Blunt Policies and Secretive Enforcement Mechanisms: LGBTQ+ and Sexual Health on the Corporate Web (EFF)

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Read the full article by Jillian C. York at EFF.org 

The free and open Internet has enabled disparate communities to come together across miles and borders, and empowered marginalized communities to share stories, art, and information with one another and the broader public—but restrictive and often secretive or poorly messaged policies by corporate gatekeepers threaten to change that.

Content policies restricting certain types of expression—such as nudity, sexually explicit content, and pornography—have been in place for a long time on most social networks. But in recent years, a number of companies have instituted changes in the way policies are enforced, including demonetizing or hiding content behind an age-based interstitial; using machine learning technology to flag content; blocking keywords in search; or disabling thumbnail previews for video content.

While there are some benefits to more subtle enforcement mechanisms—age restrictions, for example, allow content that would otherwise be removed entirely to be able available to some users—they can also be confusing for users. And when applied mistakenly, they are difficult—if not impossible—to appeal.

In particular, policy restrictions on “adult” content have an outsized impact on LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities. Typically aimed at keeping sites “family friendly,” these policies are often unevenly enforced, classifying LGBTQ+ content as “adult” when similar heterosexual content isn’t. Similarly, as we noted last year, policies are sometimes applied more harshly to women’s content than to similar content by men. Over the past few months, we’ve observed a number of other cases in which LGBTQ+ or sexual health content has been wrongfully targeted:

  • The YouTube channel of Recon—“fetish-focused dating app”—was suspended, and later reinstated after receiving press coverage. It was the second occurence.

  • The Facebook page of Naked Boys Reading was removed after being flagged for policy violations. After the organizers accused Facebook of “queer erasure,” the page was restored.

  • In 2017, Twitter began collapsing “low-quality” and “abusive” tweets behind a click-through interstitial—but users have reported that tweets merely containing the words “queer” and “vagina” are affected.

  • Chase Ross, a long-time YouTuber who creates educational videos about transgender issues and about his personal experience as a trans person, has reported that videos containing the word “trans” in their title are regularly demonetized.

Many creators have suggested the uptick in enforcement is the result of the passing of FOSTA, a law that purports to target sex trafficking but is already broadly chilling online speech and silencing marginalized voices (and to which we are posing a legal challenge). Although it’s difficult to attribute specific policy changes to FOSTA, a number of companies have made amendments to their sexual content policies in the wake of the bill’s passing.

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