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Is anyone else worried about this? Tumblr banned porn in 2018, and recently they’ve begun to restrict content even further. GFYCat banned porn. Imgur is also banning porn. Reddit doesn’t allow you to use it to host images on NSFW subs, and I’ll bet you anything they ban porn entirely within a year or so.

yeah, in broad strokes. i don't think porn is at any risk of being completely eradicated—actually, i don't think it'll ever even really suffer. it's a big constant of the internet and too many people have an interest in it because most humans have an appreciation for sex.

what i do think is at risk is anything that isn't, for lack of better wording, "normie" and NSFW. queer NSFW spaces, weird porn communities, sex work, and other stuff like that? that's the stuff i'm really worried about; which gets disproportionately policed; and which doesn't have the institutional backing of porn websites or ordinary people to fight back when they're threatened.

sex workers, for example, have had it really bad since SESTA/FOSTA. Apple (and the payment processors behind them) have made it basically impossible for a website wanting to accommodate NSFW content to have an app. my main social media site of choice, Cohost, doesn't have one specifically because it would otherwise be subject to this issue, since it allows a lot of queer content, porn, and sex workers. that really sucks in a lot of ways! and unfortunately, i'm not sure what can really be done about that short of the exceptional step of building payment processors which aren't so puritanical.

There are a few sites still supporting it. I'm glad Patreon still supports creators creating porn, for example. Also porn games are becoming more accessible on places like Steam now.

Overall I agree with you though that most sites are banning or degrading in quality.

GFYCat banned porn.

I feel they handled it best. They banned it but moved existing content to another domain (redgifs) and allowed it to operate separately (before ultimately selling it).

Well, guess my first comment on this site is going to be about porn.

My thinking, beyond any of it, is that pornography drives a lot of media. If you can't get porn on it, then it's not going to be as popular. Imgur is big enough that it doesn't need porn, but I'd be interested to see some statistics from before and after that policy change. Tumblr, well I'm pretty sure 75% of Tumblr's usage was porn, ban that and self-destruct. GFYCat never seemed like a good place for porn anyway, so I'm not sure what to think about that.

So, what I mean is these platforms are cutting off a portion of their userbase. In this respect I'm less concerned about accessibility to pornography, but the engagement on the platform.

Also, indeed I have observed things migrating to paid services. Lot of things are moving that way, gotta pay another subscription (and have that all over your credit card statement).

I've heard the idea that one of the biggest issues of the web is the homogenization of user spaces. When I was a kid, I could get on Club Penguin, Webkinz, Disney and Nick's websites for games. I think AOL even had a kid's oriented network I might've used once or twice when dial was still around. When I got into my teen years, I started joining user forums and message boards where I knew that it was mainly adults, so I did my best to act mature (and failed, lol), and if I got called out for being too young and not fitting in, I either got ran off or banned. Now that I'm an adult, even in non-NSFW internet spaces, I don't really want to interact with kids, but rules and culture are dictated by the need not to expose children to unsavory content because we just let them run around.

I'm sure it's the responsible thing to do, because I saw stuff I never should have, browsing 4chan, adult content, and other really nasty stuff as a kid. I definitely don't want kids to be subject to that, but damn I hate that the presumption that kids might see something be a strike against users when adults want to discuss mature topics.

I don't know. Aggregator sites are closing shop in that respect, but, sex workers are workers, and they deserve to be paid for their work. What we have had for a long time is a situation of rampant and normalized pirate streaming of a genre of media, while the people who make that media are disaparaged to high heaven and back again. And it's a situation, further, that obscures or even distributes child sexual abuse materials, revenge porn, videos of sexual assaults passed off as consensual (including videos of otherwise consenting people, who did NOT consent to filming, that were filmed with hidden cameras), stolen nudes and sex tapes, and the like.

Small porn sites, run by the people who make the legitimate porn, still exist. People could, perhaps, consider paying the sex workers for the thing that they make.

Amateur porn might be harder to come by, but, with that, it seems a lot harder if not impossible to guarantee that all parties are consenting to it, anyway.

Too many sites banning NSFW discussion, including discussion like you say of peoples' own experiences of abuse, is a bridge too far, but I'm not seeing that as a general trend, like video porn bans. If nothing else, it's far easier to discuss sex or abuse via text here than it is to ask instances to take on the risks associated with trying to host and moderate video or image porn.

Also, erotica is absolutely thriving, especially ever since the invention and adoption of e-readers. There is no shortage of it, nor difficulty with accessing it, except on a few specific sites (e.g. Tumblr).

"And even outright porn is getting harder to find"

Haha. What? It's never been easier to access free porn since the Internet began. There are tons of free porn sites on the net. Why do you need social media sites for that kind of content? Don't those sites have their own forums and comment sections too?

I agree partially, you could say that porn and nsfw stuff are leaving social media platforms that are trying to appeal to advertisers and shareholders. I know that major porn subreddits are disappearing taking out a big repository of it along with Imgur's takedown. The CombatFootage subreddit is the only one that I might personally miss from a shutdown. I believe high quality documentation of war is important to highlight the dangers and tragedy of war/conflict at a closeup level.

There is still a lot of it across the internet if you know where to look. After all, the internet is for porn.

I don't care for porn pretty much at all, but I recognize people have needs. I think it's fine to have those communities but within their own time and place. It's hard if not impossible to have a nuanced, intelligent conversation with people in horny mode. It would be like having a town hall where participants rub their genitals while speaking.

I'm sure a group will come up something once porn gets banned.

It does sound like people are more concerned about 'Free' porn disappearing more than all porn imo.

There's still a tonne out there for all sorts of kinks. You just have to pay for it (A bit like the old days).

I think you’re blowing things a little out of proportion.

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