Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

ellsberg.substack.com

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being normal doesn’t make it right. Obesity is normal. Shoplifting has become normal in many places. People getting drunk is normal. Normalcy doesn’t equal moral rectitude. Why do the opinions of my ancestors bear on that, and which ones are you talking about? Most of the ones I can think of, unless you run back to the days of tribal europe, would see the culture today as hideously liberalized. Regardless a…

[flagged]

What makes me a "homophobic bigot"? If I believe sleeping with a woman before y'all marry is wrong, am I a premarital-sex-phobic bigot? Maybe standing with signs and saying mean things to people who do so, or lobbying to ban doing so, would qualify, but I'm not doing those things with either belief.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts Those "degenerate sex acts" were normal enough when the Bible was written that they were included in the Bible. Most of our ancestors would regard modern Americans as hideously prudish.

Most of the BS from modern christians is a byproduct of the church trying to control every aspect of a person's mind and body rather than being an expansion of their spiritualism. Traditional religion does not like free thinking amongst its worshippers. Puritans were amongst the worst and they have a huge influence on early Americans and their religions.

I agree with this to an extent actually, which has led me to conflict strongly with the structure of most denominations. There are a few exceptions (the Roman Catholic Jesuits are a good example) but I'd actually say the Roman Catholic Church contributed far more to the Church-as-a-power model than Puritans overall. That aside, some days, I get as much from reading Eckhart or Kierkegaard as a Newman or Aquinas.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#933
post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you hear what issues the ubiquitous dihydrogen monoxide can cause! https://web.archive.org/web/19961031232918/http://media.circ... These points would greatly benefit from being put into perspective You can't seriously think a significant percentage of people are emotionally unstable because they looked up porn of their own will at an age of their own choosing, even if I trust that it can be listed as a con…

You can’t be serious thinking it has NO bad effect on people, especially children. Would you let your own children watch porn?

I assume I would if I had them. Similar to keeping offline and online bullying in check (no matter if they're the victim or perpetrator), until a certain point I guess I'd keep an eye on what they're up to (less and less as they age, assuming it goes well). If I see sites super unsuitable to their development stage (e.g. afaik girls mature slightly earlier so I may stop monitoring their media consumption sooner, I'd do my research if I were a parent) then sure we can have an uncomfortable talk and see what action I need to take. But if they're a horny 13-year-old, heck no I'm not looking into their pornhub pageloads, they have their privacy too. I'd be super weirded out if my parents had done that until I was 14 or whatever the legal consent age is where you are! Would/do you do that to your kids?!

Anyway, I guess the more relevant question is whether I think it has no effect whatsoever. Nah, of course it does, potentially some good and also potentially some bad effects. I just thought many of the points on your list had a negligible risk level (where risk=chance*impact), since it's e.g. not like most people who've grown up with the internet freely now are aggressives without impulse control

I'm not an expert on the topic and I'm happy to look at studies that update my worldview. Yet it's evidently not the case that anyone born between ~1990 and ~2000 (widespread internet and thus porn but not yet social media) has the issues you've mentioned. Maybe elevated levels, and maybe some research can disentangle the various environmental effects to point to porn as a partial culprit, but clearly it's not a majority of the population and, among those who are affected, it seems unlikely that porn is a typical significant contributor

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#934

> conservative Christians are trying to eliminate ALL sexually-related speech online I don’t really appreciate this framing. Despite being a very conservative Christian (at least in many ways, if not others) I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a lo…

Alright, you seem receptive to arguments so I'll take a crack at this. > I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a locked-down “second internet” for minors. That's not the intent. The intent from the get-go has been to "Baptise" the internet as "God's…

I'm not sure if that's the intent of everyone backing this; I think part of it amounts to parents who are legitimately worried. I may not agree with their means but I can understand that. I haven't personally met anyone who talked about baptizing the internet but that doesn't mean it isn't happening, and I'd oppose that.

I strongly agree with you on escapism and consumerism. I see pornography as a nasty end-stage manifestation of this, but not as the root issue. I've also seen peers spend way too much time rotting in front of netflix or tiktok or videogames, or addicted to shopping, or spending their money traveling to highly-instagrammable destinations and posting it. I have a huge beef with what you're describing, very true, and consumerist hellscape is a great characterization. Sticking with the drug analogy, I think it's like cocaine vs. fentanyl. It seems like many fewer people can consume is "recreationally" without some level of harm if they do it repeatedly over time. I also tend to key on it more because it so explicitly pertains to what I see as some of the most beautiful and sacred elements of creation (love, sex, marriage). But it's absolutely one manifestation of a greater issue.

I tend to agree with you that "purity culture" is bad and that America has a weirdly-victorian air about it that almost seems to tempt people more. I see alcohol as another example of this; I'd prefer my kids didn't drink until they were older and in the right place/at the right time, but our current set-up just makes most kids get blackout the first half-dozen times they drink.

To be honest, it's still not something I'd be comfortable sitting and discussing personally, but I think there's a difference between "not polite dinner-table conversation" and "God forbid anyone mentions it ever."

I agree with you that lawmakers don't care one whit about children, families, or people. I wish some of my fellow Christians weren't so quick to assume that "their guy" is actually going to fix anything, and see it as a way to disclaim responsibility for working on their own families and communities in particular. I think I've noticed more of this amongst my peer group, a basic distrust of particularly the federal and state governments across the political and ideological spectra. I hope this drives us to focus on fixing what we can. Work on our families rather than calling state assemblymen, work more to feed our homeless rather than expecting the feds to implement a perfect nationwide solution. And I hope rather than politicization, Christianity in America focuses more on the Second Great Commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any kid that has unlimited porn is a kid with poor parents, and they were gonna get into things much worse than porn anyway since parents aren't around and being negligent.

If you can’t configure content filters and dns servers then what right do you have to be a parent. You shouldn’t be a parent if you can’t enforce a mobile device policy better than an average Fortune 500 corporation.

Just to double check, this is a joke right? Because you suggested upthread (if I'm reading the sarcasm right) that consumption must be curtailed, but clearly this comment about not having a right to be a non-tech-savvy parent is a joke...or?!

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, some of them are. More evangelicals than my crowd. Morality bears directly on what we consider to be a just society, so I don’t care if you don’t care. You’re broadening the scope beyond this particular issue, where I’m guessing I agree with you. It’s not virtuous to act right because the state makes you, but the question of what we require and preclude is defined by our moral frameworks at some level. I’m not su…

> I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men I ignore it because I've only ever gotten responses of morality. Which, as I've said, I think are stupid. My point about morality is that it's the same morality that oppresses homosexuals, or previously black people and women. It's not a different morality - it's the same reasoning. Some thing is immoral because of our…

This is actually a pretty sound framework and I mostly agree. Usually it's justifiable to intervene when somebody is harming someone else and not before. I think it's a bit oversimplified, though. Do you think it might contribute to the incel epidemic and the associated violence? In that sense one could make a similar line of argument to that of the temperance movement's talk of alcohol contributing to wife-beating (which it did). I don't believe that indirection leaves a clear enough link to justify state violence to ban something, but there do exist less explicitly moralistic arguments for it. Not really my position but it's not constructive to reduce every criticism to "moralizing".

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#937
post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you arguing that we should not regulate porn, alcohol, and cigarettes? Most of the important regulations around these things have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Requiring bourbon not to contain methanol and adult performers to be tested for STDs aren't related to the internet. And once we're talking about the internet, those things are in a different category because alcohol and cigarettes are physical o…

You’re missing the point entirely. I’m talking about age requirements to purchase alcohol and cigarettes and view porn. There is not a world where we decide to restrict purchase by age in meatspace but throw up our hands and say “whelp we just can’t have digital ID presentation that would ruin society I guess we should give up on digital age verification and just let kids do whatever”. Whether the restrictions are ju…

> There is not a world where we decide to restrict purchase by age in meatspace but throw up our hands and say “whelp we just can’t have digital ID presentation that would ruin society I guess we should give up on digital age verification and just let kids do whatever”

We've been living in exactly that world for decades without issue.

It makes perfect sense for meat space to be treated differently from the internet. A downloaded picture of a cigarette can't be smoked. The only thing that can happen on the internet is the exchange of data, and an ID requirement for that is absurd.

> there are much more “legitimate” use cases for ID verification that happen entirely online with no meatspace concerns like banking and underwriting etc. so it’s somewhat a straw man to get hung up on porn

Amazing how those use cases have survived for these decades without such a law. If I don't need to send a copy of my ID every time I sign into my bank account, what possible argument could be made for the requirement I do so to watch porn?

> Whether the restrictions are justified or not or stupid or not, we’ve decided they should exist

No, we have not collectively decided they should exist. Plenty of laws exist which are unpopular either because of the goal or the execution. Even if a law has majority support, that doesn't mean the minority can't argue against keeping or expanding it. A restriction being unjustified or stupid is a very good argument for not doing additional unjustified or stupid things to enforce that law. It's rather silly that there is a federal law forbidding leaving the country with more than $25 in nickels but it's on the books. Ensuring this law is thoroughly enforced with universal mandatory cavity searches looking for rolls of nickels would be indefensible.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#938
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GOP under Trump has considerably changed from the GOP under Bush. There is no longer a political home for Reagan/Bush-style conservatives. Perhaps a shift might be coming with the next economic downturn, which seems inevitable given the risk-off investment climate across most industries stemming from Trump’s erratic, unpredictable trade and economic policy. Things don’t look bad just yet, but it takes a while for…

> There is no longer a political home for Reagan/Bush-style conservatives. There is, they just don’t like it for aesthetic and/or historical reasons. The faction that currently runs the Democratic party is the centrist, deficit-reducing, foreign-intervention-when-necessary party of Reagan/Bush. If the centrists and moderate conservatives could make common cause, they would easily shut out both the far left and far ri…

>The faction that currently runs the Democratic party is the centrist, deficit-reducing, foreign-intervention-when-necessary party of Reagan/Bush.

How are you defining "deficit-reducing"?

>Over the four years of President Biden’s term – from January 2021 through January 2025 – we estimate that he approved $4.7 trillion in new ten-year debt through legislation and executive actions.

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-biden-add-...

That rate of debt increase is neither responsible or sustainable - though such irresponsible behavior has now been adopted by both parties. Both parties seem to have become radicalized and are catering to their worst instincts.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've drifted pretty far from the Constitution and what the Founders envisioned. The reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause was the start of a downward spiral. I'm hoping the Convention of States will succeed and fix this, even if it means rebuilding many institutions at the State level.

> I'm hoping the Convention of States will succeed and fix this, even if it means rebuilding many institutions at the State level. Amendments proposed by a convention would still need to be ratified by 38 states. That's a pretty high bar for what you're suggesting.

I think it's more likely we'd see term limits and balanced budget amendments. Possibly even the power for states to override federal laws, with a supermajority.

I'd like to see other things, like the commerce clause returning to its original meaning, but like you said, it's already a high bar.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#940
post #27

So, while I agree that this feels foreign and wrong to me as someone who has experienced "The Internet" for so long, I can't help but wonder if we can separate that from how the offline world works. I'm asking this in good faith. Given that: 1. The Internet is not an optional subscription service today the way it was in 1995. Every kid and adult has 1,000 opportunities to get online including on the multiple devices…

Also, censorship software is infamously bad at curation. Peacefire isn't around anymore these days, but the sites blocked by local censorship software around 2000 is pretty terrible, whether they used keyword filters or URL lists. See the list of sites in the left column at https://web.archive.org/web/2020/http://www.peacefire.org (peacefire circumventor is a tool I used to use to access blocked sites at school)
Post reply on HN