Post #3904128

2026-07-11 01:56 UTC

I think we’ll never know scientifically because there’s no ethical manner of conducting the study. No one’s going to supply a known pedophile with CSAM and see whether or they they molest someone, or hook up a gizmo to their head and measure their brainwaves when they go to a playground. It would probably answer a lot of questions if they did, but we as a society usually agree these questions aren’t worth scarring a child over.

Replies (1)

@andros_rex@lemmy.world 2026-07-11 02:27

I’d argue for using a study with something like another common, but legal and harmless paraphilia - feet was the one I suggested earlier - but otherwise arbitrary. I’m making an argument based on transferability but that’s reasonable here I think. The only thing we can’t control is societal disapproval, so maybe you can substitute something else like hardcore BDSM, but you can’t really replicate the pure evil factor of CSAM. Maybe animal abuse content in an area where that is legal but I don’t really like that either. Rough misogynistic BDSM content is probably the happy medium here. You’d do something like get two groups. One that you prevent from accessing the content somehow, and one that has access to that content. The obvious problem is controlling access to content. Maybe it’s just a monitoring program with unrestricted access to the internet but tracking visit frequency to that type of content, where one group is told/incentivized to not visit such content, while the other is given no such instructions; maybe it has to be self reported frequencies. Maybe one group is explicitly given just the instructions that specific type of content is specifically legal and that there is no harm in enjoying that content. Recruit among communities that enjoy that specific content, in forums where they are already not self censoring. Maybe another DV is ranking subjective scores of intensity. I think you could do this by categorizing tags, which are amply available on most pornographic content, into sorta but arguable subjective ratings of intensity. Maybe this is a mixed methods paper where the quantitative aspect is the frequency of visits stuff, while qualitative is theme analysis on the tags. If it has to be specific to CSAM, perhaps it’s measurements of how many possessors go onto be offenders over their life time. I doubt mandated counseling works often enough to be that much of a confounding variable.

Open ##3904127