Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/12/16/internet_censorship_twitter_campaign_pr0n/
Twitterers rally round #CensoredUK - to demand more porn
First they came for the grumble flicks, but I didn't speak out 'cos I was, erm, busy
Posted in Legal, 16th December 2013 08:01 GMT
SFW Twitter campaigners have launched an impassioned campaign to save grumble flicks from being snuffed out by Blighty's creeping internet censorship.
Using the hashtag #CensoredUK, a rag-tag army of right-on carnal campaigners, feminists, pornographers, perverts and men in dirty macs launched a protest against Prime Minister David Cameron's sexual censorship scheme.
In the New Year, about nine in every ten British homes will have to explicitly tell their internet provider they want to access porn. The big four ISPs, TalkTalk, Virgin, Sky and BT, have all agreed to enforce the "opt-in" scheme, which will aim to boot pornography off this septic sceptred isle.
According to a report on the stats site Tweetbinder, some 2,000 tweets were written using the hashtag, with activity peaking just before bedtime last night. The hashtag also began trending around the world.
Dr Brooke Magnanti, who once blogged under the name Belle de Jour about her life as a sex worker, joined in with the social media shouting. She tweeted:
As ever... pic.twitter.com/9Y6w9L8wky #CensoredUK
— Dr Brooke Magnanti (@bmagnanti) December 12, 2013
Magnanti also wrote a piece for the Telegraph in which she claimed the sexual health charity Brook (no relation) "turned up on website checkers as being default blocked", along with an educational NHS page about sex and young people.
"I've said it many times before, and I'll keep saying it," she said. "Sexual health is not 'adult content'. Lumping important (and for many young people, the only) sexual health advice they will have access to in with porn is a mistake."
A grumble movie director called PervLens was one of the main supporters of the tags, although he berated porn performers for failing to get involved. He tweeted:
Some #models got involved in today's #CensoredUK but frankly not enough did. Would an extra tweet in between your cam ads have hurt you?
— Pervlens (Ben) (@pervlens) December 13, 2013
@pervlens They'll be sorry when they are out of work because no one can access their cams.
— David Flint (@strangethings69) December 13, 2013
A petition against the proposals has also been signed by almost 40,000 people.
The blurb claims that "bad parenting is the problem", not the torrents of porn available to anyone able to type rude words into Google.
"It also sets a poor precedent that objectionable content can be blocked at the ISP level in the name of protecting children, who are in fact being harmed more by poor parenting," the petition states. "Aside from content of a clearly illegal nature the government should not be forcing the presence of filters at all, but instead pushing to improve the involvement of parents in a child's life, and to promote education over flimsy, disruptive, and money-wasting "solutions"."
Here are a few of the choice tweets from the Twitter storm:
None of the speakers acknowledge what is most damaging is our culture's unhealthy relationship with sex, shrouding it in shame #CensoredUK
— Marie Crispmas (@alexeptable) December 12, 2013
Cameron and his gang are either: clueless, or evil and want world domination. #CensoredUK
— jkne (@jkne) December 13, 2013
We are still so scared of naked people and naked people doing what naked people do... #CensoredUK
— Pervlens (Ben) (@pervlens) December 13, 2013
@AmyxJean maybe check the hashtag and inform yourself. ISP level filters do not protect vulnerable children. #CensoredUK
— Teena Vallerine (@TeenaVallerine) December 13, 2013
Rather worryingly, one chap claiming to be 16 years of age said that he learned everything he knew about sex from the internet.
How are kids going to find out about sex? I learned nothing in school and had to go to the internet to 'learn' about it. #CensoredUK
— Laim McKenzie (@LaimMcKenzie) December 12, 2013
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