Originally published at: https://prostasia.org/blog/why-the-un-is-wrong-to-equate-drawings-to-sexual-abuse/
Sex or nude scenes featuring teenagers in anime and manga could disappear from the Internet and be driven into underground “dark web” sites, thanks to a decision equating art with child pornography, made by a United Nations Committee that describes itself as comprising “persons of high moral character.” This stigma-driven recommendation, that was first published…
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Do you think that furry pornography will be banned next because it’s considered to be zoophilia to some?
Also, I’m worried that artwork of more feminine dudes (my preferred type) will be banned because they might look underage to some…
If that happens, it will probably happen in the same way as it did on Discord: first, they banned lolicon and shotacon, then people complained that there was furry cub art that was essentially the same as loli/shota except that the characters had furry ears and a tail, and so then Discord banned cub art as well. For many websites and national filtering authorities, it will be easier simply to say that all explicit sexual content is banned from now on, like Tumblr did.
Right, but some sites, like Fur Affinity, isn’t going to ban furry porn or even BDSM (I think) unless they’re directed to ban it. I’m just wondering if that these things would eventually be banned by the UN itself.
No, because that can’t be done without all the countries that signed the Optional Protocol agreeing to it. However, you don’t need to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The Implementation Guidelines are an attempt to achieve a similar result through stealth.
Can’t a country that signed the Protocol WITHDARAW from it?
Why not just withdraw from the UN itself?
Neither of those things are likely… the Optional Protocol itself isn’t the problem and neither is the United Nations. But we have a conservative group administering the protocol, and that’s where the problem lies. Over time, its influence will naturally decrease as other bodies take more prominence in this space. As an example, Facebook is setting up a new council to review complaints about content. What they think amounts to child exploitation will be more important in practice than what a stuffy body of government appointees thinks.
Honestly I wouldn’t be too worried, Most People agree that aside from the security council the UN has no real power, pretty much everythiug they do is nonbinding. And at the very least i know America, Japan(Obviously) and Austria have all said NO. So at least in those 3 cases i highly doubt doubling down will change any of their minds.
Besides A. this will turn millions of people into criminals overnight, and B the only way to stop it outright is for them to propose a worldwide equivilant of the great firewall of china so that’s never gonna happen.
Now to be fair i know there are a few countries that would go along with something like this. UK, Australia and Canada to name a few. But aside from that most places are pretty up in the air over things like this.
Largely because they have…oh i don’t know ACTUAL criminals to deal with. Over all this is worth keeping an eye on but nothing i say warrants taking too seriously.
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To facebooks credit, they don’t like any porn on their platform so they are at least consistent. Also the problem isn’t conservatism, it’s authoritarianism. I’ve talked to plenty of Free speech advocates who are conservative, and they admitted that for them to be truly for free speech, stuff like this needs to be allowed to exist even if they personally don’t like it.
Welp i guess we’re not allowed to be attracted to asians anymore…
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Well reddit has gone full stupid anyway, you’re better off going to instagram or something.
I hate to sound alarmist, but the biggest issue with these policies and laws is that they set far more of an alarming precedent than anyone other than those currently directly effected give them credit for. We see that something is “icky”, we arbitrarily decide that therefore it MUST cause harm without any evidence, we ban it. If this all comes to pass to the UN CRC’s liking, you will see this script play out again on many more moral battlegrounds, I can confidently assure you of that.
What other “moral battlegrounds” will this effect?
Next week we’ll be publishing an article on fan fiction. You can bet that anti-shippers will be pleased that the United Nations said that writing or drawing imaginary minors is “child pornography.”
I’m not surprised that Reddit’s rule enforcers head to the hell at full speed, but this is still shocking. I even saw another zero-porn SNS has judging-by-appearance rules for “childporn” contents despite that it already has porn prohibition terms. Fighting child sexual abuse should not be discriminating people by their visual appearance or incriminating the desire/lust/fetish itself! Another Witch Hunt is online, literally.
Mary Martin played the role of a ten year old boy. Women are more neotenic than are men. Hairless legs and large eyes are neotenic characteristics. Make no mistake that such is exploited with the shaving of legs and wearing of mascara.
I’m aware of the gist of the original post. If everything gets banned, everything becomes illegal. It’s reasonable to figure that indiscriminately banning will invite undesirable consequences because the primary concern for consumers becomes only to avoid detection rather than to not break the law. Social boundaries are the only concern that makes sense. An activity that causes no loss and does no harm cannot breach social boundaries. Banning art won’t make folks not like the art more than banning bread will cause folks to not like bread; claiming otherwise is silly. Claiming that that which transpires within the confines of solitude somehow harms is no less inane than claiming that something is what it isn’t.
If you read up the UN resolution more, you can notice they’re proposing that child porn made without adult involvement can only count as child porn if it’s shared as such.
(point 67. - “A distinction must be made between what the Optional Protocol refers to as “child pornography”, which constitutes a criminal offence, and the production by children of self-generated sexual content or material representing themselves. (…) If such images are subsequently distributed, disseminated, imported, exported, offered or sold as child sexual abuse material, those responsible for such acts should also be held criminally liable.”)
So you could theoretically be able to posess material of real children having sex but not cartoons.
That’s a yikes from me.
A lot of sites don’t want porn on their platform because it is far easier to setup an AI nudity filter to block all porn than it is to have moderators go through and make sure there isn’t any child porn.
Child pornography is the whole reason Tumblr went completely crazy in the first place as it resulted in their app being removed from the app store by Apple. It is absurd how people are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater just to make sure there isn’t any child pornography, but it is what it is.
The CEO of Automattic which is buying Tumblr stated that they may be willing to drop the ban, but only if Apple accedes to it.