It’s pretty safe to say that many people use Facebook, and most of the users hate it. That’s just weird. Your website users should not hate your website. Despite this, thousands of people miss the Our Porn, Ourselves Facebook page. In this update post, I explain everything that has happened so far and a bit about my next steps — steps that involve evolving tech and community past the frailties of places like Facebook and Tribe.net and Flickr (and all the others), so we women and men, and all genders/orientations who support us, can have a safe, sane conversation about pornography. And build community around sex-positivity — to make this world a better place, and to make porn safer for everyone.
It’s crystal clear that the easiest way to break a website is to talk about sex. And the fastest way to reveal hypocrisy is to be a woman and talk about pornography in any way that is not fear, hatred, accusation, or anger. Social media needs a slap for not growing up. And the anti-porn people, for pulling this childish and pathetic little stunt: I’m coming for you. I have no reason to be nice anymore. This conversation about pornography and its community will happen.
I think you’ll get a lot from this update, if you haven’t peeped it already:
On July 27, 2010, Facebook removed the Our Porn, Ourselves Facebook campaign page. After the page was removed, anti-porn organization Porn Harms claimed victory and thanked Facebook for the deletion, on the organization’s Facebook page and their Twitter feed. Our deleted group had roughly 3,500 members, most of whom were women (I combed through the member logs frequently). Our page had over three times the members of Porn Harms’ anti-porn page.
According to Facebook the deletion was in response to reported violations of Facebook’s Terms of Service, among which include obscenity. As I am an active and high-profile figure in the online social media space, I am not a newcomer to social media, or implementing Terms of Service. I also knew that someone was persistently trying to get every piece of art removed from our gallery — regardless of the content, nearly every user-uploaded photo was mysteriously being flagged and removed. (…read more, ourpornourselves.org)
Bonus idiocy: Digitally Blonde got banned permanently from FB for responding personally to everyone who tried to “friend” her. Her post has all kinds of juicy sexual hypocrisy, in case you’re wondering how far the world’s most popular social media site has gone away from actually serving the people who use its service. This model of media is broken. Facebook is a house you cannot ever live in, no matter how many times you let its master fuck you.
Photo by Modern Citizen.
Update Wednesday, August 18: BlogHer just added this post in support and adds their voice to the discussion > Sex and Censorship: What Recent Attacks on Online Sex Discussions Have to Do With Your Blog (blogher.com)
all the more reason we need to support projects like http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/ that are being done by amazing people
@ Keith: I say we find out.
So much for free speech. The creeping tentacles of censorship and “1984” grow ever closer. I wonder what happens if we all share this post on Facebook?
Between Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m REALLY getting tired of my favorite tech-companies going all batshit looney and taking it out on their customers.