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.

I'd say porn makes people miserable not happy/ fulfilled. I've watched a lot of porn in my life, even had access to the best porn tracker in the world where I could find almost anything I wanted and trust me it did not fulfill me.

Like any physical addiction porn just feeds a part of you that only wants more and more and is never fulfilled. Watching porn is like eating junk food or doing cocaine. Next dose you need something stronger, or more novel.

I'm not puritan but I've recently become a practicing Orthodox Christian. I'm not being taught to be ashamed of my body, rather that my body is sacred and porn is tainting it which is true. Also judging people is a sin. I'm being taught to have compassion and help others not berate them and punish them for their sins.

Anyways, even non religious self help YouTube is teaching people today that porn is bad for you, it is right up there with doom scrolling and drugs in that it fucks with your dopaminergic system

It's about imposing your view of the world on others. That's the problem here with the puritanians.

> It's about imposing your view of the world on others.

That's literally every ideology.

So because you did X and had a problem, it means it should be banned for everyone, including people whp dont have a problem with X?

Are you seriously saying porn is being suppressed? It's a bigger industry than it has ever been.

Visa has the option to do business with whomever they like or dislike and I'm not even sure they don't support them because of religious reasons.

I'm not saying it should be banned but saying the people who are against it or don't want to do business with such entities are miserable is twisted given it is an industry where most of the actors are victims of abuse, the viewers learn a distorted view of sexuality and younger generations have less respect for each other because of it.

> Are you seriously saying porn is being suppressed?

You are doing it right now!

How is gp suppressing porn by stating his views?

All speech is "just stating one's view", if you want to view it like that. That doesn't mean it doesn't have effects on the world. Consider white racist group members standing outside a mostly-Black voting location shouting slogans.

So everyone disagreeing with you is now suppressing you? Absurd.

Do you think pornography is harmful to you, and can it be inferred that pornography is also harmful to others? This is the reason why your viewpoint is not accepted by others

If you search YouTube for "effects of porn addiction" you will find mostly clips from secular sources. A lot of scientists/psychologists say it's harmful

> If you search YouTube for "effects of porn addiction" you will find mostly clips from secular sources.

This is not an argument. You can find sources saying anything you want on YouTube. If you want to be taken seriously, you need more than random videos or a Wikipedia article.

> A lot of scientists/psychologists say it's harmful

Sources? A lot of studies show it’s fine.

addiction to anything is harmful. You might as well have said using porn unhealthily is unhealthy. It's a tautology, and it's moving the goal posts disingenuously.

The argument is about moderate use, just like any other vice.

Even cocaine or heroin can be used responsibly, but there's a reason it's banned

Yes, pornography is harmful, for everyone, for people who watch at and many of those who participate in its production. No exception, it's a bad thing and it's a shame that society is being okay with it.

> I'd say porn makes people miserable not happy/ fulfilled.

Yes. And no.

It depends on a lot of other things: what porn you're looking at [1]; what stage you are in; how fulfilled you are with your life; etc.

The addiction to porn is like any addiction: a symptom of something else not going well; addiction which you won't get out of if you don't find a way to fix the issue. That isn't to say that you shouldn't treat the symptom as well, if/when it hurts you too (and any addictive behaviour can quickly hurt).

The very tricky thing is that, the same thing (alcohol, sex, drugs, porn, sport, work, food) can be addictive to someone, and just recreational to another; beneficial and harmful.

The key is understanding why, for each and every one. Not to shame.

[1] porn is not necessarily the most extreme, garbage, inhuman stuff; although those are very liberally used by most porn websites. Some stuff are definitely harmful, to anyone, on either side of it. Some are well thought-out and promote educational, healthy, loving behaviour - guess why, those of most often written and produced by women.

> ...had access to the best porn tracker in the world where I could find almost anything I wanted and trust me it did not fulfill me.

Why does everything have to be about fulfillment and enrichment?

> ...Watching porn is like eating junk food or doing cocaine. Next dose you need something stronger, or more novel.

Did you similarly cancel all your streaming services? How is binge-watching a Netflix show different than binge-watching porn?

Yes, I'm working on cutting every addiction, that's a big part of being a practicing Orthodox Christian. My biggest weaknesses are video games but I have wasted plenty of time on shows as well and I haven't done either as much in the past month or so.

But sexuality is a big part of our lives and while wasting time on any addiction like doomscrolling and binge watching is not good for us, porn can taint our relationship with the opposite sex and that's worst in my opinion

Sorry if I may have sounded judgemental and good luck with your self-improvement trip. Orthodox Christianity can be helpful with tackling self-moderation issues. Just make sure you don't pay much attention to any extreme guilt-tripping moralisms you may hear along the way. (I am of Orthodox Christian background myself, and I have heard my fair share of them.)

It's ok, you were right to doubt that I understood that porn isn't the only sin. Any waste of time/ resources in pursuit of egotistical pleasure is a sin as far as I understand it. But we are taught that God is merciful, as long as we fight truly with our sins.

Regarding judgement: https://chatgpt.com/share/67c393b3-5ad8-8009-9991-edbf43df1a...

Your beliefs do not give you the right to impose your beliefs' lifestyle restrictions on others, period.

Even if they did, forcing people through state violence to adhere to your lifestyle isn't very Christian of you.

Can you quote me exactly where I imposed or endorsed imposing my beliefs on others?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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”

So what?

The culture dies if locals don't have children and the immigrants don't assimilate. There are already many pockets of micro cultures in the US and that's what the people in power are using to divide us already.

I'm increasingly convinced that the goal is to balkanize the US and establish a Network State guided by silicon valley, as described by Curtis Yarvin

The whole modern US culture is literally "immigrants who didn't assimilate" with small pockets of native Americans. From my outsider perspective there is very little common between techie from Valley, NY yuppies and a rust belt redneck. Adding some asians and mexicans just improves your cuisine ;)

You really are hitting the propaganda talking point bingo here.

It doesn’t support economic models in the long run, unless you start modifying the definitions of “consumption”, “growth” and “value created”. It also doesn’t work well unless you create some utopia where everything is automated for old people and they can live without support from the younger generation.

The problem has not been solved, and all western governments are hoping to delay the problem through immigration. This buys them time to see what solution Japan, SK and China can come up with, and copy that instead of taking risks with potentially abysmal results.

There is a huge line of people wanting to get into the US. Authorities can pick and chose whatever they need at the moment (highly educated tech professionals and scientists or cheap labor for manual jobs, etc.) and instantly "magically" get such people, already grown and educated at someone else's expense.

This sentence belongs in a dystopian novel, not in the real world where people have to live with the consequences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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