The way I see it, and I'm pretty sure this will get downvoted, is that pedophiles will always find new material on the net. Just like actual, normal porn, people will put it out.
With AI-generated content, at least there's no actual child being abused, and it can feed the need for ever new material without causing harm to any real person.
I find the thought of kiddie porn abhorrent, and I think for every offender who actually assaults kids, there are probably a hundred who get off of porn, but this porn has to come from somewhere, and I'd rather it's from an AI.
What's the alternative, hunt down and eradicate every last closeted pedo on the planet? Unrealistic at best.
As for apps, I'm using Liftoff, which works well, but hasn't seen an update for a while, and I don't know how active the dev is.
I'd rather not use Jerboa, which has been created by tankies, or any of the ad-infested ones, like Boost, because I think it's despicable to try and profit off of user-generated content on a platform that's meant to be free (could have stayed on Reddit if I wanted that).
I don't think Lemmy will reach or overtake Reddit. That's a good thing in my opinion, because massive platforms come with massive moderation problems that aren't so easy to tackle for decentralised networks. We've seen that when someone posted kiddie porn and several servers went down to scrub the filth from their systems.
If anything, Lemmy already has a pretty high amount of troll communities, thankfully mostly contained within their own servers, which enables separation through defederation (speaking of defederation, I'd love to have an option to block servers on the user level).
Sure, but I'd rather Google spy on me to market my data for targeted ads than a country that runs literal concentration camps and is just across the Taiwan strait, basically a stone's throw from where I live.
I'd think it's more that there's now more media fighting your attention. When I was a kid (GenX here), we had a handful of TV channels and books. Books was what I went with.
Nowadays, I get home from work and watch something on YouTube before bed. I still read, but my standards have risen, and a trashy space opera won't do it anymore for me. It has to be a great one now, and there are fewer of them. So, naturally, YouTube gets a bigger share of my time. Or games, when I have time to play on the weekends. My comfort game used to be Civilization, and currently I'm hooked on Baldurs Gate.
When I first heard about the API shutdown, I immediately overwrote all my comments and posts with randomly generated nonsense, then kept reading till RIF ceased to exist. Before I deleted the account, I ran a mass-deletion tool. Hopefully that prevented them from restoring the original content I contributed for free. Been on Lemmy ever since.
I love his dramatic facial expression :)