Reddit: No More Suggestive Content Featuring Minors 722
First time accepted submitter say_hwat writes "Today Reddit announced that it has banned subreddits dedicated to posting sexualized imagery of people under the age of 18. Last year, the site came under fire for r/jailbait, a subreddit dedicated to posting images of people under 18. The subreddit was shut down, but many others, such as r/gaolbait and r/bustybait, continued existing or sprung up afterwards. The policy change today came hours after a thread on Something Awful called for a public campaign against Reddit's lax attitude towards the sexualization of children. The Something Awful thread creator claims that Reddit's administrators know about child pornography being traded, but refuse to act. Among others, the thread creator cites r/preteen_girls as being particularly egregious."
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:5, Informative)
You mean Richard Stallman, who quoted on his blog and then proceeded with sarcasm:
Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.
The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).
Please, troll harder.
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:5, Informative)
I gave links to both. First he wrote on his blog in 2003 [stallman.org]:
He also said this in an interview [arnnet.com.au]:
And finally, he wrote on his blog in 2006 [stallman.org]:
Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."
To be honest, it's surprising that more people don't know about Stallman's positions on these issues. You'd think such controversial positions would be more widely reported.
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:5, Informative)
There is a big difference between a 7 year old doing anal sex and a picture of Lisa and Bart Simpson having sex.
Not any more.. see "18 USC 1466A" , or what ever relevant country..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cartoon_pornography_depicting_minors#United_States [wikipedia.org]
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:5, Informative)
14+ is not pedophilia. Words have definitions.
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:5, Informative)
Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."
As uncomfortable as this may make you feel, what you state is factually incorrect.
Legally, age of consent varies from roughly 13 to 18 around the world. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't consider someone 13 years old to be a child.
Emotionally, the average age of first sexual encounter, world-wide, is 14. Being the average, a significant number (probably somewhere near half) would be younger than that. For your statement ot be true, one would have to believe that half, or more, of the human beings that have had sex did so non-consentually. That kind of claim would require some seriously well-researched evidence.
Some Context from a Redditor (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't just about seeing sexuality in children or people fapping over misappropriated but otherwise innocuous pictures of other people's children.
The largest of the sub-reddits at issue, preteen_girls, featured a posting from a man attracted to his daughter (I would provide a link to this thread, but reading it once was enough; I ain't going back there). He received advice about how to get her drunk, how to gradually introduce her to some physical intimacy via backrubs and neck massage, and gradually escalate to fully sexual encounters. This is exactly how things unfolded when my wife was raped as a 12 year old. They're not just trading pictures, they're trading time-tested advice on seduction and child rape.
Oh, and the advice I described came from the moderator of the page.
That's the kind of stuff that's going on here. I don't give a flying fuck how you feel about free speech, or even child porn: giving advice on intoxicating, seducing, and fucking people is wrong. Setting aside the serious question of whether children can give consent in the first place, these people think it's fine to seduce and drug kids until consent is no longer an issue. This kind of stuff is wrong whether your target is 12 or 42. Knowing that people meet and give one another advice about such things in public on these sub-reddits, to say nothing of what goes in private between people who connect via these sub-reddits (because most people are still smart enough not to collude in raping a child or sharing true snuff on a public forum), gives Reddit both the moral authority and the legal imperative to shut those forums down.
Seriously, raping 12 year olds. Intoxicating and fucking your own daughter or niece. As I've already had to say once this month on slashdot, sometimes 'think of the children' is a valid concern.
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:4, Informative)
I'm going to have to dispute this.
Let me establish a hint of credibility. I was the top-voted comment [reddit.com] on the Reddit post announcing the ban of /r/jailbait. In that comment, I supported the ban decision. However, I think this situation is a bit different.
First of all, this set of bans wasn't handled well. It wasn't very accurate. Just a blanket ban based on the Something Awful list, without regard for the actual content or intent of the subreddit. They just didn't thoroughly verify the SA list.
Second of all, I dispute the premise that all of what was banned was Child Porn. According to the United States v. Knox decision, sexual behavior in photos can be construed as CP, in addition to images involving actual sex or nudity. With this expanded and legally accurate definition in mind, I went to google cache/imgur and checked out several subreddits on the ban list (those not blocked by the 18+ check in the cache, that is). There were lots of 15-19 year olds in bathing suits, but several subreddits failed to reveal any displays of sexual behavior. In fact, some subreddits weren't even of minors. Some of it was, and the bans in those cases were good. But very clearly not all of this was CP.
This also begs the question, "Is it pornography because someone masturbates to it? Or does the intent of the photo matter?" That wasn't clearly defined or discussed either.
Third, see this comment [reddit.com] on SA's motivations. They weren't as pure as you would seem to portray them. We're just taking the accuracy and holiness of the Goons' crusade for granted here. That's a bit of a problem.
I was a big proponent of the ban of /r/jailbait after it became a CP hub. But I really don't think this current set of blanket bans was handled well. Bans must be accurate and well-executed, not badly executed and then bragged about by the admins afterward.
Reality check (Score:5, Informative)
Lets try to get this straight.
Okay, you need a reality check. Pedophilia is about primary sexual interest in *prepubescent* children. This is a *different* clinical disorder to Hebephilia, which involves children in early puberty, and Ephebophilia, which is the case that you are talking about: adults interested in under-age teens. A pedophile will lose interest in a child when they reach puberty. I remember one victim disclosing how upset he was when he was discarded. (The pedophile was perfectly frank, and said he was too old to interest him.)
/cannot/ make an informed decision around an older mature person, despite what they think they may want. But at least by 18, we can draw a line in the sand, and say that it is time to learn life's lessons the hard way if that is what you must do.
So we really are talking about different things, and hopefully the law recognises that. There are many 17 year old women who wouldn't want to be caught when boys their own age -- it is a status thing amongst -- and young boys are pretty darn annoying. So this can become a sticky situation.
And *many* 17 year old
The subreddit was called /r/preteen_girls (Score:5, Informative)
If you'd RTFA, the most active subreddit now banned by Reddit was called /r/preteen_girls. But hey, enjoy your +5.
What's up with the moderation to this article? Everyone opposed to trading child porn pictures on Reddit is getting modded down, and everyone defending possession of those pictures is getting modded up. Please tell me Slashdot's moral compass isn't that horribly screwed up.
Re:I Left Today (Score:3, Informative)
due to the sheer number of Redditors there actively defending pedophiles and their crimes under the guise of "free speech"
Pedophilia is a sexual orientation that is as "natural" as any other sexual orientation, and pedophiles should have the same legal rights as anyone else unless they molest children. Also most child molesters aren't pedophiles.
The "crimes" were posting pictures of fully clothed children and making creepy comments. Any actual child pornography was reported and banned as standard policy.
The number of members there who seem to base their morals on whether something is legal or not
Which is exactly what you are doing. Your morals seem to consist of "its against the law" and "its creepy".
Re:Reality check (Score:4, Informative)
And *many* 17 year old /cannot/ make an informed decision around an older mature person, despite what they think they may want. But at least by 18, we can draw a line in the sand, and say that it is time to learn life's lessons the hard way if that is what you must do.
Who are "we"? Where I live the age of consent is 15 (as in, once someone is 15 it's perfectly legal to have sex with them even if you're 25, 41 or 78). It varies by country. Even here in Europe it varies between 13 and 18, in North America it varies between 12/onset of puberty to 18. Hell, even in the US it varies between 16 and 18 depending on state.
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:4, Informative)
So you agree that it's a societal thing.
There is a reason why the age of consent is 13 or 14 in many countries.
The Reddit Admins Have Always Known About This (Score:2, Informative)
The SA forums leave much to be desired but they have done a great service in exposing the hypocrisy and outright vileness of the Reddit admins in permitting these sorts of things to occur. There is simply NO PLACE for child porn on Reddit or anywhere else and no excuse. The fact that the REddit admins were and contiue to be great friend with a pedophile and generally rotten person doesn't mean they get to look away from this. This all happenned because the Reddit admins REFUSED TO ACT when presented time and again with what their friends were doing with their site.
Re:The subreddit was called /r/preteen_girls (Score:5, Informative)
If you'd RTFA, the most active subreddit now banned by Reddit was called /r/preteen_girls. But hey, enjoy your +5.
Then TFA is wrong. /r/preteen_girls only existed for a few days (strangely enough, only a couple days after SomethingAwful launched their campaign; just saying) and it only had 620 subscribers, which is pitiful for a subreddit.
The most active was /r/teen_girls (with 11640 subscribers), which didn't allow preteens.
http://redditlist.com/stats/preteen_girls [redditlist.com]
http://redditlist.com/stats/teen_girls [redditlist.com]
Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score:4, Informative)
? Does the fact that someone, somewhere looks at the picture sexually change that? Does it even matter in the least?
Legally, it does: one of the criteria for the Dost test [wikipedia.org] is " whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer."
Which is awfully subjective, of course.