Sex News: Tumblr bans porn, Starbucks bans porn, California stings sex workers, male contraceptive gel

• “Tumblr will permanently ban adult content from its platform on December 17th in a move that will eradicate porn-related communities on the platform and fundamentally alter how the service is used. The ban includes explicit sexual content and nudity with a few exceptions.”
  * Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th (Verge)

• “With its massive distribution and strict rules, Apple’s App Store has had a broad homogenizing and sanitizing effect on the internet. Tumblr’s iOS app has been unavailable since November 16 … We don’t know for sure whether Tumblr made this final decision under pressure from Apple, or because the platform felt like it could not competently moderate the platform any longer.”
  * Apple Sucked Tumblr Into Its Walled Garden, Where Sex Is Bad (Motherboard)

• “It began over the Thanksgiving holiday as [an incel] effort to intimidate sex workers and women who sell access to private pornographic social media accounts by reporting them to the Internal Revenue Service for tax evasion—without evidence of wrongdoing. But it quickly morphed into a battle over who has the right to make money on the internet. The harassers are taking advantage of user reporting tools made available by companies like PayPal, Venmo, and CirclePay, in an attempt to force their targets offline and freeze their finances. The tactic has far-reaching implications beyond adult entertainment.”
  * A Quiet War Rages Over Who Can Make Money Online (Wired)

• “Under the guise of “anti-trafficking” efforts, police practices in northern California and a new federal law have broadly affected adult sex workers both online and in the streets. The result, activists say, is a risk of increased violence and suffering for the very women whom lawmakers [claim] they are rescuing.”
  * Abused then arrested: inside California’s crackdown on sex work (Guardian)

• “Starbucks said to The Verge, “While it rarely occurs, the use of Starbucks public Wi-Fi to view illegal or egregious content is not, nor has it ever been permitted…We have identified a solution to prevent this content from being viewed within our stores and we will begin introducing it to our US locations in 2019.””
  * Starbucks says it’ll block porn on its public Wi-Fi next year (Verge)

• “The Vice headline is lurid. Just a few days ago, on November 28, it screams at us: Millennials in China Are Using Nudes to Secure Loans. The article is breathless and couched in very current terms … It turns out that Vice was just clickbait-remilling (which is to say, ripping off) this more detailed Australian news story, which offers much more clarity about what’s going on — supposedly a sort of extortion-collection ring — and its Chinese sourcing.”
  * Vice Turns Stale Chinese Propaganda Into Nude Clickbait (ErosBlog: The Sex Blog)

• “The movement has taken hold, says community organizer Lola Balcon, in part as a result of long-term de-stigmatization efforts from human rights groups including Amnesty International, which recommended the decriminalization of sex work in 2016. But it wasn’t until the passage of the so-called Online Trafficking bill SESTA-FOSTA last spring that many workers began to organize locally, forming grassroots coalitions not just to oppose the bill but also to support sex work decriminalization efforts more broadly.”
  * Are Sex Workers Becoming a Viable Political Bloc? (Rolling Stone)

• “Unicron contends that this brothel, if it ever opens, will be different. That’s partly because of the decor, which Unicron says will feature lots of plexiglass, colored lighting, shiny surfaces and “spaceship vibes” designed by a local artist. It’s also because the brothel will serve as an arm of the cult. “The goal of Eve’s as an aspect of Unicult is to spread matriarchal change through AI and robots,” Unicron, who works as a copywriter, told The Daily Beast.”
  * California Cult Leader Plans Sex-Robot Brothel—With a Twist (Daily Beast)

• “The first clinical trial is underway to test a new male contraceptive that could be a game changer for preventing pregnancy … If proven effective, it would be the first hormonal birth control for men. The gel is applied to the back and shoulders.”
  * New Male Contraceptive Gel Enters Clinical Trials (CBS NY)

• “After he implanted a small magnet inside Aneta, it was suddenly possible for her to get an erotic jolt from the vibrations triggered by the energy of a basic house fan. Starting a car motor also felt good, and the notion of “feeling the music” in a club took on new meaning, as, according to Samppa, large speakers produced enough of an electromagnetic field to give Aneta sexual pleasure. “As far as I know I was the first who had a clitoris magnetic implant,” she says.”
  * Meet the people hacking their bodies for better sex (CNET)

Main post image: Rachael Lange by Ashley Olah MQ Photo Shoot (itr2010.org)