Edit - This is a post to the meta group of Blåhaj Lemmy. It is not intended for the entire lemmyverse. If you are not on Blåhaj Lemmy and plan on dropping in to offer your opinion on how we are doing things in a way you don't agree with, your post will be removed.
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A user on our instance reported a post on lemmynsfw as CSAM. Upon seeing the post, I looked at the community it was part of, and immediately purged all traces of that community from our instance.
I approached the admins of lemmynsfw and they assured me that the models with content in the community were all verified as being over 18. The fact that the community is explicitly focused on making the models appear as if they're not 18 was fine with them. The fact that both myself and one a member of this instance assumed it was CSAM, was fine with them. I was in fact told that I was body shaming.
I'm sorry for the lack of warning, but a community skirting the line trying to look like CSAM isn't a line I'm willing to walk. I have defederated lemmynsfw and won't be reinstating it whilst that community is active.
I think both instance admins have a valid stance on the matter. lemmynsfw appears to take reports very seriously and if necessary does age verification of questionable posts, something that likely takes a lot of time and effort. Blahaj Lemmy doesn't like the idea of a community that's dedicated to "adults that look or dress child-like". While I understand the immediate (and perhaps somewhat reactionary) concern that might raise, is this concern based in fact, or in emotion?
Personally I'm in the camp of "let consenting adults do adult things", whether that involves fetishes that are typically thought of as gross, dressing up in clothes or doing activities typically associated with younger ages, or simply having a body that appears underage to the average viewer. As the lemmynsfw admin mentioned, such persons have the right to lust and be lusted after, too. That's why, as a society, we decided to draw the line at 18 years old, right?
I believe the concern is not that such content is not supposed to exist or be shared, but rather that it's collected within a community. And I think the assumption here is that it makes it easy for "certain people" to find this content. But if it is in fact legal, and well moderated, then is there a problem? I don't believe there is evidence that seeing such content could change your sexual preferences. On the other hand, saying such communities should not exist could send the wrong message, along the lines of "this is weird and should not exist", which might be what was meant with "body shaming".
I'm trying to make sense of the situation here and possibly try to deescalate things, as I do believe lemmynsfw approach to moderation otherwise appears to be very much compatible with Blahaj Lemmy. Is there a potential future where this decision is reconsidered? Would there be some sort of middle-ground that admins from both instances could meet and come to an understanding?
Ada was clear in another comment thread that yes, emotion was absolutely involved in her decision. That isn’t a bad thing. Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?
Me too. I don’t think anyone is arguing against that. Anyone can still access LemmyNSFW’s content elsewhere, Blahaj Zone simply isn’t going to relay it anymore because some of it is incompatible with Ada’s goals in nurturing this community.
Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.
Probably because everyone agrees that we don't make the best decisions when emotional? In fact we tend to make our worst decisions when emotional? There's a pretty significant difference between society judging people for being emotional, and society disapproving of emotional decisions. Because people making significant choices when they aren't thinking clearly is pretty obviously a bad idea.
And yet teen porn is one of the most popular categories around. This sounds like a subcategory confined to a single community, and precisely what the block function is for. There's a pretty big difference between Exploding Heads and a single disliked community.
Edit: After finally seeing a link to the lemmynsfw discussion, it's not a kink community or anything fringe. It's literally a community around cute pornstars.
Yeah, see, it’s that conflation of “emotional” and “not thinking clearly” that bothers me. Those aren’t the same thing, despite the dominant cultural narrative to the contrary. Sometimes they go together, sometimes they don’t.
Are they not..? I mean, thinking clearly and intense emotions genuinely don't go together. Crimes of passion, riots after sports games, getting "carried away" in the heat of the moment. Temporary insanity being an actual legal defense.
There's a reason that a lot of good advice when handling intense emotions is all about taking a minute to step back and breath, clarify what you're feeling, accept it, and then express it safely. There's nothing wrong with being emotional, but arguing that there's nothing wrong with making decisions while emotionally charged is just a really not good idea. The fact that the acronym for managing intense emotions is STOPP should be a bit telling.
I read that, I'm just drawing a blank for moments where intense emotions and thinking clearly go well together beyond something like "I saw a bear and ran".
And do you care to provide examples of when high emotion and thinking clearly pair together? And by the way, when I say thinking clearly, I mean, being able to adapt to new information and actually think critically about situations. I don't think being reactionary is the definition of thinking clearly.
Just a personal anecdote. I have intense emotions when dealing with transphobia but I think I'm able to think clearly. I think there absolutely are times where intense emotions can cloud thoughts but I beleive the converse isn't true.
"Intense emotions can interfere with clear thinking" does not imply that "clear thinking is impossible when there are intense emotions"
It's rough that you have to deal with that, and I applaud the restraint and poise that goes hand in hand with operating while under intense emotional strain. That said, emotional biases are problems precisely because their influence can range from the subtle to the obvious, and they're a lot harder to see from the inside. It's one of the reasons why STOPP has self analysis when experiencing powerful emotions. Most people don't need it, but it's always good to take a breath and evaluate every now and then.
For one, I think I speak for everyone when seeing a huge guy flip out and start screaming in public is alarming because you no longer trust that they will make decisions based on the normal rules of public interaction. I'm not saying that we shouldn't listen to our emotions, they exist for a number of very important reasons, and paying attention to them is linked to better decisions. That said, making decisions while emotional is tempting because it often narrows attention and jumps to actions with immediate effects, which often feels like clarity when it's really just expedience.
To sum everything up, intense emotions push for quick, immediate actions to deal with whatever is causing said emotions (a simplification, but it works). This is really great when startled by predators or protecting someone, but not when presented with complex situations lacking easy solutions. So I wouldn't say that clear thinking is literally impossible when experiencing intense emotions, but I'd say there's a very strong reason that emergency drills and procedures are set up so that people in high stress situations don't actually need to think. I spent a bit of time reading up on it to provide a more complete argument than just appealing general wisdom, so apologies for the pile of words.
The reason I brought up emotion in my reply was because I've felt that the lemmynsfw admins have been able to explain their decision quite reasonably and seemed to be open to conversation, wheras Ada was set on one goal and upon finding disagreement, wasn't in the right mindset to continue a constructive conversation. Which, to be fair, due to the nature of the content, is understandable.
If the content that the Blahaj Lemmy admins are concerned about are limited to certain communities, and part of the issue is the concentration of content in said communities in the first place (at least, as I speculated in my original reply), then I don't quite understand why blocking these communities only isn't something that was considered, rather than defederating the entire instance. I do respect Blahaj Lemmy's decision not to want to host such content. Or is there some technical limitation that I'm not aware of?
Because I am not ok federating with a space that is ok with content that looks like CSAM. "It's technically legal" isn't sufficient in this case.
But whether it's technically legal is exactly what does or doesn't make it CSAM. "Looking like" is going to be highly subjective, and I don't understand how the admins of the other instance are supposed to handle reports, other than to verify whether or not it actually is the case or not.
Are petite looking people not supposed to make explicit content while dressing up cute? Should a trans man not share explicit pictures of himself, because he might look like an underage boy? Do we stop at porn that gives the appearance of someone being young? What about incest or ageplay? Like, what if you or someone else was made sufficiently uncomfortable by some other kind of porn? How do you decide what is and isn't okay? How do you avoid bias? What would you be telling a model when they ask why you removed their content?
Apologies for going on with this when I'm sure you're already sick of dealing with this. I had just felt like some of the points I brought up (like in my original reply) were entirely overlooked. Putting effort into an (attempted) thought-out reply doesn't mean I get to receive a response I was hoping for, but I was at least hoping for something you hadn't already said elsewhere.
There is no more to this. I don't have a list of endless reasons.
The reason is that it looks like CSAM and appeals to folk looking for CSAM. I'm a CSA survivor myself. A space that appeals to folk looking for CSAM isn't a community that I'm willing to share space with.
I guess the core of the disagreement is that one side values safety higher while the other does expression? It could be argued that moderation can take care of anyone stepping over the line. People can be unwelcome creeps regardless of what they're into, who would be attracted to other dedicated communities. I imagine someone could have the same concerns you do for similar reasons, when it comes to consensual non-consent roleplay. Interestingly enough, this actually is temporarily restricted on lemmynsfw, which could be because an appropriate moderation policy has not yet been agreed upon.
Reminds me of a lot of the debates around kink at pride/ddlg kink stuff. The latter is really not my thing and makes me uncomfortable, but I recognise that that's a personal thing between me and my partners that I can't, and shouldn't, police among others.
There's also ethical debates to be had on porn in places like Lemmy/pornhub/etc. -- we can't know that the person has consented to being posted, or that they have recourse to get it taken down and stop it being spreaded if they do not.
Then there's the realpolitik of, regardless of ethics, whether it's better to have porn of this type in visible, well moderated communities, or whether it's better to try to close off ethically dubious posting.
It's one I don't really have squared off in my head quite yet. Similarly with kink at pride; I've read about the historic importance of kinksters and recognise that, but at the same time I want there to be a space where queer kids can be involved with pride without being exposed to kink. Is that just prudish social norms talking? Idk; I'm still working it through.
For what it's worth, I feel like while society has become more socially accepting of people being different (imperfectly, but we have), at least in the US we've become more and more prudish when it comes to sex itself. Part of the changing era has led to a reduction in exploitation and things that were generally viewed as sketchy, but not all that big of deal (kids inheriting porn mags, sexual harassment, imbalances in power), where now sketchy behavior is quickly called out.
That said, I feel like a lot of hard conversations have been completely avoided because they'd be awkward and uncomfortable and instead we just pretend they aren't there.
Like in theory, anyone under 18 in the US can't legally see so much as a titty (unless it's art), read sexually explicit material, or see a movie or tv show with explicit content. And then, literally nobody wants to talk to teenagers about sex. I watched a reddit thread eat itself alive because a dad was furious that his wife had bought their daughter a dildo after he had confiscated her laptop when catching her looking at them and asked his wife to deal with it. People were calling for her to be reported for sexual abuse, while actual women were being attacked for sharing their own experiences as teens. Things just seem a little crazy.
People are so uncomfortable with the concept that they want to disappear anything that reminds them that 18 isn't actually a magical division between childhood and adulthood. And then you have this thread, where lemmynsfw was banned because a community sharing "cute" pornstars was a step too far despite being actual professional adults. Idk, it seems exactly like Australia's whole thing where they started banning pornstars in their late twenties because they have small tits as part of a project to "fight" child porn.
Yeah, this seems very well thought through. For what it's worth, I'm UK based so will be talking from that perspective. I'm in agreement that sex education is absolutely dire -- I can't see any objection to a dispassionate education in both the cultural and scientific aspects of sex. I don't even see it as an 'oh well, if we have to', since sex forms such an integral part of our cultural identities (of course, including when people fall outside the societal sexual norms).
More broadly on society's difficulty with dealing with sex (and even the criminal aspects) I've read some interesting books on anti-carceral feminism recently that helped give me a different perspective on how I think about sexual crimes and its perpetrators beyond the simple instinctual judgements.