Let's talk pornography...

There's much discussion going on about Tumblr suddenly banning all pornography.   

I think it was a couple of years ago that I first looked at Tumblr.   I didn't understand it then, and still don't.   It seems to promote itself as a simple blogging site, but it seems hard to find any non-porn site on it that is anything other than self indulgent photos or pictures (often of an arty variety) with very few words accompanying them.   What's more - I don't recall any advertising (unlike Blogger, which allows users - like me -  to go advertising free, but encourages its placement.)

How was it ever meant to work?

Anyway, I don't really understand anything about the commercial world of pornography since the internet.   Sure, at first, the net might have helped with commercial porn promoting itself via advertising and free samples of their wares.  But when the amount of free, routinely pirated, porn (usually taken from commercially produced porn) flooded the place, why would anyone ever pay for the original material anymore? 

I also read some thread on Reddit recently about pornography generally, and there seemed to be a very strong sentiment that "amateur" category is now very popular.  Lots of people said it's less fake with less ridiculous vocal performances.   No surprise there.   But again, if this is now "big", how does the old school pornography industry survive at all?  Yet you do still get these cringey and anachronistic (to my mind) "Sexpo" events around Australia once a year or so, in which (from what limited reporting about them I have read) old school style porn stars are still featured to some degree.   But really, the names of current stars are not widely known like in the late 70's or 80's when the industry was probably at its peak.   Boogie Nights made the industry look pathetic - I can't help but feel that getting into the industry now smacks of more desperation than ever, given that even the commercial side of it doesn't seem to make any sense. 

As for the effect of explosion of free pornographic images on the public psyche - I get the impression that everyone thinks this is an interesting question, but it's not something that attracts much academic research.   Mostly, commentary on it seems to be more at an anecdotal level - especially its relationship to apparently declining levels of actual sex between young people in some countries, and also the matter of their unrealistic expectations regarding the act and body image.

I don't doubt that the internet has de-sensitised the public to extreme and ridiculous pornography in much the same way that I complain about the rapid desensitisation of the public to gory gun shot wounds to the head. I tend towards the view that there is likely not much social harm in "vanilla" nudity and sexual imagery, and videos of your average sexual activity, being relatively easily available.  It has, after all, been available in one form or another for millennia, and children seeing animal (and indeed human) sex in real life was probably much more common in poorer centuries when farm animals were everywhere and families slept all in one big room.   But the normalisation of fetishistic and extreme porn is problematic, for reasons I won't bother trying to elaborate here.

So I find it hard to feel concerned about any site like Tumblr giving up and just wanting to ban it all due to the impossibility of drawing lines as to what is acceptable or not in terms of nudity and sex. 

Which leads me to the most interesting thing, and a large part of the reason for this post:   I heard on ABC radio recently a bit about a documentary about how there are businesses based in the Philippines (and doubtless elsewhere) which do provide a human monitoring service for imagery and videos on social media such as Facebook.   A lot of what they are trying to catch is, of course, child pornography or extreme porn of other varieties (bestiality I guess), as well as grotesque violence material:

Finding the moderators at all was a challenge.

Content moderation is a mostly secretive and hidden industry, often outsourced to labour hire companies in corners of the world far removed from northern California.   

The specific psychological hurt caused by dealing with a constant stream of traumatising imagery is clearly shown in the documentary.

The filmmakers collaborated with psychologists, and Block said it was not just the act of sitting in front of a screen, clicking through the worst humans can offer, that was damaging for moderators.

It was also the silence: Non-disclosure agreements with their employers and social pressure also kept them from talking about what they were seeing and feeling.

"You're not allowed to verbalise the horrible experience you had," Block said.

"While we were filming the documentary … we both had time to talk about what we are filming, time to have a break and to stop watching and to take our time to recover from what we saw.

"The workers in Manila don't have the time. They don't have the ability to talk to someone."

It is also clear in the film that many of the content moderators consider that, all told, their job is a good one.

"When they are hired, a lot of them are really proud about getting a job in a clean environment and in one of the best parts of the city," Riesewieck explained.

"What is highly underestimated is the psychological consequence of it … they just notice it when friends … tell them, 'you have changed'.

"Or they notice that they have developed phobias … or when they notice that they're not able to have a sexual relationship anymore."

This is when, the filmmakers said, they return to those necessary narratives — the story of Christian sacrifice or the need for social cleansing.

There's another site talking about it that says there have been suicides - and the work conditions are such that they have to view tens of thousands of images a day - something like 15 - 20,000 I think.

I just can't imagine that viewing such a rapid rate of changing images can be healthy, even if the images are just of puppies or something harmless!

Anyway, I thought the documentary sounded very interesting.  And I feel very sorry for the people who live in the Philippines and for whom this counts as a "good" job.