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The counter-devil's advocate[0] is that consuming CSAM, whether real or not, normalizes the behavior and makes it more likely for susceptible people to actually act on those urges in real life. Kind of like how dangerous behaviors like choking seem to be induced by trends in porn.

[0] Considering how CSAM is abused to advocate against civil liberties, I'd say there are devils on both sides of this argument!

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I guess I can see that. Though I think as a counter-to-your-counter-devil's advocate, shadow behavior as Jung would say runs more of our life than we admit. Avoidance usually leads to a sort of fantasization and not allowing proper outlets is what leads more to the actions I think we would say we don't want in this case.

I think like if we look at the choking modeled in porn as leading to greater occurrences of that in real life, and we use this as a example for anything, then we want to also ask ourselves why we still model violence, division and anger and hatred against people we disagree with on television, and various other crime against humanity. Murder is pretty bad too.

Thinking about your comment about CSAM being abused to advocate against civil liberties.

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