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Dispatches from the War on Horny: Has the popular Japanese website Pixiv been colonized by the Western Social-Financial-Complex?
Today (well, yesterday as I write this), Pixiv announced that, in cooperation with Visa and MasterCard's policies (well, okay, they say "Brand Protections of Card Networks," but you probably know what that really means and which card networks they're referring to), they will be forbidding certain content from their Booth, Fanbox, and Request services--of note is "sexual exploitation of a minor." If you aren't already, sit down and get (un)comfortable, this is going to take some explaining.
Now, because of the recent Twitter shenanigans, you may have come across these blog posts by Matthew Skala and Ethan Zuckerman about Pawoo, Pixiv's Mastodon instance, and both its sheer popularity as well as how comfortable its userbase is with lolicon content (and how that makes other Mastodon instances chafe). Well, loli content is once again the source of conflict over at Pixiv, and the East-vs.-West dimension seems like it's also at play here.
The new guidelines seem tailor-made to ban loli and guro (AKA gore) content (which, as a reminder, is fictional art), with the former being, well, just plainly popular for what is likely a whole bunch of cultural reasons I can't get into here. While these guidelines focus on payment-based services that Pixiv provides (Booth is a storefront akin to Gumroad or Storenvy or Etsy, Fanbox is a subscription service akin to Patreon, and I presume Request is Pixiv's equivalent to Skeb, a website for commissioning artists), it's not inconceivable to think that this will sooner or later also apply to the regular art-sharing side of Pixiv, the main site itself.
While I can't really link to them (or at least the Sankaku article collating them), there's already some reactions from Japanese users suggesting that Pixiv will have a Tumblr Porn Ban situation on their hands, as users pre-emptively flee the site before they get kicked off and leave for competitors like Nijie (another art-sharing site) and Fantia (another subscription platform).
One other reaction has been to ask "why not avoid this conflict?", as Pixiv could either just not use Visa/MasterCard (like what competing site DMM did), or, more feasibly, implement workarounds like using points purchased with credit cards (like what DLSite and deviantArt do), or even adopt crypto payments. However, it's also likely that Pixiv is completely fine with this, and here's where things get spicy:
Oddly enough, a few months ago, Pixiv instituted DEI-type policies and sensitivity training, which I presume is quite the rare thing to see from a Japanese company. Now, without going way "beyond the wire" epistemically, it does seem like Pixiv has somehow picked up the Western memes of DEI and incorporated them. This likely made them more open to playing by the rules of Visa and MasterCard, not just on paper, but also spiritually. But, again, I don't want to get too into the weeds of cultural colonialism from the West--it could just be that Pixiv really wants the money that flows through the Visa/MC networks and aren't too willing to rock the boat on this matter. I don't think this is the newest form of imposed American hegemony on the Japanese way of life, like Commodore Perry or the post-WWII occupation and reforms (which arguably built the environment that allowed hentai and lolicon to emerge in the first place), but it kinda does feel like it. (Though see also)
There is certainly no shortage of culture-war red meat when it comes to the modern culture clash between America and Japan WRT general social justice issues, from how Japanese Twitter's trending tab was populated by politics and similar current events until Musk took over, to the aforementioned Mastodon/Pawoo conflict where both sides were of completely different mindsets, and the various controversies over censorship and localization with Crunchyroll's anime distribution and Sony's treatment of Japanese games.
And of course, I don't think I need to re-link articles about Visa vs. PornHub or Patreon restricting adult content or so on. You might already be familiar with how PayPal and the credit card companies basically ban porn and other adult content (citing its high risk of chargebacks), whether outright or through sheer inconvenience (there was a comment I saw recently about how a medium-tier/size payment processor for a porn site had to keep re-routing around damage in the form of network bans, plus also the little things like not being able to use PayPal for some sites and services). Financial deplatforming comes in second or third place to regular social media deplatforming in terms of how often it gets discussed, but it's not very far behind.
Just from the practical/ethical standpoint, PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard are so huge and dominant that they probably should just be common carriers, especially considering the non-NSFW areas where they have influence (namely speech and such; dissident shitposters and Russians are probably well-aware of this reality). PayPal can freeze your account and hold onto your money for no good reason (and you especially better hope they don't catch wind of you doing sex work or selling NSFW art commissions), and your only option is to enter arbitrage, if you can.
But there's also the poltical dimension of this: these three companies are part of the massive American/global financial hegemon, able to kick off actors and users at-will, whether they be lowly prostitutes or even entire countries. Having one large actor dominate much of the world's wealth is very likely bad on its own, but the pay-to-play ESG corporatism being used to draw the lines of social acceptability is extra-worrying. The anti-porn policies of 1st-world payment processing may be rooted in social conservatism, but they play nicely with the liberal-progressive strong-arming many worry about. For any country more worried about losing access to international money because they crossed some cultural or social red-line of the West, there are only three options: embrace crypto (and subject yourself to the non-stop boom-and-bust cycles it suffers from), voluntarily disconnect from the global finance system (with all the hard work that entails), or admit that we all live in America.
EDIT: Since this kicked off a whole sub-thread in response to Hlynka, I would just like to state for the record that while I don't really care for Lolicon at all, I am fully aware that it will likely not stop there, and even an otherwise vanilla-but-still-NSFW image might eventually not be allowed. Slippery slopes, Murder-Ghandis, "the line must be drawn here," "first they came for..." etc.
As probably the only person who will be bold enough to openly identify as an avowed pedophile (and hebephile, blah blah blah etc.; this post is already too long because of my natural penchant for tangents to get into the age-based sexuality ontology soup) in this conversation, I'll ask the fundamental question: Why go after lolicon at all? (I am basing this question on the many replies here along the lines of "Yeah I'm against censorship in general but this in particular is a good thing.")
We're going to masturbate to children, real and fictional.1 You know we are, and you can't stop us. We have been since the start of the Internet. The only ways that could realistically stop us would ruin society and technology for everyone else too (especially any dissidents).2
Wouldn't you rather it be the fictional ones, or at least more the fictional ones (for example, even if a pedo splits his time on 20% fictional/80% real children, wouldn't you rather it be that than 100% real)? It would be one thing if you really had managed to fully crack down on any sexualized content of real children online and fictional content was the only stuff left to police, but you haven't at all (not even the illegal stuff overall, and its legal counterpart far less). Do you really want us on Instagram instead of Pixiv? We can actually message the girls in the photos on there!
1. And, to make it clear up front and maybe forestall some of the pointless replies of a purely mindlessly emotionalized and moralistic character (usually marked ironically enough by the impotent and simplistic anger and disapproval characteristic of a child (not that I don't welcome angry and disapproving replies of an intellectual character more complex than "wtf die pedo", because I certainly do)) that this post will inevitably receive, a lot of you have masturbated to them too, unknowingly (or perhaps half-knowingly, deep down) or not, especially if you define "child" as anyone under the age of 18 (unless you are a major, dedicated, and unwavering MILF fetishist who never spares a single glance for any erotic content labeled "teen" of any variety ever, which realistically we all know most of us aren't).3
(That is, among other implications of the above, I often if not usually get quite a few PMs along the lines of "I'd never be bold enough to admit it publicly like you but I'm always masturbating to lolicon/child "models"/junior "idols"/"jailbait" [or younger]/etc. online too [with stuff like 'and I feel bad about it and you're the first similar person I've come across online discussing it' often appended]." from other users after I make posts like these on forums, just so you all know.)
(So, again, if you're planning on responding to this post with (also again, pointless and impotent (as I guarantee you that, as someone who used old early/mid-2000s 4chan in his tender years, you will not wound me with your words on a screen)) wrath, perhaps you might as well not bother knowing how many other worthy targets there are out there immune via stealth in any case to your "righteous" crusading. You'll only be weakly attacking one visible target, with many more flying under your radar, I assure you.)
(I also point this out to remind all readers that any "consensus" on something so taboo, with so much social coercion, pressure, and shaming applied, is always inherently fake or at least unverifiable (similarly to, and in a similar manner using similar methods, the "consensus" on "just being a decent fucking human being [and 'respecting' people's 'gender identities', acknowledging that 'Black Lives Matter', not 'policing' women's bodies, etc.]!" that woke advocates allege with similar slogans, just even stronger because it's bipartisan).)
2. That is, as pointed out by many others in this subthread, say goodbye to anything that isn't Cathedral-approved because they will gladly use the same censorship techniques on all of it (after promising you that they won't and they're just targeting the "worst of the worst" that you disapprove of too). In fact, though it's not widely known and thus not widely remarked upon, Big Tech to a large degree honed and perfected its early censorship techniques, long before it was seen as censorious by anyone, on pedophilic content (as I personally witnessed/experienced, that gradual realization that the website/computer was explicitly lying to you to hide things, again long before it applied politically).
Back when the "algorithm" was actually fully honest, there were regularly underage girls shaking their assets all over the front page, trending section, etc. of YouTube, for example (because they're a lot more popular than anyone wants to admit). Cleaning that situation up was, I believe, Big Tech's actual first foray into manipulating the narrative. And look where it's led. Why think it can't happen again and more?
3. This is in reference to all of the (100% verified, ages on their Instagrams with proof like dated photos from their 12th, 13th, etc. birthday(s) (though of course those ages are rarely spread alongside their content)) underage girls whose photos and TikToks in skimpy miniskirts, bikinis, etc. are stealthily spread all over porn sites, Reddit, etc., as if it were 18+ content.
(Though I don't think "normies" actually care as much as they pretend to if a girl on their screen really is 18+, as long as she's hot, especially since some of these girls, despite their bodies/presentation, still have obviously pretty neotenous faces.
(There's also probably/certainly some element of deluding themselves involved too though, something perhaps like "I'm sexually attracted to her, someone who is sexually attracted to underage girls is a bad person, and I'm not a bad person, so she can't be underage." For example, I've had people still straight up deny that a girl they find attractive is underage after linking them her 12th birthday celebration Instagram post on her official account clearly dated from 2 years ago.))
This is a very common failure to think on the margin; it most typically shows up when people are discussing drug prohibition. Yes, we all agree that prohibiting drugs/CP/murder is not going to actually eliminate it. Some people are still going to find a way to get drugs/CP or to murder other people. These are known as "high-value users". There are some people who will go to extreme measures to get that next hit, get that next picture, or to kill that one bastard. They may do so even if we make the (potential) costs high. (Note that there are some differences in effect of increasing direct costs vs potential costs, though legal sanctions can affect both.)
You may personally be a high-value CP user. We have high-value drug users in these threads. I don't know that we've had high-value murderers in these threads, but they do exist. We may not be successful in dissuading you from pursuing what you value so highly. We may or may not catch you and actually impose the potential costs. The societal value of making such laws does not hinge on that. This has been known for centuries.
Setting aside the other possible justifications for punishing you, specifically, there is societal value in increasing the costs for others, who might have a somewhat lower-value on the behavior than you do, perhaps to the point that they simply choose not to engage in the behavior. This comes in the form of people thinking, "Yeah, I kinda like kids, but do I really want to go to all the trouble of figuring out these VPNs, cryptocurrencies, etc., and then still run the risk of getting caught? Probably not," or, "Yeah, I kinda like drugs, but do I really want to go to all the trouble to deal with the criminal culture, pay high prices, and still run the risk of getting caught or getting an adulterated product that may kill me? I guess I'll just drink some whisky," or, "Yeah, I super super hate this guy, and if anyone ought to get killed, it's him, but do I really want to go through the trouble of trying to plan out how to do it without getting trivially caught, yet still run the risk of something going wrong and ending up behind bars for the rest of my life? Probably not."
Some people will ask themselves those questions and answer, "Yes, absolutely," instead of, "Probably not." But in the meantime, we'll have a lot less CP, a lot less drug usage, and a lot less murder. For the few of you who go ahead and do it, we can figure out what mix of the other justifications for punishment will be most beneficial to you and society.
Okay but I wasn't asking about CP prohibitions (which I'm mostly against for other reasons, but I recognize your argument). Isn't the availability of fictional sexualized content of children like lolicon one of the methods you speak of to increase costs of CP consumption (as it's less justifiable and thus more costly to pursue it at risk if there's a semi-decent substitute with far less risk attached)?
My point is that if you pursue lolicon as content to be eliminated like you pursue CP, then you completely eliminate that benefit to whatever degree you pursue it (same for legal but sexualized content of actual children, but I understand there are different arguments involved there), which doesn't make much sense given that they're fictional characters with zero genuine need for emotional/physical/etc. protection in any case.
That is, even the diehard anti-CP advocate has little reason to attack it.
Almost all CP is distributed freely so you would almost never have to figure this out unless you want really new/rare/etc. stuff. I just thought I'd make a note of that.
There's no economic argument for how it would increase the cost of CP consumption. It simply lessens the cost of something that some might consider a substitute.
In any event, another thing about drug prohibition is that science/society has basically no clue what actually causes the transition to being an addict (which usually comes with many harms, to oneself and others). Obviously, we know that if you never try a drug, you don't become an addict. Some portion of folks who try don't become addicted, but some portion does (this can happen via an intermediate, legal drug, too, like prescription opioids). Best as we can tell, it's pretty much a Poisson process. That means that it scales with the number of people who start using. Also, once a person transitions to being an addict, it seems that we have basically no clue how to rehabilitate them. (See Scott's old old old post about how abysmal rehab programs are.) There is a very reasonable end conclusion that we should simply reduce the number of initial users. It just seems implausible that we could flood the market with cheap, legal opioids and somehow not cause some folks to get addicted.
Similarly, lots of folks find it pretty implausible that we can flood the market with cheap fake child porn and not cause some number of people, who wouldn't have ever even started wanking down that path, to end up abusing kids.
IF we could just isolate people who were already going to consume CP and, in a targeted fashion, with no spillover effects, provide fake CP as a substitute, then sure, that'd be a plausible thing to try. That would be the like, "Give people methadone at rehab," kind of solution, not the, "Give out prescription opioids like candy to the masses," kind of solution.
I would be interested to know more about how this works. Seems like great risk to share, and so folks would want something in return. The indictments I have read support this, as most sites in those indictments make access contingent on regularly uploading fresh content.
Lessening the cost of a (partial) substitute is essentially the inverse of/same as raising the (relative, which is always relative) cost of its competitor. If competitor A lowers its price from $10 to $5, then competitor B still at $10 costs more (again relatively, but that's how people reason) even though it hasn't changed its price at all.
I don't think this opioid analogy works at all. The widespread distribution of opioids is dangerous because a response to them is universally built into the human brain. They don't become dangerous because they're widespread and your brain doesn't get "propagandized" or incentivized via a mere exposure effect/bias into liking them; they simply are effective because they directly target basic human neurology. You can not know what an opioid is at all and still be affected by it. You can think it looks dumb, smells dumb, whatever, and still be affected by it. It's not like media exposure.
Let me ask you, if there were more widespread distribution of (fake or otherwise) positive/indulgent depictions of the brutal murder of puppies, do you think people would:
A. be horrified or at least strongly disapprove of it, no matter how long this campaign went on.
B. be slowly convinced via exposure that maybe murdering puppies might be fun.
(You could also use (literally) eating shit, being castrated, and any other fully unpleasant phenomenon as an example to plug in to the same formula.)
I think the answer is obviously A. Media becomes/is widespread (in the absence of exogenous manipulation) fundamentally because it appeals to inherent preferences, not because it alters them via being more and more widespread itself in a cyclical effect. (I think it can do this especially in the immediate to some degree, but the effects are indirect and obviously limited based on the example. I wrote some other replies on this that might elaborate more.)
That is, nobody is ever worried that depictions of animal violence are going to suddenly explode in popularity and cause a wave of animal cruelty. Why is this? It seems pretty clear to me that it's because we all know there's not really any widespread desire in the general population to randomly do innocent animals harm that is just waiting to be unlocked. So why would we be worried about sexual depictions of minors if, like those who commit animal cruelty, those who are attracted to them are only a small, sick, and twisted minority...? The implication is obvious: they're not.
And given that, perhaps instead of trying to offload the issue into a matter of exposure (which is obviously an artificial excuse given the above puppy murder example), we should reckon with the clear, strong, and inherent preferences of the general population that are subtly revealed by our own fear of them. That is, we should stop living in fantasy land and address the underlying issue, which is why I think your whole point is really orthogonal to the truth because it is based in a fundamental self-deception.
Mostly how you works is that you sign up to a forum (with a username, password, maybe a fake e-mail address (if the admins are too lazy to find out how to disable this requirement in their forum software)) using standard forum software and there it all is in various categories/threads (uploaded to Javascript-free filehosters that tend to take it down, so it may not all actually be there, but the latest posted stuff usually is). It's pretty simple once you get on Tor and find the URLs (the hardest part, though you only need to find one directory URL that links everything else). You're not getting the absolute newest or rarest stuff this way usually but with a decades-long history of content there's plenty on offer.
It's not much of a risk (legally a bit more sure, but that only applies if you get caught) unless you're the one in it. If you're anonymizing your connection, then uploading is no different than downloading (that is, there's no technically reason to believe that one is more easily detectable).
Some sites do this, or have subsections accessible only for consistent uploaders and/or producers, and my explanation for this being more common in indictments is that those who regularly upload "fresh content" (that is, in many cases content potentially containing identifiable information about themselves) are far more likely to get caught.
No. This is econ 101. In fact, in the most simplistic case of substitutes, the price of B actually goes down. There is literally no sense in which its price goes up. ("Relatively" doesn't count.)
You present this as if it would be an advertising campaign. That probably wouldn't work, but that's not how it would work, anyway. What would work is slowly normalizing it through the marginal people. The ones who are already a little off, a little predisposed to violence and weird, twisted shit. And if you forcibly make the people who want to shut that down desist (while simultaneously running a propaganda campaign in universities about how we should maybe be more sensitive to the reasonable needs of such people), then you're brewing a recipe for disaster.
So yeah, if we flood the market with cheap puppy murder, we're going to get more puppy murder. Some people will obviously be horrified, but so long as your propaganda campaign can at least prevent them from taking political action against the flood of cheap puppy murder, we're gonna get more puppy murder. I don't understand how else you can possibly think this would work.
So if Wendy's halves its prices, then the relative cost of choosing McDonald's instead doesn't go up? If paper towel brand A halves its price, there is no increase in the cost, psychological, opportunity, however you want to frame it, of buying paper towel brand B at the same old price of both instead?
I'm not sure what "econ 101" you took (certainly not the same as mine) but it has zero relevance to how people actually behave in the real world. Or economics for that matter. Economics is all about resource allocation, which is all about behavior, which means relative comparisons always matter. Denying this is about the same as denying that the sky is blue.
I don't believe this, or at least I don't believe it will work equivalently. As I pointed out in another comment:
If both taboos are equally ripe for normalization in the same fashion, then how do you explain the disparity in their "natural" popularity?
"Relative" doesn't count. The cost of McDonald's stays the same or possibly goes down in response.
Did you literally just skip the part of the course on substitute goods?
"Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit." It always surprises me to see that people willingly choose to just deny the mathematics of economics when it conflicts with their political commitments. It probably shouldn't, but it still does.
Who claimed this? I didn't.
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