[00:00.920 --> 00:03.500]  So, yeah, my name is Alessandro Polidoro.
[00:03.760 --> 00:05.760]  I'm a lawyer, a digital rights advocate.
[00:06.120 --> 00:12.460]  I work here and there with different NGOs and law firms in Europe mainly, but also in North America and Africa.
[00:13.140 --> 00:17.620]  And, yeah, today we're here to talk about porn.
[00:20.380 --> 00:27.700]  No need to specify how relevant pornography has become in the Internet nowadays.
[00:28.720 --> 00:35.540]  Some people have fun trying to guess how much of the whole space of the web is occupied by adult content.
[00:35.820 --> 00:41.420]  There are no reliable data on this matter, so I will not try and guess what the right number is.
[00:41.540 --> 00:46.780]  But I guess we are all aware of the phenomenon of online pornography.
[00:47.960 --> 00:51.840]  And pornography in itself, it has been around for ages, right?
[00:51.840 --> 01:00.320]  The fresco that you see there is from Pompeii, that city that got destroyed by the volcano very long ago, close to my hometown, Napoli.
[01:00.520 --> 01:02.460]  So I'm always very happy to show it.
[01:02.600 --> 01:06.340]  It's clearly one of the very clear examples of pornography.
[01:06.340 --> 01:25.660]  And, you know, the fact of depicting sexual explicit actions or acts, especially done in this case by sexual professionals, because this fresco was actually exposed in a brothel in Pompeii back then.
[01:26.340 --> 01:31.280]  It's something that has been around, as I said, for a very long time.
[01:31.280 --> 01:41.740]  However, from a legal standpoint, an actual recognition of this phenomenon only happened in 1969, ironically enough, in Denmark.
[01:42.020 --> 02:00.740]  And it took a very long time for the legal world to adapt and to acknowledge the fact that this part of life is just something that exists and should be at least, you know, acknowledged and recognized.
[02:01.040 --> 02:10.360]  And in fact, still now, we see that pornography as a legal recognition and sometimes even legal protection in the western part of the world.
[02:10.480 --> 02:21.400]  But in many countries, especially in Africa and South Asia, Southeast Asia, it is still considered illegal to produce, distribute or even consume any kind of pornography.
[02:23.440 --> 02:35.460]  Anyhow, this very old, this very ancient kind of cultural production, we might say, was subject to a very abrupt change in the early 2000s.
[02:36.440 --> 02:44.720]  You know, it was the dawn of Web 2.0, the so-called Internet of People, user-generated content all over the place.
[02:44.720 --> 02:52.520]  Finally, the web was not only something relegated to a small niche of experts.
[02:52.940 --> 03:00.100]  And this is when we saw the appearance of platforms like Pornhub.
[03:00.680 --> 03:02.940]  Yeah, well, also Pornhub, but I wanted to say YouTube now.
[03:03.480 --> 03:04.680]  YouTube and Facebook.
[03:04.940 --> 03:15.980]  And also big tube sites like, as I just said, Pornhub, which completely changed and disrupted the sector, sometimes also in ways that were considered unethical.
[03:16.180 --> 03:36.720]  One of the very first problems that was pointed out at this new Porn 2.0 was, for instance, the fact that many platforms, it has been said, they were piracy-based, in the sense that all the, you know, artistic production was just used and actually harvested and redistributed on these platforms without the consent of those who had made them.
[03:39.840 --> 03:43.460]  And, of course, this is definitely a controversial issue.
[03:43.800 --> 03:45.560]  We're not going to talk about copyright today.
[03:45.780 --> 03:57.240]  But we can, for sure, consider that, if anything, violating copyright for the benefit of a small, an handful bunch of, you know, businessmen.
[03:57.240 --> 04:00.200]  It's not exactly the coolest thing to do, I would say.
[04:02.620 --> 04:10.120]  And we talked about this, we talked about the problem of porn tech giants, two years ago here at HOPE Conference.
[04:11.560 --> 04:25.240]  It was actually, two years ago, the presentation was about a research that had been done by a group called Tracking Exposed regarding the bias of the recommender system algorithm deployed on the platform Pornhub.
[04:25.240 --> 04:30.520]  And, as you can see from the slide, the presentation, that's a frame from the recording of the presentation of two years ago.
[04:30.760 --> 04:38.160]  We were imagining what to do next after this bias of the algorithm had been identified.
[04:38.160 --> 04:41.200]  What else was left to do?
[04:41.340 --> 04:53.620]  And the idea of pushing for new policy or advocacy or even litigating the violations of human digital rights happening on this platform seemed to be the way to go.
[04:53.620 --> 05:10.080]  And, yeah, so the idea was basically to move a bit forward and go ahead of the research because the research had already said that the algorithm is biased and in the sense that, surprise, surprise, the recommender system is sexist.
[05:11.300 --> 05:21.420]  But also most of the things that the research that we presented two years ago showed us was that what was going on on this platform is also significantly illegal.
[05:22.420 --> 05:23.920]  So we did more.
[05:24.120 --> 05:34.960]  We decided in the past two years to run a strategic litigation campaign and also an advocacy campaign that I will now tell you about in the next ten minutes.
[05:36.540 --> 05:55.580]  With the idea of try and bring new public scrutiny over the online porn sector, which is in desperate need of more transparency, more accountability, and anything that can counterbalance the overpower of these tech giants that, as they are doing in many other sectors,
[05:55.720 --> 06:02.720]  they are also damaging significantly the life of people involved or people somehow connected to the sector of online pornography.
[06:02.720 --> 06:05.500]  So let's start from the strategic litigation.
[06:05.820 --> 06:12.620]  The strategic litigation that I want to tell you about today goes under the hashtag Stop Data Porn.
[06:12.900 --> 06:15.080]  It's a strategic litigation that is going on.
[06:15.220 --> 06:21.860]  It is happening in Europe and is mainly focused on the protection of users' data.
[06:22.000 --> 06:26.620]  Because as we all know, when we go online, we're tracked, we're surveilled, we're spied on.
[06:26.900 --> 06:28.920]  And this happens also on porn platforms.
[06:28.920 --> 06:41.300]  So this idea of secrecy, of intimacy that we try to pretend that we can benefit from when we access porn platforms is, of course, a lie.
[06:41.880 --> 06:44.840]  Because these platforms know what we like to see.
[06:45.160 --> 06:55.400]  They use this data to make the platform more engaging, more addictive and, you know, to decide what will be the next year production of content in this regard.
[06:55.400 --> 06:58.460]  And also, they sell it.
[06:58.580 --> 06:59.320]  They sell our data.
[06:59.500 --> 07:01.920]  They sell our data, as you know very well.
[07:03.440 --> 07:16.600]  And thanks to this regulation, the general data protection regulation, the GDPR, we were able to carry on this strategic litigation against one particular platform.
[07:16.600 --> 07:26.680]  But the idea, of course, is to hopefully create a judicial precedent and then will allow us to broaden the scope of the achievement of this campaign to all the other platforms.
[07:26.800 --> 07:31.660]  The platform, of course, was born up, as I was saying earlier, also regarding the research that we did.
[07:31.660 --> 07:36.560]  And, yeah, I mean, I don't know how many legal nerds are in the room today.
[07:36.960 --> 07:43.620]  For those of you who would like to know more about the technicalities of the litigation, I'll be happy to tell you after this presentation.
[07:43.860 --> 07:50.340]  But for today, let's just focus on three main pillars of this project, of this litigation that we are running.
[07:51.260 --> 07:54.240]  The first one is the pillar of consent.
[07:54.500 --> 07:58.840]  Consent is, of course, an intersectional word, probably.
[07:59.040 --> 08:02.640]  It's a word that means different things, especially when we talk about sexuality.
[08:02.880 --> 08:09.680]  And even when we talk about data protection law on porn platforms, consent is a very important topic.
[08:09.780 --> 08:22.800]  Especially in Europe, because in Europe, whenever you open any website, even if it's like YouTube, for instance, the first thing that you will see is a banner that says, hey, watch out, we use cookies, you need to consent to that.
[08:22.900 --> 08:26.800]  I'm not aware if in every state of the U.S. it's also the case, probably in some of them, yes.
[08:28.380 --> 08:41.120]  But this is something that was very shocking to see that, up until last year, major porn platforms were not even asking for consent at all to have cookies, to use cookies to track their users.
[08:41.380 --> 08:47.300]  There is, of course, a little bit more, because these are not just any platforms, right?
[08:47.300 --> 08:48.000]  It's not YouTube.
[08:48.180 --> 08:49.960]  Like, for instance, I use YouTube to listen to music.
[08:50.020 --> 08:57.260]  And therefore, maybe the algorithm of YouTube knows what's my favourite album of Bob Dylan.
[08:57.440 --> 08:58.440]  But this is not the same, right?
[08:58.480 --> 08:59.840]  We're talking about sexual orientation.
[09:00.060 --> 09:01.260]  We're talking about sexual preferences.
[09:01.760 --> 09:05.580]  And for this reason, we're talking about sensitive data.
[09:06.180 --> 09:16.720]  This means that when processing this data, the platform has to make it very clear to users that their sexual preferences are being monitored and harvested.
[09:17.080 --> 09:23.860]  And they have to realise, they have to be aware that this is happening.
[09:23.960 --> 09:26.680]  They have to consent for the processing to happen.
[09:27.200 --> 09:37.400]  In general, as you can see in the slide, this means that the consent must be the legal basis of the processing, which is super important because it means that the user is put back in control of their own data.
[09:37.400 --> 09:41.920]  Your data can be processed as long as you consent to it.
[09:42.100 --> 09:48.700]  Otherwise, the platform cannot monetise your traffic, cannot monetise what you're doing on the platform.
[09:48.840 --> 09:50.080]  They were not doing any of this.
[09:50.180 --> 09:58.460]  Some of the major platforms are still not doing any of this in terms of consent and just asking for it.
[09:59.500 --> 10:05.180]  The second pillar revolves around the algorithm and the transparency of the algorithm in particular.
[10:05.460 --> 10:09.800]  Because this is not just any other algorithm.
[10:09.980 --> 10:18.960]  Again, it's an algorithm that automatically checks what you're watching, checks what you like, and decides what's your sexual orientation.
[10:19.660 --> 10:27.720]  It would be already quite concerning to think that there is a human doing that, like that South Park episode with the guy with all those screens around.
[10:27.720 --> 10:30.220]  But this is even happening automatically.
[10:30.900 --> 10:33.940]  It's industrialised.
[10:34.100 --> 10:41.380]  It's a chain production of sexual preference being assigned to everybody.
[10:41.620 --> 10:47.660]  So the algorithm basically goes, okay, you're straight, you're bi, you're gay, you like something else.
[10:48.180 --> 10:51.200]  And first of all, it's completely intransparent.
[10:51.860 --> 10:56.220]  Nobody knows what the algorithm has decided that we like.
[10:56.220 --> 10:58.020]  And there is no way to challenge it.
[10:58.180 --> 11:00.320]  So imagine that you are a young user.
[11:00.720 --> 11:04.660]  And the algorithm has decided that you're straight or that you're gay.
[11:05.040 --> 11:06.380]  And maybe you are still deciding.
[11:06.600 --> 11:08.100]  Maybe you are something else.
[11:08.220 --> 11:08.520]  I don't know.
[11:08.680 --> 11:09.680]  You will never know.
[11:10.000 --> 11:12.060]  You will never be able to disagree.
[11:12.560 --> 11:23.160]  And all of a sudden, you will think that the bubble in which you end up being relegated, because of the preferences that have been assigned to you, is actually what you are supposed to like.
[11:23.280 --> 11:24.320]  What everybody likes you.
[11:24.380 --> 11:32.820]  And if you're not particularly aware of what it means to be inside of a filter bubble, of an echo chamber and whatnot.
[11:33.120 --> 11:40.060]  And this must... this is not compatible at least with Article 22 of the GDPR, if not with common sense.
[11:40.620 --> 11:57.440]  Because Article 22 of the GDPR says that when there is an automated decision making that significantly impacts on the life of a person, of a data subject, this must be... the logics underlying this decision making must be communicated to the users when they want to know it.
[11:57.560 --> 12:03.800]  And they have to... it has to be possible for them to challenge the determination of this automated decision making.
[12:07.020 --> 12:16.340]  We need the regulators, we need the authority to clarify if assigning sexual preferences to people significantly impacts their life.
[12:17.020 --> 12:17.240]  Duh.
[12:19.520 --> 12:24.920]  Third pillar, and I'll try to get a little bit faster now, is the trade of data.
[12:25.100 --> 12:33.620]  Because as you can very well imagine, this data is used to create more engagement on the platform, but it's also simply sold, because there is a market.
[12:33.900 --> 12:37.520]  The industry in itself wants to know what people like to produce new...
[12:37.520 --> 12:46.980]  are interested to know what people like sexually, because they want to, you know, somehow use this information for advertising purposes to organize their production.
[12:48.900 --> 12:53.960]  And these tech giants, these big platforms, they all belong to very big corporate conglomerates.
[12:54.040 --> 12:57.060]  For instance, PornUp, it's part of a huge group.
[12:57.260 --> 12:58.500]  It used to be called MindGeek.
[12:58.760 --> 13:00.320]  Before it was called MenWin.
[13:00.880 --> 13:01.780]  Quite telling, I'd say.
[13:01.980 --> 13:05.040]  Now they change their name again, so that maybe they, you know...
[13:05.040 --> 13:07.020]  We lost track, we could lose track of them.
[13:07.020 --> 13:07.820]  Of course, it didn't happen.
[13:07.940 --> 13:09.140]  They're now called ILO.
[13:09.340 --> 13:15.240]  And they have been bought by an even bigger private equity firm that is called Ethical Capital Partners.
[13:18.020 --> 13:18.420]  Yeah.
[13:18.860 --> 13:20.020]  And it's not even a joke.
[13:22.000 --> 13:33.100]  So imagine this conglomerate, the conglomerate of ILO, 170-something companies within this conglomerate that every day trades and share everybody's data on their sexual preferences.
[13:33.320 --> 13:36.440]  And then they have third parties with whom they make business as well.
[13:36.900 --> 13:41.100]  And this is already creepy enough, but then think of the risk of a data leak.
[13:41.100 --> 13:56.780]  Or think of the fact of what would happen if a political group with some discriminatory agendas, I don't know if you can think of any, end up receiving a list that, for instance, says, you know, everybody who is gay.
[13:57.140 --> 13:58.180]  As simple as that.
[13:58.260 --> 13:59.480]  Everybody who watches gay porn.
[13:59.840 --> 14:01.520]  That's quite concerning.
[14:01.840 --> 14:09.700]  And the fact that everything is happening or could continue happening without any supervision, it's what really scares me the most.
[14:10.560 --> 14:14.060]  So the litigation started on the 8th of March, 2022.
[14:15.040 --> 14:17.400]  The date, of course, was not coincidental.
[14:17.680 --> 14:29.120]  And at first we decided to go a little bit more discreetly about it because we wanted to be able to interact with data protection authorities in Europe and use the advantage of surprise.
[14:29.520 --> 14:42.960]  But apparently we found out that the best way, like the secret ingredient for litigation to go fast and produce results is of course clout, is of course fame.
[14:43.200 --> 14:46.760]  We need to engage the media if we want to get any results.
[14:46.920 --> 14:52.680]  Which is why last year we decided to file yet another complaint in Italy.
[14:52.840 --> 14:56.860]  But this time we paired it with a very massive and strong media campaign.
[14:57.720 --> 15:04.860]  And then we were thinking, okay, so it's gonna probably take, you know, one year, one and a half year before we see any results.
[15:05.100 --> 15:07.820]  There are a few things that can happen, but who knows how long it's gonna take.
[15:08.020 --> 15:10.360]  Everything we were hoping for happened in three weeks.
[15:10.560 --> 15:13.280]  Just because this time media was engaged.
[15:14.280 --> 15:22.180]  Immediately, the data protection authorities of Europe made public statements addressing the importance of the issue that we were pointing at.
[15:23.060 --> 15:26.600]  PornUp itself decided to change their homepage.
[15:26.880 --> 15:30.440]  Back then they were the 11th or 12th most visited website in the world.
[15:30.580 --> 15:32.700]  Now they are the 14th, 15th.
[15:33.300 --> 15:35.880]  Correlation is not causation, but they are losing traffic.
[15:36.100 --> 15:41.820]  And they had to add a banner, the famous banner that I was talking about before, on their homepage.
[15:42.900 --> 15:47.020]  Finally asking for consent before processing users' data.
[15:48.560 --> 15:50.080]  And this is, of course, not enough.
[15:50.320 --> 15:51.800]  This is, of course, not what we need.
[15:51.920 --> 15:54.920]  Also because the banner that they put on was very small.
[15:55.440 --> 15:57.700]  And then we had to tell them, your banner is too small.
[15:57.840 --> 15:59.560]  And they changed it immediately.
[16:00.400 --> 16:02.000]  After years of not using it.
[16:02.120 --> 16:04.340]  Because imagine, like, of course, it's...
[16:05.640 --> 16:12.280]  If before this banner, anybody going to PornUp.com was directly landing on their homepage.
[16:12.580 --> 16:14.840]  So click one more person on their homepage.
[16:15.060 --> 16:17.480]  One more data point in their traffic market.
[16:17.680 --> 16:17.900]  All right?
[16:18.420 --> 16:23.200]  Now, because of this banner, people can still go, of course.
[16:23.340 --> 16:25.780]  But first, they have to click on the button consent.
[16:26.040 --> 16:30.780]  And this is, of course, something that impacts directly the amount of traffic that they have on their platform.
[16:30.780 --> 16:34.600]  So we went directly to their wallet.
[16:35.160 --> 16:36.080]  Which is quite cool.
[16:37.420 --> 16:38.460]  And, yeah.
[16:39.720 --> 16:41.100]  The litigation goes on.
[16:41.720 --> 16:42.760]  It's actually...
[16:42.760 --> 16:47.080]  Well, again, I don't want to get lost too much in the legal technicalities.
[16:47.220 --> 16:49.400]  But it's happening at the same time in Italy and Cyprus.
[16:49.820 --> 16:56.160]  And right now, all the different lawsuits have been reunited in Cyprus.
[16:56.160 --> 16:58.280]  Because Cyprus is the leading authority.
[16:58.820 --> 17:00.420]  They have jurisdiction over this.
[17:00.980 --> 17:03.640]  And the European Data Protection Board might intervene.
[17:03.960 --> 17:04.840]  It's a little bit messy.
[17:04.980 --> 17:06.140]  It's going to take a very long time.
[17:06.460 --> 17:08.980]  PornUp just got sanctioned for something that they...
[17:08.980 --> 17:11.700]  For a violation of the GDPR that they did four years ago.
[17:11.860 --> 17:13.380]  Four facts of six years ago.
[17:13.560 --> 17:15.080]  And we only started a couple of years ago.
[17:15.180 --> 17:16.460]  So it might take a bit longer.
[17:17.520 --> 17:17.760]  But, yeah.
[17:18.080 --> 17:23.460]  Meanwhile, we've also launched an advocacy group called the Digital Intimacy Coalition.
[17:24.100 --> 17:28.040]  Because, as we were saying two years ago, litigation is important.
[17:28.380 --> 17:29.320]  Advocacy is important.
[17:29.520 --> 17:30.480]  Policy is also important.
[17:31.260 --> 17:32.500]  We will get to that soon.
[17:32.840 --> 17:39.580]  But in terms of advocacy, what we've done was putting together a bunch of different groups.
[17:39.860 --> 17:43.140]  And, you know, thinking a bit more in a broader sense.
[17:43.320 --> 17:45.980]  Not only about pornography and sexual representation.
[17:46.240 --> 17:47.620]  But in general about digital intimacy.
[17:48.040 --> 17:52.680]  Meaning that part of our intimate life that is somehow connected to digital media.
[17:52.680 --> 17:54.520]  So you can see digital tools.
[17:54.660 --> 17:56.500]  So you can think, of course, of porn platforms.
[17:56.620 --> 17:58.740]  But also, I don't know, like dating apps.
[17:59.260 --> 18:04.040]  Or if we want to think about femtech, for instance, period tracking apps.
[18:04.200 --> 18:05.440]  These are also very important.
[18:06.300 --> 18:13.580]  You know, the intimate part of our life that is, as every other part of our life, mediated by digital tools.
[18:14.440 --> 18:16.280]  We think that this should not...
[18:16.280 --> 18:23.200]  This super delicate, super important part of the digital world should not be left in the hands of tech giants and tech bros.
[18:23.340 --> 18:25.720]  That they decide what's best for their revenue.
[18:25.920 --> 18:28.620]  And then we have to deal with the consequences of their action.
[18:28.760 --> 18:30.640]  We think that civil society should be listened.
[18:30.640 --> 18:38.640]  And, you know, most importantly, within civil society, we should listen to each other.
[18:38.800 --> 18:44.500]  Because it's very complicated to regulate probably anything.
[18:44.780 --> 18:46.540]  But particularly digital world.
[18:46.740 --> 18:48.980]  And particularly the digital intimacy world.
[18:49.280 --> 18:51.980]  Because there are so many different stakeholders involved.
[18:51.980 --> 18:56.360]  We've seen so many attempts at doing something right that ended up very miserably.
[18:56.360 --> 19:00.340]  One very infamous example in the U.S. is the FOSTA-SESTA.
[19:00.900 --> 19:04.420]  That I don't even know if it started with noble intentions or not.
[19:04.640 --> 19:07.440]  But it definitely ended up damaging the sex workers community.
[19:07.440 --> 19:09.220]  Which is a big no-no.
[19:09.860 --> 19:16.000]  And so what we decided to do, right before we started, was to gather up all the stakeholders.
[19:16.220 --> 19:20.200]  And as you can see in this slide, we identified at least four different stakeholders.
[19:20.840 --> 19:24.080]  To ask exactly what was the right way to go.
[19:24.180 --> 19:25.980]  What was the most compelling issue?
[19:25.980 --> 19:27.600]  What was the way?
[19:28.160 --> 19:31.680]  So, of course, this coalition is composed by digital rights advocates.
[19:32.020 --> 19:34.220]  That want big tech accountability and privacy.
[19:35.060 --> 19:37.920]  But also sex workers rights defenders.
[19:38.200 --> 19:45.500]  Because users use the platform for their, you know, needs, entertainment, pleasure.
[19:46.160 --> 19:50.080]  But sex workers use it to survive.
[19:50.700 --> 19:52.740]  To, you know, afford a living.
[19:52.900 --> 19:53.360]  To make a living.
[19:53.360 --> 20:00.520]  And it's very important to know what their needs are when we enter this world if we are not already part of it.
[20:00.740 --> 20:04.120]  At the same time, there are also gender-based violence survivors.
[20:04.140 --> 20:09.860]  Because many times, many things can go wrong in the digital intimacy world.
[20:09.880 --> 20:13.580]  And it's very important to have a trauma-informed approach to all these problems.
[20:14.600 --> 20:16.920]  And sex tech builders as well.
[20:17.080 --> 20:21.060]  You see there in the bottom right corner of the slide.
[20:21.780 --> 20:25.720]  Because it's very... it's so much fun to criticize big tech, all right?
[20:25.800 --> 20:28.460]  But we should also think of what's the alternative, right?
[20:28.460 --> 20:34.560]  And sex tech builders, the small and medium enterprises that are trying to set up ethical platforms.
[20:34.580 --> 20:38.680]  So other form of tools that are digital or technological.
[20:39.240 --> 20:43.560]  They can give us new alternatives and new ways of dealing with digital intimacy.
[20:43.800 --> 20:44.920]  They need space.
[20:45.080 --> 20:46.260]  And they cannot find it.
[20:48.880 --> 20:56.060]  So one instrument, one legal tool that proved very useful in Europe is the Digital Services Act.
[20:56.060 --> 21:00.280]  You are absolutely allowed of not knowing anything about the Digital Services Act.
[21:00.500 --> 21:03.640]  If you knew about the GDPR, congratulations.
[21:04.380 --> 21:05.880]  One legal point to you.
[21:06.080 --> 21:08.460]  Digital Services Act is basically the same.
[21:08.720 --> 21:11.160]  In the sense that it's also a regulation.
[21:11.160 --> 21:15.940]  It's also, hopefully, going to become a new global standard for digital policy.
[21:16.120 --> 21:18.220]  But to put it super simply...
[21:18.220 --> 21:23.740]  So GDPR is to data protection as DSA is to content moderation.
[21:23.740 --> 21:28.060]  What I've just said could probably get me disbarred because legally speaking is wrong.
[21:28.440 --> 21:29.500]  But it's also a little bit right.
[21:32.160 --> 21:35.520]  And what happened is that this regulation came into force this year.
[21:35.960 --> 21:38.880]  Only a few months ago it had become fully enforceable.
[21:39.920 --> 21:46.440]  And one of its core goal is explicitly to address the overpower of big tech.
[21:46.440 --> 21:51.380]  It's part of a bigger program, a bigger policy program of the European Union.
[21:51.900 --> 22:03.260]  But particularly for the DSA, one thing that DSA is doing is to introduce the legal definition of very large online platforms.
[22:03.260 --> 22:06.920]  Actually, also just a definition of what a digital platform is.
[22:07.100 --> 22:17.440]  Because before this, in the legal world, there were this very wide notion of service provider and then any...
[22:17.440 --> 22:18.880]  Well, anyway, it was quite messy.
[22:20.000 --> 22:25.380]  Digital platforms and, in particular, very large online platforms.
[22:25.380 --> 22:33.540]  The very large online platforms are those platforms who have at least 45 million users per month within the European Union.
[22:33.760 --> 22:37.440]  Which, to give you a sense of proportion, is 10% of the European population.
[22:38.560 --> 22:39.940]  The population of the European Union.
[22:41.740 --> 22:45.020]  And it's basically this category of platforms.
[22:45.220 --> 22:46.340]  It's literally a list.
[22:46.540 --> 22:49.960]  The European Commission, the government of the European Union, is keeping a list.
[22:50.120 --> 22:50.940]  They started last year.
[22:51.100 --> 22:53.600]  And they have all these names that you see there.
[22:53.600 --> 22:55.020]  This is actually an old picture.
[22:55.200 --> 23:00.820]  There are now roughly a little less than 30 VLOPS that have been designated.
[23:01.080 --> 23:09.960]  But what was particularly surprising is that when last year, beginning of 2023, the European Commission was asked to draft the very first list of very large online platforms.
[23:10.160 --> 23:12.300]  They started, of course, naming the obvious names.
[23:12.680 --> 23:15.020]  Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, blah, blah.
[23:15.600 --> 23:17.100]  And there was no porn platform.
[23:18.220 --> 23:19.760]  Wikipedia was in that list.
[23:20.260 --> 23:22.280]  But no porn platforms to be seen.
[23:22.280 --> 23:23.760]  Quite surprising.
[23:24.080 --> 23:24.720]  Quite surprising.
[23:24.720 --> 23:32.360]  Especially when we consider, as we said in the beginning, that for sure, porn platforms, they occupy a very big space of the Internet nowadays.
[23:32.640 --> 23:36.300]  And so many people go to these kind of platforms.
[23:37.780 --> 23:43.200]  According to some estimation, there are still more people going to Wikipedia than to Pornhub, which is quite reassuring.
[23:43.200 --> 23:46.060]  But still, it's quite close.
[23:47.080 --> 23:49.060]  So, no porn platforms in the list.
[23:50.020 --> 23:51.420]  We were very surprised.
[23:51.640 --> 23:52.420]  Very upset.
[23:53.220 --> 24:05.400]  And that's why the coalition, the Digital Intimacy Coalition, decided to run a campaign, an advocacy campaign, directly targeted to the European Commission.
[24:05.400 --> 24:10.180]  And we asked them, why don't you maybe count their users a little bit more?
[24:10.400 --> 24:23.140]  The reason for this delay, probably, or this misalignment with the European Commission, was that in the very first designation, they were relying on voluntary disclosure from these platforms.
[24:23.140 --> 24:31.120]  And when asked, do you have enough users to be designated as very large online platforms, the porn tech giant said, no.
[24:32.880 --> 24:34.480]  Our traffic is so small.
[24:34.900 --> 24:42.700]  At the same time, every year, we know that Pornhub is releasing their year in review, where they say, oh, we have so many people on our website.
[24:42.920 --> 24:43.960]  Everybody loves what we do.
[24:43.960 --> 24:48.200]  And you like MILFs, you like redheads, you like threesomes.
[24:48.520 --> 24:50.900]  But then, when asked, how many people do you know?
[24:50.900 --> 24:52.640]  Do you know people's sexual preferences?
[24:53.000 --> 24:53.500]  No.
[24:53.760 --> 24:55.640]  They completely go silent.
[24:56.180 --> 25:00.920]  The European Commission received an open letter by the coalition.
[25:01.560 --> 25:08.460]  There were many big names that all joined to this initiative.
[25:08.720 --> 25:10.160]  Media picked up on the stories.
[25:10.160 --> 25:14.980]  There was a little bit of noise in Europe about that last autumn.
[25:15.520 --> 25:28.820]  And then, in December 2023, so a few months ago, right before the winter break, three new porn VLOPS, very large online platforms, were designated.
[25:29.120 --> 25:33.080]  Pornhub, Xvideos, and StripChat, which are specifically...
[25:33.080 --> 25:41.440]  Xvideos is the first porn platform in the world, Pornhub is the second, and StripChat is the sixth, for whatever reason.
[25:41.600 --> 25:43.500]  They have decided to focus on these three.
[25:45.160 --> 25:50.780]  And this was, of course, very, very nice, because it was the result of this conversation with the European institution.
[25:51.040 --> 25:55.320]  But most importantly, they were not expecting that at all.
[25:55.960 --> 26:05.300]  The porn VLOPS sued the European Commission a few months ago, because they really did not want to be designated.
[26:05.480 --> 26:06.900]  They did not want to be in this list.
[26:06.900 --> 26:14.900]  Being in this list for them means that they have to assess every year the systemic risks of the simple fact that they exist.
[26:15.540 --> 26:17.960]  It means that they have to keep a publicly accessible...
[26:18.520 --> 26:26.580]  Well, accessible to researchers, but anyhow, the technicalities of this has been defined in these days.
[26:26.900 --> 26:31.240]  They have to keep a repository of all the advertisers that operate on their platform.
[26:31.240 --> 26:34.200]  So, yeah, it's a big deal.
[26:34.320 --> 26:37.900]  There are many, many things that they have to do, and they don't like it at all.
[26:39.620 --> 26:42.820]  However, they already lost one of the legal cases that they started.
[26:43.220 --> 26:48.700]  There was one regarding Article 39 and exactly the repository of advertisers.
[26:49.460 --> 26:54.360]  And also, one more porn platform has been added to the list last week.
[26:54.360 --> 27:01.760]  So, the European Commission made a very clear statement that they are getting into the industry.
[27:01.960 --> 27:07.760]  They have now finally found the courage, probably also because they understand that there is a backup from the civil society.
[27:07.940 --> 27:16.820]  Civil society is not only backing them up, it's also checking out on what they're doing because nobody just wants to send in the cops, what we want, or the authority.
[27:16.980 --> 27:23.060]  What we want is to have users at the centre, human rights at the centre, people at the centre.
[27:23.240 --> 27:27.660]  And these are the instruments that we have nowadays, so we might as well try and use them.
[27:29.600 --> 27:32.600]  So, they're suing the European government, they're losing.
[27:33.300 --> 27:35.860]  One more big platform has been designated.
[27:37.100 --> 27:37.660]  Yeah.
[27:38.080 --> 27:38.300]  Oops.
[27:40.380 --> 27:41.680]  Things are moving, you know.
[27:41.880 --> 27:44.140]  And this is very, very encouraging.
[27:44.600 --> 27:57.700]  Because it might really mean a new era for the, at least, online porn sector, but hopefully not only in Europe, but everywhere around the world.
[27:58.000 --> 28:05.780]  So, if you want to join our work, if you want to contribute to what we are doing, you are more than welcome.
[28:06.040 --> 28:09.420]  We have a website that is now being set up.
[28:09.660 --> 28:14.360]  And we run monthly meetings, we have working groups, the door is always open.
[28:15.080 --> 28:18.680]  And yeah, see you in two years.
[28:27.660 --> 28:28.220]  Okay.
[28:28.500 --> 28:38.940]  So, I'm going to talk a little bit more about some of the research and some of the background and importance and thinking about some more types of complex solutions that we can start to integrate.
[28:39.740 --> 28:41.080]  So, you heard a little bit about me.
[28:41.200 --> 28:42.780]  I'm a professor of sexuality.
[28:44.100 --> 28:47.880]  I'm also the first person in New York to press charges for revenge porn.
[28:48.120 --> 28:54.160]  So, I had an ex that posted quite a lot over and over, photos and videos of me.
[28:54.260 --> 28:56.720]  And he posted my name, my face, my contact details.
[28:56.840 --> 29:01.480]  And I had thousands of men harassing me over the course of a full year.
[29:01.480 --> 29:13.600]  And so, I pressed charges and was thrust into the space of advocacy and really got a lot more in-depth experience than I ever wanted in this field.
[29:13.860 --> 29:17.200]  And so, I also started doing some more research in this area.
[29:17.420 --> 29:29.860]  So, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of my research, some of other researchers' experiences and data and some of my own personal experience to flesh this out a little bit.
[29:30.720 --> 29:36.660]  So, research has mixed findings on porn's impact on people's sexuality.
[29:36.660 --> 29:41.800]  But we have some actually positive effects of engaging with sexually explicit materials.
[29:42.140 --> 29:50.480]  So, the frequency of sexually explicit material exposure actually predicts more accurate knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and sexual behavior.
[29:50.820 --> 30:05.820]  And this is likely because young people specifically are going to porn as a way to fill out their very bad sex ed that they are getting in schools or not even getting in schools or from other places.
[30:06.040 --> 30:11.020]  So, we know that porn in itself is not necessarily bad.
[30:11.140 --> 30:16.720]  But the way that porn is being directed and consumed, as you've already heard, is problematic.
[30:18.360 --> 30:24.120]  Porn also helps shape people's body image, and there's also some mixed evidence here.
[30:25.520 --> 30:42.320]  Specifically, when men are watching it, they're more likely to use it during sex, request particular pornographic sex acts of their partners, deliberately conjure images of porn during sex to maintain arousal, and then have concerns about their own sexual performance and body image.
[30:42.320 --> 30:49.360]  And higher porn use is also negatively associated with enjoying sexually intimate behaviors with a partner afterward.
[30:49.660 --> 30:52.740]  So, we're seeing some mixed results here.
[30:52.920 --> 30:59.020]  But we also see that watching Internet porn is unrelated to females' body satisfaction.
[30:59.140 --> 31:06.000]  So, more likely to affect men, and that is regardless of how much actually they're engaging with the materials.
[31:06.000 --> 31:16.000]  So, when we're looking at adolescents' use of porn, we see that in the short term, it's negatively associated with body appreciation.
[31:17.040 --> 31:27.640]  And adolescents may be more critical of body ideals represented in porn, as they learn to think with more discernment about the pornographic descriptions of bodies and sexuality that they're seeing.
[31:29.280 --> 31:34.040]  However, we also see that young people have quite high porn literacy.
[31:34.340 --> 31:59.400]  So, I've conducted a couple of hundred in-depth interviews across Australia and in New York City, with young people of all different genders, sexual orientations, and even people, young people that are unstably housed, and looking at their understandings of what porn is and how that is impacting
[31:59.400 --> 32:00.400]  their own sexuality.
[32:00.680 --> 32:06.120]  And their literacy and understanding that porn is not real sex is actually quite high.
[32:06.300 --> 32:14.540]  So, a lot of young people have really been trained in understanding digital literacy and porn literacy, and they are able to recognize that.
[32:14.540 --> 32:26.480]  So, it's not so much that porn is the problem, but what we're talking about here is these other challenges that are really popping up through these online sources.
[32:27.080 --> 32:37.380]  So, there are 3,000 websites, approximately, currently, dedicated to non-consensually sharing intimate images, predominantly of women and girls.
[32:39.000 --> 32:46.580]  Image-based sexual abuse, which includes revenge porn, deep fakes, and non-consensual image sharing.
[32:47.820 --> 33:06.000]  So, in one study that looked at the general community of the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, found that self-reported image-based sexual abuse perpetration was very common, with one in six respondents engaging in at least one form of perpetrating this type of crime.
[33:06.680 --> 33:09.480]  The victimization rate is about 10%.
[33:09.480 --> 33:13.360]  That's looking at across several studies, trying to determine what the rates are.
[33:13.620 --> 33:15.740]  And rates have climbed since 2020.
[33:16.040 --> 33:32.640]  So, a lot of people commit different types of crimes against their partners, and COVID actually really skyrocketed image-based sexual abuse and online abuse, because people were more limited in the type of abuse that they could commit against their partners, and so more and more people went online with it.
[33:34.820 --> 33:38.000]  So, we've seen quite a big increase in the past few years.
[33:39.160 --> 33:58.200]  When we're looking at the impacts that cyber sexual assault has on people, the impacts are very similar to physical sexual assaults, with the added complication of privacy concerns, where people are then not ever able to recover that sense of privacy that has been taken from them.
[33:59.900 --> 34:13.040]  Technology-facilitated sexual violence is kind of a broader term, which includes the non-consensual image-sharing, also cyber-stalking, harassment, sextortion, digital sex trafficking, and the facilitation of physical sexual assaults.
[34:13.380 --> 34:20.480]  And so, geolocation-enabled dating apps provide this ever-evolving arena for further sexual harassment.
[34:20.580 --> 34:27.940]  And there's the relative anonymity of online interactions that is allowing for bolder and more sexually violent interactions.
[34:27.940 --> 34:39.900]  And then, with the dating apps, introduced the heightened sense of intrusion, because they have the geolocation, and then they're also always on somebody when they're on their phones.
[34:40.160 --> 34:48.740]  And so, we did some research looking at how people are experiencing this type of violence on dating apps.
[34:48.860 --> 34:54.380]  And we conducted this research with about 2,000 undergraduate students.
[34:54.380 --> 35:04.660]  And we found that women and non-heterosexual respondents had significantly greater odds of reporting technology-facilitated sexual violence than men and heterosexual respondents.
[35:05.020 --> 35:15.100]  And queer respondents were more likely to receive unsolicited sexually explicit messages and unsolicited sexually explicit images than their non-queer counterparts.
[35:16.400 --> 35:23.580]  So, we can see that there is a problem based on who is victims of these crimes.
[35:23.740 --> 35:27.840]  So, we do have a bigger need for protection of marginalized groups.
[35:28.260 --> 35:36.680]  For example, members of the queer community, and particularly people living in ultra-conservative societies, their digital footprints pose a significant risk.
[35:36.820 --> 35:38.220]  And Alessandro is referencing this.
[35:38.380 --> 35:51.080]  So, for example, when a person visits a site about transitioning gender or downloads a queer dating app, this data can be collected by third parties and compiled with other data, such as IP address and device information, to form a profile on that person.
[35:51.120 --> 36:01.460]  And then this information can either be bought or seized, often legally by authorities and used to identify queer people, including those who have not made their sexual or gender identity public.
[36:03.020 --> 36:07.180]  So, we really need a lot more accountability from the big tech platforms.
[36:07.760 --> 36:10.920]  Image-based abuse is prevalent on porn sites.
[36:11.140 --> 36:20.100]  The high incidence of non-consensual sexual material on mainstream porn sites legitimizes and normalizes abuse, therefore really justifying more regulation.
[36:21.100 --> 36:22.800]  We need more harm reduction.
[36:22.800 --> 36:31.180]  We need swift removal of non-consensual imagery from the Internet that can significantly reduce the harms and harassment experienced by victims.
[36:31.180 --> 36:38.800]  And there's a limited capacity of criminal justice systems to prevent or reduce harm, so we need big tech to step in and help out with that.
[36:39.620 --> 36:42.560]  And then self-regulation by porn companies is really failing victims.
[36:42.760 --> 36:47.780]  Victims report significant delays in getting material removed from porn sites or being ignored entirely.
[36:49.780 --> 37:04.260]  This is a quote from one of my research participants in a study where we were asking victims of cyber-sexual assault about their experiences and how they were able to overcome all of these challenges that were brought up for them.
[37:04.400 --> 37:13.320]  And this participant said, But the fact that revenge porn happens means that we need some laws and law enforcement and some recourse to protect people from that kind of disaster.
[37:13.640 --> 37:17.100]  We have things to protect people from earthquakes and tornadoes, right?
[37:17.400 --> 37:21.160]  When a tornado hits someone's town, we have all kinds of things in place to help them.
[37:21.260 --> 37:25.700]  And well, we need the same kind of thing for when a tornado hits someone's life.
[37:29.280 --> 37:39.120]  So we've talked a lot about all of these different problems and we want to really think a little bit more with you about how we can get to some more integrated solutions.
[37:39.480 --> 37:51.980]  So these are really complex problems that we've been talking about where there are issues of consent, issues of privacy, representation and protection of marginalized groups, and this issue of platform responsibility.
[37:51.980 --> 38:09.920]  And so as we're thinking about these, we want to think about multifaceted solutions where we're thinking about not only all of these legal things that can be done and also these tech solutions, but also how we're bringing social change into this and actually getting more of the broader global community on board with pushing for these things as well.
[38:14.400 --> 38:17.320]  And so we're going to open this up a little bit.
[38:17.420 --> 38:19.460]  We want to answer questions.
[38:19.460 --> 38:20.540]  We want to hear your thoughts.
[38:20.540 --> 38:27.820]  We want to talk a little bit more about other types of ideas for solutions and get a little bit of a conversation going.
[38:28.120 --> 38:31.500]  So I'm going to open it up to the audience.
[38:48.060 --> 38:48.540]  Hi.
[38:48.860 --> 38:51.380]  Both of y'all mentioned global solidarity.
[38:51.400 --> 38:55.740]  I was wondering if you could go into more details of what that looks like logistically.
[38:56.080 --> 39:00.780]  Like, does it matter where these companies are based?
[39:00.780 --> 39:09.240]  And yeah, what are the sort of laws that can be put into place so that people in other countries can also benefit from these changes?
[39:10.060 --> 39:10.680]  Thank you.
[39:10.800 --> 39:11.800]  Thank you so much for this question.
[39:11.940 --> 39:13.160]  This is super important, actually.
[39:17.400 --> 39:27.340]  So everything that I described in the parts regarding the litigation and the advocacy that we're doing in the European Union, it's not only happening in Europe.
[39:27.500 --> 39:34.660]  We are using EU regulations because that's what we have there, but we know that there are no borders in the digital world.
[39:34.660 --> 39:34.860]  Right?
[39:35.060 --> 39:40.020]  So we absolutely hope that there will be the...
[39:40.020 --> 39:41.820]  Sometimes it's called the Brussels effect.
[39:42.040 --> 39:47.800]  So when from European regulation, we can set standards that then have impact on a global scale.
[39:48.060 --> 39:50.600]  We've seen it with the general data protection regulation.
[39:50.600 --> 39:57.380]  We've seen it with the GDPR because after Europe implemented it, then other countries across the globe follow suit.
[39:57.460 --> 40:11.700]  For instance, in the U.S., I don't think you have a regulation on a federal level, but on a state level, for instance, in California, there is the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is built on the blueprint of the general data protection regulation.
[40:11.700 --> 40:14.500]  In Brazil, they have a similar data protection law.
[40:14.700 --> 40:16.900]  In Kenya as well.
[40:17.040 --> 40:21.600]  So there is this sense of, you know, spillover effect.
[40:22.700 --> 40:38.540]  For Europe also, there is maybe another issue when it comes to big tech, because we are actually still somehow on the receiving end of digital colonialism, because the majority of these tech giants are actually not from Europe.
[40:38.720 --> 40:44.980]  We have a few like Spotify and some other, but like Google, Meta, Amazon, blah, blah, blah.
[40:44.980 --> 40:45.720]  It's not from us.
[40:45.900 --> 40:48.900]  So the issue of digital colonialism is very big.
[40:50.340 --> 41:04.140]  And it shows, I would also say, because if you see the way it impacts other places, even with pornography, you know, we are concerned about how to regulate pornography, but in a big portion of the world, it's even still illegal.
[41:04.140 --> 41:05.960]  So what are we even talking about, right?
[41:08.240 --> 41:12.900]  And in conclusion, this is also something that the fact that sometimes...
[41:12.900 --> 41:16.420]  What I want to say is that we should not see it only...
[41:16.420 --> 41:20.900]  Nobody wants to see it only as a state level problem, but it's a global problem.
[41:21.080 --> 41:23.960]  Because otherwise, we're actually doing a big favor to these tech giants.
[41:24.200 --> 41:28.340]  So for instance, in the case of ILO, as I said, it's a very big corporate conglomerate.
[41:28.340 --> 41:30.220]  They have more than 170 companies.
[41:30.980 --> 41:33.780]  Their legal headquarter is in Luxembourg.
[41:34.200 --> 41:37.220]  But most of their offices are in Canada, in Montreal.
[41:37.900 --> 41:47.720]  And yet, when I have to file something, a lawsuit against them for data protection law in Europe, I have to go to the little island of Cyprus, because apparently always the biggest the island...
[41:47.720 --> 41:50.120]  The biggest the company, the smallest the island.
[41:51.280 --> 41:54.960]  And yeah, so absolutely what you said is super important.
[41:54.960 --> 42:00.180]  We need to bring this level, this conversation on a global scale.
[42:00.400 --> 42:05.680]  Even the coalition, the Digital Intimacy Coalition, it started in Europe, but we have many people that have joined up from the U.S.
[42:05.880 --> 42:07.360]  So feel free to jump in.
[42:07.580 --> 42:15.520]  I have the feeling that the issue of pornography will become very big, especially if that Project 2025 thing really kicks in.
[42:16.180 --> 42:16.840]  So yeah.
[42:21.240 --> 42:25.780]  Not that legal prosecution is the only way to go about fixing these things, clearly.
[42:25.780 --> 42:35.180]  But even in the U.S., what percentage of states and jurisdictions have some sort of laws around the technology-facilitated sexual abuse?
[42:35.700 --> 42:41.200]  Like, is this in two states that would actually have some teeth to it, or that have ever seen prosecution?
[42:42.080 --> 42:49.140]  You said that in New York, you've been one of the first people to file a suit on this, or file charges.
[42:49.720 --> 42:51.660]  How common or uncommon is this?
[42:51.760 --> 42:53.360]  And again, that's not the only solution.
[42:53.580 --> 42:59.540]  But is this, like, essentially, unfortunately legal most places, or barely illegal?
[43:00.980 --> 43:10.060]  It's currently illegal in 48 states, but there's a lot of problems about the way that the laws have been written in a lot of the states.
[43:10.180 --> 43:22.800]  So it's very difficult to press charges in a lot of states, because a lot of times you have to prove that they are trying to have mal-intent on your life, which is, like, kind of obvious to me.
[43:26.080 --> 43:33.080]  Like, it depends on the words they're putting up there with it, and so it's pretty complicated, and it does get difficult.
[43:33.080 --> 43:50.060]  And it also is very, very hard to get enough evidence to press charges, because in many cases, there's nobody able to collect the evidence, because police are not trained in digital crimes at all.
[43:50.200 --> 43:53.820]  So they are not helpful in collecting any of the evidence.
[43:53.820 --> 44:06.180]  So it mostly falls to the victims themselves to collect all of this evidence and try to track down all of the IP addresses and things like this, and to prove the people that are behind it.
[44:06.300 --> 44:08.900]  And it's pretty crazy.
[44:10.260 --> 44:10.900]  Thank you.
[44:11.020 --> 44:21.100]  And it also just sounds, I mean, I don't want to moralize it, but it sounds really awful that there are, like you said, over 3,000 sites that are intended largely or exclusively for that purpose.
[44:22.060 --> 44:22.700]  Thank you.
[44:25.180 --> 44:25.760]  Hi.
[44:26.660 --> 44:40.700]  I'm a software developer that has, you know, due to the climate of layoffs, been forced to go to LinkedIn and try to decipher what these engineering departments are trying to do.
[44:40.800 --> 44:51.920]  And so one of the things that I've come across and that, when you mentioned Hinged, reminded me a lot about what I've seen lately about trust and safety departments and how...
[44:51.920 --> 44:54.840]  Well, to me, it seems very interesting at face value.
[44:55.300 --> 45:02.640]  Like, basically, an engineer tasked with, like, developing tools to help...
[45:02.640 --> 45:10.600]  Hinge actually has one of these departments, and I connected with someone looking for that possibility.
[45:10.600 --> 45:15.560]  But I'm really curious to hear your perspective on what these trust and safety departments actually do.
[45:16.920 --> 45:21.660]  What do you know about them and, yeah, how they can have an impact in this climate?
[45:23.260 --> 45:27.960]  Yeah, I mean, I think that we need a lot more support from the platforms.
[45:28.200 --> 45:35.260]  I mean, they certainly can be monitoring what's happening more and more responsive.
[45:35.260 --> 45:38.860]  I think the responsivity, to me, is the most important thing.
[45:40.260 --> 45:56.840]  Especially, you know, in my personal experiences, whenever I had a problem on any type of site, when you just get no one responding to your emails and your takedown requests and things over and over for weeks at a time and things, like, keep propagating, it's very demoralizing, you know.
[46:00.960 --> 46:04.080]  So I think, and the same is true on dating apps.
[46:04.200 --> 46:09.620]  People are often reporting things and telling the company, like, this was a problem.
[46:09.620 --> 46:12.160]  And then nothing ever actually happens.
[46:12.360 --> 46:33.820]  So I think, you know, I would say that's the biggest thing, is being responsive to people's concerns and following up and having real people, not just algorithms, respond to those and, like, actually look at the cases and try to, I would even say, press charges once things are happening on those sites.
[46:34.000 --> 46:38.180]  Like, take those directly from that to press charges.
[46:38.180 --> 46:38.200]  Yes.
[46:38.580 --> 46:38.820]  Sure.
[46:42.460 --> 46:42.920]  Hi.
[46:43.100 --> 46:46.420]  You were mentioning multifaceted solutions.
[46:46.420 --> 47:10.040]  And one of the impacts of VASTA-SESTA, well-known, is that it's driven sex work out of public view, out of scrutiny, and into, like, regions where sex workers have less safety and ownership over their line of work.
[47:12.260 --> 47:30.380]  And I was wondering what part of, given potential difficulties and, like, especially outside of Europe, yeah, all the difficulties outside of Europe, and what part of the solution could...
[47:31.120 --> 47:45.840]  And, oh yeah, seeing that all the biggest platforms are privately owned, and also in the dating space, like, you have Match, the Match Group, and Bumble, which is owned by, like, a Trump supporter and stuff like that.
[47:45.840 --> 48:08.600]  But, like, the private ownership of all of this, what part of a solution could be, could a platform cooperative, a platform that could be owned and operated by sex workers, and where they set the standards for safety, and, yeah.
[48:12.380 --> 48:14.180]  This is also a great question.
[48:14.380 --> 48:17.120]  The topic of platform cooperative is so important.
[48:17.560 --> 48:27.540]  In the work that we're doing with the Digital Intimacy Coalition, there is a working group specifically dedicated to decentralised governance, and what we can do to achieve these kind of things.
[48:27.540 --> 48:32.700]  I know, with the research that I'm in contact with, at least, that there is research ongoing right now.
[48:32.900 --> 48:35.460]  I think that probably next month...
[48:35.460 --> 48:38.700]  I'll tell you when we're done, because I'm a little bit conscious of time right now.
[48:38.860 --> 48:48.260]  But there are research projects looking for solutions in exactly the direction of platform cooperativism to come up with solutions.
[48:48.260 --> 48:51.480]  That's also why, for us, it's super important to engage with sex tech builders.
[48:52.140 --> 49:00.360]  If you are expecting me to tell you already what's the solution to that, I don't have it on an individual basis, and probably it's better that way.
[49:00.900 --> 49:04.540]  But, yeah, we should definitely work together to find that.
[49:04.880 --> 49:06.080]  That's wonderful to hear.
[49:08.960 --> 49:10.360]  Thank you so much for the talk.
[49:10.800 --> 49:31.940]  Sort of building on that question, one of the biggest challenges for alternatives seems to be the financial side, because a lot of the major payment processes enforce their ideology, their risk assessment through cutting out entire industries, including anything to do with sex work or porn.
[49:31.940 --> 49:41.500]  Are you aware of any public pressure campaigns or regulatory efforts to force them to be more of a neutral market?
[49:42.020 --> 49:45.900]  Or do you have any other suggestions how they could approach it?
[49:46.100 --> 49:47.720]  And if there's time, probably not.
[49:47.980 --> 49:59.600]  Do you see that kind of financial side as a way of pressuring the big sex tech companies in a particular direction using that same tool?
[50:02.160 --> 50:03.680]  Short answer, yes.
[50:04.300 --> 50:08.640]  What you said, the payment processors are a key subject of the industry.
[50:08.800 --> 50:16.020]  Like, we focus on tube sites because that's the thing that is more like facing the public and, you know, known by everybody.
[50:16.240 --> 50:20.940]  But data brokers, payment processors, advertisers, there is a whole ecosystem.
[50:21.880 --> 50:29.200]  And they've been in charge for calling the shots in the past two decades because nobody else was stepping in.
[50:29.440 --> 50:34.820]  What is happening right now, especially in Europe, is that finally a different kind of stakeholder is stepping in.
[50:34.820 --> 50:37.660]  So the public institutions, in this case the European Commission.
[50:38.200 --> 50:50.700]  And with the Digital Services Act, one thing that they will do will be, you know, as I was saying before, lay down all the systemic risks that we think may be associated with porn platforms in general.
[50:50.700 --> 51:01.100]  And this will already take away from, for instance, payment processors, the duty, no, the role to decide what can be on the platforms and what cannot be on the platforms.
[51:01.220 --> 51:03.640]  Because this is what happened until now.
[51:05.020 --> 51:13.760]  Porn platforms don't really care what's going on in their platforms until the payment processors say, mm, we're not fine with this, we're going to cut you off if you don't remove that part.
[51:13.840 --> 51:20.880]  And then all of a sudden, PornUp gets rid of, like, I don't know, millions of videos because MasterCard told them so.
[51:21.240 --> 51:25.600]  This must change and hopefully one way to do it will be through public institutions.
[51:25.600 --> 51:30.000]  Of course, the most desirable way should be from civil society and researchers.
[51:30.240 --> 51:31.280]  But we're working on that.
[51:33.000 --> 51:33.900]  Thank you so much.
[51:35.760 --> 51:42.880]  I'm just going to quickly say, if you didn't attend the VALID session, you should go back and play it back.
[51:43.020 --> 51:49.480]  And anybody who did might see the connection of creating platforms that really increase your privacy.
[51:49.780 --> 51:56.220]  On the other hand, I think Dr. Spring will not be happy because there ain't going to be anybody you can call to take a photo downstairs, I can tell.
[51:56.700 --> 52:00.740]  So, yeah, go check out the VALID talk that was earlier today.
[52:01.480 --> 52:01.980]  Thank you.
[52:04.140 --> 52:04.660]  Hi.
[52:06.540 --> 52:12.500]  I was wondering if you could speak more to the harms of porn across different populations.
[52:12.760 --> 52:18.720]  In particular, I was wondering, are there clear reasons for the difference in the harms of porn between men and women?
[52:18.820 --> 52:25.860]  But also, are there reasons why we see higher rates of porn literacy among adolescents?
[52:26.060 --> 52:27.880]  Is that something that we might expect to persist?
[52:27.960 --> 52:28.660]  Is it generational?
[52:28.940 --> 52:29.660]  So on and so forth.
[52:31.540 --> 52:32.640]  I think that it is.
[52:32.800 --> 52:37.540]  I think, you know, in schools, they do quite a lot of media literacy now.
[52:37.780 --> 52:41.320]  And that really translates into the porn literacy, I think.
[52:41.460 --> 52:47.780]  So I think that's where most of that's coming from, just based on what I'm hearing from young people.
[52:47.780 --> 53:03.220]  And so I would expect that to persist a little, and I would actually expect that the impacts of viewing sexually explicit material would continue to actually be better in people's lives because of that.
[53:03.220 --> 53:04.780]  But that's just, I guess.
[53:05.500 --> 53:06.060]  Thank you.
[53:06.300 --> 53:06.600]  Thank you.
[53:08.340 --> 53:08.860]  Hi.
[53:09.180 --> 53:14.640]  Did your research differentiate between non-consensual revenge porn and non-consensual deepfake porn?
[53:14.720 --> 53:18.060]  And how do the laws treat both differently?
[53:18.120 --> 53:19.180]  And what are our next steps?
[53:19.180 --> 53:20.060]  Yeah.
[53:21.040 --> 53:21.560]  Yeah.
[53:21.560 --> 53:31.540]  My research on cyber sexual assault was specifically looking at how people experienced it and then how they were able to move through it and how they're able to get over it.
[53:32.700 --> 53:37.480]  And so it could have been any type of cyber sexual assault and people did experience.
[53:38.400 --> 53:43.600]  I think only one person, because this was conducted a few years ago, was a victim of a deepfake.
[53:44.520 --> 53:48.060]  But the impact is the same on somebody's life.
[53:48.160 --> 53:52.980]  It doesn't matter if it was an image that is created of you or if it was one that was actually taken.
[53:53.180 --> 53:54.720]  The impact is exactly the same.
[53:56.360 --> 54:02.220]  Which is why we normally refer to these two things in the broader category of image-based sexual abuse.
[54:02.400 --> 54:05.820]  That I think it's why, you know, tell lingo what it is.
[54:06.320 --> 54:07.240]  A sexual abuse.
[54:08.460 --> 54:09.440]  Great job, you too.
[54:09.660 --> 54:09.920]  Thank you.
[54:09.920 --> 54:09.980]  Thank you.
[54:10.320 --> 54:13.700]  Please put your hands together for these two and the work that they're doing.