specific. Reasons are fundamental, complex, and often come in multiples, all interacting and feeding off each other in complex ways.
Same with the religion-caused conflicts/atrocities mentioned in this thread of comments. Religion was not the reason for those imo, it was just the cause/trigger, but not the reason. Hell, I am halfway thinking that it could even be that some religions in those ancient days were partially formed in response as to justify certain behaviors, rather than religions causing/triggering those behaviors, but that’s just a baseless speculation on my part that I myself have zero certainty in.
Off-tangent sidenote: without trying to take a dig at any specific religion, as I have no issues with religions themselves or their followers at all in present times, it does seem rather convenient that one of the most mainstream religions these days was found on the premise of a married woman giving a “virgin birth” to a child that wasn’t her husband’s son. Sensibly, once couldn’t explain it any way other than getting pregnant by someone other than the husband or a miraculous divine intervention. And knowing the very real life-ending consequences those days for women for that and, on top of it, giving birth to that child, the choice would be rather obvious.
Yet somehow people still claim religious moral guidelines are somehow useful or good.
Look some of the great thinkers were religious, and christian and muslim and hindu and jewish philosophy used to be the best approximation of what we now know as science and rationality. We are standing on the shoulders of folks like Aquinas, Al-Khwarizmi, Aryabhata, Maimonides and others but we now know more than they did in basically every way. Why their moral stances would still hold up is beyond me. Maybe because people are still attached to the power over others that these "ethical" norms give them.
Like, I am not trying to defend religion because it holds some special place in my heart, because it doesn’t, i am entirely non-religious. But looking at how Soviet Union did all those terrible things and more, while explicitly cracking down on religion and essentially prohibiting most of it (with a bunch of gulaging and murders, just to speed up the process a bit), I don’t think religion on itself is the problem.
> people still claim religious moral guidelines are somehow useful or good.
I mean, if one cites religion as their source of inspiration and encouragement for doing good things and being kind to other people, who am I to interfere? Sure, we can muse on the fact that good morals and kindness shouldn’t come from a belief in some deity or holy books. Ultimately, as long as someone is doing good things, I don’t really care whether they draw their inspiration to so from a religion or some charitable person in real life or an episode of spongebob squarepants. Whatever is helping them cope with the reality of living in a way that makes lives of those around them better.