Sex Tech Round-Up — 04
Here is your latest round-up of what’s been going on in the world of sex tech over the past week.
🔥 Hot off the press — Facebook’s Transparency Report
Earlier today, Facebook released its latest biannual Transparency Report, which includes a dedicated section on how they enforce their Community Standards, which are supposed to safeguard but can often just end up censoring a lot of sex-positive content across Facebook & Instagram.
“We want Facebook and Instagram to be places where people can express themselves and have a voice. To create the conditions where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, we must also preserve our community’s sense of safety, privacy, dignity and authenticity. That’s why we have Community Standards, which define what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram. In this report, we share metrics on how we’re doing at preventing and taking action on content that goes against these policies.”
This is the second time that it’s Community Standards Enforcement report includes some data on Instagram.
The report details metrics specifically on Adult Nudity & Sexual Activity including the number of pieces of content that violated their standards, how many of these were appealed, and then how many were restored after appeal. However, the data provided is only for Facebook, not Instagram, so it really doesn’t give a full picture.
“We restrict the display of nudity and sexual activity on Facebook. We make some exceptions when it is clear that the content is being shared in the context of a protest, for educational or medical reasons, or a similar reason. On the other hand, we default to removing sexual imagery to prevent non-consensual or underage content from being shared.”
They also detail some information about their processes, like how they go about detecting which pieces of content violate their standards (a mix of tech & human input) and their appeal process. However, the report doesn’t really state what they are doing to reduce the amount of content that gets wrongly taken down in the first place.
- Read the full Transparency report here: https://transparency.facebook.com/
- Read the Community Standards Enforcement report here: https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement
💸 Payment freezes on porn sites
A group of international campaigners, who say they work to tackle sexual exploitation, have written to major credit card companies asking them to block payments to pornographic sites. They are claiming these sites feature content that includes sex trafficking & child sexual abuse. Pornhub, one of the sites listed, has commented stating that these claims are untrue. The below article includes more details including the difficulties in monitoring the content on porn sites, and the devastating effect a payment freeze like this could have on the sex workers & porn performers who rely on these sites for income.
The world of payments is already an interesting topic, not just for porn sites but for all companies in the sex tech realm, as many current payment providers are already overly cautious about associating their services with the industry. Back in November, Paypal announced they would stop supporting payments to Pornhub. The below article outlines the approach that some sex tech companies are taking to navigate these difficulties.
We’ve obviously got a long way to go until the world realises that sex tech is a valid industry, solving many important problems, and with a lot of revenue to be made.
🚫 Youtube banning Wost Conference
Women of Sex Tech held their first virtual conference on 2nd May. It was a huge success and you can read my full write up here. However, despite things running smoothly on the day with so many supportive attendees, the tech wasn’t always on their side. Youtube banned the conference from being streamed on their platform, despite the fact all of the conference content did not violate any of Youtube’s policies. Read the full story below.
“This is yet another example of sex education and sexual speech being routinely silenced by tech companies like YouTube, Facebook and Apple for years. It’s an incident that’s indicative of a larger pattern of sexual censorship online.”
