I happen to write erotica and be on a number of Discord servers that have adult artwork. Having Microsoft purge all adult content from Discord would destroy entire communities of people who are doing no harm to other people.

American attitudes towards pornography really irk me. It's just as much free speech as any other speech.

As a precaution, you may want to set up fallback servers on either Matrix or set up your own Mumble server and make a web page describing how to use them ahead of time. Such things may prove useful in the event that Microsoft has Discord outages.

Unfortunately, I don't own the servers and it is highly unlikely people will move to either of those services.

Right now, one of the communities I'm in is split between Telegram and Discord. We had a Slack server for many, many years and no one would use it, no matter how hard we pushed. Moving Slack to Discord was a roaring success. We still have more people on Telegram despite moving all official activities to Discord.

For sure, I have had similar experiences. The only time people would use servers I hosted was if Discord/other were down hard. I am only suggesting it as a precaution so you don't lose track of your community. Another option may be a mailing list so that your community can at least stay in touch if MS disband all communities that have adult themes.

> doing no harm to other people

This is not true. It gives children a false impression of what sex is like in reality. I don't need a scientific paper to tell me that children looking at this stuff is bad.

The rise in the number of incelibates around the world is dangerous and it must be due to the wide availability of pron. Just take a look at what's happening in Japan.

Parents who don't want their children viewing this kind of thing can't block all the 18+ discord servers. (Although I personally don't think kids should be using Discord given the amount of grooming that goes on).

Yet another think of the children argument here. Should we also purge all graphic gaming content from discord and ban action movies because they give a false impression of what real world is like?

Further it’s the parents job to supervise their children and not the corporation. In addition one would think that your little 10 year old shouldn’t be playing GTA 5 on discord in the first place and that is more disturbing than seeing a naked boob.

American’s attitude towards sexuality and nudity is quite conservative if you ask me.

"Think of the children" is a valid argument. I don't know if there are more in-depth studies, but this study hints that the average age of first exposure to porn is at around 13 years old and the youngest being 5:

https://archive.is/PfJd9#selection-429.17-429.66

We've taught children myths, legends and now cartoons and comic book heroes for centuries, that is fine. What isn't fine is exposing them to pornography at such young age. When you're addicted to pornography you progressively seek more and more hardcore stuff, as anything milder doesn't do the trick anymore. If you want a population full of sex offenders, then go ahead.

In the US, the rates of sexual violence and violence in general has been decreasing year over year despite the estimated reporting percentage of rape increasing.

If anything, the accessibility of pornography is reducing violence.

> It gives children a false impression of what sex is like in reality.

So does every other part of American culture. I'm throughly unmoved that producing adult material in an artistic sense is harmful to society. (None of the communities I'm in allow photo or videos. Or minors. We ban them when we find them.) Such things have always existed and have always been a part of human culture, despite various moral panics.

The assumption that incelibatity is due to pornography is unproven. The Japanese birth rate started dropping in the 1950s, well before this could be a factor.

> American attitudes towards pornography really irk me. It's just as much free speech as any other speech.

First, it's not just Americans. Second, it's not free speech and it never was. People who came up with free speech supported obscenity laws. The main purpose of free speech is to ensure that you can criticize the people in power.

Obscenity laws started in 1873. Well after the Constitution. The Supreme Court has steadily pushed the bar higher since it was created.

And since when do we have pornography as we know it right now?

I'm almost 100% sure that if you went back in time and showed them furry porn, you'd be thrown in prison. If you're lucky.

Regardless of moving goal posts, I don't buy this argument.

If we went back in the last century, they'd throw me in an asylum for being bipolar. Heck, I'd probably be forcibly sterilized due to the US being the first country to support and implement eugenics.

Violations of civil liberties in the US have always existed to great extremes.