Better to have neither, though. Even virtual CSAM can encourage behavior that eventually leads to real children being abused.
My brother worked in an in-patient place where a lot of people with pedophilia were being treated, and the providers would even instruct them not to watch certain movies and shows depicting children, much less something like virtual CSAM. It's a common internet myth that it reduces their chance of offending.
Do you have studies on this? I'm not convinced any given treatment facility is going to have good takes; conversion therapy is a thing they do at inpatient facilities. To be clear, I'm not saying your brother was doing conversion therapy, just that I prefer to base my opinions on research rather than what a treatment provider I have no idea who they are does.
I'm not an expert, and I'm just basing this on what I've been told by my brother and people he worked for. To be clear, my brother is not an expert. He worked in the facility assisting in another capacity and only helped adhere to their care plans. These were typically people who had offended, though not all were pedophiles.
I had a link at one time with information that is relevant that I used to share with problematic users on reddit, but quite honestly I'm not willing to look that up again since this is an upsetting topic for me. I don't think it's too hard to find though, with the right keywords.
Edit: This was a state agency, not a private practice btw. It was not "conversion therapy," and there were many people there with various mental illnesses, not just pedophilia
I did explicitly state that I wasn't comparing it to conversion therapy. I was pointing out that having a facility was not 1:1 with having a good and effective program.
And if this bothers you to talk about, by all means don't feel obligated. Maintaining your own mental health is a priority.
Gotcha. Sorry I misread that. I could be also misunderstanding what I was told, but my understanding was that immersing oneself in virtual CSAM is not recommended for pedophiles.
Yeah, I'm not sure because my understanding is that the existence and availability of porn generally correlates to a reduction in sex crimes in general, but it's not like it's a remotely not God awful area to investigate.
Not necessarily? We have ai that can de-age people created without CSAM so it stands to reason that it's possible. I still don't think it should be accessible though. It still requires children and that's uncomfortable enough for me I think
Something like stable diffusion can absolutely make things it’s never been trained on. For example if puppies are in its training set, and poodles are in its training set, but not poodle puppies. It can generate a poodle puppy.
Yes but fron what i know every image AI is technically able to make "cp" you don't need cp to get a ai to make it. The training data is definitely actual children but not necessarily from CSAM