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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Yeah exactly, I don't want to see it but the same goes for a lot of weird fetishes.
As long as no one is getting hurt I don't really see the problem.
It'd be hard to actually meet that premise, though. People are getting hurt.
Child abuse imagery is used as both a currency within those circles to incentivize additional distribution, which means there is a demand for ongoing and new actual abuse of victims. Extending that financial/economic analogy, seeding that economy with liquidity, in a financial sense, might or might not incentivize the creation of new authentic child abuse imagery (that requires a child victim to create). That's not as clear, but what is clear is that it would reduce the transaction costs of distributing existing child abuse imagery, which is a form of re-victimizing those who have already been abused.
Child abuse imagery is also used as a grooming technique. Normalization of child sexual activity is how a lot of abusers persuade children to engage in sexual acts. Providing victimless "seed" material might still result in actual abuse happening down the line.
If the creation of AI-generated child abuse imagery begins to give actual abusers and users of real child abuse imagery cover, to where it becomes more difficult to investigate the crime or secure convictions against child rapists, then the proliferation of this technology would make it easier to victimize additional children without consequences.
I'm not sure what the latest research is on the extent to which viewing and consuming child porn would lead to harmful behavior down the line (on the one hand, maybe it's a less harmless outlet for unhealthy urges, but on the other hand, it may feed an addictive cycle that results in net additional harm to society).
I'm sure there are a lot of other considerations and social forces at play, too.
I mean you could also go with a more sane model that still represses the idea while allowing some controlled environment for people whom it can really help.
You could start by not prosecuting posession, only distribution. So it would still be effectively "blocked" everywhere like it's (attempted to be) now, but distributing models for generation would be fine.
Or you could create "known safe" (AI generated) 'datasets' to distribute to people, while knowing it was ethically created.
A huge part of the idea is that if you create a surplus of supply it cannot work as a currency and actual abuse material will be drowned out and not wort it to create for the vast majority of people - too risky and irrelevant if you have a good enough alternative.
You're definitely right though that there would have to be more considerations.
You seem to think it's some kind of human right and people are entitled to have fapping material provided for them. No one is hurt if people don't have fapping material.
There is an argument to be made that allowing people with unhealthy desires a safe and harmless outlet, they will be less compelled to go with the harmful option.
And, actually, I kinda want to disagree with the premise too. Even if it was provably true that noone gets hurt if there wasn't porn, you can flip the question; why should it be banned if it doesn't hurt anyone? Do you want to live in a world where anything that's perceived as bad is just outright banned without much thought?
You are already making assumptions about whether or not producing artificial CP is harmful. But in truth nobody knows. And studies have shown that media indeed does influence us. It's quite naive to assume that somehow just porn doesn't.
Artificial or not, this isn't really a new idea. A similar argument can be made for existing CSAM and providing it under controlled conditions.
And yeah, "nobody knows", in huge part because doing such a study would be highly illegal under current CSAM laws in most parts of the world. So, paradoxically, you can't even legally study how to help those people, even if they actively want to be helped and want to help you do research on it.
Edit: Also, I'm not really making any assumptions; I literally said "there is an argument to be made". I'm not making that argument because I don't actually know enough. Just saying that it's an option that should be explored.
This would go directly against the needs of the victims.
I was able to find an organisation which helps pedophiles and also conducts anonymous surveys. The pedophiles themselves reported they feel addicted to CSAM, most have come first in contact when they were minors themselves and nearly half want to seek contact to children after watching CSAM.
Survey of German pedophiles
Survey of Russian pedophiles
Research about the surveys