Cultural Attacks

LOS ANGELES—Collective Shout, an Australian anti-pornography group, announced Thursday that it successfully pressured Honey Birdette, the Playboy-owned lingerie retailer, to withdraw certain advertising from a shopping mall near Perth.

The group described the outcome as a “flash win” in its campaign against what it called “porn-themed” marketing.

Collective Shout, co-founded by self-described “pro-life feminist” Melinda Tankard Reist, positions itself as a prominent anti-pornography organization in Australia and has often compared its efforts to similar conservative-led advocacy groups in the United States.

Honey Birdette has been in Collective Shout’s crosshairs for years. In August 2025, the group objected to the retailer’s advertising of lingerie products featuring BDSM-inspired accessories such as chains, collars, and leashes. The complaint was filed with Australia’s advertising industry regulatory body, Ad Standards, which later closed the matter after Honey Birdette addressed the concerns. Similar cases have been raised by Collective Shout against the brand multiple times in the past.

“Playboy-owned sex shop Honey Birdette has been forced to remove two porn-style shop window ads following our reports to Ad Standards,” the blog post declared. “The ads promoting a range called ‘Sumi – Leopard’ featured objectifying portrayals of naked women.”

The complaint targeted ads promoting Honey Birdette’s Sumi collection, which the company describes as “inspired by sheer bodysuits and bodystockings.” The line includes lingerie sets, catsuits, headpieces, and other items in black and leopard print designs.

Collective Shout said the ads objectified women and were inappropriate for children visiting the Perth shopping mall. The group emphasized that the ads were displayed in close proximity to a children’s stage show, describing the venue as a “family shopping center.”

While the group highlighted this proximity in its complaint, it did not provide exact measurements of the distance between the advertisements and the stage show. Still, Ad Standards acted quickly after receiving the reports.

“Less than 24 hours after lodging our reports, Ad Standards replied with a notice advising that Honey Birdette had confirmed the ads had been ‘modified or removed and the original advertisement will not be used again on this medium,’” Collective Shout wrote in its post.

Following the removal, the group is now urging its supporters to continue the campaign by filing additional complaints with Ad Standards and petitioning executives of the shopping center’s parent company to suspend Honey Birdette’s marketing campaigns across all of their properties in Australia.

Honey Birdette, founded in 2006 in Australia, was acquired in 2021 by the NASDAQ-listed PLBY Group, parent company of Playboy and other brands, as part of a strategy to expand its global retail footprint and e-commerce operations. The lingerie chain operates stores across Australia as well as in the United States and other international markets.

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has dismissed several trafficking-related claims filed against Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, and credit card processor Visa, according to court orders issued Monday.

The case was brought by Serena Fleites, whose story was highlighted in Nicholas Kristof’s widely discussed New York Times opinion column “The Children of Pornhub.” In the piece, Kristof portrayed Fleites as emblematic of claims that the platform enabled illegal content, including child sexual abuse material. Fleites later disclosed that she had been victimized as a teenager and filed suit against Aylo and Visa.

The lawsuit is being heard by U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu of the Central District of California. Fleites is represented by attorneys Michael Bowe and Lauren Tabaksblat of Brithem LLP, along with David Stein of Olson Sten LLP. Bowe, who previously defended former U.S. President Donald Trump and appeared in Netflix’s Money Shot: The Pornhub Story, co-founded Brithem LLP earlier this year as a boutique firm specializing in what it calls “impact litigation.”

Judge Hsu ruled that many of Fleites’ claims against Visa could not proceed. Her attorneys had sought to hold Visa liable for processing payments connected to Aylo’s platforms, then operating under the name MindGeek. However, Hsu dismissed most of these claims, finding insufficient evidence of active participation in trafficking-related conduct.

“Civil conspiracy with Aylo cannot be triggered solely by knowledge and inertia; it requires affirmative alignment with the venture’s unlawful purpose,” Hsu wrote. He added that there were “no allegations of internal Visa communications, decision-making, or admissions reflecting an understanding of MindGeek’s unlawful objectives,” noting instead that Visa appeared to have simply “continued a pre-existing business relationship in the face of controversy.”

While most claims against Visa were dismissed without prejudice, Hsu allowed parts of Fleites’ case against Aylo to continue. These include allegations tied to the Communications Decency Act and claims related to Aylo’s alleged role in the receipt, distribution, or transportation of exploitative material.

“While the court agrees that plaintiff’s pleadings as to MindGeek’s involvement in the videos as specific to her leave more to be desired,” Hsu wrote, “the court finds that these allegations paired with the general allegations found in the rest of the complaint … are sufficient at this stage of the litigation when all reasonable inferences are drawn in favor of the plaintiff.”

Hsu also dismissed claims that Aylo violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA)through direct liability, but he allowed Fleites’ beneficiary liability claim to move forward. That provision of the law allows plaintiffs to pursue damages against entities that knowingly benefited from participation in a trafficking venture.

In addition, Hsu dismissed allegations of conspiracy between Visa and Aylo to violate the TVPRA.

A spokesperson for Aylo declined to comment beyond a short statement: “Out of respect for the integrity of court proceedings, our policy is not to comment on ongoing litigation. We look forward to the facts being fully and fairly aired in that forum.”

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia’s Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of adult performer Esperanza Gómez in her dispute with Meta over repeated suspensions of her Instagram account.

The court determined that Meta failed to apply its standards equally, noting that Gómez’s profile had not been treated the same as others with similar content.

“If social media platforms use offline activities as criteria for content moderation, they must clearly state these criteria in their community standards,” the ruling stated. “Due process must also be allowed to reasonably challenge the social media platform’s decision.”

Gómez first filed her case in 2022, arguing that Instagram’s repeated deactivations cost her millions of followers and harmed her “right to work.”

In the decision, authored by Judge Natalia Ángel Cabo, the court ordered Meta to take three corrective measures: establish a visible electronic channel for judicial notifications in Colombia, ensure moderation policies are available in Spanish on a unified website, and revise Instagram’s terms of use and privacy policy so users have clear avenues to contest moderation actions.

Following the ruling, Gómez celebrated the outcome on X. “I continued without listening to the people who told me that I would never win a lawsuit against a giant, and today we are triumphing,” she wrote. “We must know how to defend our rights when they are violated.”

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, has raised concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton. In a briefing published on Tuesday, Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow at AEI for technology policy studies, laid out the basis for the criticism.

Calvert argued that the Court’s conservative majority created a carve-out in First Amendment protections for controversial forms of expression, such as adult content.

“To grease the skids for a decision that burdens First Amendment rights, it helps to denigrate the group that’s fighting for free speech subtly,” Calvert wrote in his AEI blog post.

Calvert is professor of law emeritus at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law and Brechner Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the College of Journalism and Communications, with expertise in First Amendment case law and communications policy.

He noted that the Free Speech Coalition (FSC)—which describes itself as “the trade association of the adult entertainment industry based in the United States”—was characterized differently in the Court’s opinion. While FSC’s website does not use the socially stigmatized term “pornography,” Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, referred to it as “a trade association for the pornography industry.”

“Semantics matter because under U.S. law, there are three distinct categories of sexual speech: obscenity, child pornography, and variable obscenity,” Calvert explained. “Notably, pornography is not a legal term; it’s just a disparagingly loaded word. Thomas unloaded it against the FSC, making it just that much easier for adults to stomach a decision burdening their own First Amendment rights.”

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