The War on Porn

The Washington Post published an opinion piece yesterday offering a cautionary historical perspective on how anti-pornography crusades like the current War on Porn end up harming marginalized groups like sex workers and the LGBTQ+ community.

A prominent player in the anti-porn lobby has announced its support for the controversial EARN IT Act. As previously reported by YNOT, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., reintroduced the “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies” Ac…

The New York Times published an opinion piece yesterday by staff columnist Ross Douthat advocating for a return to pre-1960s “inconsistencies and hypocrisies” about several social issues, including sexual expression.

Confirming the fears of sex workers and advocates around the world, Twitter has reportedly begun blocking German profiles that include adult content, after a local government official escalated a campaign to force the platform to implement age verification systems designed for “pornographic websites…

U.K. government officials confirmed last week that social media sites “hosting large amounts of pornographic material, such as Twitter and Reddit” would have to “introduce systems to remove adult material in the U.K., or introduce age checks to determine whether users are over 18,” The Guardian repo…

A Republican bill that would have held companies criminally liable for selling any computer, smartphone or tablet in Arizona without a filter to block children from accessing “harmful content” was rejected by a legislative committee Wednesday morning.

The EARN IT Act has advanced out of committee despite the well-founded concerns of a legion of civil libertarians and privacy advocates.

An Alabama federal judge today shut down MindGeek’s petition to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed by Jane Does over content posted on Pornhub that allegedly depicts instances of their human trafficking, claiming that Section 230 protections over third-party content do not apply because the compan…

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who has acknowledged having conversations with the U.S.-based, religiously-inspired anti-porn lobby NCOSE, is now “developing a roadmap to implement age verification for online pornographic sites.”

Police in Bavaria, Germany are seeking information on a pile of 1990s porn magazines found in a ditch on the side of a road, so that they can charge whoever disposed of the magazines with criminal “distribution of pornography.”