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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

We are under an attack by Puritanism that is quite astounding actually. And no one is doing anything. Everyone just keeps bending the knee.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver...

Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat of “something bad might come down from the new administration”. It’s so ridiculous.

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The squeeze on any content that religious people find 'yucky' is double-pronged in the US - encouraged both by governments and businesses. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al are given complete discretion over what transactions they can block, and they have already extensively used this to deprive legal NSFW platforms and creators of their income.

So, on one end, state governments are trying to strongarm NSFW services by imposing draconian requirements that ask users to submit their private data to some random opaque 'benevolent' third party business - and on the other, payment processors are using their legal right to refuse whatever transaction for any reason so they can starve them of income.

I dont think the pressure from payment processors is because of puritanism, but rather payments in this space tend to come with a much higher % of fraud and chargebacks and they've decided it's not worth the risk.

That is half truth that gives them cover.

Many people agree with this comment, for a leaf comment, it is substantial at 15.

Visa and Mastercard also have limits on what percentage of a bank's transactions can be adult.

"risk management" is not puritanism - sex work has a different/higher risk profile for PSPs (fraud, chargebacks, etc) and it's easier to say "no" than to come up with a new product to serve customers.

An enterprising PM at a PSP or fintech could look at the size of the sex industry, measure the risk of providing payment/banking services to sex workers and businesses and offer them at a premium like any other "niche" financial area.

And while we're on the topic of "draconian" regulations from the government - it's not outside their interest to limit the availability of obscene content from children. This isn't a "think of the children" argument so much as "children consume graphic pornography at huge rates and porn providers make money off them as consumers and producers with such inept guardrails that age verification has been a meme for 25 years." I don't think validating your identity with a government ID (and storing it forever) is a good countermeasure but I disagree its some kind of draconian limitation on free speech. If porn sites didn't buy and sell sex from kids and self regulated, this wouldn't be necessary (nb4 "it's the parent's problem" - good luck!)

That's exactly a "think of the children" argument. CSAM moderation was always fairly strict on the big sites -- they knew it was both an existential threat and the route through which puritans such as "duped" here (nice name) would try to attack -- but they really tightened up with the ban on third party content. Now they have a chain of responsibility for every video. So, "duped," if you actually have an example of the problem you claim is rampant, why aren't you acting on it? Why aren't you lighting the fuse on that chain of responsibility? Do you want to promote the abuse of children? Or do you admit to making it up so that you could use it as a pretext for your agenda?

Also: yes, building a government blackmail database is draconian.

> CSAM moderation was always fairly strict on the big sites

Except on the largest of the sites which was successfully sued just a year and a half ago over it's years-long policy of looking the other way.

I'm no puritan, I'm just not an absolutist. The real world is complicated and I find arguments like yours annoying and naive.

I know this is late and likely won't be read, but I have a few objections to what you said.

First of all, not all NSFW transactions are created equal. A person subscribing to a website, a person buying a physical product, and a person paying an artist to draw what they want all have different risk profiles. (The former is far more likely to cancel). Does this change the opinion of Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al? No, they blanket ban everything. They pressure businesses and platforms to stop selling this content and to cut out any of their NSFW creators, and the websites often have no other option. These big companies are the only available avenue for sending and receiving money.

Second of all... I think that being free to do legal transactions with whoever you want in exchange for anything you want should absolutely crush the payment processors' right to moderate their transactions in accordance to their own guidelines, rather than the law. Again, you have almost nowhere to run if these businesses turn you down - there is no digital cash. I think that companies that process transactions should be mandated to not discriminate between them, as long as it is lawful.

Lastly... The reason why this verification debate has been standing for 25 years is because it's not solvable. Every proposed scheme for reliable age verification that I've heard of either trades off your privacy, or isn't watertight (and might as well not be there). You can only have one. Given that private companies and governments love private data, and that we've had open internet for 30+ years now and nothing catastrophic has happened so far, I say we should let it be.

I don't think it's particularly driven by religion anymore. The new puritanism is as much left-wing as right, and often atheist.

The Puritans have been trying to ban porn here since the concept has existed, it's never stopped, and it's never going to stop. They're miserable and they want everyone else to be too. That's like most of their religion. Going to church, being ashamed of bodies, and judging people.

Confused. What do Firefox's terms of service have to do with puritanism ? Have Firefox developers become puritanist or something ? That would be extremely surprising if true. Any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to this ?

"You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality“

When I run Transmission, it also says "don't use this for piracy." Of course people are gonna pirate with it. It's just to cover their asses.

It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by Conservatives is going to be the point between two political eras.

It's by far not the first time this has happened but it's kinda surreal to be alive for one.

wait till you unlock 1984 esque reality they are beta testing on us rn

when you see slavery is still very alive im sure this will seem like just a playful moment

I want to entertain you but use a caps lock and some punctuation from time to time. It gives your comments more credence.

At least in the US, slavery is alive and well. 13th amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment for a crime, and prisoners all over the country perform forced labour for a small fraction of federal minimum wage.

haha just wait until you unlock the open air slavery they are testing don't even need a conviction just gotta piss off the right spoiled rich folk :)

ever seen a reality where multiple people have access to all your accounts but no matter what you do your bank or anyone else can't seem to help

This is what the 2nd is for.

Attempts to eliminate this have even failed in solid blue states -- Prop 6 in California failed 53-47 last election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_California_Proposition_6

I'd say it was the decline and fall of the Soviet block. Without the external pressure to remain competitive, the balance shifted from realism towards ideology.

The U.S. still has competition from Europe and China, no? I'm not convinced that the puritanical fanatics would ever make the rational decision to ease up on their efforts for the sake of the economy. For non-Western examples, see Iran and Afghanistan since the mid 20th century.

> The U.S. still has competition from Europe and China, no?

Not militarily, at least not the way the Soviets were competition.

If the US really is on the Roman path and transitioning from the republic to the empire, it's not clear Europe + China have enough force to keep MAD in place.

Europe + China have between 500-750 nuclear weapons usable on short notice. Depending on how well classified US missile defense programs work, it's possible for the US to only lose a single digit number of metropolitan areas.

Combine this with the fact that large, dense urban areas primarily contain the current administration's political opponents, and that may become acceptable losses.

A potential alliance between the US and Russia being on the table (or at least a non-aggression pact) further bring a non-MAD world order into the range of possibilities.

It's not any more surreal than the extreme shift in the other direction we had before. If anything, what you are experiencing now is just the expecte (over)correction to that.

I don't think that's the problem here, as I don't want to see porn on e.g. Mozilla's forums either. There's a place and time for that content and Mozilla shouldn't be the one to decide for others. The problem is whether Firefox is a Mozilla "service" or not, and the way the terms is linked implies that it is.

There's a huge difference between a public forum and cloud storage for e.g. your private bookmarks.

IIRC, terms like that have been in agreements for many years. It's boilerplate, almost.

I'm all down to write off contract law as "puritanism" but the rot is far deeper than an aesthetic (and frankly I'm unclear how puritanism applies to this situation at all).

EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here when most internet activity seems to be potentially against terms of service.

My conspiracy theory is that gears are slowly turning to revamp the culture, redefine what’s acceptable/not acceptable and eventually suggest that if you won’t have kids you’re not accepted in the society. Basically a funky way to reverse the population decline, as the governments are realizing this problem won’t be fixed by free markets and etc.

It seems like not so much a conspiracy theory as something totally transparent and out in the open. There's a huge political push to birth as many babies as possible. Major political parties have it as part of their platform. Their spokespeople talk derisively of "childless cat ladies" and how you're not a real contributor to society unless you produce babies.

The "Birth" lobby is a stool composed of several legs:

1. Attack abortion

2. Attack contraception

3. Attack porn

4. Attack education

5. Attack "women in the workforce"

All of these things are seen as contributing to declining birth rates, so they're opposed by Big Birth. You can see the same politicians tend to go after these things in lock step.

Pretty much, yeah. Like everything is factually right, but I completely disagree with their method. So far, they’ve failed at each step.

There’s a very obvious “pro-religion” push going on across all social media as well, but it’s hard to pinpoint when/how it started. Not sure how far they’ll have to roll back women’s rights to get where they want to, but it’s incredibly sad to watch. Not sure how fathers with daughters are going to watch this happen in real time as well.

I don't think they can succeed though, because the 5. is the crucial step, as being a baby-making machine is a full-time job, and no lobby is going to get a lot of following from the business with the premise to cut the available workforce by half.

With the absolutely massive investment in (and push for) AI, I assume the belief is that the the reduction of workforce will have less of an impact.

If the plan is to have most people out of job soon-ish, then big population with bunch of young people without good prospects is a recipe for disaster.

If 1. and 2. are done, 5. falls very easily. It's no surprise they started with attacking Roe vs. Wade.

Now consider that perhaps the current state is the result of a similar conspiracy but in the other direction.

People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages and soaring home prices. In the US, the median home price is now $450k. In Canada, it's $650k. And when people do have children, they're on average having fewer, later in life (with a greater risk of complications): https://www.northwell.edu/news/the-latest/geriatric-pregnanc...

I doubt banning porn or abortion or engaging in cultural engineering will fix this.

And then there's this phenomenon, discussion of which was once verboten in goodthink circles (like HN) due to its anti-feminist and "incel" optics, but has since grown enough in strength and scale to shove its way through the Overton Window so that even respectable, MSM sources cover it: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...

The best way to have more kids is to increase the size of the middle class, while lowering housing, food and childcare costs.

I don't think creating the illusion of an imaginary middle class ever helped anything. I believe it only makes things worse, as now a lot of people think they are not working class, just because they have an above median wage. Snap it, even some even hold to the illusion that they are rich, just because they have a house with a mortgage and a private pension.

What you need to have a modern, western country instead of a dog-eat-dog wild west is welfare, including universal health care.

But welfare is considered as an evil communist plot in the US and the people who are led to believe that they are somehow above the working masses keep voting against their own interests. Not just in the US, unfortunately.

I have no idea why people keep saying it's monetary reasons. Why would anyone have 3 kids nowadays? There are no real incentives, other than "I want a big family". Society actively discourages large families as well. The amount of people in their 20s aiming for that is getting smaller and smaller too.

The best way to have more kids, unironically, is making everyone as poor as possible, removing any other method of entertainment, and making "having kids" the only choice. That's how it worked for the eternity, and some people want a percentage of people to go back to it, so it would support the current established system.

I didn't say 3. Perhaps I should have said, any.

If everyone has 1/2 kids, the outcome is the same as having no kids, just with more years to get there. That’s Japan’s biggest problem right now. People are having kids. Tokyo is fairly kid friendly, and infrastructure/culture is there. But nobody wants to have 3 kids.

Simply not true. 2 is the replenishment rate. 3, is a 1.5 increase generation to generation. Our population is out of whack with the resource load. Your model is orders of magnitudes too simplistic.

Top income brackets aren't really having more than 2 children either, which is a requirement for growing population. Like most studies has shown that, in general, educated women, freedom of choice and etc. will negatively impact birthrates. It's the same thing everywhere. Sure, income, less social pressure and etc. affects it somehow, but there's just no real need in general to have 3 kids in this day and age. Asking a woman to give away at the bare minimum 6 years of their youth won't cut it nowadays. And honestly, I don't blame them, I think exactly the same way.

> People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages and soaring home prices.

That's proably a non-insiginficant factor but unlikely to be the only one. Poorer people have never had problems reproducing in any society.

I think media exposure plays a much bigger part. Not porn exactly, but anything that glorifies a "free" lifestyle over settling down.

First of all, US population has been steadily growing, so I don't get why big business (whose interests current administration represent) would need to engage in long-term culture engineering for steady supply of new workers.

Second of all, majority of US population is urban. People in NY or Bay Area can't elect a president who represents their interests due to how Electoral College is designed but attempting to change their opinions on having children by banning porn is a pipe dream.

Again, it's just a fun conspiracy theory in my head, and no, it doesn't have to be big business. Like you realize churches have been pouring money in ads, apps, and etc. right? They're actively trying to get back all the lost memberships.

US population is growing for a combination of immigration and just slightly better birth rates than others. It's nowhere close to above-replacement levels (2.1). Just check out the population pyramid, and you can see there are less younger kids than older ones.

“The population growth rate is projected to slow from 0.6% per year between 2024 and 2034 to 0.2% per year between 2045 and 2054.”

And almost all growth is immigration, the fertility rate hits new lows constantly.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/...

“U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Historic Low”

"We"? Do we live in the same first world where people fuck like animals and promiscuity is the overwhelming norm?

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