I keep seeing people post this same idea, and I see no proof that it would actually happen.

Why would you need "real" CP if there's like-for-like-quality AI CP out there?

Also, aside from going out of our way to wreck the lives of individuals who look at the stuff, is there any actual concrete stats that say we're preventing any sort of significant number of RL child abuse by giving up rights to privacy or paying FBI agents to post CP online and entrap people? I Don't get behind the "if it theoretically helped one single child, I'd genocide a nation.." bs. I want to see what we've gained so far by these policies before I agree to giving govt more power by expanding them.

How often does tracking child abuse imagery lead to preventing actual child abuse? Out of all the children who are abused each year, what percentage of their abusers are tracked via online imagery? Aren't a lot of these cases IRL/situationally based? That's what I'm trying to determine here. Is this even a good use of public resources and/or focus?

As for how you personally feel about the imagery, I believe that a lot of things humans do are gross, but I don't believe we should be arbitrarily creating laws to restrict things that others do that I find appalling.. unless there's a very good reason to. It's extremely dangerous to go flying too fast down that road, esp with anything related to "terror/security" or "for the children" we need to be especially careful. We don't need another case of "Well in hindsight, that [war on whatever] was a terrible idea and hurt lots and lots of people"

And let's be absolutely clear here: I 100% believe that people abusing children is fucked up, and the fact that I even need to add this disclaimer here should be a red flag about the dangers of how this issue is structured.

I am sort of curious, bc I don't know: of all the types of sexual abuse that happens to children, ie being molested by family or acquaintances, being kidnapped by the creep in the van, being trafficked for prostitution, abuse in church, etc etc... in comparison to these cases, how many cases deal exclusively with producing imagery?

Next thing I'm curious about: if the internet becomes flooded with AI generated CP images, could that potentially reduce the demand for RL imagery? Wouldn't the demand-side be met? Is the concern normalization and inducing demand? Do we know there's any significant correlation between more people looking and more people actually abusing kids?

Which leads to the next part: I play violent video games and listen to violent aggressive music and have for many years now and I enjoy it a lot, and I've never done violence to anybody before, nor would I want to. Is persecuting someone for imagining/mentally roleplaying something that's cruel actually a form of social abuse in itself?

Props to anybody who asks hard questions btw, bc guaranteed there will be a lot of bullying on this topic. I'm not saying "I'm right and they're wrong", but there's a lot of nuance here and people here seem pretty quick to hand govt and police incredible powers for.. I dunno.. how much gain really? You'll never get rights back that you throw away. Never. They don't make 'em anymore these days.

Seriously, everyone here, if you know somebody still using Twitter, you should take the time to inform them about mastodon and explain why continuing to use that dying abusive platform and give Musk legitimacy is a bad idea.

Gotta learn to extract the good from the bad. It's always worked that way.

Typical conservative strategy:

• Public thing exists
• Become a lead weight in government so public thing gets underfunded and cannot adapt to market changes.
• Public thing no longer meets expectations.
• "See? It should be privatized and you won't have this issue"
• Privatize thing. A few people make a crap load of money in the transition. Thing starts out acceptable for the first few years.
• "Oh no, capitalism uses an infinite growth ponzi model. How do we increase shareholder value this year?"
• Private thing gets underfunded and consumers get manipulated and abused.

Are we winning yet?

I see, taking notes from their overweight neighbors across the pond, they've chosen the way of teh hambruger

We've entered the Twilight zone. Where Ben Shapiro and Gavin Newsom are on the same side of a debate, and they're fighting against Tucker Carlson and the unions.

Edit: piped link

If Reddit were a worker coop, that's how it would work. Maybe Lemmy should be a worker coop

PeerTube seems to be the federated (decentralized) option (similar to this). Content obv is entirely different, but maybe that's actually a good thing. Think of it as a clean slate - a fresh canvas. tbh YouTube's content has really sucked the past few years, and mother of bog do you see the stuff that trends nowadays when you're signed out? It's basically become cable tv. I started using youtube bc I hated cable tv.

be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. ~~Some folks are really upset~~ I've unabashedly put you in direct danger, and we don’t want ~~you to be the object of their frustrations~~ pesky lawsuits

ftfy spez

That's basically every major corporate strategy this day and age -- wait 6 months everyone will forget. They keep seeing it happen again and again, so of course they're getting bolder and bolder. We the public need to quit being pushovers. Where we spend our time energy and money is a far more valuable vote than the one at the ballot box. We will die from our own conveniences.

I don't know if Lemmy is the solution, but it certainly feels like the right direction to me.