(I recohosted said post earlier, go read it for context).
After thinking about it for a bit, I think disallowing loli/shotacon is probably the most pragmatic move, based largely on the argument that allowing it, even under mandatory filtered tags and geolocked to regions where it's legal, opens the door for Cohost to gain a Reputation as The Loli/Shota Site, which could bring with it both an outsized influx of people wanting to post loli/shota art as well as a lot of negative PR off-site.
(Edited in a readmore to reduce timeline spam)
Acknowledging this sticks in my craw, though. (It's not that I'm GAGA for loli/shota content - I would be happier if it didn't exist, but I understand why it does and am fairly firmly in the "it's just a drawing" camp in that I don't believe sexualized artwork of fictional children has the power to enact psychic harm upon all CSA survivors everywhere by the mere fact of its existence. I also get pretty tetchy about it being treated as 1:1 equivalent to porn of literal human children - an attitude I picked up from the CSA survivors I'm close friends with, who all have varying levels of tolerance for loli/shota but none of whom appreciate their experiences being placed on the same level of seriousness as an anime drawing. But I digress.) What sticks in my craw is that coming to the above conclusion feels like handing a win to the people who frequently make other platforms unbearable for anyone expressing sexual desires even slightly outside the unthreatening softness of the tenderest Catadora fanart. Y'know. Cops.
You probably know who I'm talking about here. People who obsessively police fandoms, callouts at the ready for anyone who enjoys a "problematic" ship. Who comb through Likes and Followers, searching for any indication that someone might be a deviant, a Threat to be annihilated for the good of the community. Who will descend, gleefully and en masse, upon perpetrators of wrongthink based on nothing but hearsay and innuendos. I haven't named any specific instances, but I bet one popped into your head while reading this paragraph!
I truly, genuinely hate these people, iterations of which have attacked and traumatized more than one of my close friends. I think they are dangerous, and far more destructive to communities than people who want to post loli art. After all, you can restrict loli art behind a tag, but you can't do the same to someone who wants to play Purity Police. Reading some of the comments under the guidelines post, you can even start to feel some of that Cop Impulse wriggling through, through broad, moralistic proclamations and barely-veiled threats of tattling.
Again, my ultimate take is that loli/shota should probably be disallowed, if for nothing else apart from the longterm good of the site. What I dislike, what's currently getting my hackles up, is the feeling that coming to this conclusion is based less on an honest evaluation of the possible harm that could be caused by an influx of distasteful opt-in content and more on the implicit threat of an extant collective of doxxers-in-waiting looking for the next witch to hunt.
Whew! Writing that cleared out MY sinuses. I might delete this later, but for now, thanks for reading.