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Popular porn sites now display unproven health warnings thanks to Texas law

2023-10-12T18:05:40-04:00

Popular online adult film sites in Texas have published "Texas Health and Human Services" disclaimers warning visitors about the unproven health risks of watching porn, reports 404 Media. The move comes after a US appeals court temporarily overturned an order blocking a Texas law that required porn sites to verify users' ages and display government health warnings.

Though they don't require age verification, every Vixen Media Group site - which includes Deeper, Blacked, and Vixen - now displays factually debatable disclaimers warning that porn is "potentially biologically addictive" and "proven to harm human brain development." The warnings …

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Sex workers made OnlyFans valuable — then it sold them out

2021-08-23T16:19:56-04:00

In 2019, OnlyFans, a content subscription platform founded three years prior, had about 120,000 creators registered with the site. But after the pandemic left millions of people out of work and sex workers unable to safely meet with clients in person, people flocked to the platform, which was already well-known for its adult content. By the end of 2020, OnlyFans boasted 1 million creators and 90 million users.

Creators liked the control the platform gave them over the kind of work they wanted to do - but the more the site grew, the more nervous they got. "OnlyFans is not going to last, but it is a hell of a ride," OnlyFans creator Kimberly …

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Eight big takeaways from CES 2020

2020-01-10T07:00:00-05:00

CES is over, and I am quite sure you'll be happy to be done with it. We still have more to come today and perhaps a little next week. We'll have our Verge Awards piece, naming most important, best, and most hilarious things of the show. We'll have a few category-specific roundups of what to watch out for this year and some pieces digging deeper into the trends that CES has kicked off.

In the hopes of having something we can look back on later this year when asked what the hell even happened at CES, I'm going to list some of my big takeaways. I'll leave specific products to the Awards list, instead I want to try to do just a little synthesis …

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The lonely ballad of the fuck button

2019-10-31T09:30:00-04:00

Lauren Stutzman's nightstand is home to a pair of palm-sized, black and silver buttons. Once mutually activated, both illuminate with a flashing green ring. The light merrily circles the smooth black surface to announce some exciting news: your partner would like to have sex with you.

Stutzman is one of 442 Kickstarter backers who threw their support behind LoveSync, a project that promises to help couples with problems in the bedroom. By tapping it, users can wordlessly express their interest in sex. If both people hit their buttons within the set window of time, the LoveSync lights up. It aims to be both informant and instigator. "LoveSy …

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Porn companies are embracing crowdfunding

2019-04-03T09:15:00-04:00

The flood of free porn online has made things hard for professionals who are looking to make a living. For every video-on-demand service, there are dozens of free alternatives and outright pirated films to choose from. Facing the new reality of their industry, many pornographers have gotten creative about how they bring in the bucks, enlisting crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Patreon as a new way to make money in the porn business.

Over the past 14 years, Pink and White Productions has established itself as one of the leading voices in San Francisco's queer porn scene. Its flagship site, The Crash Pad Series, has a thriving, enthusiast …

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Tumblr’s adult content ban means the death of unique blogs that explore sexuality

2018-12-06T12:00:04-05:00

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This week, Tumblr announced that it would ban all adult content from its platform and said any user who was hurt by the decision could simply migrate to another site. But creators and readers alike don't believe there's another website that fosters the same kind of sex-positive spaces that Tumblr has. It's as though Tumblr CEO Jeff D'Onofrio has failed to understand his own platform, how unique these communities are to Tumblr, and how unlikely it is for them to survive beyond the shutdown.

"Sex wasn't this separate, shameful thing. Tumblr allowed it to exist right next to every other facet of our messy, millennial experience," says Vex Ashl …

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How Tumblr went from being the most porn-friendly social media site to banning porn

2018-12-05T10:20:08-05:00

About a decade ago, I met up with Tumblr founder David Karp at a SoHo coffee shop. I was a writer for Gawker Media's porn blog, Fleshbot, and Karp was overseeing the relatively new and still growing microblogging platform. We'd met through New York City's surprisingly small digital media scene. Over coffee, around the corner from Gawker's Elizabeth Street office, Karp outlined his vision for what Tumblr could do for porn, and what porn could do for Tumblr in return.

At the time, Tumblr was incredibly friendly to adult content. Twitter was too text-heavy to properly showcase erotic art, and Facebook was too prudish (and not nearly anonymous …

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#ThotAudit is just the latest tactic people are using to harass sex workers online

2018-11-30T11:29:39-05:00

Over the past few days, sex-work Twitter has been abuzz about a somewhat unexpected topic: taxes. A tweet from amateur clip producer and webcam model Mocha Puff that declared, 11 times and in all caps, that, contrary to some people's assertions, "sex workers do pay taxes," was retweeted over 1300 times; in follow-up tweets, Puff shared links to some sex-work-friendly tax professionals, as did other members of the sex-work community.

Why the sudden obsession with sex workers' financial responsibility to the government? It all started with #ThotAudit, a harassment campaign that encouraged people to report sex workers - and, more specifically, …

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What if porn, but for women

2018-09-18T09:00:02-04:00

Porn has long been seen as the exclusive domain of men - at least when it comes to who's making it and consuming it. Whether it's because women are assumed to be less horny and visual-oriented, or just too monogamy-oriented to be interested in watching other people have sex, pundits have long proclaimed ladies to be generally uninterested in erotic films. But it's increasingly clear that that idea isn't true: On the porn site Pornhub, "porn for women" was the top trending search term of 2017, and globally, women are estimated to make up about a quarter of porn viewers, a number that continues to increase as internet access becomes more wides …

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‘Female Viagra’ is back and easily available online — which means it could be more harmful than ever

2018-06-13T12:31:41-04:00

Three years ago, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Addyi, a so-called "female Viagra" pill intended to increase a woman's libido. The decision was controversial, and Addyi didn't sell well, partly due to problems with its manufacturer. Now, Addyi has been relaunched. It's half the price and easily available online - two moves that make it likely this ill-advised pill will be even more harmful. When it comes to issues of sexual desire, expanding access to a bad pill is a bad solution.

First things first: "Female Viagra" is a catchy term, but Addyi is not a female Viagra. Viagra increases blood flow and makes it physically easier f …

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