Yes we have that law. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. What I do know is that a lot of the discourse around this area (and specifically new laws on content scanning for CSAM) hinges around the idea that (1) production of CSAM harms children, which is something that is obviously true. But also (2) that proliferation of old or fully-synthetic CSAM causes “addiction” that might lead to further real-world harm to children. The second point is concerning to me because it seems to be more an article of faith than something based in actual science.
It feels to me that there is a (very natural!) tendency to want all of this stuff to disappear, because it’s disgusting. But that this results in a certain degree of motivated reasoning where people feel that they must justify new (invasive) legislation by tightly binding it to the welfare of real children. I worry that these justifications might ultimately do a lot of damage, causing us to aggressively treat symptoms rather than doing much to heal the underlying disease.
It feels to me that there is a (very natural!) tendency to want all of this stuff to disappear, because it’s disgusting. But that this results in a certain degree of motivated reasoning where people feel that they must justify new (invasive) legislation by tightly binding it to the welfare of real children. I worry that these justifications might ultimately do a lot of damage, causing us to aggressively treat symptoms rather than doing much to heal the underlying disease.