Current content policies on social networks do not actually address (or even acknowledge) that maybe you, personally, do not want to see pornography. These policies simply make it so no one is allowed to post adult content — but they do not define adult. They cannot define it. And because they cannot define it, everything from Full Body Project by Leonard Nimoy to ads for safer sex are at risk.
After surprising users by completely banning adult content on a blogging platform previously committed to freedom of expression, Google has done another volte-face and rolled back their draconian policy. A Google employee even acknowledged that users post “sexually explicit content to express their identities.”
We reached out to people in both the tech and adult industries to see what the options look like for the creators of adult content who will be displaced by Blogger’s ban on sexy and we have some good news. You’re not totally shit out of luck. It’s time to pack it up, and we’ve got some options lined up for you.
The country that brought you Georges Bataille, Pauline Réage, Charles Baudelaire, the Marquis de Sade, Catherine Millet, etc., doesn’t see what the fuss is over Fifty Shades of Grey. The film, which got an R rating from the Motion Pictures Association of America for its depiction of dominance and submission, will be accessible to movie-going French minors as young as twelve.
We live in a world where some stigmatized groups have finally achieved a rightful place in the streets where they can congregate and bring their grievances to the state. But just as they have attained this, they’re finding that new, much more effective avenues to change are being denied to them by powers that aren’t under any obligation to the public.
Just days after Google announced it would no longer police the names chosen by users on its social network, Facebook decided to take up the battle cry, stressing a name policy it’s had on the books but rarely enforced until now. “Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe,” says the popular social network on their recently-edited name policy page.
The Data Retention and Investigation Powers Bill, is a knee-jerk response from the United Kingdom to a ruling by the European Court of Justice that declared the Data Retention Directive of the European Parliament invalid in April. This new piece of legislation is being sold as a measure against terrorists, specifically “radicalized Brits returning from Syria” but no promises have been to target only suspects of terrorism.
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. to uphold that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act can exempt a family-owned, or closely-held company, from a federal regulation requiring that employers provide coverage to their female employees for certain types of birth control deemed, in the religious opinion of employers, capable of facilitating an abortion.
The female nipple is so obscene, a number of places have gone as far as to prohibit the public feeding of infants. No week goes by without some story about a woman being ejected from a locale or, at the very least, being shamed for breast-feeding in public. For a while organizers have sought to make a change, but no efforts have drawn as much attention as the makers of the TaTa Top, a bikini offered in three different flesh tones that also features nipples.
Welcome to Sandy Springs, Georgia. Located just north of Atlanta, this city of 93,853 boasts IBM and Cisco Systems as its top employers, but you won’t find cutting edge innovation here. In fact, it could be said that some of its ordinances are just plain backward. For instance, you can’t sell sex toys here — unless the person buying has a prescription. This has been on the books since 2009, but it’s finally getting challenged.
