Asymmetric Content Moderation in Search Markets: The Case of Adult Websites(papers.ssrn.com)
64 pointsby amadeuspagel14 hours ago5 comments
  • ssalka8 hours ago
    > The shift did not take place immediately. Within six months, traffic at smaller, less regulated sites had grown by 55%, and at larger sites by 10%, with point estimates implying that the traffic was entirely diverted to competing firms. This suggests that regulating only the largest platforms may push traffic to fringe sites and less controlled spaces.

    This rings true to me, especially in the recent context of AI adopters looking for uncensored alternatives. This frame of thinking can be applied not only to models, i.e. many move away from OpenAI/ChatGPT in search of less restricted models, as well as being applied to sites providing AI resources. Just the other day, CivitAI (the current leader for distributing custom checkpoints, LoRAs for image-centric models) announced it was taking a much more heavy-handed approach to moderation due to pressure from Mastercard/Visa. Its users are simply outraged, and many I think will be leaving in search of a safe haven for their models/gens going forward.

    • krige14 minutes ago
      Why are Mastercard/Visa even trying to police this? It's not the first time (Japan got famously hit by them hard), what is this puritan stranglehold.
  • motolov12 hours ago
    Interesting abstract. I can see similar concepts applied to eg govt regulation, censorship, etc (only one side monitoring, other sides absorb content of the monitored)

    BTW, it looks like your PDF is missing figures/illustrations/etc (there is placeholder text) Not sure if this was a publishing tech issue or if missed in authoring

    • Freak_NL11 hours ago
      The whole document looks weirdly formatted, but you can click the red numeral in the placeholder text for the tables and figures to jump to the appendix where it is. Not sure if this approach is intentional. It's certainly weird.

      You would think that with a decent LaTeX template academic papers would look reproducibly good, but for some reason some (many?) institutions and authors choose weakly justified convention over typographically sound formatting optimised for actual reading. The font choice (not too bad, but not pleasant either), the outsized leading which competes with the paragraph spacing. Look at how badly the references section on page xxviii scans.

      The word missing from the abstract is 'PornHub', of course. They're not just studying “a dominant online platform”. The fact that it is PornHub seems relevant enough not to hide it in the abstract to me.

      • gwern4 hours ago
        This always frustrates me about paper abstracts. Whether it's economics or AI, everyone seems to make a point of being as vague as possible, when it would sometimes take 1 tiny word to clarify it hugely . You'll see paper abstracts talk about how they analyze "an important and widely deployed commercial family of large language models (LLMs)" and then you have to skim 10 pages before you finally find out that they mean 'GPT'.

        I don't think the authors are even doing it maliciously or deliberately, because it's like how students or kids struggle to write anything. It's just a fallback when you're struggling to condense it and have gotten lost in your forest. Like how you can ask someone, "OK, that's all great, but what did you do? What are you trying to say here?" "Oh, I Xed the Y with Z." "There you go. That's your abstract."

      • mcphage11 hours ago
        > The word missing from the abstract is 'PornHub', of course. They're not just studying “a dominant online platform”. The fact that it is PornHub seems relevant enough not to hide it in the abstract to me.

        The fact that it was PornHub is mentioned repeatedly in the paper itself. Leaving it out of the abstract seems fair—they picked PornHub because it was a site that deleted 80% of their content, not because they're specifically interested in studying PornHub.

        And, they study several of MindGeek's sites, not just PornHub exclusively.

        • Freak_NL11 hours ago
          Sure, but omitting it is like having a study about 'a dominant social medium' and not mentioning that it is Facebook or X in the abstract (or a study about radicalisation of young men focusing on 'an anonymous imageboard' and not putting 4chan or whatever in the abstract). These are for the most part unique beasts, not interchangeable venues.

          It is relevant information for anyone scanning through dozens of abstracts on the topics addressed.

    • dkga10 hours ago
      This is how some people in economics format their papers due to how some top journals require manuscripts to be. Source: I'm an economist (although I personally prefer to place figs/tables where they are supposed to be).
    • bschne11 hours ago
      I also find this annoying, but it‘s common practice to do this while a draft is still being worked on and not yet getting submitted to a journal (SSRN is ≈ SocSci Arxiv)
      • tough11 hours ago
        Why isn't there a global-like open platform for science like ArXiv?
        • bschne10 hours ago
          path dependency with fields having developed their own early on I guess?
          • tough10 hours ago
            so are these like other fields don't use LaTeX but other formatting?

            I can see for example if its' mostly word documents from source on that area of science maybe there's no point on arxiv like pipeline that builds from source.

            wondering if it will ever converge there, like a wikipedia only about science/research but of all areas

    • nh23423fefe11 hours ago
      i left reddit because i was tired of mods destroying communities (with "moderation" which is really just shitty curation by your shitty taste)

      porn consumption is even more demanding. if you want "that release" you dont really care about the 2257

  • frankfrank139 hours ago
    > Our findings highlight how asymmetric exposure to content moderation shocks can reshape market competition, drive consumers toward less regulated spaces, and alter substitution patterns across platforms.

    Or at least one very specific market and platform

  • readthenotes111 hours ago
    "What do you do?" Study porn
    • dkga10 hours ago
      A: "I can't believe I caught you in that website!" B: "It's for research, really!"
  • 11 hours ago
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