Thread by @emvdn

At morning session, 'Fuck the System: A Roundtable on Digital Sexual Cultures and 'Inappropriate' Content' #aoir2019

After the content ban on Tumblr, the algorithm went wild and tagged everything as NSFW. We need some transparent, international norms around this process: @susannapaasonen #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen .@paulibyron is here to talk about LGBTQI use of Tumblr - he sees producing content and having pretty unmoderated discussions about it as similar in some ways to zine culture #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron Tumblr is sometimes perceived as a DIY space that feels precarious and is vulnerable to being formalised within various commercial contexts: @paulibyron #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron "Our community" kept being raised as a justification for Tumblr's post-FOSTA/SESTA content ban. Sex became a community, but of course, this was taken away @paulibyron #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett wants to talk about safety and the deplatforming of sex that happened with the Tumblr ban. She feels a bit of a fraud talking about sex workers, but it's important to consider antagonisms between platforms and sex workers #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett In a lot of ways, platforms have given sex workers control. As @terrisenft wrote years ago, the cammer controls the focal range - and the off button #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft Sex workers are more able to screen clients, get paid up front, offer each other solidarity and advocacy, and even create a kind of intimacy pre-encounter, which helps to humanise sex work: @kylzjarrett #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft All this creates economic safety for sex workers. This safety is being stripped away by FOSTA/SESTA, which conflate human trafficking with sex work. This is hugely troubling. @kylzjarrett #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft Sex work is work. Everyone deserves safe, fair work. Challenge puritanism. Become better supporters and allies of sex workers. @kylzjarrett #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft .@kkatot: When you say, "hey, there are Nazis on your site", platforms say, "But I saw *nipples*! Think of the children!" and use this issue to distract from broader problems #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot Some of @kkatot's research has involved a speculative fiction approach where she's asked people to imagine that sex and sexual content had been banned online for 10 years, and write from the point of view of a sex doll/librarian/AI #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot Responses ranged from feeling like sex online sparks a feeling of freedom, like swimming naked, to feeling like being led around by your dick, to suspecting it made men aggressive and violent at sex @kkatot #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot .@susannapaasonen has difficulties with how the notion of "community" gets thrown around in internet studies. It's a fuzzy, warm kind of term. But communities are policed, they have problems, they're not always safe. There is no community except corporations. #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot "Safety" online with regard to sex gets complicated. People felt Tumblr was a "safe space" because it allowed conversations around sex. But then it took out the sex with this justification it would keep people safe?? @kkatot #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot Queer spaces are always precarious spaces. It's not just the online spaces that get shut down, but lesbian bars etc. You're always looking for a space to call your own, where you can be with your friends: Sal Humphreys #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot Commodification and economics have always been tied up with queer spaces, online and offline. Gay bars make money from queer people too! Bars for gay men are better than lesbian bars because men spend more money!: Sal Humphreys #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot For 15 years platforms have been claiming safe harbour: they are not the publishers, they only host content. Now Zuckerberg is making a push towards Messenger and Groups; this is another move to lessen platform responsibility @kkatot #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot .@KathAlbury uses citizenship as a sensitising concept. Citizenship is fraught. Certain people are always excluded from the boundaries of citizenship: children, the criminal, the deviant #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury Film classification is tightly regulated by govts and boards; it has all kinds of rules. @KathAlbury doesn't know if that works in relation to platforms. She doesn't believe we are citizens in that context. "When I work all this out... the book is going to be fantastic" #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury "Has anyone thought about Craigslist personals -" [Jessa Lingel passes the questioner a bookmark flyer for her new book The People's Republic of Craigslist] #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury There are heaps of ideas flying around about how to better make digital spaces for sex and how to regulate it appropriately #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury .@terrisenft: Platforms need users, and users have bodies. So: when we say "sex", do we mean penetration? Representation? Intimacy? We get into different positions (ha) when we consider these things #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury "I hate to be Gillespie 2010, but platform is a slippery term. Like sex": @terrisenft. They're corporations, infrastructures, and stages. Could we talk about re-platforming sex, working with people who have been working in these areas for years? #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury .@terrisenft is in NSW, where sex work is legal. This leads to different conversations everywhere, including the classroom. We need to remember some of our students are sex workers. We need to include more voices in more conversations #aoir2019

@susannapaasonen @paulibyron @kylzjarrett @terrisenft @kkatot @KathAlbury Lots of these threads will be taken up by @kkatot and I in our forthcoming book, Sex and Social Media, to be published by Emerald in 2020 💻👉👌❤️