CYBERSPACE—With the FOSTA/SESTA bill now set to become law after its overwhelming passage in the United States Senate on Wednesday, fears have quickly surfaced that the law, which holds online sites legally liable for activity by users that promotes “sex trafficking,” is already leading to online censorship—censorship that is hitting adult performers where it hurts most: the pocketbook.
According to a report Wednesday by the technology news site Motherboard, at least six porn performers have reported that their files have suddenly and without warning been blocked from the cloud storage and file-sharing service Google Drive.
“It seems like all of our videos in Google Drive are getting flagged by some sort of automated system,” performer Lilly Stone told Motherboard. “We're not even really getting notified of it, the only way we really found out was one of our customers told us he couldn't view or download the video we sent him.”
Motherboard reporter Samantha Cole asked Google for an explanation, but was simply referred to Google’s “Abuse Program Policies” page.
“Do not publish sexually explicit or pornographic images or videos. Writing about adult topics is permitted as long as it is not accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos, or any material that promotes or depicts unlawful or inappropriate sexual acts with children or animals,” the Google “Abuse” page states. “Additionally, we do not allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography.”
Oddly, however, the performers who spoke to Cole say that Google has not in every case deleted their adult content files, but simply blocked them from downloading or distribution.
“They also said they can't share that content with other accounts or send to clients. In some cases, the adult content is disappearing from Drive without warning or explanation,” Cole wrote. The porn performers I talked to ... said that Google Drive no longer seemed sex-trade friendly, detailing error messages and sharing cloud storage alternatives with each other.”
An “innocent” explanation of the troubling phenomenon could be that Google algorithms which scan the Google Drive cloud for content that violates terms of service has simply developed a bug. Back in October of last year, Google Drive flagged numerous files as objectionable, even though they did not appear to violate any of Google’s terms.
But Google reported that the bug was soon fixed.
Some performers, anticipating the passage of the FOSTA/SESTA “sex trafficking” law were warning their fellow sex workers to back up or remove content from Google Drive as early as last week.
“With #sesta and #fosta coming, google might be under pressure to crack down on consensual sex workers. This applies to both regular accounts and Google suites accounts.” performer Hailey Heartless wrote on her Twitter account on March 14. “Google is deleting accounts that are being used to distribute content via Google drive. Everything else, at this time, is unverified. This isn't a new practice of Google, but they seem to be cracking down right now.”
Following passage of the “sex trafficking” bill in the Senate Wednesday by a 97-2 vote, following a 388-25 vote in the House on February 27, Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law when it reaches his desk. His daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, has expressed her support for the bill, saying that the laws “will bring us one step closer to ending sex trafficking online and restoring safety in our communities.”
“It's very oppressive. And it's making my job hellish,” performer Avey Moon told Motherboard, describing an incident in which she was trying to send a prize to the winner of one of her contests on the live cam site Chaturbate. “I'm still stressing about finding a way around this. I don't believe that Google should be allowed to dictate what you and another consenting adult send to each other through email.”
