Although I don’t agree with every type of content on this site (neutral stance since I haven’t studied research on the matter) and welcome the latest actions for legality reasons, I welcome your stance and statement on freedom and its limit whereby real people get hurt. Please allow me to make a broader, societal point, not limited to porn. And albeit being long, admittedly not long enough to go into details.
Why these advocacy groups (of which I will not post any links to avoid trace-back) are so successful, is because they are well organized. While the other side sees social stigma* as the main prohibitive factor for people to join in with their names or faces attached to it.
Make no mistake though. While these groups start with legitimate sounding issues, actual illegal practices (like the case of GirlsDoPorn, age restrictions or revenge porn), they argue in bad faith and play hide the ball. And we know what they are gonna do, because they keep telling us out in the open.
Porn is but a small part of it. It is of course also any type of sex work, or actually sexuality itself. But it is way more sinister: Did you know that they describe “transitioning” as inherently pornographic and therefore children should not be able to see anyone doing so? Combine that with executive orders all but outright outlawing trans people out of existence. They will go against anything not fitting into their narrow puritanical white pseudo-christian world view. Step by step. Moving the goal-posts every time.
And they do this by pressuring critical service providers like banks, progressing to different businesses and also by enacting laws to limit them. And then they go on to criminalize the service itself, or some consequence of their pressure so the social costs become unbearable (e.g. getting people de-banked to make an easier argument for homelessness, which can then be criminalized → see the EO from the other day). And they describe this clearly in the over 900-page document that is Agenda 2025 of the Heritage Foundation, that is currently being enacted by the White House, the biggest power center on earth.
This is about way more than porn. And the only way to stop this, is to organize. Organize to pressure companies in the other direction (e.g. the linked campaigns and threaten legal action), by calling out these dishonest groups and their real intentions and not letting them dictate the narrative, by adopting alternative structures (e.g. for payment or communication) and pressuring elected officials and get people elected in order to drive laws back into the direction of freedom and democracy and away from fascism and subjugation. And this does not only apply to the US, but to everywhere, where there still remains a semblance of democracy.
*Pornography is a giant industry, internet traffic is made up by a huge part (30% IIRC) of pornography and in studies numbers vary between 60 to 95% of men and 30 to 90% of women consume porn… and yet, sex work is being frowned upon, sex workers being seen as lesser and no one wants to be associated with any of it. Aren’t we humans such logical beings?