
highlights
Why This Teen Walked Away From Millions of TikTok Followers
March 29, 2021
Sixteen-year-old Ava Rose Beaune was hanging out at a friend’s house on an otherwise unremarkable mid-July afternoon when her cell service briefly shut off. She tried to text her dad, but it wouldn’t send—definitely odd, she thought, but not alarming.
Then people started messaging her: Did you see what’s on your Twitter? Your Instagram? What’s going on? She logged on to her social media accounts and saw that her new Facebook status alluded to suicide—but she hadn’t posted it.
With more than 2 million followers on TikTok, Ava was a minor celebrity in her own circles. So, she said, she was used to men being creepy, or even hostile. This was extreme, she thought, but it was over. But it wasn’t. This was only the beginning of weeks of daily harassment so severe it would uproot her life entire life.
The Crusade Against Pornhub Is Going to Get Someone Killed
April 13, 2021
A post by an extremist Christian group on the far-right social media platform Gab called for the death of a specific Pornhub executive. “WANTED,” the image posted to Gab, featuring a man’s headshot and full name, said. “For crimes against women and children. Help us bring pornstars to justice. Save your children from the LGBT ideology. Save your daughter from becoming a whore. Save the white race!” Another image in the same post shows a man in military fatigues and a black ski mask holding a gun.
For years, anti-trafficking organizations have pushed agendas that toe the line of vigilantism. They shouldn’t be surprised when someone takes their version of “justice” into their own hands.
Sex Workers Banned from Banks Turn to Crypto
April 7, 2022
For our fifth episode of CRYPTOLAND, Motherboard visited Allie and Belle Creed, another sex worker primarily using cryptocurrency, at the Las Vegas headquarters for Spankchain, a crypto platform made for sex workers by sex workers.
Crypto and NFTs are the only reason many were able to weather last year’s shakeups in the porn industry—OnlyFans announced and then walked back a decision to ban NSFW material, which caused them to lose subscribers, and Visa, Mastercard and Discover cut ties with Pornhub, cutting off hundreds of performers from their livelihoods. In October, Mastercard implemented even more strict rules for adult content platforms and their creators, causing them to lose even more money—and opening them up to more vulnerability.
free speech, platforms and moderation
- School Removes Student Project About Fascism After Cops Complain
- What Is the EARN IT Act and Why Is It Bad for the Internet?
- Virginia School Board Bans ‘Sexually Explicit’ Books, Threatens to Burn Them
- The Congresswoman Behind FOSTA Is Coming for OnlyFans
- Anti-Vax Doctor Goes Wildly Viral on YouTube, Facebook
- There Is No Tech Solution to Deepfakes
- ‘Sex Trafficking’ Bill Will Take Away Online Spaces Sex Workers Need to Survive
- Deepfakes Were Created As A Way to Own Women’s Bodies—We Can’t Forget That
- Archivists Are Preserving Capitol Hill Riot Livestreams Before They’re Deleted
labor issues in the adult industry
- Sex Workers Detail the Financial Damages of Mastercard’s Discrimination
- Anti-Porn Crusaders Are Going After Twitter Next
- ‘I Felt Betrayed’: OnlyFans Creators Scramble to Adapt to Imminent Ban
- A New Wave of Reckoning Is Sweeping the Porn Industry
- 40 Girls Do Porn Victims Are Suing Pornhub for $1 Million Each
- How Cam Models Changed the Porn World Forever
- Inside the Underground Trade of Pirated OnlyFans Porn
- An OnlyFans Model Is Trying to Subpoena Reddit for Users Who Pirate Her Content
banking discrimination
sex tech
misc