Child pornography is viewed as bad for a number of reasons, however there appears to be some overlap between the harms of child pornography, and the harms of revenge porn (non-consensual pornography).
It is unusual that child pornography is punished so much more harshly than revenge porn, and that similar measures like hashlists aren’t used to prevent the proliferation of revenge porn. Victims of revenge porn would rightly see the proliferation of such content as deleterious to their mental health.
There are even some sites on the web which are dedicated to hosting revenge porn with little concern in the realm of legality.
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While I definitely don’t want to extend illegalization let alone, straight up criminalization to adult revenge porn possession/viewing, I would most definitely like to see more measures done to remove non consensual pornography from social media sites. I don’t see why a prison rape video needs to be on a gore site just because the victim was for example… 45 years old and accused of being a “snitch”. If a 6 year old being sexually abused and it’s recorded and shared to the world, no doubt he or she would feel revictimized whenever assholes share their video, especially if it’s displayed to a large quantity of viewers. I don’t see why a 45 year old rape victim should be given no protection. As far as I’m concerned, they were both victims of non-consensual image abuse. 6 year olds can never consent therefore it’s automatically abuse. A 18+ year old obviously can consent but the 45 year old was violated by prison rape therefore it’s sexual abuse imagery.
I caution towards extending illegalization and criminalization to possession/viewing of non consensual pornography because I do not wish to turn web browsing into a legally risky behavior. We don’t want legal landmines. If I am on a comment section and one of several hundred commentators were an asshole has revenge porn screenshot as a profile pic, I don’t want to suddenly be made liable civilly or criminally because I decide to continue to browse the comment section. Same goes to a youtuber who is watching say… a documentary on asteroid mining and for some odd reason, youtube suggested a video which had a “thumbnail” that was revenge porn or a screencap of sexual abuse on the “video suggested” bar. I don’t think the regular user should be suddenly made liable if they decide to continue watching their documentary on asteroid mining and not do anything about the screencap suggestion. Web browsing should not be an activity that carries “significant responsibilities” and legal landmines should not be created.
The prohibition of knowingly distribution of revenge porn also makes sense IMHO. Same goes for keeping voyeurism laws (which illegalizes non consensual pornography production). It does not risk turning regular web browsing into a legally risky behavior. I made some reports to get revenge porn sites removed that were obviously dedicated to sharing non consensual lascivious nudity of celebrity women. But these bloody sites were not removed.
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There are various revenge porn laws around the world, and some of them seem to be working well. But there are some risks about overcriminalization; for example if someone an unsolicited dick pic, the victim posting that would get the victim in trouble—even if the perpetrator is a public figure. I do agree that platforms should disallow revenge porn regardless of age.
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