Assuming what you’re saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state’s responsibility?

In general, yeah. It’s quite literally what the government is supposed to be for. When there’s a widespread problem affecting a lot of people, it’s precisely the government’s job to step in, regulate and solve it.

Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?

These two I can agree with the answer being ‘no’. The problem isn’t that it’s not an issue or that the government shouldn’t interfere. The two main problems I can identify here are:

• The current American government (and most of the previous ones) cannot be trusted to handle this in good faith,
• There are several more pressing matters that should be addressed first.

And a bonus issue. There’s currently no sufficient and reliable infrastructure to even implement restrictions on pornography, as we can plainly see from the results of recent attempts. But this ties in to the first problem. If they really wanted to solve the issue in any capacity, obviously they’d start by building the necessary digital infrastructure.

All in all, I think you brought up important points and I pretty much fully agree with you on them. However, to me it seems like they’re not exactly relevant to the discussion. Or at least that’s not what I was trying to address.

My main goal was to refute the previous guy’s theses that pornography has no confirmed negative effects on people, especially the part about children, since it literally takes seconds to find dozens of studies on this topic. I didn’t mean to speak about whether or not the government should do anything, let alone defend the current US efforts to regulate porn, if we can even call them that. In fact, one of the studies I quoted stated that the participants did not feel a government intervention is needed, which I felt was a crucial detail to highlight.

Lawmakers don’t watch porn. They prefer to get it straight from the source, right at Little Saint James.

No offence to anyone, but this post strikes me as coming straight from a spokeperson for Aylo (formerly MindGeek). A mix of baseless claims and straight up misinformation, that happen to align with the company’s business model.

You speak as if porn sites are analogous to social media and it’s perfectly normal to record your experiences and post them online. Which it absolutely isn’t, anywhere in the world. ‘Expressing your sexuality’ and porn are entirely separate and have very little to do with each other.

It is widely known and confirmed that pornographic content comes with a broad spectrum of negative effects, especially for children and adolescents. The latter really should be common sense in 2025. Watching porn isn’t always bad and can be beneficial in some ways (as some sources below even highlight), but those cases represent a small minority.

Below are some quotes and just a few out of countless sources providing much more reliable information on the topic of pornography’s effects. I strongly recommend reading at least some, because this comment is like ignoring decades of scientific literature and traveling in time back to the 1700s.

Prolonged exposure to pornography is known to lead to habituation, resulting in blunted processing of pleasurable stimuli and greater sensitivity to negative stimuli (21). Continuous use of pornography impairs emotional processing capacity and flattens affect, reducing emotional connection to real-life sexual experiences.

Source: Impact of pornography consumption on children and adolescents

Research shows that frequent porn use hijacks the brain’s reward system and changes the brain’s structure, much like addictive substances.

This means that prolonged pornography use can weaken natural pleasure responses and reinforce compulsive behavior.

A 2014 study found that heavy porn users showed significantly reduced activity in critical areas of the brain responsible for motivation and impulse control, suggesting long-term neurological rewiring.

Source: The Hidden Cost of Pornography: How It Shapes Your Brain and Behavior

Age of first exposure was significantly associated with reported need for longer stimulation and more sexual stimuli to reach orgasm when using pornography, decrease in sexual satisfaction, and quality of romantic relationship, neglect of basic needs and duties due to pornography use, and self-perceived addiction in both females and males. (…) In the opinion of most of the surveyed students, pornography may have adverse effects on human health, although access restrictions should not be implemented.

Source: Prevalence, Patterns and Self-Perceived Effects of Pornography Consumption in Polish University Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Additional sources:

• 10 Negative Effects of Porn on Your Brain, Body, Relationships, and Society
• Affection substitution: The effect of pornography consumption on close relationships

Individual cases of rape or other forms of sexual assault aren’t necessarily “challenges we face as a society”. I think this phrase refers to broader issues impacting us all, like climate change.

Everyone who originally proposed this or otherwise helped in drafting this should be thoroughly investigated under suspicion of foreign affiliation. Chat Control doesn’t just start the EU’s transformation into a surveillance state. It also weakens its digital defenses. No matter how you look at it, this is treason both towards the European people, as well as towards the individual countries and the Union as a whole.

Sociopaths will be sociopaths. They’ll continue saying that protesting and violece are never the answer, while eroding our basic rights and ignoring all pushback.

So you’re telling me the one person who’s been making deals behind closed doors (illegal), and then ‘accidentally’ deleting all messages regarding said deals (also illegal) will be exempt from having all their communication scanned?

Allegedly. Idk how he could have done it without any of our 180 friends we’ve been hanging out with noticing.

Grok, do I need you? Be honest.

I wish it was true, but the reality seems to disagree. Trump very much can pardon Putin and anyone else, and will do so if he wants to. The EU may cry, but it will do nothing about it. I’m not one bit happy about this, but that’s just how it is.

Currently, EU leaders consist of the following types of politicians:

• American assets,
• lunatic nationalists who happen to side with the US for a variety of reasons,
• more or less reasonable (for politician standards), but still afraid to confront the US in any way.

Any time Washington wants something, they get it from us. Any time they tell Europe to bend over, it does so, lubricant in hand. Want us to completely illegally seize a Chinese company’s Dutch branch, leading to no benefits and severe sanctions from China? Done, daddy.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but current EU is not prepared to stand up for itself. A combination of US and Russian interference, as well as braindead far-right nationalists have made sure we’re powerless and unable to act on anything significant.

Empires simply cannot tolerate the existence of a place like the EU. It shows their citizens that they don’t have to be slaves and that not every single minute of life has to suck. Which in turn might cause them to protest, and we can’t have that. How many times have you heard the “employment in the USA vs employment in France” memes? Well, the American Empire has found a reliable solution to this issue. Just destroy France, along with all of Europe, and American slaves will stop complaining about shitty work conditions compared to France!

How can you know if the sources really are bad if it’s not obvious aftet reading? Do you just trust a random person’s words? In this case, you’re essentially arbitrarily picking one version over another.

The problem with ‘stopping lies’ is it requires effort, which not everyone may wish to dedicate. I’m by no means denouncing the other person for trying to stop misinformation (assuming that’s the case, since I still have no idea). However, it’s all in vain if they don’t bother to do anything to prove their point.

Anyone can post misinformation as sources, just as anyone can post that the sources are bad. Fundamentally there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two. If you really feel the need to defend people from being misinformed, some better source or other form of proof, or at the very least a deeper explanation would go a long way.

So let me get this straight.

Tim wanted a better storefront, free of all the ‘slop’ that Steam is filled with.

Then he proceeds to use AI in his main game and argue against AI-use disclaimers.

Am I missing something here?

Disclaimer: not .ml.

Critisizing someone’s sources and then refusing to provide any other ones “because it’s pointless” seems a little hypocritical to me.

I’m pointing out the problems with the sources for all the other people that are observing that comment and being swayed, because it’s a bunch of baloney.

So we should trust your word over someone’s who has at least put in the effort to provide sources?

Look, you don’t need to prove anything, but if you’re gonna argue or act like you’re defending people from misinformation, then I’d expect to see more than just “don’t listen to that guy”. It’s not exactly easy finding objective information about various issues in China and filtering out all the American propaganda. Personally, I’d very much appreciate any links that don’t lead to obvious manipulation.

So basically an unofficial colony?

Remember when he was against running for president and even joining the political scene entirely?

Russia conducts special military operations, while the US is fighting terrorism. It’s all the same. Except our media outlets - in the case of my country, mostly American - will only speak about one of the two. Let’s do our best to spread the word more or less evenly.

All empires will fall. They have to. Otherwise there’s no future for humanity.

There is already some. Looks like those huge touchscreens are generally worse than using a phone on a handle or being at the legal limit for alcohol/weed (by US law), but better than using a phone with both hands. Plus there’s huge negative feedback from pretty much everyone except some Tesla fanatics.

Will try and remember to link a source later.

‘Thought’ implies that they made premeditated, informed decisions out of own free will, and were not manipulated into voting for whatever the media outlet they happened to listen to told them.

There are more ‘social scores’ than just the credit one. The main difference is that in the West it’s kept in secret, while China is open about it. Of course, it’s also different than American propaganda says.

Arguments can be made both in favor and against such systems or their parts. I think we can all agree that the American one goes far beyond reasonable social utility. The Chinese one too, probably. China may be a lot better than our media tells us, but it’s still far from perfect.

Honestly, I dont want to marry someone with more partners than I can count on one hand… I dont think im crazy here?

I actually think this by itself is a reasonable take, though I’d say it also depends on the age. As a young (<25) guy, personally I would probably not date a girl with a 2-digit body count. Probably, because people are never that simple and you can’t be sure who the other person is without getting to know them. For some people this may not make a difference, and for others it may be a positive. We all have our own preferences. If you’re a low libido vanilla person, then you probably don’t want a freaky partner who likes sex a lot.

Women are looking back and realizing “homemaker” was an enviable position, usually.

This is because most jobs suck, wages are low and people want to enjoy their hobbies to stop thinking about all the global issues. Most men I know don’t see any issues with the idea of being stay-at-home husbands. It’s not women-specific.

Why did that stop? Why is nearly every household a “dual-income” house? In a large part, it is because of the feminist movement.

Almost every single word in this part is incorrect. First of all, feminism isn’t any more responsible for degrading quality of life than worker unions are. The ruling class simply decided they’ve had enough of ungrateful peasants fighting for more rights. Second, feminism has been dead for a while, so you can’t really blame it for anything substantial. 90% of modern feminists are just reverse misogynists, while the remaining 10% rarely speak out. They aren’t really considered ‘feminists’, but that’s because people generally don’t know what feminism is (or used to be?).

Now things, like rent, are WAY more expensive because they assume most house holds are dual income.

This is probably one of the last positions on the list of why rent is higher. There’s practically zero connection here. In short, rent is astronomically high, because capitalism doesn’t work. Not because women - also known as people - fought for more rights. Demanding basic rights is never a bad thing for anyone, regardless of additional unintended consequences.