By Naomi Miles, Founder and Chair of CEASE
CEASE is six! Each year that passes, so much happens in this space. The need to take radical, decisive action has never been so urgent.
There has been a lot of positive momentum: we’re seeing heightened awareness of the harms of online pornography and calls for stronger laws and more robust regulation from the highest levels of government.
This is the year that the Online Safety Act has introduced the need for age gates on pornography sites. We’ve always argued that this is an obvious and fundamental child protection measure but given the force of online libertarianism and the influence of the vast, multi-billion-dollar sex industry behemoth, getting any kind of regulation is a watershed. It marks a line in the sand: we no longer trust the pornography industry to self-regulate.
We are yet to see how Ofcom will succeed at enforcing age verification, or how pornography sites will respond, although from experience, we expect more of the same self-righteous moral outrage. Last year Pornhub withdrew entirely from three US states that had introduced age verification laws. This was apparently because “safety and compliance” were at the forefront of its mission, and Pornhub knew better than the “elected representatives” on how to protect children and user privacy alike.
This is an audacious and laughable claim. By failing to prevent children’s access, pornography sites know full well that they secure their next generation of consumers. Pornography sites are at the forefront of the modern digital economy that’s built on constant user surveillance. What’s more, the global Traffickinghub campaign exposed how the world’s biggest pornography site profits from endemic trafficking, child sexual abuse, image-based sexual abuse and other criminality.
The pornography industry has a vested commercial interest in resisting regulation and non-compliance. However, it also has a vested commercial interest in looking virtuous. It can surely see that the writing’s on the wall and that the years of denial and indifference towards its flagrant criminality are at an end.
The pornography industry is now selling itself as our ally in our fight against sexual exploitation. It purports to work with and not against charities, governments and regulators to make the industry safer, more ethical and more responsible.
As we might expect however, the industry is better at talking the talk than walking the walk. By its very nature, pornography remains as provocative and extreme as possible. Its profit comes from pushing boundaries, breaking taboos and nudging beyond socially acceptable limits. This tends to entail risky, harmful or even illegal business practices that are fundamentally opposed to the interest of equality, mutuality, consent, safety and responsibility.
Although Pornhub recently partnered with the IWF to create a series of voluntary content standards to tackle online abuse material, none have so far been implemented. This is no more than an empty PR stunt.
When it comes to PR, OnlyFans has led the way. Over the past few years, it has set itself up as the “clean” new face of pornography, a tactic that has helped to secure its popularity and soaring, record-breaking revenue. The website said it had implemented age and consent checks for consumers and participants even before the demands of the law. It openly partners with child protection charities, boasting of its high-level internal regulation at conferences and events across the UK.
However, the effectiveness of its regulations remains to be seen. Most OnlyFans content is locked behind a paywall, making it almost impossible for investigators to review. Reuters’ recent series of articles draws together widespread evidence of the trafficking, coercion and abuse that goes on behind the scenes. We can safely assume that this is the tip of the iceberg.
Criminality is not the only problem. The narrative that being on OnlyFans is an easy and empowering way to make quick money is false and downright dangerous. OnlyFans has established a business model that sucks more young people into its dangerous underworld. Ultimately, it plays out the same old story of grooming, pimping and manipulation, reducing women to sexual commodities with all the degradation and dehumanisation that entails.
So the question is: are we awake to this harm? Can we see through the propaganda and the lies, to the true, ugly face of the sex industry? Can we interrogate the “bright line” that supposedly separates empowered “sex work” from exploitation and abuse?
The battlelines are drawn.
The UK government has just released the recommendations of its Independent Pornography Review, and they are strong. But will they be implemented? The government is torn between its duty to regulate industry and its desire to support the vast economic growth of this sector. It has a strong vested interest in nodding along to the industry’s “ethics washing” resolutions.
We will help it to resist the temptation. We must call out the sex industry’s inherent harms. At CEASE, that is our mission, and we won’t not stop fighting until we win.