CW: Brief child sexual abuse mention.
Is anyone else worried about this? Tumblr banned porn in 2018, and recently they’ve begun to restrict content even further. GFYCat banned porn. Imgur is also banning porn. Reddit doesn’t allow you to use it to host images on NSFW subs, and I’ll bet you anything they ban porn entirely within a year or so.
Where does that leave people who even just want to discuss adult content? Even if you think porn should disappear from society–and I would hardcore disagree with that–that’s not the only thing that’s getting caught up in this wave of censorship. On Tumblr, if you were sexually abused by an adult as a minor, you can no longer discuss this. Literally any reference to child sexual abuse by an adult is now banned on Tumblr. Even if you’re recounting something that happened to you. Hell, even if it’s fictional.
Where are you supposed to go now to discuss adult topics? Twitter is a fascist hellhole, but soon it’s going to be one of your only options, at least social media-wise. And even outright porn is getting harder to find. Your options now are basically the mainstream porn sites and the shit you have to do deep googling for, with nothing in between.
I find this very worrying. Even the vilest, most no-redeeming-social-value porn doesn’t deserve to be banished from the internet entirely. As long as someone gets something out of it and no one is harmed in its creation, porn has its place. But while decentralized alternatives are cropping up to replace social media, nobody seems to want to step up and make a place where we can all be horny without corporate influence.
Or maybe I’m just bitching that I don’t know where to find the good porn on Mastodon. Who knows. Regardless, I think there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had about the scouring of the internet of too risque for advertisers.
Edit: You know what, this person articulates it better than I ever could: https://devonprice.medium.com/mourning-porn-on-imgur-mourning-trans-kinky-history-64de2eaaa6ce
“And even outright porn is getting harder to find”
Haha. What? It’s never been easier to access free porn since the Internet began. There are tons of free porn sites on the net. Why do you need social media sites for that kind of content? Don’t those sites have their own forums and comment sections too?
Do you know how goddamn hard it is to find anything more specific than “straight, BDSM” on those websites? There’s barely any way to filter or save shit, and certainly not both at once. And god forbid you want to create porn and post it yourself, especially of any variety other than “two real people having sex on video.” Plus there’s no equivalent to the common thing on Twitter/Tumblr where people will collaborate on porn, often by one person giving another a prompt. Also, their comments and forums are dogshit, and allow you minimal curation of your identity and interactions. You can no longer, say, have a blog that sometimes posts porn and other times posts different things.
Basically, if you prefer your interaction with porn to be anything other than “watch a video of two real people fucking,” the internet sucks right now.