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We don’t entrust Internet companies to be arbiters of morality. We shouldn’t hand them the responsibility of making broad cultural decisions about the forms sexuality is allowed to take online. And yet, this last year has been a steady and consistent drum of Internet companies doing just that. Rather than seeking consensus among users, Apple, Mastercard, Amazon, Ebay and others chose to impose their own values on the world, negatively affecting a broad range of people.
The ability to express oneself fully—including the expression of one’s sexuality—is a vital part of freedom of expression, and without that ability, free speech is an incomplete and impotent concept.
To be clear, we are talking here about legal sexual expression, fully protected in the US by the First Amendment, and not the limited category of sexual expression, called “obscenity” in US law, the distribution of which may be criminalized.
Here is a tiring and non-exhaustive list of the ways Internet platforms have taken it upon themselves to undermine free expression in this way in 2021.
Prologue: 2018, FOSTA
It’s apt to take a look backwards at the events leading up to SESTA/FOSTA, the infamously harmful carveout to Section 230, as it set the stage for platforms to take severe moderation policies regarding sexual content. Just before SESTA/FOSTA passed, the adult classified listing site Backpage was shut down by the US government and two of its executives were indicted under pre-SESTA/FOSTA legal authority.
FOSTA/SESTA sought to curb sex trafficking by removing legal immunities for platforms that hosted content that could be linked to it. In a grim slapstick routine of blundering censorship, platforms were overly broad in disappearing any questionable content, since the law had no clear and granular rules about what is and isn’t covered. Another notable platform to fall was Craigslist Personals section, which unlike Backpage, was attributed as a direct result of FOSTA. As predicted by many, the bil
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Read the original article: 2021 Year In Review: Sex Online