FRom Johannes Gutenberg’s newfangled printing press was the first time people got irritatedThe adoption of mass communication technologies has been facilitated by the widespread acceptance of sexually explicit content. But with every advance in methodology has invariably come a backlash — A moral panic here, A book is set on fire there, the constant uncut threat of mass gun violence — aiming to suppress that expression. You can be sure that they will eventually fail, dear reader, after what I found Googling “sexually explicit print press”.
However, it hasn’t stopped social media advertisers, regulators, government regulators, and the people that you most fear seeing in your elevator, from trying to eradicate sexually explicit content from the web. Here’s an excerpt from her latest book. The Internet changed Sex and How Sex Changed It: Unexpected HistoryMotherboardSamantha Cole, senior editor at Facebook, Instagram and Google discusses how and why they have stifled online sexual expression over the past 15-years.
Workman Publishing
Excerpted form The Internet changed Sex and How Sex Changed It: Unexpected HistorySamantha Cole Workman Publishing © 2022
Online Sex Repression: How Sex Is Repressed
Both algorithmic and human censorship have completely changed who is allowed to post which types of sexual content online. This has played out as independent sex workers struggling to avoid getting kicked off of sites like Instagram or Twitter just for existing as people—while big companies like Brazzers, displaying full nudity, have no problem keeping their accounts up.
Despite Facebook’s origins as Mark Zuckerberg’s Hot-or-Not rating system for women on his Harvard campus, the social network’s policies on sexuality and nudity are incredibly strict. Over the years, it’s gone through several evolutions and overhauls, but in 2022 forbidden content includes (but isn’t limited to) “real nude adults,” “sexual intercourse” and a wide range of things that could imply intercourse “even when the contact is not directly visible,” or “presence of by-products of sexual activity.” Nudity in art is supposedly allowed, but artists and illustrators still fight against bans and rejected posts all the time.
That’s not to mention “sexual solicitation,” which Facebook will not tolerate. That includes any and all porn, discussions of states of sexual arousal, and anything that both asks or offers sex “directly or indirectly” and also includes sexual emojis like peaches and eggplants, sexual slang, and depictions or poses of sexual activity.
These rules apply to Instagram, which is a photo-sharing platform owned by Facebook. These rules govern how much of the internet interacts with and sees sexual content, as they are the two largest social networks in America.
In the earliest archived versions of Facebook’s terms of use, sex was never mentioned—but its member conduct guidelines did ban “any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.” This vagueness gives Facebook legal wiggle room to ban whatever it wants.
In 2007, the platform adopted a more accepting approach to sexual speech. Sexuality was included as one of the categories of interest, with more than five hundred groups created by users for discussion on the topic. But the platform’s early liberality with sex drew scrutiny. In 2007, then–New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo led a sting operation on Facebook where an investigator posed as teens and caught child predators.
As early as 2008, it started banning female breasts—specifically, nipples. The areola violated its policy on “obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit” material. In December 2008, a handful of women gathered outside the company’s Palo Alto office to breastfeed in front of the building in protest (it was a Saturday; no executives were working).
As of 2018, Facebook lumped sex work under banned content that depicts “sexual exploitation,” stating that all references and depictions of “sexual services” were forbidden, “includ[ing] prostitution, escort services, sexual massages, and filmed sexual activity.”
Many of these banned content concerns health and wellness education.
In 2018, sexuality educator Dr. Timaree Schmit logged in to Facebook and checked her page for SEXx Interactive, which runs an annual sex ed conference she’d held the day before. A notification from Facebook appeared: She and several other admins for the page were banned from the entire platform for thirty days, and the page was taken down, because an “offending image” had violated the platform’s community standards. The image in question was the SEXx word in block letters against a red background.
This is not just a Facebook problem. Google AdWords banned “graphic sexual acts with intent to arouse including sex acts such as masturbation” in 2014. Android keyboards’ predictive text banned anything remotely sexual, including the words “panty,” “braless,” “Tampax,” “lactation,” “preggers, “uterus,” and “STI” from its autocomplete dictionary. Chromecast, Google Play and other apps forbid porn. You can’t navigate to adult sites using Starbucks Wi-Fi. In 2018, Google Drive was preventing users from downloading files and documents that contained explicit content. Patreon, a crowdfunding site, bans porn of real people and blames Stripe for not being sexually friendly in 2018. This was largely in line with FOSTA/SESTA.
This is by no means a complete list. This is just one of many stories where journalists, sex workers and artists are subject to censorship or removed from platforms for crossing imaginary lines.
Over the years, as these policies have evolved, they’ve been applied inconsistently and often with vague reasoning for the users themselves. However, there is one thing platforms have done consistently: The discrimination against Black and Indigenous women and other queer, trans, and sex workers has resulted in images and content that are offensive to them. This can lead to serious self-esteem issues, isolation, and in some cases, suicidal thoughts for people who are pushed off platforms or labeled “sexually explicit” because of their body shape or skin color.
“I’m just sick of feeling like something is wrong with my body. That it’s not OK to look how I do,” Anna Konstantopoulos, a fat Instagram influencer, said after her account was shut down and posts were deleted multiple times. Her photos in bikinis or lingerie were deleted by Instagram moderators, while other influencers’ posts stayed up and raked in the likes. “It starts to make you feel like crap about yourself.”
However, Facebook users project their true selves, or at the very least, a portion of themselves onto the site. Censorship of our sexual sides doesn’t stop people from living and working on the internet—unless that is your life and work.
Engadget recommends only products that have been reviewed by our editorial staff. This is independent from our parent company. Affiliate links may be included in some of our stories. Affiliate commissions may be earned if you make a purchase through any of the links. All prices are accurate at the time they were published.
