Less Power to Porn Tech Giants, More Love in the Cyberspace

The talk opens with the influence large porn platforms have over how people understand sexuality and their bodies. The speaker, a lawyer and digital rights advocate, presents it as a follow-up to earlier research into biased recommendation systems on one such site, and moves on to a European strategic litigation campaign built on data protection law. The argument is that sexual preference data is sensitive, that viewers were tracked without meaningful consent, and that automated profiling of them is opaque and cannot be challenged.

The campaign reportedly led one major platform to add a consent banner after media attention and regulator statements, and cases have since moved through Italy and Cyprus. Separately, the EU's Digital Services Act led to the designation of very large online platforms, and in late 2023 three porn sites were named, which the companies then challenged in court. A co-presenter shared research on image-based sexual abuse, including non-consensual sharing and deepfakes, the burden victims carry in collecting evidence, and the greater risk to marginalized groups whose digital footprints can be exposed. The Q&A covered how such rules could spread beyond Europe, payment processors as a pressure point, and how slowly platform trust and safety teams respond to reports.

The main takeaway is that lasting change needs regulators, civil society, sex workers, survivors and small ethical builders working together. Practitioners should expect litigation and designation to move slowly, and should treat consent, algorithm transparency and takedown responsiveness as open problems.